#its the difference between a 70 and a 90 but it matters to me

[silverislander]

something really fun and sexy adhd will do is block you from ever actually showing others what you're truly capable of. lol

[jesncin]

Re: the whole Si Spurrier Bi/Pan Johnstantine debacle thing

For context, Spurrier (the writer of the current Hellblazer run) explicitly had John self identify as pansexual in narration despite John being canonically bisexual. The cover of the issue (I believe this was the artist's intention, but can't confirm) also evoked the bi flag colors in its colorscheme. When asked about this on twidder, Spurrier doubled down (paraphrasing: "John shouldn't have any queer label, he's bad representation"), deleted tweets, and just left fans in a mess.

My tldr take: John Constantine is bisexual. Spurrier didn't and doesn't know the difference between bi and pan, mixed them up and spouted respectability nonsense to cover himself. He's an old man who doesn't fyuck with gay people, simply. I don't think he has deep seated hatred for the bi community or anything. He made a mistake (still a bad one) and didn't apologize for it. Shame this is the author spearheading such a prominent queer character.

The long take:

I see a lot of people bringing up modern media that reaffirms John's bisexuality but I believe it's important to look at the historical context.

John Constantine in his original Vertigo Hellblazer run was an inherently counter-culture character. A working class guy growing up in the punk scene, aligning himself with queer people, explicitly ACAB, a rebuttal to the classic Superhero tropes, etc. It's only fitting that Constantine's bisexuality was revealed in a similarly counter-culture manner. Under guest writer John Smith (and artist Sean Phillips and colorist Tom Zuiko), John just casually mentions having "the odd boyfriend" in passing narration about his struggles with commitment. This may not seem like a big deal with today's standards, but it's important to recognize that this issue came out in 1992. Hellblazer already had a handful of queer characters at this point and suddenly after years of queer coding, the main character just reveals his bisexuality in passing.

So that's the historical context in our comics world, how about within the canon of Hellblazer? Well, John was born in 1953 in Liverpool, meaning he was a teen in the 60s, formed and toured with Mucous Membrane all over the UK but mostly London during the 70s (as a young man in his 20s). When we cross reference that with what's going on in the UK queer scene at this time, it's no wonder why John is presumed to be bisexual.

[From Stonewall UK]

In the same article, Stonewall mentions that the term "pansexual" became popular in the 90s. While this aligns with when issue #51 reveals Constantine's "odd boyfriend" comment, it's clear that the term "bisexual" would be the term Constantine grew up with during his formative years. While this distinction might seem unnecessary or even arbitrary to some people, these identities do matter in their nuance and historical context. Identities and histories are not interchangeable after all. With all this context in mind, to me, John Constantine will always be bisexual.

To Spurrier's comment on "John Constantine shouldn't have any label anyway, he's bad representation/role model for any identity" (paraphrasing, I know he probably said this in a defensive moment since if he truly believed this then he wouldn't have explicitly had Constantine refer to himself as pansexual in Dead in America #7), I think using respectability in defense of a character as counter-culture as Constantine is a demonstrable example of Missing The Dang Point.

[from Nerdist article written by Jules Greene]

Spurrier, the gays like John Constantine especially in his og Hellblazer run because he wasn't a walking Pride ad. We like that he's a mess. We like that he's working class. We like that he's messed up and painfully human. If you don't understand that about Constantine, then you fundamentally misunderstand why people find him so appealing to begin with.

[nieves-de-sugui]

BL and it’s Shoujo grandma

In the last few years a lot of people have entered the fandom from different pathways and don’t know its history and origins. This post is an effort to clarify some of the whys and the hows of how the genre and industry came to be in the way they have. In this post I want to talk about BL and its connection to Shoujo manga through their tropes.

We all know to some degree (and if you don’t you will now) that BL came from the more traditional romance manga genre: Shoujo. 

Today, BL is its own independent genre, so many people might not know that a lot of what is characteristic of BL, is an evolution or a trace from its Shoujo grandmother. After all, romance is romance, and our hearts flutter very easily with the same tropes over and over again. 

We must also take into consideration that everything in this life influences each other so the limits between genres will never be cristal clear. There is no clear line between Shoujo and BL... but the ambiguity is part of the charm. 

Please be remiended that this is my own thoughts on the matter. It’s a hypothesis I have come up with based on my readings but do not take it as gospel. Anyone and everyone is welcome to add to this post and correct any errors, or comment their own takes on the topic.

Edit: this got so long I’m gonna put it under the cut

Shoujo, as the Romance Manga Genre by definiton, comes from Japan. Even though it is not the only source of romance content, I believe that it has had one of the biggest influences over the mainstream asian romance media. Which, I believe, has a lot to do with the recent history of the region.

First, a little bit of history and context (and some speculation) 

The after effects of  WW2 

Well, Japan’s imperialism and war against the west makes it occupy a big part of the countries of southeast asia and “during this period, GDP in most Southeast Asian countries fell by half; 4.4 million civilians died prematurely; severe shortages of food and goods affected almost all Southeast Asians; and many lived in fear of draconian military rule” ( World War II and Southeast Asia Economy and Society under Japanese Occupation, by Gregg Huff) yes this post has citations people

Overall, Southeast Asia faces economic difficulties, social and ethnic unrest, and political struggles through much of the mid-twentieth century. By the 1980s, conditions have improved, but the “Asian financial crisis” in the late 1990s is a serious setback for the region (source)

All of this to say, that it makes sense that, in such a landscape, it was Japan who, after the American Occupation was the one country with the means to produce and eventually export entertainment. The US wanted to successfuly avoid any resurgance of imperialism and a base in the east on their side for the cold war, and other subsequent wars. This special attention helped the stability and economy of Japan in the long term (compared to all the other countries that had been under its rule).

Manga and Shoujo 

More or less at the same time manga as we know it today started (with Osamu Tezuka, aka the god of manga) around the 50′s. 

First made by men then by women around the 60′s, Shoujo was the genre “for girls” in opposition to Shounen, that was “for boys” (these labels just inform of the content and tropes of the stories you read, there are many other genres but I’m trying to make this short). Women authors took control of the stories that were being told to women audiencies, taking into account what interested them at the time: gender roles, sexuality and romance, among others. 

To me, the most interesting time period for Shoujo after the initial 60′s/70′s (ie, The Rose of Versailles) is the 90′s/early 2000′s (ie, Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Ouran High School Host Club, etc... My favorite shoujo manga come from this time, really really recommend reading some). Which coincidentally happens around the same time as manga’s worldwide boom and expansion. 

How has Shoujo influenced asian media? 

The 80′s/90′s was when manga arrived to the US, and subsequently to the rest of the world. Depending on the country manga became popular at different times, however by the end of the 90′s it was a success worlwide. 

references 

Why I think shoujo manga has had one ot the biggest influences over romance media in Asia

Shoujo manga has been adapted into live action so, so much. Many memorable doramas were mangas first. Boys Over Flowers being the most prominent example of this (we will come back to it later). 

Imo, Shoujo was able to explore a certain amount of themes that interested women at the time, and through manga’s popularity and expansion, those themes came with tropes and ended up becoming the backbone of the genre, influencing other romance media in general. But it has also been influenced by the mainstream trends of tv and interests of the public as it evolves according to the demand. The name does comes from its target demographic. 

Some of the most typical themes we find in shoujo are: 

Interpersonal relationships between characters concentrating on the interaction of their emotions and a lot of inner monologue, aka romance

Gender

Sexuality,

Fashion,

etc...

One of the interesting things here -- going back to the historical context I gave before -- is that Japan’s Constitution (1947), that was made which the US’s supervison, enabled a bigger equality between men and women. Which might be one of the reasons why “characters that defy traditional roles and stereotypes surrounding gender and sexuality have been a central motif of shōjo manga since its origins.” 

General Romantic tropes we find in Shoujo

Romance being one of the main themes of Shoujo, it is inevitable that a lot of what we consider romantic will also be a Shoujo trope. Many of these are just inherent to any romantic theme. What influenced Shoujo or was influenced by Shoujo?  It is hard to tell. Nevertheless, I will do my best to do some sort of categorization. 

General romantic behaviour tropes: kabedon, accidental kiss, feed me, sucking on wound, temperature check, indirect kiss, lap pillow, shirt tug, hair kiss/touch, monster-in-law ...

Other tropes include, not limited to romance but pretty common: we got together kiss/sex, drunken acts, I can’t control myself/I’m a man too, overnight trip, miscomunication, physically hurt/sick moment where they get taken care of, ...

Here are some of the most typical shoujo tropes:

How many times have we seen a scene under the rain, where the use of an umbrella was made very romantic? Or an icy, emotionally closed off man being melted down by a warm woman’s love?

Others shoujo specific tropes: sponge bath, drying hair with a towel, snuff cheek kiss, indirect kiss, unconscious kiss, kiss them to make them take their medicine, bitchy girl rival (because mysoginy), violent defense of loved one, he belongs to everyone (mysoginy and girl rivalry again), accidental meet cute (library/street corner), gender bender, woman dressed up/mistaken as a man, ...

How many shows came to your head (queer or not) while you were reading that list of tropes? A lot of them you know or have seen many times in kdramas, jdramas, cdramas, thai dramas, etc... Probably some of them you didn’t know were a common trope.

Shoujo tropes refs 1

To exemplify the influence of Shoujo Manga on the Romance Media...

Let’s talk Boys Over Flower/ Hana Yori Dango/ Meteor Garden/ F4

Boys Over Flowers (or Hana Dan) is the best example to see the influence of Shoujo tropes in Asian romance, since it has been adapted many times, and is still being milked to this day. 

Contrary to popular belief the taiwanese Meteor Garden did not come first, the manga did. Followed by: the japanese live action movie (1995) >> the anime (1996) >> taiwanese series (s1&2, 2001-2002) >> japanese series (s1&2 + movie, 2005) >> korean drama (2009) >> chinese Meteor Garden (2018) >> japanese spin off Hana Nochi Hare (2018) >> F4 (2021). 

We find all the tropes in BOF: 

love triangle, popular x unpopular, umbrella under the rain, cold ml x warm wl, rich x poor, trapped in an elevator, sick boy, accidental kiss, unfortunate accident that brings you closer, monster-in-law, I leave you because I love you, he belongs to everyone... and many others. 

The overwhelming success of BOF, and it’s many reboots and adaptations made the shoujo tropes a staple of the romance genre (at least in Asia). 

 How does BL appear in all this?

Shoujo and gender and sexuality

BL (or Yaoi or Shounen-ai) started as one of the subgenres of Shoujo (others being Josei (more mature), Horror, Teen’s Love(erotica), Moe, etc). It was a variation on the hetero notion of romantic love, hence the clear paralelism with the gender binary. It slowly started integrating actual queer dynamics later on. The genre in itself has evolved a lot as it has broken free from the Shoujo mantle. It was very very different in the 70's (when it started) to the 2000's (when the hetero style of relationships and dynamics was at its most popular in QLs) to now.

The particular thing about Shoujo is that, besides creating a subgenre about exploring homsexuality, they explored gender and gender roles a lot. Women disguising themselves as men, or characters that did not identify with their assigned gender were and are still very common. Starting with Princess Knight to The Rose of Versailles to Ouran High School Host Club. We see this trope a lot in live action dramas like: Hana Kimi, Coffe Prince, Bromance, Secret Garden, You’re Beautiful, etc...,  And all the historical k-dramas with women disguised as men (Sungkyunkwan Scandal, Scholar Who Walks the Night, Love in the Moonlight, The King’s Affection). Besides it being a theme that clearly interests female audiences, other possible influences on the growing of media exploring this theme might be: the Takarazuka Revue, the newfound equality of sexes thanks to the japanese constitution, and trying to break free of gender roles and societal expectations through media. 

