#look there is in fact heterosexual explanations however to me this does not read as such in bc queer undertones of forbidden love and a

[what-thisiscrazzzy]

Its only episode 4 and Merlin has drank a poison to Dave Arthur which then makes Arthur put his life at risk to save him. People still believe they aren’t insane for each other?

[myfairkatiecat]

I think you're misunderstanding my point a bit, the problem is not "accidentally agreeing with someone when they also disagree with you on other points". I agree that worrying about that is silly. However both my hypothetical post and the actual post, in my opinion, have the problem of presenting a false dichotomy which is indicative of bias. "We need more single mothers in media" is a point which is completely unrelated to the much stupider point of "there are TOO MANY women with jobs in media", and the fact of the matter is that being bothered by seeing women in media who have jobs is, not inherently sexist, but certainly something you would expect more from a misogynist than a non misogynist.

Similarly the original post pairs a point that many agree with - "more fandoms/media should portray close brotherly friendships" - with an unrelated (and in my opinion, very entitled) complaint about fandoms being too gay, as if it's not possible for both gay relationships and brotherly ones to both be respected and given validity without choosing one as the correct or more valid interpretation. Or as if, as the person who responded to that post was alleging, the post was trying to imply that interpreting characters as gay is inherently worse than interpreting them as brotherly. Given that that's a very bold claim, I think supporting that claim with "btw this same person has said this on the topic of gay people irl" is quite normal?

The reason context matters is not because valid points become gross and wrong when said by the wrong person, but because valid sentiments can be used to mask other, less valid sentiments. If you agree with both points, that's one thing, but if you think complaining that fandom is just too gay is indicative of homophobia, "the person who said that has also publicly stated that they don't support the LGBT community" is relevant information in that discussion. And I frankly think that "actually, my friend thinking that fandom is too gay is completely unrelated to that same friend thinking being gay irl is sinful" is a very strange claim that I struggle to believe, in the same way I would not believe it if someone said "the fact that I get mad when I see women on TV with jobs is completely unrelated to me thinking women shouldn't have jobs because then I could sleep with them more easily".

Ok so this is the post in question by @gracefulchristiangirl:

why aren't guys allowed to have strong brotherly friendships anymore without being queer headcannoned anymore. like- not all strong relationships are because of romantic or sexual desire??? some people have life-long friendships with other guys who are literally their brothers???

Reading comprehension check: “NOT ALL strong relationships are because of romantic or sexual desire.” This post is a response to the frequent sexualization of male friendship, which feeds a culture of toxic masculinity. If showing affection is consistently interpreted as inherently gay (like posting a gif of Sam and Frodo with the caption “there is NO heterosexual explanation for this” which does happen quite frequently) then straight men are going to be discouraged from being affectionate with their friends because, understandably, they don’t want people unanimously agreeing that they must therefore be a sexuality that they aren’t.

This post is about people erasing the possibility of friendship between two men when they see a certain type of behavior, usually expressions of care or love. This isn’t a response to “I think it would be cool if Merlin and Arthur were gay so I’m going to write a fic where they’re gay,” it’s a response to “look at the way Merlin is looking at Arthur in this scene with so much love in his eyes. Look at the way he holds him tenderly ad he dies. They’re literally so gay, like wdym they aren’t lovers??” One such statement owns that it is something made up by the person with the headcanon, while the other statement makes affection between two men seem inherently romantic! I used the merlin fandom as an example because I have seen that second statement made, almost word for word, and it’s sentiments like those that make me glad for posts like the one we are discussing.

The post is not about gay people. The post is about viewing close male friendships as inherently romantic or sexual in fandom spaces, which is unfortunately very common.

This post is also not about fandom spaces being “too gay,” as you said in your ask. *wags finger like an aunt* mm-mm-mm, that’s not what OP said! She didn’t say fandom spaces were too gay!

[lunar-years]

re: “the jamie factor” to the roykeeley resolution in the finale, they really do have to do something about it because they heavily implied that keeley still had feelings for him multiple times at the beginning of the season and that was… never resolved? unless they intended the resolution to just be that she wanted to be friends with him?? but (and maybe this is just my shipping goggles) I don’t feel like that really explains how she was talking about him to shandy and jack

Exactly.

This is one of the few things that will actually hack me off if it's done incorrectly in the finale (read: Roy/Keeley getting back together and Jamie is neither mentioned nor shown. Or, 1000x worse, if they do show him finding out/one of them telling him afterwards and he's just like "Oh I'm so happy for you guys! my two best friends who I absolutely don't also have feelings for! together at last! :)" because WHAT). I'm pretty confident they won't do that because of how little sense it makes but like. It's still an illogical fear of mine.

And look, I'm all for an ambiguous ending in which ot3 isn't defined. I don't really need any further confirmation beyond what we got last week. But the fact that the narrative did start (and subsequently interrupt) an "I don't want to just be friends" conversation between Roy & Keeley makes it an almost certainty that they're going to finish said conversation. In which case, I don't see how Roy and Keeley could make any choice about their relationship without thinking about/including Jamie. The only route to ambiguity I can see is Keeley turning Roy down (maybe after some more glances in Jamie's general direction to suggest to viewers with eyes that he's part of the reason) and then the three of them shown briefly as friends again.

As you say, there's been several moments in the season where it's been made pretty clear Keeley is thinking about Jamie in that way again. And even in the moment where Roy/Keeley are talking and Jamie interrupts them, Keeley 1) does not look like she's about to give a resounding yes to Roy and 2) drops her hand SO fast the moment Jamie walks through the door. How else are we supposed to read this, like ?? We know Roy still loves Keeley, there's been nothing to indicate Jamie isn't still in love with Keeley (as he told her last season) and everything Roy/Jamie this season has not been subtle development... the dots are connecting in a way that the writers absolutely have to not only be aware of but also intentional about at this point.

Not to mention that last week the entire Jamie Roy Keeley plot was however many minutes of "there is no heterosexual or monogamous explanation for this" so uhhh. yeah. I can only conclude that ot3 is going to be addressed.

[hopefullystillatheatrestudent]

i'm so excited about you taking asks again ahhhh okay so. if you'd absolutely had to choose. what would be your top 5 cockles moments, and why? thank you ily <3

here’s the thing: there are so many routes i could go down with this, because cockles moments come in all shapes and sizes and formats. these include moments from their panels, their bloopers, the footage we get when they don’t even know they’re being recorded, stories being passed down from photo ops & autographs(one of my personal favorite ways to get cockles, tbh, because they’re all insane), and social media(tweets to each other, instagram posts & comments, etc.). 

SO! since many a list like this has already been made, and i want to stand out from the crowd, what i’m gonna do is definitively give the number one spot to each of these five categories.(i might even throw in honourable mentions because they’re so despicably in love that they warrant that. i really put my whole pussy into this, guys, i hope you’re happy.) 

disclaimer: these are my own personal opinions. but that also means i’m right. so. enjoy. 

number one: top cockles panel moment

so we’re starting off with a bang, because how do you even BEGIN to rank what atrocities jensen and misha commit at jibcon. every single one they’ve had is damning in it’s own right, for different reasons.

however, considering just how much unabashed fuckery they’ve given us to sift through, it’s a good thing i do have a personal favorite despite it all. it’s heartwarming, the sweetest thing i’ve ever seen, AND it’s jarringly cinematic - mainly because it has a whole ass arc to it that was years in the making. it might even be surprising to some people, but my favorite cockles panel moment, and what i consider the one that encompasses their entire gut-wrenching journey from 2008-2013 in the most sweepingly romantic gesture possible, is this one.

i want this burned into my retinas. i am not even joking. when i'm through with my explanation, let me convince you why this is thee most romantic cockles moment of all time.

first, some history: people call this the resume off, but many seem to forget the botched attempt at a resume off a year prior. and yes, you guessed it: it's during their break up. it's a juicy time period for a reason, guys. it came across as exceedingly one-sided and VERY awkward. let me refresh your memory as to just how bad it was, and just how hard jensen was trying and ultimately failing at winning misha over: the funniest part of the whole resume off in 2013??? every joke/bit had literally already been made/done. they were just going through the motions again, but the difference THIS time...is that misha reciprocated jensen's energy. it. is. fascinating. i want to get into it more detail in another post, and i'll link it here when i'm done, but the main takeaway, i think, and the main difference that showcases how much they've grown in a year, is that in jib 3, misha flat out refused to do an accent, and this time around, he indulges jensen for literal minutes. when i tell you they're crazy, they're crazy. i can't wait to actually dive into it later.

ANYWAY, the resume off culminates in this moment here. and, like, a million things happen in this gifset. actually, more like a million and one. the music starts playingneediremindyouthatthesongissingingintherain(h e l p), misha starts dancing, jensen 'perpetually fake grumpy' ackles lets misha think he's not going to join, misha sits down defeated, but no!!! that was jensen's plan all along(look at his stupid fucking smirk) and he offers his arm to his dance partner who immediately grins like a fool, jensen then leads misha into their kick step, they perfectly synchronise and let loose, and are then very clearly having the time of their lives, hanging off of each other with joy and ease. from their expressions alone i can tell that this moment is so. so. so. so! much more than what initially meets the eye. i mean-misha is fighting back the biggest smile i've ever seen. to me, it reads like jensen is offering something to misha, something that misha kind of gave up on expecting, and him offering his arm like that is like, a surprise to him in the best possible way(and it's so not platonic, let me just say that.) as soon as jensen did that, it ushered in a new era of cockles. this panel is jensen and misha's favourite for a reason, and i think this moment is the biggest clue as to why.

whew!!! ok. that took a lot out of me and that was only point one. moving on,

number two: top cockles blooper moment

cockles bloopers hold an extremely special place in my heart, because it shows just how fucking disastrous jensen and misha are. they are so goddamn infatuated with each other that they HOLD UP PRODUCTION ALL THE TIME TO FLIRT WITH EACH OTHER(???). let me repeat. let it sink in. jensen ackles; arguably one of the most professional actors on that show who puts everything he has into each scene, with mountains and mountains of notes to prove it: would rather hold up production to flirt with misha collins. this sounds fake. it's not. he does it. all. the. time. and here's the thing guys!!! i'm gonna let you in on a secret!!! misha loves it. he loveesssss it. on top of that-misha collins: overlooked because he's pranked and people assume he's unprofessional as well, but his only pranks are in retaliation/off-set, and he rarely if EVER causes problems if he can help it....lets himself get carried away when it comes to jensen making kissy faces at him!!! are you actually kidding me!!! i mean. misha. it's just a face. you've seen it a million times. i don't buy that it triggers something in you that strongly....you like it, and you like jensen's reaction. you can't fool me!!! lisa berry's face in that one gifset shows just how fed up the crew is with their gross, coupley boyfriend antics.

i could pull up so many examples. sooooooo many. but my favourite was sealed since the moment i saw it.

i actually already wrote an analysis on it but i can't find it :(((( which SUCKS because i really unpacked the whole thing. i'll try to summarise.

basically, a backstory is part of this too!!! jensen and misha both had a really really hard time with this scene(because it's explicitly romantic there i said it), they sat down for hours and poured over their scripts together, they were super super nervous going into filming, both of them, jensen especially, were super hard on themselves for their performances not being true to their characters but they both complimented the other's work(boyfriend moments fr). so, yeah. they weren't confident going into shooting. and how do they get themselves to feel better???? by cuddling each other, apparently.

a lot. a LOT. happens in this specific blooper. to the point that i saw it years before i knew about cockles and it raised all sorts of flags for me.

1) stop pulling my face towards your crotch(as a thinly veiled request that misha would, in fact, move jensen's face towards his crotch, considering it was jensen moving himself there in the first place. also, why so comfy down there guys???) 2) you're my baby daddy i know(in the most intimate voice i've ever heard please) 3) i know, i know, i love you too i didn't say i love you i know but you wanted to say it etc. misha's right, of course. that's what jensen meant.

it just reeks of comfort, familiarity and intimacy between the two, and it's a moment that is extremely sweet and silly at the same time. they're so <3

number three: top cockles found footage moment

WONDERFUL category. truly the culmination of the cockles experience. many people have said that shipping cockles doesn't work because 'they're just onstage you dummies!! they're playing it up for the audience!!!' here's the thing, love. i could not disagree with you more. once you climb your way up the cockles ladder, you soon learn that they are, in fact, playing their dynamic DOWN, not up. they really are just Like That™, and they could not care less about the paying audience, if we're being honest, considering how much time they take to giggle with each other and refuse to let the audience in on the joke. and i love them for it <3

anyway, my point is that this category is for all you naysayers out there, all you 'jensen and misha's relationship is just for show and is real life queerbaiting'(?????lordhelp???) oh yeah? ok, explain this.

he. he. he calls jensen sweetheart. literally enough said. there's nothing to really add here, except, misha and jared then immediately engage in damage control. jared's method is distraction and misha's is retconning('get out of the car, dude') this was what got me to buy into the cockles dumpster for GOOD good. you don't call your buddy sweetheart accidentally and sound so completely earnest while doing it! especially not when that buddy is jensen ackles!!! you think he would let any of his friends call him that? do you?

one more thing; if it was a slip of the tongue, little mouth thing or whatever, you think jared wouldn't have jumped on it immediately??? i can hear it now. 'did you just call him SWEETHEART???' yeah. that's what i thought. you know why he didn't? because it was too revealing.

number four: top cockles autograph moment

i mean, i think we all know what it's gonna be, and if you don't, well, do i have the piece de cockles resistance that is gonna send you over the edge.

if you haven't heard of this story by now, as a cockles, truther, i'm gonna go ahead and get you to read it, because there is no possible heterosexual explanation for any of it, and you're fooling yourself if you think otherwise.

spoiler alert: it's the story where phones weren't allowed in an auto session, jensen nuzzles himself in misha's hair, leans his full body weight onto him, holds his hand, etc. etc. i'm imploding just repeating this back, actually. also, just, the sheer amount of stories from photo ops where they tackle hug each other or slap each other's asses or sing romantic songs to each other or almost kiss is, frankly, a lot. if i could wish for anything, it would be to witness them in person.

and finally,

number five: top cockles social media moment

this one is super difficult, because there's obviously a lot to choose from. but you know what? full send, i'm going with this one:

i just. what to say about this. how often do misha and jensen watch sunsets together for it to qualify as ‘always’ ??? why are sunsets synonymous with their relationship??? that’s like??? a very romantic thing????? ‘this guy’??? the fact that it’s a CANDID??? i don’t know guys.

