#no comprehensible commentary other than man.

[devicecontact]

Crushes this stupid text in my hand like a soder can sooooo easily. Guh

[dangans-ur-ronpas]

saw ur vents abt dungeon meishi and while I haven’t read the series yet or watched the anime I have seen bits and pieces and already saw the blowup scene where Toshiro attacks Laois and like. even I with zero context didn’t totally hate him. It sucks majorly that it had to happen but like. Toshiro is going through his own shit and plenty of other characters ALSO don’t like Laois! I think people just see that scene and project the amount of times that’s happened to them with someone in real life, which like. I get it. I’m autistic and reading that scene hit like a gut punch bc it was something I had experienced directly in real life: trying to be friends with someone, thinking you are friends, only for them to reveal one day that they couldn’t stand you and hated your guts from day one. You wonder why the fuck they pretended and let you hurt even worse than outright initial rejection. You wonder why they’d put themselves through enduring you. It makes you feel like you can’t trust anyone, makes you feel like utter shit. I 100% get why it bothers people. But you can’t project real life people you experienced onto this character that does not align at all except for this one moment. Also knowing about the author, she probably put that in on purpose as commentary for how autistics in Japan generally have to go through shit like this bc of the way their social culture is. She’s made plenty of autistic commentaries before, I doubt she stuck that scene in there for no good reason. The fact that Toshiro kept quiet and didn’t say anything until he couldn’t take it anymore is VERY indicative to me of the ways Japan’s typical social system is a struggle on all sides. Not to say these are problems unique to Japan, but the nuance needs to be understood. Toshiro isn’t being a dick just for the sake of it. I want to read it sometime so I can better understand the guy, but I don’t want to hate him based on one scene where he was an asshole. Laois is an asshole plenty of times himself, being very overtly written as autistic doesn’t absolve him from the responsibilities of being an adult.

TLDR: People tend to infantilize Laois and demonize Toshiro, which comes down to the prejudices preconceived for both of them: people see Laois, as an autistic man, as an innocent sweet guy who needs to be protected. They see Toshiro, as an Asian man, as someone who should be “polite and honorable” or whatever and are appalled when he acts like a fallible human being and not some appropriation of a fictional romanticized samurai. I understand feeling betrayed and angry seeing a character be a genuine asshole about something (social expectation does not completely absolve Toshiro of his own antagonizations however much of a reason he had) but when it’s so damn one sided, and especially in a series where almost NO one is without complete asshole qualities that round them out, I find it kind of gross that people hate on him for that. Anyway. Just wanted to send a message of support and understanding. Hopefully after I read more I can offer more analysis to corroborate with you on.

100% CORRECT thank you anon

i also understand the people who are sympathizing with laios bc that scene is very easy to relate to for many autistic or otherwise neurodivergent people (i also got a cold sweat when i was watching it bc. like. having someone you thought was a friend straight up tell you there are parts of your behavior that they can't stand is one of the worst things to experience of all time, ESPECIALLY if you were only showing that behavior around them bc you thought they were your friend and you trusted them) but it's so frustrating seeing so many people have such shallow opinions about toshiro bc of it. im on hands and knees begging people to consider the characters in three dimensions and/or develop better reading comprehension because like!! toshiro's official meeting with laios's new group literally leads with 'oh his name is actually toshiro and we never knew bc our leader had a misunderstanding and microaggressed him and he was too polite to correct him' laios is not an innocent party here!! he is not an innocent uwu autistic baby he's a grown adult man with responsibilities, in that whole time he was partied with toshiro he never learned his real name!! plus using toshiro's crush on falin as a reason to hate him, falin's adolescence was spent in a school and a social setting where she was expected to mask + her being a girl also means she is expected to mask by default -> she is better at masking than laios so why are people saying that toshiro hates laios for the same traits in falin bc clearly not?? also saw one person saying 'he only likes falin because she's hot' NO HE DOES NOT HE WOULD NOT RISK HIS LIFE HEALTH AND RETAINERS IN A DUNGEON ON A FOREIGN CONTINENT FOR THE SAKE OF A WOMAN HE ONLY THOUGHT WAS SEXY!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DUNMESHI FANS THINK WITH YOUR BRAAIN

the whole fight he had with laios where laios points out that their party is more serious about finding falin and resolving everything also drives me nuts because i've seen at least one take saying that toshiro doesn't care about falin as much as team laios because of this. which yes the fact that team laios understands the importance of health in pursuit of a goal is very very important but for many cases in east asian culture (and actually any culture with emphasis on capitalism and economic growth) productivity will get valued above all else which leads to neglect of personal health, i.e: what toshiro was doing. so this is just a clown take to begin with

also interesting to me that almost every character in dunmeshi thus far has demonstrated some kind of racial bias/misconceptions (i.e: chilchuck about elves, senshi about half-foots, etcetera etcetera) and laios and falin are no exception. race and racial differences and conflict and coexistence is also one of the underlying themes in dungeon meshi, with the elves of the west being considered a major issue to many dungeon-goers and the mayor hating dwarves and having to contend with those elves, and then marcille's motive for studying black magic and even thistle's motive for being the dungeon keeper. so it's real fucking ironic that the fans are really quick and happy to demote toshiro to 'asshole side character who is bullying our autistic rep' instead of, you know, using nuance and thinking about it

tldr; dungeon meshi has great commentary on what it's like as an autistic person in society. but dungeon meshi fans are too quick to write off toshiro as an asshole japanese guy who is ableist and getting in the way of their white woman yuri, therefore helping to promote this website's enduring legacy as the piss-poor reading comprehension website

[hyper-pixels]

Analog Horror List

Analog horror is uniquely known for its low quality and low visual styles. Or VHS style. They can widely range to a found footage or a visual guide style formatting.

Here are some noted ones:

These videos can contain disturbing content, as well as content that can induce a epileptic seizure if you choose to watch any of them.

2h32: A series of videos that are all two minutes and thirty-two seconds long.

Backrooms - The Otherside: A found footage of the back rooms.

Basswood County: Humanoid creatures that kill humans.

Cave Crawler: A video game (no commentary) about a special remote controlled bot meant to look for missing people (or bodies) in caves.

Chezzkids Archives: An archive of games from a website called Chezzkids. The developer went missing and her photos are showing up in the game. May need to have an episode explain it (this one by Minaxa did it well) as there are clues outside of the videos as well.

Cloud Observation: A short observation video on a cloud that seems to be growing limbs.

Escape the Backrooms: A combination of found footages and commercials, it details the backroom and people trying to escape from it.

Eventide - Anomaly Infestation: A news report of anomalies.

Fear Virus: A quick guide on how to protect yourself from a new, highly infectious virus that causes mutations in humans to become something they fear.

Floaters: A video and short guide. It details how humans are suddenly floating into the air.

Gemini Home Entertainment: A series of VHS styled video tapes. Neptune has mutated and is now infecting Earth with strange things called "woodcrawlers" and other mysterious happenings.

Green Mountain Broadcast Center: A archival for tapes. Only one on this channel labled "Live Traffic" which documents a strange storm.

Greylock: One of my favorites so far. About the government experimenting with tulpa and possibly uncovering an ancient god.

Happy Meat Farms: Animal testing that causes severe deformities.

Hi I'm Mary Mary: A woman wakes up in a house with no exits. She then has to face her greatest fears.

Identity Test: A test on whether or not you can tell the difference between normal faces, and distorted ones.

Itch File: A diver touches a random creature that ejects a pus like substance on him with a virus. Severe trypophobia warning.

Koala Superdeep Borehole Incident: The deepest man-made hole has a bit of an unnerving find.

Local 58 Season One: A news station trying to report on the news, when a broadcast alert stating to not look at the moon is reported. Season two

Harmony and Horror: A VHS style of film. as you watch, you discover the oddities and mysteries of the toys tore.

Marble Hornets: You know what this is.

Mister Manticore: Asks you to memorize a picture before asking you to find the differences. Has quick fleshing images.

Midwest Angelica: A piece of an alien breaks away and onto Earth as it passes the exosphere. It quickly folds into horror beyond comprehension.

Monument Mythos Season One: In an alternate world, where the statues seem to be more than just simple monuments. Season Two Season Three

Omega Mart Ad Compilation: Adds that are attempting to be targeted towards humans. More silly and deranged than scary.

Raining Fire (EAS Snario): A EAS scenario of a mentor shower suddenly hailing Earth on Christmas Eve. Leading to event after event.

Surreal Broadcast: A news station with things happening in the background that are related to a cult. Season Two Season Three

Searching for the Five: Five men suddenly disappeared, only leaving behind a few clues.

Sinkhole: A very hungry sinkhole.

Stone Cold Series: Strange eyes have suddenly started to show up in the night.

The Anglers Trap: A guide on what to do when you encounter a tree called the anglers trap. Which lures in humans like an angler fish.

The Backrooms: Where it all started, I believe. The Backrooms are limital spaces.

The Children Under the House: A therapist tries to find out why a young girl has suddenly stopped talking. Her imaginary friends of course, know why.

The Mandela Catalogue: Hostile creatures called alternates (alters for short) that mimic humans, but don't do it quite right. It mixed Christianity and horror together.

The Oldest View: A man finds a random stairwell in a tree that leads miles down. It turns out it's an old mall. Made by the same man who created the Backrooms.

The Scrimblo Catalogue: A joke analog horror based off of a twitter meme. Part Two

The Smile Tapes: A new fungai releases spores that infect humans that causes the muscle in the faces to distort into a smile and causes hysteria.

The Swarm: Aggressive, hungry mosquitos created by a science project gone wrong.

The Quentin Sanders Tapes: A man named Quentin sanders goes to Foxwood university only to discover a eldritch monster.

The Walten Files: Possessed animatronics, one of the founder's family goes missing while the other conspired against them. And not to forget the possessed animatronics.

They Lie Above: Follows the story of a son of a missing farmer who was abducted by aliens, and Neil Armstrong. Who's memories were erased after encountering a alien space craft.

VibingLeaf: Three videos that have a early youtube "lost videos" esque style.

Vita Carnis: A guide on strange fauna and flora seemingly made entirely, out of meat.

White Door Opened: Set in Poland, monsters and strange red mist begins to spread. Of course it starts with humans messing with things they shouldn't mess with.

Winter of 83: Snowmen come to life, and they aren't happy.

-Did I miss any? Let me know! I'll try to keep this updated as I deeper and deeper, but I can't catch everything.

[verysium]

what do you read in your spare time? you’re one of the most eloquent users i know, id love to hear how you find the media you consume and what your favorites are

omg ei 😊 welcome back to the inbox! thank you for your sweet words although i'm probably not qualified enough to be considered the full definition of eloquent. i am going to preface this post by saying that i definitely don't read as much as i should, so this list is not going to be comprehensive whatsoever. the last time i even visited an in-person library was like half a decade ago, and since then my spare time has been nonexistent lmao. anyways, here are some of my favorite/most recent reads as listed by author:

POETRY

richard siken: i think siken is already well-known both in the literary world and in whatever booktok deems is popular culture. if you don't already know him though, he is best known for his poetry collection crush, which delves into themes of obsession, gay love, and violent eroticism. i actually read this chapbook unknowingly. as in i was hounding sketchy pdf download sites at 3 AM and saw a man with bloodied lips on the cover and decided to read it. he basically became my summer fever dream after that. the way he juxtaposes images is seamless, smoother than water. only richard siken can talk about violence without making it sound violent. i also enjoyed his other poetry collection war of the foxes, especially "portrait of fryderyk in shifting light." i think light is a common motif throughout most of his poems, and he manipulates it effortlessly. the most recent piece i read from him is "piano lesson." i have nothing left to say that he didn't already say, so i would just recommend reading it for yourself. he is the og big brain when it comes to word play.

ocean vuong: he's unforgettable, and i mean that literally because nobody forgets a person named ocean. time is a mother was exactly what the name suggests: an exploration of grief, loss, and the rewind of time after his mother's death. some of the poems are almost cinematic in quality. "künstlerroman" is my favorite because it feels exactly like watching a video tape in reverse. i think his most famous work is "someday i'll love ocean vuong." it was the first piece i ever read from him, and to this day, it remains my comfort poem.

silas denver melvin: i only recently discovered him through his chapbook grit. i think he's also on tumblr @/sweatermuppet. he writes a lot on the trans experience, and his work gives me a mix of southern gothic and country vibes. would definitely read his other publications if i had the time.

chen chen: one thing about chen chen is that he always comes to devour. my favorite works from him are "self-portrait as so much potential" and "song of the anti-sisyphus." you have to put on your thinking cap for some of his poems, but once you grasp the meaning, everything makes sense all at once.

franny choi: "disaster means without a star" was the entire inspiration behind my first rin fic. i relate to her more personally in regards to the diaspora experience, but her collections are worth reading in general because of the sheer quality.

pages matam: his poem "piñata" was what got me into slam poetry. his work mostly consists of political commentary which i feel is particularly relevant in today's social climate. "on learning america's english" also resonates with people who have encountered the entire losing/learning immigrant tongues experience.

laura lamb brown-lavolie: i've only read one spoken word poem from her, and tbh i only needed to read one. "on this the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the titanic, we reconsider the buoyancy of the human heart" is my two-headed calf poem. one day i will get this tattooed.

brendan constantine: once again, this was the result of me being chronically online coupled with the boredom of an august heat wave. i found "the opposites game" through TED. honestly, i was a bit unsure about it at first, but it's a cute little poem that makes you really delve into the intricacies of craft.

TEEN POETRY & PROSE

yasmeen khan: she could mouth her words onto every square inch of my body, and i would still be coming back for more. ingraining them into flesh is not enough. "movie stars" is by far my favorite work from her. she writes about femininity and womanhood so profoundly. it's tragic, but really i wouldn't have it end any other way.

kaya dierks: her writing is basically middle-of-nowhere small town stoner teenage life but personified. "crushed" is my favorite piece from her. the soundtrack for this work was definitely by ethel cain, and you cannot convince me otherwise.

