#queer coding is becoming a lost art

[babybluebae-933]

straight people think gay people make being gay their whole personality the same way you think you’ve never seen someone with good lip filler.

because when you don’t see it, you don’t see it. you’re mistaking not noticing something as proof of it’s absence.

“i have no problem with gay people as long as they don’t shove it in my face” well, you see the problem with that is you just assume everyone not shoving it in your face is straight so…

[nerdygaymormon]

Happy Pride 🏳️‍🌈

I want to wish a happy Pride to:

Glitter

Glitter represents joy, celebration, and transformation, and can create a sense of wonder. Glitter is used for self-expression and even rebellion. All of which are good reasons for why queer people have embraced glitter, from drag performances to protest movements, as a way to highlight and celebrate queer identities and experiences. This is why the sparkle emoji ✨ is often used as code for "gay" or "queer." Within the queer community, glitter is symbolic of joy, confidence, and the power of self-expression.

Watermelon

Because the watermelon is composed primarily of water, it is used as a symbol for sexual fluidity and abrosexuals. Abrosexuality refers to a fluid sexual orientation where someone experiences changes in sexual or romantic attraction over time. The Abrosexual pride flag's colors of pink, white, and green are similar to the colors of watermelon.

Crochet Clothing

Crochet has become a popular element in queer fashion as a way to express identity and creativity. For queer women, who are often viewed as breaking traditional gender roles, doing crochet is a way to reclaim traditionally feminine crafts, and for queer men it's a way to subvert gender expectations. Crochet allows for a high degree of customization and personalization, which is appealing to people expressing their individuality and challenging gender norms. Having Olympic gold medalist Tom Daley become a prominent crochet & knitting influencer further cements the link between crochet fashion and the queer community.

Butterflies

Due to the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly, butterflies are a symbol of transformation. Because of this, butterflies are used to symbolize gender transition and transgender identity.

Vibrant Hair Colors

Queer people who are in the closet often try to blend in and stay under the radar, and many queer people grow up in conservative communities which emphasize traditional gender fashions. Having bright, vibrant hair color is a way to push back against that and is a way to explore and embrace our queer identity. It signals boldly and unapologetically that you are confident in who you are.

Lesbian Manicure

The lesbian community has historically been closely associated with short fingernails, in part as a rejection of traditional female fashion norms. For femme lesbians who prefer the aesthetic of long, sharp nails, the practical compromise is to keep two fingernails short, usually the index and middle fingers, which are nicknamed the "party fingers," in order to safely and easily engage in sexual stimulation and digital penetration.

Both shorter nails overall and the 'party fingers' style of manicure have become symbols of lesbian pride and a form of mutual identification between queer women in public.

The Golden Girls

The Golden Girls' appeal to the LGBTQ+ community, particularly gay men, stems from a combination of factors including the show's themes of chosen family, its campy aesthetic and humor, and the real-life activism of its stars in support of AIDS charities and marriage equality. The television show addressed LGBTQ+ issues and positively portrayed characters who were gay or lesbian, which was pretty groundbreaking for the time.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt

The AIDS Memorial Quilt is largest community arts project in history, and helps us remember the unique lives and stories of those we’ve lost to HIV/AIDS. The quilt is composed of 3’ x 6’ panels which are decorated in honor of an AIDS victim. These have been displayed in small and large settings, and there's even an interactive online version. The quilt was a way raise awareness of the AIDS epidemic, humanize those who died from this disease, change the social stigma regarding HIV/AIDS, and to advocate for funding into research & treatment.

Thrifting

Thrifting is often associated with the queer community as it provides a space for creative self-expression and gender exploration, and many thrift stores actively support LGBTQ+ organizations and initiatives. In a thrift store will be fashion in a variety of styles, fabrics, and decades, it's a place to experiment with style and identity and create unique looks as you can find clothing which might not be available or accepted elsewhere

[catbountry]

It has been 22 years since 9/11; I was 15 years old in second period art class when a kid, who'd been running down the hallway, opened the door and announced a plane had hit the World Trade Center, and then ran off down the hall, leaving everyone confused. The principal advised teachers not to turn on televisions for us when this was happening, leaving us in further confusion as he tried, feebly, to carry out the rest of the day. We were dismissed before lunch, before fourth period ended.

There are people who are able to legally drink that weren't born yet when this happened and let me tell you, the actual event was fucked up but what happened afterwards, the decisions made in the wake of this fucking event, are a big reason why everything is so fucked up now.

I remember the color-coded terror threat chart, explained by Tom DeLay, who would become a minor internet meme just because of a weird photo of his face. I remember the phrase "known unknowns" in regards to justifying the invasion of Iraq. The "yellow cake" uranium. Being assured that there were weapons of mass destruction. Shock and awe. Bush in a flight suit in front of that "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" sign. The 2000's was the decade of neo-conservatism and 9/11 was a glorious and golden opportunity to have what America had lost with the fall of the Soviet Union; an ideological enemy that hated us because of how great we were. A perfect vessel to pump patriotic sentiment into the public. And it worked... kind of. Not so much for us younger people, those of us who were teenagers or in our 20's. You have to understand that we were at a point where Jon Stewart, the host of the Daily Show, was considered to be some sort of beacon of truth. We would rather get our news from a satirical news program than the actual news, because Stewart would at least recognize the absurdity of it all. A lot of artists did. Green Day's American Idiot is considered to be their most important album and the whole thing was a protest album. I've always had a soft spot for Radiohead's Hail to the Thief for the same reason. Counterculture was dark and bitter and cynical and brooding, and often incredibly edgy, flying directly in the face of the propaganda about how great America was. Counterculture was more queer, more atheist, dressed in black and online, making memes about 9/11. 9/11, this day that was supposed to be symbolic of the nation's greatest modern-day tragedy since the assassination of John F. Kennedy or the bombing of Pearl Harbor, was being photoshopped to make it look like Hulk Hogan was taking down the Twin Towers through sick wrestling moves. 4chan seems to have since been infected with reactionary brainworms over the course of the 2010's, but in the 2000's, counterculture wasn't conservative. It was making conservatives upset. We saw destruction and mass human death played on repeat over and over and we grew numb to it. Desensitized. We saw the obvious emotional ploy that was being used as an excuse to inflict even more violence and oppression on people on the other side of the globe. We reveled in shock sites, in edgy jokes, in transgression, in scaring the normies.

The young men who fall into the alt-right rabbit hole, who might not even be old enough to remember 9/11... I can't help but wonder what they think of it. Because they still want to be edgelords, but now to own the libs. To work in service of the very same people that we were trying to piss off 20 years ago. Trump spoke on 9/11 about how now, the Trump Tower, which had once been the tallest building in Manhattan, was now back to being the tallest building in Manhattan. He's a completely different breed from Bush, Cheney and company. Completely self-interested. Not even bothering with the pretext of things like conviction or truth. Truthiness incarnate. Embrace it. Feel it. Be it.

I think back to a few years ago, I posted a doge meme with the child doge in front of the Twin Towers, with a joke about how great the future was going to be in the coming decade. I had a teenager try and educate me on how insensitive this was. They hadn't even been born yet and I snapped at them that the meme was a real sentiment, that all of us who were old enough to remember essentially watched our futures explode on television, over and over, in a fireball of jet fuel.

This went stream of consciousness again. It always does. It's hard to summarize 9/11 and its aftermath in a cohesive way because we're still living in the shadow of it. COVID-19 is now the big historical event that traumatized us all that we will have to reckon with for decades to come, and how it affected young people growing up at the time. The new scar on our collective psyche. But 9/11 will continue to be that formative scar. Before that for me, it was Columbine, but only because the aftermath did directly affect me. Before that? Princess Diana's death, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the O.J. Simpson trial, and of all of those, the bombing was perhaps the most actually impactful on us. Before 9/11, it was the largest terrorist attack on the United States, carried out by a far-right racist retaliating against the FBI firebombing a compound because a pedophile cult leader with a bunch of guns refused to give up and used his child brides as human shields. That'd be Waco, by the way.

There was another bombing of the World Trade Center that happened in 1993. It was much smaller, using a bomb inside a van in a parking lot underneath; it's the reason Biggie rapped about "blowing up like the World Trade." Osama bin Laden was also behind that one but that wouldn't be fully realized by us until 1996. It only killed six people. It was considered a failed attempt; it was supposed to take down the entire North Tower. It didn't come out of nowhere. The CIA knew that this was in motion since Clinton was in office, and this ball got rolling because of training the United States offered to resistance fighters in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 80's. I remember the shock I felt first seeing that photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam Hussein's hand, knowing about the Gulf War and living through the War in Iraq. All these puzzle pieces are scattered on the floor and my brain is making connections between all of them as I try and fit them together. I'm looping red string around push pins and asking who Pepe Silvia is, except it's not a conspiracy, it's just me trying to fully grasp this event that happened in my lifetime, before I was an adult but after I'd started paying attention to the news regularly and had developed an interest in politics. Just as I was forming my own political beliefs. 9/11 and its aftermath has informed so much of who I am politically, and what my values are. George W. Bush is my Nixon, and yet, somehow, things got so much more cartoonishly worse as I entered my 30's that I was in denial about it until COVID. Trump's presidency felt like a clown show. How on earth was I supposed to take this man seriously? This motherfucker made the neoconservatives appear restrained and reasonable by comparison, and those motherfuckers are actual war criminals.

