#i didnt put genders

[confusedskelepatch]

what r (at least some of) the skeletons pronouns/gender, I’m rlly curious

(also ur super cool and this blog is awesome, I hope it can grow more soon!!)

SANS - he/him

PAPYRUS - they/he and would probably experiment with neos

ROSEMARY/UF PAPS - he/xe, feel like xe'd maybe use SOME neos eventually but he'd be a bit concious about it so not sure what

RED/UF SANS - he/him (same thing with neos as rosemary)

OAK/HORROR SANS - she/they/he (some neos with people she's close to)

WILLOW/HORROR PAPS - they/she/he/maybe some neos

RUS/SF PAPS - he/they/heh

NOX/SF SANS - he/xe

ORANGE/SWAP PAPS - he/they

BLUE/SWAP SANS - he/shine/mweh/pow/more neos

KILLZ - he/they/it/guy (probably more neos as well)

NIGHT - he/him

DUST - he/they/she/most neos, their preferences change depending on the day

ERROR - he/they

FRESH - any including all neos (spork LOVES neos)

INK - any including neos

these aren't set in stone, i might use others in my writing sometimes (especially more neos), but this is what i thought rn :]

[holy-reference-in-a-username]

Look out for magic mirrors~!

Congratulations you activated my trap card. Take a comic.

Ell: Holy shit they're idiots.

[ninjasmudge]

feeds your narilamb yuri juice

dude i have great news about my regular narilamb

[sporesgalaxy]

The way Dungeon Meshi does gender makes me insane. It’s stated over and over that Falin and Laios really are more similar than anyone is looking for- Laios directly states as much at one point, Marcille mentions it when Falin wakes up the first time and starts bemoaning not eating any monsters, the magic mirror story even has fem!Toshiro crushing on Laios- but Laios is so protective of his little sister. Laios leaves home to start making a life he can one day share with her. And she leaves magic school because he has failed, and failed so hard that she’s worried that she might never see him again if she lets him leave without her. He wants to protect her from the way the world treats him, but he does not or does not want to understand the terrible truth- the world will never treat her as harshly as it does him, because she is a pretty ‘quirky’ girl and he is a big autistic man. Falin is happy, doing well in her own sphere, making a single friend (because she is still autistic, and has struggles of her own, even if they’re a different kind), but Laios still feels a need to protect her because his experience of this world has been nothing but cold shoulders and distrust all the way down. This story makes me want to sprint into the river. Laios and Falin are the best characters of all time.

Ouhhhhh I dont have time to reread dungeon meshi to give you good sources but based on my doodoo memory and vibes therein: I have to disagree that Falin was necessarily doing "well," and I especially disagree that the tragedy here is that Laios was doing something unnecessary by trying to make a place in the world for him and Falin.

Falin gets along seemingly ok in the world but it's because she's agreeable to a fault .

What's so interesting to me about the Touden siblings is the different ways they've learned to deal with being The Odd Man Out. Laios set out to try and forcefully carve out a PLACE for him and Falin in the world, where they could both openly and unabashedly be themselves.....Falin stayed behind, and learned how to hide the things that made her stick out too much, and how to appease people on the verge of rejecting her and Laios.

That can be functional, but it isn't good. It isn't happiness. It hurts in a million tiny ways every single day, to hide yourself out of fear of rejection like that.

At school, Falin must have spent a lot of time alone before she befriended Marcille, since Falin was familiar enough with the surrounding wilderness that she knew where that small Dungeon opening was. She sought out what happiness she could by following her unusual passions in more private ways, where no one would judge her for it. Falin didn't expect anyone NOT to judge her for her "weirdness" before she met Marcille, so Falin didn't even try to connect with anyone before Marcille at a level more personal than "classmate." That's not doing well. That's not living.

This kind of self-isolation is a coping mechanism for neurodivergence that functions for a while, but it eats away at you. Falin considered marrying Toshiro despite not loving him, essentially because it seemed like the normal thing to do and she didn't think she'd get another chance to be married at all. What if she had gone through with that, or something similar by the same reasoning? Laios lived in a state of being rejected over and over, which obviously hurts like hell. In contrast, Falin was willing to live a life she never wanted just to avoid total rejection. That can be incredibly painful too, in its own way.

