Hellsing | Alucard/Integra, Seras, others | M | Embracing Sin
Integra needs more out of her new life as a vampire. So, taking Seras’s advice, she temporarily hands the reins over to her and plans a journey starting in Romania. Everything started out great, that is, until they find themselves upon a battlefield in 1477 and come face to face with Vlad the Impaler. AxI series:hellsing,pairing:integra_alucard,fic:chaptered,trope:timetravel
Hellsing | Integra/Alucard | M | Beautiful, Wicked, Brazen
Alucard’s been uncharacteristically silent, so Integra goes to check on him. Turns out he’s just preoccupied with something else. pairing:integra_alucard,series:hellsing,fic:one-shot
Jeeves & Wooster | Jeeves/Bertie | M | Jeeves à la Spode
Some lingerie samples are missing and Roderick Spode is on the warpath. What can the guilty parties do, other than hide the items about their persons? (Or, Jeeves and Bertie do kinky things in stockings and suspenders.) fic:one-shot,series:jeeves & wooster,pairing:jeeves_wooster,trope:genderplay
Jeeves & Wooster | Jeeves & Bertie | M | Beware the Bogeyman! Hush! Here He Comes!
A terrible plague has been ravaging Europe for months, with the disease slowly creeping across the rest of the world. Jeeves is one of the afflicted. Bertie responds in the only way he can – to do whatever it takes to save Jeeves, or failing that, to keep him safe. pairing:jeeves_wooster,series:jeeves & wooster,fic:one-shot
Jeeves & Wooster | Jeeves/Bertie | M | All’s Well That Ends Well
To the general disappointment of his family, Bertie Wooster was born an omega. After enduring his dreaded Aunt Agatha’s best efforts to pair him off, he has all but given up on love and resigned himself to the life of a perpetual bachelor. series:jeeves & wooster,fic:chaptered,pairing:jeeves_wooster,kink:omegaverse
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse | Miles, Peters, Gwen, Miguel | T | @heyitsspiderman
@heyitsspiderman: people act like they know this city but when i’m in the air i find more boroughs all the time. so far ive counted ten. dont listen to big brother in your ceiling (google) telling you otherwise (google maps) fic:chaptered,series:spider-man,series:marvel comics,fic:socialmedia,genfic
Sherlock | John/Sherlock | M | The Only Unproblematic Slash Fic
Anyways here’s my fanfic. If you comment on this fic with ANY NEGATIVE OPINION it’s ABUSE and I will call the FBI. I’m only 28, so if you comment on this fic at all and you’re older than me, it’s GROOMING and I will call the FBI. fic:one-shot,pairing:holmes_watson,fic:parody-mst,series:sherlock
Good Omens | Horsepersons | G | Anniversary
The horsepersons are summoned for a second attempt at Armageddon, but soon an irritating pattern emerges. fic:one-shot,series:good omens,genfic,illustrations
Good Omens | Aziraphale, Crowley | T | The Brazen Serpent
The Israelites have almost reached the end of their forty-year exile, but Heaven has some business with them first. Unfortunately, that business includes a certain interfering demon. series:good omens,series:religion,pairing:crowley_aziraphale,genfic,trope:hurt-comfort,fic:one-shot
8tracks is shutting down. In 3 days. They did install an automatic “save playlist to Spotify” button to back up everything before they go…so I guess I’m finally getting a Spotify account, huh.
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I got a delightful Yuletide fic!
It looks like this:
curiosity and candy (makes the world go round) (3481 words) by Anonymous Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Pet Shop of Horrors Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Count D/Leon Orcot Characters: Count D (Pet Shop of Horrors), Leon Orcot Additional Tags: Swearing, Canon Era, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Levels Of BDSM References, yes this is a tag now, Yuletide, Supernatural Elements Summary:
Word has gotten out that Leon is D’s new chosen mate, and the supernatural is pretty eager to test out his worthiness for the role.
Shame that Leon hasn’t been informed of any of this.
I also gave one, in a niche-enough fandom that it’s barely gotten any attention — but, listen, the recipient liked it, so it’s a win.
Slowly working my way through the rest of the archive, but I have a bunch of pre-Yuletide fic recs that I haven’t even queued yet…so the rec posts of not-for-me Yulefics may take a while in coming.
