i cannot properly exist without angst

Anton (he/they) •25• bisexual/queer (banner credit: Lindsay Ellis on YouTube)

[queerlyvictorian]

MY FANDOMS (in roughly reverse chronological order of when I joined them*):

*I have wildly different relationships to each of these fandoms, but I want to keep my options open for when a post sparks joy.

☆ = Frequently post about

Eternity (Film)

Kiss of the Spider Woman (2025) (Film)

Summer of ‘85 (Film)

Helluva Boss (TV Show)

The White Lotus (TV Show)

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (TV Show)

Fellow Travelers (Limited Series)

Critical Role: Campaign 4 (TTRPG Actual Play Vodcast)

Severance (TV Show)

Heated Rivalry (TV Show)

Andor (TV Show)

Osora (Webcomic)

Single, Out (TV Show)

Cruel Intentions (TV Show)

Nobody Wants This (TV Show)

Raynes (British-American Folk/Americana Band)

Baby Reindeer (TV Show)

Interview with the Vampire (TV Show)

Squid Game (TV Show)

Gen V (TV Show)

The Boys (TV Show)

Dimension 20: Pirates of Leviathan (TTRPG Actual Play Show)

Dimension 20: Fantasy High: Sophomore Year (TTRPG Actual Play Show)

Dimension 20: Fantasy High (TTRPG Actual Play Show)

Dimension 20: Never Stop Blowing Up (TTRPG Actual Play Show)

Gravity Falls (TV Show)

Dimension 20: Misfits and Magic (TTRPG Actual Play Show)

Mary and George (Limited Series)

Challengers (Film)

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Film)

Dead Boy Detectives (TV Show)

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Film)

Dimension 20: A Starstruck Odyssey (TTRPG Actual Play Show)

Dimension 20: Burrow’s End (TRRPG Actual Play Show)

Dimension 20: The Ravening War (TTRPG Actual Play Show)

Dimension 20: A Crown of Candy (TTRPG Actual Play Show)

Dimension 20: A Court of Fey and Flowers (TTRPG Actual Play Show)

Hazbin Hotel (TV Show)

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2024) (TV Show)

Ms. Marvel (TV Show)

Bottoms (Film)

Saltburn (Film)

WandaVision (Limited Series)

Smosh (YouTube Channel Group) [*mostly Smosh Pit and Smosh Games]

Castlevania: Nocturne (TV Show)

Battle for Beyond (TTRPG Actual Play Vodcast)

Nimona (Film)

XO, Kitty (TV Show)

Worlds Beyond Number (TTRPG Actual Play Podcast) ☆

Secret Sleepover Society (Twitch Channel)

The Benoit Blanc mystery series (Film Franchise)

Exandria Unlimited: Calamity (DnD Actual Play Limited Series Vodcast)

Shadow and Bone (TV Show)

Heartstopper (Graphic Novel/Webcomic Series and TV Show)

Bridgerton (TV Show)

Invincible (TV Show)

Rolling with Difficulty (DnD Actual Play Podcast)

Young Royals (TV Show) ☆

The Song of Achilles (Novel)

EPIC: The Musical (Concept Album)

The Politician (TV Show)

Heathers (Film)

Aurora (Webcomic)

Dungeons and Dragons (Tabletop Roleplaying Game)

Castlevania (TV Show)

Drawfee Show (YouTube and Twitch Channel)

The Sims 4 (Life Simulator Video Game)

The Magicians (TV Show)

The Good Place (TV Show)

DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV Show)

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV Show)

Gilmore Girls (TV Show)

Musical theatre (Music/Performance Genre)

Overly Sarcastic Productions (YouTube Channel and Aftershow Podcast)

Glee (TV Show)

The Originals (TV Show)

The Vampire Diaries (TV Show)

Merlin (TV Show)

The Fosters (TV Show)

The Shadowhunter Chronicles (Novel Series)

Hunger Games (Novel Series and Film Franchise)

Into the Woods (Broadway Musical)

The Secrets of Droon (Novel Series)

The Rick Riordanverse (Novel Series)

The Ben 10 universe (TV Show Franchise)

The Avatar: The Last Airbender universe (TV Show Franchise)

Greek mythology (Real-Life Mythos)

The Scooby-Doo multiverse (TV Show and Movie Franchise)

[rocks-in-space]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the conversation in the Solari episode 1 fireside about knights and robots. Brennan says, “what paladins are to me in fantasy, what knights are to me in fantasy, I think robots are to me.”

