#im trying to write with more intention

[mikichko]

was feeling lots of feelings today and it manifested in me writing a dark soap fic so we'll see how that goes if I decide to post it

[reaper-in-reverie]

—seaside.

Rin really was looking forward to it, you know?

Their dream. Soccer. No, Rin couldn't care less about soccer — what he cared about was brother, and being the best next to him. Next to him. By his side. He didn't care about being some best, he cared about his brother.

Fuck that. Seriously fuck that.

OR

synopsis. Rin after Sae came home from Spain, buying his old favorite ice cream, stuck in his thoughts. warnings. swearing, a fair amount of it. angst (i guess?). character study (in-character writing), which essentially is me yapping. tw long tags because those are my footnotes. I know blue lock fans only really care for thirsts and stuff so here's rin angst ig. wc 985.

Footsteps gently thudded on the hard dirt, the sea buzzing in the distance, the occasional splash of the waves against rock, the sun beginning to set.

Rin couldn't bear to stay in his house.

(Correction: holed up in his room.) He couldn't bear the thought of staying around his brother at all. He'd grown accustomed to Sae's absence in the four years he was away — but knowing he was back, near him, in his own home just filled him with a seething rage. He left his room with scattered trophies. Maybe in the heat of the moment he broke a photo.

He just couldn't be there right now.

Rin looked down at his hands. He had twin popsicles in them. He continued to walk until he reached the railing overlooking the sea. He promptly broke them in half. He couldn't stop thinking over the fact that Sae was usually the one to — supposed to be the one to — break them in half. He stared at them with a tired expression.

He couldn't stand being here either. He couldn't stand being anywhere right now.

Rin held the one popsicle in his other hand and stuck the other in his mouth, expression blank except for the twitch of his eyebrows. No, he came out here to not think of his stupid fucking brother right now — he came out here to breathe. He came out here to get out of his room. He came out here to eat popsicles. And watch the sunset.

Rin really was looking forward to it, you know?

Their dream. Soccer. No, Rin couldn't care less about soccer — what he cared about was brother, and being the best next to him. Next to him. By his side. He didn't care about being some best, he cared about his brother.

Fuck that. Seriously fuck that.

Rin had to come to terms Sae Itoshi had lied to him. Thinking back, Sae always did talk about being the best in the world — did they even share a dream in the first place? Did Sae truly just use him as a training partner? And now — now that he was the best, was Rin simply not enough?

Rin didn't want to play soccer any more.

His grip tightened slightly on the other popsicle. Some of it melted, dripping down his hand — that'd make some mess — but Rin didn't bother to clean it up. He'd nearly finished the one he was eating, opting to take it out of his mouth and see if he had won or not. In big, bold letters, were the words 'YOU WIN' on the popsicle stick.

He always did win.

Which meant the other popsicle was the losing one. Rin still took the half-melted ice cream into his mouth, switching it out with the one he already finished eating. He had a solemn expression on his face as he pondered throwing the stick into the ocean. He just kept it in his hand and stared into the horizon.

No, it couldn't be. Why did Sae change so suddenly? Whatever he and his brother went through — all his praises and all the goals they made, the money they spent on twin popsicles, the amount of 'winner' sticks in the bottom of the ocean, sitting together, walking together, him holding onto Sae's sleeve like a stupid annoying kid, their talk just before Sae went to Spain and changed forever — they all had to have meant something. It had to have meant something.

Or maybe Sae was the weak one here. He gave up, after all, didn't he? — he changed his dream. He left Rin behind. He was just pathetic. He just wasn't the same.

Sae never really was the same when he came back.

It was like looking at someone who looked like your brother. But he wasn't. This wasn't his brother, this wasn't the boy who made his dreams, this wasn't his reason to play soccer — this was Sae Itoshi, the man who turned his life upside down, the man who crushed him, the man who shoved the cold, hard truth into his face and took away all the child-like love and respect he ever had to the only human he'd ever considered family.

Rin would never forgive him.

Why the hell did he change so suddenly?

Rin would never forgive him.

No, in fact — Rin would crush him. He wanted to crush him until he was nothing more next to him. Crush him and his cruel dream to be the best midfielder.

He'd prove he was more than some training partner. Sae wanted to be the best midfielder in the world? So that Rin could be the best striker in the world? Fucking go right ahead.

He hated he wanted to prove his brother right.

He hated him.

Rin wanted to play soccer again.

