Title is a joke (and sorta a pun): this will not really be nsfw content (I’m asexual) so much as a place to keep the non-kiddie cartoons kinda separate from my main blog. @metellastella That demarcation line will be a bit fungible: some series don’t go quite as hard on the violence or sex- yay!- such as Delicious in Dungeon, Amazing Digital Circus, Pantheon, Star Trek: Lower Decks Other Fandom List: (in rough order of most to least liked, per each group) Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy Monkey Wrench Solar Opposites Love, Death, and Robots … Common Side Effects The Watchmen (2024) Blue-Eyed Samurai ARK: The Animated Series Arcane Apothecary Diaries Invincible … Amazing Digital Circus Digman! Adventure Beast Unicorn Warriors Eternal Scissor Seven Hit Monkey Tuca and Bertie Vox Machina
They sure are! And Alastor is on the bold-stripe, nonpartnering, romance/sex- and touch- repulsed/averse end of those spectrums! And he's actually one of the first and only examples of that end of those spectrums that we've ever gotten!
Seriously, list ANY other characters you know of who are as explicitly on this end of the spectrum as Alastor is, because I can't name a one. Everyone likes to say that the repulsed and the nonpartnering and the green/black/bold stripes get all the representation, but he is actually the only one I can name who is so explicitly like that. Everyone else is vague, and seems to be likely rose-indifferent.
Elsa seems personally uninterested in rose stuff, but not repulsed by it, and I could see her in a rose relationship eventually
Merida seems personally uninterested in rose stuff, but not repulsed by it.
Peridot seems personally uninterested in rose stuff, but not repulsed by it, maybe slightly averse at most.
Lilith Clawthorne seems personally uninterested in rose stuff, but not repulsed by it, and I could see her in a rose relationship eventually.
Ahsoka Tano seems favorable towards rose stuff, even though I and many others headcanon her as aroace, and I could see her in a rose relationship eventually.
Ryland Grace seems personally uninterested in rose stuff, but not repulsed by it.
Katniss Everdeen seems to be aroacespec, but she ends up in a rose relationship.
These are the most common aroace-coded/headcanoned characters I know of, and all of them occupy other areas of the spectrums.
Gosh darn it, I really LIKED this about the finale, while watching it, but reflecting on it more, it seemed totally unearned.
The hug between Pomni and Ragatha was so sweet. I’m glad they finally got to declare their platonic love for each other. I’m glad it got EVERY bit as much cinematic framing as romance!!
I love that it was specifically contrasted with the romance, even! Like Jayvik existing alongside a basically-lesbian-sex-scene in Arcane, it CAN’T be queer baiting bc this is a queer show! With the confirmation of Abstragedy, it’s basically the exact same maneuver. It is doing the hard work of wordlessly demonstrating that platonic bonds are just as important!!!! 💯
Finally Goodeworx shakes off a little bit of her implicit amatonormativity …
Granted, Jayvik’s storyline had MUCH more pull because it had actual development
Because the lingering problem with this all is … we never actually saw them BUILD a relationship.
:[
And, I can’t quite tell exactly, but because Jax and Pomni were very deliberately visually framed ex-actl-y the same as Kinger and Queenie in ep 3, this could be heavily implying they would’ve been a diamoric or sapphic romo couple if Jax had lived, OR it could be telegraphing the same thing, that platonic love is just as important as romantic love and they would’ve been in a QPR.
This was on a post discussing shit parents doing a new satanic panic. Valid points all around but. But I’m crying. This is the funniest lie ever, no parody I could come up with this will be this funny. Nonbinary Julius Cesar
I mean, if you're going to select a historical figure to project modern understandings of gender identity onto, you could probably do worse than start with the one that was famously referred to as "a man to every woman, and a woman to every man".
Ok let’s talk about the most tragic character of the Pantheon sci fi series.
No, not Maddie Kim
No, not Caspian Keyes.
[Spoilers for Season 2 under the cut.]
No not David Died-Three-Times Kim or his wife.
These are compelling and all. Don’t get me wrong. But there’s a clear winner in angst here.
No not Non-Consensually Uploaded Chanda with a blown apart redemption arc.
Renee.
