It Is Brilliant. I Love It Sooo Much. Its 4 The Fanfic I Am Co Writing!

it is brilliant. I love it sooo much. It’s 4 the fanfic I am co writing!

Btw, thewhimsicalenderdragon made it but they can’t post it cuz parents. Anywho, thank u 4 being awsome.

I drew this!!! Unfortunately I can’t quITE post my own stuff rn (parents haha) but that’s okay :> this account right here is currently in charge of posting fan fiction stuff, so any art from me on here will be on their account and of our fanfic :>

Omg! I have morrreeeee art! Soo much epic art! Hehehehehehe. I loveeee it! It’s grand! Heeerrrreeee it is. Also, credit 4 the art goes to ma bestie, @thewhimsicalenderdragon. They Slaay at this shit. Description 4 the art below.

This is one of the main characters in our fanfic, A Lasting Curse, on Wattpad. Their name is Oliver Montague-Snape, he uses he/they pronouns. They are basically me, but with ✨🪄 Magic! He has water wings, when he wants to, and is (at least in my opinion, prolly cuz he’s me) very fire 🔥. I love this art, and there will b more soon. I dunno when, but rest assured, there will b more!

Loona and Octavia: It’s not ALWAYS about the Found Family trope...

I’ve never really talked about Helluva Boss here before, but it’s actually one of my favorite shows at the moment and this latest episode had some interactions between two characters that I’ve been waiting a long time for, and the results have set up a very interesting potential relationship dynamic and I really want to discuss it.

So let’s talk about Loona and Octavia. And a take that I imagine might get me a bit of flak: I don’t think the relationship between these two is the ‘wholesome sisterly dynamic’ that much of the fandom seems to have latched onto. However, I also don’t really see this pair’s dynamic as necessarily being romantic either. Rather, I think there is something else quite a bit more interesting going on here.

I think the main the reason why the idea of the story treating Loona and Octavia as some explicitly ‘sisterly’ relationship hasn’t really felt right to me, particularly after this latest episode, is the fact that Loona and Octavia simply aren’t kids.

Loona is just entering her twenties, and Octavia is just about out of her teens. One detail about the whole ‘Octavia is 17!’ thing that I think most people have overlooked is when we actually learned this information. Specifically, the info about Octavia being 17 was released around the same time or even before her first proper appearance in the show in S1E2. Now consider the fact that Season 1 of Helluva Boss seems to take place over the better part of a year at least, with just the stretch between episodes three (Spring Break=March) and five (Harvest Moon=September) alone being six-to-seven months. So if Octavia is 17 in ‘Loo-Loo Land’, then by now she is almost certainly 18, or at least very close to her birthday.

My point to all this is that I think the entire ‘wholesome sisterly dynamic’ interpretation of Loona’s and Octavia’s relationship is actually quite a bit off-base. A lot of the fandom seems to view the dynamic between these two as two kids or a younger kid and an older teen brought together as part of a family because their dads became a couple.

But particularly after this latest episode, I think it’s clear that the narrative of Helluva Boss is NOT treating either Loona or Octavia as ‘kids’ but rather as two young adults figuring out their place in the world and working through and coming to grips with some very complicated issues relating to their dads and families. So instead of their relationship being some ‘adoptive step-sisters’ dynamic that is simply some byproduct of the relationship between their dads, I think Loona’s and Octavia’s bond is going to be much more of a close, intimate friendship that exists largely independently of whatever their dads may have going on.

And I think we can already get a pretty good guess as to what this friendship is going to represent for the story.

During Loona’s and Octavia’s scene together, there’s this really interesting bit of duel symbolism going on that I haven’t seen anyone bring up.

Remember Loona’s finicky I.M.P. lighter? Now a lot of people have already pointed out the symbolism of the lighter representing Blitzo and Loona’s relationship with her father: The lighter doesn’t always work, and even rarely works, but it is trying. And eventually it does work, just like Blitzo’s efforts to be a good father.

