#Earnest Teenage Cringe

[hirokiyuu]

so i've been writing a looooot of exocolonist fic that probably won't get published as like. longer stuff? but some of it is really fun so i wanted to throw it at least on here for some people's viewing pleasure wwwww

so have this dys+sol/nomi! a little bit of dys>sol but this is mostly just abt kids being stupid and also friends! please enjoy >:) mild spoilers for nomi's romance route

i like to dance real fast; 650 words

“Dys.”

Sol’s face is deathly serious, which means whatever this is about is going to be stupid as shit. He always looks delighted whenever he’s talking about the Gardeners or the Array -- seriousness is reserved solely for bullshit colony drama. “Dys, I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to not laugh at me, okay?”

“Fine,” says Dys. In his heart he’s out on the Ridges, sitting with Sym under the stars as they talk about anything and everything. In reality, unfortunately, he’s here. “What.”

Sol whips out his holopalm. “Okay, so you saw Nomi’s post, right?” He’s whispering, leaning his head in, and despite himself the crush Dys has been trying to bury for years wiggles a little from under the dirt. “Do you think…. Did the other person in it look like me?”

Dys very heroically does not roll his eyes as Sol dumps a shovelful of dirt on Dys’s feelings himself. It’s not so hard to get over someone who's this obviously in love with someone else. Still, in the spirit of friendship and also getting Sol to leave faster, Dys dutifully opens his own holopalm up to squint at the picture again.

The photo Nomi took of the drawing isn’t great. The lightning's off and the angle’s weird, which means Dys can only make out two figures: clearly-not-Sol and maybe-Sol-maybe-not. “I dunno,” he says, but at Sol’s pleading look gives it another closer squint. “If it’s not you, who else would it be?”

“Rex,” says Sol, instantly, face falling a little. “And I get it, y’know? He’s nice and cool and they’ve been friends forever, but… maybe I have a chance anyways, right? I mean, they, y’know, danced with me on my birthday and everything…?”

In the most embarrassing display Dys has ever seen in his life, yeah. Both Sol and Nomi had seemed happy, though, grinning at each other as they did their weird noodley wiggles. Another shovel of dirt, there: if Sol expected him to do that Dys would just die instead. He gives the picture another squint. “I’d say it’s more like you than him.”

“Really?” Ugh. Dys needs more dirt; the smile Sol gives him is small and unsure and brilliant despite that, red dusting his cheeks. “That’s… that’s good. Okay. Yeah. Yeah! Alright, I’ll, um… I’ll talk to them about it, I guess? Thanks, Dys.”

Sol reaches out and squeezes his hand. Dys really needs more dirt. “Okay,” says Sol, and then stands up, punching his hands in the air. “Okay! I’m gonna… I’m gonna do it! Okay!”

Stars above. This is kind of embarrassing to watch, which is good for burying his feelings and bad for his mental health. “Good luck,” says Dys, who means it mostly earnestly but also a little because he’d like this whole thing to be over as soon as possible.

“Thanks!” says Sol, without looking over, still red as he looks down towards where Nomi’s no doubt standing with Rex. “I’ll see you later, Dys, thank you for the help!”

With that he’s off, striding back down into the colony with a determined look on his face. Cute, Dys thinks, but not in the way that hurts. It’s just sort of… nice. To think that Sol and Nomi might date. That they might make each other smile like they did last Quiet, two idiots together who he does, despite himself, care about.

Well… maybe it's a little lonely, too. Dys sighs, flips open his notebook again until he finds a blank page. Too bad he's not on expedition for another few days: he wants to be out there again, walking with Sym through the wilderness. For now, though, he'll have to content himself with memory. 

He clicks his pen and presses it to the paper. Nomi’s kind of nuts but he can agree about one thing: there's something sort of cathartic about drawing your feelings, and so alone on the hill, as below him Sol finds his happy ending, he contents himself with sketching Sym’s face.

[canisonicscrewyou]

she’s insane she’s a wet cat of a human being she’s got daddy and mommy issues up to here she’s pathetic she’s everything she’s a breakthrough case she’s in hiding she’s forever mourning she’s a mom she’s got trauma she doesn’t even know how to find a therapist for she loves her friends and she secretly loves attention and if one things for certain she’s never stepping foot inside of the TARDIS ever again (a lie)

[hedgehog-moss]

miss moss, i come to your inbox with a complaint. you gave me unrealistic expectations of childhood diaries. i found one of mine the other day and opened all excited, thinking "oh, i wonder what delightful stories i used to write, miss moss is always talking about her diaries, surely i had something to contribute to my adult self too!" nope. just thirty minutes of second-hand embarrassment for my past self (wait, is that just first-hand, then?). any other moment of my life, i wouldve just thrown it out without reading it, so i blame you and your wonderful writing style for the shame i had to endure

