#so unrebloggable for the moment

[raskies456]

there’s definitely a very important discussion to be had about how people from non white minorities can be complicit in perpetuating racism against other minorities but there’s a big difference between that and “you know who’s actually at fault for the SCOTUS decision??? The Chinese”

[moodr1ng]

i think itd be better for everyones health and peace of mind if we stopped pretending the oscars (and other award ceremonies for that matter) mean anything about the quality of any movie or the skill of any cast or crew member. lets just stop paying attention to that shit i think. the propaganda tools founded on hoarded capital and elitism that rich white people use to dictate what art is supposedly more valuable only have the weight we give them. it should be none.

[bbeelzemon]

as such i have been tits out for hours

[polycharismas]

EXTREMELY LOUD MOANING i fiund more ohse fanart.

[avid-adoxography]

Hmm. Guess it wasn't my best idea to finish my gifsets when I'm on that time of the month, holy shit. Going insane rn fr fr.

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

i dont know much about trigun but i think it would be silly if vash and knives (they are brothers?) or vash and wolfwood (lovers? enemies? idk) were drawn like that barbie and ken mugshot meme. From what you post Mr Vash Stampede just seems like ken. little silly guy

YOU HAVE THE MOST PERFECT TIMING WITH THIS EVER I'm literally in the middle of drawing a picture of knives and vash that looks like this.

theyre brothers your honor

[iphisesque]

still trying to sort out the nebulous gender feelings because i cannot leave good enough alone and im at the point where im like i would like to do drag but i dont know which kind. i cannot want to do both because thats against the rulebook of monosexuality. i cannot be a queen because that would deprive me of my hard-earned gender non conformity. i cannot be a king because im terrified by my own masculinity. who gives a shit it’s quite literally a performance. but what you choose to perform says a lot about you. can i uncrack my own egg 

[sleepygaymerdisease]

okay theres a post going around rn about grassroots orgs led by black women who will help people with funds/transport/etc for abortions. go ahead and spread the word, but also consider that some resources are not intended for everyone to use. nonblack people (such as myself) should not flock to black women and use all of their resources. we did not set up any of that, we werent involved in those spaces, and the intended recipients are not us. there's a similar situation where white people are trying to find out the legal protections for abortions in reservations. native hospitals are already stretched thin and their first priority is serving the communities they are in. white people are feeling entitled to resources for poc, and they should be looking elsewhere. people of color are not intended to be your saviors.

[pristine-starlight]

i think we’re all mostly familiar with the experience of liking a character or set of characters and then you go in the tag and the entire fandom is talking about these like three different ones exclusively

but this is usually about like. rarepairs and minor side characters

in my current case we’re talking about the title character and another two good guy major characters, and mostly i just find it really funny

[ghul-wein]

A few personal thoughts about Ghouls and Ghoul anatomy, errors and all. Unrebloggable for now, maybe later..

transcription under the read more

JAN 19/24 Friday … GHOUL IDEAS; Physicality/body funciton

Thoughts on Ghoul bodies are many & SO big, but these are clear enough to be made concrete & shared.

Mostly, stimming from thinking on how their appearance is more ‘thought-form’ than solid concept. They are not us, and when willed into humanity (or living “top-side”…there’s a better term for this…PLEASE) they take an appearance to make humans comfortable. So much room & intrigue for off features & uncanny human details (see Swiss and his teeth), but not that full focus..

With this they can alter the form @ will, this extending to perceived sexual traits & anatomy. You don’t think things like nipples are something they need to think to give themselves… baby Ghouls nurse somehow but are NOT mammal; the visual of Spit’s chest being a rib cage w/ skin pulled over it, yes. But they can and do reproduce , both amongst themselves & w/ humans. No dwelling on this and shit of Ghoul sexuality and gender — this is later writing. Ghouls can deny themselves the feeling of things like genitalia while others embrace these things…think a Barbie/Ken when sat beside a real person. This lack of “hardware” does note mean these Ghouls necessarily lacking in physical connections, no. In the same way a doll is not denied its desirability for lacking in these traits either. Some of this, you think, stems from lack of understanding/seeing the purpose in something  innately human; others would made slide under a form of asexuality/aromanticism (you think this suits Mountain). This won;t be the last time is this said…out its so close to Angels finding form and a sense of self in a casing they don’t fully know; piloting something new.

Others see themselves in app aspects of sex and gender and forms themselves to whatever specks suit their comfort. Be it for comfort, fun, or mating purposes, it’s can all be shifted @ will.