I kinda see it as an accident that shoujo manga authors ended up making queer content. They were questioning social expectations but I don't think they even knew that there were queer people out there to be appealed by it. 

As a quick recap of BL themes through its history, we went from:

the tragic and traumatized european pretty boys (Kaze to Ki no Uta) of the 70′s to

the gay for you, hetero like uke/seme, with problematic content for the sake of drama but with happier endings (Junjou Romantica) of the 2000′s to

the more realistic, featuring characters from the LGBT community variety of content we have now (Given)

BL also eventually gave birth to Bara/Gei Comi (gay comics, by gay men for gay men. Check Gengoroh Tagame’s works to know what I mean), and in some way GL (or Yuri).

BL tropes

Do we find the general romantic tropes in BL? Yes, we do. However there are some that are inherent to BL. Also, as Thailand finds itself at the head of the current BL boom, we also find these tropes to be influenced by thai culture. 

Bishonen boys (beautiful androginous men), uke/seme, rape, gay for you, age gap, psycho boys, ...

I leave here ABL’s posts on the BL characteristics by country, other bl tropes, and Thai BL and tropes. Honestly, they’re the expert on all tropes BL. 

As I have consumed all types of romance media, I can hardly tell what tropes are inhenrent to what genre. However, tropes that are inherent to BL would be:

Many of these are related to sex, which is one of the main themes of BL. There is a lot to be said about sex in BL, particularly in its relationship to violence. There is also a lot of BL that features intentionally toxic relationships and unhealty dynamics. Which is the darked side of the genre, to be explored in another occasion.

Coming back to our main theme, here is an example of the connection and evolution of a shoujo trope into a BL tropes.

BL tropes evolved from Shoujo: Rooftop confession

Rooftops belong to the gays now and it should be known. It is a very well known trope used all over genres, but it is has become an very significative one in BLs.

image sources 1 2

Final Toughts

While preparing for this post I decided to research a little about SE Asia’s recent history, as I have been made aware recently that not only thailand is rising in it’s entertaiment production, but Cambodia is rising in the music sphere. All these industries that are sprouting from Southeast Asia, made me wonder why. And my elation when I realized there was a reason why! It all started to get into place in my head.

I have wanted to make this post for a while. In a lot of the conversations we’ve been having in the fandom around shows recently made me realize that a lot of the new fans get into BL without having encountered Asian dramas before or just partially. Lots of the analysis made and the questions posed around BL shows have a partial answer in the context of how the genre came to be and how its intertwined with every other piece of Asian media. 

The purpose of this post is to give more detail into how BL is influenced by a lot of the general romance genre, which a lot of the fandom might not know in depth. I hope this clearifies some things for those who search to understand why this or that trope or action happen in a show where it might not make sense, or it might be out of place, or just strange. 

As Thailand media is growing, we see how they use what is popular in their favor, while adding a bit of their own personal culture to it. It’s interesting how we can see the kdrama or manga influences. And talking about it and questioning them makes me excited for more. 

This will be a series of posts. I have decided to make a post about the general history of BL. Which will be accompanied by another, smaller post where I want to talk about the Yaoi Debates (Yaoi Ronso) and the use of trauma and rape in BLs, as it has been a topic of conversation recently. 

A big thank you to @waitmyturtles​ for her Old GMMTV Challenge, which has promted a lot of conversation about BL and has also made me want to participate in them. I hope this can be complementary to your watches and helps you understand the genre and how it came to be.  

[borisbubbles]

Eurovision 2023: #20 - #19

20. AZERBAIJAN TuranTuralX - "Tell me more" 34th place

Decade Ranking: 58/116 [Above Achille, below Anxela]

lmfao, the twins made my top 20?! I mean, yeah 2023. Of course they made my top 20. [AlexaVoice] PLEASE LEAVE A VOICE MESSAGE WITH YOUR COMPLAINT FOR VERTICAL CLASSIFICATION IN THE COMMENTS BELOW. [/AlexaVoice]

Now here's an entry that serves as a physical embodiment of the "Presence That Was Liked". Yeah it was mid, but a pleasant mid. The twins were never leaving the semifinal alive. They were always going to be the sacrificial lambs of the newly invented "No Jurors During Semi's rule" which specifically targeted Azerbaijan (and... props to Azer for accepting their fate? lol) Turan and Tural were never being more than passengers along for a ride, which they took to heart.

"Tell me more" was all it needed to be. An inconspicuous NQ that was still cute and endearing in its own sort of way. The dreamy and drawly vibe

The imitation 70s aesthetic that convincingly sells the 90s softrock.

Add in a rap verse during minute one, a couple of fashionable scarfs, good camera cuts,...

Yeah "Tell me more" had zero televote appeal (this 100% dies even with juries being in), but as an entry it's refreshingly unpretentious and especially from Azerbaijan, wtf? Usually Azer pick some shitty Swedish pop track and force it on a conventionally attractive jazz muppet who then can't be bothered to do preparties or interviews. This year, their rep was a pair of homely deer-in-headlight twinkbeasts operating under a myspace name who were actually happy to be there and actively mingled with the fans. There some delicious irony and melodramatic twang to be found in the knowledge that by effectively throwing their 2023 qualification, Azer have shown more respect to the contest than they'd ever done before.

--------------------------------------------

19. FRANCE La Zarra - "Évidemment" 16th place

Decade ranking: 56/116 [Above Anxela, below El Diablo]

Yes I know what you're here for;

But you'll have to wait because I am here to rate the performance first. Yep, slightly ahead of the MySpace Twinks on my list seems just about right for a La Zarra. "Évidemment" represent the other side of "mid", the one where the promise is large and the delivery not quite as large. As a song "Évidemment" was kind of a blueballer: Sure, it had a lot of poise, flair, drama, a wee bit of camp and yet...barely any substance. It was The French Entry, like that was its entire identity, almost to a point of parody. And well, France competes every year and is usually better than "LES POISSONS LES POISSONS HI HI HI HÔN HÔN HÔN". donc, pleurez-moi une rivière de pute. I'm having a laugh but seriously, not picking a lane between serious attempt and self-deprecating satire that was the difference between a sixth place and a sixteenth place.

Still, I at first thought France were headed towards a disastrous bottom five result, especially after that rehearsal clip implied LaZarra was on the same Vocal Rest Tonics as Mae Muller. I WAS GONNA BE PROVEN RIGHT AND VINDICATED!!! and well, I was but not about her. (ty Blanca Paloma, we'll rank you soon enough)

When it mattered most, La Zarra got it together, and NAILED that epic big note.

No complaints from me about that live. It was a good live and did what it needed to do. I like it when the headliners deliver what they're supposed to (see also: Azer delivering a pleasant NQ) because it makes the show better overall. Obviously that doesn't erase the fact that (1) the song was mid as fuck (2) the staging was daft at best. ("MON DIEUX I WEAR HAUTE COUTURE, ACT LIKE A DIVA, AM THE EIFFEL TOWER, SOUND LIKE PIAF, LOOK THERE'S A TRICOLORE I AM SOOOO FRENCH!!" um no ur not, ur from Montréal stfu).

Okay so now we address this:

Sure, an uproarious voting moment and it was sooooo stank, but was it fun stank? 🤔 idk.

On one hand, LMFAO WHAT AN ENTITLED FUCKING SOW. 😍😍😍😍😍. The Xwitter trolls immediately began spinning their fanfictions all "WELL ACTUALLY what she did was a secret gesture of respect in Maghrebian cultures" like bitch, she's (1) a QUEBECOIS (2) who cosplayed as the Eiffel Tower and a disco ball unironically, how hinged do you think she is? Her gesture definitely was the sort of melodramatic Egomaniac reaction I'd expect from someone who deliberately caused a pre-show stir by posting an Insta Story all "It's getting to me!!! I'm QUITTING 😭😭 // Cigarettes: "Eurovision?! 😨" // La Zarra: ".... non i meant the gluten, mdrrrr!!!!! 😆". So yes, the moment itself was pretty funnay 2 me, esp since she got twice points I thought's she'd get.

On the other hand, um take a seat you entitled fucking sow. There is serving cunt and then there is straight up being a cunt. The difference is that you have to earn your glamourcunt label and you, madame, were always in "Good but not Great" territory. Be grateful there were any scraps left for you after Käärijä and Loreen gobbled.

In conclusion, lmfao i kinda dislike her as a person (but better she show the world how rude and misguided she is after losing than after getting a top ten) and I genuinely enjoy thinking about her messiness more than listening to her music. 🙂 (so I guess that makes her Taylor Swift.)

Besides, around 16th is where France usually ends up at anyway, so I think they got precisely what they were aiming for, GJ France. 🙂 Now let's not think about this country until the end of March, when it becomes semi-important for me to remember what their entrant's (who?) song (what?) sounds like again.

THE RANKING

[analyzer-r]

CKBW-FM

"The sound of the South Shore"

Moving onto a larger station which nonetheless carries on the tradition established so far on this blog of radio stations not chasing after "popular" music or trends, this is CKBW-FM. (This trend will be broken in due time). Getting right into things across the ocean, as I learned when listening live, CKBW is a commercial radio station owned and operated as part of a network by Acadia Broadcasting. It's located and broadcasts in Nova Scotia, Canada, but also broadcasts on different frequencies to Bridgewater and Shelburne nearby. Its formatting is that of a classic hits-dedicated adult station, aimed at a target audience likely to be 50+, especially with how old some of the songs played can be (as will be detailed later). CKBW brands itself as playing classic hits from the 70's, 80's and 90's, further supporting this. It was established all the way back in 1947 and is still running today, hinting at a loyal following and a level of success codified by their 19K following on Facebook.

CKBW has an online presence with their own website, as well as accounts on Twitter and Facebook, though they do not post especially often on either. The website updates with local news from the Nova Scotia area pretty often, showing that the radio station's scope extends beyond just their radio broadcasts.

This focus on Nova Scotia exists within the actual show itself, so let's get into show structure. I listened to CKBW on Tuesday 26 December 2023, between 2-3PM AST, and was treated to the drivetime show with "Drive Home with John Wiles". Presenter John Wiles had several links sprinkled throughout the show about a minute long each, but he had a way of packing a lot of info or content into each link despite the shortened time. These links were either conversational, posing various questions to viewers that could be answered by texting in, or featured talk about whatever is topical at the time- in this instance, of course, subjects surrounding Christmas and the upcoming new year. The branding of the show as a classic hits station comes through quite effectively- every tune I listened to, be it Take on Me by A-ha (1985), Doesn't really matter by Platinum Blonde (1983), Dream On by Aerosmith (1973) or Two Princes by Spin Doctors (1991) were hit tunes that came out between 1970 and 2000, exactly as advertised by the station itself. It stays true to its principles without variation, and does have some Canadian music artists (like aforementioned Platinum Blonde) included.

Despite not all the artists played on the station being Canadian, CKBW still manages to retain a local feel due to regularly featuring weather updates for the Nova Scotia area quarterly across the hour, and advertisements on the station regularly feature businesses in the area as well such as Nova Scotia Building Supplies.

Given CKBW is, according to its slogan, The Sound of the South Shore, it's good to see that despite sticking to the classic hits format, it still finds time to live up to that slogan and be helpful to the locals of the South Shore area (of which Nova Scotia is a part). I personally found the show to be engaging, with the presenter's banter between links to be entertaining, helping to keep the show going without monotony, and I find the station's music selection is very good at recalling a sense of nostalgia for older songs, no doubt a deliberate effect CKBW wishes to invoke from its stated adult audiences.

