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Like, the Bitchmas rant? Have y'all seen the uncensored version? Bro was feeling bitchy, and pissy, and not very G-rated

SvS Redux, a bit more casual "it is a pity to admit he couldve done more then just sitting at that wedding feeling sh-" "Quit reviewing!" "Kay" and he sounds so disappointed about it. Like "oh what so Thomas can open the video with an F-bomb but I can't say sh-tty?"

Ao3 does not need a 1-5 star rating system, you just want to bring down authors writing for FREE

Ao3 does not need automatic censorship, it is an archive, therefore anything can be posted

Writing or reading about something illegal does not mean the author nor the reader condones it, if that were true, you could never read a story involving anything negative

So then he especially I guess assumed: Wow the animatronics sure do get a little quirky at night HEJSJS the animatronics- being a metaphor for Patton here- you get it

You guys miss Remus??? 😁

Very particularly, it's this recruitment poster here:

At first glance depicting the original Samurai Troopers, but on closer inspection, it is in fact Musashi's team, with Wataru in place of Ryo, Sho standing in for Shuu, Takeru replacing Touma, Manabu in place of Seiji, and Musashi himself wearing the armor of Suiko.

That is to say, Shin's armor.

Shin's story is… look if you're reading this and you don't know his deal, stop, go watch Samurai Troopers from E1 to E39, then all three OVAs, then come back.

If you're too stubborn or lazy to do that, I'll summarize here anyway - but you really should watch Samurai Troopers.

Shin's arc across the actual show is fairly shadow, being the fourth member of a five-member team on a show with a shorter run than typical, but generally he's distinguished by keeping a level head, not being not the strongest, fastest, or smartest- just the one most likely to adapt to a situation and find a way out or around. And all while being an all-around Sweet Boy.

However, the OVAs and supplemental material, namely the Suiko Den drama album, give a fuller picture of Shin's personality- a gentle, kind soul, heir to a hagiyaki kiln, youngest by several years of two children who lost their father at a young age and whose mother is chronically ill, he is ever-doubtful of the actual mission of the Samurai Troopers, to say nothing of himself, particularly as time goes on and threats arise and escalate. This culminates in Kikoutei Densetsu/Legend of Inferno, wherein at a critical moment, Shin's hesitation leads to the capture of two other Troopers and a rift between him and the two remaining team members to form, culminating in The Punch before running off and discarding his armor entirely, resolving not to take up arms in a conflict that none of them fully understand anymore.

As tends to be the case, these decisions prove critical to the others breaking free of the bloodlust inherent to the armors (long story, watch the show), and destroying them all once and for all.

And then Message happens.

Shin's role in Message is small, barely around for half an episode (Sasaki was a busy man in 1991), but delivers his final resolution, even though he was clearly being set up for a trap by the antagonist of the OVA, Suzunagi, a little girl who lost everything, including her life, due to her family's involvement with the Legend of the Samurai Troopers- which is an oversimplification, but again, go watch it if you want to know more.

In any case, this resolution is, roughly, that it was, and is, his choice to take up arms, and his alone - and he'd make it over and over, because the alternative was letting someone else die for him, something he would not, could not, allow.

Now how does this all tie back to Musashi?

Because he's not just living in the shadow of his predecessor, he is Shin's shadow. Every moment of doubt, every question, shared by both Troopers of Water; a repetition, a rhyme, and the decision to dress the new Troopers in the vestments of the old is a brilliant move not only to contrast their obvious shortcomings (as we see by the end of the episode) but most especially for Musashi, because of all of them, he has the most direct connection to his forebear, not only in element, but in spirit; in so many ways, it is he whose shoes are the biggest to be filled, simply because of how closely he resembles his predecessor.

I'm looking forward to seeing how he develops.

Since «Gravity» came out people have been discussing the symbolism of the song and animation.

The oxymoronic combination of song's name being «Gravity» and anti-gravitational movements of Lute (walking on the walls and the ceiling), biblical allusions in the lyrics (the Genesis Flood) and other important details.

As many fans believe, one of the most impressive frames in «Gravity» is supposed to show the «fall» of Lute in the future.

Indeed, it speaks volumes and is very logical (as we can see from the episode 2, where Lute does not receive any support, be that support for her plan or mere psychological help – both affect her actions and make her even more desperate).

It catches our eye, but there is something that usually stays out of viewer's attention: we had better look closer at frames, since it isn't the one and only falling of Lute during the song, nor is it chronologically the first one.

Actually, there are two moments where she is falling down.

