#tumblr already has a serious problem with this about queer issues

[wild-at-mind]

Honestly really upset about the James Somerton thing.

[fubukiswifenoimnotjoking]

One Punch Man ship reviews bc I’m bored

WARNING: BIG ONE PUNCH MAN WEBCOMIC AND MANGA SPOILERS

GenoSai: do I even have to say it?? They compliment each other so well and are already besties. They make me so happy and I love their love. Genos literally came into Saitama’s life and brought so much new life and excitement when Saitama thought he’d never get any. Genos gives him love and appreciation all the time and never abandons him. Saitama isn’t connected to his feelings, but he cares about Genos and would do just about anything for him, to keep him safe. Genos constantly teases Saitama and Saitama grumbles and takes it with some banter, Genos is super emotional and Saitama does his best to comfort him, they fucking love shopping together and just hanging out period, they talk about the dumbest shit and somehow they still understand each other with the one brain cell they both share. It takes Genos forever to realize his feelings are deeper and Saitama has to be TOLD by their friends that he should fucking realize his feelings already. Just...I could keep going but I’ll stop! 2718873737839439/10 (let’s not talk about the age gap btw, 6 years isn’t bad and Genos is a legal adult.)

FubuSai: the stereotypical straight ship ppl gravitate to. Eh. I can see it, but at the same time I feel like they don’t completely compliment each other. Are they a hot couple? Duh. But I feel like their pride and communication issues would get in the way. 4/10

TatsuSai: hnghhhh. Someone mentioned this before, can’t remember who, but Saitama literally thinks she’s a child in canon. So that just....makes it gross. Same problems as FubuSai but worse. I’d rather see them as hesitant friends w a weird bond. 0/10

SonSai/SonicSai/idk the ship name: eh, toxic. Cant see them getting past communication issues and pride, again. Plus Sonic wants to kill his ass. Also, I just feel no romantic tension?? Even in fanfic it just falls flat for me. 3/10

MumenSai: a favorite!! Wish I saw it more, it’s very cute. Mumen is so kind and would absolutely be there to help him w self esteem and just help him be a better person period. And Saitama would have a cute little kind guy to tease and open up to. I could maybe see Mumen’s kindness getting on Saitama’s nerves when he’s in a bad mood bc Mumen almost never snaps and Saitama feels shittier, or maybe Mumen being mad at Saitama for being kinda lazy at home while Mumen is working his ass off and he’s like babe I just got home, please stop playing the fucking game and pay attention to me I have a concussion again. Prob too nitpicky on this one, heh, but 8.4/10

Genos x Sonic: wtf? As a crack ship, sure. That’s hilarious. But as a serious ship, 1.3/10 bc I could MAYBE see them bond over their love of my chemical romance or sum.

Anyone x Puri: -128382839287473828739219833468282/10. Fuck Puri.

TatsuKing: eh. Indifferent on this one too. I can see them getting along and Tatsu being the mean but supportive gf in public, but a sweet gf in private. King could be like her calm oasis of video games and sweet blonde shy bf. I sway more towards ace/aro King and queer non binary Tatsu, but this is still good. 6/10

FubuPsy/Fubuki x Psykos/idk: hell yeah!! This series NEEDS more wlw ships, both for me to project onto and to cry over. Prob my fav Fubuki ship, cuz they’ve known each other since they were young and had a tenuous friendship. I didn’t use to ship it until I saw that scene in the wc after the MA arc (u know the one) but here we are. They’re big personalities so any interaction is bound to be chaotic at first, but I really think they’d work. Pride put to the side, Psykos could be someone for Fubuki to finally rely on other than the Blizzard Bunch, someone to confide in, a badass partner to fight monsters with, talk about nothing for hours with, be a super fashionable #girlboss couple with, and someone who would really see her for who she is-especially w Psykos knowledge of her from the past. Hell, Psykos might even know her better than Tatsumaki. Fubuki could be an anchor to her like she currently is in the wc, providing a quiet comfort and making her open up little by little. Would prob be toxic at first bc of the MA arc and their desire for power, but is a very good ship I think. 9/10

Speedal/Sonic x Mumen: an old fav! Sonic would have a hard time not hating Mumen at first bc he’s the picture definition of a hero, sum he hates. But hanging out with him would show him Mumen is a GOOD guy genuinely and he’d be like ohhhh shit I’m in love w this man. Mumen would thoroughly appreciate someone to make him live a little, break some rules and stand up to ppl when they talk over him. He’d DEFINITELY be upset when finding out Sonic is an assassin, but would prob be conflicted bc he knows Sonic is a good person despite that. Would prob make Sonic give up on killing for them to be together. Sucks bc of the assassin thing and bc they haven’t met in canon! So we’re not sure how they’d interact with each other, sigh. 7.4/10

Okamaitachi x Bushidrill: a very underrated ship! To be clear, I headcanon Kama as a trans woman and so does most of the fandom. Anyway, very sweet and already built as a friendship bc of their partnership under Atomic Samurai. I can’t remember who writes fic and makes art of them on tumblr but AAAAA it’s so good! Very sweet. Basically depicted Bushi as a nervous himbo who’s honest about his feelings but scared to say them and Kama as a sweet lady who’s crazy about Bushi. Very sweet. Want more of them!! 6.1/10

OneZon/Zombieman x One Shotter: never even thought of the ship till I saw @megidolan art work! Very wholesome, and from what little we know of Shotter we know he’s a sort of nervous yet strong willed guy, and Zombieman would totally help him calm down bc he’s so chill. I could see them sharing cigarettes and talking shit on heroes while cuddling u know? 7/10 only because I don’t see enough of it but very good concept.

Mumarou/Mumen x Garou: a lot of ppl are gonna hate me for this but....I don’t like it. I’ve tried! I just—idk. I’ve read so many good fics about them that make me like it a bit, but the concept is just eh. I think their relationship is, in most reps, really cliche angsty stuff. I wish I could elaborate I just...gah! Basically, there’s better ships for the both of them imo. Sorry!! 4.3/10

Sonic x Flashy/SonFlash: yes!! Prob my fav Sonic ship. They have soooo much tension, it’s almost worse than Genos’ tension w Saitama. Flashy LITERALLY poisoned Sonic so that he wouldn’t be forced to kill him at the ninja graduation. He cares. They’ll never say it out loud, but they care. They have someone who understands what they went through in each other and someone they’re both so similar to, yet so different from. Sonic is more vocal about his expressions and let’s people know it while Flashy often keeps things to himself, they could really influence the other to be more this or that. I could see a lot of comfort with these two, and not much is needed for relationship development; they already have so much unspoken between them after meeting for the first time in years. Love it. Wish I saw it more! 10/11

KingSai: wonderful! Out of the few ppl Saitama is close to, def my second fav pick for a ship for him. There’s a post saying how Saitama doesn’t cut King off when he’s going on rants about games and stuff bc he’s talking TO Saitama, not at him like Genos tends to do on accident. They’re already great buddies! Saitama could find a shy gamer man who he can talk to about manga and stuff and also a passionate bf who could break out of his shell w Saitama and be himself with no lies. King can have someone to protect him, duh, someone who finally understands his weird sense of humor, and someone to shower him in the love and kindness he deserves when Saitama is in the mood to be all out like that w his affections. Plus he’s Saitama’s anchor and brings him back down when he’s super anxious and depressed and tells him what’s up that he needs to fix without sugarcoating it. Would def have a bunch of inside jokes and go on dates that are just staying inside playing video games all night. Domestic af. 10/10

Fubuki x Mizuki: my first wlw Fubuki ship! Hard to find but very good. Mizuki is this big ball of kindness, energy, and raw power that would make Fubuki go ‘Ohhhhhhh, big pretty lady make brain go brrr.’ I could see Mizuki grounding Fubuki when she’s in over her head, giving her random gifts bc she saw sum and thought of her, doing a marathon run and wildly waving at Fubuki in the crowd, and all around being a dependable woman confident in herself and in love with a mysterious esper. Prob a little shy when it comes to anything physical bc she loves Fubuki so much and is overwhelmed by the realness of being w her. Fubuki gives Mizuki advice on ‘acting like a proper hero’ or whatever and though Mizuki thinks she doesn’t need it, Fubuki still helps her a lot w her career and being taken more seriously by others. Would give Mizuki someone who loves her for who she is and would go wild on her in private when she can be open about her affection, would be someone Mizuki could exercise with and listen intently to Mizuki’s physical knowledge, and would absolutely bandage her when she’s all banged up. Hnghh love this ship. It’s only behind the FubuPsy ship juuuuust a little bc they haven’t met in canon so we can’t be sure about their interactions and stuff. 8.8/10, I love WOMEN

Batarou: how could I go this far without mentioning them?! They have SOOOO much tension in the centichoro fight, like come on. Both snarky assholes who are huge softies one the inside, Badd being the more logical one (still a himbo, tho) and Garou being the more chaotic one. Probably take forever to admit their feelings bc they’re so prideful and stupid <3 flirt through constant wrestling matches and it takes Genos saying ‘they should kiss already, they’re getting on his nerves’ for them to finally realize what’s up. (@rayadraws has a great au where Garou Genos and Badd are a chaotic friend squad and Genos is the only brain of the group, haha. Very good au y’all check it out!) Would constantly pick on each other affectionately and switch into concerned SO when the other is hurt like the big teddy bears they are. Raise Zenko together for sure. Garou would fumble being romantic and Badd would find it both hilarious and cute. 11/12

Zombie mask/Amai x Zombieman:

So. I don’t like Amai Mask and I used to hate him, BUT the webcomic and fic have really helped me calm down on him (he’s still a dick tho), so it’s easier to want to ship him and stuff. Bc of Amai’s anger issues and controlling behavior, I could see this relationship being super toxic and icky—but I think they have some form of understanding that pulls Amai back from being a complete dick, you know? Start off as fuck buddies and slowly form something else from spending companionable time together other than screwing. Zombieman pulls Amai back from his angry fits and soothes him over with his logic. Talk maaaaaad shit about heroes, but only when they’re alone because Zombieman knows Amai will talk loud af about the heroes they’re roasting and Zombie doesn’t wanna stop a fight from happening. Zombieman loves making Amai flustered and has a secret check list in his head of all the things that get Amai red faced. Loves to listen to Amai rant about things for hours and loves to watch his face go through almost cartoon like expressions as he talks. He won’t admit it, but Zombie loves to be spoiled by Amai’s shit tons of cash and often takes rides in Amai’s limos when he wants to smoke and think to himself. Amai has a hard time realizing how his feelings have changed, but gets hit hard with it when he wakes up to Zombie making them breakfast one morning while wearing Amai’s underwear. Amai also loves to spoil Zombie and takes him out to restaurants and buys him cool new weapons on the weekends. @batneko has pretty much gotten me into this ship and I strongly suggest looking at their works! 7.9/10

DemonKnight/Genos x Zero/Drive Knight: I’m pretty sure this used to be a crack ship before the past like 10 manga chapters—and now here we are! Not a fav bc 1. ZERO LEFT GENOS TO SELF DESTRUCT AFTER THEY COMBINED TO FORM THE FUCKING JET HE WAS JUST LIKE lol bye SO LIKE if he left him to die that’s super hard for me to forgive and ship grrr 2. Disregarding the manga’s canon and looking at the wc, while I love the little trip they went on where Zero demonstrated his abilities and helped Genos kill monsters, it’s super sus. He knew alllll of this info on Metal Knight and was super supportive and understanding when Genos said he needed time to think. Like,,,what are his intentions? We know so little about him—is he trying to trick Genos or was he being sincere? THAT STUFF ASIDE, they’re a really fun ship. They’re both huge fucking nerds and can keep up with their talk on robotics for hours, they’re both cyborgs so they understand each other’s pain, and they’re both super cool and angsty. I think they could really settle into a deep bond that can go platonic or romantic, just depends. Genos needs more ppl in his life so hell yeah! Plus, he can really let go with Zero bc they don’t have that teacher/student relationship and Zero, if he’s really a sincere and kind guy like in the wc, can be there for Genos and listen to him. Don’t have much to say on this ship other than @wellthisisembarrassing makes GORGEOUS art of them! 6.3/10

Webuiko/Suiko x Webigaza: YEAH I KNOW THEY HAVENT INTERACTED IN CANON AND WE DONT KNOW MUCH ABOUT THEM BUT HEAR ME OUT. Webigaza—cool af determined cyborg idol who’s surprisingly down to earth when talking with Child Emperor. Suiko—sassy and honest fighter who doesn’t take shit and is very passionate. Suiko would go to talk to Web then immediately freak out bc aaaa she’s way prettier than she thought, she can’t do this! Web would have to gently encourage Suiko to talk and at first is like ‘ah man, must be an adoring fan, ugh I’m so tired. At least she’s hot’ but when Suiko snaps out of her shyness Web is like oh! She’s super cool wtf. Always bump into each other during fights and help each other get fixed up, Suiko using her muscle power to lift Web’s pieces (and give Web a great view of Suiko’s muscles holy SHIT) and Web would patch Suiko up. Not to be stereotypical, but they’re def a masc/femme couple. I love the idea of this ship soooo much and I really hope they interact! 6.6/10 only bc they haven’t met 😭😭😭 look them up on here! There’s some great art of them by a few blogs

Dr. Kuseno x Bang: pretty sure @baldyborg came up with this one! Super cute. Just two old dudes finding a nice friendship in each other, maybe after Bang helps carry Genos to Kuseno’s after a day of fighting. Bang would find Kuseno to be a very cute little nerd man and would be sooo impressed by Kuseno’s mad scientist skills. Kuseno would be super impressed when seeing Bang in action too. They’d prob talk as soon as they meet each other and Genos would be in the background like you guys it’s been an hour, please fix me I’m on the verge of death 🧍🏻Bang would give Kuseno advice on training techniques to teach Genos and advice on making his bodies more martial arts ready or sum, meanwhile Kuseno would give his take on how to be kinder to Garou so that Bang would learn to repair the relationship with a gentleness he’s seemingly lacking (yes I’m talking about the chapter where he and Garou start fighting and Bang is just not doing enough to reach out to Garou, he’s being a callous old man! So yeah I’m still mad about that). Genos and Saitama would prob be out on a date and Saitama would be like oh theres Bang, wonder what he’s doing? Then Kuseno would walk up and kiss Bang and Genos and Sai would be shocked like SIRS 👬 Genos would tell Bang he doesn’t need another adoptive dad and Bang would be like....ok.... I see them retiring in a cottage together and Bang would become a huge softie. Yes I’m actively ignoring chapter 141 of the wc, shut up. 7.6/10

TankTop master x Mumen: they have a nice friendship going on in the manga right now! Just bros supporting bros. Tank is the picture definition of a muscly himbo and Mumen is his cute passionate bf. Also workout buddies af!! Don’t have much to say other than pretty good ship, just not a fav. 5.2/10

To sum it up—

GenoSai: 2718873737839439/10, Batarou: 11/12, SonFlash: 10/11, KingSai: 10/10, FubuPsy: 9/10, Fubuki x Mizuki: 8.8/10, MumenSai: 8.4/10, ZombieMask: 7.9/10, Dr. Kuseno x Bang: 7.6/10, Speedal: 7.4/10, OneZon: 7/10, Webuiko: 6.6/10, DemonKnight: 6.3/10, Okamaitachi x Bushidrill: 6.1/10, TatsuKing: 6/10, TankTop Master x Mumen: 5.2/10, Mumarou: 4.3/10, FubuSai: 4/10, SonSai: 3/10, Genos x Sonic: 1.3/10, TatsuSai: 0/10, anyone x Puri: -1283828319833468282/10

If there’s any ships I left out, it’s bc I don’t know them, don’t wanna talk about them, or just don’t have an opinion strong enough. Also, I know there are some poly ships like Genos x Saitama x Fubuki, but I’ve read only one fic about that (it was pretty good, here’s the link https://archiveofourown.org/works/5406992 ) so I don’t feel like talking about it. Hope no ones offended! All my opinion here :)

[the-dragongirl]

Hello tumblr. I have returned from a long period of inactivity, because I must bring the good word to the corner of the Star Wars fandom that used to be my main fannish home: there is a new era of Star Wars canon that was made just for our taste. It is called the High Republic.

WHAT IS THE HIGH REPUBLIC?

The High Republic is an giant multi-media project being carried out by the Lucasfilm story group to create a brand new era of Star Wars canon. It is set a few hundred years before the prequel era (so, a long time after the Old Republic era), in a period of peace and stability within the Republic. It currently includes several English language adult novels, a YA novel, two serialized comics, a manga, some short stories, and some short video blurbs published on facebook and youtube. A TV show for Disney+ has also been announced, but is a few years off. This project is unique in Star Wars, in that all of the different parts are being written together by one writing team, and are coordinated to tell a cohesive story. Also, what has been announced is just the beginning – they have stated that there will be three different sections of the High Republic, and everything we have had announced so far is just part one. As a note: this is an era for which there was NO pre-existing canon in Legends, so it is totally new territory.

OKAY, THAT’S NICE, BUT WHY SHOULD I BOTHER TO CHECK IT OUT?

There are SO many reasons why the High Republic is worth your time to explore. I will try to outline some of them here below the cut (without any significant spoilers).

