I Think That Instead Of Giving Remus Movie-fanon Facial Scars From His Werewolf Attack, JK Should’ve

Little something with Doug’s voice. Audio from “Man Without a Plan” by Marc Laidlaw.

A Case for Reed Richards’ Asexuality: Aphobia and Amatonormativity in Marvel and its Fandom

I have been thinking quite a lot about how fandom’s rampant aphobia factors into Reed hate, probably because I recently discovered that a Marvel artist had vilified Reed in the past over on Twitter by claiming that he is an asshole who thinks of his wife as “just a friend,” as though it somehow would make his love for her less valuable or important if he did. So I’m going to talk about the ways in which Reed has been coded as ace within Fantastic Four canon, and how he is troublingly framed as strange, abnormal, and Other both by official FF canon and fandom over this ace-coding. To be clear, Reed has never been explicitly called ace in canon, but there are moments where it’s been made abundantly clear that he does not experience sexual attraction and that he is fairly ambivalent about sex. 

It does bear pointing out that Reed DOES love his wife romantically—if you’ve ever read FF comics, that much is fairly obvious:

I love you, Susan. You bring light…and life…and joy…and meaning to my days. Now and forever.

Marvel Knights 4 #21

But the fact that he doesn’t behave like a stereotypical heterosexual man—in possession of a high libido, sexually aggressive, obsessed with sex, constantly sexualizing and hitting on and competing over women the way Ben and Johnny do, etc.—means that, in many people’s eyes, Reed’s love for his wife is somehow lacking and not really love. Personally, I think it factors quite a lot into people’s arguments that Reed is “abusive” for “neglecting” his wife, which he simply is and does not do in canon. The implication is that it’s because of his lack of sexual attraction and low sex drive – Reed “owes” Sue sex because he’s her husband, the thinking goes, and his failure to provide it consistently means that he is failing in his husbandly duties. The aphobic notion that aces are abusive to their allo partners because they “withhold” sex is, unfortunately, old and familiar, and it is coercive and, worst of all, encourages rape. Unfortunately, it’s not an interpretation of Reed’s behavior that hasn’t been encouraged in official FF media – take, for instance, this exchange:

Just think of the technological marvels that ancient spaceport might hold, darling!

[sighs] I can see a bikini doesn’t stand a chance with you.

Fantastic Four: The Animated Series: Ep 2x12: The Sentry Sinister

Discussion of aphobia below the cut.

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ive been thinking a lot about papyrus lately n how the fandom looks at sans and papyrus’s relationship and like.. i know most people would just take this line as a joke, why wouldn’t they, pap is trying to feed a fucking rock, but like… i think some of it rings true. papyrus is a big naive sweetheart, sure, and sans is always looking out for him, sure, but ppl tend to take that to this extreme where they see it as like “papyrus is too silly and childish to take care of himself and sans has to be the big protective older brother even if pap doesn’t rly notice”.

but…. papyrus actually does rly well for himself. look at him. he’s living a life most young adults could only dream of. he’s got a clean room, a nice house, a good work ethic for a job he’s very passionate about, a positive outlook on life, high self esteem, and even a racecar bed. who doesn’t want a racecar bed? i don’t even like racecars and i’d kill for a racecar bed. like, yeah, he’s kind of got an unusual way of doing things and doesn’t always pick the smartest option, but apart from the occasional possessed murderchild coming after him with a knife, he can take care of himself just fine.

and…. sans knows that too. sans doesn’t try to intervene with every little thing papyrus does, even when he messes up. he mostly just cheers him on from the sidelines and tries to make him happy in all the little ways he can. and sans is a lot stronger and more knowledgeable than he lets on, yes, but in contrast to his brother he does a really shit job of living a healthy lifestyle. he’s messy, lazy, he slacks off at work and overeats and has generally completely given up on being happy. and im saying this as a severely depressed person myself, i get it. i love sans for those qualities because i relate. i just think people give him too much credit, and papyrus not enough.

people talk about how papyrus is the thing that matters most to sans, and he puts most of his remaining energy into making him happy, which is true, sans loves his brother more than anything. but papyrus isn’t something he needs to protect. if anything, i think sans actually envies him sometimes, for being so unwaveringly confident and soft-hearted in such a bleak world. they take care of each other, balance each other out. they’d probably be a lot worse off without each other, but papyrus isn’t a fragile baby and sans isn’t his babysitter. and it matters to me (again, as someone who Relates) to be able to see sans as somebody who’s pretty bad at existing in general, and for people to be able to recognize that positivity isn’t inherently childish… them’s my two cents

What if…

Bruno’s room?? Analysis??? Theory? Headcanon?? Thingy???