So all this in mind, it's clear to me why CKBW has lasted as long as it has. Its music selection, focus on local content for adverts and weather and fun short-but-sweet links between songs all combine to create a perfect formula for success. If you want to try this formula for yourself, you can find CKBW and listen via their website here:

References:

Castlensbs.com (Date N/A) Welcome to Chester Building Supplies Ltd.& Nova Scotia Building Supplies (1982) Ltd. [Online] Available at: http://castlensbs.com [Accessed 26/12/2023]

ckbw.ca (Date N/A) CKBW [Online] Available at: https://www.ckbw.ca [Accessed 26/12/2023]

facebook.com (Date N/A) CKBW South Shore Radio [Online] Available at: https://www.facebook.com/CKBWRadio/ [Accessed 26/12/2023]

wikipedia.org (Last edited 31/9/2022) CKBW-FM [Online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CKBW-FM [Accessed 26/12/2023]

[greatwyrmgold]

The Age of Magneto

Here's a question for X-Men fans: How long until Magneto's expiration date? And what happens then?

You probably know what I mean, but this post is as much an excuse for me to spell out my thoughts on the matter as it is asking for other people's input. (I would still like to hear other opinions, mind you.)

Most metahumans' origin stories are free-floating in history. Batman's parents could have been shot in any decade, Krypton could explode in any decade, Dr. Doom's lab accident could happen in any decade. We just quietly accept a character barely aging between the 70's and the new 10's, if not longer, because that's how comics work. But if a historical event is central to your character's backstory, you could have problems.

The Holocaust was stopped roughly 77 years ago. Any mutant with strong enough memories of Nazi Germany for them to be a significant part of his motivation would need to be in his mid-80's, at minimum. That's longer than most people who don't regularly engage in superpower fights live; it's not old enough that still being an active villain breaks your suspension of disbelief, but my dad was talking about this when Magneto could plausibly be sixty-something.

Each passing decade makes it exponentially less plausible for Magneto to be an active supervillain, but he's a critical part of the X-Men. He's their most iconic villain, his dynamic with Professor Xavier is the centerpiece of everything X-Men says about civil rights, and while I don't follow the comics that closely, I know that Magneto is the father of several significant mutants. He can't just fade into the background when he stops being plausible, like Captain America: Commie-Smasher did.

So at some point, whether in the COVID 20's or the Cyber 30's or the Giant Alien Spider 40's, Magneto will have to change in some way. I only see three ways to do this, and none remotely preserve the X-Men's status quo.

The Natural Solution

The simplest way to make Magneto not unrealistically old to survive both Colossus and leukemia would be to have him just not survive. Possibly a big sacrifice or dramatic battle, possibly just old age or mundane disease, possibly dramatic disease or a mundane battle. Regardless, it seems likely that they'd want to kill Professor X around the same time, if only to put a clean coda on their iconic rivalry.

Now, they would still be important figures in the comics, but more the way that Uncle Ben or the Waynes are, or that MLK and the Black Panthers are to modern African-Americans. The older mutants fight to continue the legacy of their fallen leaders, the younger ones idolize them, but they are gone.

Despite being the only option that doesn't require a reboot or retcon, it's the most disruptive to the status quo, so I doubt they'd pick this one.

Same Genocide, Different Decade

Unfortunately, the Holocaust was not the last event of its kind. Sure, no genocide has been of the same industrial scale as the Holocaust (except the Holomodor, depending on what estimates you use and where you draw the line between "part of the Holocaust" and "just another Nazi war crime," let's leave it at that). But is the Rwandan genocide less tragic, criminal, or traumatic than the Holocaust just because "only" several hundred thousand people died?

Magneto's character wouldn't need to change an inch if he was a Cambodian in the 70's, a Hutu in the 90's, or even a Darfur (or is it Fur?) in the 2010's. But that doesn't mean there wouldn't be issues from this change, and I don't mean continuity ones.

First off, in all likelihood, executive mandate would cut away at this reboot of Magneto until it was, like, Magneto's parents died in a Latverian mutant genocide. Something comfortingly fictionalized. But let's pretend they'd keep a real genocide in there.

Losing a Jewish Magneto would suck. Even if we got different representation out of it, it would suck. And there's no way around it; antisemitism still exists, some organized antisemitism in the past 60 years probably qualifies as genocide, but none approaches the level of generational trauma caused by the Holocaust.

And then there's the race issue. You know how a certain type of reactionary flips out when a codename traditionally belonging to a straight white dude gets assumed by a "political" character? It would be so much worse if we couldn't point out "That's Kal's son" or "That's Tony's student" or "That's the Falcon with a shield". And any Magneto from a major post-WW2 genocide would either need to be a POC (and hence attract those chuds) or a Holomodor survivor (which would just change what chuds you pissed off).

This idea has a lot of good to it. It preserves the time-proven structure of X-Men storytelling, it's probably net positive for representation, and above all, it would remind the audience that the horrors which scarred Magneto did not end with the Nazis. But it also has a lot of bad to balance that out.

Iceman (not that one)

If Magneto is going to continue to be from the Silent Generation, and continue to be an active presence in the story, there will eventually need to be some reason for him not to be a centenarian. You could just make it a side effect of his magnetism somehow, but that feels like it's drawing attention to the problem more than it solves it. Luckily, the Marvel universe has an established mechanism for WW2-era characters to get from D-Day to the modern day.

(Come to think of it...Cap and Magneto were both around during the same pivotal historic period. Heck, Wolverine was, too. Are there any storylines that do something with that quirk of the timeline?)

Or you could use some functionally similar plot device, like being imprisoned in a stasis chamber for some reason. Also, Magneto doesn't need to be frozen for 60-70 years solid for this to work; if he gets put on ice during the 60's or so and defrosted a decade or two before the nebulous modern day, he could be kept at a comfortable middle age until the X-Men franchise stops making money.

But while this option makes it more plausible that his arthritis wouldn't cripple his powers and that one punch from Logan wouldn't break half the bones in his torso, it complicates his relationship to modern mutants.

The biggest problem is his rivalry with Xavier. It could be interesting if Xavier had several decades to get over the reasons he fought with Magneto and Magneto didn't, but that dynamic can only last so long before Xavier has the exact same problem as Magneto: If Xavier was Magneto's rival before he was frozen, X needs to have been an adult in the 60's, which makes him at youngest an early baby boomer.

And it would be supremely awkward to freeze Xavier alongside Magneto. Magneto doesn't not have bonds with his fellow mutants that would be distorted by the Captain America treatment, but Xavier is almost literally a goddamned institution of the mutant community. The school that bears his name would be radically different if Xavier wasn't there.

Which basically leaves us with Magneto being frozen in the 60's after minimal to no interaction with Xavier, then developing a rivalry with him in the relatively short period between Magneto's defrosting and the nebulous presence. It doesn't not work, but it's just not the same as a rivalry developed as the two of them grew up.

I've run out of stuff to say

So, yeah. Magneto needs to change some decade or another, but the least disruptive solution I see is to slap an anti-aging power on him (and probably Xavier) and hope nobody cares.

Maybe there's a solution someone else sees. Or maybe someone else has an interesting thought about or twist on one of the broad possibilities I've described. If you've read this far, I assume you have some kind of Magneto opinion. Would you like to share it?

[dapper-nahrwhale]

if youre planning to watch riverdale because you like the comics i suggest not because they are very very different.

Thanks for the suggestion but. Well, it is a little too late. You see I have actually seen some of it before. I watched a few seasons of it a few years after it initially came out, then immediately forgot everything about it, like this was way back in 2019 or 2020, long before I even got into the archie comics and other various shows and started this whole thing of watching and reading every single archie comics and adaptation I can possibly find.

(Oh boy this is going to be a long one huh.)

And one consistent thing I've found in my journey is that archie comics, adaptations, and spinoffs, is that it's a mixed bag of quality. And theres always so much going on in them all the time. You've got some good ones, some bad ones, some in between, and the really strange ones.

And boy howdy has there been some strange ones. The 19 issue 70s spire christian archie comics. There was a 2 part collaboration with Barack Obama and Sara Palin in 2010 for some reason. A sharknado crossover in 2015. A live action Archie's tv pilot in 1964 that never really went anywhere for good reason. Many more low budget early 90s live action films. The controversial end to the life with archie 2010 series, wherein we follow parallel universes where archie marries veronica and archie marries betty, and both have the exact same ending: archie gets shot and dies.

Its wild. WILD.

And riverdale as a show fits into that sort of nonsense... surprisingly well tbh. Yes, there things I dislike about the show diverging from the comics and it taking itself way to seriously, but I cannot deny the fact that riverdale does fit with just how bonkers the rest of the archie comics and shows get, no matter how much it differs from those comics and shows.

TDLR (I go into more depth as of why under the cut) riverdale is a fascinating archie adaptation and I need to watch it soon. adaptations that are different than the source material can still hold value. There has never been an entirely accurate archie adaptation because even the comics themselves are inconsistent with each other. But the one thing every single archie comics, show, movie, adaptation has in common is that they're always always just kind of dumb and ridiculous. Can't be an archie adaptation without that. And I'm on a quest to watch and read every adaptation so I kind of am going to watch riverdale regardless.

And I'm not entirely sure of my opinion on the comics is anything more than neutral at best really.

I havent read enough of the old ones to form an opinion on them yet. I cant say I really like all the comics, some sure but. Like the real early stuff, from the 40s and 50s, can be sort of hard to read. As always, the early Archie's do not stand up to the test of time it seems. And some really weird choices made in the 70s. The sabrina the teenage witch and the josie and the pussycats spinoff comics are pretty interesting tho.

I'd say the very cream of the crop (for me so far) is the post 2015 complete rehaul of the series as a whole, in a fresh light. Definitely worth reading the road to riverdale volumes, the archie volumes, and the jughead volumes (I'm biased what can I say), even though they have absolutely nothing to do with the show riverdale itself, or even the storylines in the earlier archie comics. Their it's own thing entirely.

And truthfully, I don't actually mind how different of an adaptation something is. I think a darker, more drama focused tone is a fine thing for an adaptation. In theory. Like afterlife with archie comics started in 2013 where zombies take over the town. Because in practice with the riverdale show, oh boy. The issues I have are real. Like, ok its objectively a kind of ridiculous show that I just can't take seriously. It sure is entertaining to watch it crash and burn though. But. Thing is, I just straight up don't even remember anything that happened in it, went in one ear out the other. So it's going to be a surprise for me either way once I get around to it.

Anyways, an adaptation being inaccurate from the source material but still good (howls moving castle, who framed roger rabbit) and being badly written but still enjoyment can be found in it (the black cauldron), and being a somewhat accurate adaptation but still unbearable (the live action avatar the last airbender and percy jackson movies) are all separate things. And riverdale falls into it's own separate category all together, where it is not an accurate adaptation by any means, where the enjoyment of it is entirely dependent on the individual, where it does genuinely bring up some interesting things and compelling plot points, but at the cost of character assasination, plot inconsistencies, and alot of really really awkward dialogue. And thing is, that's just how most shows are anyways. I don't think any archie show is fully good or fully bad, they're all a mixed bag.

Where as in the past there have been adaptations of archie that dont follow the plots or characterizations of the comics as much, but still keep more of the tone of the comics, Archie's weird mysteries 1999, and there have been some that follow the comics somewhat, but change up the tone to be something else entirely, the new Archie's show 1987, and it really just depends on the writers.