All, most Ghouls are capable of carrying kits, it just comes down to ‘hardware’ and how the talk of things go w/ their chosen partner. Also gender is not a Ghoul concept and means little, but they are so very capable of transness. This entire idea is rooted in a form of queerness.

Other Ghouls, like Spitfire, by biological convention would be thought of as falling under the umbrella of intersexuality. Will not repeat the nonchalant, looseness of gender!!! They are this mangled mass of meat built fresh as needed, and the flesh mound grows and writhing w/ the warmth of explorative connection. BUT it is a matter, still, of comfort in expression and maybe too wanting to “be ready” when the right moment comes.

could be worth exploring reproductive structures more internally…is the needed internal work to bear children inherent, built @ will, or something but nothing all @ the same time. But Something not of this world can make something that is of it.

[bluedalahorse]

Two decisions I really liked about YRS3 (but not the only decisions)

Also posted on my dreamwidth. Left unrebloggable for the sake of setting boundaries. Comments and thoughts welcome though!

Today I want to talk about two decisions made by Lisa and the other Young Royals Season 3 writers that I really liked. This is an analysis post, to some extent. In line with my new priorities, I also want to talk about how these decisions could work on a craft level to fuel my creativity, and—more fannishly—where they might leave me with inspiration in my fanfiction. Because everything from here on out is spoilers, and because it is long, I am going to cut it.

The writing decisions I want to focus on today are a) starting the season with a private settlement to resolve issues around the video/the gun/the drugs, and b) digging deeper into the ambiguity of Erik. As a heads up, both of these decisions felt particularly catered toward my reading of the show and what I wanted from it to begin with. But I figured, why not start with what one loves about a thing? So we will begin there, and perhaps, if I let myself rewatch episodes during the break, we will move on to other things, too.

The private settlement

This was something @heliza24 speculated might happen in the months leading up to season 3’s release. In fandom, there was a lot of discussion around whether the legal system would be able to deliver consequences to August re: the video or not, and whether Wille or Simon could be prosecuted for the field scene and the drugs and such. For me, one of the most informative posts on the matter was sflow-er’s post about how each boys’ actions would be labeled and classified, and what the penalties might be. I don’t know the Swedish legal system too well, so it was quite informative.

In my opinion, kicking off season 3 with the arbitration/settlement outside of court, and refusing to provide catharsis through the legal system itself, was the best decision the writers could have made. I also love that it was all wrapped up in an episode. We know that rich Hillerska families often settle things discreetly behind closed doors, and the legal system tacitly allows this to happen, so this felt in line with the series worldbuilding and the real world interactions it is grounded in. I also feel that Young Royals works best when it’s at least partially anchored in Hillerska, and secondarily anchored in the family interactions characters have at home. So taking things into the courtroom for too long wouldn’t feel quite right, even if season 3 does, to some extent, open up the world more for our characters.

What also struck me was the way the adults behaved in this scene, and how a lot of it felt… not so great? You can tell that the adults all care for their respective boys (however imperfectly they express it before, during, and after the settlement.) But the way they all swoop in and try to flatten the last two seasons of conflict into who owes what to whom is sort of fascinating, and feels parallel to the housemother trying to mediate between Sara and Felice at the end of 2.6. You realize how little they know of the nuances of what happened, and how quick they are to take away the agency of their boys when they think it protects them. I really want to hit this point hard—the boys all have their agency taken away in that moment, and I use the word “boys” deliberately because it is adults who are putting them in that position. You can see some of that persist in the aftermath of the settlement; FFS Linda is making Simon pee into a cup every day.

(Not to mention the hint of personal investment each set of parents has in the case. Rickard can’t resist doing lawyerly flexes, and Linda’s constant references to Swedish values show that she’s worried she immigrated in vain. I’m sure there’s a blank we could fill in with Ludwig and Kristina, but I’m operating on memory here and I don’t remember their lines precisely.)

As icky as the settlement scenes feel, and as much tension as they create, they are also necessary for marking the importance of past conflicts while propelling the narrative forward. It does matter that August released the video—it matters enough that he had to sell his estate to compensate Simon, and it’s absolutely appropriate that he should have. And it does matter that Wille waved a gun around and Simon brought drugs to school and sold them. 

