#sort of alt universe

[kobbers]

TMayNT day 1: Favorite Turtle

In a real sense all the guys are my favorite, but one of them hits the "lawful good dork doing their best to hold everything together for the people they love" archetype I love so much. Therefore, Leonardo is my favoritest.

[painfullyprickedandticked]

remember stolitz nation that in an alternate universe we're crying over verosika and stella's breakup and apology tour

[frankenfossil]

Oh! I nearly forgot, but can I ask the significance of this panel?

It comes directly after Dee explains that he can’t come and see her from the future whenever he wants. (Which is one of my favorite moments where Dee’s true eldritch horror leaks in to the story), so I assume it’s… sort of a metaphor? How Emily finds herself at the foot of something she realizes is much, much bigger than she contemplated before?

(Also, I just wanted to compliment you for this panel)

(The first time I saw it, I imagined Dee was showing her this on purpose, time traveling from sometime the same day to really show her what it would be like. An object lesson.

The second time I saw it, I started to wonder

Because Dee himself doesn’t really look aware of what is going on behind him.

And maybe, just maybe, this one moment in time has become the only moment that Dee allows himself to come back to to see Emily, the one moment where he can get lost in the crowd with every other time he came back to look. The one moment where he’s explaining why he can’t come back.

Just… Makes me sad, and I wanted to say thank you for that too, because I love these characters and the story they tell, the sweet and bitter.)

Oh!!!

(Quick test of my ability to find which chapter stuff happens in)

I love your reading of that Uluru panel!! I think I probably didn’t intend anything that deep with it; these time skip montage style chapters are pretty choppy and I’m usually trying to figure out a way to touch on all these brief scenes or moments that I don’t want to spend a whole chapter on for whatever reason, and arrange them in a way where the cuts aren’t too hideously abrupt. For visual reasons I try to contrast different locations and not put 2 dialogue heavy moments directly next to each other. Mood wise, I don’t really want to cut from something serious and angsty to something that’s a complete backflip on that. I also sometimes just feel like drawing a nice landscape and hope it achieves my aims on these fronts haha.

I think also here I was trying to move from that final sentence, “The present is more than enough”, to demonstrating them appreciating having that present together - being able to go do cool and enriching stuff, something not completely mundane but not completely fantastical either. (I mean... sightseeing within your own country is extremely normal, but going to Uluru from Melbourne... not a convenient day trip, since it’s 2000km; 25 hour solid driving, or you can fly in a few hours but I think you have to go via Sydney, so that makes it take at least twice as long I guess. Not that it's specified how long they're there for. I haven’t been myself but I’d love to one day...)

So, yeah!! More of a mechanical/compositional rationale than an intentional metaphor, but I think your reading makes complete sense and actually improves the page! (Sometimes I do intend visual metaphors... but sometimes they’re just happy accidents.)

And thanks for the compliment re the crowd of Dees!! I also love the moments I can lean into his eldritch qualities... they’re sadly few and far between but maybe that helps them be more surprising?? Definitely your first reading was what I intended, that he zigzagged back pretty quickly, probably even from within the conversation, but there is an inherent ambiguity to Dee’s time travelling where unless I take pains to spell it out, there really is no way to know when he’s come from. Even if he can be assumed to be taking every interaction chronologically, there’s no knowing how much time has passed for him between each visit. I don’t even know how to estimate how long his experience of time is, when he’s zigzagging back so densely all the time; even the number of living things on Earth any moment is an incomprehensibly mind-boggling number. That eldritch horror again!

Truth be told I hadn’t thought of him coming back to this moment and blending in with the crowd for the rest of the future ;_; but that’s so real... he could well be, the sad sack...

I had a different sillier thought from slightly misreading your question on first pass, which is that maybe he doesn’t originally know what’s going on behind him, but then later on as he’s just going about his business he goes “oh I know exactly how to punctuate that thing I said earlier!!!” and then does it as an afterthought. Oh to have the ability to add the things you wish you’d said to an earlier conversation 😂

[skyward-floored]

Whumptober Day 8: Outnumbered, (alt) Betrayal

I originally gave up on today’s prompts because they were annoying but after I’d written this whole fic I realized outnumbered kind of works actually so! Regular prompt and an alt were used today ✌️

Read on ao3

Warnings: oh boy. Uh, mildly suggestive, dehumanization sort of..? Kind of human-trafficking vibes, but it doesn’t exactly occur. There’s some alcohol. Also a bit of being drugged. And mistreatment of fairies. ...I think that’s it.

———————————————————��

A faint pink glow guided Hyrule, Warriors, and Time’s steps through a town in the captain’s time, a jingling that Hyrule knew was born out of nervousness accompanying the light.

The fairy led them all through the town, further and further away from the center and towards the unlit stores and quiet docks. The night only seemed to grow darker, and Hyrule found himself keeping closer to the other’s sides, a feeling of apprehension he couldn’t ignore making his stomach clench.

Right as he was about to ask if the fairy really knew where she was leading them, she zipped down a side street, sparkles trailing behind her, and finally bobbed to a stop.

Hyrule looked up, and grimaced.

The fairy had led them to a building with its windows still lit despite the late hour, her dark pink light catching on a crude portrait of a great fairy holding an overflowing flagon of ale. Faint laughter filtered through the cracks in the door, and Hyrule thought he caught a whiff of alcohol.

Oh hooray, a tavern.

Hyrule gave the picture on the sign a look of distaste, but before he could say anything, the door abruptly swung open. Two men walked out, and the three heroes, ducked around a corner so as not to be seen. A hiccuping laugh came from the one man, and the other slapped him on the back as they stumbled away, neither walking straight.