that could have been better but i am TIRED so. there you go rose ily

[stupidstupidratcreatures]

this is very long overdue anon sorry about that. sorry also that i didn't paragraph or organize this well. Vinny Gender Post Ahead, andre and avani and also anyone else planning to read/reading vanitas who isn't fully caught up there are huge spoilers here so don't look

i will be using he pronouns in this post because i used the specific words "the joker for boymoders" for a reason. i am aware that thinking of vinny as like closeted or an egg or whatever is not the intended takeaway, especially because the fucking mikhail thing is like an arm's length away from it, but also i do honestly think that vinny being intensely uncomfortable with The State Of Being Male is like an intended read. shinji ikari situation. except the author is trying to make a point instead of trying to create a guy that sucks. anyway:

1: his whole thing, the reason why he's Like That, is his sense of dread and revulsion at growing into something forced on him, painfully, from a young age, by someone far more proud of the role they could force him into than by the person he actually was, for reasons he wasn't given an explanation for until it was already* too late

2: his view of being a man, and especially playing the role of the Man to someone's Woman in a heterosexual relationship, exclusively as something harmful to others and/or himself (examples include: every single time he's appeared in the same scene as or thought about jeanne, the "convenient females" thing (yeah. sorry) where he leverages him being A Man and domi being A Woman to hurt her feelings so she tortures him harder. arguably also the thing he says to ruthven a few chapters later about "examining the queen's body" meant to provoke ruthven and luca into having a reaction to their female coworker's disrespect. probably one or two more but i don't feel like lookinf for them)

3: his monochrome outfit in the color associated with the pain in point 1, how that color is blue, the color Designated As Male, and how specifically evocative the outfit is of masculine formalwear/a suit (the collared shirt and waistcoat under a dark jacket**, the bowtie). the reason i think this is notable thinking about this and connecting these specific dots in this specific way are his gloves, which look exactly like luna's hands, that he wears specifically to cover up luna's mark. idk how to like put this to words but the thing of like dressing as, taking the name of, and playing the role of the thing he Doesn't Want To Become to kind of an exaggerated degree as an attempt to avoid having to confront the fact that it is Actually There And Branded On His Body and that it all makes him deeply deeply uncomfortable. the joker for boymoders, wearing their dysphoria gloves. obviously there is also something connecting to like. the sexual abuse necessary to create a gendered subject. the way luna's mark is framed as something awful and traumatic yet ultimately "helpful" for him to grow into an Adult Man. the way he reveals the mark at the bal masque in order to antagonize and provoke fear in the crowd. like i think i've always been a bit jokey about this but like i do think that this all being there like this is intentional

* i do not think there is ever an age where it's Actually Too Late to come out as trans and socially and/or medically transition, and also this is an idea that's ideologically repulsive to me. however i and i think most other trans people feel that way in bad moments, mourning a life you never had or feeling like you have to make up for lost time. i also don't know for sure if it's Actually Too Late for vinny, it seems a little late in the game and also uncharacteristic of mochizuki and the story to introduce something that would like be able to turn him back into a human or remove the mark or w/e. if something like this does get introduced i think it'll either be introduced as something completely beyond his grasp or noé will encounter it after he's died. or both

** i know it's drawn to be like a furisode but combined with the shirt, the waistcoat, and the bowtie it does Look Like A Suit in a way that doesn't seem accidental. also it has a collar and lapels

i dont know how to end this post. end of post

[wispforever]

if youre still doing the character thing, how about spirit or marie?

I sure am. How about Spirit And Marie? Both wonderful characters. I’ll do Marie first, then Spirit. Thanks for the excuse to infodump, really. You people are too kind.

Marie Mjolnir

My first impression of Marie was the same impression I get of most female characters in anime. It’s either “why do their clothes have to look like that” or “oh god here comes the obligatory sexist heteronormative romance”. For Marie, it was more of the second. They mention in the same episode she’s introduced that Stein is her “first love”, which told me that if she had a large place in the plot, her assigned male counterpart around which to orbit would be him. Though I’ve never read the Soul Eater manga, I believe they do end up getting together there (I could be wrong). Whatever the case, I was relieved that Marie’s and Stein’s relationship (though heavily implied to be romantic, at least on Marie’s side) was left open to interpretation in the anime. I’m just very sick of cool badass female characters like Marie being reduced to the man they pine after. So, I guess my first impression of Marie and my impression of her now are largely the same. While I appreciate the moments we get to see her strengths and ability to operate on her own, I do think that her character really suffers because of the whole sexist “oh gosh all I want is to find a husband and retire” “oh my I have to take care of Stein” like okay, I had enough at the cat girl smothering Soul with her humungo-tits. I had enough at sexualizing underage girls and women in general. I had enough at making sexual harassment a punchline. That being said, when we push all of the shitty writing to the side, I admire Marie for her strength and how she interacts with the children, Crona in particular. Which leads me to my favorite moment(s).

The relationship Crona and Marie have interests me the most, since I’m really drawn to the parallels between Marie and Medusa. As parental figures (and as characters), they’re about as different as you can get. As Crona’s mother, Medusa is obviously abusive. Along with being negligent, she abuses Crona mentally, emotionally, and physically. In general, Medusa is a person who doesn’t appear to value interpersonal relationships, putting it nicely. She instead is more focused on her own interests, often to the detriment of those around her. Crona is Medusa’s only immediate family (besides Arachne who she is estranged from), and so they suffer the most from her refusal to show even a shred of human decency or warmth. They suffer especially because they are her child, meaning they’re stuck with her essentially, and repetivie abuse between family members like a mother and child often becomes complex because of the necessity of having a parental figure in your life to support you as you grow up. Medusa teaches Crona that their boundaries don’t matter and that they are only good as long as they are useful and do as they’re told. This is what makes Marie’s influence on Crona so cool to watch. Marie is caring by nature, loving and nurturing by nature. Her very wavelegnth is healing. She is kind and does what’s right reflexively. Marie is the exact embodiment of what Crona always needed but what, even upon being rescued by the academy, still felt so foreign to them: unconditional love. Crona struggles to understand why the other kids helped them, why Maka felt the inclination to stop their battle and save Crona instead by trying to understand them, why the kids are still so kind to them even after everything. They do not understand that love is not a bargaining chip. It isn’t leverage in an argument. It’s not a tool for emotional manipulation. Love is caring for the people close to you, just because. Love for the sake of love. The other kids and teachers at the academy are the ones who are able to pull Crona out of all Medusa’s lies, and Marie is a Huge part of that. Even though I have greivances with this being the largest part of her character and what that implies for female characters in general, it doesn’t stop being so beautiful to me that she could help Crona heal in this way. Marie = best mom for the win

Most of the story ideas I have for Marie involve her relationship with Crona or Stein. Say, this covers my unpopular opinion too. I don’t like Stein and Marie as a couple, but I really enjoy writing them as friends, because even though I don’t really jive with them being together romantically, I think their dynamic is an interesting one to explore because they Are so different.

Getting into that a little bit more, I’d like to start by saying I don’t care if other people like Stein and Marie being a couple. That’s great doods, keep doing you. The fanart’s adorable, the meta’s fantastic. Whoever you are, SteinMarie shippers, ffs keep kicking ASS. This is just my preference and opinion. Zero shade in this house. That said, because of my frustrations about Marie’s character I discussed in the first paragraph, I don’t like the idea of her and Stein being together romantically. It���s really a classic sexist trope: the troubled man and his sweet nurse. I’m also just fed up in general with the hetero-nonsense, so there. However, they are both wonderful characters that I enjoy very much seperately. Also, I think it’s worth mentioning that I’ve only seen the anime, so I can’t speak for the manga as far as their relationship or Marie’s character in general.

Oh shit I accidentally already talked about this one lmao [see the second paragraph]

One headcanon I like to think about when I’m writing Marie is that she likes women (in addition to men or not) and she struggles with comphet. Just something interesting I like to think about. It’s really fun for me to take characters who have been written as pining or had 10 million failed relationships and be like “say what if they can’t find a husband cuz really what they really need is a wife”. I’ll talk about that more with Spirit inevitably.

Spirit Albarn

My first impression of Spirit, obviously him being a cheater, really came with a lot of distaste. I come from a family that was torn apart by infidelity, among other things, so it really rubs me the wrong way. However, his saving grace for me was that he genuinely loves his daughter. It appears that, whether it’s played for laughs or not, he just can’t find fulfillment in his romantic relationships. The reason is left up to the veiwers. Spirit, ultimately, is not just a shitty person, which is how most cheaters are protrayed in media. “Well, they cheated because they don’t care if they hurt people”, “they cheated because they are shit and that’s it”. That’s a fine explanation if you plan to do nothing with whatever character you’re describing, but Spirit is relatively recurring and is shown to be neither mean-spirited or emotionally unintelligent. It bothers me that his cheating and routine sexist behaviour isn’t taken seriously enough to be a subject that Soul Eater tackles and deals with. But that’s fine. I’ll just do it myself. At any rate, I still feel that same way about Spirit’s character, but I find it intriguing that he seems to genuinely want to become a better father and is actually a pretty good dad when it comes to his interactions with Maka. If Soul Eater had been brave enough to develop him more, maybe delve into the reasoning behind his impulsive romantic affairs, I think Spirit as a character could have been done more justice. It seems to me that he could be suffering from some of that wonderful compulsory heterosexuality that I mentioned before, then becoming confused when the woman he claims to love leaves him feeling empty. Rattling my gay little cage

When I think of my favorite moments with Spirit, I think of his moments with Maka, but I’m gonna hold off on that until I get to favorite relationship(s). In reference to what I talked about in the first paragraph, one moment I find really interesting when I’m thinking about my interpretation of Spirit’s character is the scene where he and Maka are on the roof talking. Maka asks Spirit why he cheated on her mother if he did, in fact, love her. He doesn’t appear to know the answer, and he doesn’t really understand how to effectively communicate that, though he was shitty husband, what he really wants now is to try and be a better dad. We hear his inner monologue, and he says something like “I love you [Maka] and your mama. That’s the truth. That’s the truth. That’s the truth.” Every time he says “its the truth” it sounds more like he’s forcing it. This is actually something that is SO strange to me. Even if I didn’t project a queer narrative on to the characters I love, I would look at this and be like “huh that is a Weird thing to say in that specific way”. Why does he say it like that? Why does he have to say it more than once? He’s only talking to HIMSELF. It isn’t like he’s trying to convince Maka. Why does he have to convince himself?? Could it possibly be because he’s reached a conclusion about his romantic/sexual orientation that he’s been trying to swallow his Entire Life??? makes ya wonder, doesn’t it, queers?

Just like I said when I talked about Stein, most of the stories I have in mind with Spirit center around that sweet gayness. But also, I like to think of ways Spirit could come to terms with his sexuality, how it might have affected him when he was young, his relationship with all these women, with his wife. I love to think about him being a dad at 18 and trying his best, but how much responsibility that must have been. Lots of great ideas when it comes to Spirit.

Um? unpopular opinion would be all the standard like I said with Stein lmao. “Oh no!” scream the heteros, “that they/them on tumblr is making Soul Eater queer we canst not allow that in our church!!!111!” But besides that, maybe even the fact that I think he’s redeemable?? Idk most everyone I’ve met thinks Spirit is funny at least and just calls him a dumbass and a slut (affectionate). Doesn’t mean anybody thinks cheating on your wife 56 times is okay so. I like this fandom, it’s chill here. My favorite is when I see my art tagged like “aw the stupid man and his crazy bf” like YOU ARE RIGHT

My favorite relationship when it comes to Spirit (besides Stein cuz if I start talking about them again I’ll never finish this ask) is the one he has with Maka. If you can call it a relationship lol. I guess I just find Spirit’s approach to Maka as a parent really refreshing. Not that the parents in other shows don’t love their kids or whatever, it’s just that the loving parent always seems to be paired with some other trope that makes their character hard to approach. especially in anime. Like the perfect mother who dies in the first episode, and we spend the rest of the show mourning her. Or the father whose love is somehow everlasting even though he’s never home. It’s really the fact that Spirit is even THERE that I love. He knows what Maka is up to. He talks about her. He’s invested in her life, and he loves her. All he wants is to spend time with her, and though he’s sad when she turns him down, he doesn’t push her. god dammit I just like a dad who actually loves his kids without all the usual strings attached like. oh my kids are a huge pain in my ass, but I love them in spite of it. oh i’m a man so can’t relate to my children in a meaningful way but i try. Get the fuck outta here with that shit. I want all the dads to get so happy when their daughters wanna hang with them that they throw up like Spirit. Give me the guy who loves his daughter so naturally, whose daughter is such a huge part of his life, that it doesn’t even occur to him stop trying even if she literally wants to murder him. That’s Spirit. jfc

To end with a cute little headcanon, I really love to think that when Spirit gets older and starts losing the color in his hair, instead of getting white or grey, his hair turns a pale pink color cuz he’s such an aggressive redhead. Wouldn’t that just be adorable? late 30′s, early 40′s, Spirit starts getting little pink streaks in his hair and then bam. Little pink old man Spirit XD

There ya have it. Thanks for the ask, and feel free to send more.

[blogsanscontext]

A Closer Look at: Momoe Sawaki’s character arc; by a nonbinary (trans) viewer.

CW: Major spoilers for Wonder Egg Priority + mentions and discussion of sexual assault, transphobia, lesbophobia, self-harm; please proceed with caution.

Wonder Egg Priority came as a relatively pleasant surprise for me; I heard about it some time after the first few episodes aired, but I never actively went out of my way to ever try to watch it myself until, that is, a few days ago. I must say, I’m glad to have taken the initiative to experience such anime on my own.

With a stunning animation to accompany the heavy subjects this work touches on, I quickly fell in love with it; all the characters feel very grounded in reality, with their struggles (even someone like Neiru’s, who is a literal genius and CEO of her own company) feeling relatable in one way or another. Episode 7 became my favorite due to this very thing, Rika’s problems were things that not only have I seen in other works before, but that I know exist because of the stories told in the news every so often. It only helped, in my opinion, that they gave a character with her background such a hopeful ending.

