Kabru: I identify as a weirdosexual, I am attracted to FREAKS and FREAKS ONLY

Laios: Hey Kabru, wanna eat a meal cooked out of the unfertilized embryos of eggs laid by giant bird-reptile hybrids on the way to the bottom of this death-labyrinth to rescue my sister the harpy-dragon? :)

Kabru, already unbuckling his cuirass: Laios, you're so fucking weird. I'm going to have to kill you

who wants to hear my absolutely stunning ideas for atla soap opera aus

yes i'm rooting for m*leven breakup because byler is neat but mostly? i'm rooting for m*leven breakup for the sake of el and mike.

to me, their romance was always a puppy love born out of a combination of social pressures, naïve curiosity, and a lack of true understanding regarding intimacy and romantic love and what it really is. it was real in that they do truly, deeply care about each other and they are close friends, maybe even shared an attraction, but a maturing romance is so much more than that. they've grown up and out of being boyfriend/girlfriend, and that's okay! i think television/film needs to show more often that most of us don't have definite "soulmates" or first childhood loves that we spend our whole lives with. it doesn't mean these relationships meant nothing and didn't impact us, it just means they've run their course and that something else is in the cards, and this is part of life!

i've always felt el was at her best and most confident self when broken up with mike, discovering who she was and what she liked alongside another girl her age instead of just relying on mike for mentorship on how to live in the real world. she deserves more of an opportunity to find herself, her autonomy, and her independence, and to love who she is, and she's made it clear she's felt insecure in the relationship with mike because she isn't being loved and understood the way she wants, needs, and deserves from someone who is her partner.

also, it's okay if mike doesn't love her in "the way he should". he is not obligated to love her romantically and stay in a relationship with her just because she's a girl, because she "needed someone", or because he cares about her a lot. he shouldn't be pressured into a romance if it's not truly coming from his heart. he deserves freedom to find out and honour who he is, too, instead of just staying in his non-functional first relationship — one he got into as a child, essentially — and defining himself that way because it's what's expected when a boy and a girl are close. he loves her in some way, yes, but it's okay if he doesn't feel comfortable or secure being her boyfriend anymore, for whatever reason that is. he's felt insecure too, and that's valid and it matters.

they are their own people and are steadily growing and changing every day. they need time to figure out who those people are, and it's become clear (at least in my opinion) that those people aren't meant to be a couple at this stage.

they deserve freedom. they deserve to grow up and be authentic to themselves and not feel like they need to lie for the sake of a relationship. they deserve to move on from this version of their relationship that isn't making them happy and rekindle the best part of their bond: their strong, beautiful friendship. they don't have to be a couple if it doesn't make them stronger and better and happier people.

i think it would be healthy and wonderful for a show, especially one consumed frequently by young adults, to show a relationship starting, progressing, and ending on good terms in this way. sometimes things don't work out, and that is okay.

Did you man beam Drizzle? If so, why not just pair up Rustle with Cranberry instead? I get for the amazing ship name but I'm curious about the choice /gen

I totally forgot Drizzle's original gender, but also, I really don't want to overthink it. I'm so tired of overthinking it. I wanted CranberryDrizzle funny ship name and it was getting exhausting to plan out where every pairing in several hundred cats would be getting their kits from

Rustle is going to die at some point after having two QR kittens, and Cranberrydrizzle is going to have 2 important litters (Sunstrike and Emberfoot in the first, Fernstripe in the second). I have done an exhausting amount of work (weeks of planning and hours of work at a time, scouring the wiki and facebook screenshots, redrawing tangles, reading through suggestions, writing out full posts of changes and creating new groups with their own histories) untangling broken fragments of family trees and like... I'm tired. No more shuffling. I deserve Funny Ship Name. is this too much to ask

Boy Drizzle is just the easiest answer. I'd like for Drizzle to just be transfem but I was also told to avoid cats being trans just to have kits, which is ALSO frustrating me at this point, I don't like this weight of "perfect representation" that's being put on me when I'M not even perfect representation as a living human queer.

Do I let Drizzle be transfem and "break a rule," or change them to a boy and "lose" a lesbian pairing? It feels gross to me to have fallen into a mindset where I'm treating queer relationships like quotas or rigid rulesets

I feel like if I 'get something wrong' (like forget the gender of a Missing Kit or a side character, or handwave 'where did these kits come from' with 'trans/queen's rights' without considering a real secret surrogate) I'm going to get smacked upside the head and be forced to hyperfocus on one small part of a massive project when I already have a million other things to work on.