“So this is where you saw the men take Proxi?” Warriors whispered as the revelers disappeared from sight. The fairy jingled an affirmative as she poked her head out from his scarf, practically shaking with fear.

“Mm-hm. Th-they put her in a tiny bag, one way too small!” she squeaked, sounding terrified. “And she’s not the only one, they had lots of other fairies! I followed them here, but I couldn’t find anywhere to get inside without being seen, and... and I didn’t want to get caught as well.”

She sniffled, and Warriors gave her a gentle smile from where she’d perched on his shoulder.

“It’s alright, we’ll get her and the others back,” he assured, but the fairy still seemed nervous, her wings fluttering anxiously.

“You should get somewhere safe, if these people want fairies you’ll be in danger here,” Time warned, and the fairy quivered in fear. “We don’t want anyone else getting caught. Who knows what they’re doing in there.”

He glanced at Hyrule as he spoke, and Hyrule sighed, knowing the older hero was wondering if he should stay back or not. Time and Warriors were both aware he had fairy blood, and Hyrule could see why they would be concerned, but he wasn’t going to stay back just because of that.

“They won’t know I have fairy blood, and I’m not planning on telling them,” Hyrule said quietly, and glared back at the sign. “And I’m not sitting this out.”

Time nodded with a sigh, and Hyrule thought he caught a flicker of worry in his eye before he turned back to the fairy.

“What’s your decision, little one?”

“I-I’ll stay hidden with you,” the fairy replied quickly, and Hyrule could tell she wasn’t keen on leaving the three of them. She obviously felt safer around the heroes, and Hyrule couldn’t blame her.

Fairies being kidnapped was never a sign of anything good.

“All right, well, looks like we’re going in,” Warriors sighed, and Time nodded, straightening.

“Looks like it. We may want to split up though, I believe we’ll attract less attention that way,” Time said thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. “Perhaps I can go in, and you two can follow together?”

Hyrule and Warriors nodded. He didn’t really think it mattered much, but if Time thought that was best, then who was he to argue?

Warriors suddenly raised a hand and began to muss his hair up a bit, making it look more scruffy. Hyrule stared as the captain then kicked some dirt off his boots, running it through his hair and making his blond seem more of a sandy color. Then he tucked his scarf inside his bag, and pulled out a cloak instead, nicely made, but in a dark enough weave so as not to attract attention.

“I’m the local hero, Traveler,” he said at Hyrule’s confounded look, “I don’t exactly blend in.”

“Oh! Right,” Hyrule said sheepishly, feeling foolish for not realizing what the captain was doing. He thought he’d... well, he’d honestly had no clue what he was doing.

Time hid a smile as he left their hiding spot and casually strolled into the tavern. A small burst of sound leaked into the alley with the opening of the door, then was silent again.

“You should be fine,” Warriors directed at Hyrule as he made sure their fairy was tucked safely out of sight in his cloak. “I would be shocked if anyone recognized you or Time... but if you have a cloak you might want to put it on.”

Hyrule nodded as the captain finished off his disguising, and pulled his own cloak tight around himself, looking at the tavern with no small trepidation. It didn’t seem like the sort of place he wanted to hang around, especially based on the drunken laughter that occasionally filtered through the cracks in the door.

He’d had very few good experiences in bars, and had a funny feeling this one would be no different.

They waited a few minutes to distance themselves from Time a bit more, and then Warriors walked over to the door, Hyrule following resignedly.

“Well here we go,” he grumbled, and pushed open the door before Warriors could, the captain following him into the noisy place.

Hyrule tensed, half expecting all sorts of horrible things as they entered, but... nothing seemed out of place. There was a strong smell of alcohol, sweat, and water damage from the nearby docks. The seats were mostly filled despite the late hour, and barely a head turned when Warriors and Hyrule walked in. The large woman manning the bar did glance at them, but then went back to wiping her counter, glaring at a man who spilled a few drops of his drink.

It just seemed like... a normal bar.

“Are we sure this is the place?” Hyrule muttered, and Warriors shrugged, looking around.

“If they’re keeping fairies for some reason, they wouldn’t do it in the open,” he murmured back, then plastered a casual smile on his face. “Let’s see what we can find out.”

They shoved their way to a clear table, Warriors easily blending in with the atmosphere. Hyrule followed suit, and they weren’t bothered as they ordered some drinks and sat down. Hyrule spotted Time across the room from them at a different table, but Hyrule knew better then to stare at him too long and attract attention, and he kept his gaze away.

Instead he studied the atmosphere of the tavern, wincing a little whenever the general noisiness upturned for whatever reason. The place wasn’t as rowdy as some places Hyrule had ended up inside, but it certainly wasn’t quiet, and uneasiness was still churning in his stomach.

He wasn’t sure if it was merely worry over the captured fairies, or something else... but something about this place was making the hair on his neck prickle.

“The men at the table next to you,” their fairy friend suddenly spoke up, just loud enough for Warriors and Hyrule to hear, “they’re the ones who took Proxi, I recognize their faces!”

Warriors nodded, and casually looked around the room while Hyrule flicked his eyes over at the men the fairy had indicated. They were a group of four, with varying appearances, but all of them looked shifty to Hyrule, covered in scars with weapons at their hips.

They were discussing something in low voices, and Hyrule casually leaned over, straining his ears.

“...thing bit me,” one man was saying, looking mad as he rubbed his hand. Hyrule could see bandages peeking from under his sleeve. “And it smarts too, this better have been worth it.”

“It will be, she says the buyer pays extra for the blues. It was lucky we found that one earlier,” a thin man said in a calming voice. “Though even just the pinks we’ve got in the back’ll be enough to set us up for life.”

