#‘wah wah this person pointed out canon stuff to back up their point of the lords being a family wahhh���

[valleynix]

Listen I do really care abt you and want you to be happy and content but sometimes I think we’re quick to dismiss the fact that you literally used to publicly bully bigots on your tiktok 😭😭😭😭 that was the funniest shit ever so idk if one person being a lil mean is going to affect anything

HELP I LOVED DOING THAT LMAOO THEY’D GET SO MAD 😭😭

people being trolls or just getting mad at stuff i do/post (when it’s… literally not problematic or harmful LMAO) is the funniest thing to me and i love blasting them over it. 9/10 times i’m literally giggling on the other side of the screen bc they’re MAD mad over a silly post and i’m just 😭😭 touch grass oh my god

[ilikekidsshows]

I'm just so annoyed that one can't even voice their frustrations with Canon anymore without being written off as a salter. Especially when it comes to Marinette. But at the same time, I know exactly that if anyone had said earlier that Marinette would pull all these things that season 4 and 5 have her do, the person would have been insulted and ripped apart as a salter and hater. But the moment Canon has Marinette actually DO it her fans turn around and claim that her having done it is either totally fine, not her fault, or must be tolerated cause it's part of the good and pure messages "they totally predicted this way all along with their totally unbiased Master-minds"

It is so obvious that this is what's happening in the Fandom. In season 4, everyone yelled that people are being too harsh on poor Marinette cause season 5 will totally have her fix for example her insanely negligent, dehumanizing, and self centered behavior towards Cat Noir

And yet, the moment season 5 showed that non of that will happen, they turn around and started talking about these hypocritical nonsense philosophies that it's totally fine that feeling sorry, taking accountability and improving one's shortcomings doesn't actually include feeling sorry, taking accountability and improving one's real shortcomings, cause poor Marinette needs to have servants and be pampered for her hurtful behavior, validated and excused in it, and crowned the queen of the world first and "you just hate WOMEN wah wah wah".

That they totally understand how canon works and Marinette will TOTALLY have this groundbreaking journey til season 10, and everyone is so unfair and horrible for being sexist and having expected so much of her as early as THE END OF SEASON 5. Whne she straight up isn't doing her best to make up for her mistakes, she barely even tries and instead sweeps everything under the rug, takes every excuse she gets and continues taking advantage of Cat Noir in particular so she doesn't have to feel uncomfortable for 10 damn seconds

Where was that energy in season 4, Marinette stans? You said something entirely else back then! What changed? The fact that canon didn't deliver on your endless excuses for Marinette, so you decided to continue adapting your excuses to whatever Canon has her do? Sounds about right.

I wished Marinette stans and even just her Fans would do us all a solid and just admit already that the morality of Marinette's canon actions and behavior doesn't truly matter to them. There is literally nothing they wouldn't excuse that much is obvious by now. No matter how much they themselves qualified her current behavior as "offensive salt" one damn season earlier.

---

I did comment at one point that Miraculous was starting to resemble a saltfic when it started lifting plotpoints straight from them (like Adrien apologizing for his really solid advice that instantly helped Marinette in Chameleon). But now it seems that canon has also lifted Marinette's new role from saltfics, except that the people she disregards haven't done any of the stuff they do in saltfics that makes them “deserve” Marinette's retribution. Unless Adrien totally did rip Marinette's sketchbook and I just missed it.

But, yeah, it's absolutely ridiculous that, if we traveled back in time a couple of years and simply described to people what happens in seasons 4 and 5, we’d get labeled a bunch of salters. Even now they call us salters just because we don't praise Marinette for doing this stuff, like it's our fault the main heroine of this series is an utter failure who never worked up the courage to ask the guy she likes out and whose response to being told her nemesis’ identity was to ignore it until he jumped her when she was digging for info on her boyfriend. And then she lost the fight. Marinette had two jobs as a protagonist, and she failed at them both. That’s not the fault of the fans who are disappointed by this; it’s the fault of the writers who think doing what will get them the most attention is more important than having their supposed role model, hero and protagonist actually accomplish anything on her own merit.

Because the writers claim that they had this “planned all along”, when they had a French historical hero walk on screen and call Marinette the best Ladybug ever, while they were planning on having her fail at accomplishing all of her goals. I used to think that the writers think Marinette should be praised for simply existing, but no, they think she should be praised for explicitly failing. And pointing out this utter failure of writing and heroism is salt. That's how low the fans of this trainwreck have brought the bar for what they consider good television, it's practically nonexistent.

[welcometoteyvat]

love your thoughts on character’s ages. looking forward to fontaine & sumeru :) i think you described it really well. ages for my are like… they exist but they don’t at the same time.

edit: OH MY GOD TUMBLRS EDITOR FORMATTING SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!! if you see random parts of words bolded PLEASE ignore i dont know why it keeps happening

if you're the same anon as the og ask i am so so so sorry about the delay T_T T_T i was drafting my answer and then boom life happened ..... anyways. thank you for enjoying my thoughts wah <3333333 "they exist but they don't" SAME SAME frfr. like the most on-point (internet) discussion I've read on ages is that the stage of life you're in is often the only factor that matters, and that can vary a lot based on like your past experiences and stuff. and from my own perspective this holds true—similarly, in genshin where all the playable characters have jobs it's hard to kind of quantify them into really distinct age ranges tbh. sometimes it's just vibes (unfortunately vibes often includes height bc it's a game w not very diverse model types). anyways! character hcs:

sumeru (sans scaramouche): collei, cyno, tighnari, faruzan, layla, nilou

i think collei has an actual canon age right? unless I'm tripping and fanon has solidified so much in everyone's minds. I still haven't read the manhua <3 but iirc people think she's 12-13 there right. maybe she's like 17 rn, i can see anywhere from 14-16 though. idk anything abt her timeline so these are quite literally guesstimates from vibes and they're likely to be wrong. Layla is such a college girlie, she's like 19-20 and sleep deprived (same fr); begging for her to catch a break on behalf of uni students everywhere. I don't have a set age for Faruzan, I can see her anywhere from 30-40, 26 years old minimum (the redesigns people give her where she looks visibly older are so cool <3). Given she was a pretty well known researcher back in her day and since academia is a long and arduous career choice, I think it makes sense; also if she's like way older than Kaveh appearance wise (≥ 10 years) , even if she hadn't gotten trapped for a century, that would be sick af (their dynamic is impeccable and I think a larger age difference makes it better, sweeter, and funnier). Nilou also feels 19-20 years old to me; no real explanation, she just has a young adult vibe, like someone just out of her teenage years but quite capable at managing her life, although still testing out responsibility for major decisions and stuff like that (age solidarity w yun jin)

iirc cyno was already mahamatra or something WHILE tighnari was still in school; thus this makes cynonari EXTREMELY funny if you're a moral purist who ships it and thinks they fell in love in their akademiya days LOL. jkjk it's also a reasonable interpretation that Cyno became mahamatra at an insanely young age, since uhhh fucked up temple of silence background smth smth and honestly it feels in character for him to go buck wild at a young age like that (person most suited for young collei fr). HOWEVER. personally I think being mahamatra at like 19 is insane—thus I think tighnari's probably 23, cyno might be 27? I don't know if that makes it """""""better""""""" from an age gap standpoint but I also don't really care. Cyno being older but more joking around friends, while Tighnari is the younger kohai but serious and no-nonsense is pretty funny to me and when they're both serious you know you're fucked

fontaine: lyney, lynette, freminet (are those the only medium youth models so far lol. damn)

anyways lyney and lynette are confirmed to be at least 10 from Lyney's story quest. such helpful information I know lol. I'd think they're probably around 19-20? 18 minimum—I personally wouldn't watch 18 year olds do gravity defying magic tricks at the nation's biggest opera house—being like 1 year older doesn't make it any better ofc lol, but I think they're above the teenage threshold bc of that. Kinda fucked up to think about the timeline and house of hearth stuff though with this in mind

Freminet I'd say is around 16; 14 minimum. No thoughts for this just vibes. mmmmm idk when he was adopted into the house, if he's around 4-5 years younger than L+L, and let's say they entered the House when they were maybe 6-9 (my headcanons, is it now possible to piece together an accurate timeline of this from in-game lore??), and that was maybe 3-4 years after freminet entered, he probably was like 5-7 when he entered... wah frem............. poor child I'm giving him a hug (knowing that he's also a killing machine)

[sketching-shark]

What do you think of the show's portrayal of Wukong and Macaque's relationship now? I know before you've brought up the possibility that Wukong simply doesn't care about Macaque. But now we know that isn't true. Those two were basically living on FFM as one big happy monkey family. And now we know that abandoning Macaque is one Wukong's regrets. Not to mention all that stuff about Wukong promising to live forever on FFM together with Macaque, and Wukong imprisoning his brothers in the memory scroll. With this new context, I wanted to know what your viewpoint is on all this.

Spoilers for Monkie Kid & general kvetching below sdfewaf

I have to be honest anon their relationship as it currently stands is somewhat giving me whiplash on account of the fact that we've got Sun Wukong not caring like at all about Macaque exploding in season 1 (and not seeming to realize that him literally killing his past BFF would have influenced Macaque's hostility in any of their previous encounters) to him betraying the shadow simian apparently being one of the great regrets of his life, but I guess Macaque has with this new context been proven to be a little more consistent in that him being BFFs with the Monkey King before Sun Wukong betrayed him does explain his desire to tell anyone who will listen what a terrible person Sun Wukong is, and I guess it does provide a slight explanation for Macaque going out of his way to repeatedly beat the tar out of Qi Xiaotian for the crime of Associated With Sun Wukong. And this does confirm that the lego show decided that their versions of Sun Wukong and the Six-Eared Macaque would deviate completely from the og classic in favor of the currently popular trope of "wah we were besties but then we weren't because it turns out the 'hero' suuuuuuucks & also the 'villain' ends up warping his/her entire life around hating/getting back at the 'hero' but for some reason this is considered a good foundation for rekindling a relationship." Fully aware I'm an outlier here, but needless to say I'm not a fan aweageraw.

I guess at the end of the day I'm not really liking this change not simply because of my love for the og classic (and the really interesting implications about morality and identity that underlay the True & False Monkey King arc) but because I feel like this turn to a currently popular story type is really limiting these characters' potentials. It's like now their relationship is just another example of how Sun Wukong hurts literally everyone around him, while Macaque is once again confirmed to have basically nothing going for him outside of Sun Wukong's influence.

And yes, OF COURSE any retelling of an old story is going to deviate sometimes significantly from the work it's based on, even if and sometimes especially if it's a sequel, as with Monkie Kid. And when you're working with something like Journey to the West, while I still think some of the best adaptations are those that stick closer to the source material, such changes can be a good thing. I mean, I've joked enough how what with this being a children's show you wouldn't want to stick to a Sun Wukong who smashes people into meat patties! But at this point it almost feels like with fanon & increasingly canon insisting on these two being the Most Important Person to each other & also for Macaque to be the completely wronged party that their conflict just makes for one monkey that has 0 identity outside of the other while the other is little more than a selfish ass. I mean hell, it's even got to the point where the current writer of Monkie Kid felt compelled to go on twitter to drop the big spoiler that Sun Wukong is NOT Qi Xiaotian's bio dad, and while we can speculate why he did this it seems at least part of the reason was because a not insignificant amount of people were saying that on top of all his other screw-ups Sun Wukong is a deadbeat dad. But then again, why wouldn't they? Monkie Kid has been hammering it in time after time again that basically there isn't a single person, least of all the Six-Eared Macaque (the definite show/fandom meow-meow), that Sun Wukong hasn't hurt horribly from being impulsive and thoughtless and selfish, so why would anyone think differently in regard to his relationship to Qi Xiaotian? Add all of that to the uber-violent betrayal of all his brothers that he apparently didn't do anything about even millennia after the fact, and you can see why parts of this fandom have been primed to believe the worst about Sun Wukong. Really does make the popularity of scenarios of him rekindling his apparently deep past relationship with Macaque kind of baffling.

Of course, it does need to be acknowledged that even now we don't have the full story, and that Sun Wukong's failure to defeat the Jade Emperor (despite the Azure Lion K.O.ing him in one hit) was compounded by him being literally tortured into becoming heaven's lapdog and betraying his brothers. And who knows! The Monkey King's eyes glowing gold in all of the past scenes after he gets the headband could be a hint that it wasn't just torture through a massive headache but also some version of mind control, kind of like how his eyes glowed blue when he was being possessed by the Lady Bone Demon. But either way we still have no idea what Sun Wukong's perspective is about any of this. We only know that his brothers saw him surrendering to heaven and AGREEING to serve the Jade Emperor to save his own hide, and that even after the headband was taken off he did nothing to try to save them from the scroll. This isn't the full story, but that's what we have to work with.

ANYWAY, even with this context I still think that the best thing that could happen with lego Sun Wukong & Six-Eared Macaque is for Sun Wukong to find a way to fully embrace the fact that *lego Batman voice* just because you lose people doesn't mean you stop letting them in even though a lot of people won't ever forgive you and that's okay, and for the Six-Eared Macaque to find a way to start carving his own identity outside from being the guy violently obsessed with Sun Wukong.

[marumafan]

A Guide For Yuuram Fans

Hello fellow yuuram fan! Have you ever caught yourself thinking:

- Does Yuuri like Wolf? - No, but I mean like "Does he REALLY like Wolf?" - Am I getting invested just to find out it's clickbait? - Is Yuuri ever going to accept Wolf's feelings? - Does Yuuri like guys? - Will they get married or not?

You have questions? I have source material-backed answers!

The Basics

First, you need to understand that there's a variety of so-called canons. There's an anime canon, a manga canon, a drama cd canon, a musical canon, and then some other random things that you can't really call canon but exist: such as games, radio shows, tv stuff not written by the author, etc.

All of these canons and non-canon stuff are fine, and you can enjoy them as much as you want, but they're NOT the source material. Source material are only the novels and stories that have been written by Takabayashi-sensei (anything in written form and some dramas also written by her according to interviews).

Takabayashi-sensei is the author of the novels (the source material out of which everything else is derived), and her word is "god's word". By the way, she used this term to refer to herself in regards to the maruma series, I'm not fangirling, but using terminology she herself used.

Please understand that most of the material that isn't 'source material' has been altered in many ways to appeal to a 'larger audience' (manga and drama cds), or to make it palatable to the more homophobic society of the 2000s (in the case of the anime). When the anime began social media didn't exist. And when the anime ended (in 2009), social media was in its infancy. That's how long ago these media were adapted from source material.

The Fandom

The fandom has influenced the source material itself at times (such as Conrad fans throwing a hissy fit when he died in novel 5 to the point that Takabayashi-sensei had to resurrect him and change who the key was and many other plot points since then). Certain shippers still force sensei's hand to write fanservice here and there, and despite that, one thing has been clear from the beginning:

Takabayashi-sensei's 'main couple' is the one she got engaged back in novel 1: Yuuri and Wolf, the royal couple.

The Bias

Before we get into the thick of this, let's take a moment to understand bias. I'm sure that if you're reading this far into this you really like yuuram and don't have a problem with homosexuality, boys love, etc. (I use yuuram to mean the royal couple: Yuuri and Wolf, nothing to do with 'who's on top' or anything like that, just a name for the ship with these two characters).

Despite that, anyone reading this has been born and raised in a highly hetero-normative society where if a girl so much looks at a boy she must be into him, and vice-versa.

Who can forget the "He was a boy, She was a girl, Can I make it any more obvious" lyrics of the 2000s? Same applies to 'ships' all across the board.

If any, and I mean any 'boy-girl' relationship was 10% of what the yuuram relationship is, there wouldn't be a single doubt that those two are in love, dating, married, and living happily ever after.

But when it comes to Yuuri and Wolf it feels like pulling teeth to get people to accept that they’re in a relationship. I blame mostly the anime for including weird non-canon ideas into fans minds, as well as heteronormative societies.

Please don’t be this person:

Finally, please take a moment to read THIS as an introduction to my next section.

The Royal Couple

Begin by forgetting everything you consumed from other canons (TV, manga, fanfics) if you truly want to appreciate the Royal Couple in its source material form.

1) Romantic interest

The source material has made Yuuri very interested in Wolfram since the very beginning. Of course, at first, he was only interested in Wolfram's physical appearance. But the more he got to know Wolfram the more he cared about him and the less he cared about his physical appearance.

To get a full picture of how madly he falls for Wolf, you need to read the novels, but here are some excerpts to illustrate my point:

How it started:

Source: Novel 1-Chapter 1

"Even if our bodies are evenly matched, when I just glanced up, I've already been defeated. How can he be this beautiful! (どうよ、この美しさ！) At the same time, his head is emitting an aura. Although it's likely that it seemed that way because of his dazzling blond hair. His looks and voice are like an older Vienna chorus boy. His white skin seems transparent, and his irises are an emerald green that make me think of the bottom of a lake, and furthermore he doesn't have a split chin. He's an angel, definitely an angry angel. However, because he's in this place, he's probably a beautiful demon."

-> Yuuri writes a fucking sonnet in his head about Wolf's beauty when they meet.