FICTION

madeline miller: i was first introduced to her when i read the song of achilles. let's just say that book had me nonverbal for the greater half of three months. it was my metaphorical hatchet. i buried it once, and i never want to dig it up again. i read circe a few years later. the first time was during the blue hour at an airport, right between one red-eye flight and another transfer. i don't even remember that experience because i was heavily sleep-deprived. i read it again recently for a literature course, this time for academic analysis. overall, i enjoy the the heroine-centric narrative. typically, i'm a bit wary of novels with heavy feminist themes because they either project their agenda too strongly or they run the risk of misrepresentation. circe doesn't exactly have that problem. it was more about empowerment and less about exercising power over others.

charlotte brontë: as a historical figure, brontë was questionable, but jane eyre most certainly was not. that book rewired my brain, and that is saying something because i have never read any classic by choice. and it is so important to me that jane was the ugliest, plainest girl you could ever imagine. also cus i unironically enjoy angst, and this book was full of dramatic misunderstandings.

yoko ogawa: i love japanese literature, so there is no reason not to include this one here. "a peddler of tears" is one of my favorite short stories. i did not expect the ending at all, but it was welcome. something about violence, body gore, and dismemberment being framed as romantic and semi-erotic just gets to me. sign me the hell up. hotel iris is a hit-or-miss with some people. either you like the fact that art makes you uncomfortable or you shut it down completely. for me, i was alright with exploring some of its darker themes, but read at your own discretion.

NONFICTION

ross gay: he lives up to his name both in optimism and in carefree joy. probably one of my favorite creative nonfiction authors simply based off the accessibility of his writing style. easy to read and understand but still hits you with the full force of a semi-truck. i would recommend his book inciting joy. it's a collection of essays that delve into grief, but since this is ross gay, he makes it seem like a quintessential part of life.

paul kalanithi: sixteen-year-old me was mind blown by him cus before that doctors were shrewish old men with bald spots and sterile coats, not poetic surgeons who dissected the anatomy of word and recited t.s. eliot in the most heart-wrenching way possible. he is everything i want to become in both life and death. when breath becomes air literally does take your breath away.

[bestworstcase]

Ooo share the unorthodox ruby & oscar thoughts. Romance has never been a draw for me and in this case fanon flattens and honestly mutilates the significance and nuance to their relationship. There’s a lot of interesting things going on here that gets lost and I think that’s a shame

right so the rosegarden orthodoxy goes something like: "oscar is the Only Person who sees and understands the pressure ruby is under and the pain this causes, and the central conceit of his character is about learning how to take care of her because she is precious to him and needs to be taken care of." central to this orthodoxy is the reading of 'the little prince' as a romantic love story between the prince and the rose, with ruby interpreted as "his rose."

for a more thorough breakdown of my thoughts on the intertextual layer, refer to this post. the TL;DR is this: the rose is not the prince's partner—she is his dependent. he returns to her as her caretaker: a child grown up and ready to embrace the joys and responsibilities of parenthood. 'the little prince' is an allegory about parent-child relationships and the importance of treating children with respect and kindness. fortunately for the rosegarden shippers in the audience, ruby is not the rose. she alludes to the snake—the one character in the story who meets the prince as a friend and an equal. 

now, before getting into the weeds i do want to stress that, 1. i'm not a shipper and i don't "ship rosegarden" in the usual sense, but 2. ruby/oscar is canon and narratively important and i think about it in those terms.

"but oscar is a child, he's fifteen, he's two years younger than—" thank you for your opinion, person who ships ruby with another character 2+ years older than her, i'll take that under advisement. 

"but ruby doesn't need a love interest—" no character 'needs' a love interest, but rwby is a love story about fairytales and its romantic arcs are thematically motivated.

"but he has ozpin in his head and that makes it—" weird, yes. this tension is the fulcrum upon which the romantic arc turns and, also, it is going to be resolved by way of breaking the curse and removing ozma from oscar's head. this is a fairytale. what is not clicking.

here is my first unorthodox ruby/oscar thought: it is not complicated. the set up is really quite clear and if the rosegarden shippers would quit barking up irrelevant trees for five minutes they might notice the forest, which is to say, the foundational argument for canonicity is simply this:

marrow sees yang's disastrous stab at flirting with blake and comments, exasperated, "man, i did not sign up to be a babysitter." later, marrow watches ruby and oscar stammer through an awkward conversation resolving their volume-spanning emotional conflict and mutters, "ugh, kids." marrow's commentary underscores the tangible subtext of romantic interest in both exchanges and implies an equivalency between blake/yang and ruby/oscar.

the reunion scene in V8 is structured such that the platonic reunions occur first—ruby rushes out to hug yang, then clasps jaune's hands while yang hugs weiss—before the more lingering romantic ones. yang goes to reassure blake that things are okay and the bees forehead touch happens; ren steps forward to ask where nora is; ruby says oscar's name and goes to embrace him before emerald's presence distracts her. this again positions ruby/oscar together with the other textual romances.

that's it. there are plenty of supporting details with which to build out a more comprehensive argument, of course, but the narrative flags ruby/oscar by grouping that relationship together with the other two main pairings. (rwby does the same thing in a more overt way to confirm blake/yang […again] in V7; nora tries to initiate a romantic confession by comparing herself and ren to them.)

ozpin retreats from oscar's mind, leaving oscar free to be his own person—"i started to feel like me"—and during this time oscar comes into his own he develops an obvious crush on ruby as the narrative begins to not-so-subtly move this relationship into a romantic context. ozpin's absence opens the door for the pairing and ozma's return creates a seemingly-insurmountable obstacle. the romantic arc is about surmounting that obstacle—separating ozma and oscar—so that oscar can be free to live his own life.

it's not complicated.

so with all of that being said, let's talk about the notion—central to rosegarden orthodoxy—that oscar is uniquely supportive of ruby, and never leans on her the way all the other characters do.

in a word: no.

the cornerstone piece of evidence supporting this reading is the dojo scene in V5, construed as oscar "getting ruby to open up emotionally" leading to his recognition that "this must be really hard for her, too." but:

ruby comes downstairs to find oscar doubled over, panting heavily, with ozpin's cane in his hands—he's training alone, pushing himself almost to the point of collapse. this is not good for him or physically safe, which ruby would know as someone trained as a warrior from childhood. she says: "you're really getting better, huh? are you hungry? it's almost dinnertime." this is a soft way of telling oscar that he's done enough for the night and he should take a break. ruby is checking on him to make sure he's okay.

oscar agrees that he was "about to call it a night anyway," ruby asks about his past, he answers casually, she tells him he "looks like a natural!"—and then oscar looks down at long memory and says "it's strange. i've only had this cane for a few weeks, but i feel like i've had it for a lifetime. longer, even… i sound like a crazy person." 

"i mean, uh… yeah, just a little. but at this pace, you'll be combat ready in no time!" says ruby, and then catches herself echoing penny and gets sad.

what happened here?

oscar is training this hard because ozpin told him to, explicitly in order to increase the tempo of the curse: "oscar can give me temporary control, but he'll need to strengthen his body and aura. he'll inherit my muscle memory in time, but training will expedite the process." the reason oscar seems like a prodigy is ozpin's skill and experience bleeding through. 

in ruby's mind, "you look like a natural!" is a compliment. but what oscar hears is a reminder that his life is no longer his own: he gazes down at ozpin's weapon and states that he feels like it's belonged to him for lifetimes—and he doesn't like that. "i sound like a crazy person."

the reminder of what's happening to oscar makes ruby uncomfortable—she deflects and tries to put on a happy face, but the truth slips through. "you'll be combat ready in no time!" associates oscar with penny—who is dead. neither ruby nor oscar will say it out loud, but they both understand that he's going to die as ozpin's soul amalgamates with his. and when oscar begins to open up about how scared he is, ruby flinches away—gotta stay positive!!!—only to trip on her grief for penny.

her smile falters. she tucks into herself and turns away. in trying to hide from the thought of oscar being erased, ruby reminded herself of penny. she's already watched helplessly while two of her friends died. she is scared of letting herself get close to oscar, knowing that she won't be able to save him either. so she tries to withdraw.

but she's the first—and so far, only—person oscar has ever tried to talk to about how scared he is, and what he sees is ruby brushing him off and turning her back. "how do you handle all of this?! […] i'm… scared. i'm more scared than i've ever been in my life, more than i ever thought was possible. i always knew that i wanted to be more than a farmhand, but this? who would ask for this?"

<- note the echo here of what ozpin said to him in V4: "you do have an opportunity [for] greatness: greatness in knowing that when the world needed help, you were the one to reach out your hand. it won't come without hardship, without sacrifice, but i know you don't want to live the rest of your life working as a farmhand in mistral," which oscar experienced as a violation ("you just decided to read my thoughts?!") and which ozpin justified on the grounds that "well, they're our thoughts now."

the dojo scene is not about oscar offering ruby emotional support or pushing her to open up about her feelings because he can see that she's hurting. the dojo scene is about oscar breaking down and begging ruby to hear him, to be here with him instead of turning away because he's terrified of what ozpin is doing to him and ruby is dealing with all the same problems but acts like she doesn't care. "people have tried to kill you! the world's about to go to war all over again! how are you okay with any of this?!"—he lashes out at her because he's seeking a real connection and ruby keeps brushing him off.

so ruby—who is very empathetic and insightful enough to recognize why oscar just exploded at her—tells him honestly why she turned away. two of her friends died at beacon, and she is scared specifically of letting anyone else be killed. this is an important emotional moment for her in that she really did need to talk about penny and pyrrha, yes, but that's not quite the point of this scene.

rather, it's about the choice to be vulnerable and trust each other with absolute emotional honesty. oscar is afraid to die. ruby is afraid to lose another friend, and therefore afraid to let herself become close to oscar. he opens up to her about his fears and challenges her to reciprocate, and she does. that's the basis of their bond. by extension the dojo scene also sets up the core emotional conflict underpinning the romantic arc, which is that ruby can't bring herself to face the truth about what ozma's curse is doing to oscar.

that comes between them here. it floats uneasily around them in the aftermath of what jinn tells them: "i'm just going to be another one of his lives, aren't i?" says oscar, and "of course not," says ruby, "you're your own person—" and "don't lie to him, ruby," says qrow, "we're better than that."

at the end of V6, ruby exclaims that "oscar made a successful crash landing! he's a fourteen year old farmhand!" and oscar squirms and admits that ozpin helped him do that. in V7, yang confronts ruby on her choice to lie to ironwood by asking "how did oscar feel about that?" and the way oscar felt about it is hesitant to take the lamp back and fretting that "hiding things from ironwood, doesn't that feel like what ozpin did to us?" and ruby echoes that fear to qrow in the next episode. 

the rest of V7 is filled with references, courtesy of ironwood, to oscar's similarity to ozpin. "eventually," ironwood tells him, "you won't even know who's who anymore." but oscar never stops trying to assert himself as an individual. in V8, salem rubs the thinning boundary between him and ozma in oscar's face and that terrifies him so badly that he insists upon staying put under torture rather than let ozpin take over or risk using magic because "every time we use magic, i can feel us merging faster." 

they exit the volume more in sync, notionally on equal terms—and then in the ever after, this happens:

ruby cuts neo's simulacrum of ozpin down and reveals oscar, mortally wounded. she's spent four volumes pretending everything is fine—encouraged by ozpin's withdrawal and some of her grief eased by  penny's return—and all that denial ends here. she experiences what scared her back in the dojo scene, getting close to oscar only to watch him die, subsumed completely by ozpin.

here's what you're most afraid of. what are you going to do about it?

<- pyrrha is gone. penny is gone, and not coming back. but oscar is alive, and ruby can't pretend anymore that the way things are is okay. she's going to have this image of oscar dying in ozpin burning in her mind every time she sees oscar and (just as nora's injury led ren to admit his feelings and yang's apparent death gave her and blake the push they needed to take the next step) that demands change.

what that change will look like is an open question—it could be anything from ruby simply opening up to oscar about how scared she is of losing him in particular to ruby actively trying to come up with a way to save him—but whatever it is will move toward separating ozma from oscar.

similarly, while oscar recognizes at the end of the dojo scene that "this must be really hard for her too," his mild hero-worship of her continues unabated throughout V5 (think about oscar shaking her and telling her "get up! we need you!" while she's unconscious at haven) and even after they find a more even footing during V7-8 he still contributes to the weight on her shoulders (it is oscar saying "all this doubt and and worry and distrust, it isn't getting us anywhere" that causes ruby to snap and run out of the room in V8). oscar, too, is forced to confront the fact of her mortality. how does he respond when ruby turns out to be alive?

well.

one of the obstacles to the ozlem reconciliation is that ozma has never allowed himself to empathize with salem's grief—he was dead, he never saw her anguish, and the way jinn narrates ozpin's side of the story dismisses the very real pain and anguish salem felt as merely a pretext for what was really just spiteful lashing out at the gods. ozma leapt at the chance to return to her but he has never really understood that she felt the same depth of feeling for him.

he's in oscar's head right now. they are separate people still, but ozma feels what oscar feels and thinks what he thinks and remembers his memories—and also they're on speaking terms again. and oscar has been put in salem's position: he looked up to ruby as a noble hero, he had nascent romantic feelings for her, and now she's gone. oscar to sit with that for several weeks, maybe a couple months, before ruby comes back. and ozma has to bear witness.

i think the change this incites for oscar will be less about ruby than it is a reason for oscar to challenge ozma, building from the ways oscar challenges him in V8 (to trust oscar, to become more honest, to face his mistakes) and giving oscar a chance to continue to maintain his own identity separate from ozma. which again, facilitates an eventual physical separation and the ozlem reconciliation.

