LOOK AT THEM!!!!! OMGGG THEY ARE SO CREEPY AND CUTE AARRRGHHHH

ive been thinking about this since i drew it

peeves me off a little when some people say "miu and kokichi could be such good friends, i wish they weren't so toxic in canon!"

.......but they are friends? not in the most obvious conventional way, but still. friends.

i mean, miu actually built his blueprints and vented to him before the events of chapter 4. not only that, but kokichi had faith in her skills as an inventor, genuinely listened to her vent (though he also may have realized she was planning to kill him at that time but y'know) and plays into her degrading kink (i say kink, because, well. it is. how are the words "finally someone called me a cum dumpster" supposed to be read as distress??) without really scaring her (note that being shouted at scares her, something he rarely does)

(also also. miu was heavily, heavily reluctant on killing him. and i doubt kokichi was feeling good about orchestrating her murder, too.)

they don't hate each other. they're just assholes who bond like assholes (who care about each other at least a little, but won't admit it)

Oops.

I bought Fallout 4 the other day, been playing non-stop, decided to draw my favourite companion from the game

The Audience’s Eyes

“This wouldn’t have been possible without you!”

sorry I’m a kiibo stan account now lmaoo. The last trial just. He didn’t deserve. Everything bad that could’ve happened to him happened and it’s wronggg

i will never not be mad that x6-88 consistently gets so blatantly mischaracterized. if you’ve ever fallen from high up inside the institute on accident, you know he’s one sarcastic bitch when it suits him, and i love him for that. he’s genuinely so funny at times, he just has such a flat tone and expression that it goes right over people’s heads. but he delivers such scathing roasts in such a calm manner that i end up wheezing laughing any time i have him as a companion. but there’s a lot more to him than just being another “patrolling the mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter”-NCR-trooper-level-repetitive no-name courser.

he’s afraid of heights, and certainly doesn’t like flying, which given how extremely he exercises caution, is perfectly in character. he gets jumpy and worries almost constantly, even if he’s outwardly very calm and collected. he’s ignorant with regards to the old world, but he does express his imagination at times, even if it’s 99.9% practically-focused and only really extends to his own experience and the knowledge of the institute. but he has so many traits that aren’t in line with the stiff representation the fandom gives him. he actually has a lot of traits that would get most synths wiped if they were caught displaying them in the institute. i do still think they did him extremely, viciously, disrespectfully dirty in his writing (which is a whole rant of its own), but he still has more characterization than a lot of the fandom gives him credit for.

he’s smooth-talking, calm, and collected upon initial impression, but he’s also awkward and sheepish and embarrassed to admit anything personal to you (even just that he admires you) most of the time once you start getting close to him. he’s also a worry wart, anxious about your approval, ashamed and almost mortified if you choose to scold him for doubting you, and it’s clear that he’s seeking validation specifically from you even if he seems so self assured all the rest of the time, to the point of claiming boredom during combat. he’s this blade-lookalike, terminator type who kicks ass and takes names, but who’s afraid of heights and is prissy about the surface world. he seems to enjoy when you’re a mean vindictive bastard, but not within the institute even when scientists have literally just undermined father and threatened the proper functioning of the institute. he’s so reserved in his praise in front of you during/after libertalia, but as you walk around the institute on your own, you find out from other coursers that he’s been talking about you to them, telling them about you and praising your fighting abilities. and given how many of these coursers say it, it almost seems like he’s been gushing about working with you (at least, in his own way) while you’ve been apart. he’s talked about as the best of the best basically, and since he’s bragging about you, the other coursers think you’re cool. which, obviously you can infer a few things about him from this whole thing: he’s a little bit of a gossip (just a little, plus it’s positive); he’s not only respected, but provides his own opinions to the others and that matters to them, his opinion of you matters to the other resident badasses; once you impress him, he likes you, enough to tell the others about you and your performance in the field.

the bigger shock is that he openly praised you when reporting to justin ayo of all people, which ayo will tell you while also claiming that x6-88 “does not give praise lightly. well done.”

all of these things build a character. he deserved better characterization, better development, better treatment of his character, all of that and more, but the bare bones are there if you’re willing to look.

