Experience Tumblr like never before
a late entry, but heavy contender for tik tok of the year
related to this post, where the Mighty Nein organise Essek’s fake funerals
https://anne-o-nyme.tumblr.com/post/659298258508726272/anne-o-nyme-i-dont-know-if-anyone-else-had
Essek’s death had to be believable. It was paramount to his ability to remain connected to the Mighty Nein (even if disguises would be necessary) for he did not wish to put them in continued danger with his presence but they were at risk as long as the Dynasty’s gaze remained fixed on hunting him down. So it was that the Mighty Nein were soon happily planning a great scheme of theatrics, sending messages back and forth, and ultimately coming together in the Blooming Grove for a family meeting on the matter. Kingsley had stalwartly refused to support the usurping of his position as “handsome, ‘you should be dead’ purple man” of the group so he remained upon the Nein Heroez, getting further acquainted with crew. Jester was drawing out plans while the others offered their contributions.
“Should we throw him a funeral too?” Yasha asked.
Veth immediately interjected, excited to stir the pot, “Oh I see, so when you thought all of us might be dead, you couldn’t be bothered, but when Essek dies you’re happy to throw a funeral. I get it. I see where we all stand.”
Yasha’s brows knit together in confusion.
“No Veth… I mean you were the one who taught me funerals were important… I thought.”
Veth immediately softened at the gentle giant’s sincerity and placed an arm on her forearm.
“Okay. As long as you’ve learned your lesson.” she said softly to assure Yasha she was not mad but still stalwartly refusing to give up the bit. The rest of the Mighty Nein were holding back laughter.
“You know it’s not a bad idea,” Fjord added “it would make it more believable if we’re seen to be, like, visibly grieving. Do the Kryn have funerals, Essek?” Essek snapped to attention, upon hearing his name. He had been rather distracted admiring the way the breeze was blowing through Caleb’s long, ginger hair. It felt oddly intimate to see someone with their hair flowing free for the wind to play with, no styling whatsoever, but then, Essek supposed that was simply a marker of his upbringing in a culture where no one would ever be willing to appear disheveled in the slightest. He attempted to recall what had been said but it was no use.
“My apologies, what was that?”
Beau rolled her eyes.
“Oh god. He’s absolutely useless lately. Hey! Lovesick weirdo! We are trying to make a plan to save your life so you might want to tune in.” Beau knocked on his head as if checking to make sure it wasn’t hollow. Essek, though his expressive ears seemed to pull back in embarrassment, turned to her with the blankest of expressions, practiced from many years of maintaining composure for the sole purpose of annoying a younger sibling.
“I apologize, I was busy theorizing about what may have happened in the dynasty during my absence and while attempting to unravel the incredibly complex web of political intricacies, I happened to miss what was said.” his scathing tone didn’t have the slightest effect on Beau.
“Yo guys, new nickname for Caleb: political intricacies.”
The Mighty Nein exploded into laughter, chortling at the quip.
Read More on Ao3
See the thing about Eridan and Feferi is they are a bit like sharks and dolphins. One of them is a lovely little smiley creature that makes chittering noises and does tricks and is overall very anthropomorphizable, and the other is a big nasty biting thing that you wouldn’t want in your entourage. Meanwhile Feferi is a nice young lady with sentiments about social justice that appeal to Homestuck’s exclusively (as far as I know) non-Alternian audience and very adorable mannerisms, and the other one is Eridan.
But then expert scientists start taking a closer look at the two species and start to spot some discrepancies with the general idea of what they should be. It turns out dolphins do all kinds of nasty things (ie: premarital sex, stockbroking, pyromania) and sharks are actually big softies who wouldn’t hurt a fly when you aren’t dressed up as a seal or making sensationalist blockbuster movies about them.
Similarly, upon closer inspection you realize that maybe Feferi isn’t really all that nice or even necessarily respectful towards lowbloods (re: conversations with sollux, VrIska, Jade) and that Eridan, despite having adopted his worldview because it puts him in a socially acceptable position of power, might not buy into those ideas and isn’t quite so awful or as much of a lost cause as first impressions might have him seem (re: conversations with Karkat, Gamzee regarding Sollux, requests for faulty doomsday devices, etc).