At the same time, what the show is saying here is, legal consequences and lawyers (especially Rickard) can’t solve all the show’s problems. No amount of money from August is ever going to fix Simon’s mental health by itself. August being locked away forever wouldn’t have magically taken away the fault lines in Wilhelm and Simon’s relationship, which we see over the course of the season have as much to do with Wilhelm’s relationship to the monarchy as everything else. And in some alternate universe where Simon and Wille get in trouble for the drugs and the gun but August faces zero punishments at all, he wouldn’t exactly be magically cured of all his trauma and live a pretty life from then on.

Ultimately season 3 seems to be saying not that the legal system is 100% ineffective, but that it has its limits in how much healing or catharsis it can bring to people. Especially because of the way settlements and trials focus on incidents in isolation, and limit the agency of the people they are supposed to defend. I actually don’t think season 3 is telling us to let go of the legal system entirely. But what it is doing is asking us to understand offenses beyond the strict binaries of crime and punishment, and how they fit into broader contexts of societal prejudice. And finally, it is telling us to look to vulnerable human-to-human connections as another space for healing. Which is where all the juicy, interesting, complicated stuff is. I’m glad that S3 chose to follow those threads instead of just sticking us in a courtroom for five episodes.

A note before I continue: I know I’ve talked to a few friends who were disappointed we didn’t see August sell Årnäs, when we know it’s important to him. I haven’t decided how I feel about that yet. I have decided that this is one of the things I’d love to ask Lisa about in more depth, to see why one of her writing decisions was to leave that out. I suspect August has already started to pull away from Årnäs a bit in season 2 already, given that he’s willing to sell art to buy Rousseau for Sara, but I don’t know if he’s consciously there yet, and I think fans might be looking to see him grapple with that. In retrospect, it also seems like August’s arc over 3 seasons is him trying to figure out who his family is. The material reality of Årnäs and how much he wants to keep it is sort of an externalization of that, but also his way of deflecting from talking seriously about his grief for his father. So, I see why this is a tab left open in people’s brains. Maybe I’ll be able to close it on rewatch. But Simon’s also supposed to be getting that money, and that tab is left open in my brain, too. I hope Lisa reads this and has an answer for me.

Anyway. Onward to those human-to-human connections.

Erik’s ambiguity and his role in the initiations

I never fully trusted Erik. I say this not to “gloat about being right” but mostly to establish what my baseline reading of the character was in season 1. I do think he was very loving of Wilhelm and meant a lot to him, but I didn’t trust him to be a full-on LGBTQIA+ ally, and I didn’t trust him not to have gotten up to abusive fratboy shit in the past. Part of the reason I gravitated toward this reading of the character is that I found it way more interesting than Erik being perfect. In my personal experience, family members are never exactly who you need them to be, and part of the struggle of growing up is knowing when you can lean on someone (or their memory) for support and when you need to protect yourself. Fiction that deals with these themes is endlessly fascinating to me. It’s the kind of fiction I try to write, that I’d want to someday publish. So naturally Ambiguous Erik is my preferred Erik.

As someone who’s always sort of approached Erik’s memory with a less-than-trusting reading of his character, the minute the homophobic initiations came up, I knew that Erik’s role was going to be a key point of revelation. So much of season 3’s momentum was tied up in Wilhelm finding out and processing that, and August being able to put into words how Erik and the other third year boys’ actions traumatized him. The knowledge that August, Nils, and Vincent chose to remove the most homophobic practices when they initiated first years adds a twist of the tragic knife. We have three boys who are trying (however imperfectly) to break the cycle, and yet none of them got the support they needed in processing what happens to them. August even ends up releasing the video and perpetuating the cycle of abuse. But it’s hard not to look at that now and not see an element of untreated trauma driving his actions.

I suspect for some fans of the show, that revelation about August (and Nils, and Vincent) essentially being a sexual assault victim is a pretty uncomfortable one, because it can feel like an excuse for his actions. But I don’t think the show is excusing August’s actions so much as explaining them, and even more importantly, the show instead seems to be focused on just how challenging breaking the cycle can be, and just how much time and effort is required. Moreover, understanding August’s vulnerability is crucial for Wilhelm’s character arc.

In my restorative justice meta a while back, I talked about the dangers of the Hillerska students being able to villainize someone like August, because they could so easily deflect from their own actions by imagining him as an individual monster and ignoring the parts of the system that enabled his worst deeds. When I wrote this, I was primarily thinking of characters like Nils and Vincent. I did not expect it to be Wilhelm buying into the myth of August the Monster while disavowing his own flaws. And yet, in season 3, we could see Wilhelm’s black-and-white villainizing of August as something that got in the way of his empathy and better judgment, primarily toward Simon. Like. Wilhelm is, to put it lightly, a pretty crappy boyfriend to Simon at the beginning of the season! (If this post also included a third thing I loved, it was that a lot of the wilmon boyfriends stuff early on in the season was always just a little too yikes to be fully cute.)