Source: Novel 1-Chapter 10

 From the far side of the corridor, the blond with wavy hair comes running. The intense navy blue uniform suits him; the mazoku Prince Wolfram. I muttered in a sigh 'Although he's a man, he's this beautiful, Günter'.

-> Yuuri complains to Gunter that Wolf is too beautiful.

How it's going:

Source: Novel 17, Chapter 7

"Those words hurt me deeply inside my heart, a pain as though I was burnt in an instant. Because I had an experience like that, in which I nearly lost the most important person to me, just because he was wearing someone else’s clothes."

-> Yuuri calling Wolfram his most important person, code in the maruma series for person you're in love with.

Source:  Do you want an exorcism? 2 (post novel 17)

"And because of that rich VARIETY in the configuration, mazoku is more an ethnicity than a race.

You have from kotsuhizoku, kotsuchizoku, and bone fish who are living creatures, even though they are just bones, to the seasonal migrating tribe of half-humanoid, half-fish maidmer princesses. As for the humanoid ones, there are regular looking ones like me or Conrad, but there are also some who are super beautiful like Günter or Wolfram............. as for the last one, this is just a little bit of my own personal bias, but it makes no difference if he's beautiful or not."

-> Yuuri saying that the beauty he went head over heals in novel 1 for, doesn't matter to him anymore because of his 'personal bias'

Source: Misepan 2: (post novel 17, arguably the last story written near the release of the novels)

"If I was in trouble, and I was missing something important. And you had one that was exactly the same ...."

"I'd lend it to you, of course"

I thought about this, literally with my hands on his chest. In fact, with my hand, that was pressed against his chest, I could feel that the speed of my partner's and my heartbeat was the same. Anyone would get blood rushing to their brains when they're seriously thinking about something. When I could calm down a little, I let out a small sigh.

"Or rather, when it comes to things that I can give you, I would give you anything, Wolf."

-> Yuuri tells Wolfram he would give him anything in the world.

2) Sexual interest:

-There are several times when the source material implies that Yuuri and Wolf don't just sleep at night.

Again, please remember that in the novels Greta does not sleep with Yuuri and Wolfram. This was a TV addition to appease homophobic minds. In fact, in the novels, Yuuri forbade Greta from sleeping with them because she's 'too old'. Also source material Greta is rarely in Shin Makoku as she's studying abroad half the time.

Source:  Novel 2- Chapter10

"If I leave it up to you, it will never get settled."

"So, what kind of settlement do you want...?" My voice trails off as he sways his hips closer.

The former mazoku prince's face brightens and he pulls me down by the arm.

"Wah!"

"So you finally feel like settling things!?"

"I don't ~"

I'm scared to think about what sort of settlement this is. I'm not going to lose my life or anything, but I do feel like there's something else I'm going to lose. I desperately extract myself, fly into the bathroom and lock the door.

"Yuuri!"

"Wait wait wait! I gotta take a bath first, okay!? You don't wanna do it with a sweaty guy, right!?"

Do it...? I blanch at my own words.

-> Yuuri's subconscious is clearly working against him.XD It looks like Yuuri doesn't want to lose the v-card yet (he barely knows Wolf at this point), but he still says  to Wolf he should take a bath before they do it. Gambare, Yu-chan

Source: Novel 4 - Chapter 1

-> Yuuri and Wolfram have been sleeping together for 3 months at the beginning of novel 4! Please! If this was a guy and girl you wouldn't be wondering what they're doing! He has a lock on the door! He can keep Wolf out , order him out, but he never does. Don’t be the gray haired lady!

Source: Never Ending Poison Lady 1

- "As a measure against Wolfram, who somehow even on our trips sleeps in the same bed as I do, I made a wall with three pillows which also had cute egg shaped buttons. I tucked my shirt into my pants, so that my stomach wouldn't get cold. After all, in the mornings when I woke up, both my clothes and my sleeping posture were always preposterous."

-> Yuuri says he puts some pillows to avoid getting into the weird sleeping postures and getting his clothes messed up and shirt untucked, but he never thinks of 'not sleeping with Wolf'~

Source: Never Ending Poison Lady 1 (same book as last)

- "While watching Wolfram's cheeks get red in excitement, a surprised Josak swallowed the question" You even sleep together when you're out on a trip?".

-> Even Jozak (the spy who's supposed to know everything) seems surprised that they're "sleeping together all the time". They're clearly hiding it from people.

Source: Maru maru maruMA-  (book with series info and interviews)

Takabayashi-sensei replied to a question about Yuuri and Wolfram and what would happen once they get married... and she said it clearly: They'll have sex.

("Please answer my maruma question", maru maru maruMA)

Source: SS: Murakenzu 2018-11-13 (Paper 1 accompanying cd72) "Yeah, my father was talking about it, and she's still being called 'Gokumi', huh? At any rate, even if he was smiling way too much, his footsteps started to sound louder and faster as he got farther away. In that moment we thought: Eh? Is it that bad? Maybe they saw something while we were sleeping, or rather, maybe they took peeping photographs and want to do something bad with them."

"Rather than while you were sleeping, before going to sleep?"

"You mean like, when I do practice baseball swings naked or something?"

"Yeah, naked practice."

"Or maybe like, a picture of Wolf's butt when he's wearing his sexy negligee or something?"

"Ah! If a picture of it peeking out is released it would be bad, huh?"

"Then, I suddenly realized that "secret" might just be a hook. In other words, those trick titles that often appear in sports newspapers."

"Yes, yes."

-> Yuuri talks about Wolfram's butt showing as a common place and about himself being completely naked doing 'baseball practice' in the room with Wolf, whatever that may mean.

3) Illustrations

The 4 wedding pictures. Yuuri and Wolfram have been illustrated as married four times by the series' illustrator:

1  | 2  | 3 |  4 

And I like to add this fifth one (used in There's Valentine's Day in Shin Makoku!? DVD special), since in the black and white version, there's a comment by Takabayashi-sensei that says: "With this we've finally won against the anime team! ", meaning they beat them to the wedding. 

4) Terminology

Yuuri and Wolf are referred to in tweets by Takabayashi-sensei, GEG-san and Temari-sensei as the Royal Couple (ロイカプ). The author, editor and illustrator all know already what they are and that's why they call them that.

More information:

Please, please read the source material. But if you won't, at least read some of the analyses I've made to find out more about yuuram. Yuuram is here, it’s canon, and their ship has sailed a long time ago, in novel 1. They were always meant to end up together and they have. (”The dream ending” was how the author wanted yuuram to end, happily married). This isn't clickbait, or fanwork. The author likes the Royal couple and will see that they end up together no matter what.

Additional information:

Yuuram in novel: 1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |6 |7 |8 |9 |10 |11 |12 |13 |14 |15 |16 |17  

* Novel Analysis:  Crossheart and Love Letter

* Novel Analysis:  Misepan2

* Novel Analysis: Do you want an exorcism?

* Bias in KKM: English version of KKM

* Novel Analysis: Yuuri confessing to Wolf (w/quotes)

* Novel Analysis: Physical and mental development in mazoku

* Novel Analysis:  Yuuri and Wolfram’s daily routine (with quotes) 

* Novel facts: No mpreg in Shin Makoku (I get asked a lot)

[nadohunter]

Are you not a fan of kuro anymore? ):

I'm assuming this has to do with me posting... none of it and being pretty slow on Will to Live Comic Updates

Well...

Here's the thing. Kind... Kind of yes? Kind of no... but honestly... mostly yes....

I fully intend to finish my fancomic, bc I think at a certain point it will be far enough removed from Kuro's canon (I am planning a time-skip afterall) that it will kind of like... not be kuro??? But still using the characters. Idk. And I have a lot of ideas and new characters to introduce, I've done a lot of planning that shouldn't go to waste, and making a comic has GENUINELY been amazing for my growth as an artist AND I've met some amazing people because I dove into working on it.

But let me get a little honest here for a sec - I didn't post them here (for the most part) and only shared them with friends bc I didn't want to give them any attention (and so I could block them)- but I've gotten quite a few really nasty hateful messages over the past few months, including 'classic' ones telling me end myself and just generally being hateful - that started back when I had the 'audacity' to say shipping adults and minors is fucking gross and normalizing it has been used as an entry point for grooming real minors by predators.s also using that content to manipulate them). I suspect some of it might have been following a slight drama in a discord server? But I'm not confident enough to say for certain.

This has honestly been the worst kind of bile I've had thrown at me in a long time. It is worse than any other fandom I've been in. I remember this same vibe back when I was a little dumb 13 year old and I guess I was stupid enough to think things have changed. While I felt like maybe I could take it better at the very least... but while I'm incredibly grateful for the little community I've met because of will to live, my mental health and well being has taken the worst nose dive that it has in years, and the longer I was interacting with this fandom... the worse it got.

So frankly... yeah... I've kind of been chased off Kuro as a whole. Whenever I think about posting anything related to it I've started feeling anxious, I feel like I've gotten more paranoid for lack of a better word, and that's not a healthy mentality to be in. I don't necessarily want to go 'wah wah poor me', there's plenty of people that have it worse off... but I hit my limit. Honestly I tend to take on more than I can handle anyway usually without realizing it, and I often find myself taking on a rock role when honestly... I feel like these days at least I break easy. And I need to take note of that and take measures to take care of myself and remove myself from things that chip away at me.

I just want to be honest that yeah... I am a person, I do have silly things called emotions, and taking on that kind of shit is honestly exhausting and depressing no matter how hard I've been trying to keep myself distracted and ignore it. It still. Hurts.

There's a reason why there's so many reports on why sending people that kind of thing can cause very real... and sometimes fatal consequences. So also to anyone out there that thinks its okay to send people stuff like that... no... just... no.

I hope I don't cause like... a Streisand Effect by saying this... hopefully with a wall of text MOST ppl won't read it lol. But I think this needed to be said.

So yeah, I've always been a multifandom blog, but this is also another reason why my content has shifted towards a fandom that feels more lighthearted and genuinely makes me happy and feel good and a lot safer (you know... outside of the fact my brain has just decided this is the new hyperfixation fasklfjlkajskl)

Comic updates will be slow, but I will still work on them, I've done too much planning to let it go, and I love the community around it so much that I won't abandon them just because the kuro fandom in more broad terms has been shitty and I honestly have to step away from it for the sake of my wellbeing.

I think it will be rare if I ever draw any kuro fanart or write anything for it again that's non-comic related. So... hope that long winded essay answered your question that probably could have been summed up a lot quicker falksfjlkaj

[just-zenitsu]

oh that makes me curious... do you think zenitsu was thrown between orphanages and foster homes as a kid? or maybe he was in one until he ran away, either when he eloped or some time before and then lived on the street from then... or did he just live on the streets his whole childhood? ive been wondering this for days and its been on my mind for ages

*deep breath* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

first of all id like to say that i have like three fic ideas that explore his past (whether it focuses on how he grew up or not) BUT THANK U FOR INDULGING ME GUYS IM DEFINITELY RAMBLING ABT EACH OF THEM NOW… (this is a fucking monster tho. so its under read more)

* @anon THATS A WHOLE ASS MOOD TBH. i spend literal hours at night thinking abt whether he was in an orphanage or a street kid. ive wrote him living in the streets  and getting sent to an orphanage when he was caught stealing. whereas i ALSO have mindless scribbled notes of modern au where his parents left him in an orphanage but bc of bad experiences (and thats putting it lightly) he gets sent to different homes A LOT and eventually gets kicked out at some point, ILL GET TO THAT LATER IN A BIT

* SINCE im trying to NOT write a fic here ill just list down headcanons and stuff bc YEET!!!! and for the sake of convenience lets just say he was both sent to an orphanage and lived as a street kid :”DD

* lets talk abt hcs ive seen first,, jpn fandom mostly all seem to hc him as a street kid who lived by working on odd jobs and the sort. ofc more often than not he just gets the bare amount for payment and the people he works for arent really nice :(( they never have the nicest words to say and sometimes they even hit him. zen sometimes endures it bc its not like he has much of a choice in the end. other times he runs away crying and scared.

* he also doesnt really have a permanent home so he wanders a lot carrying what little stuff he owns (probably a few clothes or a worn-out futon or something)

* he’s taken advantage of a lot,, whether it’d be people tricking him into doing some work saying ‘he’ll be given something good in return’ or something equally vague. he usually wonders why their words sound so kind in comparison to their heartbeats that sound… off,, its not until he’s older that he gets an answer to that question

* bc he cant be picky i like to think that its not that hard for him to sleep somewhere uncomfortable. he also curls up a lot into a ball when he sleeps. he likes being cooped up into small spaces, it makes him feel safe and that no one can get him. 

* was initially very verbal about his hearing condition (something along the lines of saying ‘i heard you say that ____’ or ‘hey, do you hear that’ etc etc.) people think hes creepy and/or he’s lying most of the time. he eventually doesnt really wanna talk about it anymore once someone came this close to threatening to cut his ears off.

* i think we can say that zen lived in the city? its why he likes expensive things and the sort, and he has a lot of stock knowledge about how the city works and stuff like that, not to say that he’s ever really participated in it 

* as a child (and even as he got older) zenitsu’s favorite season is spring, autumn being a close second. he likes spring bc the air is fresh and he can find flowers in the outskirts of the city, surviving despite growing in cracked concrete. he makes little flower crowns out of them!

* he likes autumn bc the way the leaves change is pretty! but its only second to spring bc the flowers usually wilt by then and he gets cold :(

* he doesnt like winter simply because it is VERY cold. he dislikes summer the most tho bc the sound of literal thousands of cicadas give him a lot of headaches aaa 

* is very used to being hungry when he goes to sleep. he makes due with it as best as he can. one of his fondest memories is a frail old man who owns a sweet bun cart that gives him buns in exchange for a lower price than what he actually sells them for. on a day where he thinks the old man looks more tired and quiet than usual, zenitsu takes it upon himself to give him a flower crown. 

* unfortunately he never is able to give it, bc the next day, or days after that, zenitsu never sees him again.

* he has experience bein a sneaky little thief! its the reason on why he can easily take sweets without permission at the butterfly estate in canon hehe

* but its this very same reason that he gets sent to an orphanage, he gets caught! and bc he is a Literal Child. they send him to foster care woohoo

* (GOD THIS IS GETTING SO LONG BUT PLS DEAL WITH MY RAMBLING….)

* i dont have a clear idea on how zenitsu couldve been treated in an orphanage. but all in all, he’s just very grateful to be given some kind of semblance of a home and food

* he learned how to speak (barely) when he lived in the streets, but they teach the basic minimum and suddenly he’s learning all these sorts of things

* the people who took care of them arent the most affectionate, neither are the kids he lives with. zenitsu’s crying is often really looked down upon, he tries to stop but he can’t really help it. he’s not really anyones favorite person here

* there’s a small somewhat neglected garden in the orphanage’s backyard. he spends his time here when everyones playing and no one wants to play with him

* every time someone comes to adopt a kid he cries and begs for them to adopt him whenever they show a spark of interest towards him. it goes as bad as u think it does, they dont like that type of kid, and as such they assume everyone else is like that and leaves w/o taking anyone. zenitsu isnt allowed to eat dinner in these nights ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

* bc of the latter reason, kids gang up and bully him a lot. zenitsu tries to go along w it bc its the ONLY time anyone ever pays attention to him, but at the end of the day the only thing he gets is scratches and bruises from being pushed around and lots of words that hurt his heart

* (WAHH. OPK OK IM SORRY IM SAD NOW AINNFJKKJFDFHKH..)

* people think he’s a nuisance more or less. and then he gets sent to varied foster homes again and again bc he’s ‘difficult to deal with’ and going back to the first bullet point, he gets kicked out again wAH. at this point he might have been 15 and its when he starts trying to date girls, despite hearing everyone’s sounds of deceit and lies time and time again, he still goes through with it. and the rest is canon, 

OK. thats basically my brain vomit about zenitsu backstory. i am deceased and IM JUST PURELY FROTHING AT THE MOUTH EVERYTIME I THINK ABT HIM KDFKLGDFDGHF. thank u sm if u read this far, i appreciate it ;_______;

[popculturebuffet]

Star Vs the Forces of Evil Reviews: The Blood Moon Ball (1-15)

Welcome back.. though to most of you probably just joining me, welcome. I’ve been on a sorta hiatus from revewiing due to a combination of procrastination, depression, and being really busy. But I finally decided it was time to put boots to the ground and get back to doing what I love: Going on way too long about children’s television.  As such, with She Ra taking a bow a few weeks back and nailing it I got to thinking about another show that just so happened to end the year before: Star Vs the Forces of Evil. Part of it was very simple: She ra ended on a trriumphant note, making a well set up romance that had been it’s backbone canon, having a wonderful final battle, tons of payoff and a throughly happy ending that satisfied all involved and got tons of well earned coverage for having a deep, meaningful relationship between two lesbians finally coming together being the thing that saves the universe. It was freaking great.  Meanwhile a year prior Star Vs, after having been treated like toilet dinner by disney for no good reason by having it’s final season shoved out over a few sundays after a yearlong hiatus.. ended not with a bang, but with a wah wah trumpet. The series ending was unsatisfying, left more questions than answers, had the title character loose all likeablity and was in general miserable. I hadn’t been this pissed off at a finale since How I Met Your Mother and hadn’t seen a romance botched this badly in animation since “Merry Christmas Mordecai”. It was BADDDDD.  However it did make me want to go back to the series; To revisit the good, the bad and the just plain weird to remember what made me love the series, what made me want to throw my tv into a river before reminding myself “No dude, shit’s expensive. “, and what COULD have been, what SHOULD have been and what WASN’T. So i’ll be reviewing assorted episodes.. and the best place to start for me was with the introduction of one of the series best characters, as well as at the same time the start of a ship that was a good idea at first but would slowly take the series down with it as it started to fall apart. This is Blood Moon Ball. There will be blood, and a dead horse, after the cut. 