Aww—maybe you didn't read it in the right state of mind? There's got to be some sweetness or cringe-fun details in there! Or maybe you didn't write enough? My childhood diaries have pages and pages of embarrassing or pointless stuff, but I just wrote so much in so many notebooks, the sheer quantity makes it statistically more likely that I'll find fun snippets here and there. In addition to my actual diary, I had (in primary school) Stories notebooks and Ideas notebooks and also notebooks where I wrote fun facts I'd learnt in books, all of which often devolved into solemn ponderings and diary-adjacent writing. (It was a pre-internet life we had to pass the time somehow. It was that or watching the 3D Maze screensaver)

I don't re-read my teen diaries much though because past the age of 12 or 13 it gets violently embarrassing. I think the difference with my childhood diaries is that in my teen ones I wrote about stuff I felt embarrassed about even as I was writing it, so I re-read them and remember the, as you said, firsthand embarrassment. I started writing my diary in English rather than French at some point in my teens because I felt that using a foreign language made what I wrote sound less painfully earnest and more ironically detached...

This reminds me of the book "Teen Angst: A Celebration of Really Bad Poetry" by Sara Bynoe—exactly what it says on the tin; the author asked people to send her their bad teenage poetry and she published this collection. Here's the table of contents:

If the firsthand embarrassment of reading your own diaries was too much to bear, maybe you won't be able to endure the secondhand embarrassment of this book either! I remember a poem about an unrequited crush that started with "In the hand of friendship / you're a hangnail of discontent." And I like how all the poems are prefaced by a little paragraph written by the poem's author, gently making fun of their teen self :)

[ventique18]

- Not Malleus, sort of rant because of another game I'm playing -

I feel a massive, MASSIVE cringe when all of an otome game's cast is made entirely of rich, powerful, smart, handsome, godly perfect men who for some reason at the tender of 20 are already at the top of the world and the best in their fields. The only difference between them are some quirky personality tropes but remove that and they're basically dolls from the same mold. I know it's just blatant pandering for self-inserts and OC ships to drive revenue, but it feels like they're suggesting that regular people are unlovable. That somehow women (or people who like men) are incapable of being attracted to and caring for, idk, a guy who works as a teacher and makes the best of his regular life. A florist who names his bouquets after you. A cook who, though tired from work, would make delicious dishes to greet you when you come back home.

I know this sounds silly given my ultimate bias is exactly what I stated above, but in TWST, the rich powerful smart men are a minority. There are three guys out of 22 who are explicitly considered by the entire cast to be universally handsome. Most are just regular dudes trying to live their mundane lives. And I appreciate that. A lot of players appreciate that and love them for all their plainness and flaws.

Or idk maybe stepping out of my teenager years just completely changed me. But GOD I was waiting for some guy who has nothing much to give but his earnest love and kindness. 😭

[liesmyth]

locked tomb characters ranked by how cringe they are

because this post by @wifegideonnav reminded me that they’re all losers, but some are even more losers than the others

Hot Sauce: 1/10. This girl is cool in all possible ways and definitely future lead researcher material. No cringe, zero notes.

Pyrrha: 2/10. By far the least cringe of The Olds. Yes her nicknames for Nona have dad joke energy but she’s very earnest about it and it’s cute.

Juno Zeta: 2/10. Total MILF. Very smart and should know better than to get flirty with We Suffer, but I get it.

Marta Dyas: 3/10. A complete badass with a very sensible outlook on avoiding unnecessary forms. Call me Judith because I would also make a pass at her at the first possible chance.

Commander Wake: 3/10. She made Pyrrha fall in love with her, seduced ever-loyal G1deon into hatefucking and galvanized a dying resistance movement. She was genuinely nice to Gideon those 3 seconds they interacted in passing! Then she had to go and hide under the bed of a mentally ill teenager.

Dulcinea: 4/10. Her horniness for revenge is epic. Let down Pal as nicely as she could and managed to outwit Cytherea when it mattered. Not cringe at all.

Camilla: 4/10. Yes, she could kill you in seconds but she did once sell cigarettes, her most liquid asset, for about a third of their market value.

Alecto: 4/10. Scary eldritch woman-shaped creature with a sword, comes highly recommended by Pyrrha Dve. Loses points for confusing Middle English and thinking John was the best possible Sailor Earth when he was clearly the worst.

G1deon: 5/10. Utterly willing to burn for what he believes in. Yes, he probably needs some perspective but he made sure the baby had enough air before kicking Wake out of the airlock and Matthias Nonius thinks he’s an okay dude.

