#also been developing their relationship more in my little brain and the lesbian & her dad dynamic is truly one of the best of all time tbh

[luvisia]

sharing these two again because they’re my little guys! :) reagent characters, ema and roger, a drifter without a family and an army veteran. they’re both respectively sorting out their demons and watching each others’ backs in the trials.

[animation-is-my-jam]

General stuff about my Future Wordgirl AU (aka I vent about its development and random facts):

- it's more of a time skip than anything but I'm too lazy to change the tags.

- My Au has the events of the OG show and the AU caused by two dysfunctional egomaniacs.

- Tim Botsford seems to be the only good dad in the story, I don't know why. I mean there are also gonna be other good dad's but those are kinda not really the focus (and one is a spoiler).

- Honestly the amount of OCs I make for this AU in general is sad since I'm cutting so many due to how big the Wg cast was, like I had to cut out two other villain OCs to try and not make the story already cluttered. Even the one-off OCs are kinda getting scrapped or being made into a single OC.

- Okay so, the stuff with Tobey's dad is kinda gonna get weird; like it's dark--but I don't want it to make the story seem too emo since I still wanna keep the same theme and feel of the show (bc I like it so much).

- Here's a mystery: "Is Tobey still in high school, or did he graduate early?" 🤔

- There is in fact mythical and eldritch creatures OCs, why? Because the world of Wordgirl doesn't make sense and I like to get silly.

- Becky should just a get a break please.

- Tobey eventually changes his name to Tobey Mackenzie Ezperanza McCallister ( a spoiler worth mentioning since yeah Tobey eventually comes out as genderfluid).

- Like anyone in this AU who aren't my Villain OCs are either cis or straight.

- Tobey and Becky have been in other relationships before they had feelings for each other.

- I ship Violet with Rose and Dr. Two brains with Professor Tubing, which are probably the only random self indulgent ships I have in this AU.

- space lesbians and earth lesbians

- The McCallister's get therapy the arc.

- Becky finally gets too sleep the arc.

- Johnson and Tj are internet enthusiasts, with both of them getting into creepypastas and other dark web stuff like any other 14 year-olds in the late 2000s. (This Au starts in 2007 btw)

- Also Johnson definitely writes fanfictions, so did Tj but was kinda annoyed working on another fic with Johnson about Tobey x wordgirl.

- Tobey and Eme would actually be into the more memey side of the early internet with cat videos being their favorites.

- Tobey and Becky unironically like Johnson's fanfictions.

- friendship moments 🥺

- found family 🥺😢😭

-Eme (one of the OCs) actually doesn't actually consider the McCallisters a part her new family for almost a year in the story, she just lived with them on the account that's she's legally an orphan and that the family owes her one.

- Tobey and Claire don't adopt and make Eme's life better, Eme adopts them.

- RIP Theodore McCallister the II, a pretty terrible father, husband, son, student, friend, boss, brother, boyfriend, mentor, pet owner, inventor...ect.

- Becky still is a fan of pretty princess and funny enough the show has itself a reboot (commence the reboot jokes).

- Also no joke I got way too invested in the idea of developing the pretty princess reboot joke, that legitimately have made an actual story in the pretty princess canon, which itself is a fake tv show in a tv show. (Y'all wordgirl is too powerful, why did the creators/writers have to make it so good. (So yeah don't be surprised if I make pretty princess fanart 😶)

- Mr. And Mrs. Best! Get bent!

- Violet gets into punk rock.

- Kid math is still so good, he's a little dude trying his best :)

- The cookie War of 08. Idk I have a fun story idea where it starts out small with people arguing over cookie taste which eventually has the entire city divided fighting in a comical cookie war. Of course it escalated this quickly bc Becky was out of town for an author meet and greet.

- Granny may is eternal and so is her cat.

- Mr. big gets bullied by a bunch of second graders the side plot.

- Chuck and Whammer have been dating for a couple of years, Marriage subplot 😳???

- Bob tries to avoid his ex from lexicon.

- Tobey went to therapy 👍🏼

- Rhyme and Reason are close to taking over Doctor Two Brains spot of the most popular villain, since he’s been out of his game for a while.

- Doctor Two Brains recovery story featuring Professor Tubing.

[sonofsallyjackson]

Heroes of Olympus should have been in first-person.

@jo-march-is-a-lesbian​ wrote a really wonderful post about how “Percy Jackson and the Olympians is better than Heroes of Olympus…because it understood simplicity and character development.”  It highlights some reasons I also found HoO less rewarding namely that it was an overcomplicated story with limited character growth, lacked a common thesis, and was super jarring when it switched perspectives.  

And with that my little brain went: I can fix this.  Which frankly is ridiculous.  I can’t come up with a compelling thesis like “The idea that we should place our hope in our loved ones, our friends and our family, and if we do that, we won’t be tempted to give up hope again.”   But I can imagine a simple change that would have solved some of the issues and also played to Rick’s strengths as a writer:  Each book should have been written in first person and narrated by a different character.

With so many people on the quest, I often felt like I was watching a bunch of one-dimensional characters fight for their right to be the main character.  I didn’t know who to focus on but I was also dissatisfied.  There were all these new wonderful characters in front of me who I wanted to love, but I didn’t feel like I actually knew them.  I mean I don’t feel like I know the Stoll Brothers either, but I’m not concerned about that fact because they are side characters.  When everyone is painted as the main character,  I have certain expectations for growth, personality, and voice.  The story would have been better served if the characters took turns narrating the action, allowing us to settle into their perspective, see their growth, and better understand their personality.

Plus Rick kills first-person.  While I’m not particularly a fan of Trials of Apollo, it’s not because I don’t know the characters.  Apollo is so very different than Percy. Their voices, even though they can both be jokesters at times, reflect their different life-experiences, thought processes and provide massive insight into their characters.   If the Seven (and Nico and Reyna) got the same treatment, I would be absolutely giddy.  