While the inclusion of either in a story doesn’t require the consideration of any particular themes, I think that there is a big overlap in some themes that both easily invite the exploration of. Some of these include:

Agency. What factors went into determining your behavior? Were you just following orders/programming, or do you get to decide your actions? Or are those not mutually exclusive? Personhood vs an object, personhood vs a weapon. Are those opposite, is personhood even desired?

Loyalty, what responsibility do you have to the collective vs the self? What is your Purpose? Whom or what do you serve? What does that service mean?

In short, what code do you follow, literally or metaphorically?

And they’re both covered in metal*

(*or plastic/rubber, in XL-ZL’s case)

[whyistheroomempty]

Old and New

[zangezi]

I couldn't get this dumb joke out of my head.

[king-nyx]

I need more people to watch the Kiss of the Spider Woman (2025). I need more people to talk about Molina. I need more people to discuss the queer representation. I need more people to talk about Valentin and Molina. I need more people to talk about how Molina expressed her gender identity.

[juha-art]

XL-ZL!

[queerlyvictorian]

Imagine a TV show spinoff of Eternity that's just a workplace comedy that actually gets to critique the whole eternity-choosing system. It could be a little episodic as we follow some ACs helping out clients, but there are some clients whose problems follow them into the afterlife and won't be fixed by one thing, forever. At some point, one of the clients comes back as a red door escapee after choosing a perfectly fine afterlife, and our ACs have to start questioning their maddening beauracracy, their other co-workers' insistence on the rules as "just the way it is."

We have no evidence of a greater power in this universe. And yet this waystation/purgatory insists on only giving clients a week to choose their forever afterlife. Even if that's just a logistics issue, where is the dignity in that? Where is the humanity in that?

This is a system seemingly populated solely with people who chose to help other souls for the rest of their afterlife instead of moving on to their eternity. Anna says it at the end of the movie. ACs can get in the habit of just moving people along. They have forgotten the particulars of living emotion, how messy living is. Because for them, the afterlife is simple. Arrive, decide, leave.

But they didn't leave. They chose to stay. Shouldn't they know more than anyone how fucked up having to choose is? Maybe it's the bisexual in me (/j), but I don't think anyone is really happy. People seems to be escaping through red doors nearly every single day. This system does not function as intended. There should at least be an appeals process. No human soul can comprehend eternity. Why does "forever" really have to be forever?

I just think that these are way more interesting ideas, and ones that only work in a long form show.

[madam-o]

Eternity? Thanks, I hate it. (Spoilers)

I've been thinking about the afterlife lately. Not for any soul-searching reason, but because it's all over the media I'm currently consuming. For instance, I just watched the movie "Eternity" with Elizabeth Olsen, which unfortunately turned out to be a pretty standard romance film despite having an intriguingly terrible and nightmarish afterlife system that could've been explored and critiqued, but instead merely serves as the backdrop/obstacle for the story's love triangle.

In "Eternity", freshly deceased souls are transported to a painfully orange, latter 20th century themed weigh station where they are housed in hotels for a week while being constantly bombarded with ads and salespeople pushing an endless list of themed eternities at them (i.e. Capitalism World, Studio 54 World, Infantilization World, and Man Free World, which is currently taking clients for the waiting list of version #444). It all sounds pretty good especially because there are no moral requirements to get in, until you learn that you only have the one week to choose and once you're in an eternity, that's it, forever.

You're encouraged not to wait on loved ones, though you can take on a shitty job with cramped employee housing if you insist on it. Some people understandably try to escape or jump eternities, but they always get caught and are then shoved into "the void" forever. WHY? Who knows. It's just how things work.