Before we get into the episode, one of the series most notable and honestly a damn good one, for those 2 of you not familiar with the series a quick refresher: Star VS is the story of Star Butterfly, a rebelious 14 year old princess from the Kingdom of Mewni. Mewni is your standard medievil fantasy kingdom.. but you know with wifi because they have magic compacts that work as phones and large sale acess to the multiverse. Their also ruled over by a long sucession of queens with great and terrible magic power, which is channeld through an increidbly powerful wand that’s passed down from generation to generation.  On her 14th birthday Star gets her turn with the wand.. and not long after sets everything on fire. Not wanting the kingdom to get blown up while Star figures out thing, her parents send her to Earth, and after bribing the school principal into enroling her, that’s not a joke on my part but an actual joke from the pilot, Star soon becomes an exchange student, boarding with the Diazes and soon becoming best friends with their teenage son Marco, a saftey obessed, shy talented martial artist. The two are frequently forced to beat up the hordes of Ludo, a spoiled monster king who wants the wand for himself. Things would get way darker... like in literally two seconds as the revelation star’s people stole mewni from the monsters and Star’s hatred being revealed to be partly racisim instead of standard hero and villian stuff. But that’s for future reviews. Today we have demons, internet commentors and ship tease to get to. So with the basic premise set up let’s finally get on with it.  We open on the arrival of my boy and yours, hopefully, Tom Lucitor. Tom is the prince of the underworld, basically exactly what it sounds like: fire, brimstone, demons spooky scary skeltons sending shivers up your spine. He’s also Star’s ex boyfriend. How they broke up is.. never really explained. While more details about their relationship, includign the fact Tom bought Star her iconic Devil Horn headband on their frist date, were revealed in the tie-in spellbook, and reveals that star’s arson that got her sent to mewni happened right after her and tom broke up, but never explains WHY.  My guess is since the series clearly frames the breakup as Tom’s fault in this episode and on his anger, they probably didn’t want a scene of him screaming his head off at star, either to keep him sympathetic or , more likely, because a scene of a teenage girl watching her boyfriend having a rage fueld breakdown that leads to htem breaking up would be MASSIVELY uncomfortable to watch and unlike some uncomfortable to watch scenes, wouldn’t tell us anything we didn’t know already. So unlike some later things they never pulled the trigger on this one at least makes sense.  Anywho, Tom arrives, parking in the handicap spot (a nice little gag as Star’s crush at the time Oskar points it out, while the dead skeletal horse pulling tom’s carriage turns around to look at him), and all the girls stop and stare.. including Janna, who would probably regret this moment once she realize tom was a bad boy because he’s socially awkard and has anger issues. Basically he’s Kylo Ren but his redemption dosen’t come straight out of JJ Abrhams ass.  Tom arrives at Star’s classroom, removes his shade and damn if he dosen’t have game.. but naturally showing up unnannaounced to her school (Not that TOm probably gets what school is as Mewni dosen’t have those, but still), basically assuming she’ll go out with him, after they had a messy breakup it dosen’t go well and we get a great cut of Star shoving tom back into his carriage.. we also get the best joke of the episode.  Star: So take your invitation and your fire and your dead horse and go.  Dead Horse: wait.. i’m dead? Sad but hilarious. Anyways it’s quickly conved to viewers like us that Tom has anger problems, but he insists to star he’s doing better: he has an anger managment counsler he takes with him places, Brian, voiced by the wonderful and weirdly in Disney’s pocket these days Stephen Root, and a bunny he pets. Before star can pet said bunny Marco , KARATE CHOPS TOM’S HAND OFF.. I just.. until this review I hadn’t sat back to consider just how freakishly strong that boy is , that he can just accidently chop off a hand. I mean tom may have weak joints or something but even after taking far worse blows later on his hands just.. don’t come off. Tom flies itnto a rage and it becomes clear that yeah, whatever happened, it was tom’s fault, and given the kind of rage she flies into, you can see why i’d assume the writers really didn’t want the audience to see him at his worst. I certainly don’t.  Star both worried and clearly having seen this sort of thing go bad before urges Marco to run but tom quickly recovers, both reuniting with his hand and having calmed down, and he and Marco are formally introduced, with star explaning the invite. We also get a great line with marco encouraging her “Star never go with a preadator to a second location”. This show was damn good at getting shit past the radar and i’m here for it. Anyways, Star isn’t quite sold despite tom clearly TRYING to get better, and Tom , in a really nice  move, gives her a bell and tiny hammer to summon his carriage with if she decides to go but leaves it up to her, not pressuring her or anything. For how selfish tom is initially.. this is a spark that shows h’es not a TERRIBLE person, just one who has some growing up to do. Marco however is not convinced and wants to go with, with Star teling him no because A) he wasn’t invited and it’d be rude to ask and B), she appricates the concerns but she can handle this, and implicily, despite her reckless nature knows this is a risk but knows if the night turns she can handle Tom, and that maybe he’s changed. Marco insists Tom can’t change.. which I find hilarious given his massive character arc to the point I had as eires ofessays planned, and one don about his growth before deciding to change formats to doing each ep of his journey instead every so often, to the point where two years on in the series timeline.. we’ve gone from Marco thinking Tom is a predator to...

But star decides to go and .. it’s clear from the subtext that while part of it is clear concern for star, Marco’s line about “it being fun here all the time” may mean that while he DOES have the best intentions.. part of him is jealousssssss. More on that in a bit.  For now we go to the underworld with the second best gag of the episode as Tom is toning down the spookiness to please star, and one of the guys in the picture at the top insults him... and when tom asks which one he says me. We sadly don’t get an answer but it’s small gags like this that made me want to do this episode by episode. Star arrives.. and things quickly go south. Tom tries giving her a corsage that’s a live spider and she rejects it. This admitely looks bad on both as Tom , living in you know, a hell dimenson probably sees it as a sweet gesture, and Star is refusing it.. but star does so POLITELY, and for understandable reasons, and Tom is still clearly pissed about it. Not long after, they line up for what’s essentially a prom photo.. and to get Carried by a bucket of unicorn blood, another nice little gag. Star refuses since well her best friend is a unicorn, one of them anyway, or at least it’s head.. and yes one of the species in this series multiverse is a bunch of headless unicorns. IT’s wonderful. And star also notices tom needs his anger managment bunny and is clearly pissed about it when, having dated her for several months, clearly should’ve KNOWN this might bother her.  That’s really tom’s problem here: He wants everything his way on his terms and only compromises if he thinks it’ll get star to do things with him. He’s made the PRETENSE of changing.. but he really dosen’t WANT to yet. He just wants her back and wants to change just enough to get her back so he can stop trying again. He also may , due to the underworld being diffrent and a place where being covered in a bucket of blood is a time honored tradition instead of the thing that turns a young mutant into a mass murderer, and yes I think a carrie x-men crossover would be the shit. He probably dosen’t GET that star wouldn’t like a spider corasge or bathing in her best friends blood.. but the problem isn’t that. that’s culture shock, that can be bridged with some talk.. the problem is tom dosen’t want to talk, he just wants her to do what he wants and things to be all cool and to get his way. Being a prince with two loving parents, we’ll meet them soon enough just not this episode, and tons of servants, I get the impressionf rom this and other episodes tom simply isn’t USED to not getting what he wants.He’s not USED to being told “No”, and thus has no way to deal with it healthily and isntead lashes out like an angry toddler. It dosen’t make his actions RIGHT but it does make them more understandable and makes it so Tom’s later growth FEELS natural depsite some of his sketchier actions beforehand. 

Back at Marco’s house, Marco is depressed eating nachos in a sumbrero.. which if I had corn chips, cheese and a sombrero would probably be my daily life right about now. It’s then we get a WEIRD dropped bit, as Marco hears a weird piratey voice telling him the blood moon is the moon for lovers and stuff. This is IMPLIED to be his monster arm, from an earlier episode.. but it’s.. never explained. Whatever it was going to be was dropped. Which would be fine if the blood moon itself and the end of this episode didn’t get a full explination in season 4 with the writers clearly going back to it to resolve the dangling thread.. but still not explaning the spooky voice. I mean what was it? Marco’s pirate ancestor? the sea captain from the simpsons? the monster arm? terry that bastard? Burt Macklin FBI? Old Man Withers the guy who runs the amusment park? Dirk Dastardely? A sentient payphone? The alps? Tell us damn you! Okay that tangent aside Marco decides to party crash at the advice of the ominous voice.. seriously is it Flintheart Glomgold? Nevermind. Back at the ball star is bonding with a small skeletal fish int he magma punch whent his random asshole comes up and whines for a good minute,if hilariously so, about the ball being changed.

He’s feels, looks and acts like the combination of those morons who were mad adora wasn’t “as hot” in the she ra reboot and was aged down to a teenager and the threw it on the ground guy.  After that interlude, tom shoos away a guy asking star to dance and the guy makes vauge comments about tom wanting his and star’s souls to be link while making kissy nosies. Before Tom can explain what he means by that, or at least lie about what he means by that, the blood moon is about the drop, the lights turn red and tom walks off because he wants the music to be perfect. And then Marco arrives in his really damn cool calevara outfit. Which fair play, I can see why, besides ship reasons, it gets a lot of art: it looks really damn neat.  Speaking of shipping.. it’s time. Star, not realizing it’s marco, dances with him.. quite romantically in fact. It’s here that the show conciously starts Shipping star and marco together. Starco is born, and the scnee is really good: romantic, well animated, jsut great all around. While the ship would .. end up done rather poorly and lead to some really terrible stuff at the time.. it wasn’t abd and already shipping them I loved this and even now, even knowing what woudl come later... it’s not a bad sequence. The only bad thing is what would come later, but I can’t fault the writers of THIS EP for what they would do in a LATER ONE. That’s just not fair. The ship wasn’t bad to start and the later arc springing from it in season 2 would be good.. it just quickly went in bad directions as the series went on , then disappeared, then how it finallyc ame about was just awful. But as much as I want to.. I can’t blame the sequence on this. It didn’t create rabid shippers or poor writing, it was just good and deserves to be praised as such.  Naturally tom takes this about as well as me when I found out HBO max wouldn’t be on roku at launch and prepares to murder Marco.. and promptly gets frozen by star who decides to wisely get out of there. It’s a ncie moment.. and  reminder that Star is crazy powerful, as is the wand itself, because as we’ll see later, tom is no slouch himself in the power department, but even if her attack was from behind, she still stopped him in one move.  So Star takes marco home and dresses him down for sneaking in, understandbly so: while it was an iffy situation, Star knew who she was dealing with and as shown at the end, was strong enough that tom was no threat to her, and given what we learn later, Tom’s parents would likely never let her come to real harm. For all her reckless decision making, Star thought this one out and Marco shoudl’ve repsectied that and didn’t for his own reasons. To his credit though he apologizes, Star admits to liking the dance, then the two speak in unison a few times, and we wont’ get followup on that till the last season! Roll credits. I don’t have the credits for this episode so enjoy this instead:

Final Thoughts: Blood Moon Ball is a spectacular ep. A good plot, a great introduction for tom, and great animation and humor really make the episode pop and it’s nice to get our first look at the underworld and tom himself. Tom would be back, and i’ll be back to tom eventually, but on it’s own the episode is really good and it’s standout sequence still holds up even as starco ended up in the sewer quality wise. All in all a great ep and a great starting point if you haven’t watched the show yet.  Coming Soon: A return to Star in the near future probably since Tom is great and his second ep deserves love too, as do several other star eps, as well as a look at the saluna episodes of the loud house because i’m in a gay mood for obvious reasons, and a loud house mood for less obvious reasons. Until then, feel free to hit me up with asks with suggestions or commisosns for future reviews, and until next time, later days. 

[queenlua]

radicarian said: how dumb are we talkin'

under a cut because the diehards can’t find me there

(note: um this got long, apparently i have a lot of art-criticism-y thoughts about this)

so there’s this subreddit that was created for “respectful” negative critiques of The Last Jedi, right?

and i find this amusing for a bunch of subtle inside-baseball reasons.

to dump my cards on the table:

* i keep Star Wars discourse at forty-foot-pole length, and

* while i really enjoyed The Last Jedi, and thought it did a lot of interesting things,

* it managed to attract a fanbase that seemed to love it for really dumb/cringe-y lefty/SJ reasons—if i see another “TLJ is about punching nazis” take i will scream, and yet

* of course the haters hated it for even dumber, bad-at-watching-movies reasons (“wah i don’t like that Luke was a depressed old dude wah” omfg y’all do you just want Ep4 re-released forever and ever—okay, yes, that’s what Ep7 was, you’ve made your point)

obviously this “respectful critique” subreddit is more palatable than like, idk, nerds screaming at Disney or whatever, but it embodies this fascinating faux-intellectual discourse that i see creep up time and time again on the internet.  i’m familiar with this subculture because these are totally the forums i would’ve hung out in when i was twelve, haha :P

scroll through the archives and you’ll find endless weird, obsessive, nitpicky critiques of the new movies.  people are salty because some obscure point of Force lore/mythos were rendered inconsistent by the new films, people are salty because Anakin’s sacrifice was “undermined” by the new baddies, and also Rey is a Mary Sue, blah blah...

and it feels like when you’re a kid, and you learn about the list of logical fallacies for the first time, and then spend the next several years pointing out the fallacies in every political debate, as if the problem with election cycles is the words ad hominem and non sequitur.  like, yeah, kinda?  but you are missing the forest for the trees, buddy.

similarly, so often what people assert is “bad writing” is this annoying memetic thing, where one dude launches their contrarian take on Why [X] Sucks, and maybe they’re even right that the piece feels unsatisfying, but often their critique amounts to a bunch of obnoxious nitpicks and checkboxes rather than a compelling narrative of what, on the whole, isn’t working.

but then a bunch of contrarian nerds latch onto that take, and parrot the same boring nitpicks back at each other forever, and because they’re being “contrarian”, they’re convinced that they’re Smarter Than Those Other People, and they end up forming a whole weird negging version of the fandom based around pseudo-intellectual gamesmanship.

and again: i get it.  i wrote my fuckin’ 80-page takedown of every single page of Eragon as a twelve-year-old, i get why people find it fun, i’ve engaged in my share of it over the years, but nowadays it just bores me.

in general, as i’ve gotten older, i increasingly cringe whenever someone describes something as “categorically bad game design” or “bad writing” or whatever—not because i think all writing is equally good; of course it isn’t.  but, (1) usually other adjectives are so much better for describing what exactly is happening—writing can be subdued, flat, frenetic, brash, stilted, hollow, uneven, etc, and these all tell you so much more than “dumb” or “stupid” or “illogical” or “bad”.  and (2) other descriptions often give a better sense of what was being attempted, so you can actually judge the piece by what it was aiming for—and sometimes, the answer is “this isn’t bad, it just wasn’t meant for you,” a thing that fans often find intolerable but i think is actually kind of neat.  (random example: ff13 was not flawed merely because it lacked open-world exploration.  it was trying to tell a different story and give a different experience, and you can have an interesting discussion about whether that experience works, but if you spent the whole time being pissed that it’s not ff7 then of course you’ll hate it.)  and finally (3) the rare stuff that i just find bad bad bad is usually not worth raging about at any particular length.   i don’t learn much or feel good about doing exhaustive takedowns of every Eragon-tier novel on the market; i haven’t even got enough time to read all the good stuff.