I can only really tell people who are too young to remember what this era was like what it was like. It's hard to explain if you weren't there in that moment. We're seeing Y2K nostalgia become a thing, which fits, because of the 20 year minimum big nostalgia cycle, as those whose childhood was 20 years ago are now young adults. And some of those adults were born after 9/11. They never knew the world before it. I knew, but I was a child and couldn't really fully grasp it. The 90's felt very distinct from the 2000's, with it's very open cynicism and even nihilism in the very first years of a society with no Soviet Union.

If only we knew how bad things really would become.

[humanteethmarksonhumanbone]

in honor of the fever dream that was july resulting it the creation of 8 (akbzkajaja EIGHT??? idk how i did that) OCs here is their introductions: +quizzes

Uni-ted Fears Crew (tma ocs) 

Molly Tindell she/her (it?) - avatar for the End, crisis hotline volunteer, 19 yo. After deciding to volunteer for a crisis hotline she discovers her abilities to… kill people like over the phone, technically the Fog™️ does it and shes just like a bridge. She thinks shes the chosen prophet of Death cause.. of course she does 🙄 /affectionate (shes the og oc)

Ángel Santiago he/she - avatar for the Eye/Hunt, priest in training, forces confessions 25 yo. Confessions Booths are inherently Eye coded but waiting for people to confess isn’t enough for the guy so she goes all s4 Jon and stalks people cornering the and munching on those juicy secrets cause like molly he has a prophet complex

Bridie Milligan she/her- avatar for the corruption/desolation, book restorationist 26 yo. After taking an internship at st Christina's she discovers a book that refuses to be restored (mold grows back, any work she does just come back worse) it becomes her obsession cause she believes in the preservation of memories and history, however the more she works with the book the more her own memories start to corrupt (basically the book is some artifact that destroys history cause irony, and preying on her worst fear of forgetting and letting people be forgotten)

Dante Montgomery he/him- avatar for the buried, traps people in catacombs 21 yo. The stereotypical rebellious kid of a rich family, hr grew up in France and was sent to England to avoid murder charges (hang with me) after he accidentally (?) killed his Ex boyfriend. After a few months at the university her discovers the Catacombs, gets lost and is presumed dead but actually he was just doing his avatar magical girl transformation thingy

+ Quetzál Gómez - they/he/she, Avatar of the Eye, journalism major investigating the creepy stuff that happens around the St Christina’s (they dont go to that university tho) he’s sort of unofficial, they just sort of appeared but i love her so he stay.

story: Saint Christina’s catholic university students individual (sometimes crossing) journeys to avatar hood 

Smithsonian Sapphic

Maya Barker she/they - Queer/Sapphic, works at an aquarium, Julies gf. Grew up near the ocean and loves all the creatures.

Juliette Vaughn she/her- demi sexual/demi romantic Bisexual, works at an art museum mayas gf. biggest history nerd with a tea addiction youll ever meet.

Fin Barker he/him -aro/ace maya’s twin brother, trans masc bass player, chronic third wheel (of his own volition)

story- museum curator x aquarium worker fall in love. My little cheesy hallmark where nothing bad happens ever. also they kiss infront of a sappho statue/painting cause obviously

Grove Springs

Lucy Maier she/her- from 1964 16yo.

Simone Chada she/they - from 2024 17yo.

story: so its all starts with Simone, she is a girl from our time (2024) and she finds this radio thing (like the ones you talk to and stuff) she gets into contact with another girl, Lucy.  They hit it off and become fast friends but over time they start to realize stuff specifically that they might not be from the same decade Lucy is from ‘64 and so yeah their just super confused and eventually odd stuff starts happening in the town, there are old styles of car from simone, “new” cars for lucy, shops start looking different (so basically their worlds are melding together into a mix of new and old stuff)  so they hypothesize that its the radio thats causing all of this and the only way to fix it is to destroy the radios to send thing back to normal but it might mean loosing each other

tldr: radio weirdness melds the past and present, the only way to stop is to destroy the radios even if it means loosing 

Silt verses ocs

pippa “sister strider” she/her- fell into the great gull river as a kid and eashrd up near a small rundown comune for thr Trawler man without many lf her memories. she grows up there being basically an extra hand.

lyra christopher they/he- used to live bear glottage, not alot is known about yheir backstory but they have alot of siblings. they are faithless and like pippa end up at the comune unconscious and injured.

story- pippa find lyra and nurses him back to health they become close friends dispitr lyras initial hesitation. However one day lyra goes my missing and is revealed to have been sacrificed with out pippas knowledge. Pippa is distraught and runs away where she eventually meets a god of lost things who is looking got her.

Maritime emos

Wilbur- Island resident, partially deft in his pedt ear. very mellow and sad. leads bowie around the island reluctantly

David “bowie”- goes to the island for a documentary hes making on the legends and haunted light houses

story- David goes to a small northern island reasrching thr myths and legends aamd haunted light house for a documentary hes making. Wil is forced to show him around the island and they fall in love. Bowie has to go home leaving Wil distrought however he makes his way back the the island a few years later

based on a dream i had

quizzes:

[anthropologistfromentropy]

N and S for the ask game!

N - 3 things I want to see (more of) in Major Grom fandom:

- Rag and Sergey's plurality, especially the more vulnerable side of Sergey and during both childhood and adulthood

- Sergey and Oleg being friends with other Bubble characters. Childhood friends with Igor (preferably continuing to adulthood and leading to a poly relationship). Friendship with Poet, Chrysalis, Balor.

- Sergey/Bird being a fiercely protective mother/father. Preferably with a foster/adopted child who is queer, traumatized, becomes the next Plague Doctor. Bonus points for both of them being trans.

BONUS: Crossover with The Last Trial/Dragonlance. Raistlin/Caramon makes an interesting parallel to serovolk IMHO. Imagine the Time of the Raven, but Raistlin and Takhisis showing up through a portal instead of Kutkh, terrorizing St Petersburg. Takhisis using both Sergey and Raistlin. Sergey and Raistlin being little shits to each other and to Oleg and Caramon, but eventually being friends. Focus on Sergey's vulnerability and mental illness. Maybe with Rag being noticeably autistic and nonverbal/having selective mutism?? Oleg taking care of and protecting Sergey like Caramon does for Raistlin. (And maybe Raistlin being plural too? There have been TLT versions with two Raistlin's on stage and implying plurality.)

Also more fanfics in English.

S - personal headcanons for Major Grom/Bubble comics:

- Sergey barely spoke to anyone but Bird as a young child. Rag is a child alter and has selective mutism, speaks only to Oleg, Sergey and Bird.

- Sergey was diagnosed with oligophrenia (intellectual disability) as a 4 year old, because he refused to speak and cooperate with the doctor's tests. (He probably used the diagnosis and bribes to avoid mandatory conscription. Rubinstein used the diagnosis to forcibly institutionalize Sergey.)

- Balor is nonbinary

- Oleg's father was a criminal but a loving father. He saw his father be shot and die in front of him, like Igor. He had to ran away from home to protect his own life and his family. Was a street child for a few months, that's when he started smoking.

- Oleg is a social orphan, his mother and younger sibling are alive but he has no attachment or contact with them

- He cried for his father every night for a year, hasn't thought of him since. Sergey held his hand quietly, in secret.

- Igor lost his mother as a very young child. Not sure if it was death or abandonment, tho. Could even been at birth, making Igor feel guilty about killing both of his parents.

- The whole Razumovsky system is trans, probably nonbinary transfem. They are so Venus and Dionysus coded.

- Igor, Sergey and Oleg were in the same martial arts class as children.

- Oleg visited ancient Roman and Crusader ruins in Syria, wishing he could show them to Sergey.

- In my historical AU, Oleg becomes friends with T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) during ww1, in Syria. He also becomes an agent for Okhrana (the tsarist secret police). Sergey is an engineer, factory owner and a socialist revolutionary.

- Sergey prefers classical music, but he also likes Kerrigan and other more poetic and political rap music. Especially for sparring. Oleg listens to 90s rock, both Russian and foreign.

[leonsleftbicep]

WOW OC POST?????

i know this is a lot different from my usual stuff

this is Bero Moreno(left) and Eend Knowles(right). they are husbands.

dont mind my dirty nails

(art from september but still accurate to their designs)

more information/backstory under the cut, YIPPIE!!!

i love these goofs so much!

basic info:

fun fact Eend is an android (i made her while i had covid and was watching some dude play 'detroit becomes human' so shes super inspired by that). she was originally a man. but over time as i updated her design more and more, i was like "eh, what if i actually have a female oc for once". since this storyline is already incredibly queer i decided that her transition from male to female in her design was part of her storyline.

