#5-

0 days until September 12th, the release date of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba The Movie: Infinity Castle!

opaque ocarina emote

heliosphere | ko-fi | aetherlink

got an mri done of my brain for my hearing problems

i find it immensely funny that, well

"hey doc, sounds hurt like crazy. help?" "to the loud machine with you." "what?" "TO THE LOUD MACHINE"

Anonymous:

tma is pretty tame imo, I don’t do well with horror but most of the episodes weren’t that bad, there are some that did really get me of course, but most of them aren’t that hard to stomach

Anonymous:

the thing about tma is that it doesn’t rely on jumpscares. while idk about you, that’s the main thing that’s kept me away from the horror genre. tma itself usually isn’t super scary, but there have been one or two eps that do make me feel really genuinely uneasy. that’s kinda the extent of it tho

@spacedolphinsanddandelions:

Theres very little in the way of jumpscares it can be pretty unsettling tho a lot of the later eps have trigger warnings so thatll help

@hellotrickster:

Magnus was intentionally written to be enjoyably spooky or spine-tingly rather than outright scary.

@sparkledragons:

as someone who’s watched a lot of horror movies and doesn’t handle it well for me the audio medium softens it for me personally. i can avoid overthinking stuff and jump scares are harder

@tansyfandom:

I think that people who aren’t bothered by suspense or occasional body horror could easily find TMA relaxing. Jon has a soothing way of talking about his spooky stories

Anonymous:

i think tma is pretty tame because it’s more like a series of ghost stories than a horror movie, if that makes sense? there’s some suspense, but very few jumpscares, and most of it is told after the events have already happened. plus, the lack of visuals really helps tone down the fear factor while keeping the spooky atmosphere. i think for people who are bad with specific things like body horror, paranoia, or parasites, it can be really upsetting, but for most people it’s not that scary!

…

(response compilation!)

Thank you all for your input!! It seems we’ve got a pretty solid consensus that it isn’t especially scary in the way most horror tends to be, which makes it accessible in some ways that most horror is not.

hey! thanks for being polite :) i may not have been as clear as i thought i was, lol.

from what i’ve seen there’s been no shying away from the “homoerotic” (for lack of a better term) tension between C&A, not from the actors or from neilman? i have seen gifs of tennant and sheen talking about C&A as a couple (i may be misremembering! but that was the impression i got) and neilman’s affirmation of queer interpretations since before the tv show was in the making is proof of intent to me, at least.

(side note: whatever sheen and tennant were acting, i don’t think that in and of itself is makes the rep canon...it’s about as canon as the hobbit fandom seems to think bagginshield is, lmao, which is to say “better than nothing but still not much”)

i’m not super plugged in to twitter, but neilman’s acceptance of everyone’s interpretations to me says: “yes, i am fully aware this reads as very queer; we may not have intended that when writing the book but we knew about it coming into the show and deliberately included it; however it would be inappropriate to claim that we planned this when writing the book and want to remain faithful to that aspect.”

Basically, he is doing the inverse of a JKR: not claiming retconned representation but actively encouraging queer interpretations. that doesn’t mean he’s going to dunk on people who see them as straight (though interpreting them as straight is...Beyond Me) because he’s not, idk, an Asshole,

i think neilman patting himself on the back in his responses to thanks from queer viewers is...egregious, tbh. but the backlash i’m seeing, claiming C&A as queerbaiting and neilman as homophobic, is fucking Always in response to him endorsing an a-spectrum reading of C&A’s relationship. some folks just Dont Want Aces And Aros To Have Nice Things!

looking at their relationship, i cannot say it is anything other than queer. the specifics of that queerness are left up to interpretation, but it is so fucking queer. and yes! explicit queer rep is good and important! but queer vagueness can be good representation too. that’s what i think this is, queer vagueness, not queerbaiting.

i find comfort in vague queerness, and queercoding too to some extent. as an aromantic asexual nonbinary person, the odds of me getting something to represent me in all those areas is Extremely Unlikely, so instead i cling to “vague” representation and implications.

it’s rare that i see queer vagueness done intentionally like it is in Good Omens; usually i end up projecting onto characters like Legolas or Luke Skywalker &etc that are also easily interpreted as gay but not written that way on purpose. (which is another tangential subject i have a Lot of opinions on, but let’s stay in our lane why don’t we)

i think we’ve focused so much on explicit queer rep (which again! is a good thing!) that we ignored characters and relationships that fall into gray spaces that are still very much nonnormative. those are good too, those are wide-reaching and provide ground for transformative works, those are also wonderful places for questioning people to experiment.

representation shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all. we should have lots of options. i see now, after writing this mini essay, that i jumped into that post with the idea that it was obvious that there’s more to representation than labels, but it isn’t obvious, and i hope my explanation makes sense.

also: there is ample canon evidence (within the book) for queerness on the part of C&A. aziraphale intentionally presents in a way that aligns himself with the gay community; angels and demons don’t have sex or gender unless they are really trying; the lack of sexual feelings is apparent and imo if you’re going to interpret their relationship as romantic (which is cool, even if it’s not my personal headcanon) you have to acknowledge that this is the only time either of them have had this experience (making them arospec)

ignoring all those things and getting mad about them not kissing is reductive of the queer experience. not every kind of queer is gay. nonbinary, ace, and arospec representation is queer representation. and there is more to any queer identity than just kissing; queer is identity and rebellion and community and self-expression and refusing to fit into the norm, all things that both crowley and aziraphale represent and embody. that in itself is (vague) queer representation, outside of their relationship.