RIGHT as she was going to upload after two decades of service to the man she loved, who was basically functionally dead, after desperately begging him to let her join him and being turned down, she arrives . . .
but he’s already been murdered by his clone.
The clone SHE RAISED.
Guys. Understand. As a character? She’s totally underwhelming. No charm, except the paper-thin fake kind. She’s not a charismatic villainess. She shot a man. She didn’t apparently actually bond with Caspian. As a person? She’s unlikable in ALL ways. Boring even. No interests or development outside the mission or outside Holstrom. She’s a glorified plot device. But in terms of the situation?
This woman SMASHED HER OWN FOREARM WITH A HAMMER because she believed in this guy’s cause so religiously.
and she was denied a reunion moment
This woman RAISED A CARBON COPY OF THE MAN SHE LOVED FROM A BABY. CAN ANYONE FATHOM THAT? The mannerisms. The speech patterns. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW UNSETTLING AND MIND-BENDING IT WOULD BE TO WATCH YOUR BELOVED’S FEATURES GRADUALLY EMERGE FROM A CHILD’S FACE YOU WIPED BABY FOOD OFF OF.
but she was willing to put up with this off-the-deep-end insanity, probably because there were no other candidates that could trust to do it.
(a running theme of the show)
The writers don’t even seem to realize that this POV is a perfect explanation for why she went so bonkers.
It would be why she was utterly incapable of bonding with him as a mother.
He was just a placeholder, like looking at a photograph as a reminder until a husband returned from war.
A reminder of the ache and pain of him being gone. A reminder that if she screws this up, he really will be permanently dead.
Constant. Reminder.
THAT’s the most horrific and compelling thing a writer could ever dare to dream of!! And they totally fumbled the ball !!!!!!!!
I see no narrative indication- none- of linking these two things together.
just ‘oooo bad devout-to-the-point-of-psychopathy lady who’s willing to Terminate her own adoptive child’
Despite having a therapist right on hand??? Huh??
Cary gets his ‘I’m gonna miss him’ gut punch transition scene where he’s breaking down sobbing in his car, and Renee doesn’t even get 2 minutes to unpack this Bizzaro World life she’s committed 18 years to??
AND THEN.
SHE GETS A TOTALLY IGNOMINIOUS DEATH SCENE.
She doesn’t even know his clone has killed him.
She never got to be Renee Holstrom.
She never even got to digital-somatic kiss the guy.
Lemme tell you, I’m AROMANTIC and that hit so deep.
AND INCREDIBLY, except for a scene centered on Caspian, IS NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN.
Not by Pope.
Cary is AWOL.
Stephen Holstrom? Did he profess his enduring love to her in between god-complex monologues? I don’t really recall?
She seems an afterthought to everyone. Both from a writer’s room perspective AND the therapist who should care. One of the people who held this entire thing together. Under circumstances that would crack anyone’s mind.
The narrative left this character criminally under-examined.
I looked it up. Her character ISN’T EVEN CREDITED WITH A LAST NAME.
Like I guess legally she was married to Cary … but you’d think she’d refer to herself as Holstrom at least once.
Very unpopular opinion time and spoilers for Invincible season 4 but
(a) why tf can Debbie just not keep both houses, Invincible Inc. makes a shit ton of money and both of your sons are going through a BRUTAL time with the external world, why put them through an INCH more upheaval than necessary- sorry but I would be PISSED at either parent if they came to me and said "hey by the way I'm giving you zero input in this decision even though one of you is an adult and one of you is so quickly advancing towards adulthood and you have to nearly die on the reg, but we're moving" like WHAT. Items would be broken. Mark should've had PSTD (and attendant outbursts!) far before this. Etc. etc.