I recognize that rewriting the HoO series in first-person is something a talented fanfiction writer with a lot of time on their hands could actually do.  But I am not talented like that and I certainly don’t have the discipline to actually write that much fic, especially if I was trying to keep the events vaguely the same just with different narration and pacing.  So instead I’ve included who I think should have narrated each book below the cut.  I’d love to hear any opinions people have regarding this idea, especially who they would have wanted to see to narrate each book.

In addition to picking the narrator, I’ve highlighted what should be the “quest” so to speak of each story.  Personally, MoA, HoH and BoO are kind of a blur to me despite reading them all recently.  It’s hard to distinguish what happens in each book because it’s all one massive quest with a whole bunch of mini-quests.    While the different narrators would obviously make the books more distinctive, splitting the series into seven books would also help simplify each book’s individual goal.  Eight books would have allowed for better integration of the plot to find the physician’s cure, but with the prophecy of seven, it seemed like seven books was the best option, if I was going to be doing something as blasphemous as splitting books.   

As a note, I ran out of steam as I went so not all opinions are fully fleshed out. 

Book 1:  The Lost Hero The Quest: Rescue Hera/Juno Narrator:  Jason 

Why this would be cool: 

He is literally Juno’s chosen sent on a quest to rescue her.  It’s poetic enough to give him the book.

Jason’s journey is just as much about rediscovering himself as it is about saving Juno.   Of the new characters, I feel like I understand Jason the least. Mainly because I felt like I was missing the entire first half of his story.  Jason, like Percy and Annabeth, is a hero of the Titan War. I know some of his accomplishments, but I don’t have any bearing on what his life was like or how he felt about it.   He doesn’t seem like the type to relish Praetor-ship since he doesn’t have the same intense need to get back to his camp as Percy.  Was he just hoisted on his comrades’ shields after killing the Titan without any real choice in the matter? Give me Jason’s memories coming back slowly over the course of the quest (with potentially a fractured memory of a mistake he made in the Roman’s final Titan battle that makes him doubt their ability to both rescue Piper’s dad and save Hero but he makes the decision to anyway because he can’t just hurt his friend like that.   Let me understand how Jason is the person he is today.  Give me glances of the Roman Camp with emphasis on the heavy expectations that have always followed him as the son of Jupiter and foreshadow why he eventually chooses to design all the shrines for the minor gods so he can have his own place in the world as a figure between the two camps.

Let’s dive into those feelings of anger/guilt/resentment when people at camp are disappointed with him for not being Percy or in Chiron’s case are nervous about what his presence means. 

I want to dig deeper regarding Jason’s feelings about reconnecting with Thalia.  He knows that if the gods hadn’t been determined to keep the two camps completely separate, he could have grown up with his sister. 

What does telling the narrative like this sacrifice:  

We miss some of the internal turmoil regarding the fact that Piper’s Dad has been captured and she must betray her friends. 

We also don’t feel the tensions of Piper’s relationship with Aphrodite. I don’t see Piper bringing up the conversation with her mom saying that her mist memories were so strong because she automatically sensed the potential of a romantic relationship with Jason.  

We don’t have any of Leo’s conflicted feelings regarding rescuing Hera or his fear of being made an outcast for his fire abilities.  Jason has to go with Leo to discover Bunker 9 and Festus.  

Leo doesn’t actively save the day with the Cyclops. 

We don’t know how Piper feels about her charm-speak or see her defeat Madea (as the boys are in their weird trance thing). 

Knowledge about Gaea’s involvement in wrecking Leo’s life will come later.  

Book 2: The Son of Neptune The Quest: Free Thantos Narrator:  Hazel

Why this would be cool: 

The stakes are so incredibly high. Hazel is literally risking her second chance at life by agreeing to go on this chance.  She’s going to the place she died to fight the monster she created. She also has to deal with the trauma of knowing she may have bought the world time with her first sacrifice but it now means nothing if she can’t succeed again.  

We get to see Camp Jupiter from the view of someone who loves it but doesn’t really fit in.  Hazel joined Camp Jupiter just after the final battle.  She enters a community that has learned to fight as a well-oiled machine but that has lost people.  Dakota or the others may remark to her about how things were before or the people who are missing.  Hazel sees a community that she’s not quite a part of both because she didn’t fight in the war and because she’s in the fifth cohort with a feared godly parent.

It would explore her relationship with Nico more (because I love their dynamic and I want more).   She knows she can’t replace his real sister, but she feels comfortable and happy at the opportunity to have a brother, especially one who is out of time like she is.   

What does telling the narrative like this sacrifice:  

Frankly, the largest pushback would be from the fans who expected this to be Percy’s book since we just watched Jason rediscover who he is.

Percy’s phone call to his mom doesn’t have the same intensity.  

Frank’s relationship with Mars and how desperate he was to be claimed but now he doesn’t think he can live up to his father’s expectations.  

Frank and his grandmother.  We aren’t in Frank’s head as he changes shape till later.  

Book 3: Mark of Athena The Quest: Close the Divide Between The Two Camps by finding Athena’s statue and Rescue Nico Narrator(s):  Annabeth and Leo

Why Annabeth: 

So I can have all the emotions at the reunion with Percy.  

Annabeth’s relationship with her Mom has never been great, but imagine beginning the book with Annabeth being given the Mark of Athena. They haven’t left for New Rome yet and her nerves are already all over the place.  Then Athena/Minerva comes, gives her an impossible quest, and breaks her hat.   Annabeth wants to prove to her mother that she’s worthy because despite everything she still values her mother’s opinions.  Also her fatal flaw of hubris makes her believe she will succeed where everyone else failed.

Much of the book already follows her in third person limited so we just get things with a little extra emotion.  

Why Leo:  

Leo has to grapple with the fact he started this war by being the one to fire the cannon even if he didn’t have any control.  He is motivated to fix it

If we’re going to include the Sammy plot, we need to do it now.   Leo doesn’t like being the odd one out on the ship but he certainly doesn’t like the feeling of being notable because of his grandfather.  