Falin and Laios were BOTH tragically fighting doomed battles to find a place for themselves in the world during the time they were separated. Working together, supporting each other, they're able to do a lot more. Cries.

[vampyretaemin]

Just a little more, that’s all it takes.

[carbon--14]

pspsps phannies come get a little 2009core treat and help me decide which of these are better. plz and thanks :] i intentionally didn't put a both option but if enough ppl say i should i will

[cator99]

out of curiosity, would you consider yourself butch?

used to be a blonde underweight twink and now I'm a based jock still got the chanel bag and the sick albeit matured mind of a suckpig to prove it so I'm gonna let you decide whether you wanna call me that word just cuz I got a pussy and short hair. I promise you that there have been enough advancements made in the art of lesbian sexual dynamics in the past 50 years to broaden the vocabulary used to describe the plethora of types of masculine females.

[fvedyetor]

american sigzai

[milfygerard]

but fr outside of my contracted madness i absolutely refuse to give joe alwyn gold rush like how is that song at all related to their relationship the lyrics clearly spell out a relationship that either never existed or only existed in implication and fantasies and maybe-maybe nots and its so bitter and yet desperately soft in the bridge where it almost projects a sense of envy, of wanting to be them as much as you want them. It continues an interesting oft ignored lyrical trend of taylor wanting just as much to be her lover as to have them, envying their easy charisma (you were flush with the currency of cool/i was always turning out my pockets) or quiet dignity (your integrity makes me seem small) dating back to her earliest songs (the kind of flawless i wish i could be). Theres a projected self hatred and yearning to be better that twists itself into both romantic and sexual lust for her partners thats so fascinating and speaks to how all of her songs regardless of who theyre about are also an act of self reflection on who she is and who she wishes to be.

[primordial-being]

had to make these

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

it just struck me how my queerness is essentially just me going "hmmm... nah <3"

[bananonbinary]

honestly i like a lot of female characters now that i didn't like much as a kid, and i wonder how much of that is me being an adult and being able to relate to Adult Problems more, and how much is just like. knowing i'm nonbinary lets me appreciate womanhood in a way being trapped by it never did.

[caspersscareschool]

it's like this

[dungeons-and-dragon-age]

it also once again makes me painfully aware of the woes of being a dragon age dwarf enjoyer (<- being starved for proper lore) 😔

[pinkeoni]

Will Byers: The Final Girl

Looking more at Will through Carol J. Clover's Men, Women, and Chain Saws

After making this post about Will's gender expression in which I referenced and was inspired by Carol J. Clover's book Men, Women, and Chain Saws, a book which was mentioned in this article, an article which brought to my attention my Mori motherthroat, I have since made it through the books introduction and have gotten all the way to the end... of the first chapter. Like I said, I'm a slow reader.

But it's within this first chapter that Clover actually talks about the Final Girl trope, something that I, and others, have suggested that Will falls into.

And to be honest, I didn't quite get the Final Girl labelling of Will until I started reading Clover's book and made my analysis. But now, it all makes sense. So I wanted to do a deeper dive into Will as the Final Girl of the show, how he embodies this trope, and how he subverts it.

Defining Will as a "Final Girl"

The idea of Will being the Final Girl is a way to allow Will to have the masculine hero role that the creators seem to be teasing for him, without sacrificing his more feminine role of victim. The term victim-hero that I used in my original post is one that I got from Clover herself, which she uses in reference to final girls. Final girls spend the majority of their film suffering at the hands of the killer (victim) before eventually turning the tables and getting revenge (hero) or is saved by an outside force, typically (but not always) a male one.

The Final Girl idea for Will doesn't come out of nowhere either, as the show itself plays with slasher tropes. Season one opens with a culling from the killer with the initial lab sequence, and dialogue from Brenner suggests that there were other victims, with only Will being left as the lone survivor. Season four feels more slasher-y, with the kills being on screen and the killer actually given a name and a face (making Max somewhat effectively the Final Girl for that season) and the season ends with the idea that the killer is still on the loose, with emphasis given to his connection with Will.