That being said, Wonder Egg is not a perfect anime, and though I didn’t expect it to be in the first place, I do think talking about why some of the ways it handles a specific character of the main cast are problematic are worth the time. When I mentioned that “all the characters feel very grounded in reality”, I actually only meant three of them, a.k.a.: Ai, Rika and Neiru. The reason Momoe is not included in this group is what I will be discussing in the next paragraphs.

This anime lets you know, right off the bat, that it will not stray away from heavy subjects throughout the duration of its runtime; the show deals with suicidal idealization (and actual suicide as well as its aftermath; in fact, “female suicide” is at the very core of the show and is what essentially moves it forward), self-harm, sexual assault, same-sex relationships, transphobia, and being a gender noncomforming person in a society that punishes you for not adhering to the roles it has imposed on you since childhood. The last points are the ones I took issue with, however, and though they are mostly the show’s fault, they also took it upon themselves to make Momoe be at the center of all three.

See, when we are first introduced to Momoe, we can guess by context that she is a girl, however, the other characters aren’t aware of this fact yet, and so they seemingly go out of their way to call her a boy, which makes her deeply uncomfortable, and this (ie. her reaction to be treated or perceived as a boy) is a running theme throughout her arc. This, in itself, isn’t really the worst creative direction to take with a character, it’s a story that has been told time and time again, but there is a problem with the way Wonder Egg Priority specifically deals with it: Momoe is cisgender, and so far, there hasn’t been a sign of this changing whatsoever, so she will most likely remain cis until the show ends. Normally, a story about a gender noncomforming cis person wouldn’t be seen as anything out of the extraordinary, as I’ve mentioned before, but it seems that they wanted to… “innovate”, so to say, with her character. And it’s this innovation, in my opinion, that which makes Momoe’s struggles miss the mark for me.

Momoe is perceived, almost ridiculously so, as a boy by whoever even so much as stumbles upon her; her followers on Instagram most likely worship her because they’re under the impression that she’s a bishounen, and yet the show goes out of its way to deal with just how uncomfortable this makes her. This is the issue I take with her and her arc: the show has a keen awareness of AFAB people’s issues, and treats them with the respect they deserve (which is not to say some jokes at their expense aren’t made, but in general this tone is kept throughout the duration of the story), and yet the tone-deaf manner in which they deal with her issues feels… disappointing, to say the least.

Momoe’s struggles, though they are valid on their own, are not a societal issue, no matter how one may look at them; if she were a trans person (either a trans girl, boy, or nonbinary), the strong emphasis on her discomfort at being misgendered would have made so much more sense. The reason why ‘switching around’ the stereotype of a tomboy falls flat on its face is that there is no real pressure from society to present feminine, it’s what they want you to, or more accurately, force you to do if you’re perceived as being assigned female at birth; however, this is not where my issues with Momoe’s arc and character end.

At first, I imagined a variety of (albeit vague, still reasonable) reasons as to why this show couldn’t have just made Momoe be trans, and semi-understanding of this decision; that was, of course, until I watched the actual episode mostly focused on her struggles, and that’s when I got slightly mad. Being honest, I still think it was a good episode, and it definitely made Momoe seem way more sympathetic than any of her past appearances, but it also perfectly highlighted my problem with her, and subsequently, the show itself: using queer people’s actual, realistic, problems in order to push her, a cisgender character, forward.

The thing with Wonder Egg Priority is that I love how, despite all these girls literally risking their lives to save a specific person, they still seem to have conflicting feelings about them (ie. Rika’s mocking of Chiemi, Ai’s frustration towards Koito, etc.) but I also take issue with this when it comes to Momoe specifically; Haruka is very much intended to be seen as gay, yet when push comes to shove, we are supposed to be taking Momoe’s side in this conflict. We, the audience, see these events from her point of view, and are therefore made to feel, in one way or another, uncomfortable with Haruka’s attraction for her. Yes, Momoe has worked hard to bring her back to life, but the fact that she’s cis and heterosexual stands; this isn’t just exclusive to Haruka, however, but every egg she’s had to save in order to get her friend back. All of them express a clear attraction for Momoe, “despite her being a girl”, and it’s just very easy to read these attitudes as wlw-phobic, extremely so.

My biggest issue though lies within the very existence of Kaoru’s character, the trans boy she has to protect in the episode mainly focused on her; while he is an endearing and sympathetic character, and I like that despite him presenting ‘majorly female’, Momoe never misgenders him. The thing is: he’s made out to be almost a “parallel” of her own gender-related issues, and this is just a very tone-deaf statement to make; trans people fighting not to be misgendered, fighting to be called their chosen name (something Momoe, while being cis, can just freely enjoy) - trans people’s pain is very much real, which the show is aware of, but Momoe’s is very much an individual’s problem rather than the way society actually works, which Wonder Egg is seemingly unaware of, for whatever reason.

Before I arrive at my last point on why this comparison doesn’t work, I would like to quickly point out the fact that most, if not all, the eggs the girls have had to save until this point were specifically meant to be girls, in one way or another. Therefore, taking this into account, Kaoru makes me feel… a lot of things, the more time I spend thinking about it; the show acknowledges he’s a boy, though not cis of course, but still very much a boy, yet also places him in this very much ‘female’ space; no matter how I looked at it, I could find explanations both for an opinion in favor of this decision (the way a lot of trans men’s problems are defined by our patriarchal society seeing them as women) as well as some for an opinion against this decision (the fact that it could be read as the show ultimately deciding he’s ‘female-aligned’, etc.) and though I won’t be discussing this decision in-depth, I still possess that it’s an event worth examining from different lenses.

Now, onto the actual element that got me heated about Kaoru serving as a parallel to Momoe’s struggles: Kaoru was not only sexually assaulted by a man who’s always thought of him as a ‘pretty, delicate girl’, his death directly relates to the fact that he was abused and then impregnated by this man for not living up to his gross ideal of what a man and a woman are; contrast this to Momoe, who pretty much gets the treatment Kaoru would love to have: she’s pretty much right off the bat seen as a guy, she’s fawned over by women because of this fact as well, they literally call her ‘Momotaro’, etc. Taking all of this into account, it’s simply impossible for me to be okay with a comparison that ultimately decides a cisgender person’s discomfort is, in any sort of way, on equal grounds as a (might I remind you, dead) trans person’s basic human rights.

All in all, though her episode made me take a bigger liking to her character, it also served to almost perfectly highlight the very problem of her existence, as well as the “struggles” she’s intended to represent; I don’t hate Momoe in any sort of way, and though I know there must be someone somewhere who relates to her, I also think that they could’ve done something way more meaningful with her had they just made some changes that made her more realistic (as in, make her at least be LGBT rather than just cis and heterosexual); I will be patiently waiting for the finale, and who knows? Maybe something does change about her in the end, that would be even more of a pleasant surprise.

[lightns881]

DTeam Tumblr Demographics Survey Results (Part 2):

What does DTeamblr look like, what does it have to do with MCYT history, and why does it look like a rainbow?

I’ll make an educated guess here and say y'all enjoyed my last post (totally unrelated to the way I gained almost 50 followers overnight). Anyhow, thank you so much for the overwhelming support! I’m so glad a lot of you felt you could relate to my deep-dive into the leading personality type on DTeam Tumblr. It took me so many hours to write and research, and as a math major and honors student, it’s no easy feat, so I’m so grateful for the attention it got!

Today we’re discussing the general demographics of DTeam Tumblr and why they might look the way they do. Number 8 will blow your mind! So make sure to keep reading and hit that little grey heart and arrow at the bottom if you like it, so more people get to see it! Thanks for your support! Now, let’s jump straight into the post!

Your Daily Dose of Data

From the 449 responses we received, these are some pie charts displaying the gender, age, and sexuality of all respondents.

Image Description: Female (52.8%), Non-Binary (37.4%), Male (9.8%)

Image Description: 16-17 (37%), 13-15 (31.4%), 18 and over (29.4%), 12 and under (2.2%)

Image Description: Bisexual/Pansexual (54.1%), Homosexual (16%), Asexual (14.7%), Other (7.8%), Heterosexual (7.3%)

Mmhm, delicious! Y'all ready to dig into these stats? Because I don’t know about you, but they certainly don’t strike me as what the general population looks like!

Welcome to Tumblr, the Only Community Where Straight Men are the Minority

So these statistics certainly didn’t take me by surprise. Mostly because the DNF Shipper Survey I took some time ago revealed a similar trend. Not to mention, Tumblr is probably the QUEEREST internet community on the planet. 

Funny enough, the survey revealed a shocking number of ZERO heterosexual males respondents. I’ll say it louder for the people in the back. ZERO straight males were recorded out of 449 respondents for this survey!

Now, this isn’t surprising for the Tumblr community by itself, but I can say I’m somewhat surprised in terms of the MCYT Tumblr community. (Obviously, the survey specified DTeam Tumblr, but there is a big overlap between both communities, so I will be using them interchengably when it seems relevant.)

Let’s break this down. The survey reveals the largest age population is 16-17, though it’s not by a great margin in comparison to 13-15 and 18 and older, which doesn’t surprise me either. Some of the major critics of the DTeam Fandom and other MCYT Fandoms love to claim the fanbase’s majority age range lies with children and pre-teens. While it’s an undeniable fact children are drawn to Minecraft, it’s also a misconception to paint it as solely a community for younger viewers.

In the MCYT Tumblr and DTeam Tumblr communities, specifically, we see this is not the case. Only 1/3 of the respondents of this survey are under the age of 16 (you could attribute part of it to the fact younger people might be less inclined to participate in this survey, but it is still a notable difference). I can’t say these age ranges are similar in other parts of the community like DTeam Twitter, Tik Tok, or Reddit, but if I had to make a guess, I’d say Tumblr lies toward the older of the bunch, with Reddit being the oldest and Tik Tok being the youngest (I do hope to perform this survey on some of the other communities, so please stay until the end if you want to help with that).

One of the likely explanations to why the ages for DTeam Tumblr look this way is the fact a big chunk of the community has likely been watching MCYT for a long time (even with breaks in between). I, myself, used to watch channels like PopularMMOs, Aphmau, and PrestonPlayz as a kid, and I presume many of you are familiar with them as well. With the resurgence of MCYT in the past year, it likely drew a lot of the older viewers in addition to the new ones.

But enough about age. What I really want to highlight on this post is the attraction of queer individuals to DTeam Tumblr and MCYT as a whole.

Why is the current MCYT Fandom so queer in comparison to the previous generations?

This is a huge open-ended question and considering I can only capture so much of the DTeam and MCYT community, the rest of this post should be taken solely as a theoretical analysis as opposed to fact.

With that out of the way, let’s start by discussing the shift MCYT has undergone over the years (I promise this will circle back to the question of queerness in the MCYT fandom, but we need some background before we can come up with a decent theory).

When Minecraft was first released, it proved to be a monumental change in the gaming industry. This simple little indie game took the world by storm. It was so vastly different from what the general population generally viewed gaming as (first-person shooters, story-driven games, action games, etc.) Not to mention, it didn’t exactly solely appeal to only a small margin of gamers, those being white cis males.

The gaming industry has notoriously been known in the past for its heteronormative community and general prejudice toward minorities. Though it has gone through a significant change over the decades, we certainly can’t say it’s fully gone.

Yet for whatever reason, the recent MCYT has taken the interest of so many queer people in comparison to other gaming YouTube communities. Why? Why are queer people so drawn to this community? And, more precisely, why does it feel so different than the old MCYT? Lastly, how does this relate to the conclusion about the leading personalities of this fandom we made in the last post?

The Niche Communities of MCYT Over the Years

MCYT has always been a huge, over-saturated genre of YouTube with content appealing to a variety of audiences. It’s dominated gaming content for years, and I think we can all safely say it’s never been bigger than it is today.

So why is it that just now it feels like the queerness of the fandom is popping off? Why now as opposed to say five years ago when MCYT was at another one of it’s strongest stages?

It seems like the community has made a tremendous shift in relation to breaking gender norms and LGBTQ+ subjects, not only in the fans but within the creators themselves. Was flirting and calling a pretty-boy streamer pet names as normal in the past as it is today? Were straight gamer guys putting on dresses and a full-face of make-up as supported back then? Were “marriages” and “pregnancies” within Minecraft boys an everyday occurrence like they are now? How is it that MCYT has dominated a Twitch dating show where flirting with the gay host and among straight contestants themselves is just another bit of entertainment? Where is this all coming from?

Recently, I watched a 2 hour documentary depicting all of the stages of Minecraft YouTube and how it has changed over the years. If you haven’t seen it and you have some time to spare, I HIGHLY recommend it! It’s very informative, and it honestly gave me such a strong sense of nostalgia that makes me choke up every time I think about it. I’ll link it below.

The documentary does a great job at exploring the different niche communities that dominated MCYT since it first took off. Some of such communities include the basic Let’s Players, the team-based Let’s Play channels like How2Minecraft, the roleplay story-centric ones like Aphmau and Samgladiator, the tutorial, building and technical side like Mumbo and Grian, the PVP-centric Bedwars or Hypixel channels, the Machinima community, the comedy side like ExplosiveTNT, the parody music videos, and so many more. All of the mentioned communities have dominated Minecraft at one point or another, many of them still having a rippling effect and/or a loyal community today. All of these communities have certain aspects that define them, some of which parallel the current overtaking content in the present.

How can we compare MyStreet to the Dream SMP?

Taking Aphmau as an example, her MyStreet series had a TREMENDOUS success a few years ago, racking in millions of views and bringing in a lot of money that eventually allowed her to hire voice actors and increase the production of mentioned episodes. The roleplay series was so successful it ran for six seasons!

Now, let’s compare that to the Dream SMP. It seems like a big comparison to be making considering they appear so different at first glance. For once, Aphmau is just one channel whose audience caters toward girls and younger people who enjoy romance. The series is set-up in an episodic-format that resembles more of a TV series than actual Minecraft videos.

Meanwhile, the Dream SMP is a collection of content creators with a mix of improvised storylines and the occasional regular video that resembles more of a Let’s Play series than a RP series.

You could say the only true comparisons to draw out of these two are the popularity they had/have and the profit they brought to their respective creators. 

However, there’s two other key similarities that you’ll find not only within these two specific examples, but many other channels and communities as well. Story and characters.

MyStreet’s story aspect is fairly obvious seeing as it’s a episodic series that focuses on a fictional story. The Dream SMP’s story aspect isn’t as clear, but it’s evident there is a story playing out in the foreground and background, whether intentional or unintentional, or improvised or not.