Bero is the one with the tragic background, which i may someday share here. Bero lost his left forearm after years of neglecting some quite severe nerve damage. he himself created Eend to help him with tasks he couldn't do after his amputation.

how it all happened aka Eends backstory:

the whole "how did Eend and Bero get together?" part is simple Eend deviating from her code. having human feelings and the idea of being something she wasn't causing the deviation. after the deviation and Beros acceptance of the fact that she wanted to understand more about the world and to be human. she was trusted with herself, Bero told her that she has a home where he is and she can always come back anytime at all.

and that made her realize something, but before she could make a complete decision she went out on her own. got a job, rented out an apartment, learned more about herself.

she after 2 years of living on her own, visiting Bero every once in a while, and figuring out "oh shit im in love with my creator".

moral of the story is after 8 years of those two knowing each other they started to date.

and then the kids showed up. no i will not explain further.

some day i will make either a character intro art or just some writing of who they are and their defining characteristics.

[daycourtofficial]

nooo bby ignore the anon 😭 the entire definitive point of “coded” is- stripped down to its skeketal form, is the conveying of a message or theme. its like, when someone says “me coded” to a cunty looking peacock strutting around “ERMMM YOU ARENT A BIRD SO ITS NOT YOU CODED 🤓” I completely understand the stripping of a fundamental narrative or reducing something to something it is not, but you weren’t erasing or belittling anything and I doubt that people are suddenly going to be forgetting the true intended meaning of the song. the words at their core represent lost love and a melancholic yearning which transcends all sexualities, because at that point, what is anything anymore?

Removing context from art and still looking at themes of yearning and wrong choices is something that is prevalent throughout all sexualities and I think it’s incredibly relatable. For instance there are so many songs about hetero forbidden romances that I imagine a lot of queer folk really relate to in a way that wasn’t intended when the song was written.

But also I understand being defensive of a sapphic song that’s become so popular and is probably so relatable to many wlws I can understand the desire to keep it from hetero interpretations

I do think the relationship between art and its viewer is complex because I don’t think you need to understand the context of songs to have them move you in some way and I think it’s also okay to ignore context and provide your own interpretations at times

[aringatherer]

Arin Gatherer Intro

 The Arin Gatherer project is fantasy cat xenofiction inspired heavily by Warriors, projects such as @bonefall and @cats-of-eden-valley, and various West African mythologies. Links to info shall be included on this masterpost as they’re added. Feel free to send in asks about lore, changed plotlines, etc! In this project some focuses are: 1) Engaging worldbuilding that ties into the plot. 2) Attempting to remove the problematic material of the biggest inspiration, and adding queer and neurodivergent kitties. 3) Adding various wacky and wonderful belief systems, and magic. So much magic.   Tag Guide: #kittylore: worldbuilding #scribbles: art

#snippets: writing

#musings: thoughts and concepts that aren’t set in stone #character profiles: profiles of revamped characters for easy scrolling. Long ago, the prideful and aggressive Glarings of Bough, Marsh, Stone and Savannah at the center of the Hunter’s Vale set themselves up to fail. They thought themselves above all other cats, scorning the Wanderer’s code and violently enforcing the borders of their supernaturally blessed lands. The spirits looked favorably upon them, after all--their ancestors were eager to share their wisdom, their nature spirits easy to please, and the Spirit of Magic itself had granted them boons that ran in their blood. Surely that meant they were chosen by the stars. But when Magic disappeared a few generations ago, their society was tilted on its axis. Desperate to cling to the illusion of superiority, they became even more aggressively xenophobic, but turned to battling each other as well. Groups of discontented cats looking to return to the Good Old Days no matter the cost are gaining increasing political power. Young cats dying in battle becomes increasingly common, and it is in this turmoil that Echo Gazer (nee. Bluestar) of the Boughs finds a lost housecat in the woods and offers her a home. Fox (nee. Firestar) isn’t sure what to make of all this drama at first, especially not with the dire warnings of the Sangoma Moss Seer (nee. Spottedleaf). But when she discovers a piece of the Glarings’ hidden history, she decides to stick around for the ride with the help of her friends Lichen (nee. Greystripe) and Crow (nee. Ravenpaw). There’s nothing she loves more than a good mystery, after all.

[psychoticwillgraham]

long ass fucking emotional post about what it means to make it to my 28th bday under the read more

also making two bday playlists for myself: a funny one and an emotional one celebrating my journey so far. I know, 28 doesn’t seem like an important birthday, but for me? it’s everything. from something who planned to die on its 16th birthday to now, has been a hell of a journey. the vast majority of it has been heartbreaking, but through all the new trauma and old, I’ve become a much different person. i used to be a hermit basically, a high school dropout who wouldn’t talk to anyone irl and even barely online. then, the glee fandom (for all its evils) happened for me and I got to meet an Australian person irl, someone who flew all that way just to meet their weird little klaine mutual, at just 14.

then, I discovered cosplay and conventions, and in that process, the beginnings of my personal identity. I’d already been struggling with severe self harm and the realization that I was some kind of queer (initially a lesbian, then a trans man within the span of less than a year), and cons gave me a place that I could dress however I wanted, act how I wanted, even get lost in acting as the character im cosplaying. I didn’t have to be a girl, I could be a boy (which I did, and used the excuse of cosplay to get my mom to buy me my first binder, but after that she caught on), I could be everything, I could even be nothing. That was my outlet creatively which would eventually lead to my drag career once I turned 21, which was an impossible dream for 16 year old me since I thought I’d never make it to that age.

unfortunately, I met my major and longest abuser (for at least 9 years who continues to be in my life bc I can’t let go) at a con around this age (16). that would set off a 9 year period of sexual abuse, grooming, and rape, that I still struggle to recover from bc it was all I knew until I was 25/26. I’d never had a relationship with a man that wasn’t abusive in some way, and still haven’t. that’s a whole other post for another time when I can handle it better.

but over that period of time, I consumed all drag related media that I could and eventually responded to an open casting call for local drag performers, pretty much anyone who’d ever wanted to do it. most of them had already been part of established local ish drag families, except for me. I literally started from jack fucking shit and I was almost too scared to perform every time I did. I’d been in theatre, but I was always in the chorus and could never get the courage to actually be on stage in any kind of speaking role. but then fast forward to age 21, where I worked the grind for 5 years up the local drag hierarchy, even though I’m still being discounted on account of me being afab and a king, im more of the ‘underdog’ in ppl’s eyes. ppl love me and want more of me, but the current ones on charge just don’t. im still gonna work the grind until I get where I want to be.

but through drag, I found myself. i became an entirely different person. im miles more social than I’ve ever been, im light years more confident, and learning to assert myself. it was like a rebirth for me and I will defend this art form till my death.

i beat alcoholism, the thing that nearly killed me several times, most notably in 2019 when I was so far gone that they didn’t think even activated charcoal would work. thank god it did but if I’d had just one more glass of straight vodka or two more acetaminophen I’d be dead. and if I hadn’t told mom about what I did when I did, I would’ve also been dead. even five minutes later and I would’ve been dead. y’all I was legit about to be coded when they gave me the charcoal, and I did have a near death experience (i hovered above my body and saw the harsh hospital lights above me and they were extra bright, but I wasn’t being forced to go, I didn’t hear God or anything at all, i just hovered there for about 30 seconds and went back to my body) which I’ve suppressed the memory of until now.

I’ve come such a long way from that, and from my horrible childhood, and yes I was thrown off guard from grandma’s death, and I consider everything before that my old life, and everything since a second rebirth, like I have an entirely different life. it’s still haunting me every single day and it does whenever I go past her closed off room, and I still feel her very presence in this house and with me everywhere I go.

things have been immensely difficult, but I’ve survived, and yes I’ve come out a completely different person, and I’ve changed. but we all change through life and I was changed by my grandmother’s love for me and her presence from the very day I was born, and changed by her death. it’s been a change for the better, and she can rest easy knowing that I’ll never forget her or how fiercely she fought for me through my addiction when everyone including my psych team gave up on me and were about to just let me drink myself to death, but not her.

she let me lay on her floor every night and rant and talk about literally anything and everything, would share her saltine crackers and tootsie rolls with me so I’d have at least something to eat even if it was nothing substantial. she insisted that if I drank, I had to drink in her room so she could watch my every move since she was terrified of me dying alone in my room. if I passed out there (which I did most nights in the later stages of my addiction), she would do all she could to make me a bed out of blankets on the floor, even when she couldn’t walk anymore, so that I wouldn’t be sleeping on the hard, nasty carpet.

she gave me a place to just be, and I still think she’s the only reason I’m still alive.

because of grandma’s love, I’m still standing here today, a completely changed person, but at least I’m still alive.

i planned to die at 16, then 18, then 21, then 25, and then at 28. but I’m still here, against all odds, and I’m so grateful that I am.

here’s to the rest of my life, a very long life.

[moondust-bard]

~About Me~

• My pronouns are she/they

• You may call me either by my pen name, Moira Bard, or by my chosen name, Luna. I will answer to both.