Pash: 5/10. She has that freedom fighter swag and the cool hair but she is a terrible bodyguard coasting on nepotism, sorry to say.

Palamedes: 6/10. He didn’t clock the serial killer pretending to be his ex because he was too busy going to painfully extreme lengths to avoid interacting with her.

Naberius: 6/10. My controversial opinion is that Babs is the least cringe of the Third House throuple. Yes he looks and acts like a peacock but he puts up with Corona snacking on him for no reason and is still nice to her, and gives Ianthe solid romantic advice.  

Nona: 6/10. Cringe in the unselfconscious way of a young teenager, and put this ability to use making Pal fess up to his nurse kink. She will never be cool but it’s part of her appeal.

Mercymorn: 7/10. Speaks in onomatopoeias. She knows she is insufferable so she’s gonna do her best to make sure to be the most insufferable person in every room. Once called John Gaius “the best man I who ever lived” to his smug face and not even blowing him up later makes up for that.

Ianthe: 7/10. Looks like a wet rat. Hopelessly dramatic but she pulls it off. Declares her love for Harrow at every turn in the most transparent possible way then pretends she’s just being snarky. Some cool points for actually getting shit done

Coronabeth: 7/10. Terrible taste in love interests. Her freedom fighter era was hot but she thinks pompadour hair is a good look? Also, the way she spent her whole life lying about necromancy speaks of extreme conflict avoidance. Cringe move.

Judith: 7/10. She deserved to suffer and has suffered more than she deserves. It’s cringe how she clings to her imperialist brainwashing but she gets a point for rightfully understanding she should be wary of Corona, something Ianthe still can’t even grasp.

Ortus: 7/10. Yes he quotes his own epic poetry WIP at people but he also had to grow up on the Ninth with nothing better to do. Genuinely a very nice guy.

Cytherea: 8/10. Her unhinged vibes are very hot but she killed a couple of nerds and two teenagers instead of anyone who was actually dangerous. Cringe of her!

Silas: 8/10. Smarmy cloud-looking motherfucker. He is a child Pope and I guess he can’t help the inherent cringe of the Eight. But that’s still no excuse for bringing a portrait of John all the way to Canaan House just to hang it in your bedroom, dude.

Gideon: 8/10. Babygirl is a horny virgin with the vocabulary of a nerd. Harrow is bones over tit in love with her and she fails to notice after living in Harrow’s brain for eight months. Gets points for managing to maintain impressive biceps on a diet with no protein.

Augustine: 9/10. Extremely cringe because of how hard he tries to pretend he’s not cringe. Cigarettes on a space station and effectively performing swag don’t make up for how much he clearly wants to suck John’s dick. Which he did at least twice.

Harrow: 10/10. Spent most of her life being mean to Gideon because she was too hot to deal with and lobotomized a coffee shop AU into existence. Thinks Ianthe Tridentarius is beautiful. Once built a bone cocoon to sleep in after not drinking water for two days. Should’ve told God months ago that she just didn’t want to eat his fucking biscuits and stop offering.

John: 10/10. Unfortunately, this scale only goes up to 10 but we all know it’s not enough. Deeply cringe in a myriad of ways, chiefly among them the way he inflicts his barely veiled incest kink on all his friends. That one dad joke was gold, though.

This was getting too long but for the record: Aiglamene is cool and so is Abigail Pent. Magnus is not cool but he’s a fun time. The Terrible Teens are exempt from judgement on account of being 14.

[cam1lla]

