if dc cared about the wonder woman brand they'd bring cassie and artemis back together as friends.
like it's not at all a shock they haven't considering dc's deep history of mistreating the brand and the characters involved, however it is still deeply saddening considering the history the two characters share. i think their dynamic is especially interesting considering they're both outsiders to themyscira and the more widely known amazon culture. artemis being from bana-mighdall, a splinter group very widely looked down on from the amazons of themyscira and cassie being from regular degular man's world places them both in rather unique positions among the amazonian sisterhood. even while artemis was born an amazon and cassie had to fight and work for the title, their similarities make for a rather interesting pairing.
artemis pushes cassie to be the best amazon she can be, and i think it's worth acknowledging how they've routinely been pushed further out of the wonder woman brand as the more time has passed. young justice was the logical next step for cassie, branching out and making friends of her own, eventually being with the teen titans and then returning to the teen titans title for the new 52, but artemis wasn't even brought back as a foil for diana or somewhere else along the lines of mythical dc, she's now more heavily associated with being jason todd's red-headed amazonian ex girlfriend and frankly i think that's a complete disservice to her character and history.
anyway, here's some panels of cassie and artemis before flashpoint because i miss them
Ok actually I have more thoughts about the ending. Because I think it would have worked as an ending to the book, which it was originally planned as. Because the book was mainly about the humans and Crowley and Aziraphale were just another pair of characters in the story about saving humanity. But the show made them the protagonists of the story instead, spending much more time with these characters and showing us past and them slowly falling in love. And while that was perhaps even a needed change to adapt the story to a visual format, it made it less a story about humanity and more about angels and demons. Which also changes the meaning of the ending. For a book about humanity, it would have been a good and hopeful ending. But for a show about angels and demons it does feel unsatisfying to have these characters we've watched grow for that long to just sacrifice themselves and make a world completely without them. It's not a happy ending for the protagonist of the show, but it would have been a positive ending for the protagonist of the book.
I hope you enjoyed your Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Day at your job at The Freak Circus. I baked it with love UwU
I think I will probably write a little more about what happens after you leave the ticket booth… we shall see if it holds water. If it does not, I shall write you something else. I’ll try to get back to proper good old fashioned capital s smut again hopefully.
Going through an odd dry spell, sad lack of horniness, weird relationship w my body due to illness, harder to write porn ToT But I Have To. I Was Born To Write Porn.
I was inspired in this endeavor by a recent ask that Destinysquared got, about Ticket Taker dressing MC up in a humiliating outfit and making them do work. Thought it was some grade A shit, and just so happened to be right after my friend suggested a fic abt flyering w Pierrot and Quim, getting into some misadventure, and then all three being punished by Ticket Taker. Very cute, lovely plot conceit, Had To Do It.
I 100% believe if Pierrot and Quim got into a fight while his assistant was around, Bil would be a dick abt it to the assistant. For several reasons.
Firstly, I think he'd have a sort of parental “punish the ‘eldest’ or ‘most responsible’ child for not keeping the others in line” mindset. He feels like the type to be unfair in Specifically That Way. Like, you're His Assistant. You Know Better. How Could You Let This Happen.
Another reason he'd be a dick abt it: He’s your daddy??? kind of. I actually think he Would Not want you to call him that. but i mean he just does all this Dad Stuff… and he likes Reader a lot. Not nearly as much as Columbina, but still. He had a little pink baby and he loved her sooooo much and she Died. Why? She somehow got in the middle of a fight between Pierrot and Harlequin, and then [nebulous blame-shifting and accusations], and then she got eaten. He would be triggered asf abt Pierrot and Harlequin fighting over you, that shit would Eat His Ass Up. Maybe if he punishes you for their mistakes, you'll avoid hanging out w them, and then he won't have to Kill Both Of Them And Then Himself.
Next reason why he'd be a dick abt it: hes ur zaddy lmao. Reader what are you Doing getting flirted w by boys who aren't Him??? You CUCK the Ticket Taker? You cuck your daddy like the scrub or the busta? oh! oh! Jail for reader! Jail for Reader for One Thousand Years!!!!
So. Now Pierrot has to Clean Everything and Quim is grounded asffffff and you, dear Reader??? Now You must wear a silly little outfit and work overtime on a Saturday. I do believe he is logging those hours and will pay you for them! He is not doing wage theft to you. He is just making you help him, since you "inconvenienced" him earlier lol. Petty, but our boy still respects the rules of the game. Cutting off his nose to spite his face a little bit, though. I wonder how much the circus will have to shell out for your next cheque. Do you get time and a half? *blond woman doing math meme*
I hope you have enjoyed getting sexually harassed by an older man. If you are not having fun, Why Are You Reading This XD tbh i think he could stand to sexually harass you a bit more, there's a lot of buildup in this fic for comparatively little pay-off. That's cause i think he would pull some horseshit like this. He likes being a tease, he likes keeping you on your toes, he likes a bit of plausible deniability (he still thinks being This Attached to a human is embarrassing). Wait a minute, How Long has he had that outfit in his desk drawer? And what was that in the mirror when you were in the bathroom? Weird. Must’ve been the wind…
As a queer woman I never felt welcome in the Okama, even back at Impel Down. They never felt militant to me despite their role in the Revolutionaries, mostly seeming content with being comedic fodder and sidekicks for cishets.
