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15: niche fandoms thought dead alive and thriving

Reasons why I like tumblr

1. None of my family is on here

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I want my mother; the woman both a room away and ten years out of reach.

Isn’t it funny?

A tear turns into sniffles turns into sobbing turns into six years old with hands outstretched.

Hands soon to be smacked away by the bite of thoughtless words.

Hands that learn it’s better to cinch at the waist lest they get smacked once again.

Hands that soon don’t even bother to squeeze back once taken back in an effort to mend.

The tears that don’t seem to stop, even when the pain has long since passed.

The urge to cling and beg for mother’s attention that will not be given.

A woman who is not at fault, but will shoulder the blame anyway because to place it elsewhere is to place it on the intangible.

A woman who sleeps only a room away yet stays ten years out of reach.

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This encapsulates their relationship in ways I cannot put to words.

Reposting so I can find it when I inevitably get this question again.

In various places -- here, the bird app, even YouTube comments -- I keep running into people with some variation of the same question:

"Does Scum Villain have a teacher/student romance?" And every time I want to answer with: No, But Also Yes, But Also Not Really, It's Complicated (And That's On Purpose.)

Which is an answer that's too long to fit in a tweet or a YT comment, but fortunately tumblr has no (effective) post limit! So here I go.

1 - No

In the very straight forward porn cliche sense of "oh but professor, I really ~need~ to pass this class or my life will be ruined, can't I do ~anything~ to get you to change my grade?" *bats lashes* and "Hoho, my pretty young teen student, I've got your good grade right here in my pants, if you ~apply~ yourself..." then no.

No sex or romance between a teacher and their student in the bounds of a teacher-student relationship happens in this book. No deliberate grooming of an underage student on the part of a teacher occurs in this book. No sex or a romance between an adult character and an underage character occurs in this book, nor is the adult 'waiting' for the minor to reach adulthood to initiate one.

2 - But Also Yes

No sex or romance between a teacher and their student in the bounds of that relationship happens in this book. Two people who were formerly in a teacher and student relationship do enter into a sexual and romantic relationship by the end of the book. Also the nature of the society they're in further means that even though they are no longer in the schooling environment, it is socially assumed that the deference owed by a student to their teacher lasts forever, even after the student leaves that environment, and they continue to regard themselves and refer to themselves in those roles even though the teacher no longer strictly speaking has authority over the student.

Also, the student was really hot for his teacher even when he was still a student. (The teacher was oblivious to this fact.)

3 - But Also Not Really

By the time sex and romance is even on the horizon for these characters, their relationship has so drastically changed from that of a "teacher and student" that it is barely recognizeable as such. The power/authority dynamic between a teacher and their student is subsumed pretty much entirely by the facts that:

A. The 'student' has become a medeival fantasy warlord of such unsurpassable magic and might that literally no other person in this world can stand up against him, 'teacher' included, and the 'teacher' is well aware of that.

B. Also, the 'student' is metaphysically endowed (heh) with the Protagonist Halo, a literally active force within the setting they're part of, which means that not only can he not be defeated, he ontologically cannot be denied anything that he desires; what he wants, he gets, and what he doesn't want, cannot be forced on him.

C. ...But also, the teacher in this setting is a metaphysical outsider to the world order the student is part of, which means that he is aware of all of the above, and can and does manipulate it to suit his own agenda, which may or may not align with giving the student what he wants at any point in time. Assuming that the teacher has the correct understanding of what the student wants. (He doesn't.)

D. ........But also also, for all his power, one harsh word from him can destroy him. For all his knowledge, one tear can devastate him. (Which one? Both.)

4 - It's Complicated (On Purpose)

*throws the chalk against the wall*

Between a teacher and their student, who has the power? Between an emperor and a scholar, who has the power? Between a hero and the villain he is predestined to destroy, who has the power? Between a character and the reader who's read ahead to the end of the story, who has the power? Do we find some of these power imbalances more acceptable than others? And if so, why do we?

Trying to track Who Has The Power or Who Has An Unfair Advantage socially, physically, and metaphysically between this particular pair of characters is damn near impossible and that's on purpose.

The Scum Villain's Self Saving System is a lot of things, but one thing that absolutely defines it is that it is a parody. It's a parody and a deconstruction of a lot of things -- the 'stallion' genre, the 'isekai' genre, the 'pay-per-chapter webnovel' genre, the 'gay drama' genre and, most relevant to this conversation, it is a deconstruction of teacher-student romance.