She’s a covert conservative opp! No! She’s an overly-zealous cringe liberal feminist millenial! No! She’s a Barbie, a too-tall-too-thin-too-blonde arbiter of unfair beauty standards and male-gaze perfection! No! She’s an awkward, gawkish tall girl with thunder thighs and my favorite teenage sexy-baby pop star who is 5’3 and 70 pounds is WAYYY hotter and has a better body! No! She’s a nepo baby who was handed everything and never worked a day in her life! No! She’s a work-obsessed workaholic Girlboss overlord who does nothing but work and this is a bad thing because my favorite edgy cool girl artist who would rather smoke a bowl or party with the Red Scare girls than sit down and write an earnest song about her feelings is lagging behind her! No! She’s Miss Americana the straight man-dating symbol of everything oppressive and bad! No! She’s an evil closet lesbian lying to her fans, spread the truth! No! She’s an evil man-hating symbol of everything our country has lost, why isn’t she in the kitchen with babies! No! She’s apathetic to the nature of the world she hasn’t done enough she needs to fix every sociopolitical issue by herself overnight! No! She has a savior complex and it’s embarrassing she should stay in her lane! No! She’s evil for dating a clean-cut football player who encourages people to vote blue, respect women, get vaccinated, and support equality! No! She’s evil for having a two week long fling with a popular band guy but don’t worry we still like HIS music and we still will rush to buy his current girlfriend’s Mac cosmetics collab! We’re having a BRAT summer with the 1975! It’s only a problem when it’s Taylor don’t you know! No! She’s not a girl’s girl because she’s not making herself small so other people can co-opt her own accomplishments! No! She’s nobody just a pop fad and she’ll never be as good as late great legends of MALE MUSIC! No! Actually old man musician was RIGHT when he insulted her for no reason and discredited her hard work! No! Why are the swifties mad at old man musician for no reason! Why doesn’t she do this! Why does she do that! Why doesn’t she cater to me! Why doesn’t she give me what I want! When I want it! How I want it! Now! No! No! No! She’s Princess Diana! No! She’s Cersei Lannister! No! She’s Charlotte York! No! She’s the cast of HBO’s Girls! No! She’s Joni Mitchell! No! She’s Hannah Montana! No! She’s Lady Macbeth! No! She’s Ophelia! No! She’s Éponine! No! She’s Christine Daaé! No! She’s Barbie! No! She’s Oppenheimer! Slut! No! Prude! No! Whore! No! Virgin! No! Cunt! No! Goody-two-shoes! No! Witch! No! Nun! No! Girl! No! Woman! No! Person! No! Human being! No! Everything you need her to be and nothing you want! Everything you want her to be and nothing you need! It’s all too much and yet never enough! I think you’ve exhausted it all and should just let her live and make art and be Taylor!

[riacte]

Re: Dearly Beloved in-universe fandom, it struck me that I have somehow never mentioned in-universe superhero/villain/whatever fanart despite fanart being such a core (and more importantly visible) component of fandom. (While mentioning fanfiction, subreddits, touching on fancams and ASMR roleplays etc etc) And I guess it makes sense because this is text, I don't really know they look like, and it's hard to describe visuals given the format I've constrained myself to. But I also feel like this blind spot has to do with other fandom-related meta lol. (Self indulgent and long rambling)

1. Superheroes/villains are classified as "real people". In real life fandoms, while there's fanart of famous real people (actors in movies, singers, Kpop groups, athletes, F1 drivers, etc), there's less fanart compared to fanart of characters (anime, video games, books, etc). I assume this is because you need to have a certain level of skill to capture a real person's likeliness nicely. And real people may feel offended upon seeing "bad" fanart of themselves, whereas fictional people can't feel offended.

But superheroes/villains are masked and often wear helmets for safety. So you don't need the skill to draw their real life faces. Their suits are probably visually distinctive which makes it fun to draw (and cosplay!).

2. Superheroes/villains aren't just famous real people. There's a political connotation, in which it could be dangerous to support villains and people may not like heroes because they're like fantasy cops with powers. Especially in this context in which the government controls the heroes, there's whole system to raise heroes from children, there's censorship and conspiracies. Bringing to the third point:

3. Fanart is a very visual. (No shit, Sherlock.) Okay, in the sense people outside of the fandom are more likely to encounter fanart. It's also a publicly liked form of fandom, in comparison to fanfiction. I guess edits and cosplay are also liked and respected, but probably less common than fanart. (Insert something about my positionality as a fan of MCYT who writes fanfic, something about MCYT loving fanart and including it in their videos, commissioning artists, whereas fanfic (rightfully and thankfully imo) stays underground) So people who write hero RPF are already seen as "weirdos" and "the corner of the Internet you shouldn't see". It's not taken seriously. But if someone posted hero fanart on Twitter, normies would see this as liking / endorsement of said hero, whereas fanfiction would not get this kind of visibility. (And is shunned upon probably no matter what you write because fanfiction is generalised is "weird thing Wattpad teenage girls do when they want to bang a famous person".)

3.1. Back to the MCYT fandom thing. Heroes/villains can be compared to MCYT since they look different on and off camera (with and without their suits, like Minecraft skins and designs), they use different names for their different identities, and they put on a public persona. Similarly, I can imagine heroes finding fanart of their hero persona flattering and occasionally engaging with it on Twitter. (Whereas fanfiction stays underground.)

3.2. So I loveeee parodying the "cringe" Wattpad fics, not because I want to make fun of them, but because it's enjoyable to write without restraint. (And it's funny.) I think the general style is so unapologetically fun (and nostalgic). I have a lot of things to say about Wattpad (in defence of its users!), but it mostly boils down to young people being excited and earnest. I know a lot of people hate Wattpad, especially its RPF. I find it fascinating. Because someone (often tweens) had to be motivated to write that, someone had to have the passion to do it, and they'll do it badly (knowingly or not), because writing as a hobby is supposed to be fun! It's the essence of it! And it's the "bad" kind of fanfiction that I want to pay respect to. The kind that people look upon with disdain. The kind YouTubers make fun of. Because more often than not it's a thirteen year old being silly/stupid and it's mean to make fun of kids earnestly trying to make something.