IT IS A LOVE LETTER TO THE JEDI

This is the era for everyone who loves the Jedi and wants to understand how they got to the point they did in the prequel era. It shows Jedi at their best: saving people, working together, being completely in tune with the Force (in so many beautiful and original ways), demonstrating creativity and flexibility and being rewarded for it, actually thinking through the ethics of things like the mind trick, and DEALING with their emotions rather than repressing them. It shows us how the rigid Jedi culture was saw in the prequels was a corruption of something that was originally healthy and uplifting. Jedi in this era are allowed to be flawed, and to grow, and have a community that supports them in doing so. This is the Jedi culture so many of us created as fix it fic for the prequel era, but made canon.

IT IS AN ERA OF HOPE

There are some serious problems in the High Republic Era. Without spoilers, the era opens with a terrible humanitarian crisis, laid over the Republic equivalent of the New Deal from US history.  We see a lot of examples of people doing their best to be good to each other, and working for a more just and kind galaxy. They acknowledge that things are not perfect, but people from many different backgrounds (Jedi, politicians, farmers, pilots, business people) work together to try and make things better. I don’t know about you all, but with the darkness we see in the world today, I NEED some of that optimism in my escapist media. The High Republic provides that.

IT WILL GIVE YOU FEELINGS

The existing material so far is structured to really let you emotionally invest in the characters and their struggles. Unlike with many eras of Star Wars canon, characterization is not sacrificed for the sake of plot (though never fear, there is PLENTY of plot). That means there is huge scope for empathy. I’m not going to lie; I cried within the first three chapters of Light of the Jedi, as did several other people I know. It is POIGNANT in a way that feels truly genuine.

IT IS FUN

The writing team understands that, in the end, Star Wars is space fantasy. If your space fantasy is nothing but serious, gritty grimdark, it becomes pretentious and unbearable. So, for all that there is some heavy content in the High Republic (VERY heavy content – the Nihil should really have their own content warning), it has many moments of levity that keep it from taking itself too seriously. For example, the High Republic made Jedi bodice rippers canon. Also, characters like Geode exist (yes, that rock there is a CHARACTER). The result is something which honors the spirit of Star Wars, and keeps you engaged without being tedious or ridiculously depressing.

THE WRITING TEAM HAS DIVERSE PERSPECTIVES

The main writing team consists of five people: Justina Ireland, Claudia Gray, Charles Soule, Daniel José Older, and Cavan Scott. You will note that includes two people of color, two women, and one out Queer person (in fact, one of the writers is all three of those things). This is a far cry from the white-cis-straight-man-dominated writing teams we have seen in the past. And when they bring in other people to the project, they make a point of looking for perspectives that aren’t represented on their team – for example, the manga is being co-written between Justina Ireland and Japanese writer Shima Shinya, and Ireland has stated in interviews that Shinya is taking the lead on the writing.

IT VALUES MEANINGFUL REPRESENTATION

That diverse writing team means a cast that looks WAY more like the real world than any other era of Star Wars we’ve seen, in terms of representation. There are multiple characters of color, who are both heroes and central to the story. There are at least five canonical queer characters to date (a MLM couple, an Ace character, and two NB character).  [EDIT: Thank you @legok9​ for letting me know about the NB characters]. Among binary gendered characters, there is a very even balance of men and women. The writing team has also stated that they will be incorporating more representation of disability in the works to come. And the story is so much better for it – representation is included here BECAUSE it makes for more creative, believable, and original storytelling.

IT IS ACCESSIBLE

Because of the multiple formats, and the fact that it doesn’t rely on you knowing any prior lore, the High Republic offers many avenues to engage for people with all kinds of needs. Know nothing about Star Wars canon and feel intimidated about catching up? The canon is all new in this era anyway, so you’re fine. Can’t handle flashing lights? No problem – the little bit of video content that exists is totally free from the strobing effects that caused seizure and sensory issues. Need purely audio content? You can still have a full experience of the High Republic with the gorgeously sound-scaped audiobooks. Don’t have the attention span for books or long movies? Then the comics are your friend.

THERE IS SOMETHING FOR ALL

Between the books aimed towards adults and teens (and their respective audiobooks), the kids books, the comics, the manga, the short stories, AND the eventual TV show on Disney+, there is going to be content in the High Republic that suits most audiences. And that is just what has been announced so far – there is still more to come for phases II and III. This isn’t Star Wars written towards one group or demographic – it is Star Wars for everyone.

DID I MENTION THE FANCY JEDI UNIFORMS?

Because cosplayers and fanartists? This is the era for you. We are getting Jedi in silks with elaborate gold embroidery. Jedi with jewelry other decorative elements. Even the practical field uniforms have tooled and embossed leather. If you want to draw or make Jedi that have some of that that sweet LoTR-esque high fantasy aesthetic, the High Republic has your back. (Not going to lie – I am ALREADY imagining the time travel AUs. Put Obi-Wan in fancy clothes!)

OKAY, YOU’VE SOLD ME. WHERE SHOULD I START?

I strongly recommend everyone looking to get into the High Republic (who is old enough to be on Tumblr) start with Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule. I alternated between the physical book and the audio book, and found it delightful in both formats. After that, you have a lot of options. You can read or listen to the audio book of the YA novel A Test of Courage by Justina Ireland. You can check out the currently running Star Wars: The High Republic comic from Marvel, or the Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures comic from IDW. Or you can skip straight to Into the Dark by Claudia Gray. Honestly, there is no wrong order to try out most of the High Republic.

IN CONLUSION

The High Republic is Star Wars written for people who DON’T want Star Wars to be a good ‘ol boys club for salty white dudes who don’t want to see anything but more of Luke Skywalker. It offers broad representation, and optimistic narrative, and whole bunch of awesome Jedi content. If you are someone who fell in love with Jedi in the prequel era, the High Republic will give you more of what you loved. And if you are totally new to Star Wars? The High Republic is here for you too.

So, go check it. And then go write fic for it (please, there are only, like, 14 fics on AO3, I am dying).

[amispnrewatch]

SPN 1x06 “Skin”

Okay, I’m gonna try to type while I watch this time instead of forgetting this blog exists until the episode is almost over.

You can tell the footage for the previously on segment was saved on a VHS copy instead of the original film that the show was shot with because even in the HD iTunes version I have it looks low quality as fuck. And jumpy in the way that brings me back to my teens watching the WB all the damn time.

I love this song. WTF is this song. Shazam says “Good Deal” by Mommy and Daddy. I… have no comment, except that it sounds like everything I was listening to in college at the time this shit was airing.

Aaaaand not!Dean turns around to face the SWAT team after obviously torturing some woman. THAT is a cold open.

I wanna know what that car is in the background. It’s pretty. Maybe a convertible Impala? They have similar grills. This is not at all important.

Also, I love that with these higher definition versions of the episodes you can see that Sam’s email is lawboy and whatever dot com and that people in the fandom have started calling him Law Boy. It’s hilarious.

DEAN: Well, what exactly do you tell ‘em? You know, about where you’ve been, what you’ve been doin’?

SAM: I tell ‘em I’m on a road trip with my big brother. I tell ‘em I needed some time off after Jess.

DEAN: Oh, so you lie to ‘em.

SAM: No. I just don’t tell ‘em….everything.

DEAN: Yeah, that’s called lying. I mean, hey, man, I get it, tellin’ the truth is far worse.

SAM: So, what am I supposed to do, just cut everybody out of my life? (DEAN shrugs.) You’re serious?

DEAN: Look, it sucks, but in a job like this, you can’t get close to people, period.

Aaaaand now I have Dean and Cassie feelings again and we haven’t even gotten to her episode yet.

SAM: No, man, I know Zack. He’s no killer.

DEAN: Well, maybe you know Zack as well as he knows you.

Aaaaaand now I have Dean and Lee feelings and we’re nowhere near Lee’s episode in season 15.

YOU JUST BLEW THROUGH A STOP SIGN DEAN WTF.

Little Becky. Oi with the reusing of names.

Of course Sam made friends with a bunch of rich kids while he was at college in a desperate attempt to try to be normal.

SAM: You know, maybe we could see the crime scene. Zack’s house.

DEAN: We could.

REBECCA: Why? I mean, what could you do?

SAM: Well, me, not much. But Dean’s a cop. (DEAN laughs.)

DEAN: Detective, actually.

I love that Dean was like “how dare you call me that.”

Okay, after a bit of research, I totally want to take a day trip to Bisbee, Arizona, but it’s already in the 90s here in the desert and it’s not even May so that trip is going to have to wait until… winter or something. There is no way in hell I’m going deeper into the desert when the weather gets hotter.

It’s a historic mining town tourist trap looking place now which is exactly the kind of shit I love.

SAM: Bec, look, I know Zack didn’t do this. Now, we have to find a way to prove that he’s innocent.

I mean, not technically, technically you would 1) NOT FUCK WITH A MURDER INVESTIGATION YOU’RE NOT LEGALLY INVOLVED IN BECAUSE ANYTHING YOU FIND WOULD BE INADMISSABLE IN COURT 2) find evidence to provide a reasonable doubt for the jury that he did commit the crime. You know, like a lawyer would need to do, Law Boy.

DEAN: I just don’t think this is our kind of problem.

When I made my husband watch this show with me (he’s seen it all at least once now over the years) this is the recurring thing that drove him crazy.

You guys can’t even go in through the back door? Or shut the front door behind you? Really?

REBECCA: (tearfully) Well, there’s no sign of a break-in. They say that Emily let her attacker in.

Yeah, that doesn’t even really mean that she knew her attacker. Just that it was someone she let her guard down around or got in some other way. See: The Son of Sam and Nightstalker, etc.

Love the pinup magnet on the fridge. I’d throw shade at that, but I have a pinup magnet on my fridge too so… pot kettle and all that.

Okay, both people in the next couple are gorgeous.

And oh wow those special effects changing eyes… wow.

This poor couple. I feel so bad for them in this episode.

How… how are the police gonna explain the way he was able to beat himself over the head with a bat??? I…

I love that 5:30 in the morning on TV is clearly like… 10 AM.

Okay, this is a really unrelated point, but the graffiti on the dumpster here reminds me of the Teen Wolf fandoms use of the name Void!Stiles when Stiles Stilinski was possessed by a Nogitsune… I just spent way too long digging through YouTube and my Tumblr tags from back when those episodes were airing looking for a few specific videos and couldn’t find them. The TL;DR reason I bring it up here is goofball, bi-coded main character guy getting possessed by an entity set on destroying the people he loves. SOUNDS LIKE THIS EPISODE AND A WHOLE LOT OF SPN RIGHT. I love that all these monster hunting shows call out to each other.

This scene haunts me years later and I don’t even WATCH Teen Wolf. I just watched the fandom on Tumblr collectively lose it’s shit then tripped down a Hale Pack fanfiction rabbit hole.

ANYWAY

Back to Supernatural, a show that also treated its fan base, cast, and characters like garbage! Huzzah!

DEAN: Well, there’s another way to go—down. (They look down and notice a manhole.)

I’m gonna be mature and ignore the double entendre there…

But I love that Dean thinks of the world in 3D. Which sounds like a dumb statement to make, but this is honestly a good example of that in action.

SAM: I bet this runs right by Zack’s house, too.

Really Sam, sewers run by houses? SO WEIRD. I WOULD HAVE NEVER GUESSED.

DEAN: You know, I just had a sick thought. When the shapeshifter changes shape—maybe it sheds.

SAM: That is sick. (DEAN puts the bloody pile back on the ground.)

Guys, there is a WHOLE ASS EAR in that pile of yuck you’re looking at. I think it’s pretty safe to assume the shapeshifter indeed sheds its skin like a snake. A much… gooier snake.

Sam’s friend is rightfully pissed at him for fucking with the crime scene.

This is before the pearl gripped guns?! Wow. I never noticed that before.

Also, this whole episode gives me feelings.

++++

Cool. Tumblr mobile ate a whole section of my notes on this when it crashed for NO APPARENT REASON. Love that.

It always boggles my mind that actors can trust the people they’re working with enough to let people “tie” ropes around their neck or put them in actually dangerous positions in a scene.

SHAPESHIFTER: He’s sure got issues with you. You got to go to college. He had to stay home. I mean, I had to stay home. With Dad. You don’t think I had dreams of my own? But Dad needed me. Where the hell were you?

SAM: Where is my brother? (The shapeshifter leans in close to SAM.)

SHAPESHIFTER: I am your brother. See, deep down, I’m just jealous. You got friends. You could have a life. Me? I know I’m a freak. And sooner or later, everybody’s gonna leave me. (He backs away.)

SAM: What are you talkin’ about?

SHAPESHIFTER: You left. Hell, I did everything Dad asked me to, and he ditched me, too. No explanation, nothin’, just poof. Left me with your sorry ass. But, still, this life? It’s not without its perks. (He laughs.) I meet the nicest people. Like little Becky. You know, Dean would bang her if he had the chance. Let’s see what happens. (He smiles and covers SAM with a sheet.)

This exchange is just… so much. So many feelings. And I will forever (unless we magically get a fix-it fic mini season someday…) be SO MAD that none of this got resolved in that pointless, trash heap of a finale.

REBECCA: Okay, so, this thing—it can make itself look like anybody?

SHAPESHIFTER: That’s right. (She chuckles.)

REBECCA: Well, what is it, like a genetic freak? (The shapeshifter laughs.)

SHAPESHIFTER: Maybe. Evolution is about mutation, right? So, maybe this thing was born human but was different. Hideous and hated. Until he learned to become someone else. (REBECCA looks around, uncomfortable. The shapeshifter’s eyes glint silver, and he smiles.)

It always amazes me how much of this show is a pile of accidental queer allegories parading around in an ill-fitting toxic masculinity suit.

Vulcan mind meld! I love nerd!Dean. Also, I’m rewatching Star Trek: TOS with my husband, because that is what my life amounts to these days, rewatching comfort TV and flailing over the bits I love.

This post does a better job than I can do of pairing up screen caps with the dialogue of this next scene. SIX EPISODES IN. They’re dumping all of this character depth SIX EPISODES IN. FUCK THIS SHOW FOR NOT EMBRACING ITSELF.

Okay, I love that he screams back in her face after he threw the phone. It’s not something to laugh at because the situation is horrifying, but I can’t help laughing at it every time.

AND THE WAY THEY CUT THESE SCENES. Going from him winding his hand back to backslap her directly to him dropping the chains on the table to show how hard he must have hit her without actually making the actors hit each other. Good job editing department!

I… don’t understand the shifter’s motivation for killing people. If he can take over people’s identities without killing them, why kill them? Is it just because he’s a homicidal, rapist piece of shit? Cause that’s all it seems like.

How did the SWAT team even know she was being attacked? Why can the snipers aim no better than Storm Troopers?

Ugh, these kind of transformation body horror scenes are exactly why werewolf stories have never really appealed to me much. Like, I could do without watching your ribs move and teeth fall out, dude.

BUT.

THIS FUCKING SCENE.

I looked up the song that’s playing over shapeshifter!Dean being caught by the SWAT team and then going through the grotesque transformation. (And as far as I know, the iTunes version has the original music from the episodes.)

It’s a song called “Mary” by The Death Riders

Who's your mother, who's your mother here boy // Who's your mother, whos your mommy dear // Who's your father, who's your father here boy // Who's your father, who's your daddy dear

Silently screaming // Where everyone knows // Daddy's always watchin' // Where everywhere - everywhere I go

I don't wanna be a freak show pretty boy anymore // I don't wanna be a full time slave // I don't wanna be your midnight cowboy anymore // I just want to be Mary

This is… a fascinating choice. Here are the rest of the lyrics. The song as a whole has a weird incesty kinda vibe to it? Kinda like when SPN tries to straight-wash itself and misses the mark wildly. (Like Dean’s male siren episode.)

The midnight cowboy line reminded me of 12x11 and the bull riding scene with “Broomstick Cowboy” by Bobby Goldsboro playing over it

Dream on, little Broomstick Cowboy, // Dream while you can; // Of big green frogs, // And puppy dogs, // And castles in the sand.

For, all too soon you'll awaken; // Your toys will all be gone. // Your broomstick horse will ride away, // To find another home. // And you'll have grown into a man, // With cowboys of your own. // And then you'll have to go to war, // To try and save your home.

And then you'll have to learn to hate; // You'll have to learn to kill. // It's always been that way, my son; // I guess it always will.

Because, you know, why not add tons of feelings into the lyrics, right?

Props to the people who can embrace their rewatches and reclamations of the show with ease. Because every episode seems to remind me of how hollow and tragic Dean’s ending was and I just… struggle all over again.

Anyway, back to the episode so I can move on with my day.

REPORTER: An anonymous tip led police to a home in the Central West End, where a S.W.A.T team discovered a local woman bound and gagged. Her attacker, a white male, approximately twenty-four to thirty years of age, was discovered hiding in her home. (A sketch of DEAN appears on the screen.)

DEAN: Man! That’s not even a good picture. (SAM looks around cautiously.)

SAM: It’s good enough. (He walks away.)

DEAN: Man! (He follows SAM.)

(CUT TO: Alley. DEAN and SAM are walking. DEAN steps into a puddle.)