(as a sidebar, you’ll notice that very little of my engagement in fandom is via “meta” essays, and this is kind of why—while there’s lots of interesting and wonderful meta that i adore reading, i’m personally uncomfortable writing it, because so often it gets embroiled in these weird fanwarish arguments about “good writing” and i just disengage.

the nice thing about writing fanfic is that it often embeds my feelings about the piece i’m responding to—but in a way that isn’t an argument or a game, it’s a here’s how this worked for me & how it made me feel, and you can write both fanfic that’s furious at canon and fanfic that’s elated with canon while still having something compelling and interesting and new to say, i guess.)

for another perspective on it: one of my favorite takes on TLJ was from a friend of mine, who was pissed because to her, it felt half-assed.  it tried to do something bold, but flinched at the last moment: it didn’t go far enough to truly be a subversive weird arthouse film, nor did it nail any of the fun popcorn-cinema things you want from a blockbuster, and thus it failed at both.

that’s a fascinating perspective, one i don’t share but one i’m very glad to hear about.  but i assure you that that’s not a take you’ll ever see posted on that subreddit, because it’s just a totally different tenor than the obsessive, nitpicky arguments they’d rather have.

and i find the “forum debate” style of argument staggeringly emotionally tone-deaf at times—like, here’s someone pissed that Rey somehow didn’t try hard enough to redeem Kylo in TLJ and that’s what made it bad, and just, wow.  if you couldn’t hear—feel—the heartbreak in Rey’s voice when she says “please don’t go this way,” if it didn’t remind you of a time when someone let you down in the most brutal possible way, if you didn’t feel that moment of “oh, fuck, this isn’t what i thought it’d be”—then idk.  uncharitably, i’d say you’re just going out of your way to be annoyed over even the bits that really really worked—but at the very least we’re just not really relating to this piece in an emotionally compatible way at all and our conversation stops there.

anyway, yeah!!! tl;dr sometimes i pass the time by eating popcorn and watching nerds who assert they are Better Than Other Nerds doing “takedowns,” basically

[qqueenofhades]

I know you dont watch GoT anymore. And that Braime and Sansa are your favorites. But I know you've read the books and are obviously really interested in the story. And I was just wondering what your thoughts are on the whole Jon killing Dany thing? Is that something you can see happening in the books? And if it is do you think it'd be in the same context as the show did it?

Ahaha, welp. Just jumping right in there.

(Also, you never have to apologise for asking GOT/ASOIAF questions. I obviously have been a fan for 16 years and wrote fuckin’ TNR with its half-million-plus words, so I clearly do have Thoughts on the story/characters, especially with the bag of lukewarm cat vomit that was s8 of the show.)

I already answered this ask discussing how much I hated the Mad Queen Dany thing, both because a) it was horrifically badly handled and b) these mediocre misogynist douchegobblers have managed to outdo themselves in terms of the gross messages they’ve sent about women, after 8 seasons of that. (These are the same people who made Sansa say that she was grateful for her rapes and who claimed that Dany’s turn into madness was foreshadowed by her having a “chilly” reaction to the death of her abuser, Viserys, in s1, so…. make of that what you will.) I’m not saying that it was narratively impossible, especially since GRRM has been toying with the same thing in the books and has more than his own share of Male Author Syndrome. But at the start of 8x04, Dany is in Winterfell, perfectly sane, toasting Arya as hero of the battle. By the end of 8x06, she’s crazy, a war criminal, and dead, murdered by her boyfriend, because… well, something something plot reasons. Even if you didn’t like Dany or were rooting for her to go mad or whatever, that was wildly badly handled.

I personally think it would be pretty gross for GRRM to also go down the Mad Queen route, though at least if he does, we will have had Dany’s POV chapters beforehand and presumably something resembling a justification and a building narrative momentum toward it. But she also got stuck in Meereen for so long because by his own admission he didn’t know what to do with her there or how to get her out of the situation and moved onto Westeros, which remains, theoretically, her outstanding goal in the books. It would obviously not be outside the realm of possibility for this to happen, given GRRM’s focus on “grittiness” that the show took to max factor 5000. I would still find it reductive and trying to make a Clever Postmodern Point and etc if it happened in the books, because literally why invest us in a character this long, especially one who has tried so hard to overcome the circumstances of her past/to not be her father, and then just do exactly that? Obviously there would be elements of Shakespearean tragedy to it, and if done well it could be compelling, but I personally just have a different approach to fiction and what people want out of a story (especially one now as famous as GOT/ASOIAF and how universally betrayed everyone seems to feel by the ending). I’m not saying Dany’s ultimate ending needs to be sunshine and roses and getting what she wants, because often character arcs and resolutions become all the more powerful for being subverted and thwarted (think the “I said I wanted [x] but [y] was there instead” sort of endings). But whatever it is, it needs to be…. not that.

Also, Jon in both books and especially show has been the epitome of Mediocre White Man. I stopped watching in s4, but Kit Harington’s acting was so wooden and the writing for him was very much Standard Misunderstood Brooding Fantasy Hero that I could barely pay attention to his scenes. I find him somewhat more interesting in the books, though ADWD dragged for everyone and it was obvious GRRM was writing in circles. But everyone has noticed that especially in the show, Jon does absolutely bupkis. His ass is constantly saved by the women in his life, he makes an absolute hash of any power that he is given and doesn’t want it anyway, and his ultimate ending was…. going back to the Night’s Watch (as their idea of satisfying narrative storytelling is to literally put everyone back where they were in the very first episode, apparently). Never mind the fact that there’s no need for the Night’s Watch, but the point is, even the fact that Jon is Rhaegar and Lyanna’s son ended up being relevant for like half an episode. That has been one of the major plot points/secrets of the books (although not so much anymore) and it just…. fizzled out like a damp squib. Dany actually TRIED for multiple seasons to be a good ruler and to learn how to handle power and become a queen, so for her to have to be the one to die for Jon to once again do diddlysquat is… well, as I have said before, the misogyny leaps out. They ended up wasting so much potential and so many other things that were also foreshadowed (and far more convincingly than “wah wah she was gonna go evil!”). For this? So Jon can just go brood in the snow again? Cool.

Not to mention, I find it gross on principle that Dany’s boyfriend had to be the one to kill her, especially after rape/sexual violence/loss of agency was such a big part of her early-season storylines (and how horrifyingly and grossly that has been handled on the show overall). We’re obviously supposed to sympathize with Jon in this scenario and to feel that it is justified to “stop a tyrant” or whatever. Also, if the episode was going to be called “Queenslayer,” why the fuck wasn’t it Jaime fulfilling the valonqar prophecy, another thing they forgot about, and killing Cersei, at great personal grief/cost, to once more stop an insane monarch from burning down King’s Landing? But that, of course, would be actual character development/overall arc, and they preferred to also trash that by having Jaime “killed Aerys Targaryen literally to save half a million innocent people and lived with his reputation being destroyed ever after” Lannister unironically claim that he never cared about the lives of the innocent and only wanted Cersei. After she again tried to kill him and Tyrion like three days ago, not even to mention what they did to Brienne and with that whole arc, but I will have a ragestroke if I think about it too much. 

Basically, the ending wasn’t “bittersweet.” It was tragic, reductionist, ham-handed, hugely disappointing for everyone who put years of investment into these characters, and ended up in the amusing position of making Bran Stark the younger and more beautiful queen who comes to cast Cersei down. He became king because… reasons? Whatever? And he knows literally everything about everyone thanks to being the Three-Eyed Raven, so there’s no way that can go horribly wrong. He has basically done nothing except sit in a wheelchair and look creepy for several years now, his arc has never been remotely about being king, and Isaac Hempstead-Wright himself is apparently on record as saying he genuinely thought it was a joke script when he read it. This after both Emilia Clarke and Kit Harington broke down over learning what happened to their characters/Kit apparently realized it for the first time at the read-through and was horrified. Emilia already talked about wandering for five hours and having a crisis and calling her mom and asking to be talked off the ledge like….. fictional choices/characters completely aside, that’s a gross thing to do to your actors. I know they’re all proud of their work and they have apparently and understandably been defensive about the existence of the petition to rewrite s8, but they’ve all been pretty clear, while still being professional and supportive, that there is stuff that they’re just as much WTF about as we are.

Basically, as everyone keeps saying, the acting, cinematography, visual effects, music, etc was clearly up to as high a standard as ever, but was betrayed fundamentally and comprehensively by this god-awfully shit writing by a couple of hacks who clearly rushed the final season to get on to ruining working on Star Wars. They have also been on record about saying “you can’t do what the audience expects or it’ll get boring blah blah blah,” which is a profoundly flawed storytelling strategy if you’re paranoid and trying to outsmart your audience and do something that nobody has ever thought of because you’re an Intellectual Postmodern Commentator On Our Violent Society. If your audience can guess where a story is going, but are still surprised by major twists along the way that then make sense in hindsight, you’ve done your job. If you’re relying on grimdark and cramming in gimmicky plot twists and deus ex machinas and Shocking Moments rather than authentically developing your story, it’s going to bite you in the ass in a big way, as was just proven. 

Nobody expected a completely happy ending from GoT. But the fact that they went to such lengths, especially in s8, to build up characters/ships (Jonerys, Braime, Gendrya were all torched after major canon moments completely unexpected by fans, especially the latter two – why even include it unless to just be more Tragique, and Gendrya is the only one that has even a chance in the future since half of it didn’t end up idiotically dead) and then just wrecked all of it…. as I’ve said, good endings don’t need to be rainbows and unicorns and kittens. But if you’ve asked eight years of audience investment, there has to be something that makes it worth it and that doesn’t make everyone feel like they were duped and stupid to get involved in the first place. They have been beating the “it’s a hard world and bad things happen to the characters” drum for all they’re worth, but… it’s just bad. You can analyse and ask why the hell they did things and so forth, but it’s bad. At this rate, the show should have either ended after 8x03, or they should have taken the money HBO offered and done the proper 10 episodes and let Bryan Cogman write all of them. He was the only one who appeared to remotely give a shit about the characters, and since D&D wrote the last four episodes themselves, yeah, this disaster is on them.

Fortunately, I left the show years ago and have TNR and am used to ignoring their version of things. And I knew all along that they never really got the characters or the story. But I feel really bad for everyone who has had this thrown back in their face, and it seems like a communal disenchantment with this ending is going to enter the pop-culture consciousness on a possibly unprecedented level. So if GRRM does do the Mad Queen Dany killed by Jon in the books (though he has apparently called the show’s ending “traumatic”), I’ll probably still not like it. He has a chance to sell me it on/justify it to me narratively, which the show categorically failed to do. I don’t think I will, just because as I said, I don’t like anything about it, but yes.

Anyway. This is a long post already, and I probably have more to say still, but it’s pretty obvious I think it’s just really, really bad, and that’s about the essence of it.

[galadrieljones]

11 Questions

tagged by @buttsonthebeach. thanks so much!! ^_^

1. What image or images do you come back to over and over again in your writing?

Birds, orchards, night sky.

2. Which character’s point of view do you most enjoy writing? (OC or canon)

Not sure? I have really grown fond of writing men. I like writing the male POV. I think it’s an interesting study and use of empathy. 

3. What is the first piece of inspiration that led to the project you are working on now?

For that he may hold me by the hand, which is my BRAND new project--I have always liked the Arthur/Albert ship. I’ve always liked the bisexual Arthur headcanon. Rockstar has written a bisexual male protagonist before, so this headcanon is very arguable. Arthur, as a character, seems very emotionally unavailable throughout most of the game. I feel like all the times he comes closest to *actually* flirting with any character in-game, the times he seems most open and easy-going, most confident and in-control of his own domain, are spent with Albert. With Albert, Arthur comes alive a little bit, like he’s got some blood flowing through his veins. I guess I wanted to explore that further, and of course it’s mostly planned out, and it is looking like probably the most straight-up romantic love story I’ve ever written. I mean, Arthur offers to protect Albert multiple times. He uses those literal words: “I’ll protect you.” Albert flails. He calls Arthur a gentleman. “You, sir, are a gentleman,” he says. “You don’t know me very well,” says Arthur. “Well, you’re a gentleman to me,” says Albert. Arthur legit is blushing. Arthur carries his bag for him. ???? Arthur worries about him. Albert is genuinely in awe of Arthur’s relationship to and knowledge of nature. To me, Arthur feels genuinely under-appreciated by nearly every member of the gang. There are really no other characters who fawn over and admire Arthur the way Albert does. I think...I think Arthur could get into that.

4. What is one fic you have always wanted to write but haven’t gotten a chance to yet?

My Arlathan AU! I always talked about going back and writing the story of my Arlathan and the Great War--Solas and Mythal’s love story, what happened with Solas’s mother Leanathy, the love triangle with Solas, Ghilan’nain, and Mythal, Ghil’s betrayal, Solas smoking elfroot in the kitchens with Abelas and flirting with the servant girls, etc. etc. I want to write it! But I don’t! Think! I ever will! Wah.

5. What project has been the toughest for you to work on?

Probably my art! Ugh. With the new baby, it’s really fallen away. I still draw, but definitely not every day. With drawing, I really have to like, focus and try so hard. It’s not easy, and I get very fixated and it’s hard for me to move in and out of the space at a moment’s notice, which I sort of need to be able to do right now. But writing for me is easy. I can be writing while doing anything. I can be writing one minute and then tending to my kids in the next, and vice versa. It’s just an experience thing. So I’ve just been writing a lot. That’s been my main creative outlet, which is okay. It’s normal for me. But I miss drawing!! Of course starting another chapter fic probably isn’t going to help with that much lmfao.

6. Do you have any routines or habits for writing?

Probably just my new need to have my phone drafts. I so rarely just sit down to an empty page without prepared material anymore. I write so many scenes on my phone before I start typing in word. It’s like the lynchpin of my writing process lately.

7. How do you get to know more about each of your characters? Do their personalities and backstories tend to come to you immediately, or do you have to “spend some time” with them to figure that out?

Hmm. I think I need to spend some time with them. There are certain things that come to me immediately, and a lot of the time, it’s because those things just fit my aesthetic tendencies. So like, Arthur being able to count cards and cheat at blackjack, and his ability to do sleight of hand at the poker table--these things came to me immediately, just like they did with Solas (who also does sleight of hand and magic tricks and is very good at cards). That stuff all just comes from my husband, who is a good mathematician and super good at games like poker and blackjack. So like, most of my male characters are...that way lol.

Other things, like backstory-wise, it’s usually a mixture of spur of the moment and then well-thought-out stories. So for Mary Beth, she just seems like she’d be from Kansas. So, she’s from Kansas. Then I go searching for a good town for her to be from in like the 1870s when she would have been born. And I find a good town, and then that leads to something else about the backstory of the entire gang, etc. With Sene Lavellan, it took me a long time to invent her whole backstory and to realize she was a rich Dalish elf, and that this was central to her identity. BUT, I knew she was a loner and a hothead right away. So. Yeah. It’s a mix.

8. If you could only write one for the rest of your life - smut, angst, or fluff - what would you choose?

Probably fluff? I need joy.

9. What trope do you love to include in your writing?

I like characters who are protective of each other (it’s not a gendered thing--I like protective women as well as protective men). I like hurt/comfort a LOT. I like touch-starved characters easing themselves back into the throes of intimacy with partners who are patient. I like secret relationships. Fake relationships. Sorry this is multiple tropes I just realized the question didn’t include the plural lmfao

10. Do you write original works in additional to fandom works?

Yes? Theoretically? Lol. I have original stories that I work on from time to time. It used to be all I wrote. I wrote and published original stories before I got here. I miss it sometimes, but to be honest, the transition from fanfiction to original work is not simple. It’s very complicated. That’s not because fanfiction is easier. It’s because it’s a different genre. It’s an entirely different rhetorical situation. The conventions do not match up. Despite the common purpose of “storytelling,” the way you get there is another animal and it takes time and focus to make the change. If I make the change it will most likely be a longterm change.

11. What author’s style do you admire the most?

Probably Hemingway. I love a lot of different styles, but his particular brand of minimalism is, I think, the most taut and the most stylistically interesting to me.

I’ll tag @morgan-arthur @pikapeppa @a-shakespearean-in-paris @ellstersmash @idrelle-miocovani @thevikingwoman @bearly-tolerable @gentle-outlaw @goldenentertainment @jarbaje and @nyoom-bum. Your questions are under the cut <3

What is your favorite character from a video game and why?

When you look back at your middle/junior high school years, what is the first album, band, or musical act that comes to mind?

What makes you nostalgic?

What is your biggest pet peeve when it comes to tumblr, fandom, and/or publishing at AO3?

Describe the place where you are from in three sentences.

Which fandom(s) are you most active in right now? What is your current favorite ship from that fandom?

Where/to whom do you turn when you seek wisdom? 

Do you like sports? If you do, what’s your favorite sport to watch and/or play?

Have you ever been to Las Vegas?

What is your guilty pleasure TV show and why?

Do you believe in ghosts?

[memedokies]

(almost) every anon ask since fall 2016

if u havent noticed i am BAD at answering asks so here’s a Big Dump of most of the asks i’ve gotten in the past few months

ps; i’ve excluded pokemon suggestions bc i plan on getting to them at some point

Hihihi!!! What brushes do you use in fire alpaca??  i dont do much in firealpaca (esp not lately lol) but when i did use it a lot i just used the fill bucket and the standard/default brush to fill in gaps n such lol! i dont really draw in it, i used flash/adobe animate for the lineart and just fill in color in firealpaca :3

when did you start animating?   uhh when i was around 11 or 12 when i started digital art i guess? i just used photoshop for the longest time then got flash when i was like 15 or so

 How did you get flash?  i got the creative cloud dealie, its technically required for my school :—-0 

 hello!! what are you majoring in in vcu?? im thinking about going there for college  im in communication arts! omg cool lmk if u come here ill tell u where to get the best bubble tea

 how many fps do you use for your wiggly animations? i work at 24 fps in flash on twos but just end up using photoshop’s 0 second frame delay/ “no delay”?