We still need to get into those feelings of abandonment and anger at Gaea for killing his mom.  

Nemesis 

Leo comes into his own with the discovery of the Archimedes sphere and the decision to value people over objects.  

What does telling the narrative like this sacrifice:

The aquarium shenanigans 

The fight between Jason and Percy in Kansas needs to happen differently so that the others are present and try to stop it.  

Neither of them went ashore to meet Hercules.  

I think we might need to move up the Calypso meeting to this book, but that also kills some of the suspense since Frank will have the fireproof coating prior to his adventures in Venice when he gains faith in his abilities.  It also might mean Leo opens the fortune cookie from Nemesis unless for some odd reason he doesn’t have it.  There’s a lot more narrative weight for it coming later, but in order to get in as many book events as we can in, it might need to come earlier. 

Book 4:  House of Hades Pt. 1

The Quest: Survive Tartarus Narrator(s): Annabeth and Percy

The first time I read House of Hades, I read it out of order (reading all the Percy and Annabeth chapters until they were on the elevator out of Tartarus before going back and reading the others), because I couldn’t handle the back and forth.  I felt like the tension would build, I’d be invested in this plot and then we’d switch to the other plot. Plus I was very concerned for my children.  So I feel fully justified in saying that there is more than enough material to give the two of them their own book.

I just feel like all the feelings would be magnified.  

Percy’s commentary slowly losing its humor because he can’t anymore.

Annabeth’s guilt at having pulled him in being extra loud.  

Downsides beyond adding an entire book: Just imagine all the outrage at two cliffhangers in a row, because you know the book would end with them in the elevator remembering Bob’s words about the stars.   

Book 5:  House of Hades Pt. 2

The Quest:  Close the Doors of Death Narrator(s): Frank and Hazel

Frank and Hazel experience the most growth on the quest to close the doors so this book is all theirs.  Hazel learns to control the mist.  Frank experiments with his transformations.  I want nothing but them growing into themselves and their abilities.  

The good thing about turning the two warring storylines from House of Hades into separate books is that we lose very little plot.  

Book 6:  House of Hades Pt. 3/Blood of Olympus Pt 1 (Personally I would call this one Ambassador of Pluto)

The Quest:  Unite the Gods’ Personalities. Narrator: Nico

To clarify what I mean by HoH 3, I just mean anything done with the intention of trying to cross paths with Reyna, including the adventure with Cupid, in addition to the existing Nico&Reyna plotline in BoO.  

Nico dealing with all the emotions and his most recent near-death experience.

He kept the secret of the camps so the world wouldn’t end in chaos, but now that the world is in chaos he will be the one to fix it.  

In the short time he’s on the Argo 2, Nico realizes that even though this wasn’t his quest; this is his family and he needs to protect them.  

The reader has a pretty good idea Nico is gay, even if the word isn’t explicitly said from the descriptions (his guilty Percy thoughts - he let down the man he loves even if he won’t admit it.) This means that Cupid’s forceful outing is potentially less surprising so the reader can be properly outraged at Cupid.  

Downside: Reyna definitely has adventures when Nico is passed out, especially the whole waking up with the Hunters, but I think it’s excusable for a whole book from Nico’s perspective.  

Also, the battle between the camps and gifting of the statue needs to happen in this book, but we shouldn’t find out if the gods have regained control of their forms yet.  We alleviate some tensions because Camp Half-blood is likely to be overrun with Octavian’s monsters instead of the Roman armies and Gaea could awaken any second, but there’s an odd moment of calm and an uneasy truce.  (Octavian is potentially taken under custody to be held for trial only to escape in the next book.) 

Book 7:  Blood of Olympus Pt 2 (and the aftermath)

The Quest:  Like The Last Olympian, the final book’s focus is entirely on defeating the series’ big bad, in this case, Gaea.  Leo’s quest for the Physician’s cure parallels Percy’s River Styx visit.  

Narrator(s):  Leo and Piper

Leo has his death hanging over his head.  He has decided that he will be the one to die not any of his friends.  He got the cloth from Calypso so the “fire” portion of the prophecy applies to him and not Frank.  (Yes I know you can’t control prophecies, but do you think that’s going to stop Leo.)  

It’s the ultimate revenge for killing his mom.  We can have memories of both the happy times with Esperanza and the fear he felt for thinking he caused the fire. 

Piper’s perspective is necessary as we need to be with her during the fight with the giants.   

This series began with Piper, Leo, and Jason.  It ends that way too with the three of them killing Gaea and the two of them narrating.  

Downsides: 

The Percabeth I love you-the feud is over scene remains in Piper’s perspective.  

Since we’re not following Reyna’s delivery of the statue concurrently we don’t know when to anticipate the healed gods appearing in the battle with the giants.  

The book can still get away with not showing us Percy’s reunion with Sally or forcing Leo to tell the others he’s alive so they’re all grieving. 

[thelanguageoflovers]

let’s talk about andi mack.

this is gonna be kind of long in comparison to what i usually post and basically just a look into what goes on in my mind (as someone who definitely represents a solid chunk of the target audience) when i think/ talk about andi mack. it’s separated into three sections, and its all around kind of aggressively academic. let’s go, yall

( @secretly-of-course it was gonna be longer but my brain said ‘you’ve spoken enough,, that will be all.’)

first of all, let’s talk format

Andi Mack is a TV show, and a children’s TV show, at that. This format offers a lot of pros and cons, which is to be expected from any form of media. A lot of adults/older teenagers in the fandom have talked about wishing AM was a young adult show, but there are definitely some complexities to this whole debate.

To begin with, there is great value in showing that kind of diversity in children’s television. We all kind of knew that, and it’s part of what makes the show so special. Children need to see this kind of representation and often because it helps them to feel normal and accepted.

However, there is also value in being unrestricted by what’s ‘appropriate’ for children. If AM were a novel or series of novels, or even if it were produced on a channel like Freeform, there would be much more space to create difficult and distinct storylines. Doing that, though, undermines the very point of the show - teaching kids important lessons.