He gritted his teeth, accidentally biting on the popsicle stick too hard — the sudden spike of pain making him take it out of his mouth. He took a deep breath, scanning over the large 'YOU LOSE' in bold letters written on the popsicle stick. He held both the losing and winning sticks in one hand, turning from the railing with a deep breath. And he began to walk back home.

Rin won back his dreams again today.

Some part of him didn't have Sae Itoshi as a brother anymore. Just an adversary. Just some obstacle.

He stared at the popsicle sticks again — 'YOU WIN', and 'YOU LOSE'. He stared at them as he walked along the side of the road. Rin found himself dwelling over the losing words. Trying to feel what his brother might've felt back then. It was one of the rare time he actually got the losing popsicle. And at the same time he didn't really lose — the winning one was just in his hand as well. But he didn't truly win either.

Rin had a feeling he could only truly win or lose if he had someone to win or lose to.

But he didn't. Not anymore.

... And Rin wasn't a sentimental person at all. But for now, he decided to keep the popsicle sticks, safely tucked into his pocket, like the ghost of the past.

For old time's sake, if you will.

© reapkusho on tumblr. 2024. all rights reserved. refrain from translating, copying, or stealing in any way, etc.

[crescentfool]

🍊🫐 throughout time!

[istherewifiinhell]

IS FLYING GENDERED?

On the masculine default, typifying gender in genre, and women as the other in the transformers cartoons.

question for the ages

once again i said back in the halcyon days of watching g1 (aka 5 months ago) i was like. Nooooo, decepticon is NOT a gender that's Silly. It's funny, but as a Read Of The Text, I thought it largely unneeded. (The concept came about, as a joke, involving dismissing the bad guys using the same language you would abt women (sexistly) that they're emotional [heh, flighty], vain, and shrill) after all. If in the 80s era there are 5 whole named/speaking woman tfs, its only ever gonna get better from here right? (<- booboo the fool)

anyway

Let's consider the axiom that the assumed default gender is male, that maleness is often seen as LACK of gender, and femaleness and gender variance are the PRESENCE of gender. In certain reasoning and worldviews, of course (See Androcentrism). Then add that, for transformers, the assumed default thing a transformer turns into, is car. (Autocentrism, if you will)

(The most general term for what a tf turns into is "Alt mode" as some of them are not vehicles at all. The other mode is "Robot Mode", whether its humanoid or not)

So I will be laying out why I believe the cartoon iterations support: non standard alt modes = non standard genders. This is in spite of the fact that FIRST lady tfs were all cars. Sleek cyber cars, but still. For whatever reason, (possibly, the reason for everything in tf, toys) they might as well not exist for how woman tf characters presence in the cartoons progressed over time.

And, to be clear, this is a reading of how these works of fiction are created, not a new unified bioessentialism but for robots aliens I'm proposing for like. In universe lore reasons. I hate that idea.

That said, alt modes in order of most to least gender: Spider, motorcycle, flying (in general, with rotors, jets), tank, and then FINALLY, car. (water and space crafts are already too marginal to rank, but they too can be assumed in relation to default maleness, AND that in making one a woman, would still qualify as othering her).

The NUMBER one reason for this is the bizarre need to have an ESTABLISHED woman tf character before making new ones. AS YOU MIGHT IMAGINE. With a g1 gender ratio something like.... (counting even the most marginal cases for the ladies) 9:120? (That's a rough count from a quick scanning of the tf wiki g1 char list) Shits dire out here.

The second is, ofc, character design based. cis people [stand in phrase for the hegemonic world view] are not okay, and their opinions about how tf gender must need be depicted visually is. uh? Im not a fan. Size and shape dimorphism in general is a given, and specifically having women tfs as far more humanoid and curvy in specific. Also general cartoon lady face syndrome but, whatever. I think there's exactly one character here who doesn't have "lips" or "lipstick" as a distinguishing factor. I'm so tired.

Third is generally, the idea of The Girl Of the Team. When there's The Girl, she often isn't JUST a normal character, who happens to be a girl. See, of course, the Smurtfette Principle. But in my view there's also a trend to give The Girl "special traits" on top of "Girl", maybe even to directly combat the idea that the Girl Character has no other traits? To stop this from being a General Primer on Woman in Media, my explanatory focus is things specific to the tf franchise.