The others seated at the table grinned, and Hyrule glanced at Warriors, looking to see if he’d heard. By the grave expression on his face, it was clear he had.

“I wonder what the buyer does with them anyway,” the first man said as he sipped at his drink. “Who’d want a bunch of fairies?“

Hyrule felt a flicker of indignation.

“Sells ‘em to doctors or something probably, who cares?” another drawled, taking a large draught of his beverage. “‘S long as we get paid.”

“Ah, but have you ever taken a good look at some of them? If they were a bit bigger, I think I’d want a few,” a man with scars all over his arms said. He smirked. “I saw a Great once, and if the little ones are anything like that... well, sign me up.”

The table burst into laughter, and anger rose in Hyrule’s chest as they began arguing about what the most attractive feature they’d seen on a fairy was, growing more and more descriptive— and crude— as they went.

One of them said something particularly lewd, and they roared with drunken laughter, Hyrule’s face growing hot with fury.

He was about to leap to his feet, but Warriors put a hand on his arm, keeping him from getting up. Hyrule nearly threw him off as he heard another one of them laugh again, feeling himself begin to shake with rage.

How dare they?

“Traveler, fighting these men won’t help us figure out what’s going on,” Warriors said in a low voice, and pulled Hyrule back down. “We need to be patient.”

“I’m not going to sit here and let them talk about fairies like— like that,” Hyrule hissed, but Warriors didn’t move. “Captain let me up, don’t you care—”

“It won’t change anything to confront them. They obviously don’t have the fairies with them, and fighting them might wreck any chance we have of getting them back,” Warriors said firmly, something sharp in his voice.

Hyrule finally looked at Warriors’ face, and realized the captain was just as angry as he was, blue eyes cold with rage. Somehow knowing that Warriors was equally outraged by the discussion made his own anger cool a bit, and he stopped trying to pull out of his hold, slumping in his seat.

“Fine. Then what’s the plan?” he asked, hunching his shoulders when the men at the table next to them laughed again.

“I’ll try and get some more information from our... friends, here, while you see if you can get in there,” Warriors explained quietly, tilting his head towards a curtained off doorway. “They said they had the fairies in the back, I’d assume that’s where they meant.”

“I saw them through the window earlier, they definitely went back there,” their fairy peeped from Warriors’ cloak, sounding even more scared.

“Fine. Good luck,” Hyrule murmured, and slipped into the crowd before Warriors could reply.

He made his way over to a shadowy spot next to the door, jostled and bumped nearly the entire way. Squeezing past a particularly large man, Hyrule tucked himself in the corner and waited patiently for an opportunity to slip through the door. He glanced over at Time while he waited, and saw that he was chatting rather amiably with the woman at the bar, an easy-going smile on his face.

Well hopefully he’s doing something useful, Hyrule thought to himself, still angry at the conversation he’d overheard. He knew Warriors was right about not fighting yet, but listening to them discuss fairies like that had lit a rage in him that wouldn’t be going away any time soon.

It’s no wonder fairies tend to hide from Hylians.

A barmaid finally walked past him into the back room, and Hyrule silently followed her past the curtain, finding himself in a dark storage room.

It appeared to be mostly kitchen items, extra food and barrels of what Hyrule assumed was alcohol of some kind. There were no fairies in sight, and Hyrule frowned as the barmaid left, looking around the room. It seemed like every other storage-type room he’d seen of this kind; messy, somewhat dirty, and no sign of anything illegal.

Well... not obvious ones anyway.

Hyrule began combing the room, his heart thudding in his chest. The bad feeling he had was even more intense now, and it made it difficult to focus on finding anything out of the ordinary. He kept having to hide when the barmaid returned multiple times, but he continued to look, aware that the longer he was back here, the more likely it was he’d be caught.

He was nearly on the verge of leaving and seeing if Warriors had had better luck, when suddenly he realized the crates in the corner were stacked oddly, like nobody ever actually wanted what was inside them.

Hyrule quickly went over to the stack, and noticed the faint outline of a door behind the crates, so similar to the wall it was nearly impossible to see unless you knew it was there.

Ah-hah.

Hyrule pushed the crates aside as quietly as possible, wincing at the creaking they made, then carefully turned the knob and slipped inside.

And nearly fell to his knees.

The room had no windows, but it didn’t need them, the inside lit by the countless jars lining the walls, all crammed to the brim with fairies. Several of them had at least three in one jar, a few filled tight with even more, and Hyrule couldn’t do anything but stare at them all in horror for a moment.

Most of the fairies were fluttering around in the jars, some swirling in more panicked circles, but some were lying worryingly still at the bottoms, their glows faint. The distressed magic from all of them was enough to make Hyrule’s head spin, chimes ringing in his ears, and he nearly tripped when he finally stepped forward.

How could someone do this?

“Traveler?”

He turned around at the whisper, and saw Warriors slip inside behind him, looking grim.

“Those men didn’t have anything to say to me, they must have thought I just wanted in on the money. I don’t think... oh. Farore preserve us,” he whispered as he looked around, and Hyrule swallowed.

He felt sick to his stomach all of a sudden, and barely noticed as Warriors stepped fully into the room, looking around in horror. The fairies noticed their presences then, and the chiming in the room grew even louder, frantic and hopeful as they realized who they were.

”Is that Link?”

“No, it’s his friend! Brother!”

“It’s Link and his friend!”

“Brother! Fairy kin!”

“Are you here to get us out?!”

“Brother please save us!”

“Brother!”

“Link!”

“Everybody quiet! Are you trying to bring the enemy in here?!”

At the bossy chime, the other fairies quieted down, and Hyrule looked around for the familiar voice that had spoken. One of the few blue glows in the room caught his eye, and Warriors perked up.