Anyways in the universe, fanfiction sites become a place to store government censored conspiracies/theories because they fly under the radar compared to Reddit and Youtube.

4. I always felt I wanted to write the story instead of Tweetgen-ing it. Maybe it felt more "serious". And mimicing social media with text/HTML is easier than graphics. Now I feel like the utter lack of visuals in a social media fic (when social media is extremely visual, almost obnoxiously so) makes me focus on text itself— dialogue, transcripts, usernames, Tumblr tagging, YouTube comments, notices about subreddits being taken down, to-do lists, "confirm to delete" text boxes. In-universe fanfiction (both the Wattpad and Ao3 type) is taken seriously in the sense it helps with storytelling— it shows differing attitudes to events and public figures. It shows what type of perception is popular.

Anyways. I'm not sure this is interesting and I'm probably rambling inside my head. I guess I do love fanfiction as an art form. And I do admire and respect the earnest writers and readers on Wattpad. I still occasionally wake up to like 30 comments on a Wattpad fic from 4 years ago. I'm glad people still read it lmao.

[booksandpaperss]

kind of obsessed with the fact you've slowly gotten more blatant with heartstopper hate lmfao😭 it's like. fine to me it's cute but NOTHING SERIOUS IS EVER GOING ON so I gotta be in a really specific mood for it I still haven't watched s2. definitely couldn't be a fixation. and everyone fucking loves it it's the best thing since sliced bread and I'm like. why tho. and then any critique of it is sorta dumbed down to "oh you just don't like how sweet it is but teenagers deserve sweet romance" like ok but why's it gotta be boring though. and too healthy like beyond normal levels of healthy. like this is missing even the usual human levels of miscommunication. and it gets resolved too easy. sorry this was supposed to cut off 4 sentences ago I'm realizing now in your inbox that I apparently have beef with heartstopper

LKSSJJSJS LISTEN listen. I don’t even hate it. truly. I even genuinely enjoyed myself during the nick and Charlie parts bc that’s the part that thought is actually put into. I just hate how much everyone loves it so blindly

honestly my biggest beef with it is that it’s marketed and treated as the most genuine and diverse groundbreaking queer storyline there is when that’s literally so far from true and it really really shows ppls true colors when they think this bc the sapphics and POC are literal props it’s actually absurd for a show that’s supposed to be a safe space for queer ppl

and god do I hate that part of the reason it’s so popular is bc it portrays these queer teenagers as never having a single, physical thought in their entire life. there was this whole plot centered around one single hickey that Charlie had??? and something abt the physical attraction portion of it all, which they did try to show btw, felt disingenuous to me. and I know that’s why it’s so palatable to a mainstream audience and it pisses me off and again it just doesn’t feel genuine. which is ironically one of the main arguments against heartstopper criticism: “it’s not cringe it’s just earnest” when yeah maybe it’s Trying to be earnest but when u look at it from more than a surface level lens it’s not rlly succeeding

and I know the aroace storyline in season 2 with Isaac resonated with a lot of people and I think that’s wonderful, and I actually do think that was something that was done well, but how can you have a storyline around asexuality when you don’t show the contrast in how it is being an allosexual queer person. there was a whole lot of romantic attraction going on but even more tip toeing around the sexual attraction aspect. and I don’t expect it to be like sex education for example in terms of the focus on sex obv , but the lack of acknowledgment of that aspect of the queer experience paired with how much the uwu wholesomeness of it all is played up rlly rubs me the wrong way. once again: it feels dishonest

I was actually talking about this with one of my mutuals the other day and they pointed out that it is very plain that alice olseman did not consult a single queer man in the writers room. and if someone can prove this wrong be my guest but I rlly don’t think the whole physical attraction component would have been done so badly had an actual queer man been on the team. feels kind of like back in summer 2022 when byler shippers would literally shun and harass anyone who even implied that Will’s feelings for Mike probably included physical attraction meanwhile Noah Schnapp himself was making jokes about it bc he’s an actual gay teenager.

not gonna even get into right now how Tara and darcy felt even more like props this season than in the last one and I didn’t even like watching their scenes bc the writing itself felt performative. that’s a whole other post.

and man, wouldn’t it have been so nice if there had actually been people of color in that writers room. On a purely surface level heartstopper has a very diverse cast but once again, peel away even one layer and you realize it’s a bunch of tokenism, which brings me full circle back to my original point: you can’t say it’s peak representation and diversity when it’s whitewashed as hell and doesn’t gaf abt sapphics despite literally being written by one. guess she chose her whiteness over her queerness even when writing a queer story which wowwww sooooo original.