However, now let’s keep this symbolism in mind and dial the scene back to the start when Loona is trying to light her cigarette. She tries to use the lighter, but can’t get it to work. But then Octavia lights Loona’s cigarette. Think about the symbolism there for a moment.

If the lighter in this scene represents Blitzo’s genuine and earnest but still very flawed and unreliable relationship with Loona, then I think this could very well symbolize that a friendship with Octavia is something much more stable and trusting for Loona.

And the same is true the other way around. At the end of the scene when the smog clears just a bit to give Octavia and Loona a view of the night sky, Octavia does get a view of the stars, which symbolize her father, but else what is shining down on her even brighter? The moon. Which is the point where Loona offers her a hand and the moment where they share a hug before returning to Blizo and Stolas. All under the light of the full moon.

Again, the symbolism here isn’t particularly subtle. While the stars are something Octavia struggles to find, just like her relationship with her father, it is the moon which shines down on her even brighter. Again symbolizing that Loona is someone Octavia can trust and rely on far more than her father.

It really feels like this scene is showing us Loona and Octavia recognizing and coming to grips with the fact that both their fathers are colossal fuckups as parents, yet also love and care for their respective daughters dearly, while ALSO showing Loona and Octavia forming this close bond with someone who both deeply understands what they are going through, and is someone they really can trust and rely on.

One of the big recurring themes about Blitzo’s and Stolas’s arc as fathers that really gets highlighted this episode is that one can have entirely genuine, unconditional love for their child and want the absolute best for them, while ALSO being a complete and utter disaster of a parent.

Like Blitzo clearly adores Loona and wants nothing but the best for his daughter, and he also just as clearly SUCKS at being a parent. As we learn in this episode, the whole reason he even adopted Loona in the first place was because her situation hit one of his repressed trauma buttons HARD and ever since he’s been doing nothing but enabling Loona’s unhealthy coping mechanisms to her own trauma because he is clearly terrified of being ANYTHING like his own father. Again, that’s not to say Blitzo doesn’t love his daughter completely and unconditionally. It’s just that as a functioning parent, Blitzo is a complete fucking MESS.

And Stolas isn’t much better himself. Yes, he used to be a legitimately pretty good dad to Octavia, but it’s pretty clear that years of verbal/psychological abuse from Stella and a LOT of repression have seriously messed Stolas up. And he’s really only become more of a mess since he started up his affair with Blitzo. With Octavia being the one caught up in the middle of that mess.

Again, it’s clear that Octavia still means the world to Stolas and he would never knowingly do anything to hurt her. It’s just that he’s also a complete fucking WRECK of unraveling repressed trauma in the midst of an imploding marriage AND caught up in childhood-friend-romance-feelings that even he doesn’t fully understand. All of which clearly has a tendency to override/short-out any ‘good-parenting’ instincts. Just this episode shows us in several cases of Stolas either getting caught up in her divorce from Stella or getting caught up in his love for Blitzo and wanting to have fun with him that he ends up unknowingly leaving Octavia by the wayside. It’s not that Stolas doesn’t love his daughter, it’s that his mess of psychological and emotional issues have left him fairly unreliable to Octavia.

Which is precisely what makes Loona so important. Throughout the entire episode, she’s the one who puts in all the actual legwork to help Octavia. Loona is the one to figure out that Octavia went to Los Angeles while Blitzo and Stolas had no idea where she was. Loona is the one to actually track down Octavia in LA while Blitzo, Stolas and the M&Ms get caught up in various shenanigans. And it’s Loona who gives Octavia the emotional heart-to-heart and closure that she needs.

It all seems to point to Loona being exactly the kind of close, reliable friend that Octavia desperately needs in her life right now. And going by the symbolism with the lighter we covered earlier, it seems like Octavia will likewise end up being the same kind of close friend that Loona needs in her life too.