(b) I was already mulling this over when somebody said it about Eve's home life being a wreck but . . . you do not owe your asshole father shit, you could've also used money from Invincible Inc. to set him up with a home care aide and replacement income. That is YOUR PARTNER'S INCOME, (and yours, right????) he would of course say yes to signing off on using it in his absence in a f&%king heartbeat if it insured you could stay away from constant emotional abuse. COME ON WOMAN. Which leads us into
(c) If you had realized that you are ALLOWED to use this AS INCOME because even superpowers won't necessarily cover things like insurance, etc, and we learned that you can't build things (or probably by extension, repair) without having some specialized knowledge, as shown in other seasons . . . you'd have a bit of a 'nest egg' and you might've then realized that aborting a baby of a man you might never see again is juuuuuust a little whack. (ofc, it's already a good bit whack even w/o that) I'm personally tokophobic and I would STILL hit a huge pause button on "this may be all I have left of the man I love" in fact I'm AROMANTIC and I still can't wrap my head around the fact that that didn't factor into the decision. Like AT ALL. Was not even brought up. Actually, it might be the culprit of amatonormativity itself, given how she felt 'alone' without her partner there, where are all her friends? 'It takes a village' and all that. She had one talk with one person who was more Mark's friend than hers. Allllll those guardian fights and you didn't feel like you could lean on or interpersonally bond with any of them????? Really???? The writing just basically f%$kin puppeted your body through this, did not treat you like a real person. Also. As I recall, Cecil was willing to extend childcare to Debbie, right, (I should double check that I guess) so was Eve just unaware that offer was on the table for superpowered people in his orbit, or? I already felt like the story did a huge disservice to her character by even including this arc (oh wow a woman gets pregnant, that's what you do when you can't figure out where else to take her character. You schmuck.) but then to ignore the rules YOU SET UP in service of just having her angst. It's like a double whammy of suck.
I hope a lot of people have set about to doing Fix-it fics about this situation where she went to- I DON'T KNOW- A WOMAN like Debbie to talk about woman-type problems (trans ppl don't come after me ok, this is a very non-queer show despite the token gay man couple), and then found out Cecil could extend the childcare, etc.
Seems like just another victim of crypto-sexism tbh. Not thinking about how the situation would actually play out or how a woman would go about things, just thrown in there for cheap drama fodder.
Man I usually don't even like fankid type pairings or parenting arcs in superhero shows but D&$N imagining Mark and Oliver being like Ultra Protective Family of the now diluted 1/4th Viltrumite and the kid having a massive complex about how he's simultaneously one of the most powerful people on the planet but also only a sliver of his immortal granddad's crazy strength, (never has to mourn his granddad like other kids, of course makes him feel more alienated) and also having to live in the shadow of all of their deeds is like . . . man you really did just kill off the super interesting character just to give a woman- who was doing just fine in her character development before you nerfed her- an abortion arc. F in creative writing.
What the H$#L
And idk how the Viltrumite plan is going to work out exactly, given I don't read the comics, (probably gonna be thwarted ig. Hey Mark being realistic here which is supposedly what this show is going for- you should've CHECKED that someone as BRUTE-FORCE-ORIENTED as Viltrumites have a rock-solid sense of SEXUAL CONSENT btw) but having said kid secretly flirt with the idea of defecting to the 1/2 Viltrumites who have, on the other side, been 'poisoned' by the placidity of earth and flirt back with defecting is also a story that I bet will be more compelling than whatever we get. Just sayin.
I don't read fic for this series, but I'm crossing my fingers that exists because it should and would be rad.
In light of this reveal about Bubble, and his all-out psychological abuse of Caine, let’s revisit the incident where Zooble merely mentioned sex and it upset Caine so much it induced a total memory wipe.
(is this analogous to a panic attack…?)
We’ve seen Bubble repeatedly skeeve out his co-host with what appear to be very deliberately calculated mentions of sexuality that don’t quite trip off whatever censor caught him during the Candy Kingdom adventure intro.
As if Bubble has been poking and prodding at the system’s boundaries, (pretty much very literally not respecting boundaries!) figuring out what will get through and what won’t.
@freakyricih @lazuli-starlight
Caine has shuddered at the Moon even having overtones to the voice.
Then comes the absolute most sus one-
“tell Daddy Bubble why bad thing”
All of this suggests that Bubble knows the exact midpoint at which to keep him from resetting completely so he doesn’t have to remember
He knows his victim so well not even protective measures that kick in automatically can help.
I’d say it’s a very heavily and clearly telegraphed analogy to rape, actually. As close to it as AIs can get when they don’t have the necessary parts to make human-type rape possible. Or else, a way to foreshadow, use references to sexual dominance (Daddy Dom) as a metaphor for what he inflicts on him in that extreme and climactic scene later. A way to subtly get across the sheer severity of their dynamic, when he rams him in all his weak spots.