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I subscribed to Hulu With Live TV for the month, purely so I can watch the new Steven Universe episodes before the internet has a chance to spoil them.
Seriously, the speed at which people can draw fanart of totally-new character designs is unreal.
And during the rest of the eek, I’m trying to make the most of the subscription by bingeing as much other Hulu-exclusive content as possible. Caught up on Archer and a smorgasbord of superhero movies, still working through Family Guy and The Resident, got an apprehensive eye on Stargate Universe.
Surprisingly entertained by Gary And His Demons. (Satirical commentary on Chosen One narratives, Rick-and-Morty-type dysfunction-based humor, our hero has a magical-girl-style transformation sequence for which he sings his own theme song…it’s a lot.)
…they have over 300 episodes of ER. And it’s excellent background-watching-while-making-comics TV. I may or may not end up going another month with this.
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Speaking of avoiding spoilers: I saw Frozen 2!
It was enjoyable, don’t get me wrong, but also awfully weird. Go watch Jenny Nicholson’s review for a good, thoughtful, funny breakdown of a lot of the reasons why.
Haven’t been any other movies since Endgame that I was really determined to see in theaters. Considered it for Star Wars: The Final Movie For Real This Time Really, but at this point I’ve been spoiled for enough of the reveals that, eh. Might as well wait until it’s out on streaming, and pick that time to do a free Disney+ trial period.
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Decided to bake cookies for Christmas at the last minute, which had me trawling the internet for “recipes that can be made using the ingredients currently in my cupboards” on Christmas Eve.
Sidenote: I have seen so many retail outlets this year advertising “our stores are open on Christmas Eve! and will even have limited hours on Christmas Day!”, and, guys, that is not something to brag about. Go watch one of the thousands of adaptations of A Christmas Carol, then swallow your profit motive for a couple days and give your people the time off, already.
So I wasn’t going to go buy late-night groceries, because I am not a monster, and here’s the recipe I was able to make. It’s just flour, butter/margarine, brown sugar, and vanilla. Plus a bag of butterscotch chips, because I do what I want.
They were a hit at the family dinner! Then a hit again when I brought the leftovers to work. Go make ’em some time. Mix up the base with your own (premeditated or improvised) favorite add-ins.
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WordPress was offering a deal on paid blogging plans, and it was cheap enough that I sprung for it.
…only to find out it doesn’t include any customization that wasn’t already in the free version. You have to pay twice as much to control your own CSS.
Oh well. I’ve gotten enough value out of WP over the years that they’ve probably earned the donation.
Prompted me to finally look for a new theme, too. Took way too long to find something that was (a) 2 columns, (b) didn’t collapse to 1 column when you weren’t practically fullscreen on desktop, (c) had spaces to keep all my widgets and menus, and (d) didn’t have clashing colors in places that non-paying users weren’t allowed to customize.
The theme is Bouquet. The header image and the purple background are customizable. All the pink is one of two pre-set options (the others are blue and orange), which thankfully coordinates with the header pretty well.
Apparently it’s also infinite-scroll and I don’t know how to turn that off, but oh well, you can’t have everything.
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Bumped up to the next-higher dose of Wellbutrin a couple months ago, and it’s been a smashing success.
Before the switch, it had gotten to the point where I was sleeping 10+ hours a day, and could feel the not-getting-anything-done. (Doesn’t help that I have a longer Day Job workweek these days — it’s great in most ways, but having it eat up all my awake time was a bit of a drawback.)
First week on the new dose, I felt refreshed, could focus way better, and was able to draw more than I got to do in probably the whole month before.
Turns out taking the higher dose too many days in a row leaves me not sleeping enough…but by now I’ve got the hang of swapping in the lower dose before I start to feel too wired, and it’s balancing out really well.
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The last Leif & Thorn Kickstarter alternately feels like it happened forever ago, and like it just ended last week.
The first unbound proof arrived a whole month ago, in November:
I ended up tweaking both files, and asking for a new proof of just-the-cover. (There was some tricky color correction involved — you don’t know exactly how it’ll come out in CMYK until you see it in person.)