DEAN: Ugh, come on.

I love that we get two tiny little back-to-back vanity moments for Dean here. One commenting on the sketch artist rendition of him being broadcasted on the news and the other tripping in the puddle. There is literally someone running around the city trying to kill people while wearing Dean’s face, but Dean is still concerned with how he looks appears to others. He’s still concerned with keeping up his own performance. The shifter left him with just a t-shirt, so he doesn’t even have his usual comfort layers on and at any moment someone could spot him and call the police or try to kill him for assaulting Sam’s friend. His life is wildly out of control in that moment and the only thing he can try to focus on is his appearance (something semi-controllable) and finding the shifter before any of that other shit can happen.

One day I want to put together a like top 10 episodes focusing on / explaining each TFW character from the series. Like the kind of list you could show someone who’s never seen the show, but has OPINIONS about the characters (or who hasn’t seen the whole show and seen the growth they went through… you know, like the people responsible for the travesty of 15x20). This episode would be on that list. I’m not sure how I could manage to make a list of only 10 episodes to understand Dean Winchester by, but eh.

SAM: What are you gonna do to me?

SHAPESHIFTER: Oh, I’m not gonna do anything. Dean will, though.

SAM: They’ll never catch him.

SHAPESHIFTER: Oh, doesn’t matter. Murder in the first of his own brother? He’ll be hunted the rest of his life. (He picks up a sharp knife and examines it.)

Speaking of season 15 in general, this right here. This was Chuck’s villain story arc thesis statement. AND THEY DROPPED THE GODDAMN BALL WITH IT. I think that’s the thing that honestly pisses me off the most these days (about 5 1/2 months from when the finale aired) is that they tried making the whole thing a tragedy but did such an awful job with it that it just ended up like a deflating condom balloon at a dive bar concert. Disappointing and gross. The finale for season 14 set them up SO FUCKING WELL and it just… didn’t get there.

Becky’s parents are gonna be pissed at how torn up their house is after all this shit…

And you’re not shooting him when you first see him strangling Sam because…?????

I like that he took the necklace back. Also, is this kinda Dean death number .5 of the show? Like it wasn’t him but it was also kinda him. Eh.

At least they left the windshield on Baby this time. Reflections are better than tearing her apart.

[rpbetter]

"writes dubcon therefore is a freak who should be bullied off the site" ho boy i'm fed up with people acting as if consenting adults writing [insert "problematic" fictional thing here] is the worst thing in the world. seen way too many people justifying harrassment of REAL PEOPLE by "they write thing that triggers me". ok, and? mute the tags or don't follow! "it triggers someone" is not a valid reason to ban a topic. piano music triggers me yet i don't go around demanding everyone stop playing the piano.

Anon, not only is everything you said absolutely valid, but also, thank you for demonstrating that triggers are incredibly varied and as such, we cannot predict everyone's triggers. Making the entire "point" of banning for possible triggers invalidated as hell.

We should be aware of things like the most commonly occurring phobias (things like arachnophobia and coulrophobia that are, additionally, easily triggered by imagery) and tag them. We should be aware of very obvious triggers, that are, again, easily set off by imagery, like blood, eye trauma, and depictions of domestic violence. And we should always read and be aware of our writing partners' stated triggers so that we can tag them appropriately or even decide that it isn't going to work because our muse, canon story, or interests are going to present an unfair situation in this partnership.

But triggers can be highly unusual, as well as activated differently (even at different times) for everyone. I'm not triggered by seeing hotel rooms in pictures or movies, I'm not triggered by writing scenes that take place in them, but I'm triggered to some degree by being in one. It's outrageous oversimplification to act like all triggers are the same, they all display the same way, they're all going to trigger someone on the same basis, everyone's going to react the same to their triggers. There is absolutely no way to prevent 100% of possible triggers for 100% of the population, 100% of the time.

Add to this that way too many people trivialize triggers by throwing around that term to justify the banning of something that makes them uncomfortable or that they take a personal, moral issue with. "I don't like this" and "I'm grossed out by this" and "this makes me feel uncomfortable" is not being triggered. It's just a good way to weaponize the better nature of other people so that they comply.

Most people legitimately do not want to trigger someone, especially if they have triggers and know what it's like. Just like no one wants to be accused of cruelty towards trauma survivors in general, or be designated a pedo, rape apologist, or fascist. They're all things to weaponize in order to isolate, shame, and control. And that's really fucking gross. These are serious, real things that have no business being trivialized to police content, win internet arguments, or garner popularity.

The potential for someone to be triggered isn't a reason to ban anything; we have tags, we have blacklist.

While I'll be the first to say that tumblr's blacklisting can be as shitty as everything else on the site, the primary issue with running into content you don't want to see comes down to two factors: no one tagging/tagging correctly and actively exposing yourself to that content. Going through people's properly done tags and blog warnings about their content in order to "call it out" is actively exposing yourself by choice. You actual walnuts.

Calling people on on their "problematic" content is bringing those topics to the attention of other people. That's the whole point of this gross behavior: look at the freak pedo abuse apologist I found, they write dubcon!! Don't look if you'll be triggered uwu

Buddy, pal, my guy...you just put that on blast for anyone to run across. Maybe their blacklist catches those words in your callout post, maybe it doesn't. Maybe they think you're a safe space because you promote yourself that way, so they click it anyway. Point is, you just willfully and irresponsibly exposed people because it's more important to you to demonize a rando on tumblr RPing something you take issue with. Good job!

Furthermore, dubcon itself is such a hilarious issue to take. Do they realize that isn't always sexual, or? Not? I'm thinking not. Funnily enough, one of the oldest posts I've been working on for this blog is about exactly this topic, the myriad situations that are dubious consent. That doesn't have to be sexual, and neither does it have to be intentionally predatory. You can come up with some amazing character development with a lot of muses in the RPC with dubcon because almost everyone's muse has some manner of trauma that might negate their perception of their own consent...and what do you do then? Is it removing more agency from that muse to shut them down, or is that always the better option? Can you separate your opinion as the mun from your muse's natural reactions? How does this impact the muses involved not just that moment but the next year?

Point is, dubcon isn't always some rapey situation. Even if it was, even if someone is writing it that way, it's literally not your business or your problem.

There's one mutual-in-law on my RP blog that really bothers me. They write things that I find fetishizing, incredibly rapey, all around shit that bothers me. I don't want to see it, some of the things they write makes my damn skin crawl. This person doesn't know it, we certainly don't speak and I don't think they like me very much, but I've repeatedly defended their right, specifically their right as a person with some long-term callouts on them, to write what they want to. I have them blocked and their urls blacklisted so I never have to see my mutual reblogging their threads. It's not a problem because I don't click "show anyway." Why would I, if it genuinely bothers me so much?

That's how you handle things that bother you; you use the tools available to not interact even by accident. Not by launching a morality crusade.

If any of us want to write what we enjoy, we have to allow others that same freedom. It's always a matter of time before this policing grows to include more and more topics, it's been used multiple times to get well-meaning people who don't fall into the general demographics to police queer, BIPOC, and other marginalized groups off of platforms. We've been fortunate in most of the RPC that it implodes on itself before it gets all the way there, but even so, you can see it.

It starts with things that produce a visceral reaction in the great majority of people, positions this with a repeatedly condemned idea presented as solid fact that fiction is reality, and you've got the start of something awful. Today it's something you don't like, maybe even something that triggers you, so you either support it or you quietly allow it to happen. Who needs to write that "freak shit" anyway, can't they just be gross privately? Six months from now, it's something "problematic" that you enjoy like violence that's canon-typical for your muse, or your OTP because they're gay and that's fetishizing, they're cis male and female but one or both is bi and that's bad representation, or they canonically have a rocky relationship so that's romanticizing toxic/abusive relationships.

If you can't care for any other reason, you really should care about how it is going to impact you sooner or later. In an environment like this, you can stay in your space, put warnings on your blog, and tag properly and you're still going to get a callout if the wrong person finds your blog. Just takes a single person with more time, energy, and skewed ideas of justice than they have reading comprehension or common sense.

Again, I cannot encourage people enough to give warnings, but it's difficult to ignore why those warnings are slipping; they're a way to be found, designated as a Problem, and called out. Look, it's another reason why callouts actually make things worse, not better! People put that shit in their rules so you can avoid content, they're being responsible and interested in promoting a safe RPC. Let them do it, damn.

You can't tag everything, and if you've never experienced what a giant series of repetitive tags is like on a screenreader you probably should before you tag seven paragraphs of possible issues. You can tag for visuals, you can tag for the obvious things, and you can tag for what's in the rules you agreed to when you followed/followed back. But you should also warn people that you write "dark topics" on the tin, and expand on that in your rules for specific things like graphic violence, toxic relationships, dubon, and addiction.

That's how responsible adults, not over-aged children, make better decisions about their mental health and general comfort. Not by appointing themselves the watchdogs of the damn RPC, here to protect you whether you want to be or not, find that incredibly insulting or not when you're in one of their categories of people who must be protected, by forcibly banning Problematic Everything. Problematic, of course, being entirely in the eye of the content police.

It's fiction. No one and nothing real was harmed. It's great that you are so invested in the fictional world and people that make you happy, but take a fucking big step back into reality. The real people you're harming with your bullshit had every right to peaceably exist. If what they're writing is triggering to you, stay. away. from. it.

Without any coincidence whatsoever, that's how you get from the base-point of Problematic Material to Problematic Mun. Yeah, it's just fiction, it's just RP, but I also took something out of context OOC or was upset by their tone on their own blog or couldn't exercise the minimal adult logic to remove myself from their presence OOC as well. So, now, you've got OOC behavior being added to the callout, if it wasn't already. Everyone is now ableist, transphobic, racist, and a misogynist because it lends that visceral reaction to the callout and ups the game from just being "y'all so gross you aged up a cartoon character to ship" to "this is REAL and it won't be tolerated! OP is actually a pedophile, they told a sexual joke in a discord server with a minor present and I have the receipts!"

What are the most storied callouts in the entire RPC? I'm absolutely certain the same names came to mind no matter what fandoms you're in, and one of them was "Matt." Another was probably "Ares/Snow". They're all successful and keep being brought up out of the closet anytime people are bored enough because their primary punch is the mun themselves being a predatory threat to the community. The mun is verified to be a bad person. Well, of course, that's got to be repeated, it worked. (Even if it did not, at all, work and only made it harder for people to avoid any of these muns.)

Are there people in the RPC who are legitimately a problem? Absolutely, yes. We're all supposed to be adults, however. Part of being an adult is having and acting upon one's agency. If someone is coercing you into things you are not comfortable with, shut it down. If you have difficulties being certain of those situations, run it by a trusted, honest friend or available, impartial source in the RPC for a second opinion. If you can't handle any manner of confrontation, there really are situations in which it's perfectly alright to block someone without any discussion. It's just the internet, you're in control of your space. Own it.

Minors are a whole other can of fucked up worms I'm not even getting into right now except to say that because a minor exists in a space they were told to stay out of does not mean we ban all topics inappropriate for their consumption.

tl;dr: banning shit doesn't work anyway, the whole idea is predicated upon some incredibly problematic takes IRL, and no, there's no justification for it outside of intense personal problems with one's own importance. That energy would be infinitely better spent volunteering one's time to help real people in crisis or after surviving one, or even oneself in developing some healthier approaches and thought patterns.

[crimeronan]

2020 in review

it’s been a weird year for me.

by all accounts, it Should be a bad year.  

lots of bad things happened to me this year.  i found places i adore in my new town - a certain cozy chair in the library, a corner table at a 24 hour coffee shop, a park bench in direct sunlight for most of the day - just in time to lose them all.  i started pursuing health answers in january, only for all the hospitals to close on my birthday, rendering answers impossible to find.

i waited months for the hospitals to open again, from home, unable to pursue any of the nightlife or queer meetups or community theater i’d vowed to get involved in.  eventually i found out i have scoliosis and a serious vitamin D deficiency.  i hoped to get better by treating these things.  instead the health problems continued, worsened.  i slept through most of may and november, i had intermittent weeks where i’d sleep for 20+ hours a day and be in too much pain to get out of bed upon waking.  i missed rent a few times.  borrowed money too many times.  relied on my loved ones way more than i’ve ever been comfortable with. (it’s the adam parrish ass in me.)

i developed a painful deformity in my leg.  spent stupid amounts of time in urgent care and the ER.  thought it was a dislocation due to connective tissue issues, but my x-rays came back clean.  so did an ultrasound for blood clots.  my doctor referred me to a dermatologist, who did a biopsy.  not super pleasant considering i faint when punctured with needles, but i’d already had my blood drawn and IVs stuck in me, so whatever.  found out i have an autoimmune disorder.  went from the most-perceived-as-able-bodied person in my house to the one most likely to get killed by the pandemic in the span of a single phone call.  might have a shortened lifespan, might not.  don’t know yet.  probably will know by the end of the year.

so it should be a bad year.  none of this was pleasant.  i’ve had spans of time where i’ve cried harder than i’ve ever cried in my life.  had to keep myself from calling my mom and telling her i needed her, because i knew she’d drop her job and her responsibilities and her plans to race across the whole-ass country, and i didn’t want to do that to her

but i don’t think it was a bad year.  not really.

it was my first full year living in the portland metro area.  which, don’t get me wrong, deserves some of the Cringe Hippie Liberal Anarchist Moron reputation it gets.  but it meant living in a city full of queer people and openly trans-friendly businesses.  it meant having enough healthcare providers near me that i could actively seek out ones who could treat my complex mental and physical health issues without some of the biases i’m used to.  it meant that i found an adequate psychiatrist within 10 minutes of me, an adequate primary care doctor within 20.

i used to live in rural new hampshire.  i drove 70 minutes to see my psychiatrist.  i never found a primary care doctor for physical health issues.  i would have had to go to boston, and i don’t like driving in downtown boston.  (masshole reputations are real and boston’s city planning is hell on earth.)

i also had the very strange experience of being taken seriously by every doctor i interacted with.  i am not used to this.  without getting too deep into it, i have been pretty badly scarred by experiences with having my autonomy violated because of my status as a psychotic individual, even though my fears were not psychosis-related.  also less scarring but equally off-putting experiences with being a perceived-as-woman individual whose pain was shrugged off by men as, like, normal hysterical woman agonies.  or whatever.

so, i had a leg deformity.  and doctors took me seriously.  because it was a visible, inexplicable symptom.  and because a lot of them looked at it and thought, oh fuck, this girl is dying.

(i could still be dying, i guess.  just a lot slower than they worried i was.  i’m not about to keel over from a blood clot or from my rotting bones decaying into my bloodstream.)

this has gone a long way toward alleviating my intrinsic fear of doctors.  being SICK is scary, sure, but it’s odd to be able to (cautiously) expect that doctors will try to help me instead of hurt me.

it was also my first full year living in an apartment of my own, with the family i chose.  my first full year of having my own space that i built.  my first full year of being independent, aside from the times i wasn’t.  my first full year of interacting exclusively with people who make me feel happy and loved instead of people who drain me.  and i felt better, mentally, than i have in a long time.

which is reflected in my creative work.  this was my most creative year in... ever, i think?  even though i was so sick and slept through so much of it.  even though the pandemic kept me from seeking out inspirational experiences.  i made a lot of fandom friends & got closer to friends i met last year.  i got a lot more confident in writing what i wanted to and talking about what i wanted to and not worrying about pleasing anyone but myself.

i published over 150k words of fanfic.  the vast majority of it was exploring feelings about chronic illness.  i outlined an original fiction project from beginning to end, added about 30k words to it.  i started fucking around with digital art a bit, although i have nothing even Remotely worth showing people.  i gained something like 900 tumblr followers from a combination of shitposting and earnestly talking about my feelings re: chronic illness, mental health, fictional meta.  i gave some ppl life advice that i guess was helpful.  apparently i inspired some people to survive the year, which is very weird to think about, but also very nice.

so, uh.  that’s my year i guess.  should be bad, but it wasn’t.  dunno how to conclude this so i will simply say:  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[reyeslonestar]

Thank you for reblogging that post about how some fans seem to have a problem with other fans wanting wlw relationships and characters on lone star. It is soooo infuriating and invalidating as a wlw woman myself seeing so many fans act like us wanting wlw characters and relationships weird or delusional. I literally just saw a blog call fans who want wlw rep delusional. Like how can you say something like that? Do you know how hurtful that is? And I’m not just the only wlw fan of lone star or fan in general wanting wlw rep. It’s not even asking for much? Like excuse us for wanting wlw representation? How does that make us weird or delusional? What makes mlm relationships the only valid ones and wlw relationships and characters invalid? It’s just so incredibly rude. There’s bias and other things I could talk about but we all know that already- why these fans are saying things like that. I have learned to just tune these fans out because it does no good to see stuff like that. Recently in both the 911 AND lone star fandom I guess you could say, I have seen so many fans try to gatekeep opinions and basically bully and say other incredibly hurtful things to fans who don’t view things the same way. And it’s like nothing is that serious this is a tv show about fictional people. We are all here just meant to be having fun watching a good show on tv. But instead fans wanna act like their opinions are more important or are the only important things. When that’s not true. There’s nothing wrong with wlw fans or just fans in general wanting wlw representation too. Because idk if they realize this but wlw women exist in real life, so it would be nice to see that reflected onscreen. Because it’s nice to see people like you or even if you aren’t wlw yourself, wlw women onscreen....... like why is this so hard for some fans to understand lol they can be so nasty and hurtful when they don’t even have to be

anon youre absolutely right.

