i accidentally ended up writing THE most spiral-coded horror story plot line and setting i could possibly think of and i can’t decide if i should be mad at myself or proud. both is probably good, right?

"You know, I could hunker down at your place. Slither over and watch you eat cake." ⁠ —Crowley to Aziraphale in the Good Omens Lockdown special

I think one of my “favorite” things is when people misinterpret what it means to be aroace. Watching people so clearly not understand the complexity behind the spectrum of aromatic and asexuality and then proceed to say they “stand with” aroace as an ally is so hilarious to me. Especially when they use this to start bashing on a perfectly fine ship, especially because said ship gets in the way of theirs.

Aroace does not mean no attraction. The plastered poster face for it is people who don’t feel ANY types of attraction, but that does not mean everyone. Aromantic people can date and fall in love. Asexual people can fuck. Aroace people can do both.

Yes, aroace rep IS needed. But we still have it via Luffy—just because Luffy kisses someone (hypothetically) doesn’t mean we just yeeted the aroace label off of him. He is STILL aroace. You know who else is aroace? Bon Clay, for one. Zoro as well. Yet I don’t see people screaming that shipping Zoro with someone completely erases the aroace label, now do I?

Ugh, I’d totally make a whole ass essay about this, but it’s half till midnight. It’s just. Been on my mind for a few hours and I need to say a little shit

cw eye strain , blood

it doesnt hurt to dream for world in which you can be a princess even if it isn't possible

ive just rediscovered an old wip of mine and im having so much fun right now. like i havent opened the document since early 2020 and genuinely forgot it existed yet there's 90k words and so much lore and elements of basic concepts that made it to my present writing in far cooler and more complex ways and the writing isn't great but there's potential to it and idk. it's been a while since i wrote something privately and while i hugely prefer the way i do it now where i actually have a community with it and dont hole myself away and act like it's a huge shame thing, there's still something hugely reasuring about knowing this is something ive always done and that actually i was always drawn to it and had potential and that's something to remember for when my writing block gets bad or i convince myself Everything Ive Ever Done Is Awful

I never talked about this on the 8th, I kinda just reblogged my one post about Dracula digging facial hair, but rereading Three Letters by BlueCatWriter reminded me of this internal connection I made in my head that I never saw anyone else bring up. Maybe they didn't bring it up because it's stupid, but I'm depressed, so I need something.

EDIT: fuckin bluecat wrote another fic where Dracula is being a pervert about the beard and now I'm even more depressed joiegrp

Anyway anyway anyone know about Peter the Great? The first emperor of Russia. He's regarded as "great" for looking at Western Europe and saying "... we should do that". One of the funniest Westernization routes he took was forcing the nobles to shave their beards because it was seen as very Slavic to have big bushy beards while men in the West shaved. Men who refused to shave were either physically forced to or made to pay a tax to keep their facial hair.

Now, Romania was not under the Russian Empire, it was split into Moldavia, Transylvania, and Wallachia, which were independently run for a time. And Romania is not a Slavic country by any means, it is more closely related to its Latin counterparts than to its Slavic counterparts. So, to be clear, I am not trying to make a comparison that is Slavic culture vs Western culture, because it wouldn't make sense.

It's a shaky comparison with my shaky outsider knowledge, BUT! Like Peter policed the nobles' appearances to strip them of their culture and replace it with Westernism, Dracula, by refusing Jonathan the ability to shave, strips him of his culture and replaces it with his own ideals about a man's appearance.

Attitudes towards facial hair are always fluctuating, but particularly after the Crimean War, I believe shaving grew more popular in England when soldiers who had to shave for hygiene reasons returned from the war. In general, if you were to have a beard, it was prudent for it to be more than just a little stubble (men growing moustaches would fill in their moustaches with makeup or wear a fake until they grew in completely) and you simply must keep it well-maintained! Like a little garden hedge on your face. Otherwise, you look like an unkempt slob.

So, apart from clean-shaven-ness being deemed more Western, it's simply a matter of pride for any man to style his facial hair or lack thereof however he pleases as a means of self-expression and personal hygiene. Dracula denies Jonathan that vehicle of self-expression and forces him into a state of dysphoria.

Tsk tsk all because he's into bearded men.

Man. I just get so actually legitimately sad each time I remember that toh ended and that we live in the post-toh world. Like it really is over.

Ms Dana Terrace has said that she'd like to do more given the chance (and after some quality time off of bigger projects, just to chill), but as far as we know, it's the end.

Heck, we barely got anything after the final episode, no books, no special merch, no dedicated little chibi shorts, nothing really, aside from the, thankfully fun, get-togethers of the cast and crew!

Idk. Ah well actually nah, I do know, that this show just meant an enormous lot to me. Incredibly huge, the kind that you can't break away from and wouldn't want to anyway. The kind that feels like, man, where would I be without it.

Happy 1 Year, to the end of The Owl House. Thank you, The Owl House.