Character is where some of you might start to question me. It’s obvious MyStreet has characters. I mean, it is a fictional story, after all. But the Dream SMP? Light, they’re obviously people!

Well, my answer to that is yes and no--sort of. The Dream SMP’s story heavily relies on roleplay, bits as you might call them. Events that aren’t necessarily planned out as a fictional plot like the typical MyStreet episode is, but they aren’t exactly real. Schlatt is obviously not a villain in real life, he just likes to impersonate as one for the narrative. Wilbur isn’t crazy, but it’s a way to spice up the heroic story surrounding Tommy and him.

It’s video-game improv. Except the actors behind the content just so happen to be real people playing off the personalities and “brands” they have obtained. 

Brands. It all boils down to this. In the entertainment business, without a clear vision of your project and a clear way to brand what your consumer intakes, your project will likely not find a lot of success.

There’s a reason why Tommy plays off his loudness, using an overexaggerated laugh that although may not be completely fake, it is likely not the laugh he uses everyday. Or why BadBoyHalo is this supposed innocent muffin who doesn’t understand the crafting table meme and other references that are fairly easy to google and find the meaning of. Or why Sapnap is this chaotic being who loves starting pet wars and we love to paint as an arsonist in the Dream SMP. While all of these personality traits may be a part of their true selves, they’re played up for the camera--for the story. They act as the personas that define their characters in the narrative.

They have a clear brand and vision that appeals to the audience and makes them tune in on the daily to see how they all come together. It’s like roleplaying a more extreme version of yourself, one that brings home the money.

Story and characters run across every entertainment outlet. They define their brand. Aphmau has her characters and series. Hermitcraft has a set of memorable personalities and episodic videos that formulate its own story that is less like a narrative and more of a history of the server. ExplodingTNT has his recurring cast and comedic sketches. Most of these niche communities have a form of story and character defining them. It’s how they achieve a clear sense of branding and cater to a specific audience.

Queer Theory in MCYT

Having said all that, why does the MCYT of today draw in so many queer viewers?

Let’s think about this. In my last post, I ended by mentioning DTeam Tumblr is a sort of safe haven for INFP and INxx types who might be placed in the “other” category by society. INFPs, specially, are predisposed for escapism--one common form of it being fiction and entertainment. Not to mention, INFPs are feeling types who, as introverts, seek a personable connection. It’s why it’s so easy for them to obsess over book characters or fall in love with content creators.

Now, let’s imagine a whole community of LGBTQ+ INFP and INxx types. Actually, scratch that, we don’t even have to imagine it.

It’s what our community looks like today.

And why are so many so drawn to the DTeam and Dream SMP of all things? It’s a personable storyline that essentially forms a direct tie to the viewer. Unlike pre-recorded fictional TV series you tune into on your device, the Dream SMP is a whole load of chaos that blurs the lines between reality and fiction where fans can directly connect to creators and get to know them as people through a storyline that features sub-textual queer themes and non-conforming behaviors.

The MCYT content creator community of today is more non-conforming than ever before, and knowing this whole fact, knowing that many of them might place themselves in the “other” category or at the very least aren’t afraid to break the norms and be seen in that light, is a comfort in itself for LGBTQ+ INFP types. Once again, it’s a safe space that helps you escape from the troubles of real life, one you relate to.

Okay. So although this does answer why the fans look like they do, what about the creators themselves? Are we really supposed to believe this all came through naturally? That a bunch of straight guys suddenly decided wearing dresses was something they wanted to do?

I don’t mean to sound cynical here, and I’m in no way trying to insinuate creators have solely some sort of corrupt ulterior motive. Things are never as simple as they look. However, the truth is, a part of it lies on the attention it’s gotten.

I’ve talked a lot about DreamNotFound and the way Dream uses it as a marketing ploy. I stand by my point. However, he’s not the only one who does this in the MCYT community. Why did Finn suddenly go from wearing a dress to cross-dressing as a girl for a whole week? Why are so many creators suddenly deciding wearing dresses is fun? Why does every freaking straight MCYT actively want to flirt with George nowadays?

Let’s just let Techno’s favorite word answer this for us: clout.

It gets attention from one of the largest historically underserved minority community in the entertainment business. We might not be able to see gay flirting in every Netflix TV show or guys not minding dresses and getting fake marriages, but you are certainly going to get at least one of those in every Dream SMP stream and video you tune into. It gets attention. It brings home the money. And do I blame them? Not really.

Interestingly enough, there’s a lot of analytical posts on the MCYT Tumblr community that discuss the dangers of these tactics and why gay jokes and the way queer subtext is treated by MCYT creators is harmful. Despite this, it still attracts such a huge community of queers. So why exactly would queer people actively watch something that’s offensive or harmful to us?

I have a lot more to say about this topic and the morality behind Dream’s tactics, but I’m out of breath for today, so I’ll talk about it in my next post. What better way to start the conversation about the DNF and Karlnap questions of the survey than a good ol’ discussion on the morality of queerbaiting and the likes?

If you got this far, I’d appreciate it if you liked and reblogged this post if you enjoyed it and/or learned something new! Also, important news, I would really like to perform a similar study on the DTeam Twitter Community to measure the differences in demographics across platforms. I would REALLY appreciate it if you guys could go like, retweet and share the link I posted on my Twitter about it (tweet will be linked in the reblog below) so it reaches more of the DTeam Twitter community!

However, if you filled out the survey yourself here or you associate more with DTeam Tumblr than DTeam Twitter please DO NOT fill out the survey again! I’m trying to make sure it reaches the audience that mains on Twitter, but I need a little help with that since I don’t have as big of an influence on Twitter than on here for obvious reasons.

Anyhow, thank you so much for all your support! I really appreciate y’all and make sure to hit the follow if you want to lookout for the next demographics post! <3

(Pssst, I’m releasing a MCYT DNF superpower AU longfic next month... You should totally go check out the post on that if you’re interested in it...)

[destielshippingnews]

Edvard's Supernatural Rewatch & Review: 1x04 Phantom Traveler

In this week’s analysis, I’ll be discussing the unfortunate introduction of Abrahamic mythology, the lamentable gender politics of Dean in his nightwear, and magic languages.

Supernatural’s fourth offering, 1x04 Phantom Traveler, (not a misspelling, 'traveller' is spelt like that in America) is a solid episode. It’s not fantastic, and Supernatural certainly has better to offer, but it’s still an entertaining watch which introduces demons into the Supernatural universe and continues developing Dean and Sam’s characters, making them more distinct.

It is also the first episode Robert Singer directed for Supernatural. I didn’t see much to particularly comment on in the direction for this episode (my two years of Media Studies were not wasted on me at all), but one interesting choice, however, is the tracking shot of Dean’s sleeping form straight after the title card. EscapingPurgatory podcast had a shrewd postulation: the intended audience was heterosexual educated men between the ages of roughly 15 and 39, but a lot of them would be watching with their girlfriends and wives etc, and Dean is the brother who’s available at the moment.

Returning to the plot of the show, the script does itself a major disservice as early as the cold open. This episode was broadcast in America four years after 9/11 (almost four and a half in Britain) and was right in the middle of the decades-long and still ongoing war on drugs. The atmosphere surrounding airfare has changed fundamentally. The air hostess clearly saw the man’s black eyes and was affected by it, and should have alerted somebody on the plane to her worries, because she would have thought he was on drugs of some variety at the very least, and possibly smuggling drugs on the plane. However, for the purposes of the plot she does not act on her misgivings, but simply gasps and goes about her day.

This raises the question of why the demon revealed its presence like that. Demons are usually incredibly stupid on Supernatural, but this level of dumb is difficult for me to believe. The air hostess could have very easily had the man thrown off the aeroplane, and then its plan would be scuppered. The most likely reason was to show the audience that the man was possessed, but the audience was going to find that out in about a minute’s time anyway, so why reveal it there? It breaks the fourth wall in a bad way.

Whilst on the aeroplane and the demon’s plan, the episode never makes the demon’s motivations explicit. Sure, Sam claims that demons like death and destruction for their own sake, but this doesn’t fit well with how demons behave later in the show. They are, forsooth, as thick as poo, but they usually have higher ups telling them what to do. Was the demon’s repeated downing of aeroplanes part of a higher up’s plan?

Before I go on, it’s worthwhile mentioning that this episode is the first one to introduce the idea of an actual Abrahamic Hell in the Supernatural universe. It’s not the only genre show of its kind to have included something like this, with Charmed having the Underworld where the Source of All Evil resided, and Buffy having various Hell dimensions, but those two examples weren’t Hell as depicted in the Bible.

Joss Whedon specifically avoided the idea of a Hell and employed dimensions ruled by demons and demon gods rather than Archangel Lucifer. Charmed used the Underworld as an equivalent of Hell, but it was not a place of punishment for human souls. While Charmed is definitely my least favourite fantasy/horror/sci-fi genre show (Prue notwithstanding), I appreciated that it took a step away from Abrahamic mythology. Buffy/Angel were even better, having their own mythology that had precious little to do with Middle Eastern religions and more to do with Dunsany, Lovecraft or sometimes even Tolkien.

Kripke, however, took the lazy route with Abrahamic, specifically Christian, mythology, a choice which I believe was to the show’s detriment. It’s supposed to be a show about American folklore and urban legends, but that stuff eventually gets thrown under the bus. Forget Native Americans, screw the Americanised versions of Scandiwegian lore, screw the Old West and the Gold Rush and all the tales revolving around America’s history. And Canada? Pfft. What even is Canada? And don’t even think about Mexico. Let’s just have yet more desert myths from 2-3000 years ago.

My distaste aside, this universe has a Hell (and a Heaven), and demons are made by torturing humans until all humanity is gone from them, or by letting the humans off the torture rack if they agree to become the torturers.

Knowing this, two possibilities come to mind. One is that this demon is repeating its own human death for some reason, and another is that it kills people and drags their souls to Hell to make more demons.

Repeating its own death is entirely speculative, but this episode mixes up demons with traits later associated with ghosts and death echoes. Never again is an EMF reader used to detect demonic activity, and unless I’ve forgotten a certain example, demons aren’t shown to act as specifically as this again.

The second option, that of dragging souls to Hell, doesn’t seem likely as it’s made clear that demon deals or trades are required in order for Hell to get its claws on human souls, at least in usual circumstances. There’s nothing saying that demons can’t just decide to drag certain souls to Hell, and there is an implication at the end of this episode that this might actually be the case, but it’s a stretch. If this were the case, however, it would give the demon a real motive and make the episode less of a stand-alone bit of fun with overt X-Files vibes.

Sticking with Hell events on the aeroplane for now, let’s skip to the end and the exorcism. Whilst trying to exorcise the demon, it tells Sam that Jessica is burning in Hell. Dean tries to reassure Sam by saying that demons read minds and that it was trying to get to him, but demons can only know the minds of people they possess. This then leaves three options: the demon was lying and Jess is in Heaven, it was telling the truth and Jess is in Hell, or the demon was just trying to get to Sam, but unbeknownst to him Jess actually was in Hell.

Technically speaking, Jess shouldn’t be in Hell. She didn’t make a deal (that we know of) and it’s established later in the show that most people go to Heaven anyway. But Kevin didn’t, neither did Eileen or Bobby. Mary did, even though she made a deal with Azazel, and she died under the same circumstances as Jess. As Jess is never mentioned as being in Hell by another demon in the show, and as Dean, Sam and Cas eventually visit Hell and find nothing of her there, we can assume Jessica went to Heaven.

The exorcism in this episode is strange compared to exorcisms in the rest of the show. The Doyle (external to the text) explanation is clearly that the writers didn’t know exactly how they wanted things to work yet, but the Watson (within the text) explanation could be that they used a different exorcism ritual. Later in the show, there is no intermediate stage between being expelled from the host body and being banished to Hell: they just go directly down. This version, though, forces the demon to manifest and thereby makes it much stronger and more dangerous. I personally think the version in this episode makes the demons more of a threat because it’s harder to exorcise them, but I can see why it became streamlined later in the show.

The fact the demon possessed the aeroplane, however, raises the question of why it didn’t do so in the first place. Maybe it’s more fun to possess a human first.

Speaking of the ritual, Jared tells us on the commentary that he had to have a Latin teacher from a local university instruct him in Ecclesiastical Latin because he learnt Classical Latin at school. As a language person, I’m left wondering why. It’s the same language, just pronounced differently. Does the spell need to be pronounced in a certain way in order to work? If so, would the Ancient Romans have been completely incapable of expelling demons with their own language? Would they have had to rely on Greek, Etruscan, Gaulish or Sumerian for the rituals? It’s just completely unnecessary, especially as we later see Rowena casting spells in Scottish Gaelic, Irish witches casting spells in Irish, Celtic ‛demons’ performing rituals in Gaulish…

At least the university teacher got a little bit of extra money, I suppose.

Sticking with the aeroplane a little bit longer, Dean’s fear of flying is a welcome expansion to his character, though it was clearly included with the intent of making fun of him. It could easily have been played as such, but Jensen’s comments on the commentary indicate he saw it as an opportunity to provide more depth to Dean, as his connection with Lucas through their shared childhood trauma did in 1x03 Dead in the Water. In these two episodes, Jensen begins taking Dean away from the writers and making him his own: he was supposed to be the sidekick, but Jensen said nope.

In making Dean afraid of flying, but having him so insistent upon flying in spite of it, The Show perhaps did itself a bit of a disservice in its mission of making Sam The Hero and Dean The Sidekick. Dean was terrified, but flew anyway. That is bravery, and it’s what the audience wants to see in a hero.

Sam, however, does not miss an opportunity to make me dislike him (you knew this was coming at some point, don’t look surprised). Not only is he incredibly unappreciative and derisive of Dean’s talents, such as making his own EMF from an old Walkman, but he was also derisive of Dean’s fear of flying.

Sorry, let me reword that. Derisive of Dean for being scared of flying. It’s perfectly rational to be afraid of being in a giant metal bird suspended miles above the ground, but Dean agreed to it anyway in order to save people. And Sam treats him like a child because he’s scared of take-off and turbulence. Dean’s fear is a rational one, something that a person who hasn’t been sheltered from reality would have. Sam’s greatest fear, however, is…

Clowns.