(A phrase I use for thinking about normative modes [in general, not just the Alt ones] in within the tf universe is "unique transformerdom" or, even more clunkily, "A transformer of unique transformerdom". The excessive verbosity is amusing to me personally. All I mean by it is to have an umbrella term for any of the ways tfs can be made unique from their peers in the non allegorical realities of the fiction).

I could, and do, and greatly want to, speak about this AT LENGTH. But it keeps spiraling away from me. So I'll say for now were looking at ways a character is being depicted different from her peers, not because she is the only woman (which she likely is), but cause she's a different kind of transformer, AND if she's othered for it.

(IN SOME forms of the lore. Being a transformer woman, IS A UNIQUE KIND of transformer unto itself. Let's just say I hate it and move on)

Fourth, is the gender of villainy. There is much to be said about gender presentation of villains, the ways they are allowed to be aberrant. We will get to it. There is also all the tropes specific TO evil women, and the modes of villainy open TO female characters. But a general thing I think impacting the gender ratios of the factions is the how "Good" and "Evil" female characters are written. I'll generalize and call this the "Damsel vs Temptress" dichotomy. (See concepts like the Madonna-whore complex). Transformers, is by and large, an action franchise. Unless special reasons are made, characters who can impact the action– have more screen time, and likely more memorable, and iconic presences. A villainous woman can be unchaste, violent, aggressive. While a heroic woman, even if not a literal damsel are more likely to be in a support role. The secretaries of the action genre: medics and techs.

(Another factor is that tfs are giant robots, and the good guys are often friends with tiny squishy little humans. These make very good damsel fodder, and can be taking up the spots on the roster that might, in a different franchise, go to women. Additionally, while woman characters in transformers overall is an interesting topic. When I say tf women, I'm referring to ones that are in fictionally, transformers.)

SO, now understanding our points of attack/obstacles for getting woman into transformers. (Getting established, gendering the designed, uniqueness of existence, and general villainy). Lets go over those alt modes, and the characters that have em, in more detail.

Spiders

The "Beast Era" (1996) intro-ed the spider ofc. And what don't we have with this one. She's a villain, but shes also misunderstood, the era and design style let to these more organic shapes. And they used them to make sure she was very sexy. She's genre aware, she's quippy, she's an absolute icon. So naturally. She gets ported to other later shows. Which means we just have sexy spider ladies running around when everyone else is a fucking truck and shit.

Her own origin is, well think of her as a "Bride of Frankenstein" to the resident evil scientist, also a spider. She was designed for, and manipulated by him in multiple ways. Her protoform (A blank robot base), was supposed to be one of the good guys (a Maximal), but was reprogrammed into a bad guy (Predacon). Even then, she eventually joins them, for her own reasons. She's not even the first predacon to do so, the difference? Well the characters are a lot more NORMAL about his autonomy. Both of these characters stress that being a predacon is an identity they still see as important. But only the woman is told that really, she is was was always MEANT to be a maximal. And while that's true in a sense. There's also a plot were she's forced (by plot contrivance, not the other maximals) to get corrective robot surgery for it. And when they think she died from, everyone's more sad for her boyfriend than for her. Ouch.

The second spider, in the 2007 show, is now one in a world where she is the only "techno-organic" transformer, hence, she is spider, everyone else is a vehicle. Similar to the first, her narrative is very gendered, but less in the way were, like, I do literally think the first was was experiencing in universe sexism from other characters. Here, they really focus on the "techno vs organic" narrative, and the tragic circumstances on how that happened. In this case its just real world sexist writing.

THIRD SPIDER, (2010), instead of misunderstood and tragic evil, this ones just super mega likes to cause pain evil. She also occupies a strange place between the typic vehicular tfs, and the insecticons. This is because she has a helicopter alt mode, and her robot mode is just, a lady with spider characteristics. And, more than just a passing bug like similarity, she has the power to control the insecticons (you know, cause evil woman mind control). However, she doesn't fit in with them either, as the insecticons are at the most insect like they've ever been, in look, living in hives and that most don't even speak.

They may vary in exact character, relationship to the story's moral conflict, and design. But they stay comfortably established, dimorphised, flirty and flirting with villainy. And bonus points, always, for black widow spider trope.