So naturally you as the reader get very excited about all these developments and start wondering oh boy oh boy, where will the story push these characterizations next, given that it’s already managed to tell us so much with so little? Who will remain true to their ideology, and whose will crumble? And then Eridan goes and does that. Sad! Oh well, there’s other tools of a genocidal regime to unpack. Sometimes the shark really is just a big nasty biting thing, and there’s nothing sinister lurking beneath the dolphin’s adorable trick.
But you, understandably, are a little pissed off by all this. You were eager to see all the secret nice and nasty bits of these characters come to fruition, and as the reader you’ve been denied your delectable prize. Plus, it seems not everyone has caught on to how things could have gone. So in your analysis you push things a bit, maybe to bring them justice or to make things clearer. Dolphins are actually murderous rapists who delight in stealing candy from small children, while your average shark is on par with Mother Teresa. Feferi’s plans for societal rehabilitation were tantamount to genocide. Eridan Did Nothing Wrong. And so on.
However, it’s important to settle on a few things at the end of the day. Bits of nuance are usually intended to make characters more similar rather than push them further apart. It might be more helpful to see what those similarities are pointing to and analyze them on that basis. Eridan and Feferi are both troubled little soldiers of a fascist state positioned very close to its head. Similarly, when all’s said and done, sharks and dolphins are both large marine predators with very sharp teeth who humans would benefit from not getting close to.
I was a teenager when ace and transmed discourses were at their peaks, and I can’t exaggerate how badly it affected me then.
Now trans men are the latest target, and I’m terrified for trans kids.
It’s easy to say “intracommunity discourse is an online problem! Go talk to queer people irl!”, but people forget that so many kids and teenagers do not have safe or reliable access to IRL LGBT+ communities and support groups. For many, online spaces are the only option.
We need to make sure the younger members of our community are being heard, and block out the hateful voices with messages of support and encouragement. Things are bad enough for trans people right now, and it's easy to forget that trans minors are often the ones suffering the most.
The hate you are experiencing isn’t normal, it hasn’t always been like this, and it won’t always be this way. It is bleeding out from a small, miserable group of self-absorbed jerks.
Don’t feel obligated to call them out, don’t feel like you have to interact with these people. Please don’t doomscroll through discourse tags; it will make you feel like everyone is out to get you.
If you want to speak up for your community, that’s fine, but please take a break if you feel like your mental health is worsening. Block anybody who so much as breathes rudely in your direction.
You’re just as trans as the rest of us. You are welcome here.
Oh, and if you want to seek out external resources and groups, PFLAG helped me a lot when I was younger. It is an American-based organization, however, so if anyone has recommendations for those living outside of the US, please let me know in the reblogs!
using this as an opportunity to say that the hatred can be resolved SO easily because mu qing does not deserve most of the shit he gets. my boy tries so hard to be perfect and is almost always misunderstood i'm :((((( the fact that he only ever wanted hua cheng to stay alive because he KNEW the conditions hua cheng came from but couldn't bear to see him die because somewhere in there he saw his own past. jealousy didn't even cross his mind. the fact that he always, ALWAYS, admired xie lian to the point of doing anything for him, even when he thought xie lian hated him. he only left xie lian because of sheer desperation, and even then he hesitated. he came back. never once while reading tgcf did i get the impression that he was anything short of grateful to xie lian which makes him a better person than i would be if i had to consistently chalk up my achievements to someone who "allowed me to cultivate" (love you xie lian but just. no.)
the two solid reasons hua cheng hates him have a basis in misconceptions and it really fucks with my brain.
hualian is great but huaqing. ohhhh huaqing. two bastards with equally sharp tongues who will give as good as they get. but also if you dig a little deeper into their mutual dislike it's like. oh fuck they're so similar that it's easier for them to "hate" each other than admit the deeply ingrained insecurities they have.
i like the whole devoted aspect of hualian but if you shift canon a little and make it so that mu qing is the one who caught hong-er you get to see hua cheng watch someone who was born into the same situations as him, who was consistently ridiculed and treated as inferior, grow to be a fiercely powerful and loyal individual. it's not just god x devotee anymore, you've given it a raw humanizing aspect because mu qing CLAWED his way to where he is, and so did hua cheng.