The second one depicting angel's dark silhouette attracts everyone's attention, here we see the «fall» itself, as it is. (By the way, she broke the window wall and not the ceiling here)

The first one remains behind the scenes, but the essence is the same – she is falling. We just see a result instead of process. And that result is no less important and symbolic…

She breaks the stained-glass ceiling and is about to fall down. But where is at that exact moment Adam?

The answer: he stays on the floor, while she is under the ceiling. He is «in Hell», waiting for her, while she is «in Heaven». Metaphorically.

Nota bene: Adam as hallucination can fly, as we see in many scenes. He also accompanies Lute during her flight around the room, appearing here and there, beside her or opposite her… Why stay down there waiting? Emphasis in the discussed scene was obviously on him.

And here we witness the concentration of meaning – depiction of extermination on the ceiling, falling (or fallen) angel, gold and red shards of glass falling like a rain (some time later – gradient of gold-red sky) ... and Adam, looking up at her, waiting for her, even meeting her with soft hand movement as she lands. The very next moment they are completely in sync and are mirroring each other, just like they used to do in season 1.

The «mirroring» is, in my opinion, also important – that is something they usually do, but it is also the first time during the song when Adam acts natural and doesn't give these hallucination/ghost vibes (by that I mean his constant whispering and abrupt appearances behind her back etc.) …

WARNING: This post turned out WAY WAY WAY longer than I had planned it to be. But I hope you all enjoy reading this MASSIVE post and kudos to anyone who actually gets to the end. PLEASE feel free to engage with this post - add your own thoughts, opinions, and comments on this whole topic in a reblog/tags or even in the comment section. Thank you all for reading this! <3

Something that I feel isn't mentioned as much as it should be, in regards to Riku being queer-coded and viewed as gay, is that a vast majority of Disney villains are queer-coded and Riku ends up joining forces with them in KH1 (and then you have Riku being equated to Elsa in KH3, a character who is placed in a more antagonistic role like Riku was in KH1). I feel like, because the discussion and topic of many of the Disney villains being queer-coded is so commonplace and has been talked about so often, it's hasn't really been properly discussed in regards to Riku and what it really means that Riku was grouped in with these Disney villains in KH1.

I'm going to do a breakdown of the Disney villains found in KH1 and what aspects of their characters lean into queer-coding and queer readings (even if the characters themselves may not be queer-coded).

Ursula: A character who's real life inspiration was the drag queen, Divine:

Enough said, I feel. Like, I don't think I really need to elaborate more here. Though, I guess I could mention that with basically all of the Disney villain queer-coding, you have these characters expressing traits that are often equated with the opposite sex and opposite gender presentation. These associations have been connected to villainy via queer-coding and specifically, in large part, due to the Hayes Code, which is where queer-coding largely stems from.

I have more I'm going to say about all of that more towards the end of this post. For now, let's move on.

Hook: Hook is a pirate. They are often known for and thought of as being against the societal norms. Here is an interesting bit on relationships (seamanships) between pirates/buccaneers:

Alexandre Exquemelin wrote about the custom of pairs of sailors entering into economic agreements.[3] Though most often interpreted as a platonic form of mutual insurance, some historians have compared matelotage to same-sex marriage or domestic partnership.[4][5]B. R. Burg argued in Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition (1995) that in the male-dominated world of piracy, homosexuality was common.[4] A union such as matelotage may have acted as a manner of validating relationships that would otherwise have been considered against contemporary societal norms.[4] Another allusion to matelotage's significance was the disapproval it was shown by colonial authorities. Burg's conclusions and research methods are not accepted by most pirate historians.[3]Hans Turley, who also wrote on pirates and homosexual unions, said "the evidence for piratical sodomy is so sparse as to be almost nonexistent."[5] It is likely though that same-sex encounters were more accepted among buccaneers than in the Royal Navy, based on the lack of pirate articles against homosexuality.[3]

From the Wikipedia article on Matelotage.

Then, of course, you have the live action Hook movie where Dustin Hoffman specifically portrays Hook as a gay man and as him and Smee being a gay couple :

In an interview with "Playboy" in 2004, Dustin Hoffman recalled his "aha!" moment with Bob Hoskins about their characters being gay. They decided to play their characters as "a couple of old queens" because they felt J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan's creator, had created them that way. "Bob and I were rehearsing and suddenly we looked at each other and realized it at the same time. We said, 'These guys are gay...' and it was fun. Suddenly, we rehearsed it that way, 'Get over here, Smee. Give me a foot massage.' We went to Spielberg, and he said, 'This is a kids' movie.' Suddenly, it made all the sense in the world. They were really good friends. They lived on a ship. They were devoted to each other."

