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The contemporary queer insistence to call almost any lesbian who isn’t a 1950s housewife a butch is really ignoring how hot and incredible femme muscle girls are…
if Verlaine won't do it then Karl will
(as promised, @crowatyourwindow )
Quick question – why do the TCF fans keep portraying Bud Illis as an idiot?
It kind of bothers me, because in canon, Bud is not stupid.
Yes, he is a at times reckless (like that time he got captured by Jopis). And yes, he plays the "drunk idiot" role very well, to the point he completely fooled Raon when Cale and Bud met for the first time.
The problem is, for some reason, TCF fans remember that interaction between Cale & Bud in the inn and take it as his actual characterization, and not an act. Which it is.
Because Bud acts like a drunk blabbermouth idiot on purpose, there! Cale himself notices it almost instantly!!
Bud is an interesting character. He's someone who relies on his drunk act – which he does mostly to gather intel, just like OG Cale relied on his act to ruin his reputation – in order to be underestimated. And it works, because everyone is surprised just how much Bud knows, despite being from a different contient than Cale.
However, being drunk and supposedly recklessly talkative (even though I can tell he chose the information he told Cale in that first meeting very carefully, figuring Cale out at the same time), Bud also shows signs of very quick wit and spontaneous planning, just like Cale.
He figures out quickly that Cale and the others are no joke. He's willing to enter an alliance, and show Cale the Directory, and also makes the immediate decision to burn the Directory down, once he realizes that the White Star uses it for nefarious purposes.
We see his competence in the 1,001 mercenary squad rescue, how he's willing to do anything for his men, and isn't too stubborn to ask Cale for help, when he needs it. He's also compassionate and responsible enough to regret putting Cale in danger as he rushes in to save them.
Of course, I understand why the "idiot" part is what the fans actually remember of this character. He got captured by Jopis' "innocent" puppies. That.... wasn't his fault. He has an Ancient Power which should have warned him of potential danger, and yet, the puppies turned out one of the few immune exceptions to his senses. Bud's true mistake was going in alone, and doing so because the wanted to impress Cale. Which is why he gets no sympathy from Cale when they show up to "rescue" him and make a deal with Jopis.
Sorry, Bud, as much as I'm on your side, that was a hilariously stupid mistake on your part.
One incident shouldn't make fans believe that Bud is an idiot, though. The reason it does, however, is because of Glenn. Glenn Poeff's reaction to Bud getting stupidly captured shows us that this was not the first time when Bud was stupidly reckless. But it does fit his overall characterization. Bud is not stupid, but he's not as cautious as Cale, despite his justified paranoia about the White Star aiming to kill him.
Bud's attitude towards Cale's crazy shenanigans also reminds the audience of two specific characters: Toonka, and Archie. Both of which are, at the same time, the "violent thugs" of their society, who contrast Cale in being shocked by his "mad viciousness" and become ironically "the only sane man on board". But just because Bud is also one of the characters who react to Cale as "dude, are you crazy?? Wait, nevermind..." doesn't mean that Bud is at the same intelligence level as Toonka and Archie. In fact, Bud is much, much more intelligent than those two. So it's not really fair to put him together with them in that department.
Bud is also a Sword Master, and a Mercenary King. We can probably conclude two things about his personality from that: one, he loves adventure and swordmanship. Two, he is brave enough to lead and make risks in order to achieve his ambitions. Bud is intelligent and a good actor, but he does love alcohol – he just pretends he's a lightweight (again, just like OG Cale). Bud is a good strategist and fighter, but he does make reckless mistakes from time to time, much to Glenn's exasperation.
So here it is. My reasons why "Bud Illis isn't as stupid as fans portray him in the fandom". Just because he's funny, doesn't mean he's a complete idiot. He's a competent leader, who managed to defend the Mercenaries against Arm in the Eastern Contient for a significant amount of time. He was one of the last lines of resistance towards the White Star there. That says things about him.
Give Bud some love, guys, he deserves it.
So it's been a hot second since I took a break from my full series reread, but I found myself once again thinking about Outcast of Redwall and the raw deal that Veil Sixclaw got.
What kills me is that before the poisoning, the one thing Veil got in trouble for--the only thing, in fact--was stealing. This kid didn't even get into fights, he just stole food from the kitchens, which as Bryony points out is normal Abbey kid behavior. Another character shoots back that stealing is something most kids outgrow implying that the fact that Veil hasn't is suspicious, which is frankly a wild thing to say to the great grand-daughter of Gonff the Mousethief.