SO. SPIDERS. Established: ✅️ Gendered designs: ✅️ (Extremely!) Unique: ✅️ Othered: ✅️ Villainy: ✅️

Motorcycles

Tooooo my knowledge the first bike lady was in 2004, and fairly minor, in the actual plot, but rest assured, they did go the previously established woman route, by being pink, though, which one shes named after varies by language. But neither were previously motorcycles. (And yes, there is also this problem of mixing together or swapping out one woman tf for another. As if we have the ladies to spare). Even though motorcycle men also exist, this one just stuck for a bit. Maybe something to do with Those Movies. I think the Gendered Existence of a motorcycle is pretty evident though, general sex appeal, being smaller, the mode of riding a motorcycle is different, more physical and intimate. Mainly this ranks so high for the level of grossness they can pack in. Just how objectifying it can be, particularly with two instances where the human rider is an annoying teen boy. Naturally, I've also never seen a male and female motorcycle in the same room, but the approach to design tends to be different. And yeah most of em are Arcee, who's first alt mode was cyber car, but it's not just her.

Established: ✅️ Gendered designs: ✅️ Unique: ✅️ Othered: Depends on iteration, I do NOT like the way one gets called "tough, for a two wheeler". Villainy: ❌(they wouldn't need to be motorcycles if they weren't making them the Special Girl Autobot, after all)

Flying

General: It just tends to stick out when your one girl is only flyer in the group, even she's otherwise tactfully done. Only flyer of the Maximals, a falcon, only flyer of the dinobots, a Pteranodon.

Rotors

I can barely even figure this one. Maybe it's just a general, aesthetics and use case of the actually vehicles, the associations? None of these ladies (and special case) are very connected otherwise. As previously mentioned, the spider helicopter. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A big one for this is the preschool demo shows, which are rescue team focused. In the first one the only woman on the human response worker team pairs with the helicopter, they mention she does medical at times. The helicopter is male, like the other tfs. But also he's afraid of flying, and while not the first case of a flyer with a fear of heights, their personalities are, pretty different. As he's both fearful AND effeminate, fine as character traits go but, with the tone of humour used, marks him as Other.

In the second, Whirl (pointing to icon) becomes a girl for the first time, now with standard humanized face. I assume as move to keep with the previous show of having a girl one, as there's no human team mates. She's also the only one who really likes rescue school. Aaaand that's all know of her. What more do you want from me.

Helicopters: Unique: ✅️ Othered: ✅️ (milder than some)

But why'd I call this section rotors instead of helicopters? That would be because one of the latest Sole Female TF we just put in everything™ is a VTOL jet with rotors. She'll tend to be the only jet of her type, which is also smaller than the type of jet used for the villains.

And, of course, aside from alt mode, the thing that makes her stand out most in the cartoons? That she's very clearly a comics character. (I find the emphasize that she's "fan created" over done, as it only controlled minor aspects, and irrelevant cause tfs get completely overhauled in new versions all the time). From her design, which is a bit busier than most characters she stars with. And also uses Japanese aesthetic signifiers in ways that I think are a bit misappropriated and untactful. (VERY USamerican comics). Also, when she stars next to a guy, also from comics employing Japanese aesthetic, you can tell its not deployed in the same manner. (E.I she has hair and makeup, he has armor). Either way, her depictions have her either as badass sword lady on mission from god who's constantly getting hit on by an annoying guy. Or have her be from a different planet and has special telepathy.

Do we see how both her gender AND the cultural signifiers are having affects here? That the main woman tf in a series can be a literal alien even among our alien robots, with cultural signifiers they don't have?

Ratings Established: ✅️ (made the comics to cartoon jump) Gendered designs: ✅️ Unique: ✅️ Othered: ✅️ (SO SO EXTREMELY, using methods in fiction and real life)

Jets

I think my association of jets with tf gender is stronger, than some of the above examples, even if there's less reason to it. And why is that? Well, lets get socratic. Here's another question.

Is This All Starscream's Fault?

No. He's not real, he can't do things. But. His legacy as THE main stay transformers character that gets to subvert gender? Yeah. (Sure, the G1 autobots have their own effete, but he's not in every single cartoon they ever made now is he? Plus now that I think about it, he is a FLYING car...)

From the get, he's not a Man's man. He's shrill, he's manipulative and duplicitous, petty and emotional, cowardly and wheedling. He is, of course, the Perfect character. Now naturally, the 80s cartoon was not concerned with your paltry logics. Starscream and his ilk are the jets, but every decepticon can fly. The gun, the cassette player, the camera, the cassettes.