“Proxi!”

“Link!” she said with a happy jingle, and Hyrule smiled as Warriors reached up to gently take the bottle she was trapped in. “You’re here to save us?”

“We are,” Warriors assured, cradling the bottle. Hyrule swallowed back his nausea and joined his side, frowning at the sight. Three other fairies were pressed inside of the bottle with Proxi, and she herself was near the bottom, her blue glow dim.

“...Are you okay?” Hyrule asked in concern, and Proxi hesitated.

“She got hurt when they captured us,” another fairy said quietly.

“You’re hurt?” Warriors said sharply, and Proxi let out a dismissive jingle.

“Oh I’m fine, can you get us out?” Proxi asked a little impatiently, and Warriors sighed, then nodded, tugging at the cork.

It didn’t budge though, and no matter what Warriors did it refused to come out. Hyrule tried then, but he didn’t have any luck either, and they looked at each other in dismay.

They didn’t want to hurt the fairies, so they couldn’t try breaking the glass. Melting it or using anything heavy was out of the question as well, as were most methods Hyrule could think of, but how were they going to free all of the fairies if they couldn’t even open the jars?

“I think they must be magically sealed,” Hyrule said morosely after they’d tried everything they could think of. “There’s no way this cork is this strong without some help.”

“I don’t like what that means for this whole operation,” Warriors murmured, still carefully holding the bottle. “If they have enough resources to get so many magically sealed jars... this might be bigger than we thought.”

Hyrule swallowed, his stomach still unsettled.

“So what do we do?”

“Fetch Time, I suppose,” Warriors sighed. “See if he has any ideas. We need to tell him we found the fairies anyway, and I don’t see us figuring anything out any time soon.”

“He probably has an item or something that just opens bottles,” Hyrule said with a faint smile. “Or a mask.”

Warriors almost smiled back. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“Someone’s coming!” a fairy by the door suddenly squealed, her voice shrill with alarm. Warriors carefully set the jar containing Proxi and the other fairies back on the shelf, then dove behind a discarded crate with Hyrule, the both of them ducking down as much as possible as the door slid open.

“...saw someone by the storage room, and those guards were in earlier. We better start shipping out tonight,” a voice said, and footsteps tromped into the room. “...Ugh, this place always makes my head hurt when we’re full.”

Hyrule pressed tighter against Warriors’ side as the voice drew near, trying to make himself smaller. The crate really wasn’t a good hiding spot, but there was nothing else in the room big enough to shelter behind.

Multiple sets of footsteps moved over to their side of the room, right next to the crate they were behind, and Hyrule nearly stopped breathing, forcing himself to stay still. Warriors swallowed, and Hyrule could feel his heart thudding where his head had ended up on his chest.

“Well you won’t have to deal with it much longer,” a different voice drawled, and Hyrule recognized it as one of the men who’d been at the table. “Once we load these in the hold you’ll be fine.”

It was silent for a minute, and Hyrule found himself holding his breath.

“Besides, we have other business to take care of.”

The crate Warriors and Hyrule were tucked behind suddenly lit up like a flare, a pink so dark it was nearly red flashing above them.

Hyrule was nearly blinded by the light, but when he looked up in shock, he saw the fairy that had guided them to the tavern chiming and flashing a deafening alarm, showing exactly where they were hidden.

Before Hyrule could even reach for his sword, he and Warriors were yanked out from behind the crate and restrained, unable to escape. They both kicked out and struggled, Hyrule even trying to bite the men that had grabbed him, but they were grossly outnumbered, and quickly subdued.

Both were tied up and shoved against the wall, but Hyrule only had eyes for the fairy who had come to them in tears earlier because she’d seen Proxi be kidnapped. She was floating right next to one of the men who they’d overheard at the table earlier, and a sickening feeling rolled through Hyrule.

“How could you?” he asked, anger and disbelief warring inside of him. How could a fairy fall so far to betray her own kind like that?

The fairy’s glow dimmed.

“They said they would hurt my sister,” she whimpered, and Hyrule felt a brief stab of pity.

“If you’d told us the truth, we could have helped you,” Warriors cut in with a grave look, and the fairy turned away.

The other fairies on the walls had been chiming frantically throughout all of this, Proxi’s voice shouting the loudest of them all, and making a truly deafening racket that only grew when Hyrule and Warriors were tied up. The men were obviously growing sick of it, and the one with the scarred arms abruptly drew a knife and pressed it to Hyrule’s neck, then looked around at the fairies.

“Shut up now, or he loses his life.”

The fairies went dead quiet.

The scarred man waited a second, then withdrew his dagger, placing it back into a holder at his waist. “Thank you. I would’ve hated to get blood on the floor.”

“Have you no shame?” Warriors snapped. “What you’re doing here is cruel, you can’t put that many fairies in one bottle without endangering their lives!”

The men laughed, and one looked Warriors up and down.

“Great, a knight with morals. Do we kill him?”

“Nah, look at his face, he’s a handsome one,” someone else spoke up. “Bet we could get good money for him downriver.”

Warriors slightly paled, but his cold expression didn’t change.

“What about the kid?”

“I’m not a kid,” Hyrule said, and didn’t flinch from the scarred man’s gaze when he strode up to him. “And you’re going to regret every single thing you’ve done here today.”

The man chuckled. “The only thing I’m going to regret today is that I didn’t make more money then I’m already going to.”

He leaned right up into Hyrule’s face, and the traveler still glared at him despite how his heart was thumping. His eyes trailed across his face, pausing when they got to his eyes, and he studied them in silence for longer then was normal.