<- rip to all the rosegardeners who want ruby/oscar to be the rebound and/or narrative refutation of ozlem. it is not that. lol.

[dresshistorynerd]

There is no way to say it pleasantly. Your recent post about Julie... its speculation is a slap in the face of masculine women. Dressing in men's clothing is not a statement against being female, especially in times when male clothes were far more practical than women's. (And especially in the case of a bisexual or homosexual woman!) Behaving "unwomanly" is evidence only in the eyes of sexists. But even today... it is stunning to think that a woman, should her every thought not be recorded, could be deemed a secret man for being masculine! That lingering speculation, despite absence of proof, is rather insulting.

Your reading of my post is extremely dishonest or you didn't actually read the post. The whole time I talk about her as a sapphic woman, because that is what the evidence most point towards. If you think even raising the possibility that she might have been somewhere in the genderqueer or trans spectrum (like some butch lesbians identify as genderqueer and/or trans too), is an insult and means I'm sexist or some shit, there's no way to say it pleasantly, you're probably just a fucking terf.

Now I have no illusions that correcting some of the inaccurate things you said will do anything to change your mind, but because we're already here and I'm allergic to these bad fashion history takes, I'll correct them anyways. This is more for anyone else who happens to see this and actually has some level of reading comprehension.

The women's dress at the time was not necessarily any more impractical than the men's dress. The impractical part of high society women's dress was the skirt that usually had a large trail. But they would also have much more practical dresses for casual usage. High society men wore large wigs that were I would assume pretty impractical. Their clothing, which was well fitted around the torso, closed with buttons and then not very easily adjustable. On the other hand the women's dress was either loose and pinned and belted to fit (in the case of mantua) or laced (in the case of rigid gown) so very easily adjustable even during the day to keep it comfortably fitted to the changes in the body. This would be more practical for anyone, but especially to most afab people, whose bodies can change quite drastically thorough the month.

My point is actually no Julie de Maupin did not have any practical reason to dress in men's clothing. In fact it was impractical for her. As I point out in the post she struggled with the leading female roles, which she wanted to get, partly because her off-stage personality clashed so much with them. (At first) she didn't get as much recognition of performances in leading roles as in supportive roles, partly because the audiences had trouble buying her performances in those roles.

And the other point. The modern concept of fashion doesn't entirely apply to the past. Now fashion is seen as self-expression. Even being into fashion is seen as an indication of certain personality. This was not the case in the time when Julie was alive. Back then fashion was much more social decorum. To be able to participate in the high society you had to keep up with fashion. There were people who were more fashionable than others, sure but they were mostly just the richest young people around, and that made them most fashionable. Fashion was not for self-expression, it was mostly for expression of hierarchy. It was also for political expression. (There's an interesting paper on the contemporary commentary of the politics of the court fashions, which I will link here, when I'm on my desktop.) It was not about what you wanted to wear, but what you wanted others to think about you.

In addition to that at the time clothing was integral part of gender (arguably still is judging from all the conservatives loosing their minds when a man dares to wear a dress). Women in breeches and men in skirts were seen as transgressing on gender. This can be seen even in the mid 1600s conservative reaction to when women's riding habit first appeared (they never change do they?). They complained that the women were basically indistinguishable from young pretty men and like the women were even wearing skirts (seen below)? Part of this was that both the women and men were shaping their silhouettes with their clothing to gain the fashionable feminine and masculine silhouettes, which meant that different shaped bodies could still achieve either silhouette.

Looking through this lens we can ask, why did Julie wanted to be seen as transgressing on gender even though it hindered her career? I think there could be many answers to this question and one could be that she wanted to be seen as not-woman (or maybe not entirely woman). We can never know, because we don't have any of her thoughts about her androgynous expression surviving to this day.

[raiquen]

Book Review: Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley

My Review in a Tweet:

Oh, Shelley, the care you put into the feelings and thoughts, dreams and nightmares of your characters shines through an exquisite writing. The dialogues read as if shouted to the crowd of a theater, trying to convey an emotion they feel new in its intensity.

My Full Review:

Continuing with the series of readings for Halloween, I went for the next one of the Classic Monsters (order entirely decided by the lenght of each novel). "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus" by Mary Shelley, published anonimously at first on 1818, tells a generally well-known story of a man meddling with powers of nature beyond his complete comprehension and control: the energy of life.

The novel is a collection of letters and retellings of stories from differents points of view, which makes it a little "The Thousand and One Nights"-esque, reaching a point where we are reading the letters the captain of the ship wrote to his sister about the story Viktor Frankenstein told to him about the things the creature narrated to him about the tragedy of the poor family that lived in the cottage the monster was hiding in.

While Viktor Frankenstein seems to understand the "science of life" well enough for him to actually create life (or more technically, give a new one to things that were once alive), he seems to lack... responsability? I wouldn't say morality, because all throughout the novel he seems troubled by his experiment, by what he did and what it caused to the ones he loved, but only after many killings does Viktor actually confess or tells another soul about what he did. By that point, one loses any empathy and pity one might feel or have felt for either Viktor or the creature, both too enraptured and imprisoned in their feelings of guilt, remorse, sadness and anger to consider what they are causing to other people's life.

It's understandable to certain extent why they believe they are in the right, but their constant victimhood and cries for death upon themselves or upon others end up putting them beyond redemption.

This isn't to say the novel becomes unbearable because of this, on the contrary: the rich language with which they denounce the moral wrongs and the Providence's punishments they suffer and endure is very passionate and compelling, probably very typical of the Gothic movement the novel belongs to (I should read more literary theory).

I am a bit surprised and perplexed about which story beats have been used and expanded upon on different media such as movies, series, cartoons and other literary retellings. I think the character of Clerval has been very rarely used, if at all. The incident of the little girl that almost dies but is rescued by the creature is much more used, but it's quite a short part of the novel, and it's only mentioned once again, almost by the end of the book.

I'll make one short commentary in Spanish for any other argentinean readers that might come across by this review: que Viktor se case con la prima me pareció medio santiagueño (?

It was a very good reading, I enjoyed it a lot more than "The Invisible Man".

9/10.

My other 2023 readings.

[thesparklingwriter]

a modest proposal

"Would you let me stay by your side for the rest of my life?”

tags: soft Zhongli, canon divergence (Zhongli has mora), fem!reader, Zhongli and reader are in a relationship, proposal, dinner date, zhongli being Zhongli, he knows he's slightly out of touch but he's trying

masterlist | ao3 link | taglist | next

i'm also taking requests for the rest of the flufftober days, feel free to leave any suggestions, no matter how self-indulgent they may be.

You've always been very vocal about things people do that they pretend are for their benefit, but are actually power plays to show the rest of the world how well they're doing. Namely, useless degrees in the Akedemiya, (You once met someone who had a degree in rockology. When you told Zhongli, he laughed and said he wouldn't teach a rockology class, because by simply opening his mouth, he would already be speaking at a level higher than most of the class's comprehension. You said he was harsh, but not incorrect.) massive houses that you spend most of your life cleaning, (your house was the only exception to the rule, since the only beings around were adepti, and they truly didn't care enough about you to pass judgement, for better or for worse) and finally marriage.

You were very against marriage. Or at least the silly kind you often encountered in Teyvat—people were married, but barely even knew each other's names. They just got a kick out of saying 'my wife' or 'my partner' and it irked you. You were essentially married to an Archon, but did you scream it off the rooftops? Technically, you screamed it off the mountains, but that was more Zhongli's fault than yours.

But Zhongli, being the most annoyingly perfect man on Teyvat, seems to see right through your act. It wasn't that you didn't want to be married. You just didn't want to be caught in the kind that made you feel suffocated. Some nights, when Zhongli was fast asleep and you found your thoughts drifting, you wondered whether you'd really want to be married to him. You concluded that you essentially acted like a married couple anyway, so it would just be an excuse for you to wear a pretty dress, which again, you weren't too bothered for or against. You wouldn't reject it if it were ever to happen, but you wouldn't actively chase it either.

Or at least, that’s what you’ve been telling yourself, instead of getting your hopes up. Over the past week or so, Zhongli has been banging on about doing things the ‘human’ way. That involves actually walking to places instead of letting you teleport, carrying your own groceries home instead of letting him teleport them home…It seems Zhongli views teleporting things as inherently unhuman, despite the fact that you spend your time teleporting across Teyvat. You’ve kept that particular commentary to yourself.

He keeps taking you on lavish, expensive dates—that you thoroughly enjoy—but always serve to remind you that you’d rather be at home with him, quietly reading a book together.

So today, you decide that even though it’s going to sound rude, you’ll tell him that you’d much rather be at home with him. That is, you’ll tell him after you’ve devoured your food.

“Are you alright? You’re eating much slower than usual.” Zhongli says to you, nudging you slightly under the table. He never sits opposite you, always next to you, as if you being on the other side of the table is too far away from him.

“Hm?” You look up from your plate. “I’m alright. Are you?”

“I’m also alright,” he chuckles. “You’re being really quiet. Have I done something to offend you?”

You feel your eyes widen. You hadn’t realised that you’d been showing your emotions on your face so clearly. “No, not at all!” You protest. “Actually, if anything, you’ve done the opposite. All these dates, and the good food… I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you.”

“You’re more than welcome,” Zhongli smiles. He was worried he’d come off as too overbearing or creepy by being so frivolous with his spending with you. But the god of mora could always make more(a), so he didn’t see the need to be so frugal with his cash. He was beginning to worry that you would grow to dislike the quiet nights at home.

“But I have to ask,” You twist the ring Zhongli gave you. Today, like some other days, he’s gifted you a new outfit to wear. You try to not take it to mean that he doesn’t like the rest of the clothes in your wardrobe. He wasn’t often one to add jewellery, and when you started to look at it more closely, he finally finished dressing and you made your way to the restaurant, so you didn't get to have a good enough look. “What’s going on with these dates? I enjoy them, don’t get me wrong, but I miss our quiet nights at home.”

“That’s because you’re in heat again, aren’t you, love?” Zhongli jokes.

You squeal in shock, glancing quickly around the room. “You shouldn’t say things like that in public. I am not in heat.” You hiss quietly. He chuckles, taking your hand in his. "I don't go into heat. I don't have the biological facilities for that."

“In all honesty, I would not be surprised if you did, and simply didn't know it," he smiles. "As for the dates, I thought that you’d maybe miss the more normal aspects of being in a relationship. I suppose I overdid it though.” He sighs. “I don’t want you to resent me for being so unconventional.”

You can’t help it. You laugh. “Li, when have I ever wanted anything conventional? All I’ve wanted is to be with you. I keep telling you, and you don’t listen. I don’t care about fanfare, okay? I care about us.”

“So you don’t mind being behind the rest of your friends?”

“Of course I don’t. Sometimes, I wonder if we really have much in common anymore. All they ever want to do is talk about their husbands and the children they’re going to have and their scheduled—”

“You don’t want any of that?” Zhongli asks you.

“No, I think the whole scheduling thing is more headache than it’s worth.”

“I am not talking about that. You’re not interested in having a husband or children?”

“Li,” you sigh, cupping his face lightly. “I don't care about the semantics, as long as it’s with you. I admit those aren't my priorities in life, but I don’t mind either way. Why do you look nauseous?” You’ve never seen Zhongli look so out of his element before. The only other time was when he first asked you to meet him.

“Because I feel nauseous,” Zhongli replies, chuckling softly. “I know being married isn’t very high up on your list of priorities, and I know you don’t care for it, but I’d like to do things the human traditional way, like you did for me. I’d like to afford you the same luxuries.”

To be completely honest, the whole dragon mate thing was the most lowkey tradition you’d ever experienced, and that made you pretty happy. But as much as you want to pretend like you have no feelings for or against being married, the inner child who longed to be married is squealing her head off.

“You want to get married?”

“Only if you do. It doesn’t have to be a ridiculously grand affair, it could even be solely the two of us,” Zhongli flushes. “I don’t want you to feel like I’ve deprived you of an experience you clearly want.”

“You’d marry me? Even if it were to change nothing about the way we live?”

“I see the way you stutter when you introduce me to your acquaintances. At least this way, you could say ‘my husband’ and not have to deal with the confused stares.” Zhongli smiles. “And I’d like your parents to feel secure in the fact that I’m not going to disappear.”

Now you start to tear up. You haven’t visited your parents in so long, whisked away by the demanding nature of your life as an adventurer-come-errand runner, but Zhongli is right. All they ever wanted for you was for you to be happy and secure. The fact he thought about your parents completely sways you. If there was ever a fragment of doubt in your mind about whether you’d refuse him or not, it’s shattered now.

“What do you say, love?” Zhongli asks, taking your hand and twisting your ring slightly. “Will you marry me? Would you let me stay by your side for the rest of my life?”

Now the tears are really falling, and you don’t want to draw attention to yourself, so you nod as vigorously as you can manage. “Of course I will,” you sniff.

Zhongli kisses your hand, and as he lowers it, a light catches your ring, and it suddenly dawns on you.

“You made me put on my own engagement ring?” You ask him, slapping his shoulder lightly. Of course, he would make you do all the work. He even left you to figure out the ring's significance by yourself!

“Well, I thought it was too pretty to go to waste if you didn’t accept my proposal. I didn’t want you to dislike it.”

You study the ring in more detail. It’s not like the normal engagement rings your friends flash at you, and you’re grateful for it. It’s marbled with gold and brown crystal, and topped with a shimmering Cor Lapis. It’s almost a ring version of Zhongli, and that makes you love it even more.

“So,” You smile. “What type of rock is the brown crystal?”