I was gonna talk about fandom history here, and how shipping developed and how a lack of canonicity has never been a boundary to shipping, and how crack ships and rare pairs have been a part of fandom pretty much since the word go and why should that change now? and that wlw ships have always been rarer for reasons I kind of went into on the tags on this post, and that the lack of screentime for female characters, particularly with each other, has been yet another boundary to the prevalence of wlw shipping.

then I saw the original posts that I suspect kicked this whole thing off. and im just. so tired.

here's my advice anon.

get friendly with your block button. clear out any blogs that are putting things on your dash/in the tags that are hurting you. filter out any phrases that pop up in posts with that kind of hurtful stuff. curate your Tumblr experience and protect yourself.

other fans have no right to tell you whether or not a ship is ‘valid’ or not. so long as you aren’t hurting anyone (and shipping two adult women certainly isnt doing that) go right ahead. enjoy the dynamic that you find, and explore it to your heart’s content.

there are many many issues with shipping in fandom. white ships get prioritised over interracial ships, queer ships get erased for straight ships,  noncanon mlm ships get prioritised over healthy f/m ships, white mlm ships get prioritised over interracial f/m ships, queer characters get some part or all of their sexuality erased to fit some arbitrary binary. fandom is not exempt from racism, or sexism, or even queerphobia, and these are the issues we should be critical of.

shipping two women together - two women who currently have no other relationships and have unconfirmed sexualities so are literally open to any interpretation, women who are fully capable of being in a consensual relationship - this is not a concept that needs to be criticised.

fuck that blog. fuck those people. wlw ships are just as valid as mlm ships, and you are entitled to an existence of acceptance. 

[anarcho-smarmyism]

Long post heads up

so im assuming this will be controversial but i’ve been thinking about this for a while, so please hear me out on this: pagans, even white American ones, literally are marginalized. now, i realize that by making this post i’m opening myself up to a lot of ridicule and accusations, so i ask that yall please do me the courtesy of actually considering what i have to say before you write this post off completely.

a few things to get out of the way first: to act like it’s equivalent to widespread racialized religious discrimination against well-known established religions such as Judaism or Islam is obviously wrong. to act like modern pagans aren’t mostly white and that our communities don’t have huge issues with racism is obviously wrong. i laugh at most posts criticizing pagans, because i genuinely think most of them are funny; it often comes across to me mostly as bemused roasting more than anything actually hateful. i feel like pagans often just need to learn to take a joke and take ourselves a little less seriously, as many religious people need to remind themselves. also, as someone who’s been hanging out in these groups for about 6 years now, i’ll outright tell yall that most pagan groups have ongoing issues with racism, transphobia, ableism, and other social prejudices, as well as the aforementioned predators and cults. many many pagans really do just go “lols The Spirits Don’t Care About Race silly sjws” and then appropriate the hell out closed traditions and act disrespectful as hell to the people who say it’s wrong; if you’re criticizing us for shit like this, GOOD. That’s legitimate criticism that we choose to ignore far too often. 

however, more and more of the “criticism” i see on here toward pagans is just saying we’re crazy, stupid, gullible, or other shitty nu-atheist talking points that have just been repurposed to target a growing fringe subculture that has been widely declared an acceptable target by culturally christian progressives AS WELL AS the religious right.

the justification for this is that no white pagans are discriminated against for being pagan, and i know for a fact that isn’t true. all the pagans i talk to report having to keep it a secret from family, friends, or coworkers -but for this post, i’ll keep it limited to my own experiences. i was abused by my parents as a minor for converting from christianity to a pagan faith, and having to keep my religion and experiences a complete secret from most of my friends and family really did take a toll on me. now, as an adult, i’ve learned to keep my religious beliefs a secret from most strangers and especially anyone who might know me at work, because people will start treating you differently -either like you’re evil, or gullible and stupid in a way they (mostly) don’t accuse mainstream religions of. when i was in the psych ward, i was refused my paperback holy text which i had brought with me for the same reason a christian would bring a bible into a scary and traumatic situation, but because the mainly-christian patients were bullying me for being pagan and the nurses didn’t want to deal with it, so the staff withheld it from me for 3 days until i could talk to a social worker. when my aunt took me in so i could move away from my parents, she coaxed me into sharing about my religion, which i naively did because it was rare for people to take an interest in it, and then the next day she told me if i didn’t get rid of all my “occult” stuff (mostly books and tarot cards), she would kick me out. i can’t get holy days off and in some states i can’t run for a lot of public offices unless I’m Christian. (yeah, i realize the post is talking about atheists, but people use those same laws against pagans as well, because as far as they’re concerned, we don’t believe in God, either.)

if any of this happened because i converted to buddhism or another well-known established open religion, people would call it religious discrimination. non-pagans who talk about this almost always say “yeah well you CHOSE to convert that religion, it isn’t a culture or religion you were raised in”, as though that means we’re under some obligation to quietly absorb any insults or abuse related to something so universally personal as one’s faith -like why does it matter to yall if i was raised in this faith, or converted? why is a faith only “real” if you were raised in it, or are adopting it literally from your direct ancestors?

i realize to people who aren’t religious that this may sound like nonsense, but my experience as a kid wasn’t that it looked cool and trendy and i wanted to feel special. i’m sure that some people are like that, but on the by and large, that’s just a strawman. Personally, whether my experiences that led me to convert were real or not is irrelevant: I was a kid who needed to be able to confide in adults about what i was going through, but the fact that I had started to perceive the world vastly differently than Christians did, and no longer believe in Christian theology, meant it was unsafe for me to do so. not being able to talk to anyone about it without getting either literally accused of being crazy, demonically possessed (happened many times) or like i was just stupid caused real, lasting damage. instead of being the source of stability, comfort, and fellowship that faith can be during difficult times, it’s often been something i feel i need to either hide from others, or defend my right to care deeply about.

as a result of people taking this attitude toward pagans, i and many other young pagans have to rely on online spaces to find any kind of fellowship with people who believe the way that we do. this is isolating and uncomfortable for most, and legitimately dangerous for some. see, if you confine a whole subculture to be either a joke or Satanic depending on your political leaning, the subculture generally develops an Us Against Them in-group/out-group mindset, which makes it much easier for predators and some actual cults to prey on vulnerable people.

keep in mind: pagans are not a monolith; it’s an umbrella term for a lot of different religions. (i don’t claim any kind of ancestral tie to my particular pagan faith, but since it was always an open culture and religion, it doesn’t matter if i have a “hereditary right” to it.) there are a lot of pagans of color, even including Heathenism which has a literal Nazi problem. (i’m referring to people i’ve met irl as well as online here.) lots of young queer people who feel rejected by mainstream religions find a lot of comfort in worshipping queer icons like Loki, Dionysus, Artemis, Set, etc. When you write off pagans as a whole for being just dumb racist white people, you throw them under the bus by erasing them. you isolate them the same way you do me, and they are even more likely to experience the kind of discrimination and abuse i have. is it really worth it to make them feel even more alienated in their religious choices, because they go against the mean-spirited stereotype that secular and non-pagan progressive people have crafted for pagans? 

Also, antifascist and progressive pagans are already swimming against the tide to make social prejudices persona not grata within our spaces, and it makes pagan reactionaries’ recruitment tactics WAY more effective when the world around new, insecure pagans tells them they’re automatically racist privileged white people for being interested in paganism. you don’t need to have any sympathy for bigots, but you should at least acknowledge the end result of this kind of rhetoric. i don’t like it either, but most people aren’t going to stop being pagan, or stop talking about it publicly altogether (as that seems to be the only thing that will make yall happy lol) when people make fun of them constantly; they’re gonna dig their heels in and do the in-group out-group thing people always fuckin’ do in these situations. that mindset makes otherwise-normal people, who may have been willing to learn and grow out of their background prejudices under other circumstances, easier for the truly racist monsters in our community to begin grooming.

paganism is a swiftly growing counterculture, and it’s more than likely that at some point it’s going to be part of a larger conversation on religious freedom. i don’t think people on tumblr or twitter roasting pagans is discriminatory necessarily, but life isn’t split up into “discrimination” and “okay things to do”. yall are pretty obviously just petty and excited to make fun of people who you think are weird, because yall can easily insist that every pagan is a privileged racist cis white lady, therefore it’s totally okay to be rude, dismissive, or just outright mean-spirited to pagans as a group because you’re pretending your bullying is enlightened or required by social justice laws. this is what we in pagan culture call “a dick move”. 

besides, it’s ten thousand times more accurate and funnier to roast us for being too self important and arguing over whether emoji spells are Serious Magic or not lmao.

[ranma-rewatch]

Episode 7: Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’

Hey, it’s Ranma Rewatch, I’m on episode 7, and I don’t want to waste too much time with the preamble. I am super excited for this episode, my boi is here, I really hope it holds up, see you after I watch it again!

That wasn’t exactly how I remembered it, but not in a bad way. The episode starts with a short scene that has become pretty freaking iconic, and has been sampled in dozens, if not hundreds, of AMV’s: A man cloaked from head to toe, walking through a desert, his eyes barely visible under goggles. It is a really cool shot that catches the eye right away.

We cut from that to that same person approaching a small village, deciding to throw off his concealing clothes to reveal his typical yellow and green outfit, with a bandanna around his head and an umbrella on his back, which he takes out to slow down his descent when he jumps off a cliff. This village happens to be being attacked by a huge wild boar, wrecking everything in its way, but this fellow is able to stop the animal with little effort and send it flying. When the grateful villagers approach, he only has one question for them: where is Furinkan High School?

At first they don’t understand the question, until they look at what he has for a map and realize it’s of Tokyo. The problem is, this young man is on Shikoku, a completely different island in the archipelago. They point him in the right general direction, and he reveals before the scene ends that he is specifically trying to find Ranma Saotome.

Speaking of the show’s titular character, we get a small scene of him in his cursed form being blackmailed by Nabiki into wearing women’s clothes because all of his stuff is in the wash. After that, we get another scene of the mysterious umbrella-wielding stranger asking someone for directions to Furinkan High School, but this time he’s in Hokkaido. Once again a completely different island, only this time on the opposite end. Fun fact: Hokkaido was the inspiration for Sinnoh in Pokemon!

We get another small cut-away to Ranma in various outfits, then another of our new character somehow ending up back in that village he was in earlier. The point is being made clear to us: he is terrible at getting where he wants to go, but is also so inhumanly strong and resilient that he has no trouble surviving in the wilderness in the process.

What seems to be the next day, he finally gets to where he’s going, just as school is letting out for the day. Ranma is being chased by Akane for something, though we don’t know exactly what. (Of course, we know their dynamic well enough by now to know it’s almost certainly something Ranma did to annoy her.) The newcomer slams into the ground where Ranma is landing at the same time, leaving a crater in the cement from the force of his landing, all while screaming how Ranma has to die.

The problem is, Ranma has no clue who this guy is, which pisses him off to know end. Even after he brings up that his vendetta has something to do with Ranma never showing up for a duel, Ranma still struggles (and fails) to remember this guys name, but luckily he gives it to Ranma anyway: Ryoga Hibiki. They went to Junior High together, and they’d agreed upon a duel, but it never happened because Ranma wasn’t there when Ryoga arrived.

Now, Ranma protests that he waited in the agreed upon empty lot for three days before taking off for China with his dad, which is honestly more time than most people would have waited. As we already know though, Ryoga can’t seem to get anywhere quickly, so he got there on the fourth day. Oh, and the lot was right behind his house.

The crowd of students who only moments before considered him with awe over his fantastic martial arts abilities are now looking at him like a buffoon, and Ryoga is ready to get his revenge on Ranma already. But Ranma puts a pause on that, runs out, and comes back with a bunch of different kinds of bread. Why? Because bread was the reason for their duel in the first place. Their school was only for boys, and getting food at lunch was a nightmare. Ranma ended up snatching the last piece of bread just before Ryoga could get it time and time again, and all the bread he brought was one of each type he’d taken years before.

But Ryoga doesn’t care about that, making it clear that the bread isn’t something he cares about anymore, that Ranma has put him through hell, even if Ranma has no clue what he’s talking about. But before they can get a proper fight going, Ranma runs away, losing Ryoga enough that when he starts busting up the school looking for him, he ends up going the wrong way and out of the area entirely, leaving Ranma and Akane to wonder where he went. We do get to see where before the episode ends: once again back in that village that had the boar problem, where he gets a meal before running out into the evening to find Ranma once more.

Like I said before, this episode wasn’t entirely how I remembered it. Namely, there was a lot more humor than I remembered. For the most part, that’s not a bad thing, there was actually some really good comedy, and I don’t feel like it trampled over the more serious parts of the episode.

If it isn’t clear, I am going to say right now that I did still love this episode. The animation was really on-point, some of the visuals of Ranma darting around people or the brief combat he gets with Ryoga just looks beautiful. Also, even though we don’t get a fight between the two just yet, it’s already solidly communicated, through Ryoga easily beating the boar, barreling through steel barriers, and hitting the ground so hard it destroys concrete, that he is strong as hell.

As much as I love the opening desert shot, I actually think my favorite part of the episode is some of the conversation between Ranma, Akane, and Ryoga. Ranma straining his brain to remember who Ryoga is killed me. It was weirdly relatable too, I’m sure many of us have run into someone who obviously knows us, while we can’t even remember how we know them, let alone their name. The fact Ranma actually specifically bought one of each bread he’d taken from Ryoga before was kind of cute, more than I expected of the usually flippant martial artist.

There’s also an exchange I’ve seen on Tumblr a few times in screencaps and gifs, and there’s a reason people love to share it. When Ryoga says he’s going to destroy Ranma’s happiness, there’s this shot of him freaking out, only to turn to Akane and blankly ask if he is happy, to which Akane doesn’t understand why he’s asking her. They take such a trope-y line from a character seeking revenge and turn it around into a really good joke.

There was also a really interesting thing I noted in terms of translation. After hearing about the string of times Ranma stole bread from Ryoga, Akane makes an analogy to why it mattered so much, but it’s different from dub to sub. In the English Dub, she says the straws broke the camel’s back, a common phrase that seems to fit the situation. But in the English Sub, she says (loosely remembering) “enough dust can make a mountain”, and I think that actually fits much better. After all, we soon learned that the bread isn’t really why Ryoga is angry, but once you do know everything that happened that led to Ryoga’s rage, that analogy fits perfect: it isn’t so much one specific event, as a collection of small events that collected into an enormous vendetta.

All my compliments aside, I did have some issues with the episode. Some of the comedy didn’t really work for me, and that was most true with the early scenes of the Tendo girls trying to dress Ranma in Akane’s clothes. Some parts did make me chuckle, but on the whole the mini-plot made me uncomfortable. Primarily because, as I’ve said before, I feel like the best way to look at Ranma’s cursed form is as a trans man. Even though his body has changed, his gender hasn’t, he’s still a man. The scene has Ranma protesting again and again that he is a man, even as they try to dress him as a woman. The idea of some cisgender folks trying to force a trans man into women’s clothes just...isn’t very funny to me. It’s kind of terrible, at least from a more queer perspective. That complaint done, let’s do the character spotlight.

Oh come on, who else did you think I was going to do? If it isn’t clear yet, Ryoga Hibiki is my favorite character in the series, and he has been since I was a teenager. Who knows if that will remain true this entire watch-through, but so far I’m not liking him any less. I’ll get into why, but first let’s talk about his voice actors.

The voice actor I’m more familiar with, his English one, is Michael Donovan. Like most of the actors for this dub, he’s someone who worked with the Ocean Group for a lot of series around this time period. That said, if you’re a fan of the Fate franchise, he has done some voices in Ufotable’s recent anime adaptations, playing Risei Kotomine and Zouken Matou. In Japanese, his voice actor is one Kōichi Yamadera, and he continued the pattern of voice actors who are well-known in Japan for dubbing English works. He’s most well-known for dubbing over Jim Carrey in a lot of movies, but he’s done a ton of others as well. In anime, some of his notable roles include Spike Spiegel, Beerus in all the recent Dragon Ball movies and anime, and Gentle Criminal in My Hero Academia. Seriously, diving into this guy’s list of roles is like swimming in an ocean of great roles.

So, how do they do? Well, so far I’d say I like both of them a lot, but they do play Ryoga differently. At his core, Ryoga is actually kind of a perfect microcosm of the tone of the series itself. Ranma 1/2 is simultaneously a shonen battle anime, a romantic harem series, and a wacky comedy. Ryoga is someone who takes himself very, very seriously. His desire for vengeance against Ranma isn’t a joke, and neither is his ability as a martial artist. But he’s also a doofus who ends up crossing the length of Japan several times because he can’t follow directions properly and the reasons (so far) for his hatred of Ranma are completely laughable.