I get it, they’re brothers, and siblings are supposed to rib on each other like this (the siblings I still talk to aren’t like this with me or each other, so I find it difficult to relate to Dean and Sam’s relationship) but it makes Sam come across as an utter cunny-hole. If somebody is clearly terrified of something and on the edge of a panic attack, you don’t sneer and mock, and then demand he calm down. Sure, Dean needed to calm down and Sam was the only one who could do it, but talking to him like a child just reveals how little Sam knows of taking care of other people. He’s the pampered younger brother, and it really shows.

He also shows a lack of judgement when roughly putting a hand on Dean’s shoulder while he was distracted. Dean’s essentially a war child (and suffers C-PTSD) and you just shouldn’t do things like this to somebody like that. That’s how you trigger panic attacks or flashbacks. Ask a veteran, I’m sure s/he’ll agree.

Aside from that, the middle-aged man on the aeroplane winked at Dean – winked – when Dean was walking down the aisle with his EMF reader. A man winking at a man has sexual overtones nowadays, and has done for a long time. How many men wink at a built guy standing over them like that unless they’re sure they won’t be punched in the face? Dean had his EMF reader out at that moment, but he was simultaneously on somebody else’s radar. Something about Dean set sexual bells ringing in cameo middle-aged man’s head. Regarding Sam, there’s two important moments for him in this episode (Jess aside): when he discovers John talked about and praised him in his absence, and when he exorcises the demon. It’s made clear in a few episodes’ time that Sam never felt like he fit in with his family, and that he believed John was disappointed in him. Exactly how he came to this conclusion is uncertain, since John doted on Sam and afforded him liberties he never would have allowed Dean, but it’s clear their relationship is difficult. Going away to university was Sam’s attempt to run away from the dysfunctional family he felt an outsider in and to escape John (and Dean): that he apparently didn’t speak to either John or Dean during his time there says a lot.

He finds out, however, that John praised him, undermining somewhat Sam’s belief that John regarded him as a disappointment. Episode 1x05 Bloody Mary provides another moment of character growth for Sam that subtly changes the way he perceives himself, but all in due course.

Praise from parents is important for children, and it really shouldn’t be hard for parents to tell their children they’re proud of them, even if they don’t say it in as many words. In spite of his difficult relationship with John, Sam gets that by proxy in this episode (whilst Dean’s happily checking out all the men in the hangar) and it changes the way he sees himself and John, even if only slightly.

The other moment – discussed above – is his exorcism of the demon. I don’t mince my words about disliking Sam, but even I can see he had potential. He’s the weird kid who wanted a normal life, but because of cursed blood had that hope denied him. Series 4 shows us the beginning of what Sam could have turned into when his blood magic arc truly kicks off, and it could have been a riveting plotline if written and handled well. Think for example of Willow in Buffy and the journey she went on with her magic powers: there was real darkness in there, and a gargantuan struggle to overcome it and become stronger.

This exorcism reminds me of Willow’s first steps at witchcraft in 2x22 when she casts the spell to restore a certain character’s soul and we see the potential for true strength as she performs the spell with ease. This exorcism of Sam’s should have been something similar, and his demonic powers should not have been completely removed and forgotten about in 8x23. He could have been Supernatural’s answer to Willow, and the Dark!Sam arc in series 3-7 could have been the first in his descent into darkness and his fight back out to take control of his own powers and become the opposite of what Azazel wanted him to be.

But – and not for the last time – three words come to mind. Such potential, Supernatural.

You might remember I mentioned the tracking shot of Dean (and neglected to mention the revealing shot of his thighs and underwear). Paula R. Stiles’ suggestion that the fact the writers and director for this episode were men doesn’t cheapen it is one I don’t understand. Jensen is in my 100% objective and unbiased opinion one of the finest men alive, but exploiting that in order to draw in an audience does cheapen the show.

To be fair, Supernatural is hardly high culture and commercial television is about revenue, but things like that break the illusion of artistic integrity, just like not making Dean explicitly bisexual does because that’d scare away too much of the audience. If having scantily-clad women in a show or film is there for the male gaze and drawing in money, then so too are Dean’s thighs and buttocks, similarly cheapening the show. If the male gaze objectifies women, stripping them of their power and subjecting them to male desires, then the female gaze objectifies and strips men of any power they might have and subjects them to female desires.

If it’s bad for the gander, it should also be bad for the goose.

Neither do I think it matters one bit that the writer and director are men, or am I supposed to believe a woman has never encouraged or coerced another woman to flash a bit of boob in order to get men to empty their pockets? Claiming that presenting a person as an object of possible sexual attraction turns him into an ‛object’ is strange, and that claim’s only ever made when women are being presented for men’s enjoyment.

But let’s stick to Supernatural because I have work in the morning. To be honest, I never notice if a woman on screen is being subjected to a ‛male’ gaze because I have no sexual or romantic interest in women whatsoever: if a woman is supposed to be portrayed as appealing to men’s eyes, it’ll usually go straight over my head because it just doesn’t register as having anything to do with sex. Interesting, however, is that this begins the trend of treating Dean in certain ways that women are usually treated, or associating him with ‛feminine’ traits.

Some people go overboard with for example Dean’s association with and likeness to Mary, his taking on the parental (maternal?) role in Sam’s upbringing, his knack with children etc, and use it as evidence to suggest that any traditionally masculine behaviour – or masculine behaviour at all – from Dean is a performance to keep up an act so that he can hide how feminine he really is.

My take on this is quite different than the condescending viewpoint that a man behaving like a man is performing and pretending. Dean’s ‛feminine’ traits are not his ‛true’ self in opposition to his feigned masculine behaviour. There is absolutely no contradiction between Dean exhibiting ‛feminine’ traits such as being good with children, cooking, or trying his hardest to fill the role Mary would have filled, and being a masculine man who identifies very strongly with being male.

I do think it’s fascinating, though, and the complexity and depth of Dean as a male character is one of the reasons he is one of my favourite characters. We rarely get to see men who are very manly and also incredibly loving, loyal and paternal and who exhibit a normal range of human behaviours and interests, including ‛masculine’ and ‛feminine’. That’s what normal men are like, something television and film seem to have forgotten.

Regarding Dean in bed, note that he is a stomach sleeper (sleeping on your stomach keeps your tummy safe), and this is consistent throughout all fifteen years of the show. However, this early in the show he takes his trousers, outer shirts and shoes off, in contrast to sleeping fully dressed as he begins doing sometime rather soon. He’s alert and cautious this early in the show, but not yet quite so worn down that he can’t be bothered to get ready for bed.

Note also that both brothers have sleeping problems here. Dean knew Sam was still up at 3am, meaning Dean likely slept for less than three hours, having been woken up by Sam at 5:45.

The end of the episode presents the brothers with something to be hopeful about. John has a new mobile phone number, the first evidence they’ve had so far that he is very probably still alive. It’s not much to go on, and John does not answer Dean and Sam’s call, but it’s something the boys can latch on to and keep them searching for John. Whether or not they should be searching for John is another question altogether, though, but at least it got the plot going in 1x01.,

Phantom Traveler is a strong but flawed episode which builds on last week’s expansion of Dean’s character and role, as well as introducing demons and Hell into the lore. The cut scene where Dean has to remove all his concealed weapons before going into the airport really should have been kept in because it says a lot about his character, as does his sleeping with a blade under his pillow, but other than that, I’m happy to leave this episode now on a positive note.

[eventual-ghoste]

TOG rambling

Hello! This post has to do with Andy and some revelations at the end of Force Multiplied. Spoilers I give aren’t super specific but they’re there, and I can’t promise they won’t bite.

This is also in response to a TOG discord question I couldn’t stop thinking about, regarding Andy’s history as compared to Nicky’s, as posited by Em | salzundhonig:

But Nicky's past as a crusader and his growth from his past was well received, surely that'll be the same with Andy right?

I apologize if these ramblings sound like a rant but I swear my intentions are in the spirit of debate/discourse, and they are not an attack on any individuals.

The TL;DR is: Andy has work to do. Hopefully Hollywood and Rucka don’t fuck that up.

Feel free to check/correct/call me out if I’ve misspoke anywhere here (I realize I still have a lot to learn) but IMHO, I don’t think a semblance of Andy’s growth will be well received. Or, at least, I’m not so certain it should be because, in the comics, I genuinely don’t think Andy has grown. At the end of Force Multiplied, she still defends her actions with the “this is how I grew up” argument, and says it was “a long time ago,” and as much as I love love LOVE Andromache the Scythian for her badassery and how she’s a vision of female empowerment, I can’t help but think about how I hear those words all the time from people defending themselves against racist and/or sexist comments from so-called bygone eras.

Wanna know a sad difference between those people and our beloved Andy? They apologize for what they’ve done, or who they were. As hollow as the words will sound, however unforgivable their actions, however self-serving the apology will be— Those Asshats apologize. Comic!Andy never does, not even when confronted by Nile, an African American woman who likely descends from slaves, and has undoubtedly experienced racism and discrimination on a regular basis. It’s been thousands of years and Andy doesn’t even know how to say sorry (if she ever does, kudos to whoever finds a timestamp/panel, and let me know!). Instead, Andy buries the truth of her actions with a load of justifications to the point that she becomes self-deprecating, calling herself “vermin,” concluding she’s no better than the apathetic, selfish, evil POS they hunt. She may have spent the past millennia with TOG, trying to make things right but then—

But then she gives up. She’s tired. She resigns because she doesn’t have it in her anymore to fight the injustice she once willingly and self-servingly participated in. So, on top of being incapable of apology, Andy also doesn’t vow to do better. She doesn’t accede to change.

If there is one reason for why “The Old Guard” is a fucking absolutely shitty title, is that it refers to people who refuse to accept new ideas and progress. We are in a fandom that has four canonically queer characters, three people of color, and two female leads! Maybe the irony is intentional but damn, why is it that Andy, PROTAGONIST #1, hasn’t completely caught up with the program?

And that brings me to why I think Andy’s reckoning will not be on the same level as Nicky’s. Because as popular as Kaysanova is, neither Nicky or Joe are the main protagonists of TOG.

We don’t follow Nicky or Joe (or Booker) into scenes. The men are strictly back-at-the-ranch, supporting characters. We follow Andy or Nile (who also have the most screen time, I believe, but fact-check me). Filmically speaking, we ought to value them with a measure of precedence. Their words and actions matter the most, especially Andy’s by nature of how everyone looks to her for guidance.

So, with all that in mind: How does one reconcile a beloved protagonist with a despicable past in slavery, of all things? In the wake of an international racial reckoning, how is a celebrated, white South African actress going to fulfill that role? How is production going to balance fantasy with reality? How are Rucka and other involved writers (Theron, Prince-Bythewood?) going to alter the original IP, while retaining the nuance of this moral quandry?

Forgive me for the overkill but: How is it going to happen?

I’m well aware that my thoughts are going down a rabbit hole, and I am definitely overthinking this, but as somebody who’s genuinely curious about whether Victoria Mahoney and the rest of the TOG crew will have the guts to confront the issue head-on, or if they’ll take the easy way out. Excise the bits that no one wants to talk about, much less watch in a feel-good film that TOG has become for many fans.

Whatever production ends up doing, I hope that 2O2G doesn’t end on a cliffhanging “pity Andromache” note because, damn, I’m gonna feel real uncomfortable scrolling through fandom posts, reading people defending slavery and giving the same “the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there” spiel, in order to protect a fictional character played by a conventionally-attractive cis heterosexual white woman.

(Also: If the past is so different from the present, why are there still calls for social justice? Why do ALL industries still lack diverse and equitable representation?)

Now, this is where I’ll go back to the original question and say: While I think Nicky functions well as an example for change/growth/redemption, I don’t think his change serves as a good comparison to Andy’s. I say this, even while I’m aware of double standards in gender, and even between the reception of gay characters vs lesbian characters vs etc. (re: I’m open to critique).

My line of thought stems from the fact that, canonically, Nicky always had Joe. The two have seemingly been inseparable from the moment they first killed each other. It’s likely that Joe would check Nicky whenever he said or did something wrong and offensive, and perhaps this symbiosis was mutual.

(I also have a feeling that many people easily disregarded the Christian/Muslim conflict because A) lack of knowledge in BOTH religions and B) the onscreen couple appear very much in love, especially when one is giving a beautiful monologue on the nature of their relationship. When we meet Joe and Nicky, we meet them at their best. Shout-out to interfaith couples who know more about this than my single (and secular) ass does, and might have more to say about this.)

On the other hand: Andy never had someone who was like how Joe was for Nicky. No one ever calls out Andy because A) she’s the oldest, B) she’s the lead, and C) her business card says ANDROMACHE OF SCYTHIA, WAR GOD. Yeah, she had Quynh/Noriko but— at the risk of yelling at Rucka for vilifying a queer woman of color (or praising him for not leaning on the stereotype of Asian passivity? idk, anyone got thoughts on this?)— Noriko is clearly not encouraging good behavior. Neither will Quynh if Netflix lets 2O2G be as faithful to the comics as TOG1 was.

Which means the Law 282 conversation might be…unavoidable? Somewhere along the line, we still end up in the hotel room with Andy, on the floor, pleading for her crew to not abandon her, even though she is the one who abandoned their cause.

This sets up a circumstance in which Fade Away might be spent trying to redeem Andy/Charlize Theron, bring her back to the “good side,” teaching her to be better— thereby highlighting her experience and “salvation,” rather than making a point of her past, and the reality of her actions. In other words, a “pity the white woman” fest.

(Because I’m crossing my fingers that TOG production/Netflix know better) In an effort to prevent that from happening, I wonder if Rucka will combine Force Multiplied with Fade Away for the 2O2G script. Given the series’ track record, I think it is feasible that FA’s release coincides with 2O2G’s, and that it finally resolves Andy. Whether by revitalizing her energy as a do-some-gooder, or finalizing her vulnerability by putting her 6,000 years to rest, thus handing off the reigns to Nile and a new generation of leadership.

The last thing I want to leave off with is: I don’t hate Andy. It’s a credit to Rucka and fellow writers (from film and fandom) that I don’t.

I might not love her character as enthusiastically as I used to, but that doesn’t mean I’m not amazed by her creation. She’s a female lead whose sexuality is not exploited by the male gaze; whose emotional vulnerability is not considered a hindrance to, nor an explanation for, her battle prowess; and whose unabashed queerness is not reinforced by cookie cutter stereotypes. Andromache the Scythian is AMAZING.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to excuse or ignore her most glaring and contemptible flaw. More than anything, I’d love to sweep her past under the carpet so that 2O2G can be problem-free. Like many people, I just want to enjoy a movie without getting triggered.