Zhongli clears his throat. “It’s not a crystal.” You tilt your head in confusion, and Zhongli explains further. “I have an adeptus friend who likes to collect things, not that he’d openly admit to it. He had a couple of my scales saved from before I had a vaguely humanoid form, so I called in a favour.”

Your jaw drops. “This is a piece of you?”

“Does that offend you?” Zhongli asks, quickly. “I can always get it changed.”

Even if it did, you’d never tell him that, not after he’d put all this effort into putting it together for you.

“No. Don't do that. I love it,” You smile. “I love you.”

a/n my mother watched me write this and asked why i looked like i was crying so i told her i was doing schoolwork and she just nodded

[aforrestofstuff]

Chapter 173 Expert Review: The "Hey, my boyfriend saw you across the bar and we really dig your vibe" Edition

The cover makes me so uncomfortable it's like I'm at a party and said something weird just as the music went quiet and everyone heard and they're all looking at me and everyone hates me and I'm so anxious and

Welcome to the Chapter 173 Expert Review! I have completely lost count of how many of these I've done. If you're coming here for a well-thought-out meta-commentary on the hit series franchise anime manga One Punch Man, then look elsewhere because I put a grand total of ten minutes of thought into this post that took me 45 minutes to write.

I hope you're all well. If you're new here from Twitter then yes, I'm really always like this and I apologize. I don't know how to segway to the actual commentary, so um......... here we gooooooo.....

I don't know what I was expecting. Could I have predicted that Murata would yassify Bofoi? Probably. Do I ever want to come to terms with the fact that he did? No.

Shut up I'm not saying anything. I'm not saying anything. I'm not. He looks like he's wearing those really oversized dentures at Party City. His head looks more like an egg than Saitama's. Why does he still look kinda.... no I'm not gonna say it. I'm not. I'M NOT. GET OUT OF MY HEAAADD RAAAAAAEERERARAAAAWW

I'D FUCK HIM!!!! I'D FUCK BOFOI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'M TIRED OF PRETENDING HE'S NOT AN ENDEARING SORT OF UGLY OK IM SICK OF IT!!! I'M GONNA DESTROY HIS OLD MAN CERVIX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I WANNA FUCK HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How many enemies has Saitama made just by existing already. Is this number three? Sonic, God, and now Bofoi? Oh, well, I guess Saitama did fuck up his robots but that was self-defense 100% and it WILL hold up in the court of law.

Oh, okay. Now we have a better idea of the timeline since Saitama became a hero.... only two months???? Dude, I've had packages lost in the mail for longer than that.

I kinda thought he'd been a hero for at least six months. I guess what Garou said about coming back to fuck up the heroes after six months at the beginning of his arc was only a sort of red herring to make it seem like he'd be the world-ending Shibabooby prophecy, but in relation to how long Saitama's been a hero, turns out my guy only fucked shit up for like, what? One month?

Was this just obvious to everyone else except me. I really should've never learned how to read dawg.

THANK YOU Amai Mask for being the "Please explain the plot so readers with the comprehension skills of fourth graders can know what's going on" character in this because I swear to fucking god I had no clue what anyone was talking about.

Also, Ninja Leader makes an appearance as Blast's totally super platonic partner. Supposedly they were "searching for a mysterious cube" together. People these days make up such weird euphemisms for skipping work to fuck each other in a ditch, I swear. 🙄🙄🙄

A couple of things:

Is Blast wearing the Ninja Leader's glasses in the present? Oh, so they really were super platonic, huh.

You mean to tell me bro aged THIS MUCH in two years? 700 days ago he was late-twenties rager at Planet Fitness and now he's a 57-year-old salt and pepper daddy at the gay bar?

I guess it could have something to do with his powers, manipulating space-time and all that. Blast teleports through something that is basically a copy-and-pasted black hole, which could explain why time flows differently for him, but doesn't time slow down near a black hole? So he should be aging slower if anything.

So, did God age him? Is this even the same Blast that came in contact with God? Something something uuuhh time travel something something...

I don't fucking know. This could also just be a case of "Murata doesn't know how to draw people that look their age" although he's been getting better about that, at least... Just seems ODD to me that Blast has aged like an avocado in a manga where characters only seem to look younger as time goes by.

Very noble that he's fighting God alone with the Interdimensional Justice League and their Pocket Dimension Pool Table to protect everyone else. Something still feels fishy about this, though........ especially since he's a deadbeat ass dad in the webcomic. I don't trust a GODDAMN thing this boy has to say. I DONT CARE IF HE'S HOT!! And I think that is so brave of me.

Forrest has a theory and everyone's gotta hear about it a million times until he's proven otherwise.

Y'all already heard me say how God has one-sided beef with Saitama because Saitama broke the limiter God had placed on him, and I suppose that alone is still a decent reason for God to be pulled to Earth, but I still think God's full body (and power) is imprisoned in the dimensional seal Blast was screaming about as Saitama was fighting Monster Garou V2.

And Saitama's habit of fucking shit up as collateral for saving the world is further eroding God's jail cell, so he's unknowingly helping his enemy get closer to him. This fucking goober.

It makes sense because the massive body in the seal looks like a fully-formed person, whereas whenever we see God free, he's always a sort of unfinished skeletal figure. He's incomplete.

Is this another one of those things where it seems painfully obvious to everyone else except me. Y'all are free to hop in my inbox and call me a dumbass if you want.

Final thoughts because this review is already too goddamn long and I wanted to shitpost a bit more but I guess I can do that on other posts because I'm TIRED.

All in all, we really needed a good expo-debrief chapter to put everything in perspective because the Monster Association arc was a load of reveals with not a lot of resolutions. I think the ending was still very anticlimactic because, although we were introduced to a lot of shit like God and Blast and whatnot, none of that was really tied up in a satisfying way, nor left on an interesting cliffhanger. Just more and more questions. Even Garou's arc hasn't ended really, and all the development he and Saitama had gone through was forgotten (for NOW, because of Genos' core, but I digress) so it almost feels like... not much really happened at all. Nothing really ended, it was just a collection of more plot threads beginning.

I wish ONE waited a bit longer to really delve into God and Blast because I think the Monster Association arc could've been a lot more comprehensive and well-paced if it had just been (mostly) contained to what was happening between the heroes and monsters. But I can appreciate how comprehensive the plot is now after the fallout, just... the road to get here was rocky. I lost all the tires on my jeep.

I'm excited for Psychic Sisters.

In conclusion: if you were at the Whole Foods down the street and took a blue bike tied to the railing then you're a fucking bitch GIVE IT BACK!! THAT'S MY FUCKING BIKE!!

GIVE BACK MY FUCKING BIKE!!!!! YOU STOLE MY BIKE!!

p.s. -- I'm still waiting for the Zombiedad and Child Emperor Get Milkshakes Together omake. Murata, pls. Also give my bike back.

Thanks for reading. Please, I need my bike.

[yotsubaclover]

explaining my blorbo associations pt2: jules who i do not draw often im so sorry u look like that babygirl

song: i actually... have never made a jules playlist LMAO my jules brainrot is so academic i could spit theories for him but not songs. so i had to dive into my spotify likes and find something. goldilocks spot is actually from a very old jolyne playlist i made but i think it also fits jules. to me it's a song about being painfully aware of how... average? not-outstanding? just there? you are and the angst that comes with it, the bitterness towards other people (in jules' case, for not seeing him as who he knows himself to be—a noble). but there's also a stubborness and pride that keeps you from fully confronting those feelings/that dilemma and finding peace within it, which is fitting for the persistent turbulence within jules... a lot of this is my (quite liberal?) interpretation tho so yeah

color & object: purple is the color of royalty and lavender is pretty and calming and healing. quite the nice set of descriptions for someone like jules :)

animal: i dont kin assign animals often so this was hard. but i chose raven as a parallel to doves... because jules' dove of happiness was/is rosemarine, and because jules is almost like rose's shadow in many ways... also ravens are kinda bad omens i feel like for all the gentleness jules shows he is also obviously capable and willing to do terrible things, he's selfish and prideful and even a little greedy... and lol i think the negativity also fits some of his self-image

drink: tea! of course! what else would i put

aesthetic: i think classic dark academia with all its elite-ness and occult-ness and general fucked up-ness would be a very average jules genre. smack him in a dark academia plot a la secret history and he's right at home lol. even his fallen noble status makes for an interesting pov in a dark academia story. the genre's potential for class analysis and commentary too is jules de ferrier

other: i think it was a fic which was about jules and perfume which made me think about this association... lavender was the scent too so that is another explanation to the above lol. as for the shadows again it's cos of his duo thing with rosemarine but also everything he does is kind of... in the shadows... he has engaged in shady shit (gang moment???) and is often lurking/observing situations (as the right hand man yk) and also just him looking out for the people he cares about even if in incredibly convoluted ways (see: rosemarine and jules' deal with the thugs who wanted to beat him up when they first arrived at lacombrade). he does the dirty work in the dark or smth like that. tbh there are a lot of oppositions with rosejules, the light/shadow thing is pretty on the nose i think but my favorite is probably the feminine/masculine. (disclaimer thisis an idea spitball Only so pls do not sue me for incorrect use of terminology; im sorry feminist theory i promise ill read more of you BUT a lot of the ideas kind of branch out of 2nd wave ideas/concepts i believe)

because publicly rose seems to take the patriarchal role as the superintendent (ie. being the disciplinarian, having power, being the symbol of the institution) while jules assumes a more matriarchal role as advisor, someone more approachable and "kinder" than the patriarch... then it all gets skewed because of auguste's presence, so they actually switch with rose being "feminized" and jules being "masculinized" but anyway LOL i have many thoughts on this specific kind of. feminist/queer inspired reading of rosejules

i hate his ass so much cos it's so fucking hard to break his character down in a comprehensible way. the thesis topic thing is only partly a joke. i genuinely think with the depths i am going to look at this i can find something in him or maybe im just delusional lmao i probably am

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

I don't know how relevant this is to your theory but Neil Gaiman answered a tumblr ask about his Riddler comic a bit ago and mentioned that he chose Ed as the one to give meta commentary about the increasing 'darkness' of the other rogues because he hasn't really been relevant or had many appearances at the time of the comic's release and because of the way the character was perceived then. Considering how in that comic Ed mentioned other 60s show characters as villains and an era he misses that's probably further evidence for how stuck in the 60s he and the idea of him as a character still was even at that point? Not real evidence but fun: one of the traits listed in his TV Tropes page is "last of his kind" as one of the few sillyguy villains in Batman's rogues gallery that haven't fallen into complete irrelevance yet

man okay I hate having to talk about When Is A Door but only because it makes me spectacularly emo. listen everyone just. go read it. I'm dropping a link for you and everything.

anyway this absolutely is relevant to the ongoing discussion about what the fuck was going on with the Riddler in the 80s and early 90s. When Is A Door was actually published just three years before the Riddler appearance in the Question #26 that @clay-cuttlefish mentioned (linked), indicating that WIAD was very much coming out in a period where the Riddler was very much seen as a goofy relic best remembered as Frank Gorshin (and boy, you can really see the Gorshin influence in Gaiman's depiction! that old man is off the shits!).

the 80s really were a spectacularly dark period for the character, and the more I learn the more surprised I am that he managed to not only survive into the 21st century but did so with such indisputable prominence in Bat-lore. I'm starting to seriously suspect that appearances in other media, like Batman: The Animated Series and especially Batman Forever, might have had a lot more to do with keeping him afloat than anything happening in the comics during the 90s, but we'll see how that bears out as I continue my comprehensive-ish Batman reading (which is only up to late 1991).

this really does drive home my frustrations with recent efforts to shed the riddle gimmick and make the character darker; there's certainly a time and place for more serious and gruesome stories, especially with Batman, but there's really nothing more boring than homogeneity that demands every villain be a ruthless sociopath. for fucks sake, he's the Riddler.

[autisticandroids]

Director's commentary on "hunger" PLEASE. I cannot stop thinking about the yonic abyss.

[the goal here is to provide a director's commentary, a la the one i did for i fold in half so easily, though obviously less comprehensive. this commentary is for hunger.]

i don't have a TON to say about hunger. but. well. ok. first of all. yonic abyss castiel comes from this post by @allegedlyopposed. that's crucial before we start. okay. second thing you have to know is that i was DESPERATELY finishing this ON november fifth. in order to get something posted and i managed it at like 11pm. the third thing is that the original concept for this fic was um. much weirder. as you'll see.

also like, i had a ton of fun writing this fic because like... a lot of endverse cas fic is like. it's About The End. that's what it's about. it's really uninterested in how the endverse related to the rest of the canon except in terms of differences. but the thing about the endverse is like. the point of divergence from the timeline is free to be you and me. that's pretty fucking late! a lot of things that we see happen in canon have also happened to endverse dean and cas. endverse cas sat with dean on a bench and discussed doubts. endverse cas saw dean fall apart in on the head of a pin. endverse cas said "we're making it up as we go." so like, it was a lot of fun to write a fic that is essentially mostly about lazarus rising, framed through the endverse. like it's very explicit that this is like... also how our cas feels. he would just never say it, and may not even have the words to articulate it yet.

“Want some?” Cas says, offering the joint, and Dean looks over at his jailer.

“No, thanks. I, um, don’t partake.” Dean feels his cheeks heat.

Cas laughs, then. It’s a big belly laugh, complete with a coughing fit halfway through. He chucks Dean on the shoulder.

“It gives you panic attacks, I know. I just wanted to see if you’d agree out of embarrassment. You were such a priss about admitting it back in the day.”

i love you weedsocks boy. the thing about dean winchester is that he is a little chihuahua of a man and could never smoke weed he is TOO anxious. however, as an homage to the dean winchester beat sheet. i do believe that he pretends to other people that he smokes weed.

Dean doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t say anything. He sits and he watches Cas smoke, instead.