okayyyy anyways did NOT mean to write a whole essay but u discovering ur own beef reminded me of mine lmaooo

all of this was to say that basically I’m not gonna pretend I didn’t enjoy myself during parts of the show, and I don’t wanna shame ppl for liking it that is not at all what I’m trying to do here, it has its own place in queer media and if a show like this came out in like 2010 it would be groundbreaking despite its issues (but again it’s literally 2023 do fucking better) , but I take issue with people treating it like something it’s not and with the amount of love it gets I feel like I have to be really loud about my criticism of it, especially bc usually the criticism of the show that gets any attention isn’t even slandering it for the right reasons and like. if ur gonna hate on something queer and popular do it right

oh and heartstopper writers? maybe try speaking with an actual teenager once in your life before writing their dialogue they do not fucking communicate that well

okay I’m done now finally 🫡

[partywithponies]

Being a Star Trek fan often means picking your favourite ship when you're an earnest overeager cringe teenager and standing my your choice unrelentingly until the day you die.

Personally I picked T'Pura, because I have the strongest willpower on the planet and will invent an entire ship lore out of a single scene. The space wives ever.

[hirokiyuu]

wow so when i wrote this i was like "hey this i'm only posting bc it's the first part to something much funnier" and then completely forgot to post the followup. so here have some dys>sol(>cal/tammy) bracelet scene pre-pre-pre-rship stuff. i love when kids are dumb and in love

it's ok (we'll find our way); 1k

When Sol crests the hill to where Dys is packing for his next trip out, the very first thing that Dys looks at are his wrists, because Dys is an idiot. Because apparently Sol is also an idiot, he is in fact wearing the databand, spinning it with his other hand as he stares down at it. “Hi, Dys.”

Thank fuck half the time he just nods hello at Solana anyways, because trying to unstick his jaw from where it’s glued shut sounds pretty impossible right now. Not that Sol even notices, really, still staring down at his dumb new bracelet. “Um. Can I… can I get another ten minutes where you don’t tell me you think something’s stupid?”

Thank fuck that him packing means he has an excuse to turn around. Against all odds his dumb voice doesn’t crack as he says, “Sure?”

“Someone likes me?” Sol blurts, instantly, and when he glances over, Sol is blushing. Stars. Dys kind of wants to die. “Like, I got this message on Vertumnalia, and apparently, um, this --” he holds up his wrist, like Dys hasn’t been staring at it since the moment he showed up “-- is from a, a secret admirer?”

Yeah, I fucking know. He bites it back. “Oh.”

“Someone likes me,” Sol repeats; he’s staring down at the dumb thing with stars in his eyes. “No one’s ever liked me before. Like, I mean, I thought, um. I thought Cal did, and I was…. I was totally wrong there, y’know?”

Because Cal is the stupidest person in the colony, yeah. Why anyone would ever pick Tammy with Sol as an option, Dys will never understand. “But…” says Sol, and the smile that had faltered on his face for a moment is back, small and sweet. “But I guess someone does.”

Okay. Maybe the whole thing wasn’t such a terrible idea after all, if it makes Sol smile like that. Or at least, that’s what Dys thinks for exactly two seconds, before suddenly Sol looks up at him and blurts, “Who do you think gave it to me?”

Nevermind, Dys wants to die again; he jerks back around, grabbing the nearest ration to shove into his pack so Sol won’t see him blush or whatever. Luckily Sol doesn’t actually seem to be expecting an answer, already barreling on ahead: “Like, I was thinking about it, and I really don’t know? Like, at first I thought maybe it was one of the Helio kids, but I don’t really know any of them that well, and whoever made this, um… I mean, it has a bunch of stuff I’m into, y’know? All the music and vids and stuff that I like?”

Next time Sol starts talking about Sanctuary Moon, Dys is turning on his holospeak and pretending he’s gone deaf. “So that kinda narrowed it down, I guess, to one of us? But like, obviously it’s not Cal--” because he’s an idiot, as previously established, and fuck but Dys hates the way Sol’s face drops a little just saying that “--and Nemmie’s super gone on that Vace guy already, so I knew it wasn’t her, and that just leaves --”

--oh fuck here it comes--

“--Marz?”

Dys stops. Puts his things down. Turns around. “...What?”

“I know!” Sol’s got his face buried in his hands, which is good, because Dys has absolutely no idea what kind of expression he’s making himself right now.  “I know, I don’t like it either, like….” He drags them down his face before looking up at Dys; for a moment seeing Dys’s face he wilts, but then rallies again. “I-I mean, it’s a nice gift! It’s a really, really nice gift, y’know? It made me… it made me really happy, okay?”