But I did feel welcome in the Donquixiote Family. Despite their queerness being limited to coding, I always felt as if they had more righteous rage and pride, not being talked down to and existing outside a social norm.
Am I the only one here?
I think the okama tap into a particular Thing about queerness and that Thing is the cishet preoccupation with The Body. Do I think Oda did this intentionally? God no. Do I fault anyone for not connecting to the okama in the same way I did? Absolutely not.
What follows is a VERY long rant that no one asked for about why I find the okama particularly compelling as a subversive sort of queer power in the One Piece Universe. If you choose to read more, you continue at your own peril.
For about as long as there has been an effort to police queerness, there's been an effort to define it in "scientific" (= pseudo-scientific) terms. Why? Well, because if something has a pathology, it has a cure. Early attempts to pathologize queerness ranged from "gay men can't whistle" (yes, I'm serious) to "lesbians are left-handed" to very specific (and very racialized!) imaginings of "proper" bodily proportions (see: size of the clitoris, presence/absence of body hair, muscle distribution, etc.) And this compulsion to give a morphology to queerness is still around today! See: discussions of sex differences in the brain, the diagnostic tool of “gender identity disorder”, and The Gay Gene™. If you want to read up on this more, I really recommend Nancy Ordover's American Eugenics
This preoccupation with the Queer Body is in our history, in our medicine, and absolutely in media. Specifically, in One Piece, I think that it’s these sorts of Queer-Body caricatures that Oda relies on with his design of the okama.
There’s long been this belief that queerness was linked to hormone production. In the 1896 work of English eugenecist Havelock Ellis, Ellis suggested that an “abnormal balance in internal secretions” was to blame for the morphological anomalies he observed to be associated with “lesbianism.” (And anyone who knows anything about the brutal history of experimentation on queer folks knows that hormonal experimentation was a particularly grim recurring feature.)
Funny how the choice devil-fruit for Emporio Ivankov was the Horu Horu no Mi…
The scene that introduces us to Ivankov’s powers was a very particular evocation of the mythical terrors of hormones. Before our eyes, Ivankov turns a buff, hairy, deep-voiced man’s man into a high-voiced, big boobed, blushing lady. Is it meant to be comical? Most definitely. Does it also tap into a century’s worth of deep societal and medical anxiety about the sorts of people—re: “sexual deviants”—that an “abnormal balance of secretions” creates? I sure think it does.
And, more obviously, the character design of the okama draws from this tradition of Queer Anatomy. See, the “hairy men in dresses”, the “animal/beastial” (with my apologies to furries), and the starkly contrasted/clashing binary:
But here’s where I think Oda’s intended caricature of queer bodies backfired for a lot of queer One Piece viewers: he made the “mistake” of making Ivankov a character. Like @talesofmetalandmagic pointed out, a lot of the okama get relegated to a role as comedic fodder. But there’s one thing that I think Oda does really well and that is creating a fully realized world. Many of his gag characters come back as fully-fledged people with backstories, motivations, depth!!!! (Just fucking look at Buggy!!!!) Oda does the same thing with Ivankov by making them the leader of the revolutionary army and a vitally important ally to Luffy during Impel Down/Marineford.
Are there things about the okama that are offensive? Absolutely. And look, I don’t get to dictate what does or does not offend any given queer person, alright? I am not the Queer Tzar. I’m just saying that I think there was something unintentionally clever in having a huge part of the Impel Down arc contingent on queer-trope gag characters—they are unapologetically vital to the story. I mean, just look at Bon-chan, whose heroism was the only reason Luffy made it out of Impel Down.
Say what you will about Oda, but his characters are never really just one thing, and the okama are not just offensive queer caricatures. They’re powerful allies, guardians of key knowledge, and heroes with emotional weight. For me personally, seeing these characters run around as blatant call-backs to the gay nightmares of english eugenecists while having their pronouns Respected by the main character is something like empowerment. Yeah, the okama of the Kamabaka Kingdom have stubbly faces, big red lips, and pink frilly dresses, but they also spent two years kicking Sanji’s ass, and honestly? Fucking get his ass, ladies.