I genuinely dont know if theres ever been an entirely accurate archie adaptation, even with how all the comics and shows do have some sort of consistency, whether it be character traits, the places and people in town, plotlines. But theres also the fact that they had so many people making and writing archie comics and various spinoffs all at once, that there is going to be discrepancy between even the comics themselves. Theres no real one accurate archie. Theres how it started out, and how it has changed, evolved, and morphed over time and decades, into an amalgamation of 80 some years worth of recognizable characters and places and plotlines. And riverdale is just one of many bizarre choices in the long and strange history that is archie.

And it's like the last part of my journey, you know. I don't think I can stop even if I wanted to, I'm in too deep now. I gotta know it all. Everything. The good, the bad, the questionable.

(Quick sidebar but also. Theres this live action movie called the archies coming out on Netflix soon, and it looks really interesting, set in 1960s india. I don't know till I see it if it's good, but that alone sounds like an adaptation worth watching, even if it isnt so accurate to the source material, it certainly has the tone of the 1960s shows and comics down it seems.)

Oops! Didnt mean to make this response this long, riverdale is a fascinating mixed bag of just everything to me. I have a lot of thoughts about archie adaptations as always.

Anyways thank you for the ask anon! I'll take any excuse to talk about archie adaptations.

[nikkiruncks]

i know kelso treated jackie shitty (damn i can't control the weather/cheating with laurie and most likely others no confirmation for sure for the others) but hyde would say mean things to jackie or invalidate their relationship or whatever. that was his schtick, hyde had 'issues' everyone in the show did but i think hyde had it rough at home, maybeits part of the reason he and jackie jived well because they both had issues with their parents/home lives. hydes were so bad that the formans took him in and arguably jackie too at one time before they were caught together. however the difference between kelso and hyde is hyde did love jackie but he would SHOW IT in his actions and less in his words. it was rare to see a sensitive side but when he showed it was lovely. he was more of a sarcastic type or dead pan, where kelso didn't give a shit, or played ignorant until it mattered 11th hour salvage and it was just complicated and jackie was pretty much done. neither was perfect. i really do not like that in that 90's show she's like with kelso (better than being with fez but irl mila and kutcher are together) but i don't think jackie was happy with either. kelso was a horrible bf! he had moments but he was horrible to her. she seemed unhappy with kelso from the glimpse we saw while married (their son is literally kelso too, yikes and jackie abandoning fez to run off with kelso storyline doesn't seem jackie at all!) obviously, we couldn't have 90's puddin'pops hydejackie in any capacity (is he canon like jail?) or not around for some other reason/relocated/off the grid (irl it was the allegations/case around masterson) but in the show maybe it was jail bc he always would joke about it/family in jail/being generally criminal/popped for weed who knows since 1979-1980 when t70's ended and 90s when t90's show started/was going on in like the mid-90's. also there were the 1980's drug scene/war on drugs times perhaps he got into harder drugs and then jail and stuff bc laws and he was anti pretty much establishment or heavily implied to be so yeah. jackie was obviously not a criminal so ...

am i making sense? i hope so. so there you have it. that's how i see it in terms of jackie's relationships on that 70's show/present. i'd love to hear what you think? (there are things i missed, unfortunately. idk where i left off but i do know about the endgame things. i do know that the last season sucked! that so many things were off probably contributed to its ending/rushed/unsatisfying endings for beloved characters and stuff with few exceptions.) let me know what you think?

I understand what you’re saying dw!

One of thing I love so much about J/H is that they’re an ‘actions speak louder than words’ kind of ship. It’s wasn’t about status or good looks *cough j*lso*

Hyde treats Jackie with respect and loves her for who she is while also calling her out on her bs (Fez and Kelso worship the ground she walks on and Kelso seems too scared to call her out.) They don’t need any of that shiny stuff or status to show how real they are (which is why I lol at anyone comparing them to chuck/blair. They’re clearly dan/blair.).

Jackie inspires Hyde to be more in touch with his emotions and his softer side. He smiles more with her, he seems lighter around her. He can let his walls down with her. One of the only complaints I have about them is that sometimes I feel like Hyde doesn’t really trust Jackie. Like instead of confronting Jackie on whether she was cheating in s5, he ends up cheating. And in s7, when he saw the towel thing, he just left and fucked a stripper in Las Vegas. Not to mention that he STILL kept bringing up the “get off my boyfriend” incident TWO MONTHS after it happened. But for the most part, they’re a great couple.

J/K is self explanatory. Their foundation is bonding over their good looks and what not. There’s nothing substantial about their relationship. All they do is bitch at each other more than half of the time. Not to mention, Kelso kept cheating on her with no guilt. (He only felt sorry that he found out) Also I will never get over Kelso putting the blame on Jackie for his cheating. Like sir, there’s a such thing as having a conversation. Even yelling would be more mature than this or BREAK UP WITH HER.

[boyleenergy]

5 differences between Natural Gas and Propane Gas

Both gasses are good at heating homes. Both gasses are popular among homeowners looking for reliable primary fuels to power day-to-day needs like heating and more. Both gasses are available no matter where your home is located. So then, are both natural gas and propane similar when it comes to performance and other factors? Not really. There are differences and that’s what this blog is all about. Read on to know more. 

Basics: Natural Gas and Propane

Before we get to the differences between two of America’s most preferred fuel sources for homes and businesses, let’s dive into the basics of these two compounds.

 Natural Gas

This fuel resource isn’t created in any of mankind’s manufacturing facilities. It is formed as a result of the earth’s immense pressure and heat acting upon fossilized remains of plants and animals that have deposited over the earth’s surfaces across hundreds of millions of years. Natural gas is a mixture of gasses, with methane accounting for 70 to 90% of the composition. It is a colorless, odorless, flammable and non-toxic hydrocarbon. Natural Gas deposits are found both on land as well as in spaces underneath the ocean floor. This fossil energy source is procured by drilling wells in areas with natural gas deposits.

Propane

Propane is one of the by-products that result during the processing of natural gas. Although propane can also be obtained from crude oil refinement, natural gas processing is its biggest known source. Propane is colorless, odorless and non-toxic and is usually compressed and stored in its liquid state.

The differences between Natural Gas and Propane

 Efficiency and Cost

When in doubt, let numbers show you the way. When it comes to efficiency, you’ll find the numbers favoring propane. Here’s how. One cubic foot of natural gas generates 1030 BTUs (1 BTU – the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1 pound of water by 1*Fahrenheit) while the same amount of propane generates 2516 BTUs. In simpler terms, propane generates approximately twice as much heat or energy as natural gas. Or if we put it another way, propane will generate the same amount of heat as natural gas, at half the cost. You could double-check this advantage of propane by speaking with propane gas companies or reputed businesses providing propane gas delivery in Havertown.

 Eco-friendliness and Toxicity

As a responsible citizen and homeowner, you’d ideally want your fuel to be considerate towards both your home and your planet. You’ll be relieved to know propane is the cleanest burning fuel of all the options available to you. Propane produces about 50% of the carbon dioxide and other gasses usually generated by gasoline. An accidental propane leak won’t result in any damage to soil,  water or the environment whereas a natural gas leak will further add to the problem of greenhouse gasses that are already warming up our planet. Before you start looking up propane heating companies ‘near me’, propane gas delivery in Havertown or natural gas heater and air conditioner companies, we suggest you check the rest of the differences listed in this blog.

 Ease of choosing suppliers

Unlike propane which is commonly available, natural gas is only available in certain areas. What this means is, you won’t have as many suppliers to choose from or switch to as compared to propane suppliers. This limitation could cause you discomfort in a situation where you’re not happy with the rates, the service or both and desire a change. With propane, you will enjoy the advantage of virtually limitless suppliers who will provide you with a range of prices, discounts, delivery and maintenance plans and more. In other words, you’ll have no problem finding abundant local propane gas companies, propane heating companies or companies providing propane gas delivery in Havertown.

 Method of Delivery and Installation

Natural gas is a fuel resource that’s delivered via a pipeline to your home. Propane on the other hand, will be stored on your property in a tank that will either be above the ground or under. With natural gas, you will have a constant supply all year round through the pipeline. To enjoy uninterrupted propane supply, you will need to stock and refill your tank at periodic intervals.

Density of Gas

While both propane and natural gas may be odorless and colorless, they differ in their densities. Natural gas is lighter of the two and so in case of gas leaks within a home, propane gas will settle at the lower level while natural gas will collect at a higher level.

Propane and natural gas are two of the most popular fuel sources across homes in the US. As with a lot of homeowners, you too may find it perplexing to pick the right fuel source between the two, for your home or establishment. We trust this blog on the 5 main differences between the two fuels will make it easier for you to make the right choice.

If you happen to be looking for propane gas companies, propane heating companies ‘near me’, propane gas delivery in Havertown or even natural gas heater and air conditioner services, call 610 595 4717 or 215 709 9196 to speak to us at Boyle Energy. We’re a full-service propane company with a reputation for professional, personalized and honest service that dates back to 1937. Whether you’re looking for speedy delivery of propane or reliable installation and maintenance of propane equipment, rely on our technicians to deliver a service experience matching up to top-notch industry standards.

[maxkirin]

With my book coming out soon, I thought I'd take this as a chance to answer a very tough question:

What's the Best Way to Support an Indie Author? Where should you buy their books? 🤔💵

Big post incoming!

Before we start talking about the wild, wild world of 👑royalties👑, I want to make this crystal clear:

The best way to support an indie author* is to BUY OUR BOOKS. Straight up. Paying for our hard work is good enough.

You want to support me? Easy. Buy my book.

*Now, let’s say you don’t care where you get the book from or your goal is to make sure most of your hard-earned money actually goes to the indie author rather than some corporation… then, in that case, read on!

So… what the heck are book royalties anyway?

When you purchase an indie eBook the money you spend is split between the author and the retailer. Depending on the split, more or less of your money will actually end up on the hands of the author you’re trying to support.

This differs from traditional publishing, where the author receives a lump sum as an advance from the publisher (which is then split between author and agent).

The publisher then sells this book on other storefronts, which further splits where the money actually goes.

PS: It is not until the book has actually generated as much revenue as the advance that said author begins to *actually* earn royalties on books sold, which may be as little as cents per book to a percentage of each sale.

To further confuse matters, different retailers offer different royalty rates! 😵

Where should you purchase books from if you want to super-duper support an indie author?

Well, let me give you a tier list—beginning from the TOP!

S TIER: Author's Personal Shop

Buying a book directly from an author's shop is by far the best way support 'em. Outside of a small % that goes to cover for credit card fees (~5% in my case), pretty much all of your money goes to the author.

If the author has a shop—buy it from there!!

A TIER: Itch.io

It's not just for games, you know! Its royalty rate is one of the most generous with a default 90/10. This is crazy-good compared to most other retailers.

Seriously, more authors should start selling their books on Itch.io!!

B TIER: Most Retailers

Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Google Play Books, and Kobo all offer a 70/30 split. It didn't use to be like this, tho!

If you like to have all of your books on the same platform, buying an indie author’s book through these platforms is honestly A-OK! 👍

C TIER: Amazon

Amazon has a default 35/65 rate (ouch) and has the option for a 70/30—but it's not easy. The latter option is not available in all territories and has many prerequisites.

Also, one way to get the 70/30 split is to *exclusively* sell your title on Amazon (ooof).

As if Amazon’s system wasn’t already confusing enough—there’s also *delivery fees*. Yes, you read that right. Amazon charges the author for the delivery of the digital item based on the file size, nickle-and-diming you like it's 2004 and you went over your text message limit.

I don’t want anyone to feel bad for buying books through Amazon. Like I said before, the best way to support us is to buy our books—no matter where you get them.

A sale is better than no sale at all. 🤞

The reason I set out to write this is because the average person has no clue that where you buy a book from actually matters.

You spend your hard-earned money wanting to support an indie author and the bulk of that Hamilton doesn’t even go to them.