And each to a last, more masculine than he is. Vocally or behaviorally, physically. Every one of them fit the gender expectations more than he does. Even being a small time grunt, is a masculine trait, after all, more so than unchecked ambition. So its not femininity from flying, from jets. But direct relationship, reference, and descendancy from Starscream that makes it. I've yet to see female versions of Jet fire and or the aerialbots, for example.

So what to do when an effeminate male villain was less maltese falcon and more that man has effeminate hips? Well. We had to start getting his ass for being effeminate, explicitly. They made the female clone of him, which yeah, is an offensive joke stemming from the various The Gender Anxieties. (Transmisogyny, homophobia and sexism. General relation toxic masculinity. A heady mix of all and more).

But I mean. It's free girl tf... Once given a name in extra canon materials, she start's showing up in other things. Once you're in books, video games, comics, and most importantly, toys, you're real. And then eventually, her first non clone appearance in a cartoon, and how her presence shaped it.

That being, Cyberverse. Which is a cgi show, you need to know this for reasons of production. Making new models is expensive. This has always been the reason you just make recolours of Starscream and name them different things. Chicken or egg on this one, I don't know, But because CV has Slipstream, and the only difference between her and the generic "male" decepticon jet, is a more feminine face; Suddenly, any random decepticon goon can be a woman.

An absolutely revolutionary take for striving to populate a fictional world with gender parity. By at large it also means they're way more lady villains, and specifically flying model of villain. The show has other woman, but none who get the same androgynous body mold treatment.

Established: ✅️ Gendered designs: Mildly to NO. Unique: By design, no. Othered: Yes for the clone, and Screamer himself, I suppose. No, otherwise. Villainy: ✅️(That's, the whole idea)

Tanks

It needs to be said. Sometimes, when doing things that transgress a norm, anteing up is less subversive. This is another reason why gender variance, female agency and overt sexuality are more common traits of villains. When already defying strictures of society. What's one more.

That's Right. TANKS ARE THE BUTCH WOMAN OF TRANSFORMERS.

Alright. Let me back up. Strika is the stone cold knock out undefeated champ of lady tf designs that, actually has a reoccurring cartoon presence. She is, admittedly, only a reoccurring to minor character.

Her introduction is in another show with techno-organics, this one involved in the struggle between well, the techno and the organic. Strika as we see her, and as the design that will go on to be iterated, is not in her normal transformer body. She has been transferred into a 'vehicon' body. Without a preexisting essence contained in one, vehicons are not considered alive, in the way a transformer is. Visually, they lack the more human body plan, a standard face, feet and hand like appendages.

To further contrast Strika against the two techno-organic woman. Both of them are tall, and slender. Their softer organic shapes designed towards elegance or beauty, whatever your subjective opinion of that result might be. They both have romance subplots too. By the way. Or honestly one subplot and one main plot. Strika. In contrast. Is built like a brick shit house. Her face is. Minimal. And her goal: protecting her planet... by terminating the heroes.

Now, existing as a character that can be referenced for other media, and given the detail that she was a "Famous general", it's off to the races. She makes a wonderful big tank menace that can fill out a background shot, too.

Without her I hardly think we could have Clobber, also from CV. Who is. The true goat. The finest thing, the achievements of all we could ever hope for. A big fuck off woman, gender swapped from a previous male design with minimal faff, with now even more personality and show presence. Friends, wants, desires. Emotions. Thank God for Clobber, Thank Clobber for Clobber. Thank Randolph Heard and Mae Catt for Clobber.

Established: Depends if you want to count that Strika had so much swag they kept drawing/modeling her Gendered designs: FUCK NO Unique: ✅️ Othered: only originally Villainy: ✅️

Cars

So now you have the final piece of the puzzle. In transformers, Autobots are Cars. Yes, there are plenty of autobots that are NOT cars, and there are cars that are not Autobots. But they're exceptions, they're aberrances. They're unique. And Autobots are the norm. They oppose the Decepticons. Decepticons are Villains. And Decepticons can fly. Modal simplified binaries and false dichotomy abound!

And the thing about those original Autobot woman, the one's who largely did not influence all of this? They were cars, it's true, but not like how the men where cars. They've not been designed from transforming car toys, with a shellac of humanoid gender over top. Their designed in the way of human gender. With the car on top.

When the preexisting clause leads to the original designs to be revisited, which, has largely only happened in more recent years. They aren't car woman robots. The cars are literally not part of their bodies, they are additional. Instead of a unifying identity of a robot who is a car, its Arcee and her backpack. Parts of cars get grafted onto their petite lady bodies, and placed anywhere out of the way.