From Hook's IMDB Trivia section.

For any Kingdom Hearts fans out there who have never seen the Hook movie, it is incredibly obvious that Hook and Smee are being interpreted and played as a queer couple:

This depiction of Hook, like any depiction of a well known character with various iterations, was likely influenced and based off of previous versions and iterations of Hook before it (including the animated Disney version, I'm sure).

Hades: First off, I mean, Greek mythology, am I right? In general it tends to be rather queer, especially in regards to the Gods and Goddess in a "generally speaking" kind of way.

I found a great article that talks about Hades and the queer-coding and presentation of his character. It largely talks about the linguistic aspects, while also referencing other studies and write-ups that were done on the visually queer aspects of Hades character:

A previous study by Li-Vollmer and LaPointe (2003) points out that Hades is already represented visually as gender-queer (for an overview of the field of queer linguistics, see Maree, 2015), with his relatively delicate facial features, darkly coloured eyelids (giving him the appearance of wearing makeup), slender hands and long robes. On top of this, they pointed out that certain behaviours Hades engages in emphasise his stereotypical femininity, from his general passivity (using his minions, Pain and Panic, or his indentured servant, Meg, to do his dirty work) to smaller mannerisms such as lifting his little finger when drinking. To determine whether Hades’ dialogue complements this feminised visual presentation, I look at all scenes in which Hades has a speaking role of two or more lines (see timecodes and a brief description of each excerpt below). Within these, I examine both the more obvious elements of Hades’ speech and the subtler features of stereotypically feminine language he uses.   

I definitely suggest giving the full article a read, here.

Jafar: For me, personally, I don't think that Jafar, the actual character, is gay, but I do think that there is still a lot of unintentional queer-coding aspects to the character.

Turning our attention to Disney now, two notable, queerly-coded villains include Jafar and Scar. Both were animated by Andreas Deja, who himself was gay. This led many to believe that Jafar and Scar were based on him, something that Deja himself has denied. Deja claimed that Jafar’s appearance was based on Conrad Veidt. Jafar’s voice actor, Jonathan Freeman, also claimed that his work was inspired by Vincent Price and Boris Karloff. Both latter actors were famous for their villainous roles. Although Jafar does possess stereotypical camp mannerisms, throughout the film he is motivated by a potential marriage to Jasmine. This might complicate things, and based on Deja’s comments, perhaps means that Jafar has not been queer coded. Maybe it is our perception that has foisted this upon him.

The above is an excerpt from a write up on gender queerness and villainy in animation. I do think an interesting thing to note about the above though is that Vincent Price was bisexual (or very likely bisexual). So, you know, who's to say that Jafar isn't bisexual? I feel that could explain some of the disconnect that might be going on there as well.

Finally, we have both Oogie Boogie and Maleficent. Neither one is necessarily a queer coded Disney villain. But both can be related to general queerness, in the sense of existing outside of the stereotypical, heteronormative or even just the general societal expectations. The Nightmare Before Christmas is quite well known and mainstream in some regards, but its a series (like most of Tim Burton movies) that tend to appeal more to alternative, counter culture individuals. Like, (while I'm sure there may be some people out there that this applies to, generally speaking) the type of person that watches Hallmark Christmas movies usually isn't also the type to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas for the Christmas season as well, you know.

As for Maleficent, she's a witch. Witches have always been associated with being on the fringes of society and have been subjected to other-ing and seeped in feminist, occult, queerness, and so forth.

Kingdom Hearts 1 Riku is quite interesting in regards to villainy, queer-coding, and Disney. When I was discussing older Disney villains (the ones found on the Council that Riku became a part of) the main thing often noted is how their appearances, movements, speech patterns, etc. are often equated in some way to the opposite gender, this was perceived as "not normal", and also equated with being bad. The queerness of the Disney villains were written to be obvious and apparent to non-queer fans and watchers. It goes back to the Hayes Code, right, all of these visual and audio indicators transmitted these (negative) coded readings of the characters to the audience so that even non-queer watchers could understand the implications.

Riku lacks all of that.

While, yes, Riku does have the standard JRPG/anime boy pretty face bit going on, his appearance, how he speaks (both in English and Japanese, where he uses 俺 - ore, a very masculine first person pronoun), and just his general, overall persona is very masculine. And, I honestly think this is why a lot of dudebro KH guys insist on a "Chad Riku" reading of the character (I feel this could apply to Sora as well, but that's a different post, lol).