Which is all supremely fucked-up, no? Firstly because ANY afterlife catering to a specific taste is eventually going to become unbearable, especially one themed after Studio 54 or capitalism or infantilization. Even Man Free World has to drive its inhabitants crazy after a few dozen millenia. A fantasy vacation stops being fun once it becomes an endlessly repetitive existence.

And why must people who object to this system and break the rules be immediately banished to a dark void for their eternity? Wtf? The powers that be can't take any criticism or change anything apparently??

But the horror of the eternity facing them doesn't seem to bother the three main characters, only who's going to get to spend it with the female protagonist. They don't worry about being trapped in an eternally crowded beach or isolated and bored in a mountainside cabin forever. And even more, they don't examine how unhealthy it is for the husbands to have to compete for their wife's affection and prove themselves as the best provider of her future eternal happiness. She's been the object of their affection and approval for their whole lives and beyond, but she doesn't really call them out on how much they're laying on her or advocate for any different type of arrangement, other than just leaving both of them for her best friend and Paris World (which leads to the classic, cliched train station scene).

I just found the set-up so, so interesting. It creates such a nifty dystopian afterlife with the potential to comment on the bullshit that we sell ourselves about how happy endings are supposed to work, but there's no real follow-through on any of it.

It did make me wanna rewatch "Defending Your Life" with Meryl Streep and Albert Brooks, though. Seriously similar vibes.

[obrashir]

insane shit bruh polyamory shouldve been the endgame fr

[glendyrants]

I think Eternity is a love triangle movie where if in the end they all just go together we will just accept it

Mf gave us this scene and a mentioned Luke being hooked up with two guys in purgatory only to do that ending i mean come on!!!! Let them being trouple!!!!

[spookedlev]

Eternity (2025) spoilers,, but I really held out hope for an all or nothing ending. I could tell Larry was the choice based on traditional romance story knowledge, but I really wanted either all three to be together in the end or for her to go through with Paris World and strike off on her own. I mean, I don’t want to simplify the great varieties of love and life into only romance, but I thought maybe with Luke and Larry becoming friends and Luke clarifying he’d slept w guys, that they could end up a little in love w each other and have a polyamorous afterlife.

[queerlyvictorian]

THANK YOU

[queerlyvictorian]

For a split second, I really thought we were going to actually have the "polyamory solves every love triangle" ending.

Ah, well. C'est la vie.

They even hinted at it early in the movie!! Why choose neither, when choosing both would mean no one has to be without each other? It's not perfect, but I don't know. The film even references polyamory at the end between Anna and Ryan, and he reasserts his monogamy. I am monogamous, but I do think that for a premise as brimming with queer potential as this one, not ending with a throuple is genuinely an enormous missed opportunity.

Larry and Luke were getting along!! Luke has experimented with guys--twice!! Give Larry a few decades it the afterlife, and I think we could really have something. Why couldn't they all just get jobs and figure it out?

It's just such a profoundly traditionalist ending for a movie that really tries to tackle the complicated feelings of loving two people. I thought the answer was that Joan never had to choose. But in the end, the film claims that there was a right choice. And while I understand and value the message, it's still going to somewhat selfishly be my second favorite way for the story to end.

[queerlyvictorian]

MY NEW FAVORITE MUSICAL MOVIE ADAPTATION, HANDS DOWNNNNNNNNNN!!

[biologicalstepfather]

If you know who Emmett Till is please reblog.

I’m trying to prove a point to my dad.

[jesse-is-inarguably-purple]

WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THIS????

[wizard-loving-wizard]

what if you were a robot and you didn't struggle with the meaning of life or humanity. what if you believed deeply in the beauty of life, believed in love and feeling and therapy and pleasure and sex and romance. what if your programming let yourself indulge and you did, disappearing into vices as deeply as humans did, discovering all of the beautiful corners of existence that physics can invent. what if you were a synthetic angel of humanity, hard-wired for connection and happy to find it anywhere, with anyone. what if you were just happy to be here

[queerlyvictorian]

I love everything about this pansexual, philosophical, pontificating robot