• I have… 4.5 indoor cats. Yes, I know that’s a lot of cats. Taming and caring for the feral gremlins in my neighborhood has become a hobby

• I’m autistic. And probably ADHD, too.

• I’m also a visually impaired person with albinism

• I enjoy mythology, folklore, fairytales, and world history

• I identify as queer

• Aside from writing, I enjoy editing fiction, playing DnD, studying herbalism, singing, stage-acting, studying astrology, graphic design, watching history documentaries, interior design, crafting with modeling clay, sketching, reading fantasy books, watercolors, practicing tarot, and baking

• Is my goal to traditionally publish? Not sure. Currently, the plan is to do those things which bring me the most joy— and that includes storytelling

• I’m In my mid-20s, but I’m secretly an ancient hermit hidden in a stone cottage, nestled in a dark wood untouched by sunlight and civilization. Through some arcane magic I shan’t divulge there is indeed an internet connection.

Get to know me tag here

I am open to:

character voice-act ✅

Beta-read ✅

Proofread ✅

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Create book and character playlists ✅ (search the tag “songs for playlists” for examples)

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My asks and inbox are both open!

About My Writing & Related Topics

• I’m a plotter, though I’ve recently been straying from adhering to a strict outline and allowing the characters and my own whims to dictate the story

• I write mostly fantasy and sci fi for adults and young adults

• I would like to indie publish at some point— though I’m in no rush. For now, I write because I can’t not tell stories

• I’m also adapting some public domain works into scripts, mostly because my friends and I need fresh audition pieces

• I draft with scrivener and speech-to-text software

• my pen name is Moira Bard. I chose it because it evokes a sense of ethereal whimsy— two words I feel encompass my energy quite nicely

• I prefer comments and reblogs over likes— but don’t let me tell you how to writeblr. All interactions are appreciated!

Here are my 2024 writing goals

~My WiPs~

Lost Souls’ Night Series

Genres: mythic fantasy, young adult

Current Stage: draft of book 1 shelved for later edits; plotting books 3-5

WiP Tags: wip: lsn

Read the wip intro!

Character Masterpost coming soon! — meet four of them here

Cultures Masterpost coming soon!

Locations Masterpost coming soon!

Religions Masterpost coming soon!

Excerpt 1 & 2

Potent Poison, Treasured Tonic (Her Enchanted Garden Series, Book One)

Genres: new adult, urban portal fantasy

Current Stage: world-building, plotting, and character development in progress

WiP Tags: wip: pptt

Character Masterpost

Faerie Courts Masterpost coming soon!

Faerie Religion Masterpost coming soon!

Read the wip intro!

The Bloody Divine (Unholy Covenant Duology, Book One)

Genres: gothic fantasy, horror, adult, romance

Current stage: first draft written; book 2 is 20% outlined

WiP Tags: wip: tbd

Read the wip intro!

Read my excerpts: 1 2 3 4

Character Masterpost coming soon!

Religions Masterpost coming soon!

Locations Masterpost coming soon!

Shadefyre (Lost in the Witherwoods Series, Book One)

Genres: new adult, fantasy

Current stage: character development and world building; first 4 books 50% outlined

WiP Tags: wip: ww

Read the wip intro!

Character Masterpost coming soon!

Religions Masterpost coming soon!

Locations Masterpost coming soon!

Species Mastetpost coming soon!

Learn about the covens

Zenith Code (City of Crystal and Chrome Duology, Book One)

Genres: sci fi, dystopia, YA

Current stage: worlsbuilding, character development; detailed outline 75% done. Two books set in this world are 50% outlined.

WiP Tags: wip: zc

Read the wip intro!

Character Masterpost coming soon!

Hunting Ground (a Noble Dragons novel)

Genres: romantasy, adult

Current stage: draft 1 is done

WiP Tags: wip: hg

Read the wip intro!

Character Masterpost coming soon!

Clans Masterpost coming soon!

Creatures of Fate Series

Genre: romantasy, adult

Current Stage: drafting book 1

Wip Tags: Wip: CoF

Intro to Book One coming soon!

Meet Book One’s MC!

~ My socials ~

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Feel free to tag me in ask games and interactive posts!

~Resources I’ve Made~

Songs for playlists masterpost

Blurb Writing Tips

Writer’s Guide to Conquering Executive Dysfunction

I co-run moon+seraph — a blog dedicated to encouraging and supporting the writing community here on tumblr

PLEASE KEEP IN MIND that my blindness makes me reliant on screen readers— you might also know this as text-to-speexh software. I use this tech to make tumblr more accessible to ne. One of the limits of the tech I use is that hashtags aren’t picked up and read to me. Please be aware that any messages left for me to read in the tags of a post… well, won’t be. I can’t see them and my tech won’t read them. I prefer feedback be left in comments and the text area on posts and revblogs for this reason.

[celeborne]

will’s art and the d&d party have always been a big part of mike and will’s relationship

i find it so interesting how in the very first season, they make it clear that will is an artist and very passionate about drawing. he draws things that mean a lot to him and gives his artwork to the people he loves most.

they chose to show mike looking through will’s drawings of their party (and confirmed that mike collects them and has a binder filled with them) after he thought he lost him. they could’ve used anything else, like mike looking through photos of them together or maybe d&d figures they used to play with, but they specifically chose will’s drawings to highlight how important art is and how it’ll play an important part in their relationship later on (like when mike finds out the truth about the painting from season 4 and eventually realises his feelings for will).

season 2

when will is possessed, joyce is telling will how she gave him a box of crayons for his birthday and he drew a big rainbow space ship and she was so proud of him. i still remember when season 2 came out, people immediately knew this was queer subtext (since will was written as queer). i don’t think joyce specifically meant it in that way in the show, will just simply drew a rainbow ship because he had lots of colours, but it was definitely supposed to be a little hint directed towards the audience. it’s also interesting how they specifically chose this memory and then shortly after, mike talks about the day they first met and how asking will to be his friend was the best thing he’s ever done. see how they've used art and mike in the same scene again?

season 3

mike and will have an argument where mike projects a lot and gets defensive. he’s forcing himself to be a certain way (even finn said this in an interview) and trying so hard to be what society considers “normal” (aka straight). society expects boys their age to start talking to girls, and that’s what mike feels like he has to do. will says “you’re ruining our party” (and sometimes when mike and will talk about the party, it’s also code for their own relationship) and he’s clearly upset that his best friend is becoming distant. then mike eventually asks “i mean, what did you think, really? that we were never gonna get girlfriends? that we were just gonna sit around in my basement all day and play games for the rest of our lives?”. then will says “yeah. i guess i did. i really did”, because that’s all he’s wanted. he feels safest when he’s with mike and playing d&d is an escape and distraction from the real world. mike’s basement is basically his second home, and a cute detail that many people missed is when mike saves will in season 2 on halloween night and tells him “i’m gonna get you home, okay?”, he actually takes him to his basement where they talk about going crazy together.

anyways, after their fight in 3x03, will ends up leaving and breaking down because he thinks he’s just lost his safe place, and mike eventually rides his bike in a storm to apologise. then, at the end of season 3 during their last private moment together before will leaves town, mike is concerned when he sees will putting his d&d board in the donations box. he asks “what if you wanna join another party?” (aka “what if you meet other people in your new town and forget about me?”) and will says “not possible”, because he could never move on from the boy he loves most.

season 4

we see will working on a special painting for mike. as i mentioned above, the last private conversation they had together was about their d&d party and it’s always been incredibly special to both of them. will was thinking of mike while he was away and wanted to give the painting to him as a welcoming gift for when he came to visit. i think he thought about their last conversation a lot and it’s also his way of saying “see? i kept my promise. i could never forget about you”. also, i think it’s important to remember that mike and will have been by each other’s side since they were 4 years old, so being away from each other was so difficult for both of them. they both admitted that they’re afraid of losing each other and things weren’t the same when they were without each other.

in episode 8, will sees that mike is upset and decides to give him the painting. this painting is what makes mike the happiest he looked all season. his face lit up the moment he opened it and you could tell he immediately felt so much better. will then confessed his love for mike and told him that he’s the heart of the party that leads and inspires them all. he also told him that he was so lost without him, that he makes him feel better for being different and that he’ll always need him. this made mike feel so loved and gave him so much strength.

look at that smile!!!!!!!

anyways, when i first watched this scene, i felt sick that they had the audacity to take something so personal and special for will and mike (will’s art and their d&d party) and make it about mike and el. hearing will use el’s name as a disguise in an attempt to help mike feel better and bring their relationship closer absolutely broke me. it was selfless of him and it was beautiful to see how much he loves mike and how he would do whatever he can to make sure he's happy, but it was also such a cruel thing for the writers to do, especially as it led to mike saying his forced monologue in episode 9 (which i don't even want to talk about because that's a mess for so many reasons). seeing will cry afterwards was absolutely heartbreaking as well.

i truly believe that this painting will be brought up again in season 5 and it’ll be the thing that finally makes mike realise his true feelings. after all, mike only confessed to el because of will. he thought will was talking about el when he was actually talking about himself he entire time. this painting was so heavily focused on and the duffer brothers said it took so long to make it perfect. i highly doubt they used it as a plot device to force another ship back together while will suffers all alone. that would be the most cruel and unnecessary thing they could do to a kid who has suffered enough. will's art and the d&d party is also a very personal thing between mike and will only. no one else. making it about another ship isn’t okay at all. they have to address it again because it’s important to both of them and it's the only thing that’ll make sense from a narrative standpoint. it would also be so beautiful to finally see two childhood best friends realise their feelings for each other after all the slowburn and build up and it would make rewatching the show so much more worth it because then you’ll notice all the little details.