So the new one arrived…and somewhere between the file I sent and the paper coming out of the printer, the colors got changed in ways I didn’t do. Not in a way they would notice when quality-checking, either — it looked perfectly-balanced, which is the problem, it’s supposed to have a purple tint.
(Volume 1 was pink-tinted. Volume 3 — the one with the magic vine attack — will be green. Volume 4 is shaping up to be red.)
The company blamed an equipment failure, apologized, and sent a free replacement. I now have 3 separate copies of this cover, and the books themselves are gonna be in production…any day now. Depends on when people come back from vacation.
Then decided the events of those pages should be bumped back to happen after other events. Which leaves me in the fascinating position of “two pages of scanned and fully-polished lineart, still hasn’t gotten me ahead re: the page I’m supposed to post on Monday.”
…One of my New Year’s resolutions is to actually finish the series in 2020. Fingers crossed.
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Marshmallow Fluff continues fluffin’ along.
I did a family visit that left him alone for the weekend, and he seems to have coped just fine:
No special Christmas dinner for Fluff, because he started turning up his nose at canned food a while back. I figure it’s a good thing — he’s no longer afraid of imminent starvation, so he feels secure enough to be picky — but it really cuts down on my “treats to provide for special occasions” options.
He also sometimes sits on one end of the couch while I’m sitting on the other! And almost relaxes. I get the joy of having a judgmental mop staring at me.
As for the contents…look, it was well-written prose. I didn’t get bored while listening. (Rereading that last review, I realized I’d written the same thing about the previous book, too.) But in retrospect, there sure was not a lot that happened in those 20 hours. Some notable action bits, in between a lot of padding.
And my reactions mostly consist of…complaints. Not “this is hideous, time to ragequit the series, this is an unqualified anti-rec” complaints, more a low-level churn of frustration.
(There’s one scene I know has made someone else outright refuse to read it, though, and I think it’s totally reasonable. More on that later.)
So I’m gonna try to unpack a bunch of it here. Hopefully in enough detail that, if you haven’t read it yet (and don’t mind spoilers), it can help you make an informed decision about whether it’s worth spending 20 hours of your life on.
It packs more explicit, unashamed queerness into those 5 episodes than any other cartoon I can think of
The only possible competitor would be if you took the whole 5000-episode run of Steven Universe and pared it down to a supercut of Just The Gay Parts
This in spite of being produced in Brazil, which (in my broad understanding, as a total non-authority on the subject) is more oppressively, dangerously homophobic than the US
The original is in Portuguese
There is an English dub, fabulously voiced by contestants from RuPaul’s Drag Race
It’s wrapped in “for adults only!” warnings, not because the content is any less child-friendly than (say) your Bojacks Horsemen or your Ricks and Mortys, but because Brazilian authorities tried to get it shut down on the grounds of this much gay being Harmful For Children
It was (heartbreakingly) not renewed for a second season
Here’s a promo video, in which the main characters (Portuguese, with subtitles) play Drag Race judges for Shangela, who ends up voicing Scarlet in English:
And here’s a beautiful flashy music video of the big musical number! (Also Portuguese, no subtitles, but the melody and the visuals stand on their own.)
Plot and worldbuilding stuff!
The elevator pitch is “What if Charlie’s Angels, but also drag queens, with superpowers, because magical-girl transformations?”
In this universe, all LGBTQ people have magical energy. The Big Bad is an evil magical-drag-queen nemesis who tries to drain our energy for her own purposes. It’s like if Ursula from The Little Mermaid was a first-season Sailor Moon villain.
…sidenote, in case you were worried, the representation isn’t “cis gay men and nobody else.” There’s a butch lesbian in the recurring cast, a genderfluid person (ETA: that word is exclusive to the English dub; a Brazilian viewer tipped me off that the original Portuguese dialogue includes “bissexual”, which means exactly what it looks like) as a one-off love interest, and all the ensemble scenes are wonderful collages of different races, body types, and gender presentations.
Our heroes also fight non-magical everyday homophobes, who get written with scathing realism.
The moment I knew the show wasn’t pulling any punches was in the first episode, where a newscaster complains about being Silenced by the Law of Political Correctness, then chirps “however, we have a special guest who is thankfully above the law!”