it just makes me irritable when he gets so poorly characterized by people who claim to like him. i don’t even know x6-88 that well compared to some other characters but i know that much.

struggling. to write characters. personality wrong.

really love dynamics that are like 'it honestly doesn't matter if you view them as romantic or platonic, the point is that they love each other. the type of love is inconsequential, all that matters is that it's there'. gotta be one of my favorite genders.

markiplier lore is queer: an essay by me.

dedicated to @system32-cleanmgr <2

so, to start things off, i wanna talk about the gender of it all. because of the gender ambiguity of the viewer insert in almost every markiplier lore video, the universe now has at least three canonical non-binary characters who go by they/them pronouns (wether these characters are all the same character, different characters, or kind of the same character is unknown).

but that's not where the gender fuckery of the better mcu ends. you see, there's also the (subtextual and mostly ignored, yes, but still relevant) overall gender fuckery of darkiplier's character. because, while they present male, they are still in some ways a combination of celine and damien, two people of opposite genders (not to mention the fact that they exist inside the body of the viewer from who killed markiplier, who's one of the formerly mentioned non-binary characters). so, while not explicit representation, i personally like to think of darkiplier as some flavor of genderfluid.

i also feel like damien and celine's specific gender expressions themselves affect darkiplier in some ways: while they're both (presumably) cis, the two still have very distinct ways of performing their respective gender identities. damien portrays a softer version of masculinity, whereas celine shows a slightly harsher femininity than what we're used to seeing in media. he's a bit clueless and sees things from an emotional, human perspective, and she's clearly used to being the rational, fast-paced one, always trying to find solutions. this dynamic might have something to do with them being siblings (and i'm assuming celine's the older of the two, purely because of all the talk of 'keeping damien safe'), and it's not inherently queer, but it is interesting to me that these characters have such specific ways of acting out their genders.

now, this one's not as important, but i would also like to mention the casual usage of they/them pronouns for other characters as well. in in space with markiplier: part 2, mark explicitly refers to the character of lady by they/them pronouns multiple times (this could also be either because they're an alien and mark doesn't know how they identify, or because their actor, lio tipton, is non-binary, but to me, that reads as somewhat solid confirmation that the character goes by they/them pronouns), and mark himself is referred to as "they" by the narrator at least once.

this isn't really a gender identity thing, but rather a gender expression thing, but i do also wanna talk about wilford warfstache and his gender non-conformativity. i do think he identifies as male, all things considered, but he doesn't seem the least bit interested in masculinity as a concept, favouring traditionally (i say traditionally, but i do mean societally, since pink used to be considered a boy color) feminine colors like pink and yellow, and being more than open to expressing his feelings and encouraging other characters to do the same.

now i'm gonna get into the sexualities. how are queer sexualities portrayed in markiplier lore?

well, that's a hard question to answer; no character has ever been (as far as i know) specifically stated to be of any sexual orientation. although there is a high possibility that wilford is pansexual, since he was clearly in love with celine, but it's implied he doesn't really care about the gender of whomever he happens to be romantically or sexually involved with at the time (i.e. him casually asking abe if they used to date, because that really is a possibility).

aside from wilford, because of the ambiguous gender of the viewer insert, a lot of characters end up being inadvertedly queer because of their attraction to them, most of them most likely falling on the m-spec.

there's also something to be said about abe the detective. is he gay or not? well, again, nothing's canon, but i think it's safe to assume he isn't straight. the "accidental" homoerotic innuendos he makes constantly seem less like a joke about being gay, and more like a joke about having repressed, sexual thoughts about someone, and having those thoughts emerge as those kinds of comments.

the "would anyone like to join me?" comment might just be will making fun of him, but i can't find it in myself to think actor mark is straight either. i guess it's just a headcanon, but let's be honest, he's every 'subtly' queer-coded old cartoon villain ever. he's rich, dramatic, petty, and vain, and frankly sometimes being evil and queer is just a fact of life.

but i'm not gonna go further into my headcanons on here, lest this post turn into a list instead of an essay, so i'll just wrap it up here. thanks for listening to my ramble.

Kabosu did not deserve to have her image turned into cryptocurrency. She did not deserve to have the meme she was known for across the world to become a code word for a fascist coup.

Her name is Kabosu. Not Doge.