 Hey love your animations! What do you animate with?  adobe animate 2017! (previously flash) 

You mentioned a YouTube channel but I can’t seem to find a link to it? Do you post processes on there? https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCovvoZxlQjFaIA7A3w_94Zw theres not much atm but i plan on posting a lot more, including process/speedpaints! 

i really like your art style gosh darn!!! everythings so fluid and stylized and nice aaa (also ur animations are goals) do u have any tips for someone still developing their artstyle????  WAH TYSM!!!!! compile art you already like and incorporate aspects from their styles into yours, BUT dont limit urself to one style! if u like something then try it out! do straight up copies (as PRACTICE, DONT CLAIM IT as your own ofc) of stuff you like to see how they work and what you’re clicking with. spending time on fundamentals is MEGA helpful so keep going back to that too! USE REFERENCES!!! draw …from ur soul…what makes u ..FEEL good

 how do you make that burn effect on your lineart? it makes it your pieces look sharper and even more interesting, it’s super cool!!  when i used to use flash for lineart and firealpaca for coloring a lot, setting the lineart layer on BURN with the coloring layer seeping a lil past the lineart would get this effect automatically 

(like on the whiskers. u can see it gets a brighter brown(?) and the warmer yellow on the ears)

but since then i’ve been using sai+photoshop more so i just do it manually! i’ll use this funny pic of me and my cat as an example lol

^i select the lineart/everything i want the funky color around

^slam that INCREMENT button a couple times

^make a new layer under the lineart

^fill that puppo with ur preferred color! something brighter works best, or even straight up white

that’ll give you something like this

then i open it in photoshop

and i mess with the pink line layer’s blending mode..color burn usually does the trick but depending on the Look you’re going for, saturation, multiply and overlay have some similar effects that look cool. 

i also usually get rid of the outermost edge of pink line that’s visible around the lineart, just so it looks a little cleaner? to do that you just select around your lineart, increment/expand selection, and delete/erase in the selection of the pink line layer

uhh yeah! lmk if anyone needs clarification on this, i have some other #TIPS on makin ur art look crusty and funky so…lemme know if you’re interested :—3

What do you use to animate? And, a more specific question, how do you make transparent animated gifs? adobe animate 2017! (previously flash) i export my animation from flash as a png sequence then open it in photoshop, where the background will be transparent and save it as a gif from there nyaaa

if anyone needs more clarification lmk and i’ll make a proper walkthrough :-0

 Hello!! Ur art is rlly pretty and so inspirational and nice to look at!! 💗💗 I was wonderin’ if ya had any tips on choosing shapes for characters? Like, when you draw shapes for a certain character, it looks rlly like it fits with the character’s personality n stuff!! ( e.g: Your Love Live! drawings!! The characters look so good in your style.) I’ve always admired how u did that n was hoping for some tips maybe?? Anyways, have a good day!!💛💖💟💜💝💞💖 HOOGA!! TYSM!!! and YEA you basically guessed it, i mainly just think about the character’s personality and translate that into a shape or Pheeling… 

especially for anime characters i look at the Very Subtle differences in the character’s original design..or possibly canon implications…for example kotori has slightly different eyes (it also says on her wiki page she has soft droopy eyes!) so i make sure to incorporate that Detãile

 anime wiki pages that have details like that is nice, for love live they have cute lil “charm points” which is really cool n helpful! listening to how a character is described in their world can give clues to what differentiates them which you can make more clear in your design

taking into account each characters context is good too, what they do/hobby/personality and how that could affect their appearance/posture/attitude

 YEAH its really fun to figure out certain characteristics and make it evident in their appearance! or. idk thats just what i do lol. hopefully this helps!

Have you ever seen the anime jojos bizarre adventure? alas i have not..i have some friends whom are into it so i’ll prob end up watching it sometime lol

sorry if this is obvious but!! are you the creator of Fork and Knife: Food Fighters?? your gif of fork is super cute btw!! yes i am!! wah tysm!!

Hey my little sister found your animation on an online art gallery and she really loved it! omg cool, thanks so much!!

Your style is so lovely!! OHG thanks!

your blog is so precious i love it a lot! your art is so cute too ^u^ waa thanks!!

Your art and animations art really cool! Keep up the good work! You are amazing!! aahg thank you!! :’333

 your art is fuckening amazing hh broe…tysm

 Oh my gee, I used to follow you on Deviant Art, and now here I am, finding you on accident. You’re still as talented as ever. =w= b hUIOpugh deviantart, my homeland..my origin.. thank you!!!

- O mg I love your art! 💕💕💕 thank you!! heart emojis!!! 💖💖💖

- your art and animations give me so much inspiration, thank you! everything about your style is so fun and it cheers me up omg this validates my top tier goal in life, im so glad!! thank you SO much!

Your style is so charming and adorable ;__; thank you!!

ur art is so gross in the best way possible this is the biggest compliment ive gotten thank u so much. i love making gross squishy awful drawings

IM SO HAPPY I FOUND YOU!!!! IVE BEEN LOOKING FOR YOU FOR AGES!!!!!!!!! I LIVE FOR YOUR BEAUTIFUL ART!!!!!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!! BHOLY CRAP THANK YOU!!!

 your art style is very cute ! 🌱 oohg thanks!! thanks for the little sprout emoji, i love her

GOOD ART!!!! good art good art good art EVERYWHERE I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!! OHHGG THANK YUO

how do ya draw such cutely its driving me nuts Nuts NUTS !!! I LOVE SPARKLES AND BRIGHT COLORS AND FUNNY ANIMALS..its my lifeblood..thank u.. 

You’re a really rad artist! I’m Glad there’s some cool artists that are local! Have a good time at VCU! oh wow thanks!! 

Ur shapes r so good thanks i LOVE a nice wholesome shape!

I rlly like ur art style my dude thanks!! 

hi! just wanted to let u know that you’re wonderful and i wish u well in everything u do this is making me bVERY HAPPY THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

 Im love You!! IM L OVE YIOU

that meowth boy is so good. i love him as he is my son THANK YUO i too, love meowth a Lot

 I love how your art is basically lines and curves, it’s very cute oo thanks! 

i love your art style so much!! it’s so zesty? i cant think of a better word to describe but its like. zesty & refreshing & rly rly cool !!! THATS A BEAUTIFUL ADJECTIVE I LOVE IT thank u so much!!!

You seem like you would watch Osomatsu-san. I could see you drawin dem bois in you hella rad art style. osomatsu was the wildest ride of my life. tho i dont think i could physically be able to sit down and draw them seriously ever… 

 Pls make more angry cat comics theyr so halarious plllls 👀 more are on the way!!!!!!

Have you done a meet the artist i sketched one when the meme was still poppin..is it too late lol? maybe i’ll still do it

[t--o--f--u-blog]

☼☼☼☼☼ also think tank a white lecturer using the n-word when quoting literature in a lecture? I think she used it once outside of quotation as well certainly not meant in a disrespectful way, just seems unnecessary

☐☐☐☐☐ better have a justification at least but if you just use it out of the blue it always seems like some attempt at provocation 'i can say this because my interests are purely academic'

☼☼☼☼☼ mmmmm we're reading uncle tom's cabin, so it's hard to avoid

☐☐☐☐☐ should only be quoted verbatim if absolutely necessary, if there's no alternative I think

☼☼☼☼☼ yeah seems like she could have avoided it pretty easily

☐☐☐☐☐ if she's making no acknowledgement of the word's relationship to her privilege, that's rly not good

☼☼☼☼☼ yeah she's older so there might just be an outdated perspective there 'I'm just quoting the text, it was anti-slavery so I'm fine' sort of mentality maybe?

☐☐☐☐☐ still she would know about the contemporary attitude to the word and she should at least mention that! ugh like it doesn't sound malicious or super super racist, but eh

☼☼☼☼☼ Yeah I feel iffffy about it

☐☐☐☐☐ should mention it!

☼☼☼☼☼ Trying to work out if I should send email and if so how to word it

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ be interesting to actually properly discuss it

☐☐☐☐☐ yep

☍☍☍☍☍ heck I’d be interested to know more of a history of the word basically teach properly why its offensive

☼☼☼☼☼ Yeah, I might bring it up in the tutorial different teacher, but maybe good discussion

☐☐☐☐☐ mm that seems appropriate i'd love to hear how that goes

☍☍☍☍☍ uhhh there was someone who used it at Bar Oussou  the host reallllly should’ve said something and I normally would but just too tired for confrontation

☼☼☼☼☼ Yeah ☐☐☐☐☐ was telling me Sounded very cringe

☐☐☐☐☐ v unfortunate most disappointed in yhe host tbh

☐☐☐☐☐ he maybe had a old-worldy attitude to it and didn't mind or was too cowardly lol which do u think?

☍☍☍☍☍ I think he thought it was in the context of the poem she didn’t use it to degrade someone directly, but the word itself is degrading

☐☐☐☐☐ ugh but the poem is in the context of fuckin oussou yep ppl need to have a think before using words

☍☍☍☍☍ I just think its great to have a stage to do emotional work, but it can cross a line into normalising shitty white behaviour

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ I went to a coloured school so I can’t b racist wah wah wah

☐☐☐☐☐ and you have to consider your audience if your rant is dehumanising or brushes aside/causes suffering u gotta reconsider felt pretty ashamed on behalf of bartender/various black audience members not saying that dumb white shit would be acceptable with a different audience, but her obliviousness was kinda astounding

☼☼☼☼☼ wow yeah cringefest

☍☍☍☍☍ lol spoken word scene as a whole can b so lame haha rings true to why I/we left

☐☐☐☐☐ mm so macho! that's what I liked about talkbox some sensitivity there, gentleness

☍☍☍☍☍ still, I just wish people read more lok *lol

☐☐☐☐☐ yep I wish I read more

☍☍☍☍☍ like the stylistic range is generally pretty lame

☐☐☐☐☐ I guess that's why anyone reads mmm

☍☍☍☍☍ I wish I read more too

☐☐☐☐☐ hahahaha

☼☼☼☼☼ :')

☍☍☍☍☍ don’t mean to shit on everyon, I just think the scene as a whole and the conception of poetry is lacklustre - it doesn’t seem like the time for poetry, sometimes

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ ppl too distracted by netflix uwu sounds like phones but too much

☐☐☐☐☐ doesn't seem like the time for art, sometimes! hahhh

☍☍☍☍☍ its definitely a time for music

☼☼☼☼☼ I think there's a place for poetry It's just raps and memes

☍☍☍☍☍ yeh but I play dat long game there might not b a place now but I’mma fkn make one whether you like it or not lol

☼☼☼☼☼ Oh yeah fair go 4 it

☐☐☐☐☐ loll

☍☍☍☍☍ I just mean that I think 'poetry' has evolved into other forms, and now the traditional form is struggling to find a place I mean does anyone pay attention to Victorian satirical cartoons? I don’t I think it’s also tho that the low brow is more apparent in the moment, the high brow more apparent from a distance the shit sinks, basically

☼☼☼☼☼ elaborate?

☍☍☍☍☍ time brings forward higher brow material while a lot of lower brow stuff falls back or like there’s an art for getting through your days, and there’s an art for elaborate long form spiritual liberation

☼☼☼☼☼ so u don't mind about a lack of audience now if your work has staying power?

☍☍☍☍☍ different works have different digestion time and yes that is what I’m saying

☼☼☼☼☼ hmmmmmmm

☍☍☍☍☍ hmmmmmmmm?

☐☐☐☐☐ personally I don't know whether I'm prioritising the reception of my work or its value to me right now i feel poetry/art in general are useful tools for thinking about the world useful philosophical tools i guess and idk whether i'm learning for the sake of my own knowledge/making 'better' art or learning so what I put out into the world is better received I suppose the two aren't mutually exclusive but yeah - feeling fairly indifferent to the idea of creating work that will persist right now part of me feels more comfortable with being lost forever lol or at least that I should become comfortable with that, bc that is what will happen inevitably

☍☍☍☍☍ I just think in this atmosphere of complete denial of the arts as an important component of society, as well as the stigmatisation of ritual and other mystical practices that used to house what we now might describe as an artist, its important that we follow our intuition rather than give in to a system that routinely prevents us having access to basic resources like I want to be there for whoever is there when this period comes to end and those peoples are looking for anything to rudder them, whether or not I’m alive

☐☐☐☐☐ you want to add to the cultural record?

☍☍☍☍☍ I want provide a map for future generations is how I would put it

☐☐☐☐☐ mm how do you feel one can ensure the persistence of their own work? or are you just hoping it'll be around for others I suppose whether or not anything lasts is out of ur control past a certain point

☍☍☍☍☍ for one I make an effort to give away a lot of work

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ I also store it all and make sure that that stockpile is kept w care but I also think there’s something to be said that I try and operate within many pre-existing canons I also it’s important to use the more meme-y, short stay work to bring attention to the slower works yeah, re: canons, like tanka and before that wakka as poetic forms stem back as far as a thousand years - perhaps more by putting myself in conversation with the ancients... idk it feels a bit like entering a cultural refrigerator haha

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ sometimes I find it better to see my individual works as modules that make up a whole more prescient than its parts (Morton lolz) soo... maybe my work won’t carry the same weight until I finish, so to speak who knowsss but this how I think about it lol

☐☐☐☐☐ best to try and contribute something I spose rather than do nothing w ur resources

☍☍☍☍☍ I’m weird with this shit u don’t have to be

☐☐☐☐☐ mm it seems fairly simple to me and not that weird

☍☍☍☍☍ not everyone should spend their life tending their gravestone it’s a job for a particular type of person, and I am it

☐☐☐☐☐ but in a sense everyone does anyway everyone does things with the future in mind or without it in mind I suppose

☐☐☐☐☐ and i guess that influences what you leave when you die eheh, whether you do it consciously or unconsciously

☍☍☍☍☍ I just am particularly stubborn that I have something to offer - I think its partially a result of being denied that a lot in school, I found other ways to have social bonds that were more... non linear bonds with past peoples, and inadvertently bonds with future people

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ I find it frustrating that its seen as arrogant to suggest your work should be read after you die - if anything its remarkably humble as I'm acknowledging that I will never properly see the fruits of my labour it's a ridiculously isolating position to find oneself in, where your best friends - books, music, content - have no form of human intimacy with you and completely defy all survivalistic, lizard-brain humanity plus you're just on a total different dimension from most people you meet

☐☐☐☐☐ mm you're in a very specific position here

☍☍☍☍☍ lol goodluck catching up ☼☼☼☼☼

☼☼☼☼☼ unrelated btw

(☼☼☼☼☼ posts a meme in chat)

☍☍☍☍☍ see y'all @ da rally (in reference to the meme)

☐☐☐☐☐ where and when is this? oh oops thought you meant a real one

☼☼☼☼☼ hahaha

☍☍☍☍☍ xD

☼☼☼☼☼ structurally is the meme ok ? took the photo the other day, and just added the text.

☍☍☍☍☍ yes are u going to weigh in on the conversation tho lol

☼☼☼☼☼ nah not really

☍☍☍☍☍ meme fine

☼☼☼☼☼ I have so little to add

☍☍☍☍☍ well hm why make memes? why not write novel? do memes have staying power?

☐☐☐☐☐ it's a question of what timescale is important to you at any given time maybe

☍☍☍☍☍ oh absolutely - not trying to infer a hierarchy here, I just think there are different approaches for different problems

☐☐☐☐☐ sometimes I'll say something to someone so they'll remember it for tomorrow, sometimes I'll say something to someone and hope they'll remember forever lol mm I don't think I care about staying power that much

☐☐☐☐☐ memes have such a short lifetime, they're like cultural mayflies haha

☼☼☼☼☼ Yeah defs

☍☍☍☍☍ why tho lol

☼☼☼☼☼ Because the art itself can date while still inspiring change

☍☍☍☍☍ yeah so using it pragmatically like a single use tissue

☼☼☼☼☼ If you create something short lived, it (with the help of other artists producing similar work) is able to push art and society in a specific direction The butterfly effect I guess

☍☍☍☍☍ it's true that you have more effect in the current conversation

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ but that conversation draws intensively on a language formed by the ancients so the two are dependent on each other, a back and forth

☐☐☐☐☐ and that's dependent on their work's longevity?

☍☍☍☍☍ not following ur question

☐☐☐☐☐ not following your point haha hmm

☼☼☼☼☼ so you're suggesting a works longevity is crucial in that it helps reinforce and update the ancient language in which short term work of the future will be influenced by?

☐☐☐☐☐ mm also - what if of all the work you make, it's only a meme that survives the passage of time?

☍☍☍☍☍ basically... like you're just reiterating points that have been made more in depth in 'higher' brow culture - that's definitely how I feel when writing raps

☐☐☐☐☐ like Roman graffiti surviving on the walls or whatever

☍☍☍☍☍ did you a hear copy of the I Ching, the Chinese numerology classic more than a thousand years old, was found in the 70s and had a heap more sections and a different order? effectively completely changing the understanding of the I Ching gotta get those nice lead storage chambers ayyyyy ahahaha it was found buried in a coffin, obvs haha

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ a lot of Chinese philosophers only exist in so much as someone else described them

☼☼☼☼☼ But what does that changing of contexts of that piece actually mean for us? Is updated Ching from the coffin helping us in any way?