“...Take them both. We can figure out what to do with them after we’re on our way,” he said as he leaned back, a deceptively easy-going smile on his face. “I think there’s more to them then meets the eye.”

He looked directly at Hyrule when he spoke, and the traveler’s blood ran cold.

He knows.

Warriors gave him a wide-eyed look, but then cloths were shoved over both of their noses, a sickly smell coming off of them. Hyrule struggled not to breathe, knowing it would be bad if he did, but he hadn’t had a chance to take a deep breath.

Time had better notice we’re gone soon, he thought desperately, watching as Warriors began to slump next to him. Or we’re going to be in serious trouble.

Something struck his chest, and Hyrule gasped in spite of himself, breathing deeply of the sweet smell of the cloth. His head immediately began to swim, and he took in another breath without thinking. A voice said something above him, and Hyrule slumped against Warriors’ side as his senses began to leave him, one last flicker of desperation fighting to keep him awake.

He couldn’t let them do this he... he couldn’t...

Hyrule’s vision swirled into a black void, and he fell limp against Warriors’ shoulder, totally unconscious.

Time was their only hope now.

[theeflowerofcarnage]

Going into dai blind is funny cuz nothing really induces you to side with the templars so u think well I’ll just side w the mages instead and in the process of doing so u mentally and emotionally torture 4 of your closest allies (possibly killing the rest?) plunge the whole world into an apocalypse n then Dorian’s like wait! we can fix w the snap of our fingers cuz we’re mages yay! Everything goes back to normal no one remembers anything n u just gotta look everyone in the face like u didn’t just fuck up their whole lives

[bluebeetle]

gabri o’hara and gabriella o’hara are the same person, miguels kid is just trans and hes super supportive send tweet

[divinekangaroo]

Finding the Smethwick Corporation Act 1927 being actual legislation which extends the controls and powers of the constituency of Smethwick over that of (parts of) Birmingham

[insert some reaction gif here]

[retro-system]

wgat if i wrote a noir sam fic inspired by hotel dusk

[seemslegitflapjacks]

Happy New Years! Y’all get some good quality bromance to kick off 2023.

[crossover-enthusiast]

Every day I wonder if the Steven Universe FANDOM wiki is an outlier

[vaugarde]

hm... i can make original universe versions of my pmd ocs if i want... what is stopping me

[ipso-faculty]

Perisex allies: stop this shit

CW: intersexism

Came across this infographic during some google image searching and I'm still kind of a state of despair about it because it's not just offensively wrong about what intersex is, it was used to teach university students about queer issues:

Alt text: LGBTQIA+ are defined one by one. Intersex is defined erroneously as "These are people who were born with genital organs of both sexes (male and female). It is a genetic condition."

It's one thing for your rando perisex person to be getting this wrong on social media. It's another thing entirely when it's professionals getting this wrong in an educational setting. 😩 And that this infographic appears in a peer-reviewed publication. 😩

It's even worse to know the students that were taught with this infographic were medical students, who will be the ones traumatizing intersex people for decades to come 😩

It's so wrong in so many different ways:

Intersex is not limited to people with genital differences. Most intersex people have intersex variations that are not apparent at birth, with puberty being the most common time of life for variations to present. Many people find out in adulthood having no outward physical differences.

Of the intersex people with genital differences, they do not have two sets of genitals. Most genital differences are still recognizably female or male (e.g. spadias), and those who have ambiguous genitals have one set.

Intersex is not "male parts + female parts" or even "intermediate male/female parts", it is an umbrella term for anybody whose primary/secondary sex characteristics don't line up with what is expected for male and female bodies. Some intersex variations make women look more feminine, or make men look more masculine.

Defining intersex by genital differences doesn't just exclude most intersex people, it also sets the tone that we are defined by our genitals. To be publicly intersex is to have non-stop DMs about your genitals. This sort of framing sets up openly intersex people for invasive questions and harassment, and it keeps large numbers of intersex people from coming out.

Many intersex variations do not have a known genetic basis. Many intersex variations are caused by exposure to certain hormonal levels in the womb. Certain medications when taken during pregnancy can trigger intersex variations.

While bodily variation is necessary for being intersex, the social experience of stigma, discrimination, isolation, hyper-medicalization, and hyper-sexualization are all just as much a part of being intersex.

📣 Perisex allies: this is shit you can stop. When you see other perisex people parrot this sort of misinformation, correct them. Direct them to look up resources written by actually intersex people.

Here are some starter resources to give:

Intersex explained by Hans Lindahl

Media and style guide by IHRA

FAQ by intersex-support

A recent post I did compiling information for trans people who want to be better intersex allies

[arolesbianism]

You know if anyone ever thinks that I maybe go a lil overboard with my Olivia characterisation sometimes just know that it could be so much worse. You could be reading abt my alternate timeline Olivia thoughts

[voiider]

I need codependent Danny/Jason as a little treat (for me) and I love the idea of them having some sort of instant connection the moment they meet (bc ghost stuff idk)

Danny who's been dropped in Gotham with no way home (alt universe??) and he's been here for 36 hours and having a Very bad time senses a liminal being and immediately latches onto them heedless of the fact that his new best friend is shooting at some seedy guys in an alley and goes off about how stressed he is and how he can't make it back to the ghost zone and what a bad day he's been having (and it's important to note Danny is a littol ghost boy literally hanging off of Jason's neck as he floats aimlessly) and Jason is like "who are you??" And Danny is like "oh sorry I'm Danny lol" and then just continues lamenting his woes

And honestly ? This might as well happen. Nothing about this Danny guy(is he human?) gives Jason a bad vibe and tbh he's never felt more calm and level headed before so he just keeps up his usual Red Hood patrol and doesn't even think about it when he heads back to a safehouse and feeds Danny dinner (breakfast) before crashing for half the day

The only thing I actually need is Jason meeting up with the bats for some sort of Intel meeting and they're like "uhhh who's that" and Jason is like "that's Danny." And does not elaborate (very ".... What do you have there?" "A smoothie" vibes)

And it takes them a while to realize that these two have known each other for less than 12 hours and are literally attached at the hip

[cybernaght]

The fandom echo chamber: fanon, microanalysis and conspiracy brain 

As someone who has been in fandom spaces, on and off, for 20 years, I find some fascinating trends popping up in the last decade that I thought to be fandom-specific but clearly aren’t. So, I would like to do a little examination of where those things come from, how they are engaged with, and what it says about the way we consume media. This is a think piece, of sorts, with my brain being the main source. As such, we will spend some time down the memory lane of a fandom-focused millennial.