And now you know. 🧵🔚

[epic-sorcerer]

Queer imagery in BBC Merlin

Content warning: kink/fetish, fisting in particular but I show I big image containing a long list of different kinks, homophobia, dom/sub dynamics, sex

Merlin is shown wearing a purple tunic in s4, despite the fact he is a servant and purple(especially with such saturation) was extremely expensive bc purple dye was so hard to make. Gwen also has a light purple dress(or maybe 2? It’s hard to tell). Even though it’s definitely lighter than Merlins tunic, it’s still expensive.

it was illegal for peasants to wear expensive fabrics because of the Sumptuary Law. Basically it makes sure that lower class people are not fashionable. However, BBC Merlin doesn’t seam to care about that law, considering Merlins other bright clothing so take this was a grain of salt.

Basically what I’m trying to say is that there’s no way they could have gotten their hands on these clothes without the help of nobles. Gwen might have, because she works with clothing and could have easily mixed blue and red dye together. Merlin probably not have because he’s never shown to be particularly materialistic or interested much in fashion, despite his bright clothes. Bright Purple would have been much, much harder to get.

It makes the most sense for Merlin and possibly Gwen too to have been gifted such expensive clothing by a noble for being a good servant. I’d imagine Arthur would be the one to give Merlin the tunic and morgana the dresses.

Why does this matter? Lavender(and also purple in general) was considered a queer color starting in the 19th century. Queer men especially were said to possess a “streak of lavender” and a serge of homophobia at the time was often referred to as the “Lavender Scare.” Purple and lavender is still used now to symbolize queerness.

Since Merlin is a modern interpretation of Arthurian myths, it would be perfectly plausible that this symbol was on purpose. Merlin/Arthur and Gwen/Morgana are both extremely popular ships and they are both shown to have a very deep form of trust(Gwen/Morgana being at the beginning of the show). Arthur and Morgana gifting Merlin and Gwen purple clothing could be show them they accept their queerness and/or signaling their own queer attraction to them.

Now, this next symbolism concerns only Merlin/Arthur.

Merlin is shown to have three neckerchiefs.

Navy blue, red, and light grey. Why does this matter? Well, let’s take a look at something called the handkerchief code, also known as the hanky code or “flagging.”

This code has its origins all the way back in time during the Wild West in the USA, but got more popular during the late 20th century in USA and UK gay bars. This code was used mainly by queer men and some nonbinary people to signal to other queers what they wanted sexually. While typically worn in people’s back pockets, a handkerchief could also be worn around one’s neck to show they are a versatile and experienced.

According to this code, Merlin is into;

Red: fisting and getting fisted. This color was hard to get an exact shade from, but the second best option was dark red for double fisting which is honestly so similar I’m not sure if it really matters much.

Light grey: stone topping and getting fucked by a stone top

Navy blue: fucking and being fucked anally

For any one wanting to make their own interpretations of Merlins neckerchief colors(the lighting makes it hard to tell the exact ones) have a look at this handy chart

Not only that, but Arthur is seen wearing a favour on his left arm in s3 ep 4.

What’s a favour? It’s a fabric strip of affection commonly given by maidens to knights before a tournament as a symbol of good luck. It’s often a very important scarf, hankcerchlif , towel, really any bit of cloth that can be tied around someone’s arm. This is also a popular trope in historical media for a female love interest to give a favour to a male one to show chemistry between them.

Regardless of your stance on Merlins gender identity, you have to admit how commonly Merlin is shown to be gender nonconforming(GNC) or otherwise be associated with “womanly” qualities. Especially in a society so heteronormative, the only “pure” option for a knight receiving a romantic gesture would have it be from a woman. If the token was from a queer man, it would also out the noble and cause lots of horrific chaos and destroy both of their reputations.

Even if it was common for women to give knights favours, queer men still existed and with that came romantic gestures—this time hopefully more secret.

Even though the favour on Arthur’s arm doesn’t look exactly like Merlin’s neckerchief, Merlin was the only person to speak with him while preparing for the tournament. Also, the original theorist who I linked in my sources also pointed out that Merlins neckerchief looks lopsided. Almost like Merlin tore off a bit of it and hastily tied it back on.

Although this theory is definitely flawed, it doesn’t matter. Arthur is still wearing a red handkerchief on his left arm. But what does that tell us exactly?

Regardless of wether or not it was Merlin’s, the red is the same shade and also implies Arthur is also into fisting. What about the placement? Sicne it’s on his left, it shows that he is a top/dom, meaning that he prefers to be the one fisting. Since it is worn around his upper arm, it shows that he is simply into the fetish, compared to what other placements mean. In another source, it shows taht upper arm means switch, but because Arthur is wearing it on his left it wouldn’t really make sense for him to signal being a “top-switch” compared to being a top and having the fetish in general.

If you look closely, you can see a different colored stripe on the favour. It’s hard to tell exactly what the color is, it could be yellow, gold, orange, etc. because the color is so dubious, I’ll just leave y’all with a list of color meanings that may apply to Arthur’s favour.

YELLOW: pisser/watersports kink

YELLOW, Pale: spitter/spit kink

MUSTARD: Has 8+ inch dick

GOLD: two looking for one

ORANGE: anything anytime

Also, it’s important to bring up what many in thsi fandom refer to as the “fisting scene.” Where Arthur threatens Merlin by showing him his gloved fist and pulling a bit at the glove.

In the blooper, you can see Merlin’s actor(Colin Morgan) breaking character and giggling as Arthur shows him his fist. Many in the fandom agree that this was a clear innuendo for fisting, and it is very well possible.

Merlin is shown hitting Arthur and saying he was just doing some horse play, but still indirectly convincing Arthur that he needs to teach Merlin a lesson. This is actually a common act in BDSM sex, where the submissive person purposely angers the dominant into punishing them in a way that somehow involves sex or fetish play.

If you look closely, you can see Merlin is wearing at kinky red fisting handkerchief, showing Merlin is perfectly capable of being a submissive fistee. Also, the hanky code also includes other symbols such as latex or rubber gloves that, surprise surprise, also mean fisting. Although it’s more likely Arthur’s gloves where made of leather, it can still further be interpreted as a fisting symbol if you want. Either way, Arthur’s favour still holds water as he is undoubtedly the dom in this situation.

Also, Merlin is very impulsive and a madlad. Tell me he wouldn’t wear his secret fetish symbols infrount of stuck up, Roman Catholics who are none the wiser. He’d probably think it’s hilarious which is probably why he wears them almost everyday. Merlin loves playfully misbehaving(and is also a brat sometimes) so it makes sense for him to have some dangerous fun.

Now, you may be asking. Why does this matter? At the end of the day, it probably wasn’t intentional. Well, there is alwyas room for doupt BUT I do have some ferther proof. One of the co writers of BBC Merlin—Johnny Capps—actually won a Stone Wall Award. You know, an award named after a core part of queer culture?

The award’s website and Wikipedia page say they give the award for art that describes the LGBT experience well. While I am unsure why or what Capps made to be nominated, it still shows he is very much in touch with queer culture. Capp himself even said at an interview about Merlin, “... in the end, deep, deep down it’s about sexuality and things you just can’t tackle head-on.”

Well, what says more about sexuality than the main characters fist fucking each other? That’s a lot of sexuality. While I am unsure of Capp’s age, he does look to be about middle age and it would make sense for him to know about a code popularized in a 70s to 90s. Especially for someone who has made multiple queer oriented stories in his life time.

Sources:

Why is purple considered the color of royalty?

Sumptuary law

How lavender became a symbol of LGBTQ resistance

How Lavender Became a Symbol of LGBTQ Resistance(part 2)

flagging opinicus rampant

Handkerchief code

DO YOU KNOW THE HANKY CODE?

Picspam: The Red Favour (Proof of Arthur Wearing Merlin's Favour in 3x04)

Five medieval love tokens

The Lady's Favour

Hanky codes

Nominees for Stonewall Awards announced

Merlin series 5 spoiler-free launch report

Pls reblog I spent hours on this /np 😭👊

[honeyedhoseok]

8th MEMEBR OF BTS

• STAGE NAME: Kim Yvonne (김 이본)

• BIRTH NAME: Park Chanelle

• BIRTHDAY: December 31st, 1995

• HEIGHT: 5"9

• PROFESSION: K-pop Idol

• GROUP: BTS

• LABEL: Big Hit

• POSITION: Lead Vocalist, Visual,Sub-rapper, writer, producer.

• DEBUT DATE: June 13th, 2013

• FACE CLAIM: seunghwibaby on ig

• VOICE CLAIM: Madison Beer+Ariana Grande. Rap voice claim: Lisa (BP)

EXTRA INFO ABOUT KIM YVONNE

• NICKNAMES: vonnie, nellie, baby, Big Hit's princess

• TALENTS: can play drums, electric guitar and piano.

• HIDDEN TALENTS: can hold her breath for 4 minutes, is very felixible, excellent at volleyball and basketball.

• LOVE LIFE: is currently single, has 4 exes.

• SUBLINGS: 1 twin brother, Park Jongin.

• SEXUALITY: she's bisexual

• AESTHETIC: femme fatale

• HER PERSONALITY: she's the sweetest little thing ever. everyone's first impression of her was 'bubbly, adorable and sweet'. she's extremely selfless and is constantly putting others before herself in any situation even if she's at a disadvantage. very smart, a little introverted. can be really quite or really loud, no in-between. can seem cold on the outside but she's the warmest person on the inside. broken gen z humor. clingy baby, loves skinship.

• was diagnosed with ADHD Inattentive was she was 13, anxiety and depression when she was 19.

• is unsecure about her looks

• fake maknae

• has three awards on her solo project

• her voice is on the deep side but she can go really high

• MUSIC GENRE: loves pop, RnB and Trap.

• PETS: two chow chow dogs, Oliver and Sirius Black.

• TATTOOS: A sun and a Cresent on her hand, a cloud on her middle finger and ARMY'S shield on her ring finger, 'kookie'on her wrist, a heart in her palm, and a ⁷ behind her ear

• PIERCINGS: three on each ear, nose piercing.

• SOLO PROJECTS: 'Selenophilia' three singles and 10 songs in total.

'Venus Records' two singles and 9 songs in total

CELEBRITY CRUSHES:

• People Crushing On KYV:

• Jackson Wang (GOT7), Wooyoung and Seonghwa (ATEEZ), GRAY and Jay Park (AOMG), Jennie Kim (BLACKPINK), Chan and Han (STRAY KIDS), KAI (EXO).

• Crushes KYV has:

• Seonghwa (ATEEZ), Wonho, Jay Park, Hwasa (MAMAMOO), Jennie Kim (BLACKPINK), Madison Beer, Yeonjun (TXT).

A GUIDE TO THE SHIPS: withing BTS

VONJOON/RAPVON

• 45% family, 55% romance

• fourth biggest ship in K-pop.

• she's his baby, you can't convince me otherwise.

• she looks up to namjoon alot.

• king and queen of destruction

• writing duo

• calling eachother 'honey' platonically

• too many inside jokes

• can be annoying, because who ever is around them WILL third wheel.

• "BTS and the world third wheeling joon and vonnie for 25 minutes straight" videos

• back massages because carrying the music industry is painful

• they trust eachother so much

• will always spill to eachother about their worries.

• the respect is through the roof

• love for days

• vonjoon/ rapvon stans are either rock hard or soft af

• HUGS

• this man is a giant and the hight difference is just enough for him to scoop her up in his arms and squeeze the life out of her.

• they can carry smart conversations most of the time, but not all the time

• "joon, what's the difference between horses and donkeys?"