So unfortunately the most honest answer I can probably give is that im tired. I'm really tired. Overthinking minor details before making every single tumblr post is draining me. I forgot the missing kit's original author-assigned gender and didn't scroll to the bottom of Onestar's wiki page to check it before posting. I like the ship name. Cranberrysplash somehow gets pregnant twice, but I was told to avoid trans bioparents, yet doing that is making things even harder after I had to do weeks of work to make a good tree in the first place

I'll figure out Drizzlefall's gender when they become relevant in some context

there are a lot of reasons i'm really, really impressed by how well sdmi portrayed the dynamic of an abusive relationship with pericles and ricky, and one of the big ones is how accurately they show what it looks like when abuse starts to escalate.

the extent of that is yet another thing that'll take a longpost of its own to go into, because it spans like.... the entire arc of their relationship in the show. but one thing that stands out to me in particular is their portrayal of the massive red flag that is a partner trotting out bigoted behavior against a group you're in. especially insults, and especially directed right at you.

this show has a LOT of fatphobia, jesus christ does it ever, and there are certainly some fatphobic tropes going on with ricky; but i've always been surprised and impressed by how many of the nastier ones they avoided, especially considering his role in the story and what his arc is about.

he is a major, nuanced character whose trauma is treated with full weight and sincerity. it's implied that his body type changed the way it did due to the trauma he went through when he was younger, and the ensuing mental illness, which is a pretty realistic experience for a lot of people. the things that happen to him are played for full tragedy and horror, when it would have been so, so easy for them to make light of it because Tee Hee Fat Guy and Tee Hee Male Abuse Victims Funnee. despite how his whole thing involves corporate greed, they don't go the route of portraying him as Gluttonous and Hedonistic; if anything he is very obviously not using all that money for even basic physical self-care, and the only time we ever see him eating anything it's when he's drinking wine grape juice with pericles. which, like, there's issues to be unpacked with that too, but jesus christ it's an improvement over what usually happens with characters like him.

he's a fat queer man who isn't degendered or made feminine in a mocking and/or predatory way. (there's nothing wrong with feminine fat queer men and they need more non-shitty rep, please and thank you god, but there is a lot of nastiness in the tropes they're often used for in mainstream media, and one of those tropes is when people consider 'fat queer man' and 'masc' to be oxymorons.) no one ever once calls him ugly; if anything multiple people in his life think he's attractive and desirable, for better or for worse. no one body-shames him. and no one ever mentions his weight.

except pericles.

'The Horrible Herd' and 'The Devouring' are two halves of a whole here, re: escalation of abuse. 'Devouring' is when the abuser goes full mask off and shit hits the fan; 'Horrible Herd' is the wind-up before the punch. HH is when ricky realizes things are getting Bad and he needs to put a stop to this now, and Devouring shows what happens when he tries, because by the point where it's gotten bad enough to give him a wakeup call it's already too late. it's how abusive relationships tend to go, and it's chillingly accurate.

and what's one of the things pericles says during Horrible Herd when that punch is winding up? something no one's ever said before now, including him? 'you pudding-faced dummkopf.'

he body-shames him. he insults his weight, and that's a major turning point. bigotry is something that's often there to some degree from the start, but not always, because some abusers are good at hiding things like that until they're confident they've got you where they want you. the message with ricky and pericles is loud and clear: when this happens, the walls are dripping blood. get out.

(if you can. and be careful when you try.)

when this show is good, it is really, truly good. god damn.

Be My Favorite is rewiring my entire brain istg... just unraveling those brain wrinkles and resculpting them in exciting new shapes and patterns

So who’s your favorite character in Wander Over Yonder? And what’s your fav ship(s)?

Oh, I love playing this guessing game!! ♡ ～('▽^人) ✨

Favorite character? Well...

[🎨📺]

As for ships, I wouldn't exactlyy say I ship anything in this show tbch, but I'd say I'm especially fond of Sylava, in a strictly fanon kinda way.

In your opinion, is the laugh from Leon at the end of the Ada and Leon encounter in the castle one of amusement, or more like frustration? People seem to interpret it as him being charmed by her which has lead to some butting of heads. I'm not really sure how to take it myself, but I feel like there's some lingering attachment there mixed with a lot of frustration... y'know, with her whole elusive, never explaining herself thing. Gets a little old for him, maybe.

I know you personally interpret Leon as being done with her shit, but I still wanted to know what you thought!