[lorenfangor]

I heard that #40 was super homophobic :/ so I skipped it. But now your fic is making me want to give it a try. How problematic is it? Are the characters worth it?

Okay.

Okay.

Let’s talk about #40.

The plot of The Other (a Marco POV) is that Marco sees an Andalite on a video tape sent in to some Unsolved Mysteries-esque TV show, and he assumes it’s Ax and hauls ass to save him from being captured. Ax, being Ax, has videotaped the show, and they pull it up and Tobias uses his hawk eyes to figure out that it’s not Ax, it’s another Andalite - one without a tailblade. Ax is appalled at the presence of this vecol (an Andalite word for a disabled person) and we find out that he and others of his species have deep ingrained prejudices against at least some kinds of disabled people.

Despite this, Marco and Ax go looking for the Andalite in question because he’s been spotted by national TV, and they meet a second one, named Gafinilan-Estrif-Valad. The vecol is Mertil-Iscar-Elmand, a former fighter pilot with a reputation and Gafinilan’s coded-gay life partner. The two of them have been on Earth since book 1; they crashed their fighters on the planet and have been trapped there thanks to the GalaxyTree going down. Gafinilan has adopted a human cover, a physics professor, and they’ve been living in secret ever since.

Thanks to that tape, Mertil has been captured by Visser Three, and he’s not morph-capable so he can’t escape. Gafinilan wants to trade the leader of the “Andalite Bandits” to the Yeerks to get his boyfriend back; he can’t fight to free Mertil because he’s terminally ill with a genetic disorder that will eventually kill him, and (it’s implied that) the Yeerks aren’t interested in disabled hosts, even disabled Andalite ones. Despite Ax’s ableism, the Animorphs agree to work with Gafinilan and free Mertil, and they’re successful. Marco ends the book talking about how there are all kinds of prejudices you’ll have to face and boxes that people will put you in, and you can’t necessarily escape them even if they’re reductive and inaccurate, but you can still live your life with pride.

So now that I’ve explained the plot, I’m gonna come out the gate saying that I love this book. I love it wholeheartedly, I love Marco’s narration, I love Ax having to deal with Andalite society’s ableism, I love these characters, and as a disabled lesbian I don’t find these disabled gays to be inherently Bad Rep.

that’s of course just my opinion and it doesn’t overshadow other issues that people might have? but at the same time, I don’t like the seemingly-common narrative that this book is all bad all the time, and I want to offer up a different read.To that end, I’m going to go point by point through some of the criticisms and common complaints that I’ve seen across the fandom over the years.

“Mertil and Gafinilan were put on a bus after one appearance because they were gay!”

this is one I’m going to have to disagree with hardcore. I talked about this yesterday, but in Animorphs there are a lot of characters or ideas that only get introduced once or twice and then get written off or dropped - in order off the top of my head, #11 (the Amazon trip), #16 (Fenestre and his cannibalism), #17 (the oatmeal), #18 (the hint of Yeerks doing genetic experiments in the hospital basement), #24/#39/#42 (the Helmacrons’ ability to detect morphing tech), #25 (the Venber), #28 (experiments with limiting brain function through drugs), #34 (the Hork-Bajir homeworld being retaken, the Ixcila procedure), #36 (the Nartec), #41 (Jake’s Bad Future Dream), and #44 (the Aboriginal people Cassie meets in Australia) all feature things that either seem to exist just for the sake of having a particular trope explored Animorphs-style or to feature an idea for One Single Book.

This is a series that’s episodic and has a very limited overall story arc because of how children’s literature in the 90s was structured - these books are closer to The Saddle Club, Sweet Valley High, Animal Ark, or The Baby-Sitters’ Club than they are to Harry Potter or A Series of Unfortunate Events. Mertil and Gafinilan don’t get to be in more than one book because they’re not established in the main cast or the supporting cast, I don’t think that it’s solely got anything to do with their being gay.

“Gafinilan has AIDS, this is a book about AIDS, and that’s homophobic!”

Okay, this is… hard. First, yes, Gafinilan does have a terminal illness. Yes, Gafinilan is gay. No, Soola’s Disease is not AIDS.

I have two responses to this, and I’ll attack them in order of their occurrence in my thought. First, there’s coded AIDS diseases all over genre fiction, especially genre fiction from that era, because the AIDS epidemic made a massive impact on public life and fundamentally changed both how the public perceived illness and queerness and how queer people themselves experienced it. I was too young to live through it, but my dad’s college roommate was out, and my dad himself has a lot of friends who he just ceases to talk about if the conversation gets past 1986 or so - this was devastating and it got examined in art for more reasons than “gay people all have AIDS”, and I dislike the implication that the only reason it could ever appear was as a tired stereotype or a message that Being Queer Means Death. Gafinilan is kind, fond of flowers, and fond of children - he’s multifaceted, and he’s got a terminal illness. Those kinds of people really exist, and they aren’t Bad Rep.

Second off, Soola’s Disease? Really isn’t AIDS. It’s a congenital genetic illness that develops over time, cannot be transmitted, and does not carry a serious stigma the way AIDS did. Gafinilan also has access to a cure - he could become a nothlit and no longer be afflicted by it, even if it’s considered somewhat dishonorable to go nothlit to escape that way. That’s not AIDS, and in fact at no point in my read and rereads did I assume that his having a terminal illness was supposed to be a commentary on homosexuality until I found out that other people were assuming it.

“Mertil losing his tail means he’s lost his masculinity, and that’s bad because he’s gay! That’s homophobic!”

so this is another one I’ve gotta hardcore disagree with, because while Mertil is one of two Very Obviously Queer Characters, he’s not the only character who loses something fundamental about himself, or even loses access to sexual and/or romantic capability in ways he was familiar with.

Tobias and Arbron both get ripped out of their ordinary normal lives by going nothlit in bad situations, and while they both wind up finding fulfillment and freedom despite that, it’s still traumatic, even more for Arbron I’d say than for Tobias. And on a psychological level, none of the main cast is left unmarked or free of trauma or free of deep change thanks to the bad things that have happened to them - they’re no less fundamentally altered than Mertil, even if it’s mental rather than physical. And yes, tail loss is equated with castration or emasculation, but that doesn’t automatically mean Mertil suffering it is tied to his homosexuality and therefore the takeaway we’re intended to have is “Being gay is tragic and makes you less of a man”. This is a series where bad shit happens to everyone, and enduring losses that take away things central to one’s self-conception or identity or body is just part of the story.

Also, frankly? Plenty of IRL disabled people have to grapple with a loss of sexual function, and again, they’re not Bad Rep just because they’re messy.

“Andalite society is confusingly written in this book, and the disability aspects are clearly just a coverup for the gay stuff!”

Andalite society is canonically sexist, a bit exceptionalist and prejudiced in their own favor, and pretty contradictory and often challenged internally on its own norms. In essence, it��s a pretty ordinary society, and they’re really realistic as sci-fi races go. It makes sense from that perspective that Andalites would tolerate scarring or a lost stalk eye or a lost skull eye, but not tolerate serious injuries that significantly impact your perceived quality of life. Ableism is like that - it’s not one-size-fits-all. I look at Ax’s reactions and I see a lot of my own family and friends’ behaviors - this vibes with my understanding of prejudice, you know?

“Mertil and Gafinilan have a tragic ending, which means the story is saying that being gay dooms you to tragedy!”

Mertil and Gafinilan have the best possible ending that they could ask for? They are victims of the war, they are suffering because of the war, they get the same cocktail of trauma and damage that every other soldier gets. But unlike Jake and Tobias and Marco, unlike Elfangor, unlike Aximili? Their ending comes in peace, in their own home. Gafinilan isn’t dying alone, he’s got the love of his life with him. Mertil isn’t going to be as isolated anymore, he’s got Marco for a friend. Animorphs is a tragedy, it’s not a happy story, it’s not something that guarantees a beautiful sunshine-and-roses ending for everyone, and I love tragedy, and so I will fight for this story. Yes, it hurts. Yes, it deserved better. But it’s not less meaningful just because it’s sad. Nobody is entitled to anything in this book, and it’s just as true for these two as it is for anyone else.

“It’s not cool that the only canonically gay characters in this series don’t get to be happy and trauma-free and unblemished Good Rep!”

This is one I can kind of understand, and I’ll give some ground to it, because it is sucky. The only thing I’ll say is that I stand by my argument that nothing that happens to Mertil and Gafinilan is unusual compared to what happens to the rest of the cast, and that their ending is way happier than Rachel and Tobias’s, or Jake and Cassie’s. But it’s a legitimate point of frustration, and the one argument I’ll say I agree has validity.