As the Super Drags tell their nemesis (and this is also in the first episode): “How dare you try to turn the LGBTQXYZ community against each other? We do enough of that on our own!”
In between missions, our girls work sitcom retail jobs and deal with other everyday problems. All of which are written in amazingly nuanced and thoughtful ways for a show that also features “defeating an orgy monster with a lip-sync battle.”
Detailed character stuff!
Our heroes are Color Coded For Your Convenience!
The Super Drags themselves go by “she” in-uniform, and a lot of the time when out of it. Like the Sailor Starlights, only more so. I’ll roll with that.
In blue: Safira Cyan, or Ralph by day, an excitable college-age kid who’s built like a football player and squees like a fangirl. (She’s an anime fan in the original, and for some reason all the otaku references were replaced in the dub, but you can see them in the subtitles.)
Ralph lives with her younger sister (they play video games together!) and their dad, comes out to them mid-series, and is very shippable with another young guy who starts out reciting the homophobic beliefs he was raised with but whose heart clearly isn’t in it.
Safira’s weapon is a classic magical-girl wand that casts protective force-fields. Which are shaped like condoms. Because of course.
In yellow: Lemon Chiffon, aka Patrick, the oldest of the group and generally the smartest/most strategic. In most cases, the other two treat her as the de facto team leader — unless she pushes it too far.
By day she’s a single guy with thick thighs and thinning hair, who has some body-image insecurities on the dating scene. And this show has Things To Say about unrealistic beauty standards within the community…not to mention, about masc guys who look down on anyone too flaming or femme because straight people disapprove.
Lemon’s weapon is a fluffy boa that can be used as a whip or a lasso, especially when there’s a bondage joke to be made.
In red: Scarlet Carmesim, also Donizete, the loudest and most aggressive teammate with the most cutting insults, who refuses to suppress that attitude in an attempt to appease racists. (But will give it a shot when trying not to get fired.)
Donny still lives in her religious/homophobic mom’s apartment, and I’m pretty sure it’s because neither of them can afford to move out. Her rock-solid sense of fierce self-confidence is the reason it doesn’t bring her down.
Scarlet’s weapon is a fan that she uses to throw shade. Yeah, you knew that was coming.
The Charlie to these angels is Champagne, who runs operations from a cool magitech compound and breaks the fourth wall at the end to petition for viewers’ support in getting a second season.
…we let her down, folks :(
So here’s a thing. The show never draws a sharp line between “people who become drag queens because it’s a way they’re driven to express themselves as gay men” and “people who become drag queens because they were trans women all along.” That’s consistent with how South American LGBT+ culture works. (Again: best of my knowledge, not personally an authority on this, etc etc.)
Many of the characters, including Champagne, never describe themselves in ways that translate to one of our sharply-defined Anglo-USian identity categories. And I’m not going to try to impose any English labels on them here.
But I can say (in contrast to Safira, Lemon, and Scarlet), Champagne never switches out of her “drag” name/voice/presentation, not even in the most candid off-duty scenes, and still has the same bustline when naked in the tub. Make of that what you will.
If you ever do a Netflix free trial month in the future, make a note to yourself to watch Super Drags!
It’s one of their original productions, so there’s no risk of missing your chance because the license expired. But it’s absolutely not getting the promotion it deserves. Which means potentially interested viewers won’t find it, which means Netflix will think there’s no interest, which means they’ll keep not promoting it…etc etc etc.
No idea if there’s any chance of getting it un-canceled, but maybe we can at least convince them to release it on DVD.
And the sheer gutsiness it took for a group of Brazilian creators to produce this show in the first place — that deserves to be rewarded with your attention.
In spite of various anti-discrimination laws that sound good on paper, the country has serious problems with homophobia, transphobia, and anti-LGBT violence (warning, article has a violent image which is only partly blurred).
Maybe the creators could’ve gotten a second season if they made this one softer, less sexually-explicit, more restrained…but honestly? I bet that wouldn’t have helped.
And it didn’t get renewed past the first season either.
(Note: it had a trans woman showrunner and a queer-heavy creative staff, so I blame all that restraint on executive meddling, not the creators themselves. The showrunner even liked the tweet of my review that complains about it.)