☍☍☍☍☍ I think for me finding the I Ching and looking over it is like a person in a thousand years finding a functional iPhone it gives great insight into human impulses regardless of time and offers a way of writing the past a new, which in turn presents a new future (thinking of the cowboy article you sent me) reconceptualizing the past IS the future look at 'Make America Great Again' or calls to restore the caliphate both are founded on histories that have more to do with our current state than the actual happenings of the past

☼☼☼☼☼ I do see where you're coming from I like the idea that it's important to preserve our work for understand the past better And I hope that someone in the future will have a clearer understanding of our time through your well preserved works But what fucking future is it

☍☍☍☍☍ haha but like looking back we see people been asking that for a veeery long time I get it seems on a new scale but we're on a new scale too

☼☼☼☼☼ It does seem that yes Also if we do survive and keep on teching on

☍☍☍☍☍ I'm for an integration of the human/natural binary where we properly acknowledge our mutual codependency, the earth and humanity that is

☼☼☼☼☼ Are we even going to be translatable? Is the functioning iPhone found by the future person going to even be able to be translated? Or will it be meaningless because everyone is already part of the grid

☍☍☍☍☍ where artificially effecting the climate for the benefit of 'nature' isn't seen as strange but completely akin to Aboriginal burn back practices

☐☐☐☐☐ i guess it's productive to hope that it will be translatable

☍☍☍☍☍ we've always interfered in the running of nature

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ ehhh idk we translated fucking hieroglyphics

☼☼☼☼☼ Or future tech can look into the past and someone is watching our lives as we type this now, constantly being understood through our context in a way we can't comprehend through our recording processes shrugs

☍☍☍☍☍ I mean yeah, imagine if the internet was even vaguely archived

☼☼☼☼☼ You probably have a better understanding of how the future will pan out than I do tho

☍☍☍☍☍ even if 0.1 % was kept, it would be a massive resource

☼☼☼☼☼ No sass intended there, I'm sincere

☍☍☍☍☍ lol idk I just try to see a bigger picture and it keeps me calm remember me old saying? we survived the plague and nukes lol

☼☼☼☼☼ I just don't see the issue with creating short term work, especially if it is preserved

☍☍☍☍☍ oh neither do I

☼☼☼☼☼ Like a meme may have more impact than a novel rn

☐☐☐☐☐ well it could be argued that we're yet to survive nukes but I see your point impact on various timescales

☼☼☼☼☼ I've heard the plague make be thinking of making a comeback too haha

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☍☍☍☍☍ oh duh peasantry is fully hip rn

☐☐☐☐☐ but like

☍☍☍☍☍ bring back the boils, they look great with my Balenciaga sneakers

☐☐☐☐☐ lol bubonic chic

☼☼☼☼☼ Pretty close to heroin chic tbh haha

☍☍☍☍☍ not jking that was tb

☐☐☐☐☐ but like, I don't find a huge amount of solace in the fact that we survived the plague

☍☍☍☍☍ "The Victorians romanticized the disease and the effects it caused in the gradual build to death. For decades, many beauty standards emulated or highlighted these effects. And as scientists gained greater understanding of the disease and how it was spread, the disease continued to keep its hold on fashion. and the severity of the corsets was known to harm the lungs in such a way that would increase the likelihood of transmission LOOOL

☐☐☐☐☐ mm Balenciaga look out idk it's a question of what capacity we survive in

☼☼☼☼☼ lollllll

☐☐☐☐☐ quite depressing to think about

☍☍☍☍☍ eating disorders have a pretense

☐☐☐☐☐ what if ecocide leaves a few insular eco fascist regimes who gradually diminish over centuries always engaged in pointless wars of attrition with one another lol

☍☍☍☍☍ I mean you could probably say the same thing of colonial regimes now

☐☐☐☐☐ just because we can survive, doesn't mean my outlook should b at all rosy :((

☍☍☍☍☍ point is its a big ol' world that has plenty of room for pain AND love any future pain you think is imminent probably already is happening, and nonetheless breakfast tasted good this morning

☼☼☼☼☼ 'The hipster middle class would dress with raggedy beards and large jackets and refuse to use deodorant, perhaps to reflect the look of people suffering from homelessness at the time. It is suspected that this made them less likely to be hired, and therefore more likely to become homeless themselves.'  ☍☍☍☍☍ ahahaha

☐☐☐☐☐ mm that's true hahhh

☼☼☼☼☼ Planning on making this into a full essay. Might not be popular now, but I think it has staying power? Soz for shitposting haha

☍☍☍☍☍ I was talking with ☲☲☲☲☲ a while back, and something struck me - she said, "I never thought this age would have its own fleet of particular medical conditions." (or something like that lol, translated via my nerd brain)

☼☼☼☼☼ Yeah that didn't quite sound like her But that sentiment is great

☍☍☍☍☍ 'fleet'

☼☼☼☼☼ In that ofc there is, but also wow yeah ofc!

☐☐☐☐☐ mmm hahh these conversations should be recorded so we can all think about em without scrolling up endlessly

☼☼☼☼☼ I do like the idea of people reading these works in the future tho

☐☐☐☐☐ and also so that they can be preserved for 10,000+ years of course

☼☼☼☼☼ In the same way we read the letters sent between dead artists now

☐☐☐☐☐ mm very true

☍☍☍☍☍ mmm

☐☐☐☐☐ messenger is not a particularly stable storage medium and also is more vulnerable to third party scrutiny although the fact we're reading artists letters now means that medium is also pretty fucking vulnerable to scrutiny lol

☍☍☍☍☍ I fucking found the word! (sorry was searching for it so hard) Neurasthenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurasthenia

☼☼☼☼☼ Americanitis lol

☍☍☍☍☍ uhh the page doesn't rly talk about this, but its like a condition of over-working effectively, and people would try and get prescribed the pills to treat it as a way of signalling they were a dedicated worker its total hokey

☐☐☐☐☐ wow yeah you mentioned this a while back

☼☼☼☼☼ oh I've heard a similar thing in Japan were workers will pretend to fall asleep at their desks to show how hard they're working No idea the trust behind it tho

☍☍☍☍☍ to this day, "In Japan, shinkei-suijaku is treated with Morita therapy involving mandatory rest and isolation, followed by progressively more difficult work, and a resumption of a previous social role. The diagnosis is sometimes used as a disguise for serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and mood disorders." a dignified mental illness uwu none of that lower class shit I'm a classy fuck with money, I don't get the same mental conditions as the poor lolol reminds me of now: I don't have shitty parents, I just have adhd (not to deligitimise all uses of adhd, just over diagnosed)

☼☼☼☼☼ mmmmm i feel u yes this has been a wild ride

☍☍☍☍☍ yes I’m leaving to get late lunch uwu have a good day in this cosmic spider web lololol

☼☼☼☼☼ :')

☍☍☍☍☍ Like the burning of this charcoal fire, our years too will soon expire Kobayashi Issa listening to Krista Tippet talk with Maria Popova, this particular phrase resonated with our conversation: we live in a world where disruption over-fetishised; we need cultural stewardship to help along new waves of disruption

☼☼☼☼☼ How would u define cultural stewardship in a practical sense?

☍☍☍☍☍ caring for the legacy of those past as a means of refreshing their insight for a new age a very straightforward example would b the importance of new translations, in this regard - as our understanding and depth of connection to Japanese society has deepened, so too have our translations dusting off the books so to speak in some sense I see that in our music too or reappropriating to a new context

☼☼☼☼☼ Well remasters are a time terry literal example Fuck

☍☍☍☍☍ time terry

☼☼☼☼☼ Pretty* not time terry lol

☼☼☼☼☼ lime berry yeah exactly

☼☼☼☼☼ Slime Jerry

☍☍☍☍☍ I mean rereleasing is an obvs example mhm but more abstract examples are how I’ve exported into both your brains Bridle/Steyerl/Haraway via conversation and art lolol I’m helping it move from one place to another same w Zappa lol

☐☐☐☐☐ also - looking after artist friends being generous I feel these are acts of pre-emptive cultural stewardship

☍☍☍☍☍ haha yeah definitely different time scales it could function on

☐☐☐☐☐ looking after and maintain communities

☍☍☍☍☍ hosting open mics lol helping teach ppl poetry lollll

☐☐☐☐☐ not allowing hate speech to creep into open mics lol

☼☼☼☼☼ Truuuuu Or anywhere for that matter

☐☐☐☐☐ not becoming so dusty that you actually have a detrimental impact on cultural progression

☍☍☍☍☍ I think religions only exist in so far as they have active practitioners

☐☐☐☐☐ mm

☼☼☼☼☼ Tru

☍☍☍☍☍ I think my sense is, in religion, this same argument plays out with orthodoxy versus mysticism Maintenance of buildings is in there too for religion People being assigned paid positions as the keepers and givers of religious knowledge oh yeah thinking a lot here of Shanzai, ☐☐☐☐☐, and the idea of an object as a lived practice

☐☐☐☐☐ when home I'm gonna do my best to archive this conversation mmm

☍☍☍☍☍ you’re going to steward our conversation bout stewardship ...

☐☐☐☐☐ this is all going in

☍☍☍☍☍ ...the tv where I am says “The comedian getting behind ‘Know Thy Nuts’” and there are big walnuts on the screen

☐☐☐☐☐ ???????

☍☍☍☍☍ “I didn’t realise chemotherapy would be such great comedic material!”

☐☐☐☐☐ ¿¿¿¿¿¿

☼☼☼☼☼ Huhhhh

☍☍☍☍☍ lol highly recommend https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/on-being-with-krista-tippett/id150892556?mt=2&i=1000429408054https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/on-being-with-krista-tippett/id150892556?mt=2&i=1000429408054

[stuckinthekookiejar]

Therapy pt 1

Pt. 1 || Pt. 2 (final)

REQUEST: Helloo can i request for a story (it can be a one shot, a drabble or a long chapter ff its up to you) of AU! Semi canon Yoongi falls in love with his psychiatric that helped him going through his dark days? If i can add an addition he started to fall in love w/her the first time she helped him cure his mental health but he didn't have the gut to admit it at that time and he was busy being a trainee to even have a relationship so he kept the feeling for himself only. and like 11 years later they accidentally met and he is now laid back and able to manage a relationship and the girl is having trouble forgetting her ex because he cheat on her on their 1000days anniv and it was d-2 b4 her mother died so it's her that feeling down now but she manage to be strong in front of people. and yoongi is the one who helps her going through all this.

Yoongi x Reader

Genre: Angst/Fluff

Summary: You were there for him when he needed you, but now it seemed like the tables have turned.

Word Count: 7187

“Oh, Jungkooookie-aaaah...ish t-that you?” Taehyung stumbled out of the bar with Jungkook and Jimin who struggled to guide him through the door mostly because he was flailing his arms about,

“Hyung watch it!” The older was flushed, his boxy smile overtook his face. He turned to Jimin,

“Jiminie! Aww, cute Jiminie...you’re so schmol...and c-cute...” Taehyung pinched Jimin’s cheek and Jungkook was struggling to stifle back his laughter. Jimin, on the other hand, was very irritated,

“Who was it that allowed Taehyung to drink today, huh?” 

Jin managed to hail a cab for the maknae line, “The stairs are steep so you guys make sure to get him to your apartment safely.”  They nodded as they stuffed the drunken boy into the car. 

Hoseok laughed, “Wah, how could he get so drunk...he’s not even the one going into the military. Right, Namjoon?”

“Ah, don’t worry too much. If Jin-hyung could survive training, then you guys will be just fine.” Yoongi assured. 

“YAH! WHAT IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?” The eldest’s ears grew red as he shook his head in disbelief prompting the other three to burst out into laughter. 

“It’s such a shame, though,” Hoseok said with sad eyes, “It was just a few days ago that Yoongi-hyung came back from service and now Namjoon and I have to leave...I wish we could’ve at least have had some time to record something for our fans as a group.”

Another cab was hailed and Jin, Namjoon, and Hoseok hopped in. Only Yoongi chose to remain outside.

“Hyung?” Namjoon asked, “Aren’t you coming?”

“Nah, I think I’m going to do some stuff at the studio. You guys go home. You and Hoseok will need your rest for tomorrow.” 

“Don’t go home too late,” Jin nagged.

“Hyung, I’m not a child you know.”

“Yah, just because we don’t live in the same apartment anymore doesn’t mean I have to stop worrying about you. Besides, we’re neighbors. Technically we do still live under the same roof.”

“Yeah, yeah just go.”  Yoongi waved for them to leave. He stared at the back of the car and watched as Hoseok stuck his head out the window, smiling and waving. With sad eyes, Yoongi waved back. That moment would probably be the last time he’d see his friend for next two years. 

Once the taxi left his vision, Yoongi turned around and walked down the empty street with his hands stuffed in his pockets. These empty streets allowed him to walk freely without the coverage of a mask, and Yoongi basked in the feeling of complete freedom. It wasn’t every day that he got the opportunity to take walks like this without being bombarded with flashing cameras. Fans even loitered around the police station he was placed in, not to mention the police chief asking for many autographs for his nieces and nephews.

His breath came out in the form of a miniature cloud as he let out a heavy breath and closed his eyes. This freedom he felt unlocked a door in his mind letting memories of the past play again and again like a movie. The days of being a trainee were brought back. Although the workload had pretty much remained the same, he did have time to be alone back then. He could venture out into busy streets without the use of a mask. He could sit out by the Han River all day and compose without attracting a crowd. He could....he could see you. You were nothing but a memory to him now, a beautiful one. 

“Hey, lady,” Yoongi’s eyes opened at the sound of a voice nearby, “If you aren’t here with somebody, then how about coming with oppa, hmm?” 

A sigh escaped from Yoongi’s lips at he peeked at the situation unfolded out of the corner of his eye. It was some punk trying to coax a drunk woman into sleeping with him. Yoongi couldn’t stand people like him. 

“What do you say? C’mon, it’ll be fun. Why don’t we just go to my...”

“Hey, just leave her alone!” Yoongi made long strides to the man all while putting on his hood hoping that it’d be enough to cover his identity. 

The punk, who had been prodding at the drunk woman, turned to Yoongi with an expression of pure agitation, “Mind your own business.” he smirked before going back to bother the woman. He even grabbed her arm prompting Yoongi to do the same to the man. 

“I said, leave her alone.” The glare that Yoongi gave the man could pierce through the soul of any being, maybe even the devil himself. But that didn’t stop the punk from provoking Yoongi.

“Hey, dude, look why don’t you find yourself a catch somewhere else.” That smirk on the guy’s face grew even more and that, along with his rudeness, really pissed Yoongi off.

“Wow...‘catch’? Really? Ah, I see. The only way you’ll ever get laid is by bringing any random drunk woman home. If you’re that desperate then why don’t you go around and actually get a life? Maybe then someone would be willing to sleep with your poor thirsty ass.” 

The man’s face grew red and anger seeped from within him, “What did you just say?” 

“If you didn’t get the memo, I’m telling you to fuck off.” Again, the man smirked and attempted to throw a punch at Yoongi. Yoongi managed to dodge the punch, grab the man’s arm and jab him hard in the stomach.

At least the military training finally paid off.

He fell to the ground, wheezing for air, “Geez, why are kids like you so stubborn? Leave before I call the cops.” The man started to tear up a little as he got up and ran away. 

Yoongi turned his attention to the woman leaning against the brick wall behind her, “Miss?” As Yoongi approached her, he could clearly smell the alcohol in her breath. She was pretty dazed and out of it. Her head hung low and her disheveled hair covered her face. Sounds escaped from her lips, mumbles or something of the sorts. 

“Miss? Do you need me to get a cab? Miss?”

“Why would you...do that...WHY?” Something about her voice sounded familiar, but Yoongi couldn’t recall why.

“Excuse me? I thought I was helping you...”

“How could you....leave me...” She pointed a shaky finger at Yoongi, “Leave me...for that BITCH?” Weakly, she lifted her arm to hit Yoongi, but he caught her wrist before contact was made.

“Miss, you’re very drunk right now. I’ll get you a cab, okay?”

“Why...why...? I...I loved you...and...and you....you....leave......why....” Suddenly the woman started to wail. Yoongi released her wrist and started to panic. He’d never had to deal with someone this drunk before...well, aside from Taehyung, but he only drank when it was a special occasion. 

“Please calm down...” 

“And...and how could you....you knew about my mother....YOU KNEW WHAT I WAS GOING THROUGH...and you...you did that...to me....YOU BETRAYED ME...LEFT ME ALL ALONE...SHE FUCKING DIED YOU HEARTLESS BASTARD!” 

She shook her head, her hair getting even more disheveled and tangled up and weakly punched at Yoongi’s chest before trying to walk away.

“Miss, it’s dangerous to walk by yourself in the middle of the night like this.” He placed a hand gently on the woman, trying to prevent her from leaving.

“....l-leave me....ALONE!” She swung her arm outward causing Yoongi’s hand to fly right off. In the process, she managed to stumble forward and almost fall over, but Yoongi caught her just in time. 