Realistically, in a system that implements restrictions upon diversity, there’s no good way to make the most important messages available to everyone.

Much like there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, there is no unequivocal truth under censorship.

and then, of course, there’s the storyline(s)

Andi Mack is known for its gay representation - Cyrus Goodman, and later TJ Kippen, was the first confirmed queer character on US Disney Channel. Goodman was also the first to say the word ‘gay’ on Disney.

While the LGBTQ+ representation on Andi Mack is a greatly imperative, (and, as a young lesbian, my favorite storyline on the show) it’s not the only thing that sets AM miles ahead of the crowd.

The show tackles teen pregnancy, mental health, racism, complex family dynamics, and much more. However, I’ve always thought that they didn’t tackle these issues in very much depth. That’s understandable, seeing as they only had so much time to cover so many topics, but it’s still a little disappointing.

Each character seems to have one or two main points of struggle throughout the series, in the interest of efficiency. Andi deals with her very interesting family dynamic and stereotypes. Buffy combats racism and sexism. Cyrus is coming to terms with his sexuality, while navigating four over-analyzing parents. Jonah has anxiety and paints a smile on over it, Amber’s the ex-popular girl whose dad lost his job, TJ has dyscalculia and never quite feels good enough.

Again, there was very limited time to work with in the show, but I feel that their individual struggles deserved more complex storytelling, as opposed to focusing on very surface-level problems.

In short, I wish that more screen time was dedicated to the long-term plights of singular characters than group squabbles.

with that being said, let’s talk about bex mack

BEX MACK DESERVED A BETTER DEVELOPMENT TRACK.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore Bex and the way her story penned out for her. Even so, I think she deserved a lot better than what she got. Bex started the series as a very independent woman with a bad relationship with her parents and a slight lack of life skills. 

I wish we could have seen her fight to stay as independent as she was when we were introduced to her. Bex deserved to have a development track in which she learns a lot and matures, but doesn’t necessarily change as a person. 

Instead, I feel like she changed a lot to better fit her idea of what a ‘good mom’ looked like. 

In my opinion, Bex’s ending would have been so much better if she had retained her personality a little more, showing a bit more resistance to what was expected of her.

[butchedyke]

(for the char thing) stanley uris, mike hanlon, and patty blum

migz!!!! i’m sorry i abandoned this in favour of video games and capitalism i hope i can make it up to u uwu

this is mostly going off the movies but there’s occasional book and miniseries input- i’ve only read the first few chapters, a few wikia pages, and some character meta from the book and i’ve only seen the miniseries once vs the however many times ive watched the movies in the last 2 months so don’t expect consistency between canons

 (also i’m gonna put these under a cut because this post got really long)

stanley uris

How I feel about this character:

there is a reason i use the tag baby boy for stan (and also for miniseries eddie)!!!! he’s my favourite loser other than eddie and i want to like. hold him and make sure he’s happy and healthy and i think stephen king should treat his characters better.

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

patty!!!!! their relationship in the book makes me so happy and anyone who’s ever spoken to me about stanpat knows that i am at all times thinking about how she calls his car sedanley.

that being said, i respect stenbrough, stanlon, and streddie but overall this is a stanpat household

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

stan with all the losers but especially richie! which isn’t very original since they are literally best friends but their dynamic!!! good!!!! i’ve not been able to stop thinking about that one scene from the miniseries where richie introduces stan as “this is stan the man uris, he’s a jew,” partially because it’s fucking funny because who says that richie what the fuck, but also because stan just instantly follows up by saying that richie has a high metabolism which makes him hyperactive, and maybe it’s because the miniseries is campy and a little bit shit but the delivery of those lines makes it seem like they do this a lot! they have these introductions ready to go! and i love the idea of them as a platonic package deal even if we don’t get to see much of that in the movies

My unpopular opinion about this character:

i don’t think i really have any? i tend to follow people who hold the same opinions as me tho so i have no idea what’s popular outside of that dshfk

i mean i do think fics that save eddie but not stan aren’t really fix-its and going off the amount of fics where stan’s still dead i guess that’s somehow an unpopular opinion? i know everyone’s focused on reddie rn but god like. stan is right there can we stop ignoring him pls

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

i mean the most blatantly obvious answer here is that i wish he didn’t die! he should’ve gotten to go on his holiday and rail/get railed by his wife and live to meet his friends as adults, catch up on the 27 years they didn’t get to be with each other. he should’ve gotten to have kids, once everything was over, and they should’ve been able to grow up with 5 extra uncles and an aunt bc u can’t tell me the rest of the losers wouldn’t be deeply embedded in their lives. i just wish stan had a chance to be completely, 100% happy without the underlying terror of his childhood.

on a smaller note i also wish we’d gotten to see more of his interest in birds in the movies bc like. he’s babie. and who knows! maybe would’ve helped stop the perception that his entire personality is just being a bitch that hates richie jshfd

mike hanlon

How I feel about this character:

part of the reason i wanted to read the book was for more mike content because i adore this lil farm boy and the movies. well. y’know. :). characters who just openly and whole-heartedly love their friends and go straight ride or die like 10 minutes after meeting them have my whole heart! he’s so smart and so kind and just wanted to protect his friends as best he could even though he dragged them into this whole mess bc he doesn’t want to lose them again!!!! mike deserves the whole world and if his way of getting that is by getting out of derry and getting to know that his friends remember and love him and each other then that’s all i want for him.

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

i wasn’t overly set on any particular mike ship until i watched the miniseries and saw the homoerotic bike montage and now i’m fully on the hanbrough train. choo choo.

just like with stan i support stanlon but endgame hanbrough is just. it’s right there in the text. bill didn’t divorce audra for nothing in ch2.