What kind of a teacher-student romance has a clueless, fish-out-of water NEET in the role of the Wise Old Mentor? What kind of a teacher-student romance has a black-hearted, demonic, domineering feudal warlord in the role of the Blushing Virginal Student? What kind of a teacher-student romance has the two principals so close in age -- by the end of the book, they may be as little as a year apart -- that they're more like peers than teacher and student? What kind of audience are we, going into a story like this one and finding ourselves cheering for the teacher to fall in love and lust with his student, only to be disappointed when that doesn't happen because the teacher fails for three books straight to recognize love and lust when it's literally looking him in the face and crying?

Asking "does Scum Villain have a teacher-student romance?" is sort of like asking "does Galaxy Quest have a lot of high science fiction concepts?" No, but also yes, but also not really. It's complicated, and that's on purpose.

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I don’t know why, but I think Aoex and SVSSS would make a very good crossover fic.

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I think Julia deserves to know how far this has gotten

"we don't have girl talk, we have creature talk," my roommate Julia just said while rolling on the floor, "put that on your fucking tumblr, they'll love that shit"

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Hey OP

What the fuck did I just read?

my grandpa was a good man. and it really wasnt his fault - recreationally lying to kids is a proud family tradition - but he told me, once, that cutting a worm in half resulted in two worms.

i think he said it so i'd be more morally okay with fishing? i actually dont remember the context.

point was, he told me this, and he understimated (by a very large margin) how much i liked worms. i was a worm boy. very wormy. and after hearing that, i went home, and i dug through the garden, flipped over every rock, did everything i could to gather as many worms as i could, and then i uh.

i cut them all in half. every worm i could find. all of them. with scissors.

i then took this pile of split worms, and i put them in a box with a bit of lettuce and some water and stuff and went to bed expecting to double my worms overnight. i have math autism, so i had a vague understanding that if i did this just a few times in a row, i would eventually have a completely unreasonable amount of worms.

i was very excited to become this plane's worm emperor.

(i think i was...six?)

anyway, i did not become the inheritor of the worm crown. i instead woke up to a box of dead worms and cried. a lot. i got diagnosed with panic attacks as a teenager, but i think i had them as a kid, i just had no idea what they were. i was kind of processing that a.) i had killed what i had assumed was every single worm in my yard, and thus would have no more worms, and b). i was going to like, worm hell.

(six year babylon spent a lot of time worrying about god.)

so i kind of freaked out, and i climbed a tree, because god can only smite you if you're touching the ground (?) and i sat up there mostly inconsolable until my mom came out and asked, hey, what's up? what happened?

so i explained to her that i had killed all of the worms, forever, and was also Damned, and she took me to the compost pile, and we dug for all of five seconds and found like twenty more worms.

the compost pile was full of worms.

she then told me that a). there were more worms, and we could put them back under rocks and stuff and recolonize our yard and b). that one day, i would die, and go to heaven, and be able to talk to the worms face to face. that i'd be able to tell them all that i was very sorry, and that i killed them on accident, driven only by excessive Love, and that she was positive they would forgive me because worms have six hearts and no malice.

at that point, i think i was sixty percent tear-snot by weight, and i had no choice but to gather enough worms that i could hug them. which my mom helped with. and then after that she helped me put some worms back under each rock.

and for my epilogue: i spent a significant portion of my childhood in trees. and for many years after, even when my mom didnt know i was watching, i would catch her giving the space under the rocks a light spritz with the hose. not because she loved worms.

but because she loved me.

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I’m a patron of the arts (I make obscure and pointed Pinterest Boards)

I’m a patron of the arts (I leave nice comments on aO3).

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I need y’all Star Wars lover’s opinion on something.

Because I personally think kark sounds better, like as a substitute for fuck but a little bit worse. But I also think that kriff would be more on the level of shit.

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Reblog to give everyone a treat

Reblog to give an asexual a treat

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Might I offer you some fluff, in these trying times of chap 117?

Shin Soukoku co-parenting Aya.

Please tag me in the fics.

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Kill me four times, WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!?!

Kill me once, shame on you. Kill me twice, how did you did that.

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“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.

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It’s 9pm.

Mother and Aunt are still bitching about me within hearing distance.

It’s 9 fucking pm.

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Why tf did a quiz asking my fav colors just drag me so bad???

where’s that quiz where you choose lke 4 colours u like and 4 u dont and it hands your ass on a plate

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My friend Amal shared this to try and get her friends out of Gaza. Please d0n@te if you can, it’s very expensive to go through the Rafah crossing into Egypt.

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Random muscle twitches that you can’t consciously recreate while you’re trying to fall asleep is your body’s equivalent of your house settling at night.

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I simply have no idea what’s going on and at this point I’m too afraid to ask