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Encanto Spoilers!!!

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Okay, I promise this will get to Bruno’s room but for starters, I think I should talk about how the casita’s rooms are implied to work. Sorry but it’s important!!

In both the film and the concepts, it very much seems that the casita’s rooms reflect a combination of who their owners are to others, and who their owners want to be. We only see a small handful of rooms in the film but this is best seen in Isabela’s room, which is a perfect, flowery, empty room. There isn’t any furniture that we can really see besides her hanging bed, the rest is all for show, literally advertising how perfect she is with topiaries of herself making “perfect, practiced poses”. This is who she wants, and strives to be for others, but secretly worries that she is lacking in identity outside of what she portrays to others.

Why is this important? Because her room changes with her. In “What Else Can I Do” her entire room shifts and changes just as she does– the more she explores herself and the freedom and passions she never knew she was capable of, the room grows more colorful and wild and more difficult to navigate with her.

The concepts for Luisa’s room were similar– her room concepts consisted of various training areas with a secret room that led to an amusement park– a place where she could just relax and be a kid, but that she felt the need to hide it from others to appear strong. Jared Bush also recently confirmed that Pepa’s room never had “a place for her to let loose”, that that was “part of her problem”-- insinuating she’s been taught to compartmentalize and suppress her emotions instead of letting them go.

So now… we talk about Bruno.

So firstly. No way did Bruno’s room always look like… that. Casita would have never given a five-year-old that room. And it logically doesn’t make sense!! We know from extra content that when Bruno first got his gift he was the “golden child”-- that people were impressed by his gift to see the future, it was only when they believed that he caused bad things to happen that they rejected him. Does Bruno’s room really reflect that golden child?

One thing I noticed was that the wood to Bruno’s room is… hardwood. Underneath all that sand and rock is the remnants of the beginnings of a normal room. It seems like such an odd choice and detail to put there when the rest of the room is all built into natural surroundings. It looks like the remnants of a living space that’s just been covered up to the point of becoming unlivable. And when we examine the specific ways this room has become unlivable, it starts to paint a very interesting picture about Bruno and how he perceives himself.

So we know that over the years Bruno’s reputation has shifted from the “star child of the family” to the Madrigal that no one talks about except in hushed whispers– the one that people are afraid of and dislike. We know from implications as well as discussions from Jared Bush that Bruno had already started isolating himself long before leaving to protect Mirabel.

So what better way to isolate yourself than a literal mountain of spiraling stairs?

They’re so impossibly long that it’s clearly meant to keep most sane people out (sorry Mirabel, it’s true). And we know he didn’t have a shortcut, he used the excuse of the tower having a lot of stairs as a reason to not live there. But again, and I can’t stress this enough, no way did casita give a five-year-old that amount of stairs (and in such a dangerous fashion!).

They’re there to keep people out. Now whether this is because Bruno just wants to avoid them and keep people away from him, whether this is to keep people from harassing him for visions, or maybe (and likely) a combination of both, isn’t explicitly stated. We know that Bruno’s visions can be both emotionally and physically exhausting and draining– to the point of physical pain and weakness. It isn’t much of a surprise that he would want to avoid people asking for visions.

But personally? I think it was also out of a desire to protect people as well. He really starts to internalize this idea that he makes bad things happen, so the more he can avoid people, and the visions, the better. The more he hides away, the more a burden it all becomes, the longer and longer the stairs get.

They’re eventually disconnected completely from the door with an enormous gap. I think this was the last straw when Bruno broke the vision and left, and his door stopped glowing. It disconnected from the inner sanctum completely and the entire room disconnected from the casita. When Bruno disconnected from his family. When he rejected his gift, and with it, himself.

Mirabel knows the casita to the point of even being able to understand its non-verbal communication like she would anyone else, and she seems shocked that it cannot help in Bruno’s room, implying that this isn’t the norm for the magical rooms. His room is cut off because he is cut off. And the deleted scene “Chores” contributes to this idea. Félix says that “his room turned all rotten and gross and Abuela was like ‘no one is ever allowed in there again.’” We know that Alma forbids anyone from going into Bruno’s room because it’s ‘off-limits”, and we can clearly see how dangerous and unstable the room has got, so this isn’t out of the realm of possibility for film canon either. Like Luisa said, his room is off-limits for a reason.

His room refused to let anyone find that vision.

AND NOW FOR THE BEST PART. THE INNER CAVERN.