Carol J. Clover describes Final Girls as follows:

“The Final Girl is boyish, in a word. Just as the killer is not fully masculine, she is not fully feminine—not, in any case, feminine in the ways of her friends. Her smartness, gravity, competence in mechanical and other practical matters, and sexual reluctance set her apart from the other girls and ally her, ironically, with the very boys she fears or rejects, not to speak of the killer himself.”

Where Final Girls are often boyish girls, Will is a girlish boy. So it's not just the narrative that aligns him with other Final Girls, it's his characterization as well. His non-conformity to gender norms, as well as his romantic reluctancy, is part of the trope.

This is most notably exemplified in season three, when Will is unable to relate to the heterosexual-romance drama that his other male friends seem to be intertwined with. Even Dustin, who doesn't share much time with the main crew this season, had a girlfriend, something that allied him to Mike and Lucas and set Will apart.

In season one Will feels more Sally at the end of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, after being tortured for the last chunk of the film by the slaughterhouse family, Sally makes her escape on the back of a pickup truck. Will spends most of the season evading the killer (who we later learn to be Vecna) until he is rescued by Hopper and Joyce. Will and Sally never turn a weapon against the killer, but they endure, out last, and survive long enough to be rescued.

But Sally's case is just one way that the Final Girl story can end, and you're more likely to find a different kind of ending— with the Final Girl turning the tables on the killer and getting back at him. Sometimes, but not always, by brandishing the killers own type of weapon against him.

So now we're in a post-vol. 2 world where the killer is still at large, Will has been confirmed several times now to be the center of the final season, it's said to be Will's "coming-of-age" story and the killer's reign can't last forever.

Clover talks about "phallicization" when describing the journey of the Final Girl.

"The tale is no less one of maleness. If the experience of childhood can be—is perhaps ideally—enacted in female form, the breaking away requires the assumption of a phallus. The helpless child is gendered feminine; the autonomous adult of subject is gendered masculine; the passage from childhood to adulthood entails a shift from feminine to masculine."

But is that really the answer? For Will to wield a weapon against Vecna and brutally kill him? For Will's femininity to be framed as something that needs to be overcome?

To go in the opposite direction (castration) hardly seems like a solution either, especially considering that the phallus belongs to gay man. To castrate would be to suggest that the phallus— sexuality— is one that is dangerous and needs to be removed.

So how do we find a middle ground, one that maintains the phallus without eliminating Will's feminine character traits? And is there a solution suggested in the text?

Oh rod motif, you never get old

In episode one the phallus is represented as something destructive, the rifle, which Will puts down and arguably because so, was afforded more time than if he had used it.

As the series marches on, the phallus never goes away— it just transforms.

The phallus has gone from something of fear and destruction to a representation of love and creation. But Will has yet to self actualize because the above scene is also an act of castration because Will doesn't claim proper ownership over the painting. The phallus is a beautiful display of love, but only if it belongs to someone else.

The show may have (unsubtly) foreshadowed this self actualization as it relates to the phallus and the defeat of Vecna.

And I don't really think that people at this point want to spend the rest of the post reading about Will with powers theoretics so I'll just leave the suggestion there for now and allow you to come to your own conclusions.

Final (Girl) Thoughts

The idea that heroism is male and victimization is female is an idea that is as old as and older than Odysseus, but that isn't to necessarily say that heroism and self-actualization is a purely male idea, something that may have been contended by the existence of Final Girl herself.

"At the moment that the Final Girl becomes her own savior, she becomes a hero; and the moment that she becomes a hero is the moment that the male viewer gives up the last pretense of male identification. Abject terror may still be gendered feminine, but the willingness of one immensely popular current genre to re-represent the hero as an anatomical female would seem to suggest that at least one of the traditional marks of heroism, triumphant self-rescue, is no longer strictly gendered masculine."