(Though, I also want to point out that I think there are plenty of equally queercoded characters in the story who aren’t Mertil and Gafinilan - Tobias, Rachel, Cassie, and Marco all get at least one or two moments that signal to me that they’re potentially LGBT+, not to mention Mr. Tidwell and Illim in #29 and their long-term domestic partnership. There’s no reason to assume that the only queer people here are those two aliens when Marco’s descriptions of Jake exist.)

“Marco uses slurs and reduces Gafinilan’s whole identity to his illness!”

Technically, yes, this is true, except putting it that way strips the whole passage of its context. Marco is discussing the boxes society puts you into, the ones you don’t have a choice about facing or escaping. He’s talking about negative stereotypes and reductive generalizations, he’s referring to them as bad things that you get inflicted upon you by an outside world or by friends who don’t know the whole story or the real you. The slurs he uses are real slurs that get thrown at people still, and they’re not okay, and the point is that they’re not okay but assholes are going to call you by them anyway. He ends by saying “you just have to learn to live with it”, and since this is coming from a fifteen-year-old Latino kid who we know is picked on by bullies for all sorts of reasons and who faces racism and homophobia? He knows what he’s talking about. He’s bitter about what’s been said and done, he’s not stating it like it’s a good thing.

Yes, absolutely, this speech is a product of its time, but it’s a product of its time that speaks of defiance and says “We aren’t what we’re said to be,” and in the year this was published? That’s a good message.

tl;dr The Other is good, actually, and Mertil and Gafinilan are incredible characters who deserve all the love they could possibly get.

[cannibalcharon]

Back in school I wanted so badly to study art. I’d never taken a formal art class or any kind of elective other than those in performing arts. My mom had a very strict rule that I could not take any elective other than theater or choir, and I could only do theater if I was also in choir.

Why? I was good at singing. I was amazing at singing actually. I did recitals, concerts, won awards, scholarships, had met famous composers like Erik Whitacre and was briefly friends with Ola Gjeilo, a known prodigy in choral circles. I could effortlessly sing soprano and have perfect pitch. My tonal memory is insanely good. Put anything into a song and I’ll remember it.

But I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t want to pursue something I wasn’t passionate about. My fellow choir students were mean, cliquey and did not have much mercy for the talented-but-insufferably-awkward autistic soprano who always got the descant parts, got the choir awards and took us to state. I hated being depended on by a group of 100+ peers that didn’t like me. I hated that our choral director also very clearly didn’t like me either. She put me front and center so that no one during a concert could see me because her body would block me. I was denied every solo I tried out for despite other choral directors insisting it ought to have been me over her other choices. The one solo I was granted by the band instructor, my choral instructor took away and gave to another girl that struggled with the piece because she didn’t want me to be in the spotlight as a soloist. I remember a friend and fellow composer of Ola Gjeilo’s saying to her, “that student of yours is going to go far” and her reply was, “they don’t deserve it.” I was quiet, awkward. I always did my work and never spoke much because I knew I wasn’t welcome. I was too autistic, too queer, too different. I came from a broken home, I didn’t have friends beyond the “delinquents” who were really just other kids struggling like I was.

All I really wanted to do was study art. I loved to draw. My other teachers always asked me, “why don’t you take art? You’re really good!” And they’d stand there stunned when I’d tell them “My mom won’t let me. She’ll only let me take choir.” Never had they heard such a strange rule based on their quizzical, critical expressions. So I knew it was out of the ordinary. One year I tried to sneak a coding elective into my schedule so I might have something of a career to pursue. My mom found out and pulled me from the class the second semester, and put me in improv because, “it’s the closest open elective to choir and theater.” She was convinced I’d pursue choir and theater if she just forced me to stay in it. That’s the tragic part. Had she not forced me, I very likely would have continued with it. I love to sing. I’m good at it even now two years on testosterone therapy. But now I can’t join a choir or even sing without an overwhelming sense of obligation. I don’t know what she expected or where she hoped it’d take me. The answer was no where. As soon as I graduated I was on my own. There was no getting help from her and I didn’t have a reliable dad to depend on either. I tried to study art in my past time but could never figure out where to start.

As I near 30 I’m finding I have a lot of resentment for this rule she had. I should have been able to pursue electives I was passionate about. I should have been able to enjoy my talents and hobbies without them becoming work and obligation. I should have been able to sing for myself, not her or anyone else. I shouldn’t have had to put up with four years of abuse from my instructor and peers. Instead of having fond memories, I just have a lot of pain. Instead of enjoying my hobbies and nurturing my talents, I’m frustrated and lost in where to start.

So tldr

Don’t force your kids into electives/hobbies they aren’t passionate about. Just don’t force your kids to do electives they don’t want to do.

[zombeesknees]

I posted 6,436 times in 2022

That's 928 more posts than 2021!

47 posts created (1%)

6,389 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@zoewashburne

@sarahssnooks

@harrietvane

@nooowestayandgetcaught

@cor-aeterna

I tagged 6,430 of my posts in 2022

#as queue wish - 6,182 posts

#art - 1,059 posts

#lgbtq - 699 posts

#videos - 471 posts

#our flag means death - 358 posts

#marvel - 321 posts

#wookies cheat and han shot first - 208 posts

#brb loling forever - 198 posts

#kinnporsche - 198 posts

#good vibes - 192 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#i love the idea of their jaeger just looking like a giant one of them and the helmet has an led visor that delivers pithy bon mots in french

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Hey, folks. I know we’re all currently consumed with Our Flag Means Death brainrot. But now that season one is done, and we’re impatiently awaiting a season two, we’ve got some downtime to fill.

Might I recommend the Sink or Swim duology, co-written by a pair of queer authors, yours truly and @stephanierabig?

What’s Sink or Swim? Well, it’s more queer pirate greatness, with a focus on romance, swashbuckling action, and supernatural sea creatures. We’ve got lesbians and nonbinary characters and canon throuples; we’ve got mermaids (and a particularly hunky merman) and sirens and magic and more! The heroes take on slavers and kill bad men. There’s love across class/racial/species divides, a heavy dose of Found Family, and badass women aplenty.

Click the read more for the synopses and order links!

SINK OR SWIM: THE SEARCH FOR AVELINE

Captain Harry Roberts and the crew of The Sappho are an unusual bunch. Bound by defiance, friendship, and a shared code of honor, these pirates took to the seas to escape marriage, cruelty, and prejudice. To find adventure, freedom, and those they’ve lost. The pirate’s life isn’t an easy one, but the ladies of The Sappho love to rise to a challenge. Whether it’s sailing through treacherous reefs or tangling with treacherous enemies, like Wrath Drew of The Charon… Navigating the cultural waters of merfolk and sirens, or the wild nightlife of lawless ports…. Pursuing romance or preparing for revenge…. Making impressive scientific discoveries or tending to the sick and injured…. Righting the wrongs of society or rescuing the victims of slavery…. Captain Harry and her wild women are ready for anything. Or so they think.

Click here to order Sink or Swim: The Search for Aveline.

———–

SINK OR SWIM: THE SANCTUARY OF NALANI

The bold crew of The Sappho return for more swashbuckling adventure and sizzling romance! Finally reunited with her long-lost sister Aveline, Captain Harry is happier than she’s ever been. But it will take time for Aveline to recover from her ordeals. The tales she has to tell will be hard for her sister to hear. And will the singer and Harry’s first mate, Jo, ever be able to reconcile after everything they’ve been through? Meanwhile, a chivalrous titan comes to Lady Deborah and Katherine’s aid. Harry takes steps to set the penny dreadful stories straight. Kai and Isabelle encounter a unique ghost, and the pirates witness two momentous births. Hope puts her mystical skills to good use to thwart mermaid collectors, Franky finally sees how Maddie got her nickname, the search is on for the Emerald of Tococo, and unexpected reunions expand the crew. Plus: Just how did a one-legged scientist become The Sappho’s cook? Is it true that only women can change into merfolk? And how many golden-hearted pirates does it take to liberate a plantation? The voyage is never a dull one aboard The Sappho!

Click here to order Sink or Swim: The Sanctuary of Nalani.

35 notes - Posted April 5, 2022

#4

Hi, I've never seen any Cary Grant movies. Do you have any recommendations on where to start? <3

OH BOY, DO I EVER!

So Cary is, at his core, a Very Handsome Clown.

That first bit is obvious right from the get go, while the second sometimes surprises people -- but the man came from a family of acrobats and vaudeville performers, and he was NEVER afraid to go Full Buffoon in something, thank God.

Which means most of his film career can be boiled down into two primary genres: Screwball Comedy and Handsome Asshole.

In the first, you’ve got (and here’s where my recommendations kick in)

Bringing Up Baby -- Cary is a paleontologist who JUST WANTS AN INTERCOSTAL CLAVICLE FOR HIS BRONTOSAURUS, GOT DAMMIT and yet has to deal with a ROGUE LEOPARD because of ditzy socialite Katharine Hepburn.