This is largely brought about by Good Omens. But it’s also not really about Good Omens at all.

Part one. Fanon.

The way we see characters in any story is always skewed by our very selves. This is a neutral statement, and it does not have a value judgement. It’s simply unavoidable. We recognise aspects of them, love aspects of them, and choose aspects of them to highlight based entirely on our own vision of the universe. 

Recognition comes into this. There is a reason so many protagonists of romance novels have a “blank slate” problem. Even when they do not, we love characters who are like us or versions of us that we would like to be. And when we say “we”, I also mean, “me”. 

(I remember very clearly this realisation hit me after a whole season of Doctor Who with writing which I hated utterly when I questioned why I still clung so incredibly hard to Clara Oswald as my favourite companion. Then I looked at myself in the mirror. Oh. Well. That would do it, wouldn’t it?)

Then, there is projection, and, again, this is a neutral statement. Projection exists, and it is completely normal and, dare I say it, valid way of engaging with — well, anything. Is the character queer? Trans? Neurodivergent? Are they in love? Do they like chocolate? Are they a cat person? Well, yes, if this is what the text says, but if the text does not say anything… You tell me. Please, do tell me. Because, in that moment of projection, they are yours. 

And then, there is fandom osmosis, and that is the most fascinating one of them all, the one that is not very easy to note while you are inside the echo chamber. It’s the way we collectively, consciously or not, make decisions on who or what the characters are, what their relationships are, and what happens to them.  

(Back when I was writing egregiously long Guardian recaps on this blog I actually asked if Shen Wei’s power being learning actually was stated anywhere in the canon of the show. Because I had no idea. I have read and reread dozen of fanfics where that is the case, and at some point through enough repetition, it became reality.)

We are all kind of making our own reality here, aren’t we? 

Back when things were happening in a much less centralised manner - in closed livejournal groups, and forums of all shapes and sizes - I don’t remember there being quite as much universally agreed upon fanon. Frankly, I don’t remember much of universally agreed upon anything. But now, everything is in one place: we have this, and we have AO3, and it’s wonderful, it really is so much easier to navigate, but it’s also one gigantic reality-shifting echo chamber, with blogs, reblogs, trends, and rituals. 

Accessibility plays its part, too. If you were, say, in Life on Mars (UK) fandom between seasons, and you wanted to post your speculation fic, you had to have had an account, and then find and gain access to one of the bigger groups (lifein1973 was my poison, but ymmv), and then, if you feel brave you may post it, but also, you may want to do so from your alt account if you wanted to keep yours separate, and then you would have to go through the whole process again. And I’m not saying that fan creations then were somehow inherently better for it than fan creations now (although Life on Mars Hiatus Era is perhaps a bad example - because some of the Speculation Fic there was breathtaking), but there is something to say about the ease of access that made the fandoms go through a big bang of sorts.

(I mean, come on, I can just come here and post this - and I am certain people will read it, and this blog is a pandemic cope baby about Chinese television for goodness sake.)

The canon transformations that happen in the fandom echo chamber truly are fascinating to witness as someone who is more or less a fandom butterfly. I get into something, float around for a bit, then get into something else and move on. I might come back eventually when the need arises, but I don’t sustain a hiatus mind-state. This means that when I float away and return, I find some very intriguing stuff.

Let’s actually look at Good Omens here. Season two aired, and I found it spectacular in its cosy and anguished way; deliberately and intelligently fanfic-y in its plot building; simple but subversive, and so very tender. (I will have to circle back to this eventually, because, truly, I love how deliberately it takes the tropes and shatters them - it’s glorious). And, to me - a person who read the book, watched the first season, hung around AO3 for a few weeks and moved on - absolutely on-point in terms of characterisation. 

So imagine my surprise when the fandom disagreed so vehemently that there are actual multi-tiered theories on how characters were not in possession of their senses. Nothing there, in my mind, ever contradicted any of the stated text, as it stood. This remained a strange little mystery until I did what I always do when I flutter close to an ongoing fandom.

I loaded AO3 and sorted the existing fic by popularity. And there it was, all there: the actual earth-shattering mutual devotion of the angel and the demon; willingness to Fall; openness and long heart-aching confession speeches. There was all of the fanon surrounding Aziraphale and Crowley, which, to me, read as out of character, and to one for whom they became the reality over the last four years, read as truth. 

Again, only neutral statements here. This is not a bad thing, and neither this is a good thing, this is just something that happens, after a while, especially when there are years for the fandom-born ideas to bounce around and stew. I can’t help but think that so much of what we see as real in spaces such as this one is a chimaera of the actual source and all the collective fan additions which had time and space to grow, change, develop, and inspire, reverberating over and over again, until the echoes fill the entirety of the space. 

Eventually, this chimaera becomes a reality. 