Stars. Of course it did. There’s a weird lump in Dys’s throat when he hears that, but Sol, still charging stupidly ahead, doesn’t even notice. “But even if I liked girls, I wouldn’t like Marz, she’s way too mean and bossy and I just….” Sol sighs again, slumping over, and despite his words he’s still playing with the bracelet. “I didn’t even think she noticed me that much.”

“She doesn’t.”

Sol blinks, looks back up. “What?”

Fuck. It’s too late to take the words back. Dys takes a single breath, wipes his palms against his legs, and then manages, “It wasn’t from Marz.”

“Oh,” says Sol. He’s got that same puzzled frown he always gets when they’re up on the walls and he’s struggling through his homework. “Wait, really? But how do you know… that….”

The silence is deafening, as the frown gives way to slowly widening eyes. Dys, for his part, turns around and starts shoving all his stuff into his bag as fast as he can, who gives a shit about organizing right now? “Dys,” says Sol, a little unsteadily, and even without looking Dys can picture the way his whole awful handsome face has gone slack in surprise. “Are you my --”

“So what if I am?” he interrupts immediately, because if Sol actually says the words he’s going to die. His face is on fire. “Don’t make a big deal about it.”

“Oh,” says Sol, still sounding totally bewildered. Dys should’ve chucked the stupid databand off the ridges when he’d finished making it; he starts buckling up the pack and ignores the fact that the top won’t go totally shut. When he glances back, just for a second, Sol’s gone red too, still staring at him, and in return Dys flushes even more and looks back away. “I-I won’t.”

“Good,” says Dys, reaching his limit. Before this stupid conversation can drag on any longer he grabs his pack and hustles away, not quite sprinting only because he can’t actually run with the stupid thing on. As he goes, though, he glances over his shoulder once last time.

Sol’s still standing right where Dys left him, head tilted back down to the bracelet, touching it gently the way he had been when he’d first walked up. On his face Dys can just barely make out that same small, shy smile as before. Dys nearly trips; Sol looks up; their eyes meet and for a moment that smile grows just a little before Dys whips his head back forward, his own dumb heart pounding so loud it’s all he can hear. 

[dioptre-hertz]

presenting to you my Hideo Kojima vs Hirohiko Araki horseshoe theory.

these two guys are completely divergent in terms of how they approach politics and philosophy, but converge in that they both have a deeply honest, charmingly self-indulgent willingness to just create whatever seems Badass to them in a very teenage boy sort of way.

both of them will, with complete sincerity and not a hint of irony or doubt, present you with some absolutely batshit insane character design that a less confident writer would worry is "cringe". kojima will give you a character who wears the V for vendetta mask, takes it off and has Joker makeup underneath, and then starts blasting robots with lightning bolts from his electric guitar. araki will give you a guy named Vanilla Ice whose special power is that he can swallow his own entire body to become invisible. kojima will tell you that the guy who drinks blood and can walk on water, hypnotize people and survive being shot repeatedly is called Vamp not on account of his apparent vampirism, but because he's bisexual. araki will have his protagonist save the day by transforming a brick into a venomous snake that lived its whole life inside a poison cloud and thus contains a virus vaccine.

but kojima's work is deeply, profoundly political in intent. he has a Grand Theory of Everything and is so eager to tell you about war, society, life and death that he is almost incoherently earnest. araki, on the other hand, thinks about politics so little that he has barely stopped to ask himself what a "nazi" even is.

kojima has witnessed the grand truths of the universe, and needs to share them with you. araki has witnessed haute couture fashion magazines. but their shared sincerity and utter willingness to write outrageous things, simply because it strikes them as cool, somehow brings them close together.

[crispy-ghee]

Godzilla Minus One is probably literally the best movie I've seen all year, I can't stop thinking about it. It's got all the good Godzilla Destroys shit set pieces that people probably go in expecting, but at its heart it's a melodrama about Post War Japan, Survivor's Guilt, PTSD, and questions the ideas we (but also largely the Japanese people) have about "Heroic Sacrifice," the value we and the people with power put in "life," and the strength behind choosing to live.

I don't know if it's still in theaters since it's supposed to have a limited run, but it's beautiful, and I wept, and if you can see it, you should see it.

Unless you're someone who can't handle some really earnest melodrama, then stay the fuck out of the theater. I had a bad experience w/ teenagers and people who just couldn't handle scenes like that w/out feeling like they had to undercut it by making sure you Loudly Knew that they had Ironic Emotional Detachment and thought a man loudly weeping about feeling like he should've died was Cringe.