“-can’t even fucking look at him” is what Dean’d heard this afternoon through the cabin wall. “So you want me to?” came the drawled reply. That’s when Cas had come into Dean’s cabin - Dean’s in the sense that it belonged to his future self, but also Dean’s in the sense that it was where he’d been kept for the past however many hours - and taken him by the arm.

it's crucial to me that endverse cas be mean. that's like. it's the last power that he has, over dean. they both know that cas will follow dean to the ends of the earth willingly, and they also know that dean can't do anything to cas, so it's like. stalemate. dean keeps cas around, and cas makes nasty remarks, and dean gives orders, and cas does what dean says in the end (no pun intended, hah). you know? and it's also about how endverse cas is you know maybe in some ways better off in his relationship with his dean than like, season fifteen cas. more secure, less afraid, possessed of more power and agency. even if when all is said and done it all ends up the same.

Now he’s in Cas’ beaded hippie dreamscape, minus the girls, and he’s not cuffed but he’s pretty sure that if he tried to leave he’d be down before he took four steps. 

look i'm not a dta girlie but that bit in dta where cas just obliterates dean in like the first or second chapter was compelling.

There aren’t really chairs in Cas’ cabin, just a couple big wooden chests all covered in candles, but there’s these fat, plush silky pillows, and the carpet’s real soft. It’s nice as long as Dean sits criss-cross applesauce and doesn’t think of what might be caked into it. It can’t be worse than some of the motel beds he’s slept in, right?

Cas is leaning back on a pile of cushions, one leg bent, the other loose and stretched across the floor. He blows a smoke ring, and Dean can see his throat working. Watches his Adam’s apple bob.

“You used to be a priss about everything. You know, when you had to shoot Jo Harvelle, I held your hair back as you bent over the toilet. It was long for a while. We were hiding out in one of Rufus’ old cabins. Couldn’t get electricity for the clippers.” Cas sighs. It’s a wistful sound. “It's a shame we've got solar panels now. You were so pretty. It fell around your face like…” he trails off, staring at the ceiling. A shiver goes through Dean. “At least we can flip the lights on at Chitaqua.”

cas voice who cares that jo is dead i got to touch your face. gayboy moment of the highest degree.

Dean glances around at Cas’ cabin. There’s no bulb in the single ceiling fixture. Just candles.

also it's crucial that i am positing a prelapsarian time where this dean and this cas WERE happy. they may or may not have been sleeping together (probably yes but it doesn't really matter) (it will become clear as the fic goes on that they have slept together at SOME point, but possibly not until things were falling apart, hard to tell) but they WERE happy. or, more likely, cas was happy. dean was miserable - he had to put down his friends like rabid animals - but cas and dean were holed up together all alone or nearly so, and dean was soft and vulnerable, enough so to both let his hair grow out and to let cas hold it back. like this was clearly an idyllic time for cas, specifically, because the world may have been ending but he had dean, in a meaningful, serious way.

Cas’ head flops to the side, and it would have felt unintentional except his eyes are so clear and bright and now they’re staring right into Dean’s.

“C’mere.” Cas cricks a lazy finger at him, and he might have said that in his chill stoner voice but God, it's a command. It's an order, and Dean can't disobey. Cas used to lead armies, and Dean can feel it in the smoky air they're sharing.

Dean scoots closer, but Cas pats the cushions beside him.

“Lay down. Stay awhile.” He laughs again, like it’s some sort of joke, but the sound is creaky. Breathy. More like a sigh than a laugh, less like a sigh than a gust of wind through an old house.

Dean lays on his side. Facing Cas. Cas rolls to meet him, and they’re nearly nose to nose. 

Cas reaches over. Runs a hand up Dean’s left side. Gentle. It would be ticklish if he weren’t wearing a shirt.

“You used to be a priss about this, too,” Cas breathes, and kisses him.

It’s soft. Cas’ lips are chapped, but they’re still pillowy. And Cas is warm, his hand solid on Dean’s ribs.

Dean’s eyes fly open. He chokes.

“What?”

This close, he’s treated to quite a show when Cas’ eyes roll.

“Still a priss, then.”

king of negging. there are a lot of things going on in this fic but one of them is that cas wants to fuck dean and is heaping him with the perfect combo of compliments, insults, and commands to make dean want his approval in order to fuck him. and it works. manipulative ❤️

Dean can feel the words against his lips.

Cas flops back onto his back, still watching Dean from the corner of his eye. Dean stays where he is. 

Cas brings a hand up. Cups Dean’s chin. Draws the pad of his thumb across Dean’s bottom lip.

“I can promise you, you’ll get over yourself eventually.” 

Dean licks his lips involuntarily, goosebumps running up his spine, but all he can think of is the man his double shot this morning. It’s called commonplace.

i love it when being gay is a sign of losing yourself. like the thing about endverse dean is that he's a complete ego death for our dean. he does what dean would never do. whether that's coldly kill people he cares about or have gay sex.

“I-” he can’t really speak. He can’t talk to this funhouse mirror image of his friend, this antifuture doppelganger, this Cassandra prophecy. He can’t say who are you. He can’t say who am I.

All he can do is try to prove Cas wrong. Or just try to prove himself.

He takes Cas’ face in his hands. Presses their mouths together with force. Slips his tongue into Cas’ mouth, desperate for a taste of- 

this was about the point where i was like okay if i'm being realistic about dean then i am never getting them into bed together. it's too hard. he's too much of a little bitch about it. i'm gonna need to turn up the "doe-eyed and slack-jawed" slider to max on this one. and on reflection i also just needed him to get manipulated because that was what cas wanted to do. it's enrichment

He feels a little huff of laughter burst from Cas’ chest. Dean rolls, and finds himself straddling him.

“Ooh, forward, ” Cas says when they break apart. Under him Dean can feel Cas’ bony hips digging into his thighs. 

Cas leans back, closes his eyes. Runs two fingers up Dean’s arm, and goosebumps follow. The movement is so easy but Dean can see the tension across Cas’ shoulders. His baggy shirt rides up, and Dean can see just a sliver of soft skin.

i used endverse cas running his fingers up dean's arm in another fic. let it never be said i'm not consistent. anyway i do think cas is a toucher in general and endverse cas, because he fucks constantly, would turn that into a flirting style, you know? and like the thing about cas is he hosts orgies to become a part of something larger than himself and like. touch is part of that. i think endverse cas touches people to hit on them and etc. but he also craves touch and has not been trained out of it as aggressively as canonverse cas was because in canonverse dean really held all the card in that relationship while also like. not being as close to cas. whereas in the nebulous beforetime that i posited previously 1) dean and cas were lovers and 2) they were each other's most important person, depending on each other. it actually seems like cas was more taking care of dean for a while, because dean fell apart when the world ended and cas didn't because like, he had already torpedoed his own life by falling, what did he care.

“Do you know what it was like, having you inside me?” Cas says. Dean’s breath catches, and he can feel his dick perk up.

i hate to write unsubtle sexual arousal like that but needs must.

Cas’ eyes slit open, and he smirks a little. “Get your mind out of the gutter. I meant when I flew you out of Hell.”

this was approximately the point at which i decided that this fic should be normal and not the original weird thing i planned. the thing about castiel mouthgenitalia fic is that i still do desperately want to write it but i'm not sure it adds that much to endverse. certainly not outside the context of this specific fic. i do kinda miss the original scene i had planned where dean was like [pointing between cas' legs] what the hell is that and cas was like popular among the people of camp chitaqua ;). also i have a great fondness for tangibly inhuman endverse cas <3.

“O-Of course.” Dean swallows.

“Anyways. Angels are… we were built by our Father. Or… we were built for our Father. And every angel… every angel has a hollow. At the center. It’s meant for worship. There’s this emptiness inside us, all of us, and it’s meant to be where we receive His love but…” he trails off. Dean thinks about Cas. His Cas. Was he empty? Was he hungry like that? When Anna said that only four angels had ever met God…

when angels are empty. like the thing about angels is that they were built to love and worship god but they LITERALLY never knew him. and they were never supposed to! isn't that cruel?? like even demons are twisted to love something that is present, even if they are tortured and brainwashed into it. angels are literally built FROM SCRATCH to love god and he never planned to be there. evil evil evil.

“And you… you were vicious. When I picked you up. You didn’t want to go, and I think maybe you were terrified of me, and you screamed and struggled and snarled and snapped and I just… I couldn’t hold you. I couldn’t hold you and fight off the demons that were all over the place trying to stop me. So I just… I took you inside. I took you into the place where my Father was supposed to be. And I… God, I don’t remember what it was like, fighting my way out.” Cas sighs. Takes a deep breath. Dean thinks maybe he remembers. Nothing clear. But a cleansing white light, first shining on him, then all around him. And a feeling of…

i love it when cas puts dean in the hollow where god was. worship. deification. consumption. new forms of daddy kink never before invented.

“I know it was bad. It felt like every demon in Hell was trying to stop me. Maybe they were. But all I could feel was you, this feral thing, biting and scratching so deep in me and it was… it was more than I’d ever felt before.” 

i truly do believe that this is the vibes of what happened in canon. when castiel experiences internal abrasion by tooth or claw resulting in fertilization <3.

Dean can feel the blood rushing in his ears. 

“More than the exhilaration of battle. More than the joy of the Song. More than the horror of an abomination like your brother. It was… God.” Cas shifts under Dean, and Dean thinks he can feel the start of a bulge in Cas’ ridiculous hippie pants.

haha did you catch the double meaning. god is a normal exclamation there but it's also like. "it was god" = deifying dean and the experience of having dean in him where god was meant to be.

 “And when I spat you out, I could still feel it. It was terrifying. I was so empty and now I knew what it was like. You gouged pieces out of me I didn’t even know were there. I couldn’t fill it.” 

Cas fingers Dean’s waistband, slipping the tip of his thumb under to caress the soft skin underneath, and Dean’s stomach muscles clench. He feels his thighs go tight against Cas’ hips. It’s just self-preservation to grab Cas’ wrist.

“You know, I tried. I tried to lose myself in the Song for a long time. Angels aren’t really… we’re not like you. Our minds aren’t… fully autonomous.” Dean can feel Cas’ fingers as he starts fiddling with the button on Dean’s jeans. 

[citation]. i love youuuuu hivemind boy.

“The boundaries between my thoughts and my brothers’ are… it’s not clear where the line is. Or it wasn’t, when I still had brothers. But I tried to lose myself in them, to stop being Castiel and just be an angel, but none of them- I was too different. None of them understood. None of them understood what it was like to have been full and then empty again. I was so alone and I wanted…” Cas lays big hands on Dean’s thighs, grasping the meat of them. Dean shivers. Rolls his hips automatically.

i am always very intrigued about cas as a being discovering desire. like i don't really think of cas as a creature that had an independent, unique will before he was sort of forcibly jolted into the world by dean and the mission. like i think that's how most angels are. they are part of a whole and if they sing out of key they get lobotomized. so cas is like. he is really discovering the twin concepts of desire and dissatisfaction at once. he is the freudian baby removed from the breast and forced to experience that separation for the first time. i've written a lot of other fanfiction about this, or, well, at least two. like the thing about cas is that he's kind of learning emotional maturity on the fly, lmao. like he's never had to regulate his own behavior and emotions before, that's always been done with orders and hivemindiness and punishments and lobotomies. cas has never needed to deal with anything like that before. he's an intellectual adult with the level of emotional experience of a toddler, or rather, he starts that way. he's had to work on it. also note: the implication here is that all of this, the trying to lose himself among his brothers, took place during canon season four and happened with our cas as well.

“God, I wanted. I tried everything. Sex, drugs, and even rock and roll.” Cas’ eyes are wide open now. Open, and clear enough to slice right through him. Clear enough to bite right into him. “ Nothing fills me up like you, Dean.”

can't fill it can you? not with food, drink, not even with sex. i don't think endverse cas is truly pulling a dean here as such. the thing about endverse cas is that he is both a genuine hedonist and also "substituting short term pleasure for long term happiness." like the thing is cas does absolutely enjoy sex drugs and rock n roll but he is also like. one, he has lost the communion of heaven, and two, now that he has truly known desire for the first time he can never unknow it, he will always hunger for more. but also... he does just want dean. like dean is what he wants. if he had dean, that would satisfy him. but he doesn't. so he's kinda fucked.

And Dean remembers now. He remembers being on the rack. Off the rack. He remembers Alastair beside him, whispering in his ear as he- and then remembers the light coming. And he remembers the feeling. 

The inescapable terror of prey.

the thing is. okay. the thing is this fic is one more in a very long line of fanfictions by me in which dean is like. he is tortured by the experience of cas' desire for him. like this fic is more on the "cas' desire is terrifying" side. as i said earlier, cas has only just learned what it is to want. thus his desire is not tempered. it is absolute and demanding and predatory. it consumes and destroys. but i'm also just interested in dean's horror of being desired in general. like the thing about dean is that he is the ken doll he is the marlboro man he is the cowboy and he has to be those things and it tortures him and being desired as those things tortures him more and makes it real. and he's spent his whole life being objectified (sexually and otherwise) in the course of his work as a hunter. like, he's played bait and flirted his way through security doors and kissed monsters to get a spit sample his whole life. he's been valued for what his body can do his whole life. he's been having casual sex with random women because it's what a man does or because it's the only human connection he can get, take your pick, his whole life. he spent his formative years as an extraordinarily beautiful teenage boy hanging around bar rooms and motels on the fringes, places filled with gropey drunk adult men. dean's relationship with other people being attracted to him is going to be tortured at best. like that stuff doesn't come up too much in this fic but it's something on my mind generally when the topic comes up. cas may be fixing to eat dean up, but for dean, it feels like all desire is going too eat him up.

Dean shivers, his mouth too dry to speak. He licks his lips instead.

well. i said all that. but it's also a turn-on, being afraid. at least for dean. he wants to be eaten up so bad.