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

this also kinda ties in with the last point, but jane @billdenbrough opened my eyes, in the middle of a very in-depth conversation about audra’s minion strap, to the world of best friends mike and audra who are both with bill which is both galaxy brained and an incredibly good concept which i think about a lot

also i think mike and ben could’ve had something Incredibly soft if mike wasn’t treated like a background character in the first film and a quest-giving npc in the second one :) :)

My unpopular opinion about this character:

i headcanon mike as gay, i have no textual evidence for this, i just think he’s neat. i think it’s a pretty popular opinion that the movies treated him poorly? and i also think that in ch2 he was just trying to protect his friends in a scenario that did not lend itself at all to protection. drugging bill and not telling the others about the full ritual might not have been the best thing to do, but he was in a goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation, and he was trying his best to save his friends no matter how impossible it may have been.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

i uh :) i don’t know if anyone’s figured out yet :) that i wish many things had happened with mike in canon :) :) the first film doesn’t give him much but the second film just infuriates me completely tbqh! he’s basically entirely there to push the narrative (his dialogue doesn’t even sound like dialogue! it sounds like prose explaining the plot and the next steps the characters have to take!), or to drug and lie to his friends. i wish they’d kept his backstory the same, that we’d actually gotten to see him find his token, that he’d gotten a token relevant to him as an individual rather than the group, that we’d gotten a flashback for him, that he was given more screentime and development across both films, like... i wish he’d been treated like the other losers and not a plot point.

i also wish we’d gotten to see him on his travels post-canon, seeing the other losers, and just generally actually getting to be happy- we see the start of it but god i just want to see him having a good time outside of derry.

patty blum

How I feel about this character:

if she were not stan’s wife she would be my wife. we don’t get to see much of her in the movie or miniseries and that is a fucking crime!!!! i’ve already mentioned sedanley but like. sedanley. i’ve read patty’s bit in the book and that’s all i need the other 1100 pages can get fucked, she’s just here to watch family feud and love stan which i can confidently say is a huge fucking mood

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

STAN. i guess i already talked about this before but i���ll keep going!!! my love for stanpat overwhelms my usual distaste towards straight relationships bc they’re so good!!!!! the fact that they’re really the only happy relationship to come out of the 27 year gap and they love each other so much and so like... wholesomely? but they still blow each other’s backs out on the reg and it’s what they deserve.

also i sometimes think about patty/audra as like. kind of a crack ship kind of a “i’m a lesbian and i’m desperate to see lesbians” ship. i haven’t thought about it in depth i just want to plant the seed

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

stan introducing patty to the losers and patty becoming an honorary loser is my weakness!!!! patty being comfortable enough to rib richie (and richieandeddie) with stan, but also vice versa going along with richie’s bits. patty and bev getting close because as much as st*phen k*ng and co push bev as One Of The Boys(tm) there’s just something in having another woman around that can be refreshing especially when they’re both bicons. patty and mike enthusiastically sharing holiday pictures and tales of their trips. patty noticing when eddie’s having a bad day, whether it’s anxiety or lingering trauma, and supporting him through it, regaling him with stories about stan and what essentially amount to dad jokes (sedanley!!!) and making sure he knows he’s loved and supported by all the losers. patty, the teacher, and ben, lunchtimes-in-the-library ben who never outgrew his love of reading, nerding out over shit that the others don’t really know about. bill telling patty all about what stan was like as a kid in that way only bill can, richie chiming in with crude comments sometimes but noticeably keeping quieter than usual, and patty returning the favour, telling them about the last 27 years, and not even richie makes a single joke when everyone tears up (because he’s tearing up the most). stan sitting there the whole time not even bothering to point out that he’s right there because it’s enough for him to see the romantic love of his life and the platonic loves of his life bonding, and yeah, maybe it was worth sticking around for.

My unpopular opinion about this character:

i don’t know if this is unpopular but patty pegs. that’s all.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

more patty. let me see my wife.

[tillielongbottom]

❝ being a pilot doesn’t make you cool, but if you’re cool, you’re probably a pilot. ❞

MATILDA LONGBOTTOM really is the spitting image of ODEYA RUSH, right? For someone only 21 years old, TILLIE has been forced to endure so much. Yeah, that UNKNOWN BLOOD STATUS has been scraping by at the sanctuary since SEPTEMBER, 2028, working as a HUNTER in the DIVISION OF FORAGE. SHE is a CIS WOMAN and is known to be TACTLESS and IRASCIBLE but also HUMANE and RESOURCEFUL. Best of luck surviving through this. ⊰ SAM, 24, EST, THEY/THEM ⊱ (Matilda is adopted.)

♡ CHARACTER PARALLELS — Lisa Simpson ( The Simpsons ) + Bart Simpson ( The Simpsons. ) + Steven Hyde ( That 70′s Show ) + Seth Cohen ( The O.C. ) + Jess Mariano ( Gilmore Girls ) + Stitch ( Lilo & Stitch ) + Jessica Jones ( Jessica Jones ) + Janis Ian ( Mean Girls ) + Amy Pond ( Doctor Who ) + Arya Stark ( Game of Thrones )

( lil note: things might be changed regarding tillie’s family backstory and dynamics. )

CHILDHOOD

TWs: Adoption + Birth + Guilt + Parental Death

alright, so. i already wrote this intro, but lost it because i have minus ten brains, and i’m going to be honest with you: it was a pretty good intro, and i’m a bit bummed about losing it, so i can’t promise that this one will be just as good rip.

ADOPTION, BIRTH, PARENTAL DEATH TWS. matilda was the first and only daughter of an american immigrant who got pregnant at the age of nineteen. she died giving birth, never even getting a chance to name the child, and since no one could figure anything out about tillie’s other parent, she was put into the wixen adoption system. she ended up being adopted by the longbottoms when she was 3 months old, and therefore never knew much of anything but the longbottoms when it came to family.