Hollywood Godzilla movies haven't been as successful in understanding that the Human Drama is the main compelling focus in Godzilla movies, and they've fallen short in making you care about characters at times. It's about the spectacle. Which can be fun! I enjoy a big dumb movie as much as the rest of us, but I feel like a lot of general audiences have been conditioned to have those moments undermined and undercut w/ irony and jokes.

That isn't what it is here. It's a fantastic movie. Let a man cry about his trauma w/out feeling you gotta laugh loudly about it. I am a movie talker sometimes, but you don't gotta MST3K your way through everything just because a feeling makes you uncomfortable. I know we aren't used to MELODRAMAAA here but...just...let it be.

[annabelle--cane]

make peace with your teenage self and your earnest but unpracticed art and the photos you thought you looked cool in and the jokes that didn't land and the opinions you hadn't yet worked through and the ugly coping mechanisms you cobbled together in a panic. shame is a useless source of pain, a pool of ice water deep in your gut that'll have you thinking the only way to warm up is to set people on fire like they're your own personal self-effigies. it's not a random fifteen year old's fault that you cringe thinking about when you were too enthusiastic about that anime you liked in eighth grade.

[jessaerys]

ventured into the rarely visited matryoshka depths of my files and i found a lot of 12+ year old baby alex art 🥺 it's so corny and earnest and full of blooming sexiness and edginess. they REALLY don't make cringe like this anymore in today's era of self-awareness and irony poison and instagram polishedness. teenagers living in 2024 would have bullied me ON SIGHT

[wormdramafever]

Goodbye Volcano High among POLYGON's 50 Best Video Games of 2023!!

Goodbye Volcano High is a visual novel with rhythm game elements, and it takes place at the precipice of the end of the world. It’s centered on a group of teenage dinosaurs entering their senior year of high school, a perfect balance between high school dramatics and the grim future of Earth, as a meteor rockets toward the planet. Though the rhythm game elements can feel a bit finicky — and don’t seem to matter much, in terms of progressing the game — Goodbye Volcano High’s music only adds to the dimensional, raw experience created by worker-owned studio KO_OP. It’s rare to find a game that takes the teenage experience seriously, but Goodbye Volcano High does just that. It’s a time in your life where you feel so, so much. You can see that earnestness in the teenage experience where everything is a big, huge issue — sometimes to the point of cringe — tied up in that big, global issue of the meteor that’s looking to destroy everything. —N. Carpenter

Check the article for the rest!

[the1975attheirverybest]

To bring back the discussion to albums, I think ILIWYS has romanticism, but of a bitter type. You can tell that there’s a lot of sadness over the fact that what was romanticised in ST ended up being disappointing, you know the “I never found love in the city” which I think can be applied not only strictly to his romantic life at the time, but also to the naïve idea that in your 20’s your going to find a sense of direction, potentially find the love of your life, pulling your shit together essentially. In ABIIOR the romanticism is almost obscured by Matty learning to find balance in his life and all the pain he endured in the years that led to ABIIOR, you can tell he’s in a more stable situation, but there’s so much anxiety tied to coming to terms with the past. NOACF has the mature romanticism that you’d expect in a 30 yo person, where the idealism is gone and you’re trying to be aloof not in a negative way, but because you think that letting yourself go would be cringe, even tho notes has incredibly touchy and romantic songs like “bagsy” and tbsg. I think that the 2 years that Matty spent at home writing BFIAFL, living a more domestic life, put things into a different perspective and made him think that it’s not a problem to be cheesy and he acted like the teenager that wrote “fallingforyou” (idk when it was written precisely like I think I said before, but it’s fair to assume that it was written in their early 20’s-late teens).

I’m particularly curious about what kind of romanticism we’ll have in album 6 because his life is even more different now than it was 2 years ago. I don’t have expectations nor clues, because we know they don’t like to make the same thing twice, so maybe they’ll make something completely unexpected

Yeah I have never quite known how to feel about how love is talked about on ABIIOR. Cuz of “Mine” which starts with “there comes a time in a young man’s life” and ends with “I just can’t say I do” like it’s classic 1975 in that it’s a non-love-song-like love song.

I meannnnn, I think you could see Matty’s writing since at least iliwys (maybe since ST) as a trajectory towards earnestness. We start at LOVE ME, then you get stuff like Sincerity is Scary, IAWDS, then stuff like playing on my mind, and what should I say, until we finnnalllyyyy get an “I’m in love with you.” BUTTTT then again we get “I’m a racist and you’re some kind of slag” which….idk I guess we settle on the idea that it’s cyclical. We get moments of sincerity in between ironic tendencies? Idk. Yeah.

Re album 6, idk but I do know that when he teased GHEMB there was a song called “ring box” and another that was along the lines of “she washes the dishes and I’ve never been happier.” Or something like that. He’s now engaged soooooo 👀👀👀