• "°_°"

• "deadass"

• wholesome relationship :)

SEOKVON/ VONJIN

• 70% family, 30% romance

• will babie her, he must babie her.

• he's so protective of his wittle vonnie

• is always checking up on her.

• he thinks she's the most precious angel in the world that need to be rocked to sleep and fed every couple of hours.

• gives everyone normal cups, but Yvonne get a sippy cup with sunflower prints on it.

• THEY LOUD AS HELL OH MY GOD

• one can spot their shenanigans from a mile away.

• a lot of "Jin and von being chaotic neutral" for an hour straight videos

• he taught her how to fish

• cooking buddies

• making cookies at 3 in the morning

• crackhead energy that fills up a tank

• will shamelessly stock up tampons and pads for her

• THE LOVE IS CONTAGIOUS

• INFECTIOUS LOVE

• sibling fights for no reason

• seokvon/vonjin stans are the softest ever

• wholesome babies

MINVON/ VONGI

• 65% family, 35% romance

• IS VERY VERY PROTECTIVE OF HER.

• has the biggest soft spot for her

• he's her little meow meow

• they go fishing together (w/ Jin)

• she has the passcode to his studio

• PRODUCER DUO

• the amount of unreleased tracks is insane.

• he pretends he doesn't like her hugs, but in reality he instantly melts in her arms.

• the only person he'll let cuddle him.

• deep convos

• stargazing

• sharing bandanas

• not a lot of skinship

• keeping eachother entertained during award shows

• WIGGLY YOONGI DANCE TOGETHER

• gummy smiles :')

• minvon/vongi stans are soft and well fed

• playing basketball together

• armys making "suga and yvonne being babies" compilation videos

• they're the type of duo who you be in a room doing literally whatever and someone you'd walk in, stare at them and slowing retreat thinking they just walked into some cult activities

• silently take care of eachother

• smallest acts of intimacy

• tiny babies

JUNGVONNIE/VONHOPE/HOVI

• 50% family, 50%romance

• team chaos

• THE ULTIMATE DANCE DUO OH MY GOD

• doing the weirdest things ever without questioning it

• compliments that turn into, "no u, no u, NO I SAID YOU"

• he's secretly her favourite

• yvonne and hobi are basically what its like to mix gummy bears, skittles, rainbow belts and honey. SWEETNESS AND HAPPINESS AND SUNSHINE ALL AROUND UWU

• THE VOLUME IS ASTRONOMICAL

• but like thank god one of them has an iq above 6

• the amount of "hobi and voni being rays of sunshine" for 30 minutes straight videos is insane

• Comfort Inn ™

• CUDDLES

• she will cling to him as if he's the last human alive.

• they're in their own universe almost all the time

• jungvonnie/vonhope/hovi stan are so soft if they see a video of hobi and voni laughing they will cry

• loveliest relationship

TAEVON/ 2V/ VONHYUNG

• 20% family, 80% romance

• third biggest ship in K-pop

• they get a little too hot on stage

• she's his favourite person

• she makes him feel so safe

• the walking memes

• GUCCI EVERYWHERE

• being weird together

• always teamed up in any situation

• DEEP VOICE DUO

• dog parents

• yeontan, Oliver and Sirius are literal siblings

• coffee 'dates'

• actual fashion icons

• king and queen of resting bitch faces

• skinship at its finest

• a new dating rumor every other day it's not even shocking at this point

• they are always taking naps somewhere, can be backstage, can during an award show, can be during practice, doesn't matter. naps.

• they're always there for eachother, mentally and physically.

• "tae and vonnie being adorable for 10 minutes straight" videos

• t r u s t

• are always playing with each others hair

• taevon/2V/vonhyung stans are either hardcore af or soft af

• sweetest relationship

( i can't add a jimin gif due to a limit in submitting)

JIVON/VONMIN/2PARK

• 2% family, 98% romance

• biggest ship in K-pop

• they're always together no matter what

• skinship to the literal max

• holding hands, cheek kisses, cuddling, hugs, sitting on each other's laps, all of it.

• matching hair colours.

• they're either being the tiniest babies together or everyone's OTP, no in between.

• 'power couple' at award shows, matching outfits, dance solos, harmonizing together, they got it.

• all over eachother on stage, as if no one is watching.

• Yvonne 'platonically' calls jimin baby, but he blushes everytime.

• him calling her noona

• they don't give the army the chance to breath, because they are never here to play

• they have the most iconic lines that genuinely sound like fake subs

• que the "jimin and yvonne being a married couple for 20 minutes straight" videos

• they are either really chill or hella energetic

• the jivon/vonmin/2park stans are probably the hardest stans in the fandom.

• sweethearts :')

( I can't add a jungkook gif)

VONKOOK/ JEONVONNIE

• 10% family, 90% romance.

• second biggest ship in K-pop

• golden maknaes

• vocal duo

• "_____ hyung won't scold us"

• they're banana milk addicts

• poutty bunnies

• she's literally kookie's role model

• he always has his head on her shoulder

• they have several matching tattoos (a heart on their palms, he has 'vonnie' on his wrist and she has 'kookie' her wrist, and a '⁷' behind their ears).

• they're always covering songs together

• crackhead energy is through the roof

• they are the chaotic good/evil

• hands all over eachother all the time

• on stage

• during practice

• on vlives

• awards shows, whatever

• fancams of their solo performances always tend to go viral

• whenever they're are in the same room, just know something is going to get spoiled. always.

• king and queen of highnotes

• "jungkook and yvonne being BTS' babies" videos

• they (+tae) are rapline's biggest fans

• the weird drunkies

• they are always eating something, can be ramen, can be an unpeeled banana, you never know.

the vonkook/jeonvonnie stans are the most confused turned on stans ever, but they are quite well fed.

( lmao I hope u liked this)

[bewitching-elizabeth-olsen]

Press: Elizabeth Olsen, Much Like Wanda Maximoff, Comforts Herself With Classic TV

W MAGAZINE: For W’s second annual TV Portfolio, we asked 26 of the most sought-after names in television to pay homage to their favorite small-screen characters by stepping into their shoes.

WandaVision was the first television show produced by Marvel Studios, and any gamble Disney+ took to make the series happen immediately paid off. At one point during its nine-episode run, WandaVision was the most popular streamed show in the world (beaten only recently by another Marvel series, Loki). The suburbia-set series received critical acclaim, snagging 23 Emmy nominations—one of those for Elizabeth Olsen, who was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for her performance as the titular Wanda—and convinced even the biggest Marvel skeptics to buy into its delicious plot.

It might come as a surprise, then, that Olsen doesn’t really watch that much contemporary television herself. But who could blame the actress, when most of her time is spent filming scenes for the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Wanda Maximoff (also known as the Scarlet Witch), a wielder of chaos magic who materializes in the small town of Westview—first as a 1950s-era housewife married to a humanlike robot named Vision (played by Paul Bettany), then as a ’60s housewife, then a ’70s housewife, and so on. When the actress does watch television, though, she prefers to get into some of those older shows, like Murder, She Wrote, which she chose to re-create above, and, of course, episodes of ’90s sitcoms like Full House, of which there was no dearth in the actress’s childhood.

My contract with Marvel was done. Kevin Feige, who runs Marvel, had me come into his office, and he pitched me WandaVision. I loved the concept of it, but I was terrified of a new streaming service—that is now Disney+.

Did you know the entire concept going in, or was it revealed to you over time?

He told me that he wanted to create a story about Wanda Maximoff manipulating reality to mimic the sitcoms that she grew up with in order to comfort herself. He wanted it to be kind of trippy, for it to feel like a sitcom, but twisted, kind of Twilight Zone-y. That reminded me of Twilight Zone: The Movie, where there’s a boy who is obsessed with television, has a horrible family, and he conjures up a bunny that kills his whole family. It’s really wacky. I just thought, It would be incredible if we do anything that’s a piece of that.

Were you personally a fan of I Love Lucy and other old sitcoms?

Yeah, I watched Nick at Nite all the time. I loved I Love Lucy, Laverne & Shirley. I didn’t like The Brady Bunch, but I loved the Brady Bunch sequel movies. That made me excited to get to reference The Brady Bunch [in WandaVision].

Did you shoot the episodes in order, or did you go back and forth between the 1950s and ’60s?

We tried to film everything in order. The exteriors, though, we hopped around. Our fences, the color of the houses, the flowers all look different from decade to decade. Luckily, it was pretty contained, but it really was sad to wrap the sitcom. We wrapped it when Paul and I and Kathryn [Hahn] and Teyonah [Parris] were filming the ’70s opening montage to the Brady Bunch theme, and that was how he wrapped it—in six bizarre outfits, with a pregnant belly on a tandem bike.

Did you keep anything from the set?

I’m not a keeper, because I feel like I’m not allowed to [keep things]. I feel like everything goes into some box that they hide from everyone, then maybe eventually they’ll retire and reuse shit. I have no idea.

I thought you might keep Wanda’s apron!

That would have been a really impractical apron. It was made out of gauze. Anything would bleed right through it.

Do you have an understanding of women in each decade now? Did you have to wear the undergarments and the whole nine yards?

Yeah. I loved the undergarments. It’s all helpful for the time, for the character, for how women move, how they talk. The shoes were the worst. I did wear vintage period shoes. And that’s awful. My feet don’t even like heels, let alone heels that have quite literally no support.

Is it difficult to have kissing scenes with all the purple paint on Paul Bettany when he’s dressed as Vision?

It’s really hard. It comes off on me, even though they try as much as they can to powder him. They have to powder his hands all the time, because if he wants to touch my face… They have to be on top of us for those scenes. It’s really not practical.

So which character did you decide to play for our portfolio?

I decided to be Angela Lansbury [as Jessica Fletcher] in Murder, She Wrote. I asked my friend Clayton Hawkins, who’s a hairstylist and great with wigs, if he could get a cheap wig and wrap my hair. And that’s what we did. I was watching Murder, She Wrote in London a lot.

During lockdown?

I was filming there, and in and out of lockdowns, but filming through lockdowns as well. And that was one of the things that would be on the television. I think I never really sat down and watched Murder, She Wrote until then. It’s fabulous. Great guest stars, great whodunits. My favorite moment is when they solve it and play it out for you in the solving of the mystery and going backwards. It’s just delicious, and it feels good to watch. There’s a great horse-racing episode that I loved, because I love the racetrack.

Did you have a TV show you loved growing up?

I never did Dawson’s Creek, I never did any of those shows. What did I watch, though? I loved Family Matters, Step by Step, The Torkelsons. And I loved Full House. We had all the VHSs, and it was very easy to watch at my house.

Did you have a crush on John Stamos?

Yes.

Who was your cinematic crush when you were growing up?

Frank Sinatra. I didn’t know they were old movies that I was watching. So when you say “TV shows,” what I consumed as a child was all old musicals, like Oklahoma!, Guys and Dolls, Carousel, West Side Story. I loved classic musicals, and I was in love with Frank Sinatra. I would do scenes with him in my bathroom, which then turned into scenes with George Clooney as I got older and I realized Frank Sinatra was an old man. I was like, Well, maybe if I get older, I can at least work with George Clooney, as his daughter’s friend or something, and then we have a thing.

What was your first red carpet look? Was it for Martha Marcy May Marlene?

Yeah, Cannes was my first red carpet look. I was in the Row. I was in a black Row skirt and a lace top, and I didn’t have an undergarment on. I didn’t know that flash photography at night was going to be my enemy, and my publicist worked really hard to try and remove those pictures from the Internet. [Laughs]

Do you have a secret skill?

You know what I’m really good at? Removing stains. I believe I can remove a stain from anything.

How did you learn to remove stains?