Cas reaches up to Dean’s shoulder, puts a hand on his sleeve, and Dean can feel something pulse from the scar there. From Cas’ brand on him. Cas grabs him, hand over where they both know the handprint sits on his skin, and pulls him down until Dean is folded nearly in half. Until their noses brush, and Dean can feel Cas’ hot breath on his lips.

“So, if I can’t have every part of you in me,” he traces one finger up the line of Dean’s zipper, “the least you can do is give me your cock.”

[brw]

Simon Williams, Marvel's Wonder Man, their first evil Superman, or why out of all the obscure characters I could have latched onto, it's fucking Wonder Man.

I'll preface; the first reason why I ever gave more than a cursory glance at a wikipedia page at Simon was because he was attached to my favourite character, The Vision, and was heavily related to my other favourite character, Wanda Maximoff. I'm not going to lie & say that it was love at first sight or anything; I was a fan of Vision & Wanda for a while, & upon discovering Vision had a whole twin brother I never knew about, but one who had also dated Wanda later, I found it weird that I could find almost jack shit about the character online.

In the fandom spaces I was in, Simon was mostly "that asshole Vision is kinda related to and was weirdly quick to start flirting with Wanda when Vision got Byrne'd". I, new to marvel comics, was curious about this mystery man, and fell into a strange world of Marvel before the MCU was really the big thing people knew about it but also still sorta... there, as this is before they got completely overshadowed by the surge of new fans coming in from an increasingly amibitious production who were not versed in comic lore & therefore did not know nor care about Simon Williams, Wonder Man.

Anyway, I made it my mission to learn more about this guy because of my involvement with Vision & because it's just generally weird when you discover your favourite has an entire twin brother who had not one, not two, but three whole solo title runs where he headlines the comic (by the way, if you're not counting Vision & the Scarlet Witch or Ultimate Vision, is more solo runs than what 616 Vision has.) and appeared in comics almost 5 years before Vision was ever a thought on Roy Thomas' mind or before the man was even fucking hired at marvel. Needless to say, I became obsessed, and as of writing this am on my second comprehensive readthrough of every issue he's appeared in since debut in Avengers Vol 1 #9.

This out of the way, here is my very long & indulgent essay on why I think Wonder Man is great, subversive & when done right, a really good commentary on comics generally, with some vague gestures that I really hope some of these aspects will live on in the fabled Wonder Man series which I'm almost convinced is a psy-op to get me to do more unpaid work analysing Simon fuckin' Williams.

First point of this; Simon is an evil Superman. We've seen this trope a lot recently but I think it's always been a concept since conceptualisation of a character like Superman. A character must have an adversary for conflict, and while villains serve that purpose well initially, eventually the Man vs Man conflict enters into play; for what is more potentially crippling than ourselves?

Now, Simon isn't actually evil (usually), which kind of knocks him out as a proper evil Superman, but he is certainly a failed one. Superman gets his powers from the sun & from birthright, being the sole (ish) survivor of a tragedy that wiped out almost all of his people. It's what he chooses to do with these powers that truly define the character; his innate compassion & kindness towards others. Simon gets his powers after getting bribed from a weird Norse goddess after getting arrested for embezzling, and then gets experimented on & subsequently empowered by a weird Nazi scientist. He does betray these guys almost immediately after realising hey, maybe the Norse goddess & Nazi scientist don't have the best outcomes in mind for the Avengers, but still, it's not a flattering start to the character.

In Superman comics, his powers are something great that he has to be careful where he applies them to do good for other people, to create the best possible outcome for others. For Simon, they're something he's quite literally bribed into, experimented on with a definite lack of strong consent, & is unfamiliar with & doesn't even really use for good when he formally joins the Avengers. They're not something he works towards through intellect like Hank Pym and Tony Stark, it's an unnatural state for him to be in that kind of informs his actions unlike Vision & Thor, and it's kind of an accident he ended up as incredibly overpowered & superman-like as he has.

At the core of the character, there's this skeevy, unearned way in which he gains his powers, and there's this element that Simon doesn't even want them in the first place which I think get's stronger after his secondary character trait becomes defined. It's interesting, in that he sort of more simiarly references Beast in his power acquistion, of making a stupid decision in a moment of panic, drinking the beaker of glowing green/allowing yourself to get bailed out by some random woman you don't know but knows you well enough to bail you out, and having to deal with powers far greater & lifechanging than what you intitially wanted. Of course, in publication dates it's more like Beast references him, but either way it's an avenue I'm suprised no writer has taken their friendship.

Simon is also an evil Superman because ultimately, there's no nobility or inherent desire to help people that Simon has. At least not in the same way. Clark Kent will throw himself in front of every danger he can to protect those without the invulnerable skin or flight or eye lazers, and even his day job is protecting free speech & informing the people. Simon has a noted anxiety disorder in almost every fight he's in when he's first in consistent Avengers publication, and was raised an entitled rich kid who embezzled everything away & tried to run with the cash when things fell apart. His nobility was only achieved in his death, giving up so the Avengers could survive, and he's rewarded for that narratively with... a near crippling fear of death & of dying that prohibits him a lot from standing up or applying himself. In all fairness, he does get over this in ways, but it still remains something worth talking about; Simon has to work way harder, in my opinion, to act as a good person, that Superman, but even in universe, than the person who's brainwaves / soul they share, Vision. You know, there's a reason why Simon has murdered people in two separate comics by two separate writers in two mainline 616 comics in cold blood, and they fit in with his character & not just edgy bait for Superman or alternate universe shit. Simon is an incredibly anxious, very privileged boy who tries to scheme his way out of bankruptcy, fails, gets powers he can't imagine, and immediately dies & stays dead for like 13 years, and when he returns is a nervous wreck. It makes sense that Simon is easy to trick emotionally or, when just having a bad day, might punch too hard & kill someone. He was doing this in 1991.

Why is Simon like this? Well now we get into the other cornerstone of many evil Supermen, and indeed many general evil comic men; bad parents. It's not fair to say this only applies to villains, as many, many heroes can attest, having bad parents is not a trait exclusive to the baby-eating genocidal manics. That said, the ratio of villains having a happy & prosperous childhood to heroes is quite staggering. Superman is always notable for his origin with Ma & Pa Kent in Smallville, to the point of which they made a very long tv show just about Smallville Superman. Superman grew up to loving parents. Simon grew up to an abusive father & to a mother, who while loved him, never seemed to be able to connect with him before Simon died in the way she'd wished possible. Clark Kent grows up in Smallville, a well-named small town in Kansas. Simon grows up wealthy, the heir to a well-off company in New Jersey. Clark Kent's background unquestionably influences him as a person, his values and his interactions, and ... Simon's can, and almost does, but obviously the bar for consistency in background isn't as high for random C-List Avenger Wonder Man than the single most archetypal hero ever, Superman.

See, Simon being a victim of abuse both at the hands of his father and at the hands of his brother have very interesting potential implications for his relationship with afterforementioned Vision. The reason why I found nothing about Simon in my standard Scarlet Witch and Vision centered fandom experience is because he's an asshole to them. Specifically, in the John Byrne WCA run, the tragic ending of the long time staple of Avengers B-plots that was Wanda Maximoff and her synthetic robot lover, the Vision. Specifically, he doesn't give Vision back their emotions & memories when Wanda asks him too, because he has a crush on her and that gives him the right to effectively ensure the death of his own sibling & Wanda's spouse, something that yeah, will definitely make her start viewing you as a potential boyfriend. I think there's a very interesting potential narrative here about cycles of abuse & how in his own relationship with Vision, Simon becomes the perpetuater of the abuse rather than the victim. He gets into a big aggressive fight with Vision during the events of Operation: Galactic Storm, and even says right there and then that he considers Vision... his child. You would think with such a big weird statement that there would be a narrative about how both Simon & his brother, Eric were abused by Sanford, and how Eric in turn and as a response abused Simon. It would say a lot about Simon's relationship to the very concept of brotherhood & fatherhood, but it's just a bizarre throwaway line in a random event nobody remembers and there's just this entire fucking decade where Simon does a completely 180 in characterisation and there is zero effort to explAIN OR EVEN TALK ABOUT THE FACT THAT IT HAPPENED, WE JUST SWEEP IT UNDER THE RUG EXCEPT FOR MULLET FLASHBACKS, I FUCKING HATE JOHN BYRNE SO GDDAMN MU--

Another element to consider; even beyond just being personally unfit for the job of Superman, Simon has other engagements. Simon has dreams of being on the silver screen, a big movie star! This is probably the second thing you know about Simon other than the relationship to Vision & Wanda; he's an actor, and trying to make it big. This is often either played as Simon just being a sellout with no artistic integrity, or Simon actually having too much integrity, and struggling in an industry that takes big action sequences over moving, heartfelt Shakespearean dramas or whatever. Whatever the case, what makes Simon feel different to other similar characters in my opinion is that the superhero gig is the day job he puts up with to support his REAL love, acting. What makes some of Simon's contemporary depictions unfulfilling is that they swap them to the more conventional way, that he's bogged down in acting work but really wants to be taking on Galactus. This is a problem we run into where Simon is given an opportunity to be a genuinely interesting character subverting very common tropes & doing it well & in a satisfying way, only for the next schmuck who just got Simon's name out of a random hat of names and did whatever they saw written on the Wonder Man tin; shit Superman.

Not only does Simon not have a heroic origin of his powers, not only is he as a person is fundamentally unsuited to superheroics because he refuses to go to therapy, but Simon doesn't even have enough committment to the superhero gig to make it his primary job, instead choosing acting, which isn't even something he has a stake in. It's a completely new field for him, and as Simon soon learns, the world of acting is not as welcome to a complete newcomer & novice with very little actual professional work to his name. Not only does he effectively give up being an Avenger to persue acting, he's not even that good an actor. Simon has powers he doesn't want, is associated with a team he doesn't really want to be in, and puts all his eggs in the acting success basket and really it's a miracle it takes Deadpool to officially bankrupt him. We open up with his first ever appearance with him getting arrested & found guilty of embezzlement, it's not like he's established to be financially safe or intelligent with his money.

Simon, I genuinely think, fits the bill as an evil Superman. I mean, he's even got a solely red & black colour scheme with a weird trademarked symbol on the chest. He is the opposite of Clark Kent in so many ways, and yet somehow... tries to be heroic? And hero Simon is way more interesting than villain Simon, I mean, that's why after the character reaches the end of his arc in Wonder Man '91 he almost immediately just fucking blows up in literal issue 1 of Force Works until Kurt Busiek, an obvious big fan of the 70s & early 80s stuff brings him back completely reimagined and firmly established as a good guy, evil Simon is just too obvious a route. What keeps me coming back to this character enough to do two comprehensive readthroughs though, is the fact that in being so much an apparent antithesis of Clark Kent, he's a subversion of most comic book hero tropes, while remaining a hero. Were this character created today, I imagine after coming back he would just stay... an antagonist. Red & black colour scheme, yup, disinterest in helping others, yup, horrible traumatic upbringing, yup, an arguably power-hungery acquistion of his abilities, yup, antagonistic relationship to a primary coloured, established heroic character, in The Vision. In fact, I think having a gothier, more evil big brother archetype in the Grim Reaper / Eric Williams is a contributing factor as to why Simon ends up a surpisingly nuanced portrayal of the conventions of the superhero genre and how a character who goes against that can still be a hero when he's given time to breathe & not given a random time travel / future plot mixed with Big Brother, thanks Peter David--

Simon Williams, Wonder Man, is to me the best case scenario when rehashing old ideas. It clearly wasn't LeeKirby who figured "yeah let's bring back the guy we created to die in issue 9 of Avengers", but as time went on & more ideas were tacked on but never really expanded upon it's created this incredible incident where we have a bunch of really good ideas in a shared soul in a gay anxious ball of ionic energy who has tricked itself into sentient thought and an android associated with Marvel's first Human Torch who is also famous for their connection to the now incredibly recognisable Scarlet Witch. Simon is the evil Superman trope, but a hero still. Simon is a failed actor who actively prefers that to being an Avenger. He doesn't like helping people and has panic attacks and stops fighting vs supervillains more than once. His best friend is furry ape mutant who he's got this bizarre sexual dynamic with. He's dating Carol Danvers & Scarlet Witch, but his position as a C-List character means he's fundamentally never going to have a real shot with them, and he seems narratively relieved whenever they break it off. He's related to an evil necromancer with a scythe hand who abused him as a kid & felt so bad about that he dedicated his life to bringing Twink Simon back without ever changing his relationship dynamics with Simon when he comes back. And yet Simon remains often a footnote, and occasionally gets some focus when people remember he was supposed to have gotten Hulk to a stalemate once. Thanks again, Peter David.

I'm not insane enough to argue that Simon was secretly Marvel's best character all along. Most of this is honestly due to Simon being too obscure to majorly fuck up because that would require insider knowledge. These are just mind-bogglingly happy accidents that resulted in an actually okay deconstruction of the evil Superman trope like 20, 30 years before that was actually the thing to do. Simon is a character honestly prime to enter the spotlight, which is exactly why it’s so terrifying it’s happening. On one hand, largely what we have heard about the production & rumours surrounding the show is positive. We have an established actor in the comic book adaptation genre, and experienced writers in comedies. On the other hand, Simon is not a major enough character to attract ire if core aspects of him are lost, and I will mourn certain things that may be lost like the evil Superman of it all, the fact that Simon was pretty much established Jewish in 2005 & has a history of queer-coding that warrants it’s own post that I may one day get brave enough to write, with certainly more panel input than this. I don’t think Simon is a character with genius writing or implementation, but I strongly believe he has potential. There are so many potential storylines just by asking the fundamental question, “What if Superman was gay and had an anxiety disorder and was also a theatre kid and actively avoided the Justice League?”. The answer, somehow, is Simon Williams, and that’s an opportunity for stories that Marvel has sat on for a while, and while this may start to change I am wary of getting my hopes up about a character who I initially was calling D List when I first started writing this.