I wouldn’t say that Michael Donovan’s performance lacks seriousness, in fact when he wants Ryoga to sound menacing I think he does it well, but on the whole he leans more heavily towards the comedic parts of the character. Meanwhile, Yamadera’s Ryoga hasn’t really sounded silly once to me. He plays the character dead straight, and let’s the comedy come through in the contrast between that demeanor and the circumstances around him. We’ll have to see as we go, but I actually might be preferring the Japanese performance so far, a rarity for me.

Okay, so, why do I love Ryoga so much? There are SO many reasons, many of which I won’t go into just yet because I’ll save them for when they appear in-series. But there is still a lot shown in this episode that I feel I can discuss. To start with, I adore his design. I don’t mean the cloak and goggles, though those are absolutely awesome, I’m referring to his standard mode of dress. The yellow and green as a color scheme, with accents of black to top it off, is something really unique. I don’t know enough about art to really articulate why, but I just love every touch of his design. My favorite small touch has to be the yellow strands wrapping around his lower legs, clashing with his otherwise dark green lower half. I have no clue what they’re supposed to be for, but they just add something, almost making him look more rooted to the spot of wherever he’s standing, more solid.

That is a good word to use for Ryoga in general. Even though we haven’t gotten to see him in a proper fight just yet, we’ve seen quite a lot of evidence of his main attributes. In Dungeons & Dragons terms, Ryoga is making out his Strength and Constitution. He hits like a truck and he can be hit by a truck without slowing down. I love that because it contrasts so perfectly with Ranma’s strength: his speed and precision. I adore it when rival characters actually have qualities that make the fights between them more interesting from the contrast, and Ryoga fits the bill there quite well. He’s also a good foil in terms of personality: Ranma is easy going, likes screwing with people, and is quite quick-witted; Ryoga has a hot temper and a long memory for grudges, hates it when people trick him, and tends to let his emotions do the thinking for him.

I will say it feels like his character has some classic Early Installment Weirdness, as he uses his umbrella quite a bit in this episode. If I remember correctly, after his introductory arc, he doesn’t use his umbrella much at all for the rest of the show, preferring to rely on his fists. It definitely feels like they hadn’t quite nailed the character completely yet, if that makes any sense.

Ryoga is also doing that thing where he’s seeking revenge and really angry, but refuses to talk about why, drawing out the mystery as long as possible. While that trope can become annoying, I don’t really mind it in this case. This isn’t a situation like Godot from Ace Attorney, where Ryoga is purposefully hiding it for some grand plan or something, or to teach a lesson. Ryoga doesn’t go into specifics because A) he thinks Ranma should already know; B) Ryoga is very mad; and C) he doesn’t want anyone else to know his secret. I’m not saying it isn’t stupid that he doesn’t tell Ranma why he’s mad, but I am saying that it’s in-character.

Are you surprised that I adore this episode? You shouldn’t be, I’ve been gushing about it this whole time. Even with the parts I found more rough to watch, this is still my favorite episode of the series thus far, putting the rankings at:

Episode 7: Enter Ryoga, the Eternal ‘Lost Boy’

Episode 2: School is No Place for Horsing Around

Episode 6: Akane's Lost Love... These Things Happen, You Know

Episode 4: Ranma and...Ranma? If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

Episode 5: Love Me to the Bone! The Compound Fracture of Akane's Heart

Episode 1: Here’s Ranma

Episode 3: A Sudden Storm of Love

The big question is: will the next episode of this four episode Ryoga arc be even better? We’ll find out next time with Episode 8: “School is a Battlefield! Ranma vs. Ryoga”. See you then!

[ryttu3k]

I want to have them all on Tumblr, so. Here are my reaction posts, in order, for Resolution of the Daleks and season 12, part 1!

Resolution of the Daleks

Thoughts on Doctor Who - Resolution! Spoilers, obviously!

Okay, negative first, just to get it out of the way. Doctor Who, I really appreciate that you consistently have queer minor characters and queer couples. Just super casual and all, as it should be. Now can you please stop killing off half of said couples? Angstrom's wife, Frankie, now this young guy? It's really not cool.

Don't think the voiceover worked. I feel the prologue would have worked better with just visuals.

Again, Yaz didn't have much to do. The Doctor got a ton of action, Ryan and Graham both had significant interactions with Aaron, Yaz was... just kind of there. I'm hoping that when the show comes back in a year, now that Ryan has largely dealt with his issues, Yaz will get more attention?

UNIT was killed by Brexit?! Fuckin' rude!

Okay, on to the positive!

The Dalek was, frankly, fucking scary. Despite knowing that the Doctor would beat it, obviously, it caused huge swathes of damage and racked up a... rather high body count. Like it felt like a proper threat. Also, its ability to stop the TARDIS tracking it and stuff. Lin's terror felt extremely genuine and it was just nice and horrific overall, like - if it wasn't for the Doctor, it would feel like a genuine threat to the entire Earth.

(Also, it shut down the wifi. On New Years Day. What a monster!)

Oh man that Dalek laughter. Creepy as fuck. The Doctor dragging it in via hologram to dare it to laugh in her face? Fucking iconic.

"I've learned to think like a Dalek." Oof.

Doctor vs Dalek. Not just the physical aspect, but the mental part - the Doctor recognising the seriousness of it, but also having that element of cockiness ("Oh, mate") because, frankly, she's dealt with bigger threats. She's right when she points out that the biggest problem will be if regular humans try to engage it!

Elements of Dark!Doctor when she asks the team - almost desperately - if she gave it enough chances, if she was nice enough. Because the Doctor can get fucking scary around Daleks and she knows it. She's nice. She's friendly. But she's also the Doctor, and the Doctor has done some really damn questionable things to stop the Daleks, and she knows that. Fantastically done and I still desperately want some proper Dark!Doctor.

Really liked the parallels between the Doctor using scrap to make her sonic screwdriver, vs the Dalek using scrap to make its armour. The Doctor makes a tool, the Dalek makes items of war. Of course, well, the Doctor is probably more dangerous just with a swiss army sonic than a Dalek blaster...

I love how the whole, "Dads are complicated... so I've heard" bit could refer to either the loom thing or the Doctor having actual parents or the Doctor being a shitty dad themself XD

Graham was so excited to show off the TARDIS! Like he's just going, "How cool is this?!"

There were some legitimately funny moments! Graham's chair, "I suppose... we'll have to have a... conversation?", "Junkyard chic"... UNIT was killed by Brexit like that's so awful but. But in a kind of funny way.

Okay, now the unsure. Ryan, Graham, and Aaron. Ryan and Graham have sorted out their issues - but Aaron is still such a big overshadowing part of it that it's a bit of a shock when he comes back in. As someone with a similarly shit biological father, I was completely empathising with Ryan in the coffee shop conversation. And I do understand why they wanted reconciliation, so they showed Aaron as acknowledging his bullshit and Ryan ultimately choosing to forgive and save him.

But it's just... not that easy. It's not all going to be perfect just because they stopped a Dalek together. Aaron's neglect hurt Ryan really badly, and it just felt... too easy? Like it helped that Aaron was genuinely contrite, and that he had that good stepfather talk with Graham, but just... yeah, not sure how I feel about it, honestly.

The Doctor's first words to him being, "You weren't at Grace's funeral. Ryan waited for you, you let him down" were so, so good. Like the Doctor is just going "fuck you I'm his father now". Like tbh I think she was 100% prepared to yeet him off the TARDIS and be done with it. Like damn don't emotionally hurt one of her crew.

Some wonderfully savage lines, though. The Doctor's, "You're almost making up for your parenting deficit!"; Aaron and Ryan's, "Is that how you talk to your dad?" "I don't know, he's not been around"; Graham's fucking smirk when Ryan pointedly calls him 'Gramps'.

I did see a suggestion that would have made it much better - instead of the Dalek capturing Aaron, it captures Ryan. First, it ups the threat in the mind of the Doctor and Team TARDIS - this isn't some dickhead, this is one of them. And instead, it's Aaron who reaches out to Ryan, Aaron who risks his life, Aaron who has to come through for Ryan, instead of the other way around. Also would have tied in beautifully with, "Family isn't about DNA, or a name. It's about what you do, and you haven't done enough."

Also, 'srs tech skillz'. With a Z. Doctor why.

In conclusion, I am going to fight Nigel Farage for killing UNIT.

-

Spyfall part 1

Current response to Doctor Who: making a near-literal SDKFJHGSDASDKFH sound, grabbing a cushion, nearly throWING THE CUSHION.

More intelligent commentary when my brain comes back online.

-

Okay. Am calm. Am good! We're good.

MAJOR SPOILERS for Doctor Who: Spyfall, part 1!

So yeah I actually literally screamed (kind of... scream-laugh-holy-shit-yes). Like, even before Dhawan finished speaking the, "Or should I say spy... Master?" line because of the way he had said 'spymaster' in full in the line before and there's nothing that grabs my brain like that one word in that one context. It wasn't quite as mindblowing as the Utopia reveal, since, let's face it, it's only been a season since we last saw that magnificant arsehole, but still.

(Actually, since I didn't watch Twelve's run, the last time I saw them was exactly a decade ago in The End of Time, broadcast New Years Day 2010. And I still fucking cry over, "Get out of the way." So. That may have been why I literally screamed lmao)

I mean. It's the Master. I can't not. They're my favourite jerk. This is probably slightly concerning.

Anyway. Comments!

The good

Episode was just flat-out exciting. It reminded me both of the Three and Ten eras, a bit? Fun gadgets, fancy suits, and what ends up being a giant game! Did start wondering when they were talking about spies and codes and stuff. It's basically a puzzle that's been set up for the Doctor to solve. Plus, the way she was pretty much enlisted into it! Thirteen and Dhawan!Master might end up having a more Pertwee-Delgado-esque dynamic, maybe? I would be down for that!

(My introductory episode to the Master was The Mind of Evil. Let's just put it that way XD)

"I'm her best enemy." <3

I mean, in retrospect, isolated house full of high-tech stuff and a wall full of books about the Doctor... oh honey. Long, looong game of playing Spies and Conspiracies just for, apparently, the sheer funsies of it. Oh, honey. They're such a disaster and I love them.

The reveal scene, Jodie's acting. The way she just... freezes and hunches in on herself. She's been hiding her past more than other Doctors have in the past, and suddenly, here is her past!! Right here!! Laughing and joking and right there in front of her! And she's just like, "Ohhh shit, I was not ready to have this conversation again..."

Yasmin and Ryan's dynamic. I do like that they split up the usual combos of Thirteen-Yasmin and Graham-Ryan for once, because I do like seeing the way they play off each other! It makes them feel more cohesive as a group. I liked Ryan trying to comfort Yasmin after her experience.

Post-reveal, I'm now wondering if the weird zappy forest thing is the Master's TARDIS? Something to do with changing and processing DNA into something else? Something based around neurons, with the electric travelling system? Am also wondering what happened to Yasmin while in there, since she seemed to be processed in some way, and I'm wondering if she had part of her DNA rewritten as well - or maybe if she's been replaced entirely, like she's currently piloting an alien version of her own body while her actual self is still in there. They did already do that with Flesh!Amy, though.

Once this arc is over, I think Thirteen is definitely going to have to sit down and tell the Fam who the hell she actually is. Graham is having some serious questions, and the Master was definitely egging that on, pre-reveal.

How much do I love that even in a tux, the Doctor still has the culottes and boots? A lot, that is how much. Also, how much do I love the Doctor in a suit and on a motorbike? A lot, that is how much.

"I've had an upgrade." <3

Thirteen playing Snap. It's okay, Thirteen, you still win my heart <3

"Worst! Uber! Ever!!"

"Kisses!" Yes, we know ;) They've been texting! Someone write me a WhatsApp chat fic with plenty of subtext and double meaning, I require it. Also, memes. You know it's true. The Master isn't a Time Lord, they're a Meme Lord.

"Everything you think you know is a lie." Season hook? :o

The hmm

Main concern is how they're handling the Master's characterisation? Last we saw, they were so ready to jump the Doctor ship. Now it's back to games. Kind of wondering if that means the Master is just at the point of being resigned that they and the Doctor just don't work and so is going back to games because at least it makes them happy, but I'm happy to wait until next week to see how things play out!

Did see a suggestion that this is the Master from one of the alternate universes (or at least that seems to be the general consensus on why there were multiple maps), so not actually necessarily the same version as Missy. Alternatively, this could actually be a pre-Missy version! Maybe between Simm!Master and Missy, since we never actually see that regeneration?

Actually, if this is the one immediately before Missy and this two-parter ends with the Master regenerating and we actually do get Thirteen and Missy together on screen I may cry.

(Like I'm aro-ace and agender but I'm still so gay for both of them. There is no word other for this emotion other than 'I'm gay'.)

I kind of wish someone had double-checked the name of the company because VOR running the world is. Is. "Right now, VOR is more powerful than most nations." Just. *pinches bridge of nose* Like okay you know how we say 'oh yeah just google it' 'yeah I googled it' are they really gonna say 'yeah I just VO

'I'm going to V

I can't say it. I can't.

Apparently the Australia scenes were filmed in South Africa. Kind of assumed it wasn't really Australia as soon as I saw actually greenery in the background h e h.

Highkey wish I could have seen Missy and Thirteen together. Dhawan!Master is very fun so far but. Missy and Thirteen. See comment above about the Master's characterisation!

...ABC are you really going to keep to Thursday night broadcasts even after the UK switches their Sunday nights / our Monday mornings? Well that's a good way to guarantee I'll be watching them online first! I was happy to wait twelve hours or so so I could watch it with Mum, but like hell I'm going to wait three and a half days!

In conclusion, am dead, send help, is it Monday morning yet?

-

Spyfall part 2

Thoughts on Doctor Who: Spyfall, part 2!

GALLIFREY LOOOOORE.

Oh man I'm hyped. We got a teeny teaser to the Timeless Child way back last decade but now we may actually get to see what the fuck is going on. And hell, if nothing else, at least the discovery is being teased to be so devastating it did undo Missy's characterisation. If this incarnation of the Master is after her, at least. Still not necessarily anything to suggest that. The Master will likely be recurring over this season, so we'll find out more, at least!

God, the Master is so fucked up. Like. He's seen something apparently so massively traumatic that he had to destroy his own planet and legitimately does look broken by it? Unless he was acting, but I did not get that impression from the message at the end. And the only way he can think of to get the Doctor's attention is to start his old tricks? Not sure if it's better or worse for him to be pre-Missy tbh.

It's just... such an interesting dynamic. Also I really want to read into the whole... scene where the Master asks the Doctor to kneel and call him 'Master' in front of everyone - then, when she does (defiantly! Stubbornly!), he... kneels to be at the same level as her. Like, "I'm going to play these BDSM-esque power games with you but when it comes down to it, I still consider us equal."

Anyway the Master is def a service top.

This comment from Tumblr user upslapmeal:

"'why would it stop? I mean how else would I get your attention’ what did I say about the Master being like a cat knocking things off shelves"

I mean. Yeah.

"Contact." Old school.

The Companions! They get a capital C because they were rad as hell. I love them all deciding that what they do next is: carry on to save the world. Like they're all heroic af without the Doctor and it's so good.

"Don't make me do a soft-shoe shuffle!"

And questioning at the end, oooh man. There are some Implications there, yeah. They've found out some surface information, yes, but no real hint at the deeper trauma. And given what this coming season is hinting at, I strongly suspect we will indeed be getting that deeper trauma and maybe even Dark!Doctor. Gallifrey does tend to bring it out of them...

The whole on-the-run thing seemed to definitely be a callback to Sound of Drums. Uh, what's that going to do long-term? Send out a worldwide message saying, "Sorry, our bad, they're fine"? I mean, last time that happened... okay, Jack was already with Torchwood and so is used to Not Really Existing, but Martha definitely couldn't go back to fuckin' medical school. She ended up at UNIT and then went independent. They did not return to their normal lives.

Barton: needs a goddamn punch. He killed his mother what the fuck. On the plus side, at least he seems to have thoroughly destroyed his career? Be interesting to see if he reappears later, you don't go from the most powerful person on the planet to massive pariah overnight without Repercussions.

On to our guest characters! I hate to brag but I guessed who Ada was as soon as I heard her first name and saw her outfit. I mean the computers theme was already there, who else would she be? :D And I admittedly didn't know who Noor Inayat Khan was except in passing, but still. Little upset about the erased memories (Donna ;_; ), but I can see why the Doctor did it and like... this way, I'm glad they were able to avoid the implications of, "Ada only developed computing because she had already seen the future." Like people said that with Rosa Parks even though the Doctor said explicitly to only ensure there were enough seats filled and the act itself was all Rosa, so they may have wanted to play it safe.

I... really want to comment on how Ada definitely was crushing on the Doctor (and really, who wouldn't?), but she was a real person so I shall avoid those implications. (But really though!)

Doctor how many times have you been in someone's liver. This is some Magic School Bus Inside The Human Body bullshit and I love it.

Doctor's recording: "First of all, you're not gonna die! Second of all, don't talk back to the screens, obviously I'm a recording and I can't hear ya. Third, don't panic. Especially you, Graham."

Graham, panicking: "I'M NOT PANICKING!"

Doctor's recording: "Yes, you were! And I did just say, don't talk back to the screens!"

Graham: "????!?!!"