Part two. Microanalysis 

Here are my two suppositions on the matter:

1. Some writers really love breadcrumb storytelling. 

Russel T Davies, for instance, on his run of Doctor Who (and, if you are reading it much later - I do mean the original one), loved that technique for his seasonal arcs. What is a Bad Wolf? Who is Harold Saxon? Well, you can watch very very carefully, make a theory, and see it proven right or wrong by the end of the season. 

Naturally, mystery box writers are all about breadcrumb storytelling: your Losts and your Westworlds are all about giving you snippets to get your brain firing, almost challenging you to figure things out just ahead of the reveal. 

2. We, as humans, love breadcrumbs.

And why wouldn’t we? Breadcrumbs are delicious. They are, however, a seasoning, or a coating. They are not the meal. 

Too much metaphor?

Let’s unpack it and start from the beginning.

Pattern recognition colours every aspect of our lives, and it colours the way we view art to a great extent. I think we truly underestimate how much it’s influenced by our lived experiences.

If you are, broadly speaking, living somewhere in Western/North-Western Europe in the 14th century, and you see a painting in which there is a very very large figure surrounded by some smaller figures and holding really tiny figures, you may know absolutely nothing about who those figures are, but you know that the big figure is the Important One, and the small ones are Less Important Ones, and the tiny ones are In Their Care. You know where your reverence would lie, looking at this picture. And, I imagine, as someone living in the 14th century, you may be inspired to a sense of awe looking at this composition, because in the world you live in, this is how art works. 

If you, on the other hand, watch a piece of recorded media and see the eyes of two characters meet as the violins swell, you know what you are being told at that moment. You don’t have to have a film degree to feel a sort of way when you see a green-tinged pallet used, when cross-cuts use juxtaposing images, or notice where your focus is pulled in any given shot. This stuff - this recognition of patterns - has been trained into us by the simple fact that we live in this time, on this planet, and we have been doing so long enough to have engaged recorded media for a period of time. 

As humans, we notice things. Our brains flare up when they see something they recognise, and then we seek to find other similar details and form a bigger picture. This often happens unconsciously, but sometimes it does not. Sometimes we do it on purpose: finding breadcrumbs in stories is a little bit like solving a mystery. It allows us to stretch that brain muscle that puts two and two together. It makes us feel clever. 

So yes, we love breadcrumbs, and, frankly, quite a lot of storytelling takes advantage of this. It’s very useful for foreshadowing, creating thematic coherence, or introducing narrative parallels and complexity. It’s useful for nudging the viewer into one or the other emotional direction, or to cue them into what will happen in the next moment, or what exactly is the one important detail they should pay attention to.

Because this is something media does intentionally, and something we pick up both consciously and not, it is very hard to know when to stop. We don't really ever know when all of the breadcrumbs have been collected. It becomes very easy to get carried away. There is a very specific kind of pleasure in digging into content frame by frame, soundbite by soundbite, chasing that pleasure of finding. 

But it is almost never breadcrumbs all the way down. They are techniques to help us focus on the main event: the story. I truly believe those who make media want it to reach the widest possible audience, and that includes all of us who like to watch every single thing ever created with our Media Analysis Goggles on and those who are just here to enjoy the twists and turns of the story at the pace offered to them. And I think, sometimes in our chase to collect and understand every little clue we forget that media is not made to just cater for us.

One can call it missing a forest for the trees. But I would hate to mix my metaphors, so let’s call it missing a schnitzel for the breadcrumbs. 

Part three. The Conspiracy Brain. 

If you are there with me, in the midst of the excited frenzy, chasing after all those delicious breadcrumbs, then patterns can grow, merge together, and become all-encompassing theories. Let’s call them conspiracy theories, even though this is not what they truly are.

So, why do we believe in conspiracy theories?

One, Because We Have Been Lied To. 

All conspiracies start with distrust.

If you are in fandom spaces - especially if you are in fandom spaces which revolve around a queer fictional couple - especially-especially if you have been in such spaces for a period of time, you have most certainly been lied to at one point or another. 

We don’t even have to talk about Sherlock - and let’s not do that - but do you remember Merlin? Because I remember Merlin. Specifically, I remember the publicity surrounding the first season, with its weaponised usage of “bromance” and assertions that this whole thing is a love story of sorts, and then the daunting realisation that this was all a stunt, deliberately orchestrated to gather viewership. 

And, because we were lied to in such a deliberate manner for such an extensive period of time, I genuinely believe that it forever altered our pattern recognition habits, because what was this if not encouragement to read into things? Now we are trained to read between the lines or see little cries for help where they might not be. Because we were told, over and over again, that we should.

(Yes, I think we are all existing in these spaces coloured by the trauma of queer-bating. I am, however, looking forward to a world where I can unlearn all of that.)

Two, Cognitive Dissonance.

The chain reaction works a bit like this: the world is wrong - it can’t possibly be wrong by coincidence - this must be on purpose - someone is responsible for it.

Being Lied To is a preamble, but cognitive dissonance is where it all originates. In so many cross-fandom theories I have noticed a four-step process:

A) this is not good

B) this author could not have made a mistake 

C) this must be done on purpose

D) here is why 

(Funny thing is, I have been on the receiving end of the small conspiracy spiral, and it is a very interesting experience. Not relevant to this conversation is the fact that a lot of my job revolves around storytelling. What is relevant is that my hobbies also revolve around storytelling. And one of them is DnD. Now, imagine my genuine shock when one of the players I am currently writing a campaign for noticed a small detail that did not make a logical sense within the complexity of the world, and latched on to it as something clearly indicating some kind of a secret subplot. Their thinking process also went a bit like this: this detail is not a good piece of writing — this DM knows how to tell stories well — this is obviously there on purpose. It was not there on purpose. I created a clumsy shorthand. I erred, in that pesky manner humans tend to. And, seeing this entire thought process recited to me directly in the moment, I felt somewhere between flattered and mortified.)