All her wailing and sobbing had died down, but now she was out cold in Yoongi’s arms. Her head bobbed back against his arm and the hair that had covered her face fell to her sides. Yoongi’s eyes widened as he began to realize why her voice sounded so familiar. 

A huge sigh of relief escaped Yoongi’s lips once he finally tossed you onto his bed. You were out cold, your hair was all over the place, and you were drooling a stream from the corner of your mouth.

With much care, he awkwardly changed you out of your clothes, closing his eyes as he did so. He didn’t want to feel like he violated your privacy in any way, but he didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable sleeping the clothes he had assumed you wore for work. 

After finally getting you changed in on of his shirts and sweat pants, he tucked you into his bed making sure that you were well-taken care off. You were still sound asleep, nothing seemed like it could wake you up now. With a sad sort of smile, Yoongi pushed away a few strands of hair from your face. 

Despite your current state and the fact that he hadn’t seen you in 11 years, you still looked like the same breathtaking person from before.

"I don’t even know why I have to do this, hyung.” Yoongi grumbled into the phone as he spoke with his older brother.

“Yoongi, it’ll be good for you. This whole trainee thing is taking a toll on you and you just need to find a way to....distress.”

“Sending me to a psychiatrist will help me ‘distress’? Sure, hyung, that’s totally how it works.”

“Huh, you know what I mean...we’re all just worried about you. Just please give it a try.”

“Hyung...”

“It’s not only for your sake. Think about mom and dad. They’re worried about you too.” Yoongi was a family man. Despite his previous disagreements with his parents, he’d never want them to fell worried.

“...Fine, but I am just trying it out. If I don’t like it, then I’m done.”

“Thank you, Yoongi. I have to go now, but I’ll call you later, okay?”

“Yeah, whatever. Bye, hyung.”

Yoongi scowled as he shoved his phone into his pocket. The door gave off a jingling sound as it slid open for him, and the woman behind the front desk stood up to greet Yoongi. He was given papers to fill out and was told to wait in the small sitting area. The place was too pistine. White walls, white chairs, white floors, even the flowers that decorated the coffee table was the color white. It felt so airy, so free...and Yoongi hated it. It was just too bright for his liking. 

“Min Yoongi-ssi.” The receptionist beckoned, “Dr. Y/L/N will be seeing you now.” He got up and handed the clipboard with the filled out forms to the lady and entered the room he was led to. 

The room was entirely different from the openess he felt in the waiting area. It was still light in color with soft beige shade flooring, and a pale blue coating the walls, but it was just more...cluttered. The desk area to the left of the door was haphazardly adorned with piles of files and papers. The bookshelves were filled with different small knick knacks and house plants. The only real spot that was free of such clutter was the sitting area to the right. There was a brown leather chair long enough for any patient to lay their legs on. Beside it was a simple white seat along with a basic night stand and two mugs on it. 

You were sat on the white chair with your legs crossed giving a Yoongi a welcoming smile, “Please, have a seat.” You gestured for him to come over and he obediently complied. As he sat down, he softly mumbled frustrating curses that you couldn’t hear. He didn’t want to be here. He thought that therapy was pointless and that he could be using this time to make music. But even Bang Shi Hyuk insisted for him to get consulted, so here he was. 

You automatically sensed the kind of attitude he had. The way he didn’t bother to look at you and the way he was reluctant told you that he clearly did not want to be here. Not only that, but you could tell that he was a kind of closed off person, someone who wasn’t one to openly share his experiences even to the closest of friends or family. You had many patients like him...but for some reason, somthing inside you felt like he was special. 

“My name is Dr. Y/L/N.” You held out your hand. Yoongi just stared at it and scoffed before adjusting himself into a more comfomfortable spot in his chair. 

“I’m Min Yoongi.” He didn’t even look at you. 

Looks like it’s gonna take some time for me to crack this one... You thought.

Awkwardly to retracted your hand back onto your lap, “So, since this is our first session why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself.”

Yoongi was about to spit out some smart ass answer when the sound of his hyung’s voice popped into his head, “Think about mom and dad.” He sighed and gave in knowing that he promised his hyung that he’d try for the sake of his family. 

He turned to you, and looked at you closely for the first time since the beginning of the session. Your hair was pulled back in a ponytail, a pair of thin framed glasses sat on the bridge of your nose and your smile felt like it could cure blindness. As Yoongi’s eyes dilated at the sight of you, his mind was screaming at him. He could never have imagined becoming so infatuated in one single moment. 

“Min Yoongi-ssi? Are you alright?” Your smile faded into a look of conern as you watched Yoongi stare at you. You were worried that maybe he was just too shocked or scared or nervous to even slightly open up in any way, “You don’t need to tell me anything too personal if you’re uncomfortable.”

Yoongi closed his mouth that had been agape and gulped blinking a few times, “Um...no...I’m fine...I can tell you a bit about myself.” 

After that first session, Yoongi came to your office on a regular basis every week. He didn’t need to see you weekly, he had just wanted to. Even when his mental state got better and he was told he didn’t need to come o frequently, he’d still go at the same time on the same day every single week. The one hour sessions he had with you was always something he looked forward to. Something about talking with you made him feel liberated. Only with you did he feel completely comfortable taking off his tough exoskeleton revealing his true vulnerable self that he vowed never to reveal. 

“I hear you moved in with your new members a little while ago?” 

“Yeah, I did. It’s kinda surreal now that I know that we’ll be debuting together.” He smiled with his genuine gummy smile. He sat on the side of his chair, his feet planted onto the floor, his posture hunching forward with his elbows on his knees as he held onto the mug of coffee you had offered him. 

“I’m sure it must be very surreal. I mean we’ve been talking about your worries about debuting for quite some time, and now that it actually is gonna happen...I’m so proud of you Yoongi. You’ve come a long way.” He brought the mug to his lips hoping that he could block your view from his reddening cheeks. The way you said his name without the honorifics made butterflies flutter in his stomach.

“But it’s weird living with six other guys. The dorm is very tiny and there’s barely any room. It’s practically impossible to get privacy when you want it.”

“I see. Well, if you are in any need to privacy take a step outside and do those breathing exercises we had established together before.” 

The sound of the alarm on your watch sounded and you looked down to surprisingly see just how fast the hour had gone by, “Well, it seems like time is up.” You and Yoongi stood at the same time and he sadly looked down at his feet. He always hated leaving because when he was with you, he felt like his true self. 

You walked him to your door, “It was wonderful having you, Yoongi.” 

Something like a punch to the gut hit Yoongi. A cold sweat started to form and he curled his hands into fists. This session was his last with you.

He couldn’t bare to think that he wouldn’t be seeing you anymore. He had been consulted by you for a little more than a year, and during all that time he felt like you were someone he could rely on, someone to just completely be free with. Yoongi knew that his sessions with you would come to an end eventually. Now that the permanent lineup of his debuting boy group had been determined, he had become more and more busy. And once he debuts, there would be even less time to do anything else other than practicing and recording nonstop. 

Ever since the beginning, he told himself that he couldn’t be with you. He was busy with his own life. Being a trainee was demanding, and he’d have no time for a relationship, but he knew he was just giving himself excuses. The full honest truth was that he was scared. He was scared that you’d reject him. You were a psychiatrist, a pretty popular one at that. You had many patients who came to you, even other famous celebrities and idols consulted you. Unlike you who had a stable job, and a stable life, Yoongi was going to jump out into the industry only hanging by a single thread. Becoming an idol...it wasn’t promising. He couldn’t promise you a stable income or care free life or even just a little bit of his time. He felt like he couldn’t offer you anything to make you happy, and that was what kept him from confessing his feelings. 

For one final time, you extended your hand out to give him a final handshake. Yoongi looked at it and remembered that first time when he paid no attention to your welcoming gesture which he regretted. This time, though, he would make it right. 

He took your hand and shook it firmly, and too your surprise he unexpectedly pulled you forward and into a hug. For a second, he rested his chin on your shoulder trying to forever engrave your prescence in his mind knowing that this would probably the last he’d ever see you. “ Thank you for everything, Songsaengnim. Thank you, so much.”

Shards of glass stabbed at your head...at least that was what your headache felt like. Your eyes fluttered open allowing the beams of light to hit your irises, soaking you in its warmth. You turned over, laid on your stomach and groaned into the pillow,

Damn...how much did I drink last night? 

You took in a deep breath, expecting the smell of the light lavender detergent that usually coated your sheets, but instead, you smelled something else....something that smelled more like pine. Using your arms, you lifted yourself up from your spot on the bed and realized that these bedsheets were black...yours were blue. 

What the....where am I? 

You looked around. The walls were white decorated with neatly framed graphic art, posters, and photographs. The dresser across from the bed was made of a sleek dark wood that complimented the walls as well as the smooth concrete floor. You peeked to the side of you, a fluffy zebra patterned rug laid right beneath the simple steel framed bed. It was very clean and minimalistic...nothing like your own apartment. You were messy and very unorganized while this place...it was the complete opposite. 

That wasn’t the only thing that was different. You felt a draft through your shirt which you thought was weird because the night before you were still in your work clothes: a button down tucked into some khaki pants.The clothes you had on right now definitely wasn’t as uncomfortable as your work clothes. You looked down, examining yourself. You were wearing a loose-fitting black t-shirt and some sweatpants that looked like it hadn’t been from your own selection of clothing. 

“Aish...” you mumbled to yourself scratching at your hair frustratingly. 

From behind the closed door next to the dresser, you heard the clattering of plates. Panic started to course through your veins and you grabbed the closest thing to you: the lamp on the nightstand. After unplugging the lamp, you took it in your hands lifting it above you and you quietly tiptoed towards the door. Slowly you wrap one of your hands around the silver knob and twisted it ever so quietly, but suddenly another forced from the other side opened it almost hitting you with the door. You screamed, startled by the movement, and swung the lamp down onto whoever opened it. A hand caught your wrist before you could actually hit the figure,

“WHO ARE YOU AND WHY AM I HERE?” You cried trying to pry your arm out the hand that clutched onto it, “LET GO OF ME!”

“Yah, calm down.”

“NO! IF YOU TRY TO HURT ME...I SWEAR...MY...MY BOYFRIEND IS A PROSECUTOR!” 

“S-Seonsaengnim, it’s me. Min Yoongi.” You looked up surprised at the mention of the name. Low and behold, you so called “captor” was indeed the Min Yoongi. The Min Yoongi that was part of the internationally famous boy group BTS. The Min Yoongi who had just come back from military service. The Min Yoongi who you had taken care of over a decade before. 

“M-Min Yoongi-ssi? What....” He sighed in relief seeing that you finally calmed down. Well, you weren’t really calmed down. It was just the shock that had caused you to freeze, “Um...what am I doing here?

The grip on your wrist was released and he took the lamp from you, “I’ll explain, but first, there’s some hangover soup for you on the table.”

“Oh...okay...” You gulped and reluctantly stepped out of the bedroom as Yoongi made way for you. 

The minimalistic theme of Yoongi’s bedroom carried on into the rest of the open plan apartment. The floors were a shiny concrete like material with a few white rugs here and there. The dining table was a deep brown, the couch was a shade of black. Even more framed photos and stylistic graphic art lined the walls. The apartment wasn’t that large, probably good enough to house a young couple. 

Behind you, Yoongi stepped out of his bedroom. With a small chuckle, he watched as you stood there wide eyed scanning the entirety of his modest apartment, “Does my place look ugly or something?” 

At the sound of his voice, your hunched back straightened and you hid your face with your hands in embarrassment, “N-No...it’s just smaller than what I imagined.”

You scurried over to the table and plopped onto the chair in front of the bowl of piping hot soup. The aroma of the broth tickled your nose and drool began to form at the edges of your dry mouth. As if Yoongi could read your mind, he brought you a glass of water, 

“You better drink up. You’re probably dehydrated from all that alcohol.” 

“Thank you...” That glass of water was chugged down your throat and the soup had vanished from the white ceramic bowl in a matter of seconds. Once you completed the meal, Yoongi came over and took away the dishes and placed them in the sink before coming back to sit across from you. 

The atmosphere was awkward. Here you were sitting in front of a guy who you haven’t seen in years, let alone him being one of your previous patients. Sure, the two of you had been particularly close and he used to be one of your most favorite patients, but that professional kind of relationship was still there. You were a psychiatrist and he was your patient, and nothing would change that. 

“So,” Yoongi finally broke the silence, “I guess you’re wondering why you’re in my apartment?” You blinked a couple times and nodded. He explained how a guy was trying to bring you home and how he kicked his ass and how he had to carry you on his back all the way to his place. By the end of the story, a deep pit had grown in your stomach with the feeling of guilt,

“Omo...I’m so sorry I caused you so much trouble...” You brought your hand to your mouth and shut your eyes as you mentally berated yourself. 

Stupid, stupid, stupid....you little shit....how could you drink so much...

“It’s okay. It was the least I could do to after you took care of me for the entire last year of my trainee period.” 

“Yoongi-ssi, you came to my office to get consultations. Taking care of you was my job. No one’s paying you to care for a stupid drunken crazy lady.” You laughed trying to somehow feel less bad about the situation, “Look, I’ll pay you back somehow...”

“No, it’s fine. Really, don’t worry about it.” 

“I can’t just ‘not worry about it’, Yoongi-ssi. For real, I’ll pay you back for sure.” 

“You’re really determined, huh?”

“I just don’t like to feel indebted to people, that’s all. If you think of anything that you want then tell me. I can get it for you.” 

“Anything?” 

You brought your arms over your chest and crossed them in a protective stance, “Not ‘anything’ per say...” 

Yoongi chuckled, amused by your assumption, “That’s not what I meant by ‘anything’. Don’t worry, I’m not that kind of man.”

“O-Oh....yeah...I knew that. I was just...setting boundaries...that’s all. So do you know what you want?”

Leaning back in your chair, you stretched your arms out after a long day’s work of consultations and documentation. As if it were now second nature, your eyes glanced down at your idle phone that sat in the corner of your desk. You promised Yoongi that you’d pay him back for the trouble you caused him and he said that he needed time to think of how you’d consolidate him. You gave him your number and told him to text you once he figured it out. 

That was a week ago, and no message was ever sent to your phone. 

A notification popped up on your phone and you jumped in your chair hoping that you’d finally be able to pay this debt off. Beads of sweat formed as you clutched your hand into a fist after seeing who had messaged you. It wasn’t Yoongi, it was your ex. 

[Heartless Bastard]: Y/N txt me back 

You scoffed and threw your phone back on the desk. Ever since you caught the unfaithful little prick in bed with none other than your former receptionist on your 1000th day anniversary, you refused to talk to him. The last thing you told him was to “fuck off”. 

[Heartless Bastard]: Wut’s the code to ur apartment. U changed it

[Heartless Bastard]: I still hav some of my things in ur place

[Heartless Bastard]: C’mon, Y/N. U know I need my PS4 back 

Imaginary fumes were expelled from your ears in anger. Not only did he cheat on you on a very special day, but he didn’t seem to give any fucks when it came to the fact that your mother passed away just 2 days after you found him and that bitch in bed. He knew about how your mother was battling cancer and how her days were numbered. He knew that you were hurting and he knew that he was only one of the very few people you had in your life to help you through hard times. He knew all of that yet he still hurt you, and his stupid messages only confirmed how little you must have meant to him. He didn’t even ask how you were, he just wanted his damned PS4 back.

Your ex was just a straight up terrible guy, but for some reason, you just couldn’t forget about him. You still kept his phone number, and you didn’t throw away the drawer of his belongings at your apartment. On social media, you still had his post notifications turned on. Even when he posted a picture with that bitch who called his new girlfriend, you still couldn’t bring yourself to completely forget about him. Maybe it was because you still did remember the happy times with him when he did care. 

You wanted to forget about the happy memories you had with him so that you could finally let go of him. That’s why you turned to alcohol. By no means were you an alcoholic. Before the breakup, you rarely even drank and even now you didn’t drink that much to be very honest. The problem was, was that you had low tolerance because of how rarely you used to drink before. After two drinks, your control over yourself would be thrown completely out the window, but knowing that didn’t stop you. 

After you made sure that you had finished all your work, you decided to wrap things up for the night. On your way out, you bid your current receptionist a good night and told her to carefully lock up the place before she went home. She just nodded and looked at you with worried eyes. By the drained look on your face, she could tell just where you were heading: the bar.

“Yeah, I’m on my way home now, Jin-hyung.....no.....hyung, I am not a child....yes, I remember how to get home.......hyung.....okay, hyung you can stop worrying about me.....yeah, yeah, bye.” Quickly Yoongi jabbed at his phone hanging up on Jin. 

Yoongi was on his way back from the studio after recording a few things for his upcoming solo album. Fans had been anticipating the release of one ever since he came back from the military, and he had been working hard to complete it. He was nearing the street where he remembered he had rescued you when he saw you in the near distance. From the looks of it, it seemed like you were going to the bar again. Before you could reach the door, Yoongi called out for you,

“Songsaengnim!” You were startled by the sudden shout and was surprised to see Yoongi running towards you.