I think that "charmed" is a good word, but I don't think that people are using it the way that it should be used in that context. Leon isn't "charmed" by her in the sense that he just fell in love with her all over again; Leon is "charmed" by her in the sense that he found that particular interaction endearing.

I've seen people make the argument that Leon didn't actually know that Ada was alive until that very moment of reuniting in the castle, and he's just become so incredibly good at masking his emotions that it catches her off guard -- but I don't agree with that interpretation. For him to be so shocked at Krauser's introduction kind of disproves that theory, because -- remember, Krauser didn't even fake his death in this version of the story. And Leon is still so surprised to see him.

The way I interpreted their reunion was that Leon has seen unconfirmed reports of someone matching Ada's description running around doing shady shit in bioterror situations -- maybe even on missions he's personally run (RE4 was OG Leon's first federal mission but not Remake Leon's first federal mission; he's been doing this shit for a while already) -- so he's already been through the "what the... Ada???? I thought that bitch was fuckin dead!" (kudos to whoever gets that reference) song and dance in his head. But there was no hard and fast evidence that it actually was her -- until she finally tries to hold him up in the castle, and it all clicks into place as "confirmed" for him.

So, I think the smirk/pseudo-laugh following their reunion is born from a few different places:

Leon is genuinely happy to learn that she is, in fact, still alive. Being able to see her and confirm it with his own eyes was probably such a relief for him.

He's probably feeling at least a little bit smug that he was right about the aforementioned reports. So, not only was it relieving to know she's okay, it feels good to find that he was right.

She's not even trying to put up a front for him this time; he actually got to see and talk to the real Ada for perhaps the very first time ever (at least, in his mind; we as the audience know that Ada was being genuine with him at several different points in RE2, but Leon has no way of knowing that, himself). It's probably endearing for him to actually see her as her true self for a change.

The way that she exits the conversation (through the window after a tongue-in-cheek offering of sex??? LMAO) is so extra and over the top and so very Ada. It was very likely a very endearing "some things never change" moment for him.

I genuinely believe that their reunion was a feel-good moment for Leon for all four of those reasons -- and all of that can be true with it also being true that he's not willing to put up with her bullshit anymore.

The two of them don't speak again until the radio transmission where Ada tells Leon that she saw Verdugo carrying Ashley to the throne room. A lot happens between those two points (including "the fall [in love]" moment between him and Ashley, which, when juxtaposed beside the way that he fell for Ada, is striking in its contrast) and a lot of time passes in which Leon can let the enormity of his actual emotions re: seeing Ada again sink in -- and it also happens right after Ashley is taken from him, so that's why he snaps off with "I guess you're not completely heartless" in that conversation. (He's also probably still butthurt about the "leave the girl" remark, too, which only makes his reaction more volatile.)

And that kind of sets the tone for their interactions/relationship for the entire rest of the game. Leon cares about Ada (because lbr he cares about everyone), he's happy and relieved that she's alive and okay, and he's glad to see her again if only just for closure's sake -- but he's done with her shit, otherwise. He has nothing to prove to her anymore, he doesn't need validation from her anymore, whatever romantic attachments he had to her in RE2 are long-since dead, and he refuses to make the same mistakes twice.

All of these things can be true at the same time. And, in RE4make, they are.

I'm sorry but I think its good that tom is saying stuff that makes you all uncomfortable. I think everyone is a little too willing to make him the hurt innocent underdog

20 // hamper

Sawyer huffed as she looked over formulas and figures, the graphite in her hand tapping an impatient spot into the paper where the dulled tip hit it. Even as she reached forwards for her cold tea (per the usual, she’d forgotten it was there while it was hot), she continued to glare down at the page, her brow set into a focused scowl.

Behind her, errant wings tapped at her shoulder—one, two, forcing her to pay attention to her posture in her chair as the other two skittered across the paper lightly and poked at the material samples that lay atop them.

Sawyer turned in her seat as the raen’s pointed nouliths folded neatly against her back, and the raen reached out to touch the page.

“Frustration and fury. No stranger to the Hawk, but poured into what, the oasis rarely knows.”

Sawyer hummed a note, answering in her comparatively unembellished fashion, “Modifications to those tools of yours. I’ve traded letters with some acquaintances in Sharlayan that were thrilled to see an original iteration of the concept and asked for schematics in exchange for…”

She paused, watching the way her partner’s hand felt aimlessly at the fibers of the page. She had tried to involve Amesha in as many steps of the design process as she knew how to, initially, having her try to attune herself to a great many different crystals and conduit metals, but the parchment-bound stage of design was always… rather one-sided.