I hope the future is bright, for all of us.

"Heihachi did nothing wrong by throwing that kid off a cliff" MAX I KNOW (AT LEAST I HOPE) YOURE JOKING BUT HEIHACHI LITERALLY KICKSTARTED THE WHOLE THING BY THROWING THAT KID OFF A CLIFF

it honestly frustrates me when i see people reduce the ericsons cast down to "just some teens in the woods" acting like theyre no different than any other group of lone teenagers from other existing properties and treating them like an overused trope

it is sooo important to acknowledge the "troubled youth" aspect of the whole equation. theyre not just some random teens in the woods clem stumbles across. these kids were abandoned by their families for their various "difficulties" and fucked up by The System before the outbreak even began. and then once zombies started roaming the streets their familes never came back for them and the adults that were in charge of taking care of them just left them there to rot in that old boarding school (except for ms martin who was like their lee 🥺 the only person who ever saw them as the scared traumatized kids they were and died protecting them)

the whole aspect of them already being fucked up by the adults that controlled their lives is like.....kind of important when discussing the whole "delta is stealing kids to force them to fight in a war they have no real part in and want nothing to do with" aspect of the season. and its important when comparing them to clem and her journey of also suffering at the hands of the adults around her forcing her to become self reliant. AND its important when discussing the "just trying to build a safe home (and future) worth fighting for in this world that wants them dead" aspect of the season as well

these kids were forced to come together to survive. and a Lot of them didnt... theyre the only family they have left and you can tell that even when they argue with each other theyre still a close knit group who looks out for each other. theyre a Real family before clem even gets there (and its why what really happened with the twins and brody and marlon hits them all so especially hard)

all of this is what REALLY makes ericsons such a perfect home for clem. its a Real community of her True peers. theyre not Just teens. they mightve had a layer of safety clem never had by at least having walls to keep them safe. and having the benefit of the school being hard to find. its the only reason theyre still alive when clem shows up. but theyre also some of the only people who can Truly understand where clem and aj are coming from. and its why it hurts so much when they vote to kick them out. but its also partially why she merges back into the fold so easily when she returns. plus the fact that shes Really the only one who has any idea what shes doing. shes their rock and she makes them feel safe because underneath it all theyre still just those scared traumatized kids ("EVERYONE is scared, clem..." vi was Definitely including herself in that 'everyone'), and on some level, so is clem

they saved clementines life. and she saved theirs. "the school was supposed to help them with their trauma, now they help each other" its about the LOVE the COMMUNITY the SUPPORT!!!! and thats the shit that makes good zombie media honestly 👌

there is no way to say this without sounding cracked from gunter thirst but i always thought his My Room portrait looked slightly off model in a way that bothered me compared to some of his other official art so yolo, here's a redrawn sketch.

if anyone who's confident in live2D and wants to see this in motion hit me up and i'll send you the raw files/work with you to make it happen.

I'm so sorry I can't take the Dudley-breaks-the-news-of-Eve's-supposed-death scene seriously AT ALL. It's hilarious! It's the reason why I'm a Dudley/Eve conspiracy nut, for fun, but let me explain the reasons this scene leaves me with no sanity.

First, it's important to know that the Qattara Depression, where Dudley says Eve's plane went down, is WEST of Alexandria (off to the left, on a map). Cairo is to the east/right of Alexandria. There is no way a plane headed from Alexandria to Cairo would go west.

So, from west (left) to east (right) we have: the Qattara Depression - Alexandria - the sandstorm Dudley says happened - Cairo.

Now, this is in a show that's playing fancy-dress-up-costume with history, and moved Kabrit from where it actually is (east of the Nile, by the Suez Canal) to a few hundred miles into the desert west of the Nile. Option one in the Eve plane story mystery is that the showrunners just didn't give a shit about where a place was, they simply slapped a name in there because they'd read/heard about it, and figured no one would know or bother to check. That would be on par for the show. (And the racist assumption that no one's going to know/care/bother to check where these places are - I very much doubt we're going to find them playing fast and loose with the location of European places.)

Anyway, leaving aside the option that makes me spit incredulous venom, I have a far more amusing second option to put forward:

Dudley was making shit up.

Which is extra fucking funny because Stirling, having been out in the desert, should very much know where the Qattara Depresison is. Dudley would know that Stirling should know. He'd be cackling internally at Stirling falling for it.

I don't know if I believe a word of what Dudley said, it makes no sense, but David not noticing the inconsistency means either anyone watching the show who knows vaugely where places in Egypt are just have to shriek in intense discomfort, or David is a complete and utter dumbass when it comes to remembering where places are.

I’ve seen some OFMD Takes that equate Stede and Ed’s softness and boil it down to an anti-toxic masculinity thing and an uncomplicated moral good, but I feel like doing that misses a lot of nuance by ignoring the role that class plays in their stories.