@talesofmetalandmagic says she feels drawn to the righteous rage and pride of the queer-coded Donquixiote Family. I absolutely think there’s some merit to that. Doflamingo is very campy, and the visual of him Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlbossing his way to the top has its own sort of subversive power to it.
But in my watching experience, the Class aspect of Dofflamingo’s backstory sort of drowned out any subversive queer power he might have had. Not to get this Girlboss Cancelled or anything, but the man was very motivated by the belief in his own inherent superiority and his right to like… have slaves and stuff.
All of this is to say that no one gets to determine how your lived experiences connect you to works of fiction. I was drawn to the subversive potential of the okama because of my own academic and personal interests in imaginings of the queer body. You, my dear, can be drawn to whatever the fuck you want.
I just read raising steam and vimes just... fucking ripped his shirt off at the beginning of a fight. if he wanted to show the dark he could just roll up his sleves he doesnt need to rip off his shirt, did he do it because he would loose his shirt anyway or does he just not know how to fight fully clothed anymore. I know he probably has spares in the train but imagine the following events except vimes is just fucking shirtless the whole time
this is a small exerpt from an essay wip about the women in fridges trope, the whole thing, including this segment, are still under heav drafting and construction but i've been thinking abt this topic lately
segment word count is 766
Wonder Woman is undeniably the most popular super heroine in the world, with an ongoing comic series published on a regular basis from 1942 into our present day, created by William Moulton Marston in the image of his two polyamorous lovers, his wife Elizabeth Holloway, and their life partner Olive Byrne.
Diana is one part of DC's Trinity, also encapsulating Batman and Superman, and has a rich history rooted in feminism and the belief in sexual liberation, restorative justice, and the power of spreading knowledge as a means to fight against fascism. Through her history, she's been written by plenty of phenomenal writers, including George Perez, Greg Rucka, and Gail Simone in the main DC comic universe, as well as Kelly Sue DeConnick in her mini series Wonder Woman: Historia and Kelly Thompson's currently ongoing Absolute Wonder Woman, both of which are revered by die-hard fans of the character, her supporting cast, and her villains.
While there have been plenty of men to form their own takes on Diana, and many are often credited with writing character defining storylines for her, like George Perez's post-Crisis reboot, and Greg Rucka's two runs in the 2000s and DC Rebirth, but there have also been an extremely large population of writers who believe Wonder Woman is too difficult, too political, or too lame of a character.
Back in the 90s, Mark Millar pitched a series to DC in what he describes as the same vein as the iconic Death of Superman and Knightfall arcs for Superman and Batman, in which Superman, well, dies, and Batman gets his back broken by Bane. This storyline was to be titled "The Rape of Wonder Woman" which he pitched to DC "for a laugh" with a gatefold page at the end. This story would have been, quite literally, nothing but a twenty-two page rape scene of Wonder Woman being sexually violated in public. If you're unaware, a gatefold is essentially a double page spread that folds out of the pages of a book, for visual emphasis.
I have no problem with depicting rape in media, however you can tell from the way he speaks about the storyline he didn't think about any of the implications about why Wonder Woman's equivalent to Death of Superman or Knightfall has to be an issue-long rape scene. As the only woman in DC's Trinity, I personally think it's in bad taste to depict what's supposed to be rock bottom as her being raped as opposed to death or disability. Many victims and survivors will have differing opinions about whether their assault was the worst thing that happened to them, as it is always on a person-to-person basis, but I don't think the man who believes a twenty-two page rape scene is the best way to depict Wonder Woman at her rock bottom is qualified to write it in a critical way, when he himself can't even speak critically about it with an audience.
I myself am a huge fan of Wonder Woman, from Marston's original stories in the pages of Sensation Comics onward, her history has been nothing short of bold and influential, showcasing the strength of women in a society that demeans them for not a single logical reason. While I don't personally feel any specific way about rape being depicted in fiction, I must acknowlege how this storyline seems to have been pitched in bad faith. Many people have written Wonder Woman and her supporting cast in ways that fans dislike, but if this storyline were published it would have easily rivaled if not overtaken The Killing Joke as DC's most controversial storyline.
It's quite unfortunate that this is how Wonder Woman is treated, despite being DC's most popular heroine, in comparison to her male counterparts. Batman is the face of DC, Superman is the face of the super hero media industry, and Wonder Woman can't even get an animated series, her video game is canceled, and her portrayal by in Zach Snyder's DCEU is inconsistent through movies at best. While, generally, she's treated well in her solo books, her team books are often subpar in treatment, and she often suffers in comparison to her fellow Justice League members.
It'd be untruthful to say that there haven't been rough patches in her publication history, such as Robert Kanigher's depowering in the late 1940s, or Brian Azarello's New 52 version of the character that was more detached from her origins and motivations in comparison to her pre-Flashpoint counterpart, but this likely would have taken the cake for most overtly vicious treatment she's faced.