Riku's queer-coded-ness is different from the old school Disney villain queer-coding. It's a coding that speaks very specifically to actual queer fans of the series (likely unintentionally, but this is still something worth noting) and it isn't a stagnant, unchanging kind of queer-coding either.

All of this is something that we specifically saw a lot of queer KH fans pick up on instantly. And, in more recent years, with more visible depictions of more nuanced villain, antagonist, and protagonist based queer characters, we are seeing more non-queer people picking up on the queer reading of Riku as well. But, at his core, his queer-coding is still one that queer fans tend to pick up on quicker and more easily, and his queer journey is one that a lot of queer KH fans can relate to a lot.

It's in his desire to see other worlds because the island is just "too small" and its in the way his character is a jealous, little gay mess in KH1 that really speaks to queer fans of Riku and queer fans understanding Riku in a very fundamental way, rather than in a more appearance and presentation based way. It's a sort of queer-coding the resides in a very queer experience, rather than queer performance (physical appearances, ways of talking, ways of holding the body, etc.) of past Disney villains.

Riku ends up getting taken in by this heavily queer coded group of Disney villains, largely because Maleficent seemingly appeared to listen to him and understand him in a way. She was a parental figure that he seemed to be lacking.

This is a struggle that a lot of queer folks can relate to as well. Especially when compared to the easy stability that Sora gets from Donald and Goofy almost instantly (and which seems to be implied with his home life back on DI as well - we see Sora's warm room filled with lot of toys, clothes, and other necessities, and we hear his mother calling him down for dinner - implying a stable household).

With Riku, in game we see that he is already at the play island and he mentions to Sora that they might not see their parents again (father and mother), but this isn't shown to be a deal breaker for Riku in any way. There is also the KH manga (which isn't canon), but does give us this image:

It's really the only indicator we have at all of Riku's living situation (in the games we've seen Sora's home and heard his mom and with Kairi we've seen her grandmother and know she lives with the Mayor upon arriving on DI), but we don't really have anything regarding family for Riku, except for this manga image really. So, I use this image to headcanon that Riku comes from a monetarily rich family, but emotionally distant and/or emotionally bankrupt family. Adding to his feelings of isolation.

Also, quite interestingly, outside of Maleficent, Riku has the most interaction and engagement with Hook in KH1. The queer-coded male villain in the Council of Villains in KH1. It's basically a sass-off with those two. It's also in Neverland that we get this moment (though this actual cutscene is depicted/shown to us in Re:coded).

Meanwhile, with Sora, we are shown him relating and engaging the most with Disney characters like Hercules (a character that had a stable upbringing by his human parents and is "wonderboy") and Pooh Bear (a character associated with comfort, stablity, innocence, simplicity, and home). Those two characters are shown having a connection and bond with Sora in KH1, KH2, and in KH3.

Sora's character, from KH1 - KH3, has remained a largely static character in terms of character growth and development, and his character (during the Dark Seeker Saga anyway) seems to represent the more "timeless" aspects of Disney and the more consistent and unchanging aspects of the company and Disney characters.

Riku, on the other hand, is Sora's foil character and is an immensely dynamic character (villain/antagonist -> anti-hero -> protagonist -> leader of the group) that represents the incredibly unique experience that Kingdom Hearts offers in the sense that it's a series that has been running with a long, connected plot since the early 2000s till now and still has more to go. All of the Disney villains and their queer-coding are all stuck in the time period that they were created...but Riku has the rare chance to continue changing and evolving with the times. And this goes for the way the fans understand his character and read the queer-interpretation of his character as well, since queer-coding is presented so differently now - its even substantially different from the queer coding present in the early 2000s (in general and with Riku's character, specifically).

Under the READ MORE is when I talk about Dream Drop Distance.

a demon with no feelings don't deserve to live. it's so obvious.

Is there a lot of excellent writing in there? Of course! Is it also a touchstone for many people’s most embarrassing moments and personal humiliations? Also yes!

The cringe gives Homestuck a certain something….a how do you say….je ne sais quoi….I predict Vivziepop will elevate this cringe to heretofore unreached new heights, and even those Homestuck fans long desensitized to cringe will hear themselves saying “uh-I-I promise it’s good! If you just - give it….a chance…” in a way they haven’t since middle school.

KPOP DEMON HUNTERS (2025) + TUMBLR REACTIONS