Probably started with my mom, who’s a soaker. That’s kind of the first rule: patience. And then, because I cook so much, I think I just had to learn. I’m pretty “woman of the house” handy.

I thought you were going to say that your secret skill was that you can sell real estate. Because when I first met you, you had a real estate license.

I did. It’s definitely expired. I got my real estate license because I didn’t want to work in a restaurant in New York as a summer job. So I thought, I’ll work in a real estate office. I was dealing with my sister’s friend who was a realtor, and I dealt with his rental clients. And I would mispronounce streets in New York all the time, because I had just moved there.

Press: Elizabeth Olsen, Much Like Wanda Maximoff, Comforts Herself With Classic TV was originally published on Elizabeth Olsen Source • Your source for everything Elizabeth Olsen

[greatwyrmgold]

HoloCure Item Guide

NOTE: This guide was written for 0.3.1656470021. Most items had ther effects tweaked or replaced in the 0.4 update, so this item guide is currently incomplete and inaccurate.

I still have HoloCure on the brain, so I wanted to write more advice for anyone looking for HoloCure advice on Tumblr. Having covered all eleven characters currently in the game, I figured I could either make an item guide or a weapon guide. I covered weapons more extensively than items in my character guides, for reasons I’ll get to momentarily, and I’ve talked about weapon choice a bit in my post bitching about weapon collabs, so…items it is.

The thing about items is, for the most part you’ll be fine whatever you grab. Most characters have a couple items they should try to grab (the big examples being Sana/Knightly Milk and Kronii/Body Pillow), but aside from that you shouldn’t worry too much. Like, yeah, some sets of items are gonna do better than others, but don’t sweat it if you wanted Injection Asacoco but could only get the mask or something.

Anyways, I’ve divided the items into half a dozen simple categories. They’re kinda arbitrary (like, does separating healing items from defense items make sense when they’re both meant to keep you from dying?), but the divisions make sense to me and should help me discuss the points I think they share in common. I’ll start with…

Healing

The Healing items are Full Meal, Nurse’s Horn (formerly Succubus’s Horn), and Uber Sheep. Now, Fauna excepted, there’s a limit to how much healing a character can use (generally 100% HP), so you usually don’t need more than one of these. And the more upgrades you’ve unlocked, the more experienced you are with the game, the less you need that one. But early on—before you have HP and regeneration upgrades, when you’re still getting used to strafing—you could really use a horn.

And ideally, your one healing item would be the Nurse’s Horn. It heals a bit of HP every time you defeat an enemy, and if everything comes together, you’re going to be killing a lot of enemies, especially when there are lots of enemies around (which if when you probably need healing the most). The Nurse’s Horn is a contender for strongest HoloCure item, period, and it’s certainly the best healing item.

That said, Uber Sheep is also fine. It makes food drop more often, both from enemies and from the sky. While it still drops less often than the Nurse Horn procs, each burger heals more than the Nurse Horn. Also, if you’re good at saving burgers when you’re healthy and finding them when you’re desperate, you can “store” food drops in a way you can’t with Nurse Horn procs. It’s not optimal, but it works.

The Full Meal, on the other hand, is no substitute for sheep or horns. It doubles all healing (except upgrade-shop regeneration), which…is not as helpful as it sounds. If you don’t have a Nurse’s Horn or a healing skill, it makes food heal 40% of your HP instead of 20%, which only matters if you’re below 80% and only really matters around 60-70%. If you’re getting that low on health regularly enough for that to be worth an item slot, something is probably going wrong.

Meanwhile, if you do have healing skills or a Nurse’s Horn, you’re not going to be very low on HP for very long, and the Full Meal will do even less (since all healing is 0 if you’re at 100%). I usually even don’t bother to upgrade Nurse’s Horns once I get them—5%/proc is enough for most situations—so I definitely don’t think doubling its healing is worth a slot. Sure, you’ll bounce back from Big Problems faster, which might help you if you encounter Big Problems often enough, but…

The only real use I’ve found for the Full Meal is alongside Injection-Type Asacoco and (of course) the Nurse’s Horn. ITA keeps your HP low enough that boosting the horn heals from 10% to 20% of your maximum HP is significant—it made the difference between struggling to reach a quarter health and hovering around 80-90%. There might also be some use with mildly cheesy strats that don’t need items—the Full Meal is the only item that doesn’t upgrade, which means it won’t clog up level-up options with unwanted upgrades. But aside from that? It’s useless.

All healing items are unlocked by default.

Defense:

The Defense items are Body Pillow, Headphones, and Plushie. Each protects you in a different way, with different strengths, weaknesses, and synergies.

The Body Pillow is, I think, the most broadly-useful. It provides a regenerating shield, like a second HP pool that is restored every fifteen seconds. In general, this is most useful for helping you endure attrition, taking small damage every so often (due to, say, mistakes) without access to healing, but isn’t as useful when you’re being overwhelmed.

Where the Pillow really shines, though, is protecting buffs. Many positive effects, from Sake’s crit boost to Perfection’s everything boost, can be lost from one enemy slipping past your cloud of particle effects and bumping into you. Losing Body Pillow shield does not count as damage for those purposes.

There’s one specific interaction I’d like to bring up here. It seems like the Pillow should synergize with Injection-Type Asacoco, giving you a buffer to protect your low HP. Instead, the Asacoco depletes your shield first. This isn’t nothing—the shield regenerates automatically, each time giving your HP a chance to recover—but to me, it seems less than the sum of its parts. Yet somehow I keep ending up with both of them at the same time (because they’re darn good parts).

Regardless, keep in mind what the Body Pillow protects you from. It will make your margins for error much more forgiving, especially when you have limited access to healing, but it will protect you only a little from big individual errors. Don’t rely on the Body Pillow for that.

By contrast, the Plushie is something you absolutely shouldn’t rely on, but it can serve as a get-out-of-sh*t-free card for an error of any size. It gives you a fraction of a second of invulnerability whenever you’re hit, at the cost of several seconds of reduces Attack and Speed.

If it was a smaller fraction of a second but no penalty, or if it penalized different stats, I could recommend this as a straightforward alternative or complement to the Body Pillow. But it penalizes the two stats you’ll need most to get out of a hairy situation. I’m not sure what situation this is for, or what character would run into it often enough for this to be worth a slot.

(Note that if you have both the Plushie and the Body Pillow, the Plushie won’t activate until your shield is depleted. I don’t know how this works with damage-negating effects like Headphones or Gura’s Short Height, but going only after those failed would make sense, right?)

Finally, Headphones. I’d say they’re about equally useful for preventing attrition and surviving big mistakes. When hit, they give you a chance of negating the damage and knocking all nearby enemies back. On one hand, this means you take less incidental damage; on the other hand, it also makes it easier to escape a crowd of enemies you stumbled into. It’s a well-rounded defensive option that I recommend for any character that doesn’t already have enough defense/healing items.

And that’s something you need to keep in mind! Not dying is an important part of victory, but it’s only one part. You need to defeat enemies—partly to reduce the pressure they’re putting on your defenses, but mostly to gather XP and other resources so you can keep getting stronger as the challenges grow. If you put too many resources (in terms of both item slots and level-ups) into defense, you won’t have the offense to keep up. The only perfect defense in HoloCure is an overwhelming offense (plus Nurse Horns).

Headphones and the Body Pillow are unlocked by default. The Plushie can be unlocked by surviving ten minutes as Hakos Baelz.

“Power for a Price”

The Face Mask, Gorilla’s Paw, and Injection-Type Asacoco work in more or less the same way: They give you a 30% damage bonus (which you can increase by leveling the item up), but also come with some kind of drawback.

The Face Mask is unlocked by default, the Gorilla’s Paw requires you to beat Smol Ame (the second and last “real” boss), and Injection-Type Asacoco requires you to beat Smol Ame in Stage Mode while equipped with Plug-Type or Breathe-In Asacoco.

The Face Mask is the simplest by far. You deal more damage, but also take more damage. The extra damage usually doesn’t matter much, especially if you don’t take the Mask until after grabbing your defense/healing item(s) and a few weapons, but it slims your margins for error by about a third.

Injection-Type Asacoco is another matter. It deals constant damage (without disabling “X time without taking damage” buffs, such as Sake or Phoenix Shield), but in exchange you get a big damage boost. In fact, ITA’s damage boost rises above that offered by other “Power for a Price” items—it goes up to 40/50% instead of the other items’ 35/40%. But obviously, being reduced to 1 HP is a big price!

It’s extremely powerful in the right build—unsurprisingly, one with a lot of healing. It’s great on Fauna or IryS, but not until after they pick up healing skills and ideally the Nurse’s Horn. But anyone can use it, if they have the Nurse’s Horn and are willing to (again) whittle away their margins for error.

I’ve been bringing up these “margins for error” (and “errors” in general) a lot, because I think this “error” lens is a good way of explaining what various items do for you. Defensive items let you make bigger errors without dying, while the Face Mask and ITA kill you for smaller errors. The Body Pillow lets you ignore minor errors, but doesn’t help when you’ve made a big mistake. Et cetera. And now that I’ve mostly finished the items that directly change how easy it is to die, I won’t be referencing that concept much again.

Anyways, the last “Power for a Price” item is the Gorilla’s Paw. (I don’t know who cut off Kanata’s hand, but they’d better watch out for Friend C.) It boosts base damage, at the cost of making your crit rate effectively zero (unless you invest way too many resources into bringing it back up to, like, 2%). Obviously, if you’re not interested in crits, this is basically free damage; equally obviously, if you need crits, you should stay the f&$* away.

Which brings us to the question of which characters care about crits. For this purpose, I divide characters into three categories: Crit-Hungry, Crit-Friendly, and Crit-Agnostic.

Crit-Hungry characters have skills which require a good crit rate to be effective. In order of ascending crit-hunger (by my estimates), we have IryS (who heals a bit on crits and maintains a buff by healing), Kronii (who needs to crit with her clock hands once every five seconds to maintain max Kroniicopter), and Hakos Baelz (whose CRATical Hits can deal ridiculous damage, but won’t deal much at all if they only happen 2-3% of the time). Giving any of these characters the Gorilla’s Paw would be an obvious error.

Crit-Friendly characters don’t need crits, but their innate skills boost critical hits. In ascending order of crit-friendliness, we have Calli (small bonus from the Rapper, plus a scythe-crit damage bonus during The Reaper), Kiara (Dancer bonus), and of course Ame (Detective Eye). The Gorilla’s Paw won’t cripple them, but losing critical hits will weaken them.

Finally, we have the Crit-Agnostic characters—Ina, Sana, Fauna, Gura, and Mumei. They have low base crit rates (except Mumei, who’s average), nothing that boosts them, and no special reason to care about the occasional 25% damage boost. For them, the Gorilla’s Paw is practically a straight damage boost.

Now, if only one item affected critical hit rates, it wouldn’t be worth breaking down characters by crit-friendliness. But the next category is…

Crit Rate Items

The Sake and Piki Piki Piman both increase your critical hit rate by 10-20% under certain circumstances. Unsurprisingly, these similar items should be considered under similar circumstances.

Crit-Agnostic characters shouldn’t reject crit rate items, unless they already picked up a Gorilla’s Paw, but it’s probably best not to seek them out. Keep your options for a cheap damage boost open, neh? A conditional 10-20% chance to deal +25% damage isn’t worth that much.

Crit-Hungry characters should consider whether their hunger has been sated. Baelz’s is a bottomless well of crit-hunger, but if Kronii gets one clock crit every ~4 seconds and IRyS is getting consistent heals, they don’t really need more crits. At that point, they’re more like Crit-Friendly characters.