I want an entire series of the Master having a really infuriating seventy-seven years on Earth. Please.

Comments on continuity issues regarding that, "It's worse than Jodrell Bank!" "Did I ever apologise for that?" "No." "Good." exchange XD;; Like people are going, "Continuity error!! It was the Pharos Project, not Jodrell Bank!!" and like. Pharos was a project. Jodrell Bank is an observatory. You can do projects at observatories. Also, you can refer to projects by location, too. Am I referring to the Canberra Deep Space Communication Project or Tidbinbilla Station? Both! They refer to the same thing! In the Whoniverse, they likely did the Pharos Project at Jodrell Bank, and just had some lighthearted bantz about that time where the Master killed the Doctor, no biggie.

So, onwards to... an apparently unrelated episode for next week! Also, the Kassavin? Still there. Like. The Master only gave suggestions. They still have all those agents everywhere! They're still ready to act! And yeah, now they have the Master in their hands, so... I wonder if they'll make the Timeless Child a long, ongoing arc, and have the much more immediate threat of the Kassavin as the season finale?

-

Orphan 55

Thoughts on Doctor Who - Orphan 55!

...whew.

First thought: anvilicious, but some anvils need to be dropped, because, uh, have you seen the world lately.

It feels like quite a brittle episode? Even beyond the immediate tension of 'there are large angry creatures trying to kill everyone', there's just this sense of... like, tension. There's the tension between Benni and Vilma, which at first is kind of a sweet tension then becomes a life-threatening and sad tension. There's the tension between Roger Parslow Silas and his dad, with Silas not being taken seriously (although I do think him running out while they're in life-threatening danger is a bit much). The obvious and major tension between Bella and Kane that drives the whole episode, yes.

And there's also the tension amongst Team TARDIS! The episode starts with the Doctor still in Some Kinda Way about last week, and I felt a bit of tension between Yaz and Ryan? She seemed rather unimpressed by Bella, at any rate. I do like how organic the relationship between Ryan and Graham feels, at least. "It ain't the aliens that are gonna kill me, it’s worrying about you!"

Set and costume building, I felt, was kind of... eh? I liked how Tranquility itself looked, but the tunnels looked Very Generic, and some of the looks I felt didn't really work. Silas and his dad's green hair just looked very obviously fake, and I saw a description of Hyph3n-with-a-three looking like a cross between a Jellicle Cat and John Candy in Spaceballs (which... yeah, honestly). And I'm not sure about the Dregs, although I did initially have the thought that whatever the original inhabitants of the planet were, they must have been humanoid was amusingly accurate...

"I just pulled this out of a friend of mine! >:("

"Oh! ...We do not make any judgments on our guests and fully support any way you choose to enjoy yourself here at Tranquility Spa! ^_^;;"

"... ... ...It wasn't recreational! o.O"

God you could feel Hyph3n-with-a-three's embarrassment...

"If I had crayons and half a can of Spam, I could build you from scratch!" Excuse me I am at least Tofurky.

Also a logical issue on the whole journey to find Benni, because frankly, it just wasn't... sensible. Okay, bring a kid. Father of the year right there. Okay, bring an old woman. Granted, she could have insisted because it was her man-friend they were looking for, but surely she would have known she would slow them down? Her 'heroic sacrifice' felt very wasted, because dammit, she could have survived if she had stayed in the Dome where it was at least a bit safer!

"At least three eighths of a plan, right here! ...Two eights. I'll be honest, all I've got is the letter 'P'..."

So the Doctor is almost at the point of passing out from oxygen loss but hang on, let her first indulge her curiosity...

The sheer existence of orphan planets is very depressing. The sheer fact that there's at least fifty-five is very depressing.

There's an interesting comment about how straight after discussion of the reveal, the first shot of the preview is the Statue of Liberty. Very Planet of the Apes! (No apes next time, just Tesla vs Edison!) Also feeling a strong connection to Midnight (stunning resort on dangerous planet with a very personal enemy), and I saw a comment about Thirteen unintentionally The-End-Of-The-World-ing the Fam (and making a connection between 'very angry trees' and the Forests of Cheem). Bit of Ravolox. Bit of... fuck what was it... Curse of Fenric.

Although, we know that the Earth will eventually be consumed by the sun, and it was done in a way that was like... it was its time. This was not its time, was a colossal fuck-up on a planetary scale (and the Doctor continues to be 'eat the rich'), but it's also only one potential future. Which is good, because that got dark. Even more than The End of the World, even more than Utopia, even more than fuckin' Frontios, because this is the near-future. The shots we saw of the destruction were modern day! That was the Dome of the Rock you saw getting bombed!

"Be smarter than what made you." PAGING THE GOVERNMENT...

Going to put it on a solid... maybe 7/10? Some really good elements in there, but also some clunkers, and unfortunately not a patch on the same writer's It Takes You Away, which was one of the strongest of the last season.

-

Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror

Thoughts on Doctor Who - Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror!

Opinion before episode: man, Tesla's cool. Opinion after episode: man, Tesla is fuckin' cool! :D That was a well-done personality-based historical, absolutely - I think it's my second-favourite personality-based historical only to Rosa (there are other pseudo-historical based ones set in the past that I love, but they're not personality-based; the Human Nature duology is a good example).

But yeah, Tesla just came across as a really, really cool character. Genius and he knew it, yes, and the real Tesla did have some questionable views (sexism, mostly), but otherwise the archetypal Idealistic Genius who wants to change the world for the better. Contrast with Edison, who was... a businessman. With, like, a really punchable face. Still pretty intelligent, but... very, very punchable. I've read about the Tesla-Edison feud before and always sided with Tesla, and let's face it, so did the writer XD

Good mix of character combinations - with a lot of characters, it's easy for someone to get sidelined, but this managed to handle Thirteen and the Fam, and Tesla, Dorothy, and Edison, pretty well. There were some neat combinations, like Ryan and Dorothy bonding over the sense of adventure, and Graham and Edison's confrontation; I also really loved the whole conversation between Thirteen and Tesla on the joy of just... creating. There's actually a very nice overlap between arts and sciences.

Antagonists - not bad? I feel a lot of people were expecting the Racnoss, and there was such a similarity that I would have liked at least a throwaway line about how the Skithra were related or something. Ooh man she definitely brought out Dark!Doctor, though. Teleporting the queen back to the ship, specifically so she can be fried? I mean, she might have survived it. Might. And just that fantastic little change of expression when the queen asks the Doctor if she's ever seen a dead planet before! Whittaker pulled that one off.

There's a very interesting compare and contrast between the Skithra and Edison, I found. Thirteen has her speech about how once the Skithra are gone, they won't be remembered. Caput. Forgotten. They left nothing behind. Compare and contrast to Edison, who was openly accused of using other people's work, but who's able to learn from his mistakes, end on an even(ish) setting with Tesla, and who does get remembered. Which kind of stings, honestly, if you look at Tesla's actual history.

Like. Apparently that, "The man just didn't understand the American sense of humour," line was an actual historical line, according to Tesla's own records. The absolute main reason for the difference in fame and recognition is that Tesla was a genius who didn't know how to market. Edison was a marketer who could invent a bit. So in conclusion Edison is a dick and Tesla needs more respect, the end.

Favourite lines and scenes:

Tesla: "Is - is this your own design?" Thirteen: "I made it! Mainly out of spoons! :D" Tesla: "You're an inventor! :D" Thirteen: "I have my moments." Tesla: "I knew it! So you... so, you can understand how it feels, you know, when you have an idea, and - and to make it real. I don't think there's any greater thrill!" Thirteen: "I couldn't agree more." Tesla: "You... you spoke of aliens. People here laugh at the very idea." Thirteen: "But not you." Tesla: "Well, apparently I'm not like other people. It can be difficult, you know, to feel no one else sees the world the way you do. It's like you're, uh..." Thirteen: "...out of place."

Graham: "Yeah, still. I bet you'd jump at the chance to have him back working for you, wouldn't ya?" Edison: "Yeah?" Graham: "Yeah!" Edison: "How d'you figure that?" Graham: "'Cause I had a supervisor like you at my old depot. And men like you don't pay a bloke that much attention unless you think there's a payout comin'."

Thirteen: "I wouldn't go killing me and Yaz. 'Cause Yaz... can tell you what this is." Yaz: "It's a camera!" Thirteen: "Bingo!" *FLASH!*

Edison: "I couldn't figure it out either." Tesla: "The internal dimensions transcend the external." Thirteen: *GRIN* Edison: ._.

Thirteen: "You do realise, it's killing Edison that they want you and not him? ;D"

Graham: "Don't worry. This ain't our first rodeo!" Ryan: "We've never been to a rodeo." Graham: "...you're not helping, Ryan..."

Thirteen: "And what are you queen of, exactly? A stolen ship and second-hand guns? A queen of shreds and patches. You're not a ruler, you're a parasite." Queen: "And what are you? So clever, stealing onto my ship, taking what I claim as mine. But where has it got you? No weapons. No armour. No escape. Just the desperate hope you might change my mind." Thirteen: "No, we are way past that. I gave you your chance." Queen: "A chance to be like you?" Thirteen: "A chance to evolve. But you were too stupid to take it. When you die, there'll be nothing left behind - just a trail of blood and other people's brilliance. No one will even know you existed."

(Side note: I love that this speech was actually in front of the companions. They're starting to see that things are Not Okay.)

Thirteen: "Don't give up." Yaz: "Whatever anyone says." Tesla: "Well, let them talk. The present is theirs. I work for the future... and the future is mine."

Favourite incorrect lines:

Thirteen and Tesla, firing at the ship: "VIBE CHECK!"

-

Fugitive of the Judoon

I'M GONNA... NEED A HOT MOMENT TO PROCESS THAT...

-

WELL I. UH. OKAY.

lmao I'm serious I don't even know where to begin.

Uh, some very disorganised comments on Doctor Who - Fugitive of the Judoon!

I squealed when I heard Jack's voice then saw him in the flesh. I gasped audibly when 'Ruth' broke the glass. I yelped when we saw the buried TARDIS. I MAY HAVE SCREAMED A LITTLE WHEN 'RUTH' INTRODUCED HERSELF.

(Also can we talk about her outfit. That was on point.)

I'm getting a very... very early vibe? She didn't know what the sonic screwdriver was, and that was introduced with Troughton. Since we saw the Hartnell-Troughton regeneration, she must be pre-Hartnell? Maybe a Doctor whose memories were rewritten to the point that they thought the Hartnell incarnation was the earliest? Not to mention that was a pretty old-school-looking TARDIS!

Alternatively, maybe between Troughton and Pertwee? Either option has some inconsistency - if she's post Troughton, she should have known what the sonic was, although it admittedly did look very different. Plus, her TARDIS is already its police box shape, which was implied to have set in the junkyard. Also, we never actually do see the regeneration between Two and Three, and it could explain why Gallifrey was after her - she escaped after her trial after The War Games!

Definitely early, though.

Alternatively alternatively, Thirteen actually does say 'time is swirling around me'. Maybe an alternate timeline. Something to tie back to the Timeless Child?

"I've lived for thousands of years, so long I've lost count. I've had so many faces. How long have you known me? You don't know me. Not even a little bit."

That wasn't just aimed at the companions. I feel that was aimed at the Doctor themself.

(Related: the response from the fam was flat-out beautiful. Doesn't matter who she was or who she'll be. They know her now, and they love her.)

Just. Wow. Wow.

Really cool note from Twitter - disguised name was Ruth Clayton. Ruth = 'friend, companion'. Clayton = 'of the Earth'. She literally named herself 'friend of the Earth'.

"You're probably a bit confused right now."

I mean. Yeah. Confused and intrigued and what.

"Don't do points! I do points! Points are my thing!"

Jack. Jack. Smooching Graham, hitting on all the companions, getting into Shenanigans! The Lone Cyberman - I wonder if that's a totally different crisis that isn't even related to the current Gallifrey-Timeless Child one? The more important part is Jack's presence - the presence of another time traveller with a... unique relationship with the universe. The actual warning could be a red herring, but Jack showing up anywhere in the first place is a sign that something is happening with time?

Orphan 55 had a timeline that may or may not have been the 'real' one. Being only a potential future kind of doesn't work with what we know of established DW continuity, so I'm liking the 'alternate timeline' theory, maybe?

Ryan: "I liked him. Kind of cheesy."

Yaz: "But good cheesy."

Thirteen, smiling: "That's Jack."

Graham just standing there going, "He kissed me tho? ...Wasn't bad, actually."

"Is she safe?" Jack, honestly, is she ever safe?

"When she needs me... I'll be there." Oh yeah, he's so coming back later this season.

Also, Judoon, chameleon arch, the Master, Jack - getting big season 29 vibes here and that's a big thumbs up for me because that's my favourite season. We just need Martha to make an appearance now!

...hehe honestly, between Jodie's entire existence, and now, in the span of five episodes, introducing Dhawan!Master, Gat, and now Jo Martin as the first black female Doctor, and reintroducing Jack, one of the most overtly and openly queer characters on the series, the 'Doctor Who is too PC!' bunch are going to be so mad XD

"A platoon of Judoon... near the moon." / "Look at you, your platoon of Judoon near the... that lagoon..."

Man. The close-up in the very first shot of the watch. Nice tie-in.

"The Doctor never uses weapons!" "I know! Shut up! >.>"

Where do the Kasaavin come into play? Is this something they've done by integrating themselves throughout time and space? Maybe they're fraying the fabric?

My mind is blown. I can't wait for the rest of this season :D

-

[Part 2 - Praxeus to The Timeless Children]

[girlgrandpa]

have been thinking a LOT re that post (just reblogged it for context) that raises issues re the whiteness of cottagecore.....thinking about bernardine evaristo’s girl woman other & dominique’s chapter re the women’s commune (& how these womens spaces for indigenous/black women were forged out of necessity as zones of safety? obvs w/ own issues and problems........) thinking re narratives of white purity & “tradfem” & settler colonialism ..... thinking about how, if i was into online research....i could do my whole MA diss on cottagecore lol (as lesbian yearning/escapism/visions for futurity in line w/ queer theory, muñoz/edelman etc, and as white supremacist traditional domestic “womanhood” in the most oppressive/tradfem/trans exclusive/woman of colour exclusive form...thinking of lola olufemi’s chapter re food & feminism and importance of land and pastoral life/labour and indigenous rights......the framing of cottagecore as the first (idyllic utopia) & concurrent negation of the latter (whitewashing, white supremacy embedded within....esp when the possibility of existing in the future as a BIPOC is already precarious....so to imagine spaces of futurity is radical act...but white utopia has always been and will always be constructed in a way that negates black life (even more so when wlw/queer)....much to think about....... but alas im not about to do a serious piece of academic research about tumblr  

[romolite]

*Important FAQ*

Aka questions that pertain to what I usually post about or stuff I don’t like getting asks about but continue to get asks about regardless.

[Insert any invasive question about my ethnicity/race]

I’m Ghanaian American. My parents were born in Ghana and I was born here in the US. I’ve seen it more on twitter and tumblr, but Black Africans don’t like me because I’m American, and black Americans don’t like me because I’m African. So I’m stuck in the middle lmao. I’m what you’d consider a First-Generation African, my parents are Continental Africans, and if I have children, they will be considered Generational African Americans.

First Generation African: A black person born in the US to parents who were born in Africa

Generational African American: A black person born in the US to US-born black parent(s)

Continental African: A black person born in Africa to parents who were also born in Africa

Non is just a prefix, black people don’t have a monopoly on the term! I suppose you think nonbinary people are racist huh?

Yeah sure it wasnt coined by black people but the context it’s currently used as was predominantly used by black people. ALL people who are not black benefit from and contribute to antiblackness, even if they are marginalized themselves. That kind of dynamic doesnt exist in other contexts (unless we’re talking about transfem + transmisogyny, but that’s something you’d have to talk to someone who is transfem about. Plus they have their own word for  “non-transfem”). Using it in contexts outside of antiblackness is appropriative (Yall are annoying as fuck with the “non-aspec” “non-lesbian”(this term also has anti-bi roots btw) “non-bi” shit etc, stop it. You also can’t complain about the “replacement terms” lumping yall with oppressors when “non-x” does the exact same thing you’re so worried about. “Cis” puts cis gays with cis hets, cis disabled people with cis abled people, cis white people with cis poc, I could go on.) 

Plus we’re talking about marginalized groups here. Black people are a marginalized group. Binary people as a whole are not so the term nonbinary isn’t appropriate at all.  I dont take issue with terms like “nonamerican” or “nonwhite” because (obviously) whites + americans as a whole aren’t oppressed for being white or american.

Basically using "non-x” in contexts to talk about oppression bad, everything else good.

Follow up: If we can’t use non-[marginalized group], what can we use instead?

There are other words to describe the people you’re talking about

non-transfem- TME

non-LGBT- cishet, or people who aren’t LGBT

non-trans - cis

Black people don’t have a monopoly on the acronym nb! I’ll call myself nb if I want to!

At this point I dont really care, go on your antiblack crusade elsewhere and out of my inbox, I’m always gonna mean nonblack when I use the acronym nb. 

And yes, you’re antiblack as fuck if you think black people telling you “nb” stands for “nonblack” is the same as exclusionists claiming “aspec” is for autistic people.