I want to see Quynh and Andy kiss and make up. I want to see Joe rocking Those Shorts, and a cheeky shot of Nicky appreciating his ass. I want to see Nile welcoming Booker back to the family again. Some form of group therapy would be chef’s kiss.

But something about glossing over/removing slavery from Andy’s narrative reeks of dishonesty, and reminds me that the (Hollywood) movie industry is full of people who do not want to be tainted with negative perceptions. Understandably, appearances are their livelihood— but that particular truth is something they still have to reckon with.

[nowhereclosetoit]

Even More Gay Shit in “The Goldfinch”

Specifically, Chapter 6: i-iv, because that showcases some of Theo’s finest internalised homophobic hours and some of the gayest shit surrounding Boris.

So, I was rereading “The Goldfinch” and I forgot how fucking gay Theo’s dumbass is in parts i. – iv. at the beginning of Chapter 6, like, it fucking SENT me. After reading some of Theo’s finest examples of internalised homophobia and general headassery, I decided that I needed to collect the gayest selection of quotes from this specific part and analyse them and their gayness accordingly, because once again, it’s lockdown, God is dead and I killed Her with this fucking essay.

Theo’s internalised homophobia and feelings towards Boris are depicted especially strongly at the beginning of Chapter 6 – The Wind, Sand and Stars due to the introduction of Boris’ girlfriend, Kotku. Theo clearly portrays Kotku as a threat to his and Boris’ relationship, without ever giving a valid (heterosexual explanation) answer why: a) she poses such a threat to their “friendship” – oh no wait sorry their “there was not exactly a word for Boris and me”-ship, or b) why he’s so upset by her being in a relationship with Boris. He tries to rationalise this by saying that it’s just Kotku that he has a problem with and that there were “Lots of other, better girls our own age [that] liked Boris”, however, it’s clear that he has a problem with anyone taking Boris away from him.

Theo is overly harsh of Kotku and we never receive an unbiased presentation of her. He’s always trying to make her come off worse than she probably is and make it sound ludicrous that Boris is in a relationship with her, specifically. To try and justify this behaviour, he often follows comments like these on with something that sounds reasonable and rational – this also helps to highlight his ignorance to his feelings for Boris as this clearly depicts his jealousy towards Boris being close/in a relationship/spending time with someone that isn’t him.

Theo’s problem with Kotku can only be explained through jealousy, there is literally no other way to interpret why he hates her so much, after all, if she treats Boris well and makes him happy, why should Theo, his supporting bestest friend have a problem with that? (Because he’s fucking jealous).

I’m going to work through each segment of the chapter through quotes I’ve picked out to fully show how fucking ridiculous this part is – it sends me every fucking time I read it so I need a log of all the gay shit.

Summary of the points I’m trying to make by showing you all this:

Theo clearly presents his relationship with Boris to have grown closer since the last chapter, so close in fact that they “were so attuned to each other” that they didn’t need to talk to each other to communicate properly, and that Boris knew “just where [Theo] was weakest, the spot under the blade where he could dig his fingers”. He’s set the scene to depict this intimate and intense relationship they now have after spending almost a year living together and spending all their time together. The closeness of their relationship can clearly be paralleled with that of a romantic relationship from these descriptors alone but are intensified by the following.

The quotes highlighted above in green clearly show Theo’s jealousy towards Boris now spending more time with Kotku than he is with Theo. Obviously, it’s natural to miss your friends and to want to spend time with them if they’re spending more time with other people or their partner, but the way Theo depicts his feelings here can only be read as jealousy.

If this wasn’t enough, Theo makes Kotku seem like she’s really boring (“The name Kotku…makes her sound more interesting than she was”, “she’d lived in Clark County, Nevada her whole life”), a horrible person (“the glare she slid over me was anxiety provoking”), and unattractive, despite not really getting to know her and give her a chance.

Theo also tries to tell us that he cannot remember Kotku’s real name and puts her down so that it comes across like she meant and her presence in his life meant nothing to him. He does this constantly throughout the chapter. (We should keep a running count of how many times he says something like “Kotku…or WHATEVER her name was, I can’t remember because she was so BORING and INSIGNIFICANT to my life, that I just simply cannot remember her name! Oh but I can by chance remember the exact outfit Boris was in a whilst proclaiming his undying love for Kotku, he was also running his hands through his hair which I totally don’t have a boner for!”.)

He even goes as far to hit Boris “hard” because he was “in no mood” to hear about Boris’ feelings for Kotku. That’s jealousy, baby!

ii. – And this is over 3 pages

Summary:

He’s pretending not to know Kotku’s name again, and also reinforcing that “or whatever” part,

Shows his #jealous streak again as he says Kotku “virtually assumed ownership of Boris”, like bitch, calm the fuck down,

Shows even more jealousy,

Key word – “embarrassed”, keep note for later as this appears when Theo has to head on deal with some gay shit and does not want to deal with said gay shit so he feels embarrassed and that’s on internalised homophobia,

Says he found Kotku “disturbing” and the reasons as to why he did find her disturbing, Boris liked – shows how he’s gay! Because he hates women! Unless they’re Pippa or his mom! Jokes! Or is it…

And there’s even more bullying towards Kotku who is yet to do something offensive to Theo.

iii. – 1 page

Summary:

I think these ones are pretty self-explanatory,

AND!!! There’s the last quote which I think is really interesting because it’s an example of Theo comparing activities he does with Boris that he would, hypothetically, do with a girl on a date, like…ok bro. That’s fucking gay. He does this again somewhere too, but I can’t remember where.

iv. – Ok, so, this is the big one where he owns up to his totally no homo shenanigans, there’s a lot to unpack from this entire part, strap yourselves in.

(For the key in this part, assume anything unhighlighted corresponds to the yellow on the chart, as there was too much of it and it looked really ugly so I removed it.)

Mini Summary Before the Really Gay Shit:

Theo is an oblivious dumbass who totally likes Boris in a very homo way, so much so that he fucking despises our queen Kotku. He also is obviously clouded by internalised homophobia because he cannot realise that he does in fact like Boris.

v – What I’m going to look at here is what the fuck is going on and why Theo’s explaining it in the way he is.

My thoughts are going to be in bullet points here because there’s SO much to analyse.

Theo clearly shows how he’s fucking head over heels for this Boris bitch. Just read like all of it.

He tries to describe it like he doesn’t care that much, and I mean, you can just tell that the motherfucker’s lying. Like seriously, dude. Like the whole part where he’s like “I didn’t want BORIS to get the WRONG IDEA! Wouldn’t that be fucking gay? HAHAHAH, not me! I’m heterosexual!”. He’s saying he wants to “make things clear” with Boris to “make absolutely sure he didn’t have the wrong idea” and personally, I think this is either because he’s completely fucked with internalised homophobia or he’s just dealing with the “rejection” from Boris because Boris is from Kotku. Maybe he’s saying this to make rejection hurt less?

I also want to talk about Boris’ possible side in this whole thing. We never see Boris’ point of view of this shit because this entire book is just Theo wallowing in self-pity (dude, get a fucking therapist, I’m begging you). Do you think that Boris maybe got with Kotku because he knew Theo was fucked with internalise homophobia and thought that maybe meant that Theo didn’t vibe with the shit they were doing? Or, do you think he did it because HE was dealing with shit like, “Oh, boy! Do I like girls? Or….like what’s happening here?”

IN CONCLUSION:

This was just an excuse for me to gather all the gay shit and write down some thoughts. That’s IT! I am ILLITERATE at this point tbh.

[metaphorewhore25]

Beach Rats (2017) & Why We Need More Movies Like It

There is a general underlying paradigm in society that “men do the looking and women are to be looked at” and Beach Rats (2017) is a movie that challenges that from its very first shot. The movie opens with an 18-something teenager taking mirror selfies in a dirty basement mirror. The camera pans over his very masculine features – his biceps, armpit hair, nipples, and the rest of his torso.

I was sold to the movie right there. Hardly do I see movies with such a focus on the male form. I have watched Eliza Hittman’s ‘It Felt Like Love’ (2013) which does the same thing from a teenage girl’s point of view but Beach Rats simply does it more and does it better.

I know that Beach Rats is a gay movie and hence the camera captures the perspective of a boy, not a girl, and hence may not exactly be called ‘The Female Gaze’ but it is written and directed by a cishet woman and frankly, I believe even that is a start when it comes to subverting the male gaze, flipping the camera and putting men at the centre, making them subjects of visual pleasure.

What Beach Rats does extremely well is this: It makes the audience uncomfortable.

And that is precisely why I loved it. In mainstream movies when the lead actresses are introduced by butt-to-lips-to-head shots, it doesn’t really make us uncomfortable anymore because it has become the norm. We’ve just accepted girls being captured in this way. We may even accept young, underage girls portrayed in a sexualized manner but focusing on men’s butts and forearms is sure to make us rethink what we are seeing on screen. Long idle shots of Frankie, the protagonist and his friends shirtless by the beach playing handball or just swimming, their chiselled dude-bro bodies taking up the majority of the screen is something we are quite unused to.

Even the scenes where Frankie is in his room and browsing a gay cam site on the internet makes us feel uncomfortable because we are simply more exposed to women doing these things like posing and pouting. It was quite fresh to see the white man become the one being looked at. It almost felt like revenge to me, like “You see this is how it feels to be constantly scrutinized or unnecessarily sexualized!”

I feel that we need to get more comfortable with the idea of male bodies presented on screen just as we are with female bodies.

However, I am aware that “Revenge” is not what women in the industry are going for, or should go for. Unlike the Male Gaze, the Female Gaze is much trickier to define. Simply objectifying men back will not do. We don’t want to revert the power structure, but rather deconstruct it.

Alina Gufran from The Swaddle says “While the act of objectifying a man through the eyes of a woman remains revolutionary, it ultimately lends itself to a very “male” idea of what the female gaze should be.” When women are handed over the cameras and the pens and the main roles, the product is often not just an objectification of men but rather a humane and emotional portrayal of both men and women as people.

Although, I would personally say that after years of having seen myself and the media around me through men’s perspectives, it is fun sometimes to objectify men and get back at the system.

I believe Beach Rats takes that extra step, by not only sexualizing men like some feminist revenge fantasy but also showing the audience vulnerability, emotions and honest intimacy. The camera zooms in on Frankie’s face a lot. He is often dreamy, confused or just melancholic. In the course of the movie his father, suffering from cancer passes away, he witnesses his younger sister getting intimate with a boy her age and his friends, although given hardly any dialogues are a key influence in his life as he often forced to fit in with them and arrange drugs for them which he steals from his father’s medicine cabinet. His friends are toxic and not at all empathetic as he often proclaims “These are not my friends” as a joke with an element of truth. All this while he is navigating personal conflict regarding his sexuality and suppressing his true self with his friends and family because he cannot fathom how they would understand.

During daylight hours, Frankie has to keep up appearances by maintaining a girlfriend but during the nighttime, he often goes on a website for gay men in Brooklyn and meets up with older men for one-night stands that are often fulfilling, but often also leave him confused.

The film is definitely voyeuristic but it also has its non-sexual intimate moments. There’s a scene where Frankie has to go masturbate before joining his girlfriend in bed because he can’t maintain erections in her presence. In moments like this, we can see his vulnerability as he tries to laugh it off or gets frustrated at his body quite often telling him something else.

My favourite scene I would say is when he decides for the first time to meet up with an older, more experienced man from the website and the camera shoots him preparing for the rendezvous in a very vulnerable and intimate way. Frankie is shown lifting weights to perhaps tone his muscles, trimming his pubic hair with a scissor and taking a shower and giving himself a thorough wash. I believe shots like this, give the character a very human feel and helps the audience relate to his insecurities and struggles that lie behind the muscular façade.

Admittedly, Frankie’s friends are only two-dimensional characters and used as props for plot development and often fall into the cliché dude-bro stereotypes. They are perhaps used only to flex their shapely bodies and contribute to Frankie’s inner conflict. They are not people, they are just cishet men in the movie. They are the ones we may call purely “objectified”.

The sexual politics are at one point even explicitly stated in the film’s dialogue when Frankie asks Simone (his girlfriend) if two men making out is hot. Simone says that two girls making out is no big deal and is obviously hot but two men making out is just gay. Reading into the subtext, the word “gay” here is used in the derogatory sense.

Of course, neither should be seen as “hot”. Homosexuality is supposed to exist in its own place, having an identity of its own and shouldn’t be co-opted by and for heterosexuals for their pleasure or entertainment.

But, due to the infiltration of the male gaze in popular media and a society that entitles men and suppresses female voices; women bear the burden of being unfairly sexualized. This same patriarchy socializes young boys and girls to view themselves a certain way, boys are taught not to be emotional and affectionate and are thus also disadvantaged by the patriarchy. I’m talking about things like “boys don’t cry” or “two guys don’t hold hands”.  The movie shows the reflections of these through Frankie’s toxic masculine friends and sometimes even Simone.

Frankie feels like he’d never be accepted into the mainstream of society because of the same sexual politics that exist in the world and that Hittman is trying to deconstruct. It is perhaps due to the fact that Frankie cannot come out that the film is shot mostly in the dark and in dingy places.

Beach Rats is a fine example of a movie that shows us a strong, conspicuous alternative to the male gaze. It does one thing very well and it is depicting male bodies in a casual, real, vulnerable, sexy and overt way and we need more of that. We need more male body presence on the screen because we as a culture of people are so oblivious to it. It’s always “Ass or Tits?”, “Pear-shaped or Hourglass-shaped” and “Skinny or Thick” and all these labels that apply only to women’s bodies to an extent where we perhaps don’t even feel like male bodies are something to be gazed at in the first place.

“Men look for looks and women look for personality”. How often have you heard this? I am not trying to defy the evolutionary explanations which may explain things to some extent. But we as this highly intelligent species cannot be completely bound by merely evolutionary instincts. While The Female Gaze does incorporate emotions and intimacy, I liked how Beach Rats balanced out the emotional and the purely carnal.  I am not saying we need more male bodies on screen in simply a sexual way. I want to see male bodies even in very mundane non-sexual ways just because I feel it needs to be normalized. Normalize focusing on the man’s body too in heterosexual romance films perhaps. Beach Rats was quite a refreshing watch despite its dark colour pallet because I was quite frankly amused to see what happens when the camera is reversed and allowed to linger on manly features. Perhaps through this, we may reach the ultimate goal of both men and women moving fluidly between the subject and object of mutual desire.