And yes, you can look at the part where Wilhelm’s making Simon delete stuff off social media, and eventually delete all his social media entirely, and talk about how Wille is responding to the pressure of the palace, and his mother’s mental health struggles and so on. But IMO it’s similar to the way August lets himself get caught up in the pressures of his social role at Hillerska to try and escape his grief and trauma. Both boys fear and disgust the ways they’ve been made vulnerable (something they react to when they see their vulnerability reflected in one another) and try to play their social role within the system they are most familiar, to gain back a sense of strength and agency. Ultimately, however, they become the weapons of that system, and hurt those they love and care about. It was pretty smart of the show to recognize that Wilhelm reconciling with August and Simon reconciling with August are actually two different flavors of Thing, and the reason a Wilhelm-August reconciliation is different is because of the amount of social power that they hold in the system.

No character symbolizes the reasons for August and Wilhelm’s struggle with the system more than Erik. This is not to say that Erik Is Evil—he’s not! We also know that August and Wilhelm love him, and that he has helped them and cared for them—merely that he strands for what they’re both grappling with. Both boys have to recognize Erik beyond the idealized version of him in order to heal and move forward and actually break the cycle. And they have to recognize Erik’s place in those cycles too. In the last scene we see of Erik, he’s day drinking, and we know he visited Boris for therapy. Could he have struggled with guilt over what he did in the initiation? It’s possible. In a way, the biggest tragedy of Erik’s death is that he doesn’t get a chance to break the cycles alongside Wilhelm and August. But maybe his soul can rest easier knowing they are a little closer to being brothers than they were before.

Where this leads me as a writer, especially of fanfics

I likely started with these two aspects of season three because they already line up so much with what interests me in storytelling. When I think about the kind of writer I want to be, I want to write the complex entangled family history stuff that’s hard to sort through, and I want to write it well. Young Royals gives me another solid mentor text in that regard, alongside books like Patron Saints of Nothing and A Sitting in St. James.

On the fanfic side of things… well. I’m glad the legal stuff is taken care of already! I honestly didn’t want to have to be dealing with the courtroom all that much in my fanfics. Maybe someone else will want that, and I think the option is still there. Someone could do some really cool fics with a character choosing to study law in the future, or similar. But I’m glad to have that off my plate for the time being.

As for what these parts of the season have made me more interested in than before, I’m really captivated by the idea of Wilhelm and August becoming brothers to one another, even if—especially if—it’s a fun multi-year slowburn with lots of heart-wrenching emotions. What would their relationship look like? How would they navigate around Wilhelm’s break with his mother and August’s newly forged relationship to one another? What kind of time would August and Wilhelm choose to spend with one another to work on their relationship, and what do the boundaries look like? Could August one day leave the monarchy too, and would Wilhelm support him in that? (I hope so.) For some fans, I think they’re just content to leave Wilhelm and August’s reconciliation as that conversation at the party, and I think that’s valid. But I do know that in whatever I write going forward, I’m interested in seeing how their relationship can develop and change over time. And that feels hopeful in a way I like.

So maybe… just maybe… some of the things I’m going to write will involve Wille and August developing a better relationship. And I think I’m ok with that.

[sygol]

Please for the love of god let me reblog the Internet angels post

im not happy with it reaching a demographic of people who need a neon arrow pointing at something to tell them its art, unfortunately i just dont really want these kinds of people following or interacting with me, so ive made it unrebloggable for the moment. if for some reason you cant wait until i make the post rebloggable again, just steal my art and repost it, i will block you though, also i hate god

[hanzajesthanza]

angoulême’s act

this post was on my fyp and unfortunately op made it unrebloggable but this is angoulême through and through

yes angoulême is funny, sassy, silly, and acts brave, but inside she is actually very terrified and vulnerable and 🤏 this close from having an outburst of panic and fear 👍

she’s actually very unstable, like ciri, but she has no vysogota (or rather her vysogota is, could so be, five people, if these five people choose to be)

and if you read the text you would see this grave-serious side of her come out every so often, the survival instinct she surpresses to preserve her veneer of indifference.