Is x AAVE?

I have a tag dedicated to what is and is not aave and how harmful it is for nonblacks to use aave given its history. I know some things overlap with southern culture but others are specifically for black people. A lot of “stan twitter” language/slang is just repackaged AAVE. No, I can’t tell you how to stop using AAVE. Don’t tell me you’re going to try to stop using AAVE, I don’t want to hear it.

Why don’t you like the n-word being compared to LGBT slurs?

Race and Sexuality/Gender aren’t comparable topics because each deals with a different history of oppression. I don’t care about slur discourse that much because I don’t even use/reclaim any myself except the n-word.

I have a problem with nonblack LGBT people co-opting black culture and struggle(like they always do), especially for trivial online discourse.

And to be honest it goes deeper than slur discourse. Every other day someone is weaponizing the oppression of black trans women, or comparing “cishet aces/aros” in the LGBT community to white/nonblack people invading black spaces (you know, something that ACTUALLY takes resources away from the people who need it, see the cultural appropriation of Black African and Blac American culture in literally any nonblack community while black people get demonized for said culture), or tokenizing their black friends to get away with something blatantly racist. And that’s not even getting into how a lot of gay slang/stan culture is just repurposed AAVE/black culture.

And I’m not gonna lie, I’ve seen this more with exclusionist accounts than inclus accounts, but it’s still not excusable for inclus to do that either. We get erased as black gay/trans/queer/aspec people up until it’s time for discourse accounts to bring us up to one-up each other

Can you give me advice on x?

Most likely not, because I’m not an expert or an advice blog. I’ll try, but don't take my word for it. I’m also tme, able-bodied, not Jewish, singlet, etc, so I’m not able to accurately answer questions about transmisogyny, (physical?) ableism, antisemitism, “sycourse”, etc.

I might be able to give advice on school-related stuff since I just graduated high school, but remember that students are not a monolith, and what worked for me may not work for someone else.

Can I follow if I’m nonblack/a minor/cishet?

Nonblack and/or cishet can follow but watch your step, minors blacklist the #minors dni tag before following

Why do you hate Ao3?

*long sigh*

I don't, I have a problem with the fact that it allows racist and (frankly voyeuristic) pedophilic/abusive/incestuous content to exist on its platform. It’s a good concept overall, but the devs are complicit in allowing “underage” and “noncon/dubcon” fics on their platform.

And there's the fact that they somehow need donations every year despite exceeding their goal several times over each year?

What’s wrong with Hazbin Hotel/The Ships/Vivziepop?

[WIP, as I have to go into extensive detail about this and I currently don’t have the energy for it]

TLDR: Viv made a half-assed apology for supporting racists (one of whom did blackface [yes the mask was used to do blackface shut up] to mock black activist) and drawing gross content. Her current projects including Hazbin Hotel are full of anti-gay/trans/aspec (Angel Dust, Vaggie, Alastor), antisemetic (Mimzy), and racist (Vaggie again, that yellow cyclops character that I’ve forgotten the name of) content under the guise of humor. If you’re into that shit, whatever, just don’t follow me and don’t whine when I make posts criticizing it.

What’s wrong with Hamilton?

Aside from the fact that it’s very obviously glorifying slave owners and made people worldwide believe the founding fathers were good people, LMM, the creator, is nonblack. This isn't his story to tell at all. 

Can you tag x?

I have a list of things I usually tag because they come upon this blog a lot. I cannot do catch all tags, as I have way too many followers for that. The closest thing to that is the “ask to tag” tag when there’s something potentially triggering but I’m not sure what it is. Everything is tagged as “x tw”. If something is extremely triggering, I’ll tag it as “major tw”

Do you tag slurs?

I tag slurs I’m not able to reclaim at all (i.e., d slur, f slur, t slur) or slurs I can reclaim but are being used as a slurs. I don’t tag the n-word, as I reclaim that one. I always tag the r slur

Can I message you about something/someone?

Unless you’re a mutual, most likely no. My DMs are only open to mutuals.

Do you want to be mutuals?

I don’t usually follow back people who follow me, especially if you’re under 16 or post things I’m not interested in.

Why is it important to have byf or about?

1) So I know gross people aren’t following me. This is not up for discussion

2) So I know someone’s not speaking out of their lane, which tends to happen a lot. (i.e, someone refusing to disclose that they are tme when discussing transmisogyny, someone not having their race listed when discussing racism)

3) Some people don’t want to interact with people under 18 or over like 30 or something.

Yeah, yeah, people aren’t entitled to personal information and all that crap but I have a serious problem with people speaking on topics from a place of privilege. Not to say they can’t talk about those things, just perhaps add a disclaimer that you’re privileged when talking about these things and be open to criticism, and NOT blocking people of the said marginalized group when they tell you something you’ve said was problematic.

I also have a problem with people who are intentionally vague about their age. There’s a difference between interacting with someone who’s 20 and someone who’s 29. I don’t want to say it’s the opposite for minors but at the same time there’s a difference for saying something racist at 13 and doing so at 17, and keeping your age vague makes it harder to determine how to deal with something like that. (Not that 13-year-olds shouldn’t know better, it’s just I don’t feel whole ass callout posts and receipt blogs are necessary for someone of that age).

Also anyone under 16, I can't stop you from following, but keep your interaction limited, please. This isnt an 18+ blog but I do rb suggestive jokes from time to time

I sent you an ask and you never answered it!

It’s likely that

I never got it

You were blocked

I’ve already answered this or it’s been answered in my faq

It’s a random positivity ask (which I appreciate but not sure how to respond to those)

You were rude in your ask and I didn’t feel like answering

I forgot until it was too late, which happens when my inbox gets a lot of asks at a time.

You sent it to the wrong blog (I.e, sending asks about my ocs to this blog instead of @ochood )

Hey, the op is [insert post] is [someone on my dni]! I usually double-check myself, just to be sure.

Have you heard about [someone who is mutuals with someone I’m loosely connected with]?

Most likely, no. And unless they’re an immediate danger to someone or they’ve got my name in their mouth, I don’t care.

Do you know who [x person/group/thing] is?Most likely no. Not to sound like a hipster but I don't usually keep up to date with trends. If I do hear about something, it’s most likely from twitter or Instagram.

Why am I blocked? Check here.

Why do you continuously move mains/change URLs/update themes?

I’m inconsistent. And sometimes there are posts on my blog that I no longer stand by.

Can I tag you in posts I think I’d like?Of course! 

[asagimeta]

Batwoman: Don’t Believe All The Negativity

So Batwoman premiered tonight

It's about an out-and-proud lesbian, played by an out-and-proud lesbian, with several major cast members- INCLUDING the main love interest- being POC, and it's very gay, this is not your "Power Rangers- let me quietly hint at being gay for One Scene and never mention it again" type of representation, there's lots of kissing, "I love you"s, goofy initial carvings, and serious issues like homophobia in the military and lying about your sexuality to avoid persecution

This is Tumblr bait if I've ever seen it so imagine my surprise when I barely get a few scrolls into the tag and already see people hating on it for not being queer enough because Sophie is married to a man

Hahahha..... I'm pissed

Allow me to advise ya'll to sit down as I explain why this is the OPPOSITE of a problem

First of all I cannot believe that on TUMBLR of all websites I actually have to explain to people that being in a heterosexual relationship- even married- does not automatically cancel out your queer ship

Shows have been putting their charectors through divorces and widowing for decades and it isn't going to stop now, in fact, I'll be THOROUGHLY surprised if The Husband makes it to see the end of the season

But I digress

We'll come back to shipping later because right now I'm going to tackle the biggest problem I have with these "You guys are making her straight!!!!" posts I keep seeing: CLOSETING. DOES NOT. ERASE. QUEERNESS.

I cannot believe I actually have to say this at the home of ships like Destiel, Sterek, and whatever the fuck legion of ships that Voltron produced but being in a straight relationship does not make someone less queer, ESPECIALLY if the relationship is fake, and ESPECIALLY if they have been ALREADY CANONICALLY SHOWN TO BE QUEER

Look I ship Destiel and Sterek and Supercorp too but "closeting" is a THEORY for these ships- with Sophie, it's CANON, she was in a canonical relationship with another girl where she kissed her and said she loved her and planned a future with her and the only reason she's not still with that woman is because was threatened to be kicked out of the military for it, I cannot process how the home of "They're in a straight relationship because they're closeted" is actually trashing this

But even THAT'S irrelevant because I can already hear some of you screaming that you don't ship any of those things but listen to me: Closeted charectors are just as important as out-and-proud charectors are

We live in a world where people are STILL being murdered for their sexuality every single day, where kids are still being sent to conversion therapy, still being kicked out of their houses, still being forced to be in straight relationships out of fear for their LIVES if they aren't- and fear for their jobs, their families, and everything else

I bought my first pride flag yesterday and hung it up today and legitimately my first thought was "gee, I hope this doesn't attract any crazy Trump supporters who are going to light my house on fire" but I did it anyway because I have supportive parents and have NEVER made my sexuality a secret and anyone who talks to me for ten minutes is PROBABLY going to hear atleast 1 "lol I'm bi" joke and I haven't been threatened with bodily harm for it YET so I figure I'll atleast probably live through the night

Other people aren't that lucky

For as important as it is for out people to have our Kate Kanes, it's JUST as important for closeted people to have their Sophie Moores

Please don't take away from the fact that the CW is trying to give that to people just because it means The Ship isn't happening Right Here Right Now

Please don't try to take away Sophie's queer identity because of being closeted

This plot development gurantees us atleast a season of Sophie exploring her identity and circling back to the question of "Do I really value being a member of something that's going to hate me for who I am over the woman I love?", we're going to have a season of her exploring what her identity means to her and we're going to get a really great juxtaposition between one lesbian who's out and proud and telling the story of pining for a lost love and how to navigate Queer Problems being out, and another who's closeted and afraid and in love but doesn't think she can return and how to navigate Queer Problems being closeted

That's GREAT??????

Why are ya'll complaining??????????

That's not something that we get very often???????

Also by arranging Sophie's story this way the CW is trying to AVOID giving us the same problems we always complain about like tokenism and Burry Your Gays, let's be totally honest here, if Kate and Sophie started off in a happy relationship and stayed that way through the beginning of the show, then for Conflict Reasons something way worse was going to have to come along and ruin that- like, you know, probably death? Or cheating, or a petty fight, or Sophie being evil....

This gives us a really NUANCED reason for why there's a story of pining and trying to get back to eachother here

Much like Alex and Maggie in Supergirl, the writers were clearly trying to take care to give us what we needed from a plot standpoint WITHOUT shoving gross stereotypes and tropes down our throats or making one person out to be The Bad Guy in the relationship, because yes you can read Sophie that way, but I think anyone who's ever been closeted can probably sympathize with her about this, esepcially as we don't know the nature of her home life, yes she signed the Gay Lie Document so she could be in the military but we don't have any indication that that was her only reason for giving Kate up so easily

For all we know, going home with Kate may not have ever been an option to begin with

And it's really hard to blame someone for risking their life and the life of their partner for wanting to be Out, especially if they were raised to believe that queer = bad, but I'm getting off topic

Instead of doing what alot of superhero stories do and fridging Sophie- making Kate's reason for doning the cowl to be revenge for her dead lover, they gave us somethin much tamer, something that will last all season but without lowering the number of main queer charectors on the show, they used the same trope that The Straights always use about becoming a superhero For Love but they did us one better because The Girlfreind isn't dead like she would have been in.... SOME.... stories....

But I promised to get back to shipping and here we go-

Aside from the fact that they're priming The Husband to get killed off early on just by virtue of existing (an unimportant charector who will greatly emotionally impact the love interest and create an opportunity for her to pursue the main protagonist, possibly even becoming a hero or a vigilante in her own right for revenge) there's also the fact that Sophie is hardly Kate's only chance at a relationship

If I'm not mistaken, they've already cast Renee` Montoya, and Maggie Sawyer already has an established charector in the Arrowverse too, so if the actress ever wanted to dip her toes back into the superhero waters, she could appear for a bit of time as well- wich would also be prime subplot territory for the next crossover, considering her history with Alex Danvers on Supergirl

So even IF they damned poor Sophie to Straight Hell for the rest of eternity- and I HIGHLY doubt that- do you really think that a show on the CW that opened with a love story is just going to let it's lead go without a love story for the foreseeable future...?

They're giving us a queer-lead show, wich means that it's going to be open to the same "UGH" romance moments that every other show on TV has, they're probably not going to give us an easy ride just because this one is gay like we get out of the background relationships in other shows where the leads are straight and I honestly appreciate that

Sure, I'd love if Kate got the Yuri On Ice treatment where she was able to maintain a steady romance through the entire show with only very short-lived, very easy-to-resolve conflicts ever denting it- I'd love that for alot of shows actually, imagine all of the plot that could get done if the relationships weren't being killed off or broken up every five minutes- but I appreciate as a queer person that she's probably going to get a gallery of love interests just like every STRAIGHT protagonist gets and I'm happy for her, in that respect

But my point in all of this is just that... guys... we finally have it

We have a show lead by a queer actor playing a queer charector who isn't going to get straight-washed or muted down the line because issues of homophobia and her sexuality are coming up in the very first episode.... and ya'll are complaining because her love interest is in the closet and married to a dude to stay that way as if that ever stopped any ship on any show ever??? Really?

TL;DR: Batwoman is great and if she and Sophie WERE in a happy and stable relationship ya'll would just complain about the show being "boring" and not actually working to examine queer relationships so I guess there really is no winning with the people on this website

[joi-in-the-tardis]

It’s my experience with any emotional issue I have that resolving it is 75% figuring what on earth it even is that I’m upset about (which usually requires going to the pain of actually talking it through with someone; hello I’m an extroverted feeler) and 25% actually working on the problem.  In other words: figuring it out is the hard part.  Actually, a lot of the stress and angst evaporates once I pin down the problem.

That doesn’t mean it’s all resolved just from understanding myself a little better.  There’s still work to do.  But clarity brings a lot of peace, you know?

Good Omens was released a tiny bit more than two months ago.  It’s hard to believe it’s been that long... and also hard to believe it’s only been that long.  I watched it all in one day because I wanted that first viewing to be mine- I didn’t want to share it.  I knew, even then, that I was going to be a bit... touchy... about the shipping of the main characters.  Not because I felt that anyone was wrong to ship them, but because they’re a pair I ship very specifically.  (Which is not something I do overly much, I tend to be pretty open about my ships.  Not just in a ship-and-let-ship way, but in the way that I multi-ship, myself.  Tenth doctor, for example, I ship with four different characters.  Even though the main one I blog about is Rose.  I have two anti-ships, but only one of those actually bothers me to the extent that I have the tags blocked- and that’s more because the other character disgusts me than an overt problem with the ship itself.)

And, not just that, I ship them as being a similar kind of queer to my own.  So, they’re dear to my heart.  I see them as ace, as I am myself.  I see them as nonbinary, like me.  As beings somewhere outside the human realm, I don’t think they have to follow human friend/romance rules, and that’s a relief to me.  Because I have an incredibly difficult time understanding where all those lines are.

I have a lot of myself tied up in these characters, okay?  I related to The Doctor, yes.  I’ve related to a lot of characters.  But... not like this. 

And I have felt, predominantly, unwelcome in the fandom.  In the fandom’s defense, a lot of my emotional reaction was from the initial round of “you either ship them or you’re homophobic” that was aimed at not just other members of the fandom, but the author of the story himself.  But, in doing so, people alienated aces, aros, and nonbinary folks.  It’s not just me.  I do understand that this was not everyone’s opinion, and that even if it was it wasn’t intended this way...  But, it was a loud enough message that I shut every related tag down for over a month, and still have them filtered.  I’m one that’s pretty stable in my identity, but I felt banished for it.  I felt I wasn’t queer enough for a space that I wanted to occupy- one that was supposed a queer space, itself.  

And, I let it fester.

That festering bled over in to my tumblr home fandom: David Tennant.  I dunno if anyone noticed, but I haven’t celebrated Tennant Tuesday in weeks.  I mean, a lot of it was tied in with GO, anyway, and I was trying to avoid that.  But, the constant barrage of how slutty he and all his characters are... just grated me to the point that I wanted to find a hole.  That hole was pulling out of it almost entirely.  I’m trying to rally, it’s just taking time.

But still, there was more to it...  I was getting increasingly frustrated with myself because of how upset I was.  And how much that upset was spreading in to other fandom areas that I love.  I didn’t understand it as I have always been a “don’t like, keep scrolling” or blacklist kind of person.  And, my goodness, I do want fluff from this pairing!  But every time I put my toe in the GO fandom sandbox it was akin to being lit on fire.  And not in a slow burn, this is fun suffering kind of way.