The Philadelphia Story -- Cary is a rich dude named C. K. Dexter Haven who’s trying to re-woo his ex-wife, Katharine Hepburn, on the eve of her second wedding, but then reporter Jimmy Stewart’s also there and romantic, drunken shenanigans ensue. (Note: Cary and Katharine did a TON of movies together, all of which were great, and his influence at the studio helped save her movie career when she was deemed “too much trouble/box office poison” by shitty men in Hollywood. For that reason alone he has my undying love and respect.)

Arsenic and Old Lace -- Cary just wants to go on his Halloween honeymoon with his new bride, but it turns out his sweet dear old aunties have been KILLING LONELY OLD MEN as a public service and he’s just found a body in the window seat. Awkward.

His Girl Friday -- Newspaperman Cary tries to convince hotshot reporter (and ex-wife) Rosalind Russell to cover the Execution Story of the Year -- and also to not marry her bland new beau. Things get wild when the condemned man escapes and the whole city goes wild. (Note: This film is extra notable because it’s arguably the first movie to have realistic dialogue where characters frequently speak over and interrupt each other. The patter is FANTASTIC.)

People Will Talk -- World’s Greatest Doctor Cary falls in love with a patient who’s in dire straits due to an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and also has to face down a committee seeking to destroy his career. (This one’s a bit more melodramatic than screwball, and isn’t talked about near as often as his other films, but it holds a special place in my heart.)

As for the second, you can largely thank Hitchcock because there’s

To Catch A Thief -- Retired Jewel Thief Cary is forced to get back into the game/clear his name when he’s suspected of making off with ladies’ necklaces again. This one co-stars the ever-goddessly Grace Kelly and a really cute red neckerchief.

Notorious -- Cold-as-Ice Spy Cary recruits innocent Ingrid Bergman, the daughter of a Nazi, to infiltrate a group of her father’s old friends who fled to Brazil (one of whom is The Invisible Man himself, Claude Rains). Things get rough in a hurry.

North By Northwest -- Ad Exec (think Mad Men) Cary is mistaken for a spy and goes on the lam. Featuring that infamous crop duster chase across the field, and a fight literally on the face of Mount Rushmore.

Charade -- Widow Audrey Hepburn is pursued by several mysterious men who’re after a fortune her thief husband stole just before he was murdered. Can she trust Cary, or is he just after the money?

Houseboat -- Stoic Widower Cary hires the vivacious Sophia Loren to nanny his three unruly children, and hijinks ensue when the family moves onto a rickety houseboat. (This one is more of a Screwball, but he DOES play a Handsome Asshole/Straight Man in this one.)

So yeah. Any one of these movies would be a good place to start, though I most recommend diving into his screwball comedies first. They’re just so fun and zany and silly, with really superb dialogue and goofy characters.

35 notes - Posted March 5, 2022

#3

driving home from work tonight, coming around the corner of my cul-de-sac and about to turn into the driveway leading to the garage, i slammed on my brakes HARD.

there was a FOR SALE sign in front of a townhouse three buildings down from ours.

i immediately whipped out my phone, texted a photo to my realtor, called the number on the sign, left a voicemail for the seller’s realtor.

kirsten (my realtor) got back to me and set up a showing at 8 pm. the place had been active online for about two hours at this point.

we did the walk-through. it’s the exact SAME layout of my current place, except with new wood laminate flooring throughout.

told kirsten to put together an offer TONIGHT. just signed all the paperwork for said offer. the seller’s realtor wants the listing to be up for at least two days, so i won’t know until tomorrow night if i’ve been accepted. i offered significantly over the asking price, because that’s how the market is right now, but who knows -- someone could swoop in and offer an extra 1k and i could miss out.

but y’all.

if i actually manage to get this place

it’s less than a MINUTE walk from my current digs. i wouldn’t have to pay a DIME for moving expenses. twads and i could just walk everything over in the course of a day.

if there is ANY higher power out there, please, i am b e g g i n g you, do me this one solid. PLEASE.

37 notes - Posted April 26, 2022

#2

See the full post

58 notes - Posted May 4, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

A Happy NaNoWriMo to all who observe it. May the odds be ever in our favor.

132 notes - Posted November 1, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[brawltogethernow]

I'd like to hear more about your murderbot transmigrator thoughts :))

Okay obviously when I said I wasn’t going to think about a Murderbot/Scum Villain fusion that was more of a goal, which is a lot like a lie. I have pecked out ~1k of prose for it, but none of it is presentable for longer than one line. The problem with this concept is that it’s actually very good, and there are a lot of meaty ideas to dig into with it, like, too many of them.

1. Murderbot would be immedately inclined to empathize with the System and guess at its motivations. Depending on what those are this may still stay an antagonistic relationship, because the way the System leverages its cosmic powers to coerce and strongarm people stomps on a lot of Murderbot’s triggers and is generally a dick move. The points system is just a gamified governor module. But it’s still a relationship, and if the System turns out to be an antagonist, it’s in that role as a fleshed out character with a personality who has been interrogated by someone with every reason to assume somebody made it and has commanded it to act like this for their own reasons.

Murderbot asks its function and designates it NarrSystem (Narrative System) or StorySystem or something because “the System” is too generic coming from its setting.

2. Transmigrating into a human body would be badweird and transmigrating into a human brain would be absolutely horrifying. (SecUnit could transmigrate into a system, but we’ve kind of been there done that with 2.0.) Dysphoria central! Murderbot gets to address that while it has never wanted to be a human, all humans are so convinced that being human is better that on some level it WAS worried that they were right. And now it can say with absolute certainty that they are not and this sucks. But also some things that it would have thought would be fundamentally different are actually the same. It’s just a whole time.

This is part of why I’m deviating from transmigration story standard and full stop making the transmigration a temporary situation, the other main reason being that Murderbot has more going on in its own world than your standard transmigration protagonist.

3. Either Murderbot gets back by hacking the System or it intends to but it’s ultimately the System’s decision. This is a very slow process because it can’t access tech the way it’s used to and the System’s structure is very different from what it’s dealt with before (because it strongly resembles Windows Vista). It needs tech and more control over its situation stat though so it’s going to keep at it until it works. Open your damn menus. SecUnit is going to rig transmigration until it’s like playing The Sims with cheat codes.

4. (This one is for me.) The System still talks in garbled Chinese netspeak, and Murderbot is like. Wow this program speaks in the lost tongue of an ancient civilization. How old is it. I can barely understand it. (Because of the bad memes not the Chinese.)

5. Murderbot gets yeeted into The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon and has to deal with the emotionally exhausting scenario of empathizing with everybody present. It likes the heroes, and it likes the other heroes they’re in conflict with, it likes the more complex villains with fleshed out motivations, and it even has a soft spot for a lot of the side characters and bit villains. This is fundamentally incompatible with how it tries to ration its empathy, assess situations by sorting people into allies/nonhostiles/hostiles, and compartmentalize by nicknaming the people it’s in conflict with things like Target 1, Target 2, and Target 3.

6. The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, as the specific transmigration variation we’re jumping off of here, was not trying to interrogate the infinity mirror effect of heteronormativity reflecting back and forth between media and people, and as such is not like, a solid narrative about this. That said, this book is basically like:

Shen Yuan reads this giant mess of a book with a lot of straight sex fantasies, not completely without appreciating the romance, but with more antipathy for it than he admits to himself. Then he ends up in the book and thinks he’s meant to enable the romances he read, which he’s so completely resigned to doing he doesn’t notice that the main character is queer and gone on him, or that he, himself, has been studiously suppressing the desires he assumes he should have while unable to perceive what he actually wants and how it affects his behavior.

So the Murderbot version of this is to subvert amatonormativity with your pretty explicitly aroace protagonist whose reaction to fictional romance is tolerant at best. Murderbot embraces its own lack of desire for romance but dances around acknowledging that it desires other relationships and seems to be working around the incorrect belief that romance and friendship are both human things and that’s why it doesn’t engage with them. So:

Murderbot ends up in the immediate leadup to the resolution of a love dodecahedron - maybe surrounding Eden, just as the only named character from TRAFOSM I think we have. And Murderbot is (internally) like...okay...I was never very moved by ANY of these people as romantic choices for you...but I might as well try to guide you to the least offensive ones, I guess. And it’s so mired in expectations based on its foreknowledge of this arc that it doesn’t notice until Eden spells it out that they’re ditching ALL their suitors and have realized they’re complete without romance and want to devote themself to finding their long lost birth mother or farming science or something, which just takes SecUnit tf out.

Possibly I will become really ungovernable and say that after seizing the System’s capabilities Murderbot just offers to take Eden on a reverse isekai right off of Sanctuary Moon, leaving ART’s crew and the Preservation team to be like, Where Did You Just Get This Entire Human.

7. Further going off svsss, there is a meta thread to interrogate by plunking Murderbot into a villain character. It's already an evil robot trope that declined to go evil, this is true in-universe and it knows it, and it has very low expectations of the morals of the group that it belongs to - informed by the same media that was a lifeline to it when it was in a very bad situation - that it is still in the process of working through. The layers.

So yeah there’s a lot going on here. Send help.

[psychewritesbs]

Okay I just finished Sonny Boy and all I can think about is Megumi and Tsumiki running between worlds like Nagara and Mizuho😭😭😭

It was also disturbing how much Asakaze and Megumi looked alike.

Do you have similar recs?

Hola anon 🤙🏼!

Ok, your head canon of Megumi and Tsumiki running between worlds is cool af! I wonder if Megumi is also into big boobs like Asakaze 😂. 

Soooo... Sonny Boy is a truly special experience. It's unlike anything I've ever seen before so, sadly, that said, I am not sure I can make recs that are similar to Sonny Boy. 

What I can do is recommend other anime with psychologically-driven storylines or interesting premises that I've loved/really liked...

If anyone else can think of recs don't hesitate to send them over or type them in the chat!

My recs and comments below the cut... 

(Yes, I really like Yoko Kano’s music)

Prepare to get scroll happy 😳🖱

Individual shows/movies in alphabetical order...

Akira is a movie I saw A LONG time ago. All I can tell you is that it deserves all the praise it gets. It’s good.

Attack on Titan are you watching this? If you aren’t watching it, why aren’t you watching AoT? It can be hard to get through some parts of the story (lots of talking), but when AoT is on, it’s on like Donkey Kong. Like holy *$HWR^# &*$@^&G. I have really come to appreciate Iseyama’s skill at world building and consider Eren to be one hell of a protagonist (note I have not read the manga’s ending). I’m going to go ahead and assume you’re watching it...

Durarara It’s been a long time since I saw this one too so I don’t remember the specifics of the plot very well. I can tell you I really liked the first season but think I lost interest during the second season. Very psychological!

Ergo Proxy it’s been A WHILE (more than a decade?) since I saw EP but it is defo on my queue for re-watching some day (that’s how you know I liked it A LOT). It’s very psychological and, if I remember correctly, it throws a curve ball at the audience. I am a sucker for well-executed plot twists so all I can tell you about EP right now is that I remember being VERY glad I watched it.

Gankutsuou this is another one I have not seen in a while but will re-visit again someday. Back when I saw it first I absolutely loved it. This is basically a re-telling of Alexandre Dumas’ Count of Montecristo set in the future. The art and music are fantastic.

Made in Abyss Do not be fooled by the cute art style. MiA is brutal. Fuck if it’s brutal. I think I cried at the end of season 1 and waited desperately for the movie and season 2 and then I forgot about it because it took so long. 2022 is a good year to be alive because we are finally getting season 2. 

Imagine two kids going into a hole in the earth full of monsters and the shenanigans that ensue. Music by Kevin Penkin (one of my favorite anime OSTs), lore, wholesomeness, tragedy... Absolute amazingness.

RahXephon is a weird anime. It’s been compared to Neon Genesis Evangelion (which I have not seen) and I understand that without Eva’s success, an anime like Rahxephon would not have been given the green light to be produced. Rahxephon is the story about your typical misunderstood teenager who happens to be able to pilot the mecha that no one else can pilot. It has a nice romance subplot.

Sarazanmai The perpetual look on my face while watching this was “what the actual fuck?” But then I learned the director was also involved in Revolutionary Girl Utena and it all made so much more sense. I guess it’s yaoi? or more like a (very much not subtle) queer coded anime of three boys who become kappas in much the same way a magical girl goes through a transformation. It’s wacky af and I really enjoyed watching it.

Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju was an anime that I almost missed out on and am sooooo glad I didn’t. If you read the plot description you might be inclined to think it looks boring, and I would have been one to agree with you until I watched it. SGRS is a beautiful story about friendship, love, and passion for one’s work. Don’t sleep on it.

The Vision of Escaflowne Ok, I’ll be honest, I’ve never managed to finish the anime but I own the OVA and I truly love it. Compared to the anime, the OVA is darker and edgier and it is one of the very few works that I watch dubbed.

Escaflowne is basically an isekai meets mecha from the 90s, so it’s nothing like the isekai from this day and age. In other words, it’s good. Also, music by Yoko Kano.

Wolf's Rain is a beautiful story set in a dystopian future where the world has been ravaged and wolves have gone extinct. In reality, the few remaining wolves turn into humans and walk amongst them in search for paradise. Lots of mythological lore, an interesting plot, and music by Yoko Kano. There’s just something about this anime...

Watch anything by these authors/directors:

Urobuchi Gen

Urobuchi Gen I have not decided whether Gen gets to join the “I’ll watch anything by this author list”. I am currently watching Psycho-Pass and find myself liking it more as the series progresses.

Psycho-Pass has got one of my favorite 2D sexy dudes, lots of talk of mental health, and mystery. 

Gen’s other work that I REALLY liked is Puella Magi Madoka Magica (also known as “depressed lesbians”), a dark and twisted re-imagining of the magical girl genre. It’s got a fantastic plot twist that is very well-executed. Just like with the Made in Abyss example, do not be fooled by the art style.

The “cat” became one of my favorite characters of all time.

Kon Satoshi

Kon Satoshi ah, Kon-san was definitively one of the best anime directors to have graced the world of anime. It is unfortunate that he departed from this world when he was so young. My respects to the man.

My favorite movie by him is Millennium Actress, a beautiful story about a young girl’s endless pursuit for the man she fell in love with.

But quite honestly all of his movies are amazing and solid. 

Tokyo Godfathers is a fun and endearing look at the lives of three homeless individuals in Tokyo. 

Finally, Paprika and Perfect Blue are both amazing mind fucks.

Shinkai Makoto

What sets Shinkai Makoto apart is that his movies are always a visual feast. More importantly, you can tell Shinkai is a real romantic at heart because his stories always feature soulmate love. 

I first discovered him when I saw The Place Promised in Our Early Days. If it weren’t because I remembered loving that very imperfect movie, I probably wouldn’t have been so excited to see his mega-hit, Your Name.

If you have not seen Your Name, you need to. 

You may or may not love it--the movie has got deep plot holes, but if you get emotionally sucked into the story, you won’t notice the plot holes until you’ve seen the movie 20 times... true story. 

Above all, Your Name will make you believe that soulmate love is real... also a true story. Just consider that the number of people crying at the movies after having seen this movie was enough to keep Kleenex in business for another decade.

Weathering with You was also a very solid movie featuring global warming, Japanese daily esoterism, and, of course, teenage love--that’s kind of Shinkai’s signature.

Apparently he’s releasing another movie this year (Suzume no Tojimari), so guess who’s going to be at the movie theatre when it comes out in the US?

This nerd right here.

CLAMP

It’s no secret that I am a massive CLAMP stan and I am working my way through all of their manga with a few pit stops to re-read some of my favorites. 

Consider that anime based on CLAMP manga is often lackluster compared to CLAMP’s beautiful and super detailed art. So you might want to read their manga instead of watching their anime.

Aside from the beautiful art style, I am a massive Okawa Nanase (the writer) stan because of her ability to create fascinating stories (always with a plot twist) that are full of esoteric lore. Also, I don’t know how she does it, but her characters always feel like actual people. 

I want to be like Nanase-san when I grow up.

noa-ciharu wrote a fantastic post on her best intro to CLAMP recs that I highly recommend checking out, but my favorites are Tokyo Babylon (because Subaru), Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles and xxxHolic.

Just be warned that CLAMP is out to make you cry.

Watanabe Shinichiro

The thing about Watanabe anime is that it is bittersweetly beautiful and human. Now that I am older, it is also clearer to me just how much thought and attention to detail this man puts into his work. His stories are loaded with symbolism, making them a truly fascinating experience. 

That said... Watanabe is a genius in my eyes.

Let’s start with the obvious one. It should be a crime to not have seen Cowboy Bebop. Cowboy Bebop is the anime classic. Also, music by Yoko Kano.

Samurai Shampoo is a solid 9 or 10/10 too.

I am currently watching Carole & Tuesday, which I dare say is Watanabe’s take on the cute girls doing cute things genre, and it has turned out to be a really enjoyable watch. This anime is his latest work.

But my favorite is Terror in Resonance (Zankyou no Terror). If you get emotionally involved, Zankyou will beat the fuck out of your heart and serve you a heavy dose of existential angst once it’s done beating you to a pulp. I know how it ends, and yet, I get chills every single time I watch the ending. 

If you happened to be in the same room while I watch that last episode, you would hear me yell “WHO HURT YOU WATANABE?!” at the TV screen. True story.

Zankyou is psychological story meets cute anime boys blowing sht up meets Greek tragedy (emphasis on the Greek tragedy part). In case it wasn’t obvious, it’s one of my favorite anime. Also, OST by Yoko Kano that very clearly inspired Kevin Penkin’s music.

Whatever the case, I can guarantee you I will also be watching anything Watanabe directs moving forward.

Anyways, of course, all of this is up to personal taste, so hopefully you will enjoy some of these titles as much as I enjoyed them.

♥️✨