(In a kinder version of events, the adults in Veil's life might have shaken their heads with long-suffering fondness and remarked that he was following in his adopted ancestor's footsteps.)
The whole point of Redwall is that it's the woodland utopia where no one goes hungry and everyone has what they need, which is why kids stealing pies off the windowsill is no big deal... except when Veil does it, apparently. Veil's the one that gets physical punishment when he's suspected of stealing--not even proven! I can't recall off the top of my head any incidents in the rest of the series of corporal punishment in Redwall beyond idle threats that the kids know not to take seriously. But Veil gets scrutinized from the moment Redfarl and Skipperjo pick him up out of the mud and they and Bella look at this literal infant and say "oh yeah, he's gonna be evil for sure."
And then a thought occurred to me: it's generational trauma.
Most of the characters in Outcast are two generations removed from the characters in Mossflower. Bella of Brockhall is in both books. Verdauga and Tsarmina are still within living memory. Until the end of Outcast, as far as she knows, Bella lost her entire family to vermin warlords. Mossflower opens on a scene in which a ferret kicks in the door of a family of subsistence farmers, threatens their children with slavery, and takes all their food as taxes leaving them with none for the winter--and the Stickles were the last holdouts. The other farmers in the area had already run off to join the resistance at that point, so this kind of treatment was normal.
And we're left with a close-knit society of people who've grown up with this shared history, with a venerated authority figure who still carries the scars and memories of what they lost--and suddenly another warlord comes within a hairsbreadth of discovering the peaceful society they built in the aftermath, and leaves behind a starving neglected baby whose first impression is eating frogspawn in the mud and biting his rescuers while being the spitting image of the warlord they just narrowly avoided.
All of that gets thrown into this caustic mixture of fear and paranoia that gets projected onto a literal baby and results in their completely out of pocket response to a child taking food from the kitchens in the We Share Everything Abbey.
It also might explain why Bryony, who's young enough to be three generations removed and may have been born after most of the survivors of Kotir had already passed, is the only one who isn't scared and suspicious of Veil on sight.
alex has such a reputation for being icy and unmoving but her eyes are so expressive like just because shes not crying doesnt mean shes not falling apart
Op i want to hug you rn you just basically described my experience to a point.
I own two cats, and I adore them, hell I display dog like behaviors and nudge against them with my snout or curl around them and lay in the sun by the window.
But real dogs? I don't hate them, but they're overstimulating often. I don't really find them actually all that cute, especially in comparison to cats, and when i see a picture of my theriotype, the joyful feeling i get isn't from the cuteness of the dogs its like.... "Wow thats me!" "That really looks like me!". And the idea of being with other dog therians or dogkins makes me feel excited, but not the idea of being with real dogs.
Being called a cat, the idea of being a cat, makes me so so so uncomfortable.
Something I wanted to share about my feelings with therianthropy...
I am a dog.
I don't like dogs, I don't like being around real life dogs that much, they kinda tend to annoy me most of the time. I don't really feel myself having any affinity for dogs in general, even fictional dogs are just sort of "okay" to me. There are some cartoon dogs I can think "yeah he's cool or chill" but it doesn't really go any further than that.
I dont even see myself in dogs, but I see myself AS A DOG.
And I've never been able to change this.
I prefer cats, I feel more affinity for cats, I communicate better with them IRL, I've lived with cats all my life (my family never had dogs as pets) and in general I think cats are aesthetically more pleasing to look at than dogs, not that that's the dog's fault or anything.
I wish I could be a cat sometimes, I even tried to call myself a cat, draw myself as a cat, mimic cat behaviour, all that stuff where you try it on and see if it fits, makes you feel comfortable...
But I still feel like I'm a dog.
I've talked about this occasionally with friends and in some furry fandom spaces, which all of them said about the same thing. "Well why don't you just BE a cat then?"
To which my answer, with sadness and longing, is only "I don't know."
New Sam hc
Sam is REALLY GOOD at doing hair. Braids, twists, wigs, you name it and he’s got it down to perfection. That man will give life to every baby hair with delicate swirls that would make Vil weep with jealousy. You cannot look at those chunky dreads and tell me he don’t know how to care for them 👀
I bet you he’s got a whole ass section in the back that just a hair store with literally every length you can think of. Puffs, buns, nightcaps, silks, durags, my guy’s got it all.
Look I just want uncle S to come braid my hair and feed me rice and plantains 😭