“Y-Yoongi-ssi?” He was barely out of breath by the time came to your side, “What are you doing here?” 

“I’m just on my way home from the studio...it’s nearby.” 

“Oh, I see.” You really didn’t know how to respond. It was quite awkward bumping into him again in front of the bar, “Um...well I’ll just get going then. Oh, and I’m still going to repay you and I’m still waiting for your text. So think of something soon, okay?”  

“Wait.” He grabbed your arm just as you were going to walk past him, “Are you going to drink again?” You looked into his eyes and you could really see a sense of concern 

“Maybe...”

“After what happened last time, I don’t think you should be drinking without a friend.” 

A sigh left your lips as you gently remove his hand from your arm, “Look, Yoongi-ssi. I appreciate the concern, but we’re both grown adults. I can take care of myself.”

“After last week? Sure, I totally can see that you can take care of your drunken self.” 

As much as you wanted to argue with him, you knew that he was right. 

Yoongi noticed your frustration, and he could tell that something was bothering you...bothering you enough to make you want to drink, “I’ve got an idea.”

The couch was soft and fluffy despite the rough look of the material it was made up of. 

“Wine or beer?” From across the decently-sized studio apartment, Yoongi called for you from his kitchen. In one hand he held a bottle of red wine and in his other, he held a can of beer. Were you feeling classy tonight? ....not really.

“Beer.” He nodded and put the wine bottle back on the mini wine rack that sat on his counter. 

The cold touch of the can sent a shiver down your spine, but the golden liquid felt so refreshing as you gulped a sip down. To the right of the couch, Yoongi sat in a chair watching you intently without even taking a swing from his own can.

“Yoongi-ssi, you invited me to have a drink, not to babysit me.”

He shrugged, “You never know when you’ll go berserk again. And just to clarify, me inviting you over for a drink doesn’t count towards that debt you owe me.”

“Wow, look at you. Weren’t you the one who insisted that ‘it’s okay’, ‘you don’t have to pay me back’?” You shook your head and laughed as you downed another gulp of beer. You let out a satisfying “ah” enticing Yoongi to take at least a sip from his can which worked. 

It was quiet for a moment before you spoke up, “Uh...it’s kinda awkward isn’t it?”

“It’s only awkward if you say it’s awkward, Songsaegnim.”

“Looks like some things never change. You’re still a smart ass.” Your gaze was trained to the floor as you laughed yet again. 

“Hey, are you supposed to be talking about patients like that?” A gummy smile arose from his lips.

“No, but you’re no longer a patient of mine, Yoongi-ssi.”

“Touche.” It became quiet again. 

It was nice, though, the silence. It allowed you to really have a gander and Yoongi. You couldn’t lie to yourself when you first met him eleven years ago. He was attractive and talented and you got to know him through your consultations...it was safe to say you had formed a bit of a crush. Despite your own feelings, you suppressed it. He was a patient of yours back then, and he was considerably younger. Aside from that, he had his own life and his own problems to deal with. Even if it was your job to provide him with therapy, you weren’t close to him like that and you never thought you’d ever be able to have that kind of relationship with him. 

Now, eleven years later, here you were having a drink at his apartment. Looking at him now, he had grown up so much within the last decade. Not only did his looks become even more dashing, but the way he carried himself and just the aura around him...it seemed more mature. 

Your heart thumped in your chest. These thoughts that whirled in your mind...it must have brought back the feelings you had so carefully locked away. But you pushed them back down and stomped on them internally.  Despite your inner turmoil, you managed to keep still. You were always like this: an expert at hiding your feelings.

As if it were a blessing sent from heaven, a knocking on Yoongi’s door pierced through the awkwardness between the two of you. Yoongi excused himself to get the door,

“Oh, Jin-hyung. What’s up?”

“The three maknaes ordered some chicken at their place. Want some?” 

Yoongi thought about it. Eating with a group of people would probably be less awkward for the two of you, “Alright. Do you mind if I bring a friend?”

“I’m sure the others wouldn't mind. Plus, since Namjoon and Hoseok left, Taehyung probably accidentally ordered too much out of habit.”

“Okay, see you on the roof.” 

“Also, bring the beer.”

“Got it.”

You didn’t hear any of the conversation Yoongi had with Jin so you were confused when he started to grab his coat and the stuff a plastic bag full of all the cans of beer he had in his refrigerator. 

“Are you going somewhere?” 

Yoongi peeked from behind the door of the fridge, “Get ready, we’re going somewhere.” 

You hesitantly stood up and collected your things curious about where you’d be heading, “Is it far?”

“No,” He was all ready with two plastic bags in hand as he stood by the now open front door, “We’re going to the roof.” 

You slipped on your shoes, walked out and waited for him in the hallway as he locked his door, “The roof? What’s on the roof?” 

“Jimin, Taehyung, and Jungkook’s place.”

“What? I thought you guys lived together...”

“You think all seven of us could fit in my tiny apartment?”

“Well, I don’t know...”

“It’s okay, you probably wouldn’t know. It’s not like we announce these things to the public. We actually don’t live together anymore. Although, we all still live in the same apartment complex, and we’re all practically neighbors, so it really doesn’t feel like I moved out to be completely honest.” 

“Oh, I see. So you live alone then?”

“Yeah, I do. The four of us older members live separately in our own apartments. The younger ones still wanted to room together, so they got the house on the rooftop. Oh, watch your step.” Yoongi guided you as you reached the end of the narrow hall. There were steep metal stairs that led up to the roof unit. He made sure to watch you from behind making sure you didn’t fall like a true gentleman. 

As you climbed the stairs, you could see a faint glow at the top and hear the noise of laughing and screaming. Behind you, Yoongi let out a sigh,

“Those rascals never change.” 

You could see what he meant when you finally reached the top. Taehyung and Jungkook were running around while Jimin was yelling at them to be careful. 

“JEON JUNGKOOK, GIVE IT BACK!” Taehyung jumped over the chairs and stools that littered the rooftop as he chased the maknae.

“Yah! It’s dangerous to do that on the roof!” Jimin was worriedly looking back and forth between the Taehyung and Jungkook. The younger laughed as he ran around with some sort of silver chain in his hand. Yoongi, who had quickly grown tired of the fiasco unfolding before him, managed to snatch the chain from Jungkook’s grip as he ran past you and Yoongi. You only got a small glance of the thing in Yoongi’s hand, but you knew immediately just how expensive it must’ve been since a Gucci charm was dangling from the chain. 

“Yah, what is this thing?” Yoongi held it up by its end and waved it around. Taehyung, whose eyes became wide and twinkly, became worried as his hyung carelessly handled his bracelet,

“Yoongi-hyung! Don’t just wave it around like that!” He came and took it from Yoongi, “It’s a one of a kind, engraved silver diamond encrusted wristlet. Only those who model for Gucci get them.” 

It was difficult to keep your jaw closed. You had almost forgotten Gucci’s newly appointed model was standing right before you. Taehyung noticed you gaping at him and looked at you curiously,

“I didn’t know hyung was bringing a lady friend over.” 

“LADY FRIEND?” Jungkook and Jimin joined Taehyung.

Yoongi sighed and took one step in front of you, “This is Y/N-songsaengnim. She’s an...old friend.” 

Jungkook, the only one who dared to taunt Yoongi, came up to his hyung and nudged at his side with his elbow while whispering, “Old friend? What kind of old friend? Or is she an old crush or something hmmm?” 

Yoongi only gave the pleasure of jabbing the maknae sharply in his gut before leading you to the table set up in front of the rooftop house. 

The unit was humble, nothing too extravagant. The roof was painted a bright green and a long lunch table sat on the deck in front of the home. Exposed light bulbs hanging from wires were strong along the railings and overtop the roof from poles. It was really like a scene you’d find in a typical kdrama. 

Jin was nowhere to be found, but the three youngest members had no problem entertaining you. Once you took a seat at the wooden table the three immediately hit you with a barrage of questions, mostly having to do with how you and Yoongi knew each other. Over a can of beer, you enjoyed making conversation with them. Despite the age gap, you felt right at home talking with them. 

Yoongi quietly sat as you interacted with Jungkook, Taehyung, and Jimin. Watching you smile and laugh...it made him almost forget about the emotional, tear-filled, blabber of a mess you were one week ago. 

Right now, you were the Y/N that Yoongi knew when he was a trainee. You were poised and elegant...the kind of person who sat with their shoulders held high, yet very amiable. You were the woman that he fell in love with. He was so used to seeing you in this light that he never really considered that you had times when you were down. You helped him during his down days, and now he wanted to help you. 

The sound of laughter came from down the stairs and Jin slowly made his way to the top. In his hand was the bag of chicken that had been just delivered, but behind him was another person: a man who looked to be older than Jin. Yoongi, Jungkook, Taehyung and Jimin all rose from their seats leaving you at the table alone,

“Oh guys, I didn’t know that he’d be in town, but this is an old university sunbae of my older brother.” 

The man was dressed in an expensive looking coat and a button up shirt tucked into some navy pleated pants. The aura around him displayed nothing but professionalism, but his smilely expression gave away his seemingly light personality, 

“You make me sound old.”

“What? I’m only stating the truth. You know, this hyung of mine, he’s a famous prosecutor now.”

“Yah, Jin-ah, now you’re going to make me blush.” The man smiled and lightly poked at Jin to make him stop gushing about him to the guys,

“Omo...aren’t you Ha Jae Hee?” It took him a little while, but Taehyung seemed to recognize him: Ha Jae Hee, the nationally famous prosecutor Ha Jae Hee.

“Why yes, yes I am.” He chuckled humbly, but you knew that he was just waiting to be showered with compliments. That’s how he always was, you would know. 

You stood from your chair and took your belongings before making your way to Yoongi. Lightly you tapped him on the shoulder, “Hey, I think I’ll be going now. Remember to text me when you think of how I can repay you.”

Jae Hee noticed you shying away behind Yoongi, “Y/N? Is that you?”

Everyone looked at you the moment he said your name, and just like that, your poised composure fell as you ran away.

A/N: this was only supposed to be one part...but then it got too long...so this will be a 2 part scenario 

Gif not mine, cred to the owner

[mattandsaraproductions]

A Rant, or, problems with Supergirl season 2

Why I’m writing this I’m sure I don’t know, since thoughtful discussion seems never to occur on this website. But I think lack of discussion is terrible, so here’s me, wading into the morass of shipping (specifically, regarding Supergirl season 2, yay).

Firstly, you can like something and recognize it’s problematic. I suppose this isn’t too obvious of a point, or I wouldn’t be writing this whole thing. There exists a block list, of all the damn things, for anyone saying anything construed as anti-karamel. That’s ridiculous. I’m not claiming that everyone’s points are equally well-expressed, but there are problems with the way Kara and Mon-El’s relationship is written. That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy watching them. I’m not saying you shouldn’t like their relationship. I’m saying you shouldn’t ignore the problematic tropes and toxic relationship norms at play merely because you ship them. Those are two different things.

My problem with the show is therefore largely extra-diagetic. That is, I think the writers err by presenting as unproblematic relationship norms that are in fact toxic. I have nothing against Mon-El as a character, except that his name should be Lar-Gand (but that’s another writing fail, and let’s leave it alone). So the “wah wah you hate the hot dude” – yeah, this is why I detest shipping. Also, “supercorp” isn’t canon either, so let me piss off the entirety of tumblr while I’m at it.

Still here? Let’s talk about Monday’s episode. The lesson that Kara is supposed to learn from Alex and Winn (and the power of musicals) is something like, “You should forgive him, I’m sure he has good reason for lying to you.” This fails for two reasons: 

1. As somebody who’s written a little bit on forgiveness (check out More Doctor Who and Philosophy for my essay on self-forgiveness in “Day of the Doctor.” Shameless plug, huzzah!), I can’t recall that much disagreement there is in the literature about owing someone forgiveness. Probably some philosophers do think that there comes a time when forgiveness is a duty, but that’s a minority opinion. Forgiveness is almost always seen as supererogatory. It’s not a duty; it’s above any beyond anything you ought to do for someone. So forgiveness isn’t something you owe to someone. Even someone who’s done far worse things to me than Mon-El has done to Kara, and redeemed himself far better, would not deserve my forgiveness. Why? Simply because forgiveness is not a matter of duty or desert. So it’s not that Mon-El doesn’t deserve forgiveness – It’s that he cannot deserve forgiveness, because that’s not how forgiveness works.

2. This sort of advice is gaslighting. It refuses to acknowledge the validity of Kara’s feelings, being hurt by what has happened, and angry at Mon-El. The writing does not let Alex or Winn accept Kara’s feelings, instead, the characters are subtlety written as telling her that she is wrong to feel this way, that there’s something about the situation she doesn’t understand, and that she would feel differently if she saw things “correctly.” No, none of this is explicit. But compare the scenes we get with someone saying, “You’re angry at him for lying and sad about breaking up with him? Yeah, it sucks. Here, have a donut.”

So is this abusive? I don’t think that’s a well-formed question when asking about the writing. In the real world, is stuff like this part of a system of relationship norms where women are supposed to accept men’s bad behavior? Yes. Does it contribute to a lack of self-reflection on the part of people in abusive relationships? Yes. Does watching fictional characters go through this teach women and girls watching to accept these sorts of things in their own lives? Yes.

The rebuttal from Karamel shippers is about how Mon-El grew up as prince of an awful place (a society where the queen laughs at things like treating people as people), and he’s learning how to be a better person (how to be a hero, even). Now, I think the characters are underwritten. I don’t know if we’re supposed to think Mon-El had problems with the system back on Daxam, if he’s reconsidering everything now that he’s on Earth, or if he’s faking being a better person to get into Kara’s pants. Any of those would be a likely scenario. Really, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, because it is not Kara’s job to help him along that path.

If he wants to be a hero, or redeem himself, or even just do better, it’s on him to self-correct. His every screw-up thus far has led to Kara dragging Mon-El back on the path. That isn’t her job. Have him go to Metropolis and shadow Clark for a while. Have him thrown into the future and train with the Legion. It’s not that I don’t expect people to see this as normal. Women are expected to do most all the emotional labor in a relationship, so of course people are going to see this as normal. Television reflects our lives, and in turn our lives are shaped by storytelling tropes. But our lives, and the stories we tell, are poisoned by sexist norms that tell us how people are supposed to act. Is Supergirl showing us these norms at play in the characters’ lives, as a way to inoculate us in real life?

Well, no. I have no faith these writers are aware of what they are doing. If this were written to teach, to show how these sexist relationship norms function, and that their subtle insidiousness can infect the relationships even of the Maid of Might herself, that would be one thing. But these are the showrunners who’ve given us Arrow season 3 and nonsensical time travel shenanigans in The Flash. They are not writing a complex show here. They aren’t capable of it.

No, what the writers are doing is writing relationships the way they now how. And what they know is the way relationships function both on television and in real life. On television, where complex functional relationships between adults is non-existent, instead giving us romance that lurches from one drama to the next. And in real life, where women are expected to do the lion’s share of emotional labour in romantic relationships, aren’t supposed to introspect, and are supposed to be forgiving to their male partners’ every failure.

That’s why, for example, they didn’t write that Valentine’s Day episode to show us how stupid Mon-El’s jealousy was and how his actions are the exact opposite of what someone who likes somebody else should do in that situation. No, we were just supposed to accept that the metaphorical dick-measuring between him and Mxy is what any guy in that situation would do. It’s also the reason I stopped watching Buffy halfway through season 1, because the writing wasn’t presenting Xander as someone whose behaviour needed to be called out as misogynistic crap; we were supposed to find it funny, typical guy stuff. Is this sort of behavior normal? Sure. But it’s not a fact of the universe that things are this way. It’s not because of gravity; it’s because of sexism.

I loved how in season 1, being angry didn’t negate Kara being Supergirl. It was such a breath of fresh air compared to the moronic New-52 comics (a Red Lantern, seriously?!). It served to flesh out the character as her own person (her anger being an expression of survivor’s guilt), instead of the gender-swapped Clark they started with. It’s apparently a bridge too far, though, to allow her to be angry at her boyfriend for lying about his past and ignoring her instructions in the field, at least for more than an episode at a time. Lately, however, it seems like all the characters, and Kara especially, do not have inner lives. They act, but they seem incapable of questioning their own motives and desires. I have no idea why she and Mon-El like each other, aside from “straight white people.” It’s not that I don’t buy that this is psychologically realistic. I know it is; I’ve seen friends go through this, and in more straightforwardly abusive relationships besides. People can be drawn to each other, and be stuck in a cycle of breaking up and getting back together. It isn’t healthy, but it happens. 

But this is Supergirl, for pity’s sake. I don’t want realism. I want someone we can look up to. That has always been the point of these characters. A better show, with better writers, would be able to deliver a Kara in relationships still being the emotional and psychological center of the show. Between the CW, the writing staff, and sexism, there’s no chance of that.

TL;DR – I don’t give a rat’s ass about Mon-El. I care about analyzing and ending oppressive social norms that prevent people from living well.

Maybe if I keep punching real hard, something will break. It always works in comics.