“You Could’ve Picked Me”

Please take note of Nero making such a big deal out of Urizen being Dante's brother. "Your own flesh and blood." THIS IS A BIG DEAL TO NERO. The blood relation is PARAMOUNT in his mind. Keep this in mind.

V admits in this scene that the one thing he and Urizen have in common is their hatred of Dante. That is the one defining foundational trait that makes him Vergil, whether whole or in pieces.

He's always defined himself as "Dante's older brother." He felt that that's how the world and his parents defined him. He saw Dante as the favorite, as the one who never had to struggle, who could be irresponsible and get away with it because HE as the older brother always needed to be held to a higher standard. To Vergil, brotherly love is irreparably entangled with his feelings of resentment.

That's why V says "you've lost me, and I've lost you." This is not a simple "my good half and my evil half" kind of thing. Urizen is all of Vergil's selfishness and pride and power incarnate. And those things are part of Vergil just as much as his humanity, his empathy and his eccentricities. He can no more give up that demonic pride and still be himself than he could his love for William Blake poems. They are all essential ingredients that make him Vergil. All this experience has taught him is that he was out of balance before, and that is why he lost to Dante at the Temen-ni-gru, because he was willing to suppress the things that truly mattered and were important to him in that blind quest for power. Just as Urizen lost to Dante here and now.

Now that he's learned his lesson. Now that he's remember what truly was important about being human. NOW that he is whole again, he can finally truly defeat Dante once and for all. Or so V is thinking in this moment.

When he does recombine with Urizen, I wonder. Does the memory of Dante telling Urizen that Eva died trying to find and save Vergil remain for him? Would that knowledge make a difference to him now? Given how Vergil acts from here on out... maybe I'd like to think so.

God this moment was so fucking hype when it happened back when the game came out. "The alpha and the omega Vergil." holy shit this game kicks so much ass.

Dante and Vergil's profiles from the Devil May Cry 3 manga.

vi’s fuck ass smile when making a lame joke to try to get cait to feel better i love you so much

The sacred water connects us together

Elphaba came back from a long study session at the library to a worked up Galinda...

this is goofy af, but it was fun (draws the build up but not the deed)

an even less exhaustive list of femme literature

since a made of a list of butch lit, I thought it would be nice to make a list of femme writing by (mostly) femme authors as well. books I've read myself in bold; take the rest with a grain of salt. I'd really appreciate additions, especially of fiction!

fiction:

dykette by jenny fran davis

perfume and pain by anna dorn

trash by dorothy allison

all the pretty girls by chandra mayor

femme confidential by nairne holtz

bottle rocket hearts by zoe whittall

nonfiction:

brazen femme: queering feminity ed chloe brushwood rose and anna camilleri

femme: feminists, lesbians, and bad girls ed laura harris and elizabeth crocker

the femme mystique ed leslea newman

out of the closet and nothing to wear by leslea newman

fierce femmes and notorious liars by kai cheng thom

dirty river by leah lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha

s/he by minnie bruce pratt

naked in the promised land by lillian faderman

a restricted country by joan nestle

rust belt femme by raechel anne jolie

my dangerous desires by amber hollibaugh

odd girls and twilight lovers by lillian faderman

another mother tongue by judy grahn

boots of leather, slippers of gold by elizabeth lapovsky and madeline davis

the persistent desire ed joan nestle

persistence: all way butch and femme ed ivan coyote and zena sharman

articles/essays:

our own words by rosza daniel lang/levitsky in e-flux

high femme camp antics by jenny fran davis in la review of books

with gratitude and struggle by nan alamilla boyd in autostraddle

that time I went on a lesbian cruise and blew up my life by shannon keating in buzzfeed

femme-inism by paula austin in colonize this!

my glasses are always dirty but it's fine. i've seen enough.

off to fight the great war now, fellas (one pending project due tonight, one lesson to be reviewed for tomorrow’s exams, two pending projects for the student organization, three lessons to be reviewed for next week’s exams) please wish me luck

if being an awkward loser lesbian was illegal id be in prison

I love lesbian gender so much. Literally every lesbian I’ve met has their own unique form of gender expression. Even within dynamics like butchfemme, we still transcend “normal” definitions of gender. We’re like scrapbooks, we just collect all these little pieces of fashion and culture and construct our own sense of beauty out of it in hopes that other lesbians will find it cool.