Crit-Friendly characters don’t need to worry about saving themselves for a gorilla, but it’s worth asking how much they’d actually get from a crit boost. (This is, of course, going to depend on their current crit rate.) Remember, critical hits deal a lot less damage than you’d expect from the name, and neither of these items give constant crit bonuses.

That leaves the question of which beverage is best.

The condition for Sake is simple—don’t take damage for ten seconds. That’s something you probably want to do anyways. You’ll want to pick up a Body Pillow so you can make small mistakes without losing the buff, but other than that…play normally. It’s a good pick. (Note that damage from ITA doesn’t count as being hit.)

I’m not sure what’s up with the Piki Piki Piman, though. It provides its buff if you’ve been hit in the past ten seconds. It counts if you’re using a Body Pillow and you don’t take damage, so that’s good. I don’t know how it interacts with Headphones or other effects which “negate hits”.

I’ve never picked up the PPP—I try to avoid enemies. (I know I screw up, but I don’t think I do that every ten seconds). Maybe it’s worthwhile as a second crit booster if you have both Sake and the Body Pillow? Or just grab both items to make sure you always have one crit booster? I dunno, I’ve never tried it.

Both are unlocked by default.

Resource Boosters

These items don’t make you better at fighting enemies (directly), but instead give you more when you do. They range from helping you get stronger faster to being an in-run resource drain that basically only helps between runs.

Study Glasses are the first. They provide a bonus to XP earned—10%-30%, depending on level. Note that the Study Glasses have five levels, more than most items—you need to invest a significant chunk of XP to get the most out of these. But if you can snag glasses early in the run, you’ll more than make up the difference by the time things get tricky.

Obviously, you shouldn’t grab these glasses if you get them near the end of the game. But how late is too late? If you know the level you expect to be at the end of the game, you can roughly estimate. Figure out how many levels you expect to gain by then, and ask yourself how many extra levels you’d expect to get from an XP boost. Keep in mind that each level costs more XP than the one before it, so you shouldn’t expect more than a…I dunno, let’s say 15-20% bonus to levels earned? (I can’t find any information about how much the level-up cost increases per level, so I’m guessing.) If you expect to gain at least 25-30 levels, you’ll probably gain more bonus levels than you spent on your glasses.

If you do pick up the glasses, you’ll obviously want to upgrade them ASAP. Unless another build-critical item pops up (priorities), or you’re struggling and need to upgrade something else (in which case the glasses were probably a mistake).

The Credit Card is still mostly an in-run item, but its upgrades focus on the meta-currency angle. It increases anvil frequency by 20%, which can be thought of as a level where you can choose to upgrade any item or weapon you already have. This is obviously a handy thing to get more often! I’m not sure how handy, since nobody outside the dev team seems to know how often anvils drop.

The main benefit—and the only thing that improves by leveling up your card—is reducing the HoloCoin cost of enhancing max-level weapons. I have never touched that mechanic, but it’s probably useful for people who enhance everything to max level before dying or are less perceived-waste-averse than me. (It’s not hard.) But it seems like you’d need to work to spend more HoloCoins on anvils than you’d gain from drops, so this is mostly helpful for increasing your final HoloCoin profit.

Super Chatto Time is all about HoloCoin profit. It increases the drop rate of HoloCoins from defeated enemies. If you’re confident that you can win with one hand tied behind your back, or want to go really wild with enhancing max-level weapons, feel free. I feel like just saying it boosts meta-currency earned should tell you whether you want to grab this item or not.

All three of these need to be unlocked! You need to find an anvil (and end the run) to unlock the Credit Card, reach level 50 in a single run to unlock the Study Glasses, and end a run with 5,000 HoloCoins (including ones you held before the run) to unlock Super Chatto Time.

The easiest way to unlock akasupa time is to refund 5,000 HoloCoins of upgrades and run into shrimps until they somehow kill you. To unlock Study Glasses, invest in XP upgrades, survive, and maybe try Endless Mode. To unlock the Credit Card…I dunno, anvils are luck-based. Try praying to RNGsus.

Miscellaneous

The inevitable breakdown of any categorization system.

Knightly Milk is the very definition of a build-defining item. It increases the attack area of area-type attacks, and boosts Pickup Range a little. If you’re using lots of area-type weapons, it’s obviously a great pick! If you’re not, it’s almost useless.

It’s hard not to have some area weapons—most weapons are! (80% of Basic Weapons, 45% of Character Weapons, 60% of Collab Weapons, and a handful of skills and specials—assuming the wiki hasn’t missed anything.) But boosting the area of just a few weapons isn’t that impressive. If you grab Knightly Milk, you’ll want as many area weapons as possible. It’s just possible to have only area collab weapons (BL Fujoshi, Elite Cooking, Flattening Board, Idol Concert), which is probably ideal for a Knightly Milk build.

Knightly Milk is godly for Sana (who also gets a damage boost from it, and wants to use lots of area weapons anyways), and pretty good for Calli and Gura (who have some key area-type weapons and skills—and in Calli’s case, can’t outgrow her own skills with the Milk). I like the area-type weapons, so I like Knightly Milk. But if you prefer Breathe-In Asacoco and Light Beams and characters with no area abilities, it won’t be a good choice.

Idol Costume is a bit less variable, but it’s still character-dependent. It simply decreases the cooldown time for your Super Attack. On characters with great super attacks, like Ina or Baelz, it’s really good! On characters with redundant (Calli*), actively harmful (Mumei), or otherwise disappointing specials, it’s not worth the item slot.

*For like the middle half of the game, the only weapons Calli can’t kill with one swing of her scythe are bosses, and even after that it rarely takes more than two.

Finally, the Energy Drink. It increases your Speed—that is, your movement speed—while decreasing your maximum HP. Running faster can make it easier to avoid danger, even if you don’t notice the danger until the last second, but lowered HP obviously makes danger more dangerous. I’d say it’s a net positive, but not everyone wants to spend a slot on this specific positive.

Knightly Milk is unlocked by default. Idol Costume is unlocked by using a special attack (and then ending the run). Energy Drink is unlocked by surviving ten minutes as Calliope.

…that’s all, folks! Hopefully this is a helpful guide and not a time-wasting one!

[memoleather]

BDSM and kink DO belong in Pride celebrations. This is why.

I've read a column on The Independent trying to explain why BDSM and Kink don't belong in Pride celebrations. What I found interesting is not only the lack of knowledge from the author, but the way he can contradict himself in the same article. I'll try to explain why based on my personal experience as a Leatherman.

Before anything I'd like to perfectly make myself clear: in the US (country where I live) showing your genitals or anus in public is illegal.

In the column, the autor tries to explain that BDSM and Kink aren't of good taste or decent enough for the public. And that could potentially alienate possible allies we could need in the LGBTQ movement. A lot of this type of arguments against the same LGBTQ community have been heard thorough our contemporary history, and most of the times have been used to attack and suppress us.

But contrary to what most of the readers think is the main error in the column, which is the wrongful denial of the presence of the BDSM and Kink collective based on their clothing or what they're doing in public, I think the main error lies deeper within the column.

The author tries to make a separation between sexual orientation and sexual preference. He states that where sexual orientation is of a permanent state, a sexual preference is a choice that can change. The author couldn't be any more wrong with this argument: BDSM and Kink people have both perfectly attached one to the other.

In my personal case as a Leatherman who has met diverse type of Leathermen around the globe, most of them coincide with what I think: a gay Leatherman can only be attracted to other gay Leathermen. That is the main characteristic of a fetish tied to a sexual preference. I cannot have sexual intercourse with a woman dressed in leather, or with a man dressed in casual clothing. My sexual orientation and preference are intimately tied one to each other.

The author makes a reference to his lack of knowledge from the subject when he tries to dismiss Leathermen, and most likely all Kinksters (rubbermen, pups, Levi, balloons, diapers, etc) and practicioners of BDSM to a simple case of a "preference", or a choice. He considers that at a certain point in my life I was given the option of liking Leathermen, a thing that never happened. There was a time when I was growing up (probably around when I was 6 or 7 years old) when I discovered that I like men dressed in leather. Before knowing that I was gay, or what being gay is, I was already a kinkster and I already had a defined sexual preference. If the author of the column had a minimum knowledge of the topic, he would have known that most fetish people are born with their fetishes in their blood: we cannot choose whether to accept or dismiss our fetishes, we have to practice them in order to be in peace with ourselves, to be our own true selves. In all my life I've met several diverse Leathermen and fetish people that cannot have a sexual hookup or a meaningful relationship with a person who does not share their sexual preference, or their fetish. That has happened to me. I've tried several times without success to have sex with a person who does not share my fetish. Having a shared fetish or kink is a basic requirement for me to have a good time with a man.

From that wrong argument on, the whole column loses its value. Thanks to his wrongful reasoning, the author falls into the same rhetoric that conservatives from the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, 2000's, 2010's and 2020's have long used to attack us: the BDSM and Kink collective (or replacing those with the LGBTQ acronym), which is nothing more than a bunch of people that CHOSE to get dressed in leather that day (or a bunch of people that CHOSE to love a person from the same sex) is not of good taste to mingle in a Pride celebration, or with the rest of the society in general. Other proof of his ignorance of the Kink and BDSM world can be seen in the same column: when the author mentions that he's practiced a fetish but no longer does. That implies that for him the fetish is nothing more than a costume he uses to make sex "more fun" and when he's over, he hangs it back in the closet and forgets about it until he needs it again. Unlike the author, I wear leather because that is who I am: a Leatherman. I consider that I use a costume when I go to work using casual clothes in a job that doesn't allow to wear leather garments.

Now I'd like to ask the author the specific type of Pride he's been going where showing genitals or anuses is allowed. Never in my lifetime as Leatherman I've been to a pride where people shows those. Any gay person (at least in the US) independently of whether if they participate in a collective or not, knows that showing the genitals or anuses in public is illegal. No matter how proud of being a Leatherman I am, I'd never do it, nor I ever will. I know the places where I can do that. Now, if his comments regarding the so called "sexual intercourses" he witness, or imagines, when assisting to a Pride event stems from the way we dress or act there, then I have the next words for him: stop reflecting your insecurities on us. I dress the way I do and act the way I do because that is what I want, that is who I am. If you have a problem with it, then that problem is yours and yours only to solve. I don't have to change my persona, nor I ever will, to accommodate to your insecurities.

Instead of attacking me, or the BDSM / Kink collective, the author should try to know me/us. He would get shocked to know that despite my preferences, I am a human being just like him: I have a job just like him, I go back home just like him, I go to bed just like him, and if someone attacks me I bleed, just like him. Maybe if he devoted more time to know us, or the different facets of the LGBTQ movement, he would spend less time attacking us. The attack to one of us does not minimize it's impact: an attack to one of us is an attack to all of us.

I also have some words for The Independent: shame on you for trying to legitimize voices of people that have no idea or knowledge of a topic you agree to publish. Rather than demonstrating the lack of knowledge and ignorance from the author, you're showing the null capacity from your editorial board to choose quality writers for your publication.

Lastly, I'd like to tell to my beloved LGBTqia+ / BDSM / Kink community: this month celebrate the freedom of being however you really are. We have a long history of fighting against what society tells us how we should be. Now is not the time to give up, nor to take a small break. And the best way to celebrate is this: if you're a Femdom, be a proud Femdom in the bank. If you're a Leatherman, be a proud Leatherman in the bus. If you're Queer, be a proud Queer in an art gallery. Gather together with your kinky friends, or just your friends and mingle with the rest of the society in your best gear. Let's build bridges of communication between our BDSM / kink world and the people that don't know us. Because what's better than a day, a week, a month or even a year of celebrations, is a lifetime of Pride.