This whole line of thinking, I think, exists on a knife’s edge between veneration and brutal criticism, relentlessly dissecting everything “wrong”, with a reverent “but this is deliberate” attached to it like a vice, because it is preferable to a simple conclusion that the author let you down, in one way or another. 

Three, Intentionality 

I believe that there is no right or wrong way of engaging with stories, regardless of their medium, and assuming no one gets hurt in the process. While in a strictly academic way, there is a “correct” way of reading (and reading into) media, we here are largely not academics but consumers; consumption is subjective.

However, this all changes when intentionality is ascribed. 

The one I find particularly fascinating is the intentionality of “making it bad on purpose” because, as open-minded as I intend to always be, this just does not happen.

It certainly does not happen in long-form media. Even in the bread-crumb mystery box-type long-form media. 

When television programs underdeliver, they also underperform, and then they get cancelled.

If all the elements of Westworld Season 4 that did not sit together in a completely satisfactory way were written deliberately as some sort of deconstruction for the final season to explore, then it failed because that final season will now never come.

(There will likely never be a Secret Fourth Episode.)

And look, I am not here to refute your theories. Creativity is fun, and theorising is fantastic. 

But, perhaps, when the line of thought ventures into the “bad on purpose” territory, it could be recognised for what it is: disappointment and optimism, attempting to coexist in a single space. And I relate to that, I do, and I am sorry that there is even a need for this line of thinking. It’s always so incredibly disappointing that a creator you believed to be devoid of flaws makes something that does not hit in the way you hoped it would. It’s pretty heartbreaking. 

Unfortunately, people make mistakes. We are all fallible that way. 

Four, Wildfire.

Then, when the crumbs are found, a theory is crafted, and intentionality is ascribed, all that needs to happen is for it to catch on. And hey, what better place for it than this massive hollow funnel that we exist in, where thoughts, ideas and interpretations reverberate so much they become inextricable from the source material in collective consciousness. 

Conspiracy theories create alternate realities, very much like we all do here. 

So where are we now?

I am not here to tell you what is right and what is wrong; what is true, and what is not. We are all entitled to engage with anything we wish, in whichever way we wish to do it. This is not it, at all. 

All I am saying is… listen.

Do you hear that echo? 

I do. 

[whetstonefires]

Man sometimes I still think about Alfred's Bandit Anecdote in The Dark Knight (2008).

So, the most straightforward reading of this sequence seems to have been the one Nolan intended, because he is not actually a subtle filmmaker, and the further we got into the series the more heavily he committed to making Alfred a mouthpiece. Old man provides words of wisdom that frame the correct understanding of the situation; you can tell it's meant to be correct because subsequent Joker appearances reinforce its thesis statement.

Intended takeaway: some men (like the Joker) don't have rational motivations, they just 'want to watch the world burn,' and you have to account for that when trying to counter them. Chaos agents, basically unstoppable by reasonable means.

But the thing is. This is not a story that stands up to even mild interrogation. The number of assumptions Nolan wants us to swallow without blinking is kind of stunning.

First of all the obvious timeline questions that arise: the Anglo-Burmese Wars and periods between and leading up to them where this kind of white man's burden 'delivering jewels to local elites In The Burmese Jungle to sway them toward British interests, but getting waylaid by bandits' scenario makes any sense all, happened in the 19th century.

The Burmese resistance in the 1930s was centered on university student protests and that sort of thing; it was reasonably successful in moving Myanmar toward independence by increments, though who knows what would have happened without WWII. But it did not provide anyone with reasons to be hand-carrying huge gemstones through forests.

Even if we assume this was somehow a 20th century event, it has to have been before WWII unless we want to postulate a complete alt-history setting, and since The Dark Knight leans heavily into being a modern 21st century story with like, cell phone networking as a major plot point, this still makes Alfred old as balls. Born no later than 1920, and probably earlier.

But that's whatever; comics time. Batman Begins did some fun stuff (possibly in imitation of Batman (1980)) with making it ambiguous what decade it was supposed to be set in, though the sequels dropped that conceit. And anyway, people can be 90 years old.

So that's basically fine, although good god Wayne hire some more servants, this man should be fully retired already.

More problematic is the unfettered colonialism of it all, the confident proclamation that since this guy's motive wasn't profit, since he didn't keep the jewels, he had no motive. Because 'inconveniencing the Raj and weakening their control over the locality' isn't a Real Person Motive that a real person could have had. During or soon after failed wars to resist colonial subjugation.

Like. Come on??

The place where this story utterly shoots itself in the foot, though, is the clever bit at the end, where Bruce asks how Alfred's military unit solved the 'bandit stealing jewels he didn't even want' problem and Alfred's like: 'we burned the forest to the ground.'

Because this is so punchy! In screenwriting technical terms, it's quite well done. It's useless advice that loops the story back to its themes; obviously Batman can't burn Gotham down to get the Joker. Even in a Batman movie that doesn't like Batman very much, this is still obvious.

But at the same time this totally takes the legs out from under Alfred's words of wisdom about human nature. Because if that bandit 'wanted' to 'watch the world burn' then what his unit did wasn't so bad, right; he was basically asking for it. Burning a forest down with all the inevitable collateral damage and economic and ecological cost, all for the sake of horribly killing a group of people in the name of government revenues was totally okay guys!

It transforms the whole thing into a pretty obvious post facto rationalization of colonial violence. Which makes the Insights Into Human Nature bit real questionable!

But the movie gives absolutely no sign of having noticed this.