Posted originally on: https://rishikapandit.com/2021/06/08/beach-rats-why-we-need-more-movies-like-it/ 

[joanofarchetype]

A Connecticut Yankee...a kid...that's all well and good but we really don't talk enough about the werewolf in King Arthur's court

This is not a shitpost — in Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory makes mention of "Sir Marrok, the good knight that was betrayed with his wyf, for she made hym seven yere a wer-wolf". Of course, Malory lifted the tale of the werewolf knight straight outta "Bisclavret," which is one of the Twelve Lais of Marie de France. And it is...wild. There's also "Melion," an anonymous Breton lai which along with "Biclarel" is believed to have evolved from the same source as "Bisclavret". In this post we're gonna refer to the protagonist as the "knight" or the "wolf-knight" and tell a somewhat composite tale.

(A note: this takes place well before commonly established werewolf lore, which crystallized thanks to Universal's The Wolf Man. Curt Siodmak wrote all that stuff about the full moon and silver bullets in 1941 so well that our common imagination accepted it as ancient fact.)

So anyway our guy is a knight who disappears for a couple nights a week and his wife is like ?????? dude ??????? where ??? do you ???? go ??????

And my dude is like "babe I love you but I can't tell you because you won't look at me the same" and she's like "I am your wIFE you better tell me right quick or otherwise have a good nose for almonds in your oatmeal" (jk she doesn't say that because if she did he might've gotten a little foreshadowing of her treachery, but alas, our man was a sucker)

So the knight tells her he's a werewolf, and on the nights he disappears he's wolfing around the countryside and his wife is like !!!!!!!!!! on the inside but makes sure her face is only 🤔 on the outside

(Mind you, Marie de France goes into how the wife is grossed out because she shared her marriage bed with a beast, which has some interesting implications but we'll get to those later)

She starts digging about his transformation until he explains how in order to return to his human shape, he *needs* to put his human clothes back on or else he'll be stuck as a wolf, at which point wifey is 👀👀👀👀

Wifey's like, "but if ur in wolf form, how do u remember where u put ur clothes lol" and the knight's like, "no no, I retain my human mind even in wolf form and besides, I always put them under this one rock outside this cave"

now bear in mind he's never been able to talk about this to anyone so he's pouring his heart out about his deepest secret which he kept even from his wife & I know we're all pretty used to medieval repression but imagine how it must have felt to share this secret at long last 😥

So to recap:

knight: 🤵🏻🛡🐾🌕🐺🤫😅😍♥️💐 wifey: 👰🏼💭🤢🤔👀🧐💡💡👔💍🔪🔪🔪

Our knight is like "yeah so I was born this way and it's just a part of who I am and whew it's kind of a relief to finally be talking about it with someone"

Wifey nods along 🤔🤔🤔 because she's had a💡moment and is 🍳 up a plan...

so the knight has unleashed (pun intended) his secret for the first time in this life and is feeling just dandy, but what he doesn't know is his wife is already plotting his downfall with her...LOVER (dun dun dunnn)

wifey & her secret lover steal the knight's clothes when he's transformed, essentially trapping him in wolf form, get him declared dead in absentia, marry each other & take over his lands

and the royal court goes for this because at this point the whole kingdom knows about the knight's habit of disappearing for days at a time (because medieval nobles are messy gossipy bitches who live for that drama) so they just assume he abandoned her

*~*ONE YEAR LATER*~* (or if you're Malory, *~*SEVEN YEARS LATER*~*)

the king & hunting party corner the wolf-knight in the woods. knight is overwhelmed at the sight of his monarch & runs up to what for all he knows might be his oblivion to kiss king's feet at which point king's like, "THAT'S NO ORDINARY WOLF. HE SHALL JOIN MY COURT IMMEDIATELY."

the wolf-knight goes to live at court where he's basically regarded as a knight (so the takeaway from this part of the lai is that a literal wild animal had a better chance of becoming a knight in ye olden days than a peasant or a woman but I digress)

anyway so there's a celebration at court and who comes to the party but the ex-wifey's new husband, now a baron. understandably, the wolf-knight does NOT react well and attacks him, and the reaction of everyone at court at this near-mauling isn't to say "whoa whoa maybe bringing a wolf to court was a bad idea" but rather "huh, this wolf has never been hostile towards a human before so obviously this guy must've personally wronged him." which is...progressive.

so the new husband/baron/co-conspirator is all "wtf keep it away from me" and the king is like "idk man, what were you wearing? maybe you smelled like royal beef jerky at the time. seems like you were asking for it"

king & the other barons take wolf-knight to the new baron's property. they just need to figure out what's going on because they're not ready to take sir wolf to his final veterinary visit, u feel? they're attached. now get ready for this next part because it's a doozy.

ex-wifey hears about the king's visit so she's waiting with gifts & cakes & shit. the wolf-knight sees her & immediately BITES OFF HER NOSE & he bites it so good her progeny can feel it & henceforth all her descendants are — I SHIT YOU NOT — born noseless. talk about losing face.

under questioning (*cough cough* torture *cough*) the wife admits to her crimes & yields the stolen clothing, which they put in front of the wolf & he just stares at them until they realize "wow yeah sorry dude our bad" and leave the room to give him privacy

when they see the wolf-knight again he's in his human form and in Marie de France's "Bisclavret" it's expressly written that the king embraces him in the bedchamber and gives him "many kisses" (hashtag heterosexual friends doing heterosexual things)

the king restores the wolf-knight's lands and ex-wifey has to live with her ex-baron in exile, forever marked for her betrayal. some real Mark of Cain shit. (obviously this lai has a lot to say about spousal dissatisfaction but that’s another day’s dissertation)

the wolf-knight (Bisclavret, or Melion, or Marrok, or Sir Wolf or whatever you fancy calling him) not only regains his good name, but also the support of a court which now knows his secret dual nature.

something to be hated or feared, only understood and accepted. no one at court shuns him once the secret's out & no one tries to change or "heal" him of his lycanthropy.

remember when I said we'd come back to the wife's reaction? in "Bisclavret" Marie de France specifically states that upon finding out his secret, the wife no longer wishes to "lie beside him." let's unpack that a bit by exploring similar themes across folklore.

the marriage bed serves as a common motif in tales of animal transformation. ex: in "Beauty and the Beast," the protagonist has to overcome her revulsion towards her suitor's ostensible monstrosity before she can accept his marriage proposal. traditionally these stories with mysterious, beastly husbands who are secretly a true catch serve as an allegory for arranged marriage, designed to help young women process their anxieties about being passed from their father's house to that of a strange new husband.

(we should differentiate these tales from those of an ostensibly appropriate groom who turns out to be a monster in disguise such as "Bluebeard," "Mr. Fox," and "The Robber-Bridegroom," as those deserve a detailed thread of their own but also provide good thematic contrast here)

more often the Beast is kind, patient & gives Beauty the time she needs to the detriment of his own freedom from the curse. once the protagonist gets over her anxiety, she ceases to perceive her groom as just a hulking hairy beast and he can take the shape of a prince at last.

circling back to wolves! in most lore both ancient and modern, werewolves represent something uncontrollable; an animalistic second nature which threatens to literally tear through our well-mannered social façade. "Bisclavret" and its various incarnations don't do that.

if you read "Bisclavret" under a queer critical lens, you can interpret the knight as bisexual; a husband has a secret duality to his nature which he is unable to express in their current social order. significantly, he is born with his lycanthropy rather than being afflicted by the sudden, violent means through which most fictional werewolves are afflicted. it's a part of who he is, and it requires no further explanation or cure.

the wolf-knight finds freedom rather than shame in his lycanthropy, and as a result maintains both honor and control while in wolf form. unlike other famous werewolves, he doesn't function as an expression of tension between the id and the superego.

considering how often wolves are used to imply sexual violence (see also: "Little Red Riding Hood" or its medieval predecessor, "The Grandmother's Tale") this would be a fairly positive portrayal of a bisexual man.

however, his wife doesn't see it that way and is repulsed at the thought of sleeping with him again, so she commits adultery and conspires against him. so really, the crimes in "Bisclavret" have a lot to do with sex, just not sexual violence.

the king's attachment to the wolf & the way he embraces the knight can easily be read as homoerotic. there's absolutely an argument to be made about the normalization of homosocial behavior & male kinship across eras but...two things can be true. either interpretation is valid.

so what we have is a werewolf protagonist — not a villain or tortured anti-hero but an honorable man who isn't made to shed his lycanthropy at the end of the tale (tail). rather, he is accepted by his contemporaries and given a place in society to live as he truly is/ROLL CREDITS

[haikyuu-matches]

@ my-me1ody 

hi lily ! it’s vy from quotev ^o^ finally set up a tumblr lol ~ this may be a little long ? anyway if it is you can just skim or delete the unnecessary parts haha. hope you’re doing well ~ and stay safe ^o^

general: female / she - her, heterosexual, aries sun&moon, libra rising, infp

personality: i’m pretty quiet to strangers ^^ and very polite. i’m the type to add “miss/mister” in front of names if the person seems older. pretty shy at first, i hate confrontation and try to avoid that haha. i can be really loud and talkative to my friends. i’m really critical of myself, but i tend to neglect the flaws of others and only look at the best. i usually out others’ interests in front of my own, which is a habit i’ve formed especially since i’m the eldest and only daughter of three. i’m pretty naive with little to no common sense, which is typical of a book-smart girl ^^’. i can be clumsy, i have butter fingers and trip a lot. i’m also really sensitive and i feel emotions in short bursts. i laugh really easily but i also cry very easily. when frustrated, i cry - scared, i cry - sad, i cry - disappointed, i cry. i’ve never cried due to happiness though, strangely. my motivation and ambitions are heavily reliant on my fear of disappointing others, usually my parents.

basic appearance: 151cm/39kg, black hair with blunt bangs past my waist, i’ve been told i look like a “vietnamese princess” type of girl. i definitely lean towards the cuter side vs pretty/hot side.

hobbies/interests: — reading, mostly romantic fiction ~ because i long for those kinds of things TT even though i’ve never had a true irl crush before lol.  — crocheting, i like making small stuffies. -— baking, i really, really suck it it. very much so, but i like to do it … haha

likes: — reading — anime/manga — cute things, i absolutely adore anything cute and/or fluffy/soft. just wanna squish. — food, i am an absolute foodie, and i can eat a l o t for my size ^o^. but i have a low tolerance for spice/sourness

dislikes: — scary things — criticism — false accusations

fears: — bugs/spiders, if it has multiple legs and or wings, i’m terrified. i nearly cried because a ladybug almost landed on me once, i have an irrational fear of bugs. — demons/paranormal, friggin scary, no other explanation needed. — heights, i tend to overthink things a lot, especially with things that can go wrong, since i lean towards pessimism for myself but optimism for others. — anything scary, i’m a huge coward. anything scary, i’m probably scared of it TT

fun facts: — i played the violin from age 4, but had no motivation due to constant criticism from my parents, so i’m pretty bad at it. i can do the bare minimum and get into local orchestras/symphonies. — i’m allergic to basically everything, including peanuts, grass, trees, and pollen. i developed immunity to some like milk, wheat, soy, and fish ^^. — i’m a speed reader, i can read 500 page novels in around 8 hours or less if i’m interested. —  i can cram-memorize something, but will forget it all shortly after.

thank you so much lily ! i hope you have a great day :)

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vy! you’re literally so precious; i hope you like your matchup !! (❁´▽`❁)*✲ﾟ*

˚✶⋆｡˚☆ﾟ✦

i match you up with … 𝐎𝐈𝐊𝐀𝐖𝐀 𝐓𝐎𝐎𝐑𝐔 !!

i think you & oikawa would make such a cute match just because you’d balance him out & i think your overall demeanor definitely makes him attracted to you from the get go.

given that you’re more of a shy, book-smart girl, i feel oikawa woudn’t really know of your existence at first. but when he does end up interacting with you, he definitely gets that “dang. .  .who is she?” and the “why haven’t i seen her around before?” feeling. 

plus the fact you look like a vietnamese princess definitely makes him attracted to you, at least from a superficial standpoint. 

anyway, oikawa will definitely take in the little things that you do- he’ll notice how polite & considerate you are of others, how you are sensitive but in a good way wherein you have the biggest heart.

honestly, the people who are genuine & wear their hearts on their sleeves? that’s the kind of people oikawa would go for just because he doesn’t have to play mind games or guessing games with that kind of person. 

they make him soft, too?? 

and this coupled with the fact you like to see the good in people? mhm yeah- oikawa will definitely be content whenever he’s around you because for once, he won’t be overly smothered by fangirls or on the flip side, told that he has a shitty personality.

when it comes to you, he’ll feel an overwhelming urge to just hug you whenever you cry & wipe away your tears tenderly because he’s weak to your crying face. and if you were to cry because of him, he’d want it to be out of happiness.

in passing, oikawa also notices the way you look out for others & the fact you try your hardest to succeed, due to your fear of disappointing others.

he might try to persuade you to succeed for yourself and not be driven for the sake of others but that’s another topic of discussion. he honestly just wants you to be happy & i don’t think he’s the type to push his significant others too hard?? unless of course he thinks he’ll truly be helping them.

supportive oikawa?? for you, of course.

okay so … he’ll most likely seek you out because i get the vibes you wouldn’t be like his annoying fangirls or someone who would fault him for his passion for volleyball. in fact, you probably become his fan when you watch him play for the first time! just not in a crazy way.

anyway, i get the sense at the beginning stages of your interactions with him, you may be even indifferent of him?? especially at first! like, oikawa’s name is well known, however, you’re out here, studying & being a big brain ( like danng, you’re a speed reader. okay i see you! )  that you really never been apart of the oikawa hype train.

which means oikawa is even more interested in you. cliche trope i know but still.

oikawa is a bit childish & has a boyish charm about him, so he probably will lightly tease you for your clumsiness for your attention. it’s his way of showing affection to you. in all honesty, he can switch from being a little mean to you to absolutely lecturing you about how amazing you are when you’re being too critical of yourself. he’ll pout & comment how he doesn’t like how you treat yourself.

he knows you don’t like the criticism… but-

how can you not see what he sees?

you find that he’s both smart & dumb, kind & mean, mature & childish… and you wouldn’t have him any other way. you probably end up poking light-hearted fun at him as payback for him teasing you.

side note– he finds that your ambitions & interests are really cool. basically, you’re hella smart, play the violin, bake, and crochet?? he’ll be blown away by how cute your stuffies are & at the same time, he’s like “yeah that makes sense” because you’re cute yourself.

he probably shows off your talents & just how adorable you are to his teammates all the time to the point iwaizumi has to be like “shut up, we get it, your new girlfriend is amazing.” because his teammates are basically so, so envious & oikawa knows it.

on top of that, i can imagine oikawa absolutely brimming with happiness once you show him your talkative & loud side– he’ll feel so accomplished that you’d open up to him like that. he might have a smug face like “yeah i knew you’d open up”, but really he’s ecstatic.

once you guys become official, oikawa will be so affectionate with you?? like it’ll be a little embarrassing & perhaps overwhelming at first, but overall endearing. he’ll pull all the romantic fiction moves– from cute nicknames to late night convos to classic dates… but he can also have a chill, laid-back side in the sense he just wants to be with you & not everything has to be perfect. especially since you both get busy-

when you’re able to, you guys probably go out to eat a lot & take aesthetically pleasing foodie pictures & cute selfies & ah it’s just perfection.

in the end, i think you’d make a wholesome match & you guys end up making each other better by being together?? 

also you two are so photogenic, so people would be like “of course they’d be together- they look so good together”- 

possible runner-ups:

bokuto koutarou

hinata shouyou

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— lily ! ♡

[fyrapartnersearch]

Flower's Search for New Partners

Hey, I'm a 30 year old writer in search of new partners. 