Ultimately, Simon Williams is what most characters are; a character glued together by fan speculation & connecting the dots from various storylines to make an attempt at a linear narrative when the writers do not care and will continue to not care. Still, I found that, as fans of Vision and Scarlet Witch, but also as an Ant-Man fan, the reaching I have to do to make everything in Simon's publication make sense is me hunched over my laptop like I am right now compared to the ritualistic intensive yoga I have to do to make the 90s & 2000s make any sort of interpretation of those other characters intelligible. Simon is a character with a rare potential in comic books; to make sense. Maybe not by ordinary standards but it's easier to argue that Simon would recreate a toxic relationship with his sibling who he considers a child given his own relationship to his elder brother & father, than whatever horse shit Avengers Disassembled & House of M are supposed to be. I want to believe badly that this vision is getting seen; why else would Simon get three different solo series & an entire fucking show with an actual good actor if there wasn't some understanding that this was a potentially interesting character. I want to believe. so badly.

This is my end, I guess, & I'll say that if you're interested in any specific sources for something I've said send an ask & I'll dig out the panel somewhere. A problem with reading a character with exactly 666 appearances in like, one month like I did the first time around meant I didn't save a lot & limits of my technology that haven't translated well to where I am now. My second time around, I'm being much more methodical with posting panels, which you can see in @wonderbeast if you're interested. But I'll be happy to dig out Marvel Premiere or Avengers V1 #184 or #15 of Wonder Man (1991) for you. Really. It's fans like us who REALLY make this company go around & man I'm not letting marvel forget that. Especially with an MCU project attached.

[madhare0512]

A Comprehensive List of Spideyfist Interactions (pt.6)

hello and welcome back to: reasons Spideyfist is canon. a series where i take you through each episode of The Ultimate Spiderman and show you why i believe that Peter Parker and Danny Rand are dating in canon, or at least that they are each other’s favorites. and also give you commentary on the show itself as i do

warnings for: episode spoilers, season spoilers, action/injury description, unsolicited commentary, probable cussing, violence, caps lock

this part features episodes 7 through 13 of season 2

~~~

S2E7 Spidah-Man!

- say what you will about this episode, i know i do, but the majority of what i saw when it first came out with kinda not great. i like it alright, but it wasn’t my favorite. 

- Danny’s not in this episode until the end, so headcanon and commentary!

- cartoon characters carry sinks for the purposes of throwing

- people go insane when money is involved, never freaking fails

- dude, this entire show and the characters send like 90% of the time dumping on Peter, it’s cringey and awful. 

- Danny and Peter are standing next to each other, Danny is uneccesarily close

- “oh, i’d tell you where to stick those cameras, but i was raised better than that!” i wasn’t, but i’d do the same. you fucking go, Peter

- Boston works FAST, holy shit

- Peter Parker, New York resident, not understanding a Boston accient

- DID PETER JUST FLIP OFF THE CAMERA?

- juice box, juice box

- Peter wanting to help Ollie by NOT getting him wrapped up in the hero life when he’s so young. Peter understanding that kids are kids and need to be allowed to be kids

- the team having the best time at the water park

- Peter, despite feeling under appreciated, still goes back to New York because he has responsibilities there and knows he can’t shirk them. plus he has a team to lead and he can’t just cut them loose, that would be rude

- ahh the villains of Boston. Adam Slammer, the Plymoth Rocket, and Salem’s Witch

- good grief

- i think at this point, i’m just either gonna do only headcanons for episodes Danny’s not in or just mentions he’s not in it. maybe a mix.

- in season 3, we get wind that Spiderman’s sacrifice for New York has inspired a whole new group of heroes, but Spiderman’s been inspiring heroes since season 1 and 2

- god bless JJJ leave it alone

- team has doubts Peter isn’t coming back, but did Danny? no, no he didn’t

~~~

S2E8 Carnage

- Peter, you know something always goes wrong when you say that

- ah the Goblin returns

- probably because you HAVE been herded to something vile and villainous

- ah yes... the ongoing issues Peter has with Harry and how Harry views Spiderman

- the innocents will always be Peter’s number one priority and that’s fucking NOBEL

- oh this episode, i remember it now. this episode has BIG evidence too

- in just about evey shot after being pulled from the rubbel, if the camera’s focus isn’t solely on Peter, Danny’s in the shot too

- Harry only expects the worst from Norman and it fucking sucks for Harry because Norman has shown him he can only expect the worst

- Harry and Peter? ride or die. if Peter needs help on an assignment, Harry’s there. if Harry needs help hiding a body, Peter’s there

- side note: Danny and Luke have those vibes too

- and again i say, Goblin is the worst parts of Norman, his darkest and most intrusive thoughts

- ahhh Carnage

- Peter fighting every second to get control back

- the team deliberates and talks out of Harry’s earshot, wondering where Peter would’ve gone and what Goblin wants with him and the entire time, Danny does NOT let go of Peter’s backpack

- Danny doesn’t look. Danny doesn’t even LOOK and even so, Peter doesn’t look like Peter. so how does Danny know Peter’s back? well, Danny can read an aura and we’ve long established that Peter is “a beacon for someone with [Danny’s] power”

- shit, things are flying, people are getting hurt. what to do, what to do? well let’s start with protecting Peter’s best friend. Danny steps forward in front of Harry which i count

- the whole fight, the only one to land more than one hit was Danny, why? Danny is Peter’s favorite

- god this episode

- there are stark differences between Carnage and Venom and i think it well shows, especially in this episode

- Venom is honestly, scary

- Venom and Spiderman are a love-hate relationship

- “i can’t let you do this!” should’ve been the ultimate clue for Harry figuring shit out but NOPE

- Danny answers Peter’s call for help

- “we’re almost there” “Iron Fist, good”

- oooh shit

- the symbiote interacting with Harry is honestly the only basis Peter has for Venom and it really sets things up for the later season

- “indeed. i do. kick alot. with my feet!” this fucking kid

- “Harry!” “I’ve got him!” the IMMEDIATE reassurance, the moment of panic, then the calm. the way Danny knows. this isn’t Iron Fist talking to Peter Parker it’s Danny talking to Peter, telling him that Danny’s got this

- Danny’s doing his best and it’s so cute

- “how do i thwip?” aww Danny

- Danny asks for help, Peter’s on his level willing to do so

- this man spitting facts. cause i don’t know if it’s obvious, but Danny’s bigger in the shoulders than Peter is and Peter’s already said he doesn’t wash the costume but once or twice a month

- this episode i have love-hate relationship with, but it does give me excellent evidence

~~~

S2E9 House Arrest

- i have a love-hate relationshp with this episode too

- okay, so you might ask how this part counts too, but the only complaint Danny gets is his insence, which bother’s Peter’s sense of smell. easily fixed but Peter doesn’t ask Danny to stop. he’s got no issues compaining about the team and ther habits on any given day, but Danny never gets a complaint except for to us the viewers who don’t live in his world

- Danny also gets spoken about last, which i’m counting

- Danny throws a punch and Peter goes after him, which i count

- this fucking team is acting suspicious and it’s so cute once you know the reason

- Danny gives Peter a thank you because Danny is POLITE

- why are the team still in costume? there’s dozens of people coming over and you’re not out of costume yet?

- Peter’s not scolding Danny, he’s literally not even looking at him, he’s yelling at Ava, Sam, and Luke and Danny WALKS OVER 

- casual gnome theft

- who’s the blonde in the picture? Peter’s mom?

- robotic voices means everything is going tits up

- Peter casually scooping the weights up like they’re nothing

- Peter really only thinks the worst of Sam sometimes, which is ANOTHER thing that turns me off that ship

- BECAUSE THEY’RE ALL DEALING EITH THEIR OWN CHALLANGES PETER

- the team trying to keep Peter from finding shit out while also fighting off the house security

- this team has three stupidly strong people on it; Peter, Danny, and Luke, which gives me the “they’ve totally arm wrestled” but then you have to think about the fact that Danny’s only strong like Peter and Luke when he’s charged up the iron fist

- “Death Trap Makeover”

- when you look at Danny, he’s already got his chi charged up and ready to go as he’s being smashed between the two walls. there’s nothing stopping him, he just won’t punch his way out. why? “i’m trying not to ruin your room” this COUNTS

- “when that man is generous enough to let me sleep on his floor” Danny slept in Peter’s room fucking conFIRMED

- do i even have to say it? Danny follows Peter’s orders without question, he’s the only one who does so FROM THE BEGINNING

- Danny get knocked into the wall, Peter’s engaging the enemy in seconds

- Danny climbs up, Peter’s right behind him

- Danny and Peter standing next to each other after a battle again

- headcanon: SHIELD does bi-weekly scannings of every single thing in the house to make sure the house would be perfect in the event it was destroyed

- “we where going to tell you. the party? it was for you.” cue me crying

- Danny’s the first one to speak up, almost the second Coulson’s finished speaking

- “maybe we can do some group yoga!” Danny, sweetie, Peter would probably do anything you asked of him

~~~

S2E10 The Man-Wolf

- fun fact, this episode’s title is forshadowing for later episodes

- this episode also has big evidence in it, season 2 is just full of big evidence for this ship and it’s great

- Peter takes a hit, Danny’s the first one who responds

- i headcanon that the LMDs also have illusions for each of the team members. they break them out for solo training sessions and special occasions

- Danny and Peter standing beside each other after battle, once again

- Peter’s love of the moon

- them all being moon geeks

- “drive faster, Danny!” “faster?” proceeds to drive faster

- Danny sounds so amused and fond when he says “faster?”, it’s so cute. it counts

- Danny literally spends the rest of the episode immensely worried the second we find the scratchmarks. it’s not just worried either, he actually looks scared

- the team splits up and Peter goes with Danny and Sam, why? likely because if you remove Sam’s helmet he’s no longer got access to his powers, and Danny’s just a normal human with no special abilities aside from the Iron Fist. Luke and Ava both have access to their powers at all times and Luke’s got impervious skin

- LOOK AT THEM, they’re terrified

- Peter and John have a lot in common and i think their relationship could be good

- Danny says a wise saying that John and Sam don’t get, but Peter just says, “here’s to NOT judging a book by its cover” which implies he understood exactly what Danny was saying. counts towards time spent togther 

- “Earth to Spiderman” Danny’s literally acting like a completely different person here, I wonder- sees episode number oh that makes sense

- Peter apologizes to Danny for spacing out, which he does NOT do with other people

- well, you see, Spiderman, THESE jewels are inactive, the one in my chest is NOT

- sword!

- Danny gets thrown into the wall and the first thing he tells Peter is “stay on him, i’ll catch up!” ughhhh mans knows Peter so fucking well

- also, Peter checked on Danny before he did anything. if Danny’s talking, relatively unharmed, and saying “i’ll catch up” Peter’s fine to keep moving

- when he and Danny crash into each other, neither of them move to get up. with others, Peter’s on his feet in seconds, but with Danny, he’s content to lay there a minute

- Danny gets pinned to the floor and then picked up and once Peter sees this he’s moving and getting Danny out

- Danny’s injured in this episode to the point that he’s not getting up and it’s kinda scary cause Danny’s pretty fucking durable

- Danny’s not getting up and the walls are coming down around them, so Peter shoots his webs at Danny and pulls him closer. “Danny! i got you." i cannot explain how cute and loving this scene is to me

- Peter’s not “helping Danny walk” carrying him out, Peter’s legitamately carrying Danny bridal style!

- Danny’s first up the ladder, which might be because he can pilot the engine but may also be because he was injured to the point that he WASN’T GETTING UP

- Peter’s upset with himself because he’s leaving John behind and Danny rushes to comfort him about it

- Peter’s so supportive of his team. he’s always boosting them up and helping them out and it’s so sweet

- “on the moon, even I can pitch a Fist-Ball!” because you can’t on Earth? sir, you’re STRONGER than Luke is, wdym?

- Ava trusts that Peter’s got a plan, but Danny trusts Peter implicitely

- AND AGAIN I WILL SAY PETER ONLY HAS TO GIVE DANNY BARE BONES INSTRUCTIONS FOR DANNY TO UNDERSTAND HIS POINT

- Danny’s rushing to comfort Peter about John

- Fury may be a fucking idiot, but he’s a protective and realistic idiot and i love that for the team

~~~

S2E11 Swarm

- Danny’s not in this episode, no notable interactions. this episode is really funny though

~~~

S2E12 Itsy Bitsy Spider-Man

- in the wide shots for the opening, Peter and Danny are swimming next to each other

- the team is lucky Fury likes them otherwise, they'd be grounded

- this episode confuses me cause it's not like the team doesn't still have the control they have, they're just smaller now so it's harder to stand up to the things they normally would, like windmills or whatever it was Luke was doing

- you know the whole thing about the Maximoff twins being co-dependent in the MCU. I'm about a minute away from putting Peter and Danny on that level if they don't stop walking/standing right next to each other

- of course SHIELD has a daycare

- Loki as a child is not something I want to see again, mostly because of the route the writers took it

- also the team being oblivious

- Danny and Peter are both on the top of the piles when the team is trying the Trojan Horse escape

- you know, I really think this list wouldn't exist if the writers didn't make it so damn easy. when you start really paying attention it's so simple to see

- when Loki poofs away and then rematerializes, Peter and Danny land next to each other

- again, it's too fricking easy, Danny and Peter ate standing next to each other again

- okay so the entire fight from the team finding out the extra kid is Loki to them destroying the Destroyer armor takes 10 minutes? wack but okay

- Peter, grabbed by the head and swung around. Danny, goes in immediately

- Danny: has a problem, Peter: immediately has the solution

- I s2g if Peter and Danny don't stop standing next to each other before, during, or after battles-

- see! see! Luke is still strong enough to lift a big ass panda (which isn't light) with one hand when it has another person in it! they should be able to win the battle normally even if they're smaller!