In order to make a transformer a woman, they have to give her a gender, not understanding that that's always been the case. And to give her a woman's gender, she's got to LOOK like a woman, not a transformer. And to look like a woman, she's got to act like a woman. She must be heroic but reactive instead of active, or else, villainous, conniving and or self centered. To be a woman, we must have some other previous woman to explain her presence, or else explain it anew with her unique, strange, or exotic origin. How could she ever be a woman if she simply, existed, looked average, talked average. How could she be a woman if her body is hunks of ungendered car. How can she be a woman if she's everything we expect a transformer to be.

A woman is transgressive, a woman is not normal. Autobots are normal. Autobots are heros. Autobots are men. And Autobots do not fly.

[scribe-cas]

Made a post about my tag list only to be faced with the most beautiful tags to ever exist

he's just that babygirl. like cmon really look at him.

that man is too dumb of ass to do any real harm and we all know it

@rbbess110

[dennistakesamentalhealthday]

the nancy boy thing is just so fucking insane because like. they broke from the spelling of this name to do it but also incorporated it into the spelling of his name with n for nancy (possibly showing how he associates it with himself). but the license plate could have been any letter and that letter could have been any word and they chose b for boy. they could have cut to the license plate from any letter in dennis and they chose n for nancy. and we already know the way dennis spells out his name/words in this scene is very important metaphorically they showed us with that alternate D.E.N.N.I.S. system he gives us so.....they did that on purpose and drew attention to it

[tarantula-hawk-wasp]

sometimes you need to tell yourself “im a shit writer” and then Write Anyways. 

[the-clay-quarters]

me, every time I make a pair/group of ocs: I'll be normal about them this time I swear

shipping brainrot: :)

me: dangit yeah they'd be cute wouldn't they

[honeydots]

I would like some teasers about that Xander - Soleil father-daughter support fic please 💖

HEHEHE that'd be my pleasure~~!! i'll put a couple things under the cut c:

the fanart nattie drew for me is from their c-support!! the gist of it is that xander's employing a similar punishment to soleil as he did to laslow for excessive flirting :3 but as they're working in xander's office, they both end up falling asleep, hence the little scene in the art <3

the rest of the support is about soleil lying through her teeth about how she totally isn't flirting anymore so she doesn't get in trouble again, and xander completely seeing through her lie and doing a dad-thing of trying to make her come clean herself instead of directly calling her out !!

[shdwtouch]

not me openly admitting that shade lowkey takes after me. this was not intentional, I swear. uwu; she kinda just... ended up with an extra dose of who I am as a person, whereas most of my original characters receive much less.

I realized this when considering that shade is most likely homo leaning. and I was like, haha she's just like me ! an enby ace lesbian... and then the similarities just kept getting drawn. idk maybe I'm just overly tired.

also like. not gonna apologize ? she really isn't a self-insert. but its also like... creators are allowed to put themselves into what they make ! and I'm proud of shade, I really am. so I won't be made ashamed for traits we might share.

[therewithinthestars]

i'm watching vnc and im so goddamn confused help

[todayisafridaynight]

This might not be anything, but while writing about your fics, the way you have the characters' mannerisms down PERFECTLY got me thinking about mirroring...

There's a lot of it in 7 (Horii is a directorial genius etc etc), most of it more intentional than these probably are, but there's something so interesting about mirroring that takes the tone of a (relatively) fond memory, a familiar gesture, and inverts it in the way shown here.

OH I'M GLAD YOU'VE NOTICED THESE TOO I think I mentioned it months back (or I drafted a post 'bout it but didn't think it was anything noteworthy) but I always really did like how the Arakawa Family mimicked each other's mannerisms (also circling back to how Jo and Masato calling Ichiban 'Ichi' presumably after picking it up from Arakawa)!

Aoki actually does the same sitting gesture too! I went back to double check and skim through the rest of the game's cutscenes, and as far as I could tell unless I skipped a scene, it really is only these three that do this specific pose:

It's such a small detail but I love it immensely and it really does highlight their connections with each other and it drives me insane

[mcybree]

Random limlife Scott rant, GO!

I got this ask and decided that I’d give it my best shot but got so mad on my skim through some of the moments I remembered that I gave up.