So after Mirabel risks her life to get to the inner part of Bruno’s room, we finally see these relief sculptures of Bruno on the walls. There’s no beating around the bush, they are terrifying. Empty eyes, blank expressions, gaping mouths. (And they pretty much prove that Bruno’s room didn’t look this way because they display the steps of his ritual, which Jared confirmed he invented himself later on after receiving his gift.) It’s a terrifying depiction of himself, meant to scare people away. He’s considered a curse, treated like the village bogeyman, and he’s clearly internalized these ideas about himself because his room reflects it so much here, in the same fashion that Isabela’s room flaunts the topiaries of her perfect posed stature.

But here’s something I have to mention. The designers did not simply pull this design out of thin air. It is heavily inspired by existing Colombian architecture… specifically burial tombs. The Tierradentro tombs, located in the southwest region of the nation in the Inzá municipality, were made somewhere between 600 and 900 CE and served as a burial site for elite groups. Their structural and decorative features are entirely unique and not found anywhere else on Earth, and the geometrical patterns within them signify the individuals buried there.

So. Bruno’s room is based on an existing gravesite. That’s a lot to unpack.

Bruno feels that he, or at least the version of himself that his family wants from him, is dead. The star child. He had tried to cling to this idea, to be someone they could be proud of, but he just doesn’t know how. His family no longer understands him. He feels like a stranger who has replaced the person they used to love, who’s now buried in a literal tomb of self-doubt.

A tomb that Mirabel almost dies in because of how unstable and disconnected it has become. A tomb that follows an infinitely long spiral staircase up to a room filled with spiraling imagery– all to find a man who truly has spiraled. And one who isn’t there because he is so terrified of hurting people.

Bruno’s room looks the way it does because of his warped self-image that has become so twisted over the years. This internalized perception that he hurts people- that he causes these twists of fate- and while I think he knows on a logical level that this isn’t how his gift works, clearly doubt has infected the way he feels. We can see it in the way he treats Mirabel, wanting to push her away at first because he’s scared he’ll somehow hurt her, refusing to do visions, refusing to help until she tells him that the family needs him. And that’s all he ever wanted, really.

Maybe his next room won’t have all those stairs.

DELTA_EXPERIMENT - Chapter 3-13

[MASTERPOST]

[Discord]

[Art Blog]

🔥sans?

everyone likes to quote the lines "do you wanna have a bad time" and "you dirty brother killer" as badass but they 100% rest on your emotional engagement with the ambience/story to land because when they don't have that to back them up they sound. kinda stupid gjsjfk.

i mean his whole badass schtick comes from how emotionally distant he tries to be towards everything that happens in your journey (even though he has his limits, both in a negative sense, like how he disappears completely if you kill his brother, and a positive sense, such as how he clearly sympathizes with you when you're relatively harmless). the moment he's forced to care though? when he can't not engage? he is NOT cool, oh my god. don't get me wrong, he has his moments, but whenever he's trying to one-line you it's a very hit or miss situation. and usually it's a miss (lmao). "but soon... you’ll need a cool mutant hand to count all of your deaths" i mean COME ON. that sounds ridiculous.

and you could say that's all just part of him trolling you, but personally i like to think that deep down? he's just as much of a tryhard as papyrus

Rincewind: The world stresses me out, man. Twoflower: You could try meditation. Rincewind: No. I need to be fully in the shit. Stress keeps me grounded. Reminds me that I’m here. It’s almost a spiritual thing.

- Zaunites dying to help Piltover in battle while wearing enforcer uniforms, even though Piltover did nothing to earn it

- Silco, one of the few pro-Zaun/anti-Piltover characters from season 1, reduced into a mouthpiece for "forgiving those who wronged you" and letting go

- Jinx, one of the few anti-Piltover characters, becoming redeemed by sympathizing with Piltovians, being apologetic for killing Councilors, and feeling like she should die to allow her sister to be happy with her enforcer girlfriend

- Vi not having any problem with her Piltovian enforcer girlfriend gassing Zaun, and reduced to kneeling for Caitlyn's pussy in a prison cell, where she was locked for years as a child by an enforcer

- Jayce telling Viktor that his disease was never a weakness to be cured even though the disease was caused by Piltover polluting Zaun

- Ekko never calling out Heimerdinger's failings as a ruler nor Vi for joining the enforcers (even though he does in the game), and also risking all the Firelights' lives to help Piltover

- Sevika not having any lines in Act 3, never interacting with Jinx or reacting to Isha's death, and also risking her life to help Piltover, a decision which was made off screen

Ace Attorney parody.