- Loki went after Danny and Peter said "not on my watch" by webbing his legs together so he can't run anymore

- Loki goes after Peter and Danny says "not today!" by tearing out the anchors of the ferris wheel so it can be knocked into Loki

- Danny would've shot the norn stone to Peter, but Peter had a heartfelt speech to make

- the standard after battle standing right next to each other, complete with being unnecessarily close together

~~~

S2E13 Journey of the Iron Fist

- the opening sequence is adorable and I love how cartoonish it is

- Danny seems agitated from the get-go, which is the first clue that something's wrong, AND something Peter picks up on

- I mentioned in an early list that the weekly sparring session is (to my knowledge) something Dammy does specifically with Peter, and I hold to that

- "the spirit of a K'un L'un warrior beats in you" I'm sorry, I gotta just- minor fangirling squeals 

- Danny being insistant that Peter learning to fight without his webshooters, telling him that they’re only a tool, and reminding Peter that he’s more that his webshooters is so fucking cute, man

- Danny is powerful enough to block Peter’s hits without even paying attention

- of course they’re fighting on the Brooklyn bridge

- Peter being impressed by Danny’s abilities and skills

- Peter being excited and Danny IMMEDIATELY being like “hey, no, focus. this isn’t a game” because he KNOWS this guy, as we’ll later find out

- Peter gets hurt and Danny goes to catch him, which COUNTS

- there are no words exchanged, no words that are said between either of them, and they still grab onto each other. the mutual understanding, the instant communication- i just fucking-

- Danny sounds worried- actually worried when he tells Peter to grab his webshooters

- “what about all that using ones ability talk”, “repitition begets skill, neither of which lie in you against THIS assassin”- because Danny knows that kind of people Peter faces, he’s been at Peter’s side for a year now, fighting the good fight and training right next to him. Danny knows Peter can handle himself in a fight, but not against this man- further evidence Danny KNOWS who this guy is. Danny wants Peter at his best in this fight (because he knows Peter will not leave) and for that, Peter needs his webshooters

- “there is no honor in you!” 

- Iron Fist gets hurt, he falls, he hits the ground in front of some truck. he could defend himself against the truck with the Iron Fist, and get out of it, but his chi stays calm and Danny braces himself for a hit. Spider Man, the second Danny falls, is right there, webbing up the truck as fast as he can and standing RIGHT IN FRONT OF IRON FIST

- and again, Danny gets hurts, falls, and Peter says, “nope, not today!” literally sends him flying behind a fast moving cargo truck. and I’m supposed to NOT ship them? come on, man, they practically write themselves!

- AND THEN ONCE THE THREAT IS GONE HE GOES AND HELPS IRON FIST UP!! HOW AM I NOT SUPPOSED TO SHIP THIS??

- the way they both immediately flip around when Danny’s birth name is used- knowing a heroes real name is dangeous, using it when said hero is in costume is a big no-no and no one respects that more than Peter

- “is that Papa Fist?” “no, he’s-” the way Danny was just gonna explain everything to Peter. the way Danny just automatically started doing so, yes this counts, Danny doesn’t do that for other people, he’s very tight lipped about his home country

- and then Danny just gives Peter his belongings. there’s no will or other instructions, just gives everything to Peter. there’s no stipulation that Danny thought important enough to say, he’s literally leaving EVERYTHING to Peter

- and Peter doesn’t even CARE. he just wants to know what’s going on

- and, even better, Danny looks so sad, and the sad music playing in the background? no, man, i’m fucking done

- “yeah, we’re not just gonna let this happen, right?” no, no we’re not

- “why would Danny Dollat-signs sleep on my floor?” the whole rich thing and Danny giving him all his earthly possessions doesn’t even hit until later, he’s more concerned with why Danny would sleep on a floor if he doesn’t have to

- and then he immediately disregards the whole rich thing because Danny’s more important to him, he even says “it wouldn’t be enough. obviously.”

- “as flies the Iron Fist, so goes the Spiderman.” .... do I even need to say anything? do i? yeah, no, this fucking counts right here

- "beautiful” is the first thing Peter thinks about Danny’s home country. we’ll get into why that counts in another episode

- Peter makes it a point to say he’s with Danny, that he’s just visiting, because he understands that he knows NOTHING about this country and it’s customs, he’s very calm and relaxed and doesn’t even fight when he’s attacked first

- Danny needs to know nothing other than Peter is here and he’s being attacked before he’s jumping in to help, to defend his best friend coughcoughlovercoughcough against the guy he’s known since he was a child, callng Peter his guest without hesitation

- Peter asks a question and Danny answers it immediately

- “if you throw your lot in with this fool, you’ll suffer the same fate!” “gladly.” omfggggg, no hesitation, NO hesitation

- the way Danny turns back to look at Peter, to check on him

- Danny’s quick to reassure Peter that in his culture, Peter isn’t being insulted, and then is like welp, you’ve never been here, let’s get you inside and warm

- Danny just patiently answers any and every question Peter has. no one else does that! and you can blame it on the fact that no one’s as zen as Danny or Peter’s askign a lot of questions, but none of them are like that with anyone else either!

- Danny likes orange soda, that’s adorable

- “talk.” and Danny DOES

- Danny specifies Peter when he says he chose to learn

- the immediate concern for his friend, even as Danny keeps trying to explain

- also, K’un L’un is a private place, doesn’t trust outsiders, so it’s doubtful Peter would’ve gotten into a private medical area without Danny being like “i want him with me”

- he fucking- breathes deep Peter, who’s been on the ceiling and out of the way the entire scene, immediately jumps down to the floor to help Danny stand up because he needs to be on his feet for this

- Danny doesn’t even try to see about the other warriors. he knows who he wants, he knows how he can win with honor, he knows how to handle this competition. Peter’s the one he wants. Peter’s who he names. no hesitation.

- Peter keeps a hand on Danny through the entire interaction, if you notice. It’s not a “hiding” or a “holding back” or anything, he’s literally helping Danny. that hold he’s got on Danny is one to keep Danny steady, one hand on his arm, the other on Danny’s back

- “don’t take it personally” mhm mhm, yep. counts

- i’m not gonna cover the trials much, tbh. there’s not a lot i can say about them in reference to Spideyfist, but i’ll do my best

- STARTING?

- Peter fights to the last because “Danny... needs... me”

- Peter APOLOGIZES to Danny like it’s his fucking fault this guy didn’t play by the rules. this counts

- Peter still saves Scorpion even after everything

- awwww the old monks

- Danny and Peter actually have very similar fighting styles when you think about it, and nothing showcases that more than this episode. they’re both on the defense with Scorpion until they have the oppurtunity, that’s how they both are in a fight, holding back until it’s necessary to fight

- Peter realizes Danny got his eyesight back and asks about it, you can hear a little concern

- Danny choosing that moment to compliment Peter, a perfect counter point to the abuse Peter’s been suffering all say, AND the only compliment Peter cares about enough to answer 

“let’s no push it” with an amused smile

- the HUG Danny gives him, the way he doesn’t let go until the monks call for him

- and they let him go back!

- Spiderman being excited about the one year as well!

~~~

I finally finished it guys!

[tepehkwi]

hey, i was wondering if you'd be willing to talk a bit about how you knew you were twospirit? i think i am but i have doubts about claiming the term for myself. did an elder claim you as 2S?

so my tribe has a twospirit concept that is so unacknowledged in literature about our history, even our own, that i only know of one source that mentions it, and in basically every other text it's just the umbrella term "berdashe" which is just the antiquated colonizer term for any native with a "weird" "gender" expression that you'll probably find in most textbooks that even bother to cover the topic. 😑

if you want some context, this is how colonizers described us, i-coo-coo-a, or twospirit meshkwahkihaki, and it should be noted that i-coo-coo-a is not listed anywhere in our own comprehensive language dictionaries to this day:

Later, in the 1830s, non-Native artist George Catlin traveled through western North America, where he witnessed and painted a “Dance to the Berdash.” In his travelogue, Catlin called the central figure “a man dressed in women’s clothes” although the Native term, i-coo-coo-a, loosely translates to “man-woman.” In Catlin’s opinion, the “berdash” performed “the most servile and degrading duties,” although he conceded that the i-coo-coo-a was considered sacred by the Sauk and Fox (Meskwaki) communities. “This is one of the most unaccountable and disgusting customs, that I have ever met in the Indian country,” Catlin fulminated, “where I should wish that it might be extinguished before it be more fully recorded.” Later, anthropologist Mary Owen estimated that the dance—and the traditional role fulfilled by the i-coo-coo-a—did indeed vanish around 1900. [source: from an nyhs blog/article on indigenous genders]

something you should know about my people is that we do not live on a reservation, we have our own sovereign nation within iowa. yes, it's a microscopic fraction of what our actual indigenous lands were, but we experience a level of privilege that rez natives don't. and this is just my own opinion but a lot of other meskwaki/meshkwahkihaki in tama are on the conservative side with both politics and religion, and i think that our comparative or relative lack of a struggle faced by the majority of other natives in this country has created an environment where we're unfortunately no more left-leaning and no less conservative than the rest of rural iowa. so, no, an elder didn't claim me as twospirit... excuse the slight hyperbole but i would be hard-pressed to find more than a couple of elders in my community that aren't literal republicans, let alone inclusive of our own culture's gender diversity.

like i'll be honest with you, i transitioned away from home and i don't really talk about my whole "gender journey" here, since i'm not as active on tumblr as much as i am on my private twitter, but it's been kind of depressing studying in other states and meeting ndns from other tribes who completely understand my identity only to come back home and find out that my uncle's voting for trump again. 😐 we're also in a caucus state and given how the last caucus went, it's just kinda disappointing to think about the fact that we’re essentially making decisions for other natives when a lot of us are literally so willfully out of touch with other tribes.

lol i know you didn't ask for my whole ass political commentary so, sorry for that... 😭

but idk i think it's important context, because twospirit is something that came from the pan-indigenous movement era (well sort of) and it's the closest thing i have as a widely-understood term to describe myself. but thanks for asking, i hope this clarifies some things or answers your question in some way. i don't think we necessarily need to consult with elders about it. many of us straightup can't. by all means, if you think it would be a good thing to seek out elder input about claiming twospirit, go ahead, but in my experience some of us just are. i relate to the insecurity completely... 😔

just know that elder input/approval isn't the end-all-be-all.

[semper-legens]

109. Mutiny on the Bounty, by Peter Fitzsimons

Owned: No, library Page count: 562 My summary: An account of the famous Mutiny on the Bounty, where a crew of Naval sailors mutinied against their tyrannical captain - but unfortunately, the captain made it back to England, and the mutineers found themselves in hotter waters. My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

If you've been following this blog for any amount of time, you'll know that I love Boat Media. If it's set more than one hundred years ago on some sort of ship, I'm into it, especially if it's in any way based on or about real incidents. With this in mind, it's weird that I didn't know much about the mutiny on the Bounty before reading this book. It's only one of the most famous naval mutinies in English history, after all - a complex tale of a captain driven to the edge, and a crew forced to live with a tyrant. Adding to that are racial and sexual politics, as well as the imperialist nature of the white crew versus the native people. It's an absolutely fascinating piece of history, and this book represents it well! It's told in almost a prose style, though the author takes pains to point out that all dialogue is either taken from a primary source or is assumed based on other evidence. The book has an extensive bibliography, and the citations in the text are plenty. I did find that this framing was a little sensationalised at times - the focus by the author on the attractive Tahitian women trended towards the misogynistic, as well as being exoticising and fetishising. But overall, this is both a comprehensive and an entertaining account of the mutiny on the Bounty.

This is really a story about class, rank, and power. The captain, Bligh, was a tyrant and a monster, ready to punish and even execute his crew for the smallest perceived slight. The crewmen rightfully mutinied against him, risking their lives in the doing, but began to fall apart themselves once they returned to Tahiti. See, many of the men had taken Tahitian women either as wives or concubines, and insisted on taking them to Pitcairn Island, where they eventually hid out. Along with them were a few Tahitian men. Now, you might think that the mostly-white English crewmen, remembering how poorly they were treated by Bligh, might have considered the Tahitians their equals and not essentially enslaved them and given them far fewer rights and belongings on the island. But the mutineers were just as racist as their fellow white men! Which led to a lot of them being killed by the Tahitians when they were pushed too far, and the Tahitian men were killed in turn. Also, the English men treated the Tahitians like they were idiots even before this incident. They were patronising and assumed ignorance and mocked the Tahitians' culture, despite theirs not exactly being the best either.

Meanwhile, back in England, many of the crew who were loyal to the Captain but wound up still on the Bounty with the mutineers were accused of being mutineers themselves. One, a midshipman, managed to escape the death penalty by leveraging his family's money and connections. Another also was pardoned. Three, including a teenager, were not so lucky, and were hanged for mutiny against their tyrannical Captain after being imprisoned in awful conditions. After Bligh returned to England, he was treated as a hero, but by the time the midshipman and others were returned, people were beginning to realise what a bastard this man was. And yet, he continued to be a Captain. Because damn it, he was a Navy man, and as the Captain of the ship was not in line to be summarily executed for treating his crew like dogs. Whereas mutiny? That was a hanging offence, and one laid on the heads of the mutineers. Mutineers must only have mutinied because they were evil, you see. Never mind that their Captain was abusing them, punishing them for next to nothing, and was so awful that this wasn't even the last time he would be mutinied against. Class in 19th century society sure was something.

Next up, we're back to CHERUB, as James goes on his first full mission.