About Me

Posting Schedule: I do my best to respond to my stories once every two to three weeks. There are times when I respond more frequently on weekdays but other times when I post primarily on weekends. It all depends on how busy life becomes. Fair warning, sometimes my writing partners may have to wait longer than a three week period. Being made to feel guilty about not posting is a massive turn-off for me. Spare us both the headache and please search for another partner if you are the type to become anxious while waiting for posts.

On Smut: Smut tends to take me longer since I am very critical of my writing in those types of scenes. Intimate scenes take me twice as long to write for male characters in comparison with females. Again, just being upfront and honest with you. I enjoy smut as an added condiment rather than main dish.

OOC Communication: We do not need to become best friends but I need to feel comfortable with my partners. I need to feel like we can have our characters have a dispute or dislike one another without it leading to misunderstandings between us as writers. 

Types of Writing Partners Desired: Anyone is welcomed here. I want your brain. Your real life gender is irrelevant to me. I prefer partners who write in past tense and third person. First person is perfectly fine in character thoughts. I want to craft a story with another person. Give me your ideas and I will give you mine. We can beat it together into something we both are eager to write. Must be 18+ in regards to your actual age.

Characters I Play: I am perfectly capable of writing either a male or female character. Usually, my female characters tend to be either bi-sexual or heterosexual. Other labels (bi-curious, lesbian, pansexual, etc.) will sometimes make appearances as well. My male characters are more times than not heterosexual but they are capable of being bi-sexual. 

Post Length: I can post a lot or I can post a little. It depends on where we are in the story. While I do value quality over quantity, I despise one-liners.

Malleable Ideas: I thoroughly enjoy collaboration. Typically, none of my ideas are set in stone because I prefer to build a story with my partner rather than dictate all of the terms.

Stories I like:

Diversity: The world is filled with a lot of similarities but there are differences too. I enjoy writing people of color (PoC) within my stories. I look through through those face claims first when searching for character inspiration. I don't mind writing other races either! In fact, I am happy too. However, if you would have an issue with me using a PoC, either as an NPC or main character, I would rather not write with you

Drama: I really, really love drama in my roleplays. A lot of my characters have tragic pasts. My partner would need roll with the punches and maybe even return them because it's boring for me to play submissive characters with no backbone. It's also boring for me to write the perfect couple. I need hellfire dammit! Now, this does not need to happen all of the time. As with all things, too much of something lessens its appeal

Humor: Make me laugh. It is one of the greatest gifts you can give a person and I will like you ten times more for it.

Low (Modern) Fantasy: A good example of this genre, for me, would be the television show, Supernatural. I write these types of stories most because they are so much fun!

Superheroes: I like playing superheroes! I haven't done it in a while but my interest has not waned. I should warn that I don't like playing canons like Storm, Thor, or any of those awesome creations. I don't feel like I can do them justice so I rather just make my original character.

Mythology: Admittedly, I have a bit of a weakness for mythology. While I am most familiar with Greek myths, I am more than happy to explore others. Stories that entice me are mortals falling in love with gods. Recreating a romance between gods such as Hades or Persephone. Or defining the reason why a god might be perceived as something such as why Zeus is seen as a cheater or what not.

Lycanthropy: There’s a special place in my heart for werewolves. Not only do I enjoy reading and watching movies about them but I really love writing them.

Vampires: Same as above. I’ve been reading about vampires forever and I do enjoy a good movie, like the Underworld series. I’m pretty flexible on the lore we borrow from to craft our own versions.

Angels: Love them! They can be sent from heaven on a mission, stolen by some bold demon, or banished for a misdeed.

Demons: Love them!

Westerns: Westerns are a tricky category. As such, it really depends if I’d enjoy writing them or not. I like the idea of rural setting in modern times. I’m not sure if that’s what someone might consider a western. I also really love Westworld. The grittiness of the characters and such. It really just depends with this one.

System Roleplays: I’ve been wanting to try a system game for the longest. It just hasn’t happened yet. If you are looking to write one with me, whether if in a 1v1 or group game, you will need to be patient. I have no experience with it other than a few brief games and watching Critical Role every week.

Historical Settings: Again, like with Westerns, it really depends with this category. Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely adore period pieces. I’m constantly searching for one to watch on Netflix. They’re just so hard and my confidence in writing them is pretty shaky.

Apocalyptic Settings: I don't mind these types of games. I will usually take a peek at group games with this setting but I have never ventured to do a story in a one on one setting. Doesn't mean I am not opened to it though.

Fandoms I Like (Original Characters and sometimes Canon Characters):

Westworld, Sense8, Charmed, Blade Runner 2049, Altered Carbon, The Magicians, Potterverse, Merlin, Penny Dreadful, Critical Role, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Downton Abbey, The Dragon Prince, My Hero Academia, Mirai Nikki, Akama Ga Kill, Sword Art Online, Elfen Lied and loads more! 

Here are some examples of story ideas I've come up with in the past. These are all modern mythology retellings.

Eye of The Storm

Story : Your character has always been troubled, the type who skipped school on the daily basis and stole lipstick from stores, even though there was not a need. People, who have the misfortune of knowing her, view her as being another ungrateful brat, destined to end up in some expensive rehab center or overdosed in a darken corner of the club. They were correct. She turned out to be a blemish upon the face of the world and her parents’ constant shame. No one understands it as there is no visible explanation for it. Either way, somehow, she ends up at the chaotic shores in the middle of the storm, garbed in her vomit stained clothes and deadly intent. She walks out into the water, seeking to end her life, and finds herself rescued by the most unlikely of sources.  Setting : A college town a few hours out from the city. The only qualifier I have in regards to setting is that it must take place near the seas.  Keywords : Romance, Substance Abuse, Suicide, Modern Fantasy, Mythology(Poseidon)  Seeking : Your character, of course, is our troubled young woman, who desperately needs to be guided away from what has been destroying her from within for years. I have a loose idea that something escaped the mysterious and dangerous depths of the ocean and has taken up residence within her body for years, potentially poisoning her beyond redemption. Maybe she discovered a necklace as a kid or something? We can discuss this together.  Kinks : Due to lack of a better word or descriptor, this might be considered a Dominant/submissive type of roleplay with Poseidon (Ishmael) assuming the dominant role. The God has possessed a lifelong obsession with water so there would obviously be a few scenes within that type of environment. Water is open to change though so he would be willing to permit whomever he’s with to lead every once in a while. 

Waste Not, Want Not

Story : Apollo has often been regarded as being a fairly lighthearted god, one who brings constant sunshine and inspires brilliance into whomever surrounds him, much like the sun which is essential for the creation of life. However, with the disappearance of his wild but truly believed twin sister, his gentle countenance has become resigned and withdrawn from the world. Unfortunately, his grief is not one to be experienced alone. Without the presence of its sun prince, the world becomes dark in consequence, not just in temperature but also in creativity .Where people experimented to create a new, they have become content with their ignorance and current circumstances. Apollo finds inspiration though in the most unlikely of places; however, what price is he willing to play to regain his muse? Setting : This can take place in a modern (rural or urban) or historical setting.  Keywords : Romance, Modern or Historical, Mythology (Apollo),  Betrayal, Punishment, Teasing, Exploration  Seeking : This is a fairly loose idea. I am basically seeking someone  who is capable to break a God’s muse block. 

To Kiss A Spy

Story : Marriage is not to be broken. Zeus has sworn himself anew to his wife, Hera, determined to take his vows seriously and be loyal to her until the end of their days. Faithfully, he ignores the temptations of the flesh, no matter how succulent, from both human and goddess alike. His temper suffers as a result but those around him have learned to adjust to their new leader’s temperament. In other words, he is given a wide berth. All that matters is that his Hera is content, basking in being the sole owner of his affections.  At least, he believes she is. In truth, the Queen of the Gods does not believe her husband is capable of the barest hint of monogamy. She is certain that he is still cheating on her even though her evidence suggests he speaks truthfully about his change of heart. Determined to prove herself right, she acquires some temptation, one which her husband would not be able to resist.  Setting : This can take place in a modern (rural or urban) or historical setting.  Keywords : Romance, Historical or Modern, Mythology (Zeus),  Betrayal, Punishment, Teasing, Cheating Seeking : Whomever Hera has bribed, hired, or threatened to do this piece of dirty work for her.

Contact: Please contact me at hyacinth.elliquiy@gmail.com if you're interested in writing with me. 

[thatlittledandere]

For the ask memeeeee Ibushi and Yosuke

Ibushi Arima

husband <3 however nothing's changed since the last time I answered this so. I'll just link it;;

Gonna attach a different picture this time though:

You don't see him angry often. It's handsome.

Yosuke Hanamura

favorite thing about them

I caaaaaan't choose he's got sooo many good qualities;; I guess I'm always in awe about how dependable he is though. The game WANTS you to underestimate him and see him as a good-for-nothing slob who fucks up everything he tries (like how he sees himself I'm hurting) but honestly?? Yosuke is DEPENDABLE. He has a job, he's good at it, he takes initiative and is the one who gets the ball rolling a lot of the time, he puts genuine good effort into everything he does, he cares so much like in general and even sort of.. looks after the IT sometimes, in his own subtle way. Well, mostly Teddie,, but he does it well!! And he's so full of love for his friends.

I ended up making two points there but gosh ok. Sue me. Love is stored in the Yosuke he's just kinda clumsy

least favorite thing about them

He's insensitive. Yosuke reads people and situations really well and uses his power for evil. It's more nuanced than that but I'm not getting into it rn;; I don't have the words. I don't know how to explain "it's a cover-up for insecurity" without sounding like I'm making excuses when I'm most certainly NOT.

Excluding the obvious lines, one of my... well not FAVORITE but one of the lines I get fixated on is when Yosuke called Naoto useless once (which is, you know. her deepest insecurity.) and seeing her reaction looked PROUD and went "ooh, looks like I've figured out how to ush Naoto-kun's buttons!" Dude you hurt her ON PURPOSE?? YOU'RE BETTER THAN THIS

favorite line

crying shaking throwing up trying not to quote the deleted lines it's about the Heat Inside-

Again I can't choose;; BUT I got Persona Q yesterday and am gonna start playing after finishing P3P (if it'll ever happen... it's been almost two years...) so once again I'm thinking about "Should we, like, get married? Will you make me, like, happy? Okay then!" I GET that PQ is basically a parody and not to be taken too seriously but that he was so ready to marry his partner.. even if just momentarily... the "will you, like, make me happy" gives me WORMS.

Wait but! Also!! "Heh, guess I wasn't straight" from Arena! I don't know the context but he sure wasn't!!

brOTP

I got obsessed with Yosuke&Rise friendship a while back and can't get it out of my mind now. Yes it comes with souyo connotations as always but sdgfddfh,, FRIENDS.

OTP

YOUR HONOR MY CLIENT IS IN LOVE WITH HIS PARTNER!!!!!

gif search in't working 😔

nOTP

I can't for the life of me see Chie and Yosuke as anything romantic. They could act as each other's beards at most, or maybe try it out and see it's not working. Back to wlw/mlm hostility that grows into solidarity as they grow and mature and learn to be nicer lol

random headcanon

SHOUTS MY TRANS YOSUKE AGENDA FROM THE ROOFTOPS!!!

But also. While Yu is the first guy Yosuke had an actual crush on, he HAS been attracted to dudes before. Just didn't recognize it for what it was because there was always a "heterosexual explanation". EVERYONE thinks that guy is handsome, it's just a fact. He wants to be like that guy. He just admires him. Of course he'd want to look his best in front of or get closer to or hang out with someone so impressive. Isn't it normal to get flustered around hot guys? Something something inferiority you know? He likes girls so he isn't gay, case closed.

Then once he could no longer justify his feelings for Yu with these he started doing more introspection, looking back, paying attention. And oh, ok, wow, maybe what he feels for that musical artist in a magazine is more than just envy for his charisma. Maybe that guy in class 3 isn't just attractive, but like, Attractive. Maybe the butterflies in his stomach when that one senpai off-handedly called him cute for something dumb he did that one time in his old school was more than just Normal Senpai Things.

I recognize I'm just straight-up making up characterization out of thin air but look i'm high-key projecting here that's what personal blogs are for

unpopular opinion

Considering how surrounded by Yosuke Opinions I am constantly it's weird how I can't really think of anything.. Hmmm Yosuke is canonically good-looking. He's considered attractive in-universe. If it wasn't for Junes and if he knew how to uuuh shut up lol (or just express himself better) he'd probably be pretty popular.

song i associate with them

I'm SURE there are some but I'm drawing a blank again...

favorite picture of them

Again I CAN'T choose a favorite so have this

I went through my entire Perona folder and I'm positively overflowing with Love For Yosuke good night