She made an angry noise to herself at the injustice of it. As much as she tried to offer Amesha agency—asking what might better enable her rather than assuming, giving her a means to feel her way through a space rather than be led. "Unfettered by sight" as she so often described herself, and yet there were still realms that Amesha was kept from.

“...Hawk?” the raen called, the lengthy pause no doubt causing her worry as she reached out comfort Sawyer with a scaled hand that the hyur took and pressed to her cheek.

“Sorry, I was lost in thought for a moment. I… find it unfair that I’ve spent all this time designing these wings of yours and yet I’ve not included you in the design as much as I could. The wood models are serviceable, but only once I’ve gone through iterations upon iterations with little of your input.”

The raen’s head tilted, and though she smiled, she knew better than to placate. She’d learned well than to give Sawyer an empty reassurance when the hyur was set on the idea that something could be improved for her partner’s sake. Honestly, the hyur might have felt more strongly about it than even she did, but she knew Sawyer would argue back, “All the more reason to be a part of the solution.”

Sighing, the raen withdrew her hand and returned it to the page. “Would that quillstroke and letter could be writ into parchment like the river writes a canyon. Engraved upon page as it is engraved upon earth…” With this, her noulith tipped itself into the sheet, pressing a deep line into a corner of the page that nearly threatened to tear.

Sawyer sat up, at first ready to give the raen light admonishment, but quickly stopped herself at a realization. “...That’s less of a fantasy than you imply. I think you’ve quite possibly come up with the first step towards a solution all by yourself.” she mumbled, looking up and around her desk at the various materials there. “Just a moment.”

She leaned forwards to grab for a narrow metal rod, then grabbed for a blank sheet of parchment while she moved all others aside. The shuffle of paper followed by the quiet scraping of metal caused Amessha to wonder quietly what Sawyer was, presumably, sketching onto this new sheet.

“Now,” the hyur said, papers shuffling again. She pulled Amesha’s hand to the table and laid it gently across the parchment, where the raen explored with her fingertips delightedly. “What do you think I’ve drawn?”

Amesha made an unsure noise as she explored, but indeed, she did feel raised lines in the paper. Long, not quite straight, narrowing shapes that met a tight, rounded end. Many of them, fanned out and layered not unlike scales—

“A… bird’s wing?” Amesha questioned, and she could practically hear Sawyer beaming.

“Yes, exactly right,” she said, in that tone Amesha knew meant she’d be spending a while longer hunched over her work table. She was pulled in briefly, a kiss planted on the raen’s cheek before Sawyer excitedly mumbled. “I’ve got some additions to make to my schematics.”

My favorite kind of romances are the ones where they are instantly a couple. And I don't mean that they are immediately officially together but it's more of an unspoken thing. They like each other and they know that they like each other and they spend a lot of time together and they just click and it's not like they're soulmates but they just fit really well together and they (at least subconsciously) know that <3

what are your thoughts on qpr (queerplatonic-relationship) sonadow, with both of them aro/ace? :o

broke—romantic sonadow (/lh) woke—queerplatonic sonadow

BESPOKE—KISMESIS SONADOW

SEGA: Sonic will not have any romantic partners or interests

Me: Cool Aro/Ace rep 👍

Official Sonic merch: -ships him with Amy-

Official Sonic media: -queerbaits Sonadow-

Me: 🙃 Ah, I see then.

When I see the low number on Ioquaerryn fics, I think the metaphor for me is one in the campaign itself.

Everyone else witnessed the ship and loved it like this:

Except I wasn't granted the same luxury, I witnessed the glory, fell immediately and am still a lonely puddle on the floor.

The whole development of Flug and Penumbra’s friendship is just really cute to me tbh

Like it’s very understated--as in it only ever really comes up in Penumbra’s Instagram. You see Flug pop in periodically in her posts, but the first post is (presumably) the second time they’re meeting. Flug is clearly frazzled, tense, and clearly didn’t expect anybody to want to snap a selfie with him. 

And then for the rest of the time Penumbra’s Instagram is active, you just sort of see them popping in and out of each other’s lives and it’s just... wholesome??? Genuinely sweet???

Cut for me being extremely Normal about mad scientist besties.

Like! They send each other holiday and birthday gifts!

Flug tries to help her find a cure for her condition!