even without changing canon you can see that hua cheng went down the path of surviving because gege became his reason FOR living, but mu qing has always been willing to keep himself and others afloat even as they kick and scream and beg to drown.
there's just this desperation mu qing carries in everything he does and to see that blend with hua cheng's uncaring or even disdainful attitude towards others is something that i think would be beautiful. like they balance out each other's most hidden and scarred parts so easily.
they're so similar yet so different it's like they're dancing around each other oh my fucking god i just. the parallels and possibilities huaqing has make me violently ill.
Wow I wish, I'm in this fandom earlier. But it's okay, the gayness is still there.
a random list of things you might not remember if you weren’t there while Yuuri on ice was just coming out because I was in a mood:
-when the trailer/preview dropped and everyone was like “uuuh looks gay” and then the actual first episode came out and we were like. Yep. Called it
-when someone finally translated Stammi Vicino and everyone got really excited because it was explicitly mlm
-for about the first three weeks everyone was like “there is no way this show can get any gayer” and then it regularly did so we all just gave up
-when people caught on the fact that the opening changed details with every new episode and got really excited, and that one person who made side by side comparisons of all openings every week
-that very short period of time when we genuinely couldn’t tell if Yurio was meant to be an antagonist or not
-I’m pretty sure Evgenia Medvedeva was there from the start and there was just this. Surreal feeling that along with all of us trash goblins one of the rising stars of the figure skating world was also very emotional over these anime boys
-on that note, those actual figure skating fans who were delivering a ton of meta over what actual skaters the characters were based on
-when everyone lost it after ep3 came out and we were all like! did Victor just tell Yuuri he loves him through food metaphors??
-just. “I’m a pork cutlet bowl fatale that enthralls men”. that was good shit
-the “Victor is going to leave Yuuri and break his heart!” discourse that came with that episode
-and then we all kinda calmed down with episode four and I remember everyone crying because,,,, they took one whole episode just for character development,,,,, we stan one (1) good anime
-the smol japanese skater that got really excited about meeting Yuuri and we were all like “mood”
-also when Christophe was introduced and everyone was just like, WHAT THE FUCK
-when ep6 came out with the preview for ep7 and everyone was like. THEY DIDN’T SHOW ANYTHING TOO GAY IN THE PREVIEW WHAT DOES THAT MEAN??? SHOULD WE WORRY???? (no literally I just found some screenshots of a text I sent to a friend of mine that says “the preview doesn’t look gay enough and I don’t trust that”)
-when ep. 7 dropped and everyone and their mother lost their shit and YOI trended for a whole week on tumblr and people were joining the fandom in HORDES which to this day is probably still the most surreal fandom experience I’ve ever had
-idk if this was a universal thing but the italian subfandom had all those michele crispino memes about wine
-also when Sara Crispino got introduced and the subtitles said Sala and everyone was crying because it was just really bad
-everyone shouting to know Victor’s backstory
-that whole week of being 100% convinced Makkachin would die, fun times
-when episode? 10 I think? came out and it was revealed that Yuuri had seduced Victor at the afterparty the previous year and everyone was LOSING IT
- that whole episode just killed everyone tbh
-also Otabek showed up and people were thirsting reaaal hard
-the Otayuri discourse which I’m assuming continues to this day
-HAMSTER META
-“I will give you something gold and shiny for your birthday” and everyone being like. Are they tricking us into thinking it’s a medal when it’s, in fact, a wedding ring, or are they tricking us into thinking it’s a wedding ring when it is, in fact, a medal?
-everyone crying after episode 11 and all the meta on what was gonna happen. I think the general opinion was that Yuuri would win gold and then he and Victor would retire together lmao
-also when it got strongly implied that Christophe had a boyfriend and people got really emotional, that was cute
-I just remember everyone dying over the final episode, with the freaking Stammi Vicino duet, tbh
-overall it was just a freaking wild experience and two years later I’m still so glad I was there for that