ADOPTION, GUILT TW. the thing is, there has never been a single doubt in tillie’s mind that neville and hannah are her real parents; the ones she loves and who love her. still, she can’t help but wonder sometimes. what if her biological mother had gotten the chance to raise her? did her other parent even knew she existed and decided never to get involved, or were they always completely unaware of her existence? with an overactive imagination like hers, thoughts like that and countless scenarios constantly made their way through tillie’s head, and it made her feel unbelievably guilty. she was a longbottom, through and through. still, there was always this little “what if” at the back of her mind. it didn’t make her love her parents and siblings any less, of course, but she felt guilt for even just wondering. those are feelings she’s never talked about to anyone, though. i’m not even sure she fully realizes how present they are within herself. (this is heavily inspired by someone i know, and makes me feel very emotional, so i might not write it out all that much in paras and what not, but i thought it was important to include it in her intro, as it does matter and is part of her character development!)

she wasn’t a quiet baby, and definitely didn’t turn into a quiet child. matilda was always loud, and always aching to be heard and listened to. she was babbling from a very young age, and started talking before the age of one. she wasn’t reciting proust by heart, of course, but she talked the way some two year olds did before the age of one. she just!!!!! ached to communicate so damn much, and got very frustrated when she didn’t know the right word to express herself, and since she was quick to anger, being misunderstood by people led to a lot of tantrums. all in all, she wasn’t an easy child, especially not as a toddler.

still, she was a charming and bold kid, and tended to attract positive attention. really, it was mostly around her parents and/or whoever was taking care of her at the moment that she could be a bit... difficult. she loved putting on little shows (though it was a GREAT idea not to call them “little” in front of her), and always tried to drag her friends and siblings into doing various performances with her, such as dancing, acting, singing, etc. she always made a bit production of it, too, and would ask any and every stranger that she would come upon in whatever environment she was in to come watch her shows.

matilda adored making up stories!!!! she loved reading, and loved inventing stories and games based off what she read, but even before she could read, she was making up stories and like!!!!! she had a very vivid imagination and would tell stories to any and everybody who would listen to her. she was such a good storyteller (for someone her age), that, um, at one point, she realized she could also lie pretty damn well. she started lying left and right, just for the hell of it, and that might have been the thing that got her into the most trouble with people, especially her parents. she still has difficulties not lying nowadays. she just......... loves making stuff up? she tries very hard not to, but it seems to be an urge that’s too strong to constantly resist.

she had a lot of energy, and sometimes when she didn’t get to let it out, she got moody and angry and not as fun as usual to be around. to counter that, her parents signed her up to muggle kickboxing classes, after a few failed attempts at team sports. tillie was a bit of a bossy kid, and she didn’t do well at team sports back when she was younger. luckily enough, she excelled at kickboxing, and absolutely adored it. later on, she even dabbled in some muggle martial arts, and though she never used her training in a real life situation (not until the inferi, at least), she loved knowing she had the ability to defend herself and/or other people. 

her relationship with her parents wasn’t always easy in her childhood (and her teenage years either, but we’ll get to that later), but she never doubted how much she loved them and how much they loved her. of course, that can be changed depending on the people who play neville and hannah, but yes! with her siblings, i feel like the relationship might have been a bit smoother? or at least, i definitely think that for younger siblings. older siblings, i don’t know. we’d have to plot it out, but............... tillie automatically goes angry emoji face at any semblance of authority so just someone two years older than her being “in charge” when she’s 10 and both her parents go out would make her the fight me emoji just out of principle eogiergjeirjgeoirjierjg. but like!!!!! my point is!!!!! tillie loves her family so damn much!!!!! would destroy the whole wide world for them, and like????? tillie loves the world!!!!! she’s quite disappointed in it, but she wants it to do better!!!!! and for them????? she’d destroy it!!!!!!!!

HOGWARTS YEARS

ok, but.......... i’d love for tillie to have made like....... a nemesis tm on her first hogwarts express ride to hogwarts. we could even make it into a REALLY slow burn enemies to lovers like?????? them always being nemesis and now being stuck in the same place in such a complicated situation??????? amazing!!!!!! i’d love if they were tillie’s opposite, too, but this isn’t my wanted connections page (which is linked below) so egoiergoiejrgijer. i’ll refrain from babbling on and on about it.

matilda longbottom being sorted into gryffindor was a surprise to like, absolutely no one who knew her. she was loud, brash, brave, courageous, etc. and it was like....... expected for her to end up there. thing is, personally, i think she had qualities of all the houses? imaginative & creative for ravenclaw, ambitious & driven for slytherin, and loyal & all for justice and what not for hufflepuff.

tillie was always one to cheer for the underdog, and so i bet that she first made friends with all the kids who seemed to have difficulty fitting in before she made friends with the rest tm. honestly, i’m picturing her having been pretty popular during her time at hogwarts? not in a “mean girls” way, but rather in the fact that a lot of people just...... liked her. of course, she had (and still has) pretty strong opinions and is not easily swayed in her convictions, so the people who disagreed with her might not have liked her all that much, but still. eoijgeriojgeiorjgeiorjgoierjg and like ofc other people disliked her too like she has a pretty strong personality so i think!!!!!! it’s like hate or love; there’s very little in the middle. which i think still fits within the popular thing, because, really, most people would at least have an opinion about her.

stood up to bullies a bit too intensely, and probably got in trouble for it. she didn’t give a sh*t about the fact that her dad was a teacher and she’d get in trouble at home as well as in school; she had no patience for people who picked on others, especially not people who had it more difficult than others. she saw things in black and white, and didn’t really get the whole “the bully might have had a super hard life too” side of things. if you did something bad, and didn’t apologize, then you were a bad person, and that was it. she’s a bit less, um, intense about her way of thinking nowadays, but not by that much ergoierjoigjeroigjerojger.

does not forgive easily, and never has. like, she saw someone steal a candy bar from another kid in her first year, and she still hasn’t forgiven them. she “hates” them and it’s eorigjeirojgoeirgjeoirgjer. she needs to relax a bit. which is funny, becausse generally she’s really chill, but there are some things that get her blood BOILING.

she couldn’t exactly do kickboxing at hogwarts, and so she became a reserve beater in her second year, before becoming a complete (tm) beater in her fourth year. she stopped after sixth year, though, and in her seventh year, she began a secret, not-so-sanctioned-by-hogwarts, Muggle Martial Arts & Other Fighting Techniques Club for people who wanted to either practice it, like her, or simply wanted to learn. would it have been sanctioned if she had asked? maybe. but she loved feeling like a rebel egoieroigjerjgoer.

probably came out as a lesbian in her fourth year. tillie liked girls, and she didn’t want to hide it. she’s always acted like she’s super confident, though, but in fact she’s kind of insecure when it comes to relationships? she’s scared of not being enough, and has always been. it’s eorgjeriojgeoijgerijo sad.