AUGUST 23RD CALL B-DAY BOY

PENUMBRA KEEPING TABS ON FLUG’S HOBBY OF BUILDING MODEL PLANES AND KNOWING ONES HE DOESN’T HAVE

HIS CARD FROM HER BIRTHDAY IS STILL THERE IN THE BACKGROUND

It’s super cute too because Flug sends her a handwritten letter that’s like “Hello Miss Penumbra! I am following up with you as a client! For business reasons! To discuss the business thing! By the way, do you think we’ll be able to meet up at Business Thing this year? It was really nice seeing you at Business Thing!” Meanwhile Penumbra is like “this is my FRIEND this is my BUDDY he’s my LITTLE SCIENCE PAL!”

Flug is there for her in an Emotional Support Zoom Call when the media starts vilifying her!

THEY HAVE A LITTLE GET-TOGETHER TO DO SCIENCE WHILE THEIR BABIES HAVE A PLAYDATE, AND PENUMBRA SHOUTS OUT HOW INSIGHTFUL FLUG IS AND HOW HAPPY SHE WAS TO GET TO HANG OUT WITH HIM

idk, like. While I love the kind of volatile sibling relationship Flug and Demencia have, and the doting parent-child relationship Flug has with 5.0.5., it’s really sweet to see him have an earnest and genuine friendship with a peer who respects him as a fellow professional, likes him for who he is, and genuinely loves spending time with him. It’s a dynamic I don’t fully expect to see explored in the series proper, but I love that they took the time to flesh it out a bit.

not to be a hater (though this is more hating on how fandom treats sapphic ships and female characters than anything) but last night i felt bored and deranged and kept thinking about my changing opinions on ATLA ships, so i sorted the mai/ty lee tag on AO3 by kudos and kept track of how long it took me to find an actual mai.lee fic, usually just by looking at tags and descriptions but sometimes taking a peek at the work itself... and it took 53 fics lol. 53 fics down the list of most kudos'd fics in the mai/ty lee tag, to find a 3k oneshot that is actually about them. on some of these i would click the "entire work" button and search for their names, just to find zuko and sokka's names mentioned 700 times each while mai and ty lee's would be mentioned maybe 10 times each. ugh. their tag already only has 871 fics to zu.kka’s almost 6k to begin with.

like, to be fair, from what i could tell based on their tags and descriptions, only 33/52 of the previous fics--so around 60%--were entirely/primarily focused on zuko or zu.kka (or the set of harry potter/zuko crossover fics i found). the other 19 fics seemed to be the odd zu.tara, zuk.ki, or azu.tara fic, or even gen fic about azula, katara, toph, or the whole gaang, that included mai.lee in the background. so not every one of the top fics in the mai/ty lee tag is actually focused on male characters. but still, to see so many of them be like that... i tried sorting by date updated and most of the stuff on the front page wasn’t about them either. :/

idk i just kinda feel like this backs up what i said before about mai.lee mostly just getting popular because zu.kka got popular and its fans wanted to get mai out of the way, and not because they actually care about the girls and their dynamic. NOT saying everyone who ships zuko and sokka is like this of course, but i think it also shows in the fact that zuko/sokka/suki has become a semi-popular ot3 whereas i have never once seen mai shipped with zu.kka, as part of an ot3 or even ot4. she just gets paired off with ty lee and then the two of them get a secondary role at best (in several of the fics i opened up, mai and ty lee were tagged but literally not even mentioned or there was just one line saying they were dating) in every fic. people just don’t seem to actually like her and to be honest, i don’t like her much either, although i tried to get myself to. i tried to more closely examine her character and see the good in her and i started thinking mai.lee would be a cute ship and seeking out content for it about a year before the ATLA renaissance of 2020. content was scarce but a lot of the oldest fics for them on ao3 are, at least, actually about them even if they’re just short drabbles. so after the renaissance i was excited to come back to tumblr after a hiatus and discover that they were finally a popular ship and people were seeing how good they could be together, but then every time i went to look for fanworks about them, on ao3 or here on tumblr, i realized everything i’m saying in this post. they’re a wlw ship, so of course they’re not actually popular, that would be crazy. of course their “popularity” is entirely owed to the fact that a mlm former rarepair (yeah, zu.kka was not that popular pre-renaissance, people who wanted an mlm ship used to prefer jet.ko) that involves mai’s canon love interest blew up. and i just hate that this sort of thing seems to happen in just about every fandom. i wish the ATLA fandom could’ve been better about it.