So there’s something very satisfying about how Super Drags went all-out, balls-to-the-wall (sometimes literally), all the rep explicit and unapologetic, packing every 25-minute episode with all kinds of queer content that would be censored or muted elsewhere — but here it’s exaggerated and celebrated and just keeps coming.
(…as do jokes like that, and I’m not sorry.)
Okay, there are a few legitimate reasons to not watch this show
Some caveats.
None of these things are Objectively Bad Problems that the show itself should be shamed for…but maybe they’re genuinely not your cup of tea.
It does have actual Adult Content beyond “the existence of gay people.” This show loves to swing barely-clothed cartoon genitalia in your face. There is, as mentioned, an orgy monster. If that kind of humor is going to bother you too much to appreciate the rest of the show, give it a pass.
I wasn’t kidding about how realistic the homophobes are. Opening of the first episode has a guy trying to murder a busload of people while shouting slurs at them. If that level of hatred on-screen is gonna crush your soul, even in a show about sparkly queens flying to the rescue with dick-shaped magical weapons, don’t push yourself.
Any fiction with this much crossdressing and gender-transgressing is going to hit some trans viewers in a bad way. Because trans people are such a broad group, with so many different experiences, that Every Possible Trope Involved pushes somebody’s buttons. (See also: “some trans readers complain about a storyline that turns out to be drawn from a trans writer’s actual life experience“.) If this show goes does gender things that turn out to be personally distressing for you…or even just distressing for this specific time in your life…don’t feel obligated to keep watching.
It has aggressively-sassy queer characters making jokes and calling each other things that are affectionate in-context, but would not be okay coming from straight/cis people. If you can’t wrap your head around that, go watch something else.
Other Than That, Go Watch This Show
For all its big heart, big ambitions, and big gay energy, Super Drags is tiny enough that I’ve binged the whole show 2 times in the past 2 weeks. Thankfully, it’s highly re-watchable — lots of fun background gags and subtle foreshadowing that you don’t catch on the first round.
(Pausing one last time to appreciate that a show with elements like “the high-tech robot assistant is called D.I.L.D.O.” can be subtle at all, let alone be this good at it.)
I’ve also paged through all the fanart on Tumblr and Deviantart, looked up the single fanfic on the AO3, and started brainstorming plans to request it in Yuletide next year. Someone, please, come join me in (the English-language side of) the itty-bitty fandom for this ridiculous, glittery, over-the-top, fabulous series.
The list of eligible fandoms for Yuletide 2019 is absolutely massive, so I pulled out a list of “just the webcomics that are free to read online.” Plus the links for where to read them…
Hey, if you’re checking out the songs in these roundups, drop a comment and let me know? I’m going to finish off the list either way, just for the personal fun of it, but I’m curious who else they’re reaching.
Mikey Wax: fun modern pop/rock with top-40 catchiness. (Mikey Wax playlist.)
Mylène Farmer: dreamy pop, electronic rock/dance, mostly in French, occasionally with gay themes. She holds the record for most number-one hits in the French charts. (Mylène Farmer playlist.)
This one is a live concert performance where she sings the whole song, then the instruments and the dancers keep going, she says (in French) “One more time, all together now!”, and with minimal prompting gets the audience to sing the whole song back to her:
And this last one is just straight-up Little Prince filk:
Nightwish: Epic, symphonic goth metal. They’re Finnish, but the lyrics are mostly in English — and if they need a full orchestral accompaniment, they’re happy to call in the London Philharmonic. (Nightwish playlist.)
Lorie: fun, catchy, energetic ’00s teen pop (mostly French). She’s also the French VA for a bunch of animated characters, so you can imagine any of these being sung by, say, Tinkerbell or Violet Parr. (Lorie playlist.)
This first one is a cheesy bilingual song about a cross-cultural romance:
Marc Almond: synthpop, new-wave, drag-show cabaret. He was the lead singer of Soft Cell (i.e. the Tainted Love guy); this is mostly the solo stuff he did afterward. (Marc Almond playlist.)
This last one is a heartfelt song about the drag scene:
Michael Stanley [Band]: classic ’70s and ’80s rock with a working-class Midwestern heart. It’s like if the E Street Band was from Ohio. Their highest-charting single even got Clarence Clemons on sax. (Michael Stanley Band playlist.)