AFTER HOGWARTS

tillie had zero clues whatsoever about what she wanted to do after hogwarts. she hadn’t chosen her n.e.w.t. classes with any specific career in mind, and she kind of panicked the summer after her seventh year, clueless about what she was supposed to do. then, she decided to work for a year, and then travel for the next. she knew it wasn’t the most “valid” choice, long-term-wise, but it was what she wanted to do, and so she did it.

she worked for a year at flourish & blotts, which was quite challenging for someone who preferred debating and helping others to selling books, but she was somewhat of an avid reader, after all, and so she did enjoy the discounts and discussions that inevitably occured about books.

and then, she went on to travel. she decided that, having explored a bit of europe with friends and family in the past, she’d go to another continent. and, very maturely, she decided to choose by closing her eyes, spinning a globe around, and stopping it at random with her finger. that method led to her deciding to visit north america, central america & south america. she started in canada, and finished in brazil. on her way, she visited all the countries on the continent, though, of course, she stayed in some for longer than in others. her favourites were mbolivia, argentina & belize. she did also enjoy a couple of cities in canada and the usa as well, but those were more reminiscent of home, and didn’t make as much of an impact on her.

she, uh, sucked at keeping in touch with people back home when she was travelling, so that could definitely be a starting or middle point for a plot? i think she may have taken the time to stay in touch with people if she knew things were more difficult for them, but otherwise, she kind of didn’t feel the need to contact people every day or so. and whilst that worked for her, whether that worked or not with your chara(s), if they were the kind who’d have stayed in touch with her, is completely up to you.

she came back and was like!!!!!! this is boring!!!!!! she started working part-time as a clerk at the ministry of magic, and was like :( because she missed travelling and meeting new people and just!!!!! she felt like something was missing. finally, someone told her of a non-profit organization that helped wixen refugeess that had escaped muggle and wixen wars in other countries, and she was like :o and decided to try and help out! she became a part-time volunteer with them, and adored it. she didn’t know if she’d spend her life doing what she was doing, doing two part-time things, but at the moment, it worked for her. 

INFERI CRISIS

the reason why she only arrived at hogwarts in september, and towards the end of september at that? she was trying to save as many people as possible. tillie cannot stand seeing people suffer, and when she becomes passionate about something, it’s the one thing she thinks about, and well...... she got REALLY passionate about saving people. 

i don’t think she’s fully processed what is happening yet, to be honest. like, she gets it; she’s not unaware, but........ in a way, it still feels fake, somehow. i think it’s because she’s been on a huge adreline rush since it first started, and because she’s been focusing on others rather than herself. everything’s been happening so fast that the facts just...... haven’t had time to settle into her mind.

she decided to finally go to hogwarts because she missed the members of her family who she knew were most likely there, and she wanted to make sure they were okay. and after getting there, it felt like leaving just wasn’t an option. not when there were so many people she could help in one single place.

she decided to be a hunter because, whilst it’s not her absolute favourite thing to do in the whole wide world, she’s good at it and it doesn’t bother her to do it when necessary. thing is, she knows it’d be way harder for some other people to do it, and so she does it so that they don’t have to. she really, really respects animals and creatures, though, and so i get like? lowkey artemis vibes from this side of her?

FUN FACTS

lesbian!!!!!!!!!!!! 

loves social justice!!!!!!!! like anyone who doesn’t care about it automatically goes in her “ew” list bc!!!!!! it’s so damn important!!!!!!! probably a big fan of the concept of socialism, really. 

loves aliens so damn much and is FASCINATED with all things related to them!!!!! she thinks it’s downright SILLY not to believe that aliens exist, and her biggest dream in life is literally to meet an alien. takes ufos very seriously.

loves muggle comics, artsy french movies & junk food. also! art! she loves art so much?????? wishes she knew more about it, though, because she feels quite , well, not exactly knowledgeable when it comes to art, and tillie hates feeling like she doesn’t know enough. 

was actually good at history of magic bc she tried seeing it through more social justice lenses and it was like, eye-openning to her!!!!!!!

SUCKED at herbology like honestly she wouldn’t have done great at it anyway bc she unconsciously and consciously was trying to rebel against her parents in her teenage years, but she LEGIT sucks at taking care of plants!!!!!! coul probably kill a plastic succulent, tbh. like, that talented at killing plants. and she doesn’t do it on purpose; she TRIES to keep them alive, but alas. eogejrgoijergiojerjogerg

USEFUL LINKS

about page.

connections page.

pinterest board.

[elle-stevens]

The Break Up Blog - Day Twenty Six

It’s official: I hate my nasal passages. 

It’s like there are furry kittens growing inside of them, that’s how sensitive they are today. Not that I’m allergic to cats or any other furry mammals; at least, I still hope that’s the case. I have heard that some adults develop latent allergies later in life that they didn’t have as children. Wouldn’t that just be my luck if that happened? 

While I sneezed my brains out nearly all day, I carved out time to do a few creative and productive things. First, I made scones for breakfast; I haven’t baked scones in nearly two years. This is the first time I made them while living abroad by myself. Granted, I left them a little too long in the oven, so they came out firmer than usual. But for a first attempt in a miniature oven, they weren’t half bad, especially when I spread butter and strawberry jam liberally all over it. My colleague, N, expressed a love for scones the other day at work and I thought of her while baking this morning. 