[fighterbound]

low activity starting tomorrow...

so i got the job i interviewed for, while im happy bc benefits and more pay ( i think ya'll positive energy helped!). my free time is gunna be reduced and i am sad about that ( means less talking to friends online and whatnot). i thought i might have like two weeks before i started, but im starting tomorrow so i may not get to replies until the weekend. ):

i'll be slow as i adjust again to the 9-5 grind again. so please bear with me as a i figure this all out.

[v-arbellanaris]

tbd later but i keep seeing people just try to go on and on abt how ppl are morally reprehensible or whatever for Not Liking f characters and i just wanna say there's definitely. ABSOLUTELY. some people in fandom that need to fuckign check their misogyny. there absolutely is and ive been talking abt it on various different blogs and things like that since '09.

but.... idk is that constructive? or helpful? to attach morality to the gender of the characters that you like? idk! this shit fucked me up bc i would like... deny that i liked m characters. like i used 2 feel soooo guilty for liking m characters???? for YEARS??? and i rly felt it was my moral obligation to Like f characters and it was SO forced... and the truth is that a lot of the time ppl write f characters with v little depth and v little intrigue bc they dont want to make Statements abt women overall bc every f character written is somehow supposed to Represent multiple someones and even when theyre """"problematic"""" or """villainous""" or whatever its in a way thats designed more for them to be unlikeable instead of morally complex or morally compelling. ppl who write m characters usually dont bother to think abt the Optics (esp when theyre white m characters) and so all of the lovely complexities come through and its clear from the story n narrative that its unrelated to their identity, or if it is related to their identity, its because of how they relate to it (rather than the relation between identity and action being that being x means you do y or that BECAUSE you're x you do y). in all honesty there's v few f canon characters that have that kind of complexity (part of the reason im always writing my own - ive been writing ofc x canon character fics for actual decades, long before i joined this fandom) and the v few f characters that do have tht complexity are probably side characters or characters not directly relevant to the plotline. and bc theyre so preoccupied w writing these characters as like... a stand-in for Minorities or whatever, they're so careful to strip any potential conflict or moral ambiguity from them in a way that leaves me feeling not v compelled to care - compared to, lets say, m villains who almost always still have that shred of humanity left to compel me to care so much about them bc i can see myself in them, f villains usually dont get that. there's exceptions to this - i can think of a lot of comics characters for e.g. - and i love those exceptions, but they're exceptions.

and idk i feel like we should also acknowledge that like... ignoring that these f characters are badly written or lack compelling (notice i specify COMPELLING here like its not rly enough for them to have a husband or a kid or whatever that's not compelling???) humanising moments because ppl treat f characters like they're supposed to Represent All Womens and 2. this makes them less compelling than m characters like 80% of the time and 3. that these critiques should be anchored in "FUCKING DO BETTER". what could we change abt how we write and engage with f characters? talk about that as much as the critiques or whatever that we have for f characters in the first place bc people are much more willing to give up on trying to write f characters if theyre told "this was shit" vs "this could use with some improvement - what abt this? or that?"

like idk i think there's a more productive way we could be talking abt this

[vigilskeep]

people really get hung up on the watsonian/doylist analysis when they talk about homophobia in thedas. the read "there's no homophobia in thedas!" and take it as the full honest truth. like sure, maybe there's an in universe explanation that makes those banters not homophobic, and maybe you could put together an in-universe explanation for why making jokes about a man wearing a skirt is rude but not homophobic/transphobjc... but thedas isn't real. the dialogue is homophobic because making a comparison between bestiality, incest, and homosexuality is homophobic in real life. treating cross-dressing as freakish or shameful is homophobic/transphobic in real life.

like i'm fully behind watsonian analysis, don't get me wrong. i love to think about in universe explanations for things, and i love reading and writing meta, but at the end of the day the explanation for things like this is often the doylist "the author is influenced by real-world homophobia"

this is not like wrong but quite different to what i was saying. i am discussing what the in-world situation is and that’s what i mean when i’m talking about homophobia in thedas. it’s for sure coloured by the writers’ opinions and preconceptions, and that’s true of a lot of facets of thedas society, i think that goes without saying for any fantasy world but particularly this one, but i myself am not focusing on that. sure the writing of that banter was homophobic but i personally am talking about what it says in-world about varric and kirkwall and thedas for him to have said that. my main point is that, whatever circumstances of writing may have occurred to make it happen, homophobia clearly exists in-world