This is ultimately a big reason why I think the whole ‘adoptive sisterly’ interpretation of Loona and Octavia doesn’t really fit with what the show is actually giving us. This doesn’t feel like two kids being brought together simply because their parents have started a serious relationship. This feels like two young adults with similar interests and issues striking up a close friendship that is largely independent of their parents.

Yes, Loona and Octavia technically meet through their dads, but let’s not forget that Blitzo’s and Stolas’s relationship can still be best described as ‘an extremely vaguely-defined fling’. Yes, Blitzo and Stolas have certainly caught major feelings for each other, but they are clearly still a LONG way off from any kind of serious, committed relationship, let alone something that would end up classifying Loona and Octavia as ‘sisters’.

And any blossoming friendship between Loona and Octavia is clearly going to be their own thing, based on their shared likes and interests and what is clearly a deep, mutual understanding of their very similar problems, rather than anything tied to whatever their dads have going on. For one thing, I kinda doubt either Loona or Octavia see each other as any kind of ‘sister’ after their first meeting in Star Seekers, rather than simply a girl with a lot of similar interests who really understands what they’re going through. A friendship feels more like mutually supportive relationship that they both Loona and Octavia know they can trust and rely on more than their uncertain and tumultuous relationships with their dads.

Like I can totally imagine a situation down the line where Blitzo and Stolas have some big dramatic ‘breakup’ for a while where Stolas tries to break-off his ‘contract’ with Blitzo by giving him one of the Asmodean Crystals that the previous episode hinted that would allow Blitzo and his company to access the human world without Stolas’s Grimoire. And it’s all big and dramatic and both are going ‘Yep. It’s really over between us now.’

And then it turns out Loona and Octavia are still hanging out and having fun together because this doesn’t actually change anything for them and if either of their dads gave even the slightest insinuation that they should stop being friends, they would IMMEDIATELY go ‘Fuck you dad/Blitzo! She’s my best friend!’ And probably immediately steal the Grimoire/kick Blitzo’s ass simply out of spite.

After this episode, it really feels like whatever relationship Loona and Octavia are going to have is something largely independent of what their dads have going on, just as Loona and Octavia will likely be growing more independent of their fathers as individuals as they grow up. So whenever Blitzo and Stolas finally figure their shit out and commit to a real relationship, I think Loona and Octavia will very much have their own separate thing going on. They’ll certainly still be a ‘family’, but I seriously doubt it will be the kind of straightforward, homogenous ‘two fathers raising two daughters’ type of thing that a lot of the fandom seems to be expecting.

To The Substitute Art Teacher - Jordan Bolton

I've been thinking about the proposed gender transition regulations (ohio) because it paints a strange painting about what it's like to be a young queer American.

At the same time that they're trying to increase the restrictions of HRT and surgery to 21, they are trying to lower the working age and increase their hours past 30, deny them lunch breaks. Moms for Liberty (now calling themselves Awake Americans) are trying to remove queer content from schools, claiming that it's pornographic. They're practically adults when you're using them in the workforce, but children when they want to learn and children when they want to be happy.

You can enlist in the military at 18. You can get a tattoo at 18. You can get your nipples pierced at 18. You can work an exploitative job at 18. You can buy pornography at 18. Vote at 18. Gamble at 18. Get married at 18. Get cosmetic surgery at 18 (unless you're trans.) You can drink and smoke legally at 21 without 6 months of therapy and the approval of a board certified psychologist, endocrinologist, and one of three medical ethicists in the state.

But you can't transition. Because the state thinks that you're too young and don't know yourself well enough to make that decision, but it will let you die in a war.

The comment period for this rule change ends January 19th at 5pm. Send an email to [email protected] with the title "Comments in Gender Transition Care Rules" and tell them how the new rules would impact your life or the lives of those around you.

i hate whenever people say "autism and adhd are basically the same disorder" because that isn't even remotely true. autism believes a strong defense is the best offense, and focuses on keeping plays connected in order to steadily earn points, while adhd is characterized by unpredictable high risk combination attacks that prioritize scoring