So when I decided to do my grading for my students’ journals at a cafe instead of at home, I asked N if she wanted me to drop off some scones for her near her home since it was en route to where I wanted to go. I left my apartment 15 minutes later that what I initially told N, but the traffic was kind to me and I got to the meeting point early enough. N had a harder time getting to me after doing her grocery shopping. There’s all kinds of roadworks and construction happening in my city these days to build more subway lines and the neighbourhood close to where N lives is completely discombobulated, including all the bus stops that have shifted over slightly to make way for the construction walls. 

Anyway, N finally met me and I gave her the scones, which she was happy to receive. It seems like she’s really stressed about work since she and C are part of the recruitment process that hires new foreign teachers at my school. There have been some issues with visa paperwork and flight bookings for a new hire that has many of my colleagues completely stressed out. Thank God I don’t help out with visa paperwork at my job; I’d be two blinks away from being carted away in a straitjacket if I were. 

N had to rush off to her Chinese class and I made my way to a cafe she and C frequented the week before. The cafe has cosy decor inside and a terriffic balcony section above where you can sit outside. Sadly, the balcony was closed today; the cafe probably only opens it up in the evenings when they serve dinner. So I sat inside and did my grading, which was still nice and cosy. 

The grading itself was more stressful than I initially planned. Maybe I just over-thought it and did more than I needed to. But it took me close to 4 hours to check and correct 38 journals as well as give each student feedback and a rating based on their writing. I know that H meant well when she planned for us to do weekly journals with our students. But the plan was meant to be executed at the start of the school year and it’s already the second semester. Plus, she made C design all the journals in different formats and colours for each grade instead of just ordering ready-made journals from a publication house. Now H wants us to critique each student’s writing every single week and only give them positive feedback so they stay motivated to keep writing in class. If I have to climb up more people’s asses and kiss them from the inside, including those of my students, I might never see the sun again. 

Nevertheless, I forged on and managed to finish all my grading, even though I was hungry and the cafe suddenly didn’t serve food. But they had a menu which not only had drinks displayed on it, but food as well. So naturally I was confused that there didn’t appear to be any food. I wrapped things up and tried to call my Dad to wish him happy birthday. After all the delays with my money transfers, I was happy that I managed to send my siblings some cash to help pay for my dad’s gifts and the family brunch. But the signal was really crappy on my phone since I was outside and waiting for the bus to take me home. I managed to get back to my neighbourhood after 18:00 and made a stop at the grocery store to buy tomatoes, mushrooms and garlic. N gave me some French bread earlier, so I made some bruschetta for dinner. Not the healthiest meal to have, especially right before going to the gym, but it kept the hunger pangs at bay since I inadvertently skipped lunch. 

My parents and siblings ended up going on a drive around the beach, which gave me enough time to have a good session at the gym almost unimpeded, shower and then head home. I even had time to go to work beforehand to pick up the new headband I ordered for the gym that I used for my workout. Unlike last week’s ultra-crap fat-loss regimen, I practically aced it the second time around tonight, which kept me in good spirits. 

I got home after 21:00 and called my Dad again. With most phone conversations, I don’t always know what to say to him. I don’t know why, I just run out of safe topics quicker with my dad than with my mom. My mom and I aren’t as close, but we find ways to talk about very superficial things like who’s a new and upcoming contestant on ‘Idols’ or what new wave of crime hit my old neighbourhood this time around. I’m closer with my Dad, but it’s hard to grab time with him to have a good heart to heart. Still, I was in an excellent mood and the conversation flowed well, especially when we talked about dishes we’d been cooking in the kitchen lately. It makes me realise how much I miss my Dad these days. 

It was great catching up with my mom and my siblings too; I feel bad that P and G have been treated to my depressing and morbid side too much lately. So it felt good to ask how they’re doing and make lots of silly jokes to keep the mood light.  Even though I wished I could’ve been home with my family celebrating my dad’s birthday today, I’m happy they’re still able to have fun without me too. Sometimes I feel guilty about being so far away from home, but I know my family loves and supports me no matter. I’m really lucky and it’s time that I start acknowledging and embracing it more often. 

Throughout my busy day, I still thought of X on occasion. When I walked to the grocery store earlier, this called ‘Loving Strangers’ by Russian Red started playing in my iTunes library. That brought up a flood of memories all related to X. I actually liked that song long before X and I even became friends, but I put her onto it and it eventually became one of our songs that epitomised our relationship. The song is from a soundtrack for this lesbian romance movie called ‘Room In Rome’. It’s about these two women who meet at a bar in - you guessed it - Rome, and end up spending the night together in a beautiful Roman hotel room. It wasn’t the best acting in the world, but the chemistry between the two actresses was on sizzling and the movie had a scintillating soundtrack too. 

Anyway, X and I both loved the song and the movie and watched it together a few times over 3 years. When I visited her the first time in the Philippines, we stayed a lovely 5-star hotel for our last night together. Unintentionally, we acted out a few romantic scenes from the movie. Like dressing up in fluffy bathrobes after taking a swim in the hotel and staring out the window together at the city skyline. Of course, we improvised with other things, like slow-dancing in our bathrobes to Coldplay’s ‘Sparks’ and ‘Loving Strangers’ in the middle of our hotel room. 

That night was so bittersweet for me because my flight back home was at 4am (I still don’t know why I booked that absurd flight time), so X and I only had a few hours together in that hotel room before I left her. I felt like Cinderella on the night of the ball with the Prince. For those first few hours, everything felt magical and wonderful. But as soon as the clock struck twelve, reality kicked in again and it was time to go back home in my pumpkin carriage. 

Being with X always felt like a beautiful dream that I was eventually going to wake up from. Now I’m finally awake and it’s still disorienting knowing that we won’t have more beautiful memories together or new shared experiences to make life a little sweeter than it was before. But I’m trying my best to move on and only focus on the crappier aspects of X’s personality to make me miss her less. What I need is to just land myself a hottie Sugar Daddy or Sugar Momma with low self-esteem on the next go-around with a relationship and hope to God they never get clued in