It occurred to me a week or so ago what it was that was bothering me: I am assumed to be courting whoever I’m friends with.  Sure, laugh it up, but I’m serious.  I’m assumed to be in a romantic relationship with my married best friend nearly every time we have a day out.  From clerks in stores to kids on the street to waiters at restaurants.  I’m not insulted by the insinuation.  My best friend is my best friend for a reason- she’s a phenomenal person and I’m very lucky to have her in my life.  We don’t even correct them most of the time, anymore.  That doesn’t make it any less exhausting sometimes.  It doesn’t do anything to make me less paranoid about, not just our friendship, but every friendship I have.  In my first years at my workplace I was assumed to be sleeping with multiple married women.  How people came to that conclusion, to this day, perplexes me.  Here I was going home to tea and TV and I was supposedly out dallying with these women behind their husband’s backs!  Even now, I’m hyper aware of some of my friendships with married friends... Because their SOs have made comments... maybe joking, maybe not... that nice things I’ve done for them is me coming on to them.  Please, I’m just a genuinely nice person who likes doting on people I care about.

It really fucking sucks that my friendships are misread.  I have spent a large portion of my life just not understanding romance.  Not knowing how to engage in it.  Not knowing where the lines are.  Not understanding what might be expected of me- worrying about that.  I haven’t really had those kinds of connections, guys.  I’ve been in love, yes, a couple of times.  But, it’s never been more than a confession that’s either rejected outright or... a slow dissolution of what used to be a cherished friendship.  I feel an enormous amount of love for the people in my life, but when it comes to expressing it in any kind of romantic way... I am just at a loss.  I’ve always kind of chalked this up to being queer and having a late start, but sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever figure it out.

But if there’s one thing I know, I know how to love my friends.  Or, at least, I think I do.  And my friends don’t seem to mind.  It’s the way that it’s labeled from the outside that bothers me.

And, that brings me full circle to my point: the thing that bothered me was that I saw these two romantically challenged ace/enby characters and I thought “omg that’s me!”  Then I saw people shipping them sexually and that was okay!  Ship whatever you want.  But, then I saw that if you didn’t ship them that way it was homophobic.  It was wrong.  How could you see it anyway but gay?  Yes, QPRs have their place, but this isn’t it (something I actually saw in someone’s tags!).

I was gutted.  I understand why now.  People ship me and my close friends together all the time, friends.  It makes people really happy to do so.  They’re getting rep in public.  They think it’s sweet.  It makes them smile.  It makes them engage socially with us when they might not otherwise.  It gets us nice tables at restaurants so we “can see one another better.”

But we’re not romantically involved.  No matter how much the public may enjoy imagining us being so.  We have always been and will always be the best of friends.

Am I right to be mad at the whole fandom for how much this hurt? No.  Absolutely not.  And I have not, at any time, been mad at everyone.  I can separate my own feelings from the situation.  To be honest, I don’t even remember who made some of the comments that hurt me to begin with and I’ll never try to find out.  I’m not in any of this to start arguments or sling mud.  I’m in the fandom life for fun, to escape from real life for a bit, and to make friends if I can.

I say all of this mostly for my own mental health: I want to share it.  I want to be understood.  And, if there’s anyone out there who feels like me: I want them to know I understand them, too.  It’s not just you.  You’re not alone. 

And I also want to explain that coming to these conclusions and talking about them has made it a bit easier to pat at the sand in the Good Omens sandbox.  I’ve been poking and prodding as I feel like I can.  So, you’ll likely see some GO stuff on my blog.  I’ve still got everything filtered at the moment because I’m letting it in, as I said, as I feel like I can.  All at once feels like it might squash me again and I don’t want to ruin the progress I’ve already made.

I guess I’ll end this by saying that I loved GO the book.  I loved the series.  I’m eternally grateful for Neil Gaiman and how he’s continually put his foot down that we can all make of it what we like: that’s the fandom’s toybox.  The only things that are cannon are the words in black and white and that’s all he’ll comment on.  They can continue to be your romantic gay ship.  They can continue to be my ace/enby QPR.  We can all play in this massive sandbox together.  Just... pardon my bandaged wounds and my being a bit shy.  It’s taken me a while to get up the nerve to be here.

[mild-lunacy]

Why Shipping is Not Always Neutral

Most reasonable people in fandom believe shipping is always neutral. That is to say, it doesn't matter what you ship, it doesn't impact your understanding of the characterization or plot, and it's neither right nor wrong. Then there are the people who think *some* (non-canon) ships are just crazy, while their (non-canon) ship is superior. This is obviously why the whole stance originated. Still, however much people like to apply the 'all's fair in shipping and stanning' philosophy, it actually doesn't apply to canon ships. And it doesn't *always* apply equally to fanon ships. But rejecting *any* canon ships is automatically not neutral.

That is to say, if you think a canon ship sucks, that's not 'just' another fan opinion; it's a critique of canon. Unless, of course, it's portrayed as a failed relationship (and the canon may or may not signal the relationship will fail from the beginning, so in some stories this gets pretty subjective). In some narratives, you're expected to be invested in certain relationships and then... let go. Naturally, not everyone can do that, let alone every time. In a good story (like with Sarah J. Maas and the Throne of Glass series or with The Raven Cycle), you'll be able to see why things happen the way they do. Not doing so becomes a sign of a closed-minded reader. There's a good explanation possible for why it *had* to turn out the way it did. Sometimes it's a bit more complicated, 'cause a character died or just disappeared for no good reason, so... taking sides is understandable. It's just not *neutral*, basically.

I read someone anonymously confess that they don't ship Kaz and Inej in Six of Crows, and people were like, well, you've got the right to your opinion but you're wrong. Which I agree with, insofar as it goes. That person also was glad Matthias died-- and that's different. I think that's fundamentally different. You can easily not care about Matthias. Truth: I enjoyed him but I wasn't that upset when he died; he was only there in the end to make Nina happy. It's not necessary for the story that you care if he's dead; it's probably better if you don't (or you may not enjoy the ending). It *is* necessary to care about Kaz and Inej, 'cause their arc is a major part of the narrative. If you don't appreciate them, you won't really appreciate the books in general. The line between 'appreciate' and 'ship' gets fuzzy though; it's certainly possible to enjoy a romantic or platonic relationship without going that extra mile to ship. It's just... most people in fandom have clearly never realized this. Possibly because that kind of mild attitude is by nature not fannish.

A lot of people do get this with canon slash ships, which are automatically labeled important and necessary to the story (unless the person is pretty obviously hating on queer pairings). No one on Tumblr or Instagram these days really goes very far in dissing Adam/Ronan in TRC, in any case, mostly 'cause they're queer. Either way, people's feelings on gay male relationships seem to take precedence. Plenty of people have much to say about how much they don't ship Blue/Gansey and how they don't like them (at least without some additions or alterations), and so on. Those people usually do care about Blue and Gansey individually, but have their own ideas about what's best for them (usually it's to be queer, but it could be anything). If I had to guess, that confession about Kaz and Inej probably has something to do with how 'healthy' or 'necessary' that relationship is. My point is that it's actually a pretty big and serious statement of philosophy about the whole canon world, not 'just' a ship, 'just' an opinion.

Of course, a lot of times, a story will play on creating drama and disagreement between readers about possible future ships (especially stories with love triangles). And not every story has a central relationship that you have to care about to get the show. BBC Sherlock is on the other end of the spectrum from an ensemble show like BtVS. You can easily like Buffy alone, or with Angel, or with Spike, all with an equivalent understanding of the show, although it gets iffy with fanon ships. You can probably get away with focusing on a slash ship like Spike/Angel as long as you still care about Buffy. I think it's (just barely) enough of a true ensemble show that you may get away with not caring too much about Buffy... but my feeling is that this is only true to an extent. In the end, it's All About Buffy, and so ultimately you have to give Buffy's needs precedence in judging the relationships and events. It's not the same with Six of Crows. It's not an ensemble in the same way. Every character and relationship is much more important, but I would argue that both Kaz and Inej are the 'main characters', though Matthias and his arc is pretty important. If the reader didn't appreciate that, a big chunk of the text just... clearly flew past them. It's not neutral.

This whole issue really started when people started mixing up fanon and canon ships. Or rather, the distinction and/or idea of fanon started to lose importance. This is pretty natural to people, who tend to think their opinion is reality at the best of times. I guess from that perspective, mere tolerance of others' ideas is already an accomplishment. Understanding of the text and/or reality thus becomes really extraneous for most people. Perhaps I'm the one discounting the importance of maintaining harmony; I realize that's probably the central problem on the Internet these days. I should have focused on how cool it is that those Kaz/Inej fans on Instagram were so chill even as they disagreed. I shouldn't take it for granted, let alone disagree and be more forceful. I just think it's useful to think about *why* that (or any other) opinion on a pairing may be wrong.

[destroyyourbinder]

Questions They Implicitly Ask To Check Your Progress in Treatment for Gender Dysphoria, Because There Aren’t Even Clear (But Wrong) Functional Standards for Any of This

I wrote this as part of a reply to a chain of conversation you can find as the previous post on my blog, but since tumblr is all about the short and snappy shit, I thought I’d repost it as this in case people didn’t want to clog their blog. 1. Did they let us change their self-narrative? Do they see themselves as having an internal, individual problem with gender and sexuality? Do they understand themselves as a transgender person rather than a type of gay person who is naturally expressing themselves but running into problems in society? Do they see their depression or functional issues as coming from their having gender dysphoria, having the “wrong body”, or having their “true gender expression” be stymied? Do they believe they can and do have the mind, soul, or brain of a different gender? Are they less confused about their personal understanding of their gender and sexuality history, even if it is a distorted or incorrect understanding of factual details of their life? Do they see their current relationship to gender and sexuality as inevitable and the final outcome of a long string of internally-generated events that started in childhood or even at birth or before? Were they happy to find out these things about themselves? Did they seem relieved when we told them or that this was their “real” problem? Did it make them seem less worried and less apt to hate themselves when we told them that it’s gender dysphoria and not something else? Did they seem like they were having real insights about themselves when they began to use our narrative for self-understanding rather than their own?

2. Did they comply with the medicalization of their distress?

Did they begin to see that their issues with gender and sexuality are a medical problem, or at least an appropriate issue to bring to a doctor or psychological professional? Do they trust doctors (me) to handle their issues with gender and sexuality? Do they prefer to get this issue resolved through medical treatment rather than trying to resolve it through other means? Do they understand that medical treatment is the only real way to get rid of their distress about gender and sexuality, and that if they try other strategies, they’ll be futile? Have they transformed their personal narrative so that they see that they’ve tried to handle their “gender dysphoria” on their own but failed, and need expert help now? Do they now collapse their ineffective, self-harming strategies for coping with gender and sexuality-related distress with any other, non-medical strategy for helping themselves?

Do they now use strategies to help their gender and sexuality-related distress that make them dependent on the medical system, a particular doctor or therapist, or a medicalized understanding of themselves? If all doctors disappeared tomorrow, or the medical system failed, would they be screwed? Do they have to keep coming back to the office or clinic to make sure they’re ok?

Do they now understand that transition would be best for them? Do they see transitioning as the natural outcome of their life course? Do they think that using medical tools to transform their body is the best way to make their feelings about their body and their social position go away? Do they think we doctors and psychological professionals will be helpful, and will they turn to us to make those changes to their body?

3. Did they prove that their distress is a very serious issue to us by letting us enact our medical authority on them?

Were they treatment-compliant? Did they agree to their diagnosis of gender dysphoria and the course of treatment recommended? Did they jump through all of the hoops to make sure this was absolutely right for them, and listen to our rules and regulations? Did they spend the appropriate amount of time in waiting, or articulate their narrative in the correct way? Is their gender presentation in line with what we expect from someone who has such a serious problem, or do they seem not to care about our narrative enough for us to think they’re for real?

Did they take in the narrative well enough that now they are begging us for medical intervention? Do they seem eager to start hormones or to have surgeries? Do they seem to be ambivalent about anything or are they able to stuff down doubts enough to make their problems easy for us to deal with? Do they make us feel like we are coercing them into anything? Are they making us make hard choices about whether this is right to convince someone to do this to solve their problems? Are we talking to a parent of a preteen, a caretaker for someone disabled, an individual who formerly very strongly saw herself as gay, or a freaked-out mess of a person? Are they really a good candidate if they are one of these people and should we just give up on treating them like a person? Or are we here to affirm people’s identities and feel great about helping them in their gender journey, no matter who they are, except when they are too difficult and we can set a boundary around caring about them? Are they giving us a lot of shit about being confused about what to do, or going on and off hormones, or ending up in the psych hospital again, or putting off surgery, or asking for it early, or not following aftercare instructions? Or are they listening and following our recommendations calmly and nicely, as if we know what we are doing, and we’re helping them?

4. Did we get them to stop being such a pain in the ass after they proved how serious they were?

Do they bother us with their problems now that they got a name change and are on hormones and had surgery? Are they still in therapy or can we give their slot to someone else? Are they still confused about gender or having issues with gender and sexuality or have they learned to shut up? Do they voice complaints about transition or do they recommend it to others as a way to solve their problems with gender and sexuality?

Are they still depressed? Ok, but are they depressed because they’re the wrong gender or because their life is still crappy (because we never said it would fix their life, you know)?

Really, in the hospital again?

Did they stop talking to everyone who gave them crap about gender and sexuality? Are they either completely stealth and pretend this never happened, or do they live in an artificial progressive bubble and never come out? Is it visible that they’re transgender and think gender standards are bullshit, and are they still making a scene about the whole thing? Have they considered maybe transition wasn’t right for them if they are still having so many problems?

Have you heard from Jake since his top surgery? I heard he never came back to the clinic for followup, do you think he just moved on with things and didn’t need our help anymore? Isn’t that so typical?

5. Is their current narrative one which is a completion of or natural end to the one we installed in their head?

Do they tell us that they think their life is better? Do they tell us that they think they solved their problems? Did they tell us everything is better now?

Do they talk about their body in the same way, as if it’s the thing that’s bothering them, or do they talk about how awesome it is that we changed it for them? Are they unsatisfied with what we did for normal reasons or really stupid ones that make us feel like we did something bad? Do they know surgery has limitations, because like, come on, we can’t give them a real dick, you know, and if they’re still sad about that then we can’t do anything?

Do they tell themselves all the time that they made it, they did it, they achieved what they needed to in order to be happy? Well, we just gave you the tools to be happy, didn’t you know that people can choose their life direction and it’s in your hands now if you decide not to actually be happy?

Did they settle? Did they settle enough? Do they know this is the end and we can’t do anything else for them, and do they accept that?

Do they feel like a man now? Do they think there is no such thing as a “real man”? Can they tell themselves something, anything, that says that there’s no reason for themselves to be upset anymore about this gender and sexuality stuff and actually believe it? Is it written on their bodies and in their history now that they have no reason to object? ---- I want to note here as part of this piece that I think most trans people are intensely aware of a lot of this already. Except: since they are so motivated by their own horrible distress and have been captured by a narrative that says transition is the only solution to said distress, they still are coerced into buying into the narrative at least somewhat. Otherwise they cannot transition. This is why you often see trans people criticize elements of this (transition gatekeeping by professionals, the idea that being trans is a medical pathology, that you have to be “born trans”, that transition has to be “complete” or end up making you gender conforming, etc.) but rarely does anyone name the full set of conditions defining “gender dysphoria” and the way the medical system deals with it. The most threatening condition to name is the idea that level or legitimacy of distress has something to do with transition, because otherwise transitioning makes no sense. So-called “transmedicalists” will name it, but in the wrong direction (that being distressed means that you must transition) rather than the way that medical professionals level it, which is that agreeing to transition proves that your distress was legitimate and worthy of care and not just a lady-problem or a faggot thing. The most radical of queer types will sometimes deny that transition ever needs a reason, but this is essentially a coping mechanism for those who wish to access transition but know they are poor traditional candidates or who cannot get their distress ever taken seriously (because of demographic characteristics or because their distress is too unseemly to witness). Denying that anyone needs a reason to transition, and demanding access to it without justifying this access, leads to new forms of abuses of medical control. The process of transition becomes “informed consent” model treatment, without any limits, as a very serious and life-altering body modification option subject to all sorts of unbounded pressures. Transition without justification has also dissolved bonding and shared experience within transgender communities, as it used to be understood within these communities why and how and with what mentality people transition. Now it is not even clear to me what “transgender” means, or what someone who uses alternative pronoun sets (for example) is even attempting to communicate to me or wants from me as a standard of respect. What is lost in all of this is the origins and historical use of medical transition, which was heterosexual men in power feeling gracious enough to do something about gay people’s distress by deigning to feel bad about shocking the shit out of their brains or throwing them in jail. They came up with transition as an alternative to the horrific abuse and punishment of gay people; transition was modeled on historical ways gay people chose to deal with homophobia, i.e. by passing as or taking on characteristics of the opposite sex. Gay people in a heterosexual world, especially isolated or young people, have little way to understand their experience except through a lens that makes them feel like an abnormal example of their sex and therefore “more like” the other one. It is absolutely normal for gay people to feel this way and to communicate their feelings through this lens, but heterosexual men in the medical world interpreted it completely literally. It was the only way they could understand why gay people were the way they were (”inverts”) and not stigmatize them at the same time. When gay people saw they could get their distress finally heard by important people who claimed they could do something about it, but they could not actually be heard or seen except when they took on a literal and medicalized narrative of “being the wrong sex”, many simply went along with it. Transition has taken on a life of its own since then, being applied to children and non-gay deviant populations, and being taken up as the culmination of a personal identity by various modern subgroups who have little knowledge of its original history.