Stede does face negative repercussions for being ‘soft,’ for failing to measure up to the ideal of masculinity enforced by civilization, but only social consequences. And that’s not to say those consequences don’t matter; it’s terrible that his father was emotionally abusive, that he was bullied by his peers, that he felt alienated from his family. However, nobody was going to repossess his house because he wasn’t performing masculinity up to their standards. He was never going to have to worry about where his next meal would come from because of it.

Further, Stede has the privilege to walk away whenever he feels like it. He can “upend his entire comfortable life to become a pirate” and then “un-abandon [it] on a whim” and STILL face no economic consequences for any of it.

Ed, meanwhile, cannot just walk away from being Blackbeard because his legend is his only source of income. He can’t simply choose to stop being a pirate and be soft instead because, for him, the consequence of failing to perform the ideal of masculinity is death. In a fair and equal world, Ed would be able to wear all the silk robes and throw all the talent shows he wanted to, but that is not the world he lives in.

Piracy was supposed to be his escape from poverty, but all it’s managed to do is allow him to stave it off, and become a prison unto itself in the process. Ed is trapped, not by toxic masculinity, but by economic desperation. No matter how hard he tries, he’s still not one of “those kind of people” and he never will be. That’s the symbolism of him throwing the red silk away at the end of ep 10: the acceptance that “you wear fine things well” was only ever a dream for him and that dream is now dead.

Mordecai probably lives in an apartment or something, but my first thought when you brought up the Caves on that post was that he won’t tell us because he’s been living in the Caves the Whole Time. Even tho he’d hate the slime mold.

yeah a Whole Damn House would be a bit much, and probably not as useful for the nightly bootlegging related goings on: see, freckle needing to stand around waiting for a ride before he can go shoot people. whereas mordecai can show up to the maribel hotel on foot, or at least have started out somewhere he could get a cab or whatever....and this is probably the closest to any relevant Living Situation Glimpses

someplace with a bed, and one with an art deco headboard....a modern style, so it's neither Antique nor unfancy enough to have less identifiable stylings at all. like just by guessing surely he lives in some apartment that's unassuming enough to live unassumingly in, with whatever alias, so something large & fancy would be unhelpful....plus if he's gonna be fairly rigorous in his domestic upkeep, it wouldn't really help to have a huge place, even if for the same reasons it wouldn't be too small (or old or otherwise unpleasant; hard no to slime mold, slime, or mold....) and like re: the rotating aliases, maybe he moves places fairly regularly for good measure, been at this like, a decade....tl;dr probably has some apartment/s that's roomy but not huge, nice but not Fancy fancy, at the nexus of practicality, resources, and preferences

but it's important to think about "what if mordecai's been living in the caves the whole time" b/c that's funny lmao

hey girlie it’s me, sam winchesters gay lover, your mootie 🥰🥰🥰 i just wanted to let you know, that your tags on the post about that wincest video are based and i agree with every word, hashtag slay couldn’t agree more i loved reading your essay in those tags heart ❤️

omg thank you!!! i'm basically only capable of talking in essays whether people want me to or not, unfortunately

i just have a lot of feelings on this topic and the whole "canon or not canon" argument is weird to me; the themes are pretty darn clear in supernatural (it is NOT known for its subtlety) so idk man. they don't have to kiss to be canon. and they don't have to have a romantic relationship to be canon either. how many times do they get into relationships with other people only for it to be treated as cheating/betrayal/abandonment, only for them have to give up that relationship in order to reaffirm their devotion to their brother

that's just what the text says. i'm not under any kind of delusion that they have some secret sexual or romantic relationship, but that doesn't change that sam and dean are each other's most important person regardless of that. which is really awesome imo, that romance isn't treated as more important than whatever horrible thing they have with each other, and that they don't have to consummate their relationship with romance/sex in order for it to be the most important one they have

(and of course there's romantic/sexual subtext, like parallels and metaphors and misunderstandings and jokes, but to me that just provides a solid foundation for presenting this relationship between them as the most important even though it's not romantic or sexual—because this language of romance is the only one we know, really, when it comes to writing important relationships between characters. it's the only one we know in our own personal lives, to a large extent. so you use the romance/sexuality to symbolize the actual bond they have. which is so much worse lmao)

anyway i think spn is fairly unique in this way because of how no other relationships can really ever stand parallel to the one they share; even in other shows that center male friendship, romance is allowed to coexist with brotherhood. for sam and dean, it's not, and that becomes a point of tension and conflict and resolution many, many times over the course of the show. so like yeah!!! just because it's not romantic or sexual doesn't mean it's not canon, in the sense that their relationship is the point of the show, and it is the most important relationship they have. they chose each other above all else, every single time. yknow, it's "the epic love story of sam and dean" and all that

I think a solid marker of identifying a truly complex, compelling, and unique character is seeing the frequency and scale of how OOC they are written in fanfic

I can't believe Janelle Monae is the new Mona Lisa! Couldn't have happened to a more deserving gay!!