the way it works is that she’s joking, joking… and then something drops, reality sets in, and she starts freaking out. this happens even in the very first time we meet her, when she starts begging fulko artevelde to be hanged and not tortured.

her reaction is even physical, kneejerk, unable to be hidden by the mask of confidence. the blood drains from her face in fear. she has an outburst of panicked frustration.

it’s such a distinct shift in her behavior that even geralt comments on it, like “what the hell was that? what was she freaking out about?”

but this is far from the only time we see angoulême letting her mask slip.

of course, the infamed scene of milva hitting her with the strap and her breaking down mid-joke and uncontrollably sobbing (yeah that sounds like a truly confident and carefree girl to me /s):

but there’s even more subtle parts where her trauma, fear, and anxiety becomes plain on her face, such as when she remembers her past:

or even when faced with a tense situation. even when she has the protection of geralt and cahir, terror grasps her. she freezes for a second and drops the confident, sassy act, confiding in geralt and cahir how she truly feels, what’s really up:

note that directly after this moment of acute panic, of “oh shit, oh shit…” this is how she acts:

funny. sassy. provoking a reaction. it’s all distinctly on purpose. she’s turned that brazen and indifferent side of her on.

it’s a performance. but inside, she’s panicking.

this is probably the best example, the pièce de résistance of it all. because the text, the narration, openly admits that it’s all an act:

ineffectually = everyone could see her ‘bravery’ and ‘sass’ isn’t real, she’s convincing no one

pretending = it’s all a hopeless defense mechanism

she wasn’t afraid = she’s terrified.

[majorbaby]

i shouldnt put this out into the ether even as an unrebloggable post but i probably encounter more casual ignorance towards antiwar and antimilitary content in this fandom than in others and it's jarring to see that alongside the sharp uptick of posts about ongoing war and genocide.

i know it's not intentional or malicious when people do this. most of the time theyre just embroiled in the ship war and are venting about it, which is normal fandom behaviour that i'm not above engaging in myself. it's fine to dislike something for whatever reason you want and express that, but it's irritating to have the experiences, interests and values of other people projected onto me.

late m/sh is a drag for me because it betrayed its own values in bizarre and morally repugnant ways. it's not about your fucking man. it isn't always about Some Guy. how is this so easily forgotten the moment we're talking about fiction?!

[weekend-whip]

Ayo where’s this poll I’m hearing so much about

If you mean this one, it's a redo for Antigone vs Lloyd for Most Tragic Character due to some drama/suspected cheating/bad sportsmanship, and thus is an unrebloggable, unrepliable poll that is only able to be spread via word of mouth. It's only lasting 24 hours, so people are running at the speed of light to get their vote in! (Buuut I think we're losing ahaha. We had a nice start tho)

Orrrrrr maybe you mean this poll where Legacyverse (a story/series I just so happen to be the author of) is up against a story/series from DC for "Best Fanfiction" (of the moment). Right now we're not even aiming to win, just aiming to close the gap and get to 40%, so that way when if we lose it's not by an entire landslide djhgfdfghd. But it's been a very wholesome competition so far that I'm honored to have been apart of, and I'm pleased by all the support!!

#TotallyNotAShamelessPlug

[faustandfurious]

Making this post unrebloggable because boy do I not want it to reach the annoying parts of the fandom, but I’m having Daemon Targaryen thoughts, so bear with me.

The thing about Daemon is that he isn’t primarily self-serving. He’s just wholly committed to the idea of the Targaryens as dragonlords of Old Valyria, as literal dragons, as more than ordinary men. He is deep down a Valyrian traditionalist (from a tradition where incest, black magic and having your kids raise weapons of mass destruction, is the norm). This is the one consistent thing about his characterisation. He’s willing to put himself second if the person he puts first is a Targaryen who exhibits dragon-like behaviour (i.e. shows strength). When Viserys, with one foot in the grave, still struggles his way across the room to the throne, Daemon is right by his side to support him. When Rhaenyra shows up on Syrax to make him hand over the dragon egg he stole, he gives her what she came for. And the moment they show what he perceives as weakness, as betraying their heritage, he turns on them, only to return to their side once they again live up to his ideal of what a Targaryen should be. He doesn’t act according to the standard black-or-white morality, his behaviour is decided by dragon morality. In his mind, the Targaryens are dragons and like dragons they can and should take what they want and do what they want because the ordinary laws do not apply to them. This doesn’t necessarily make him a good man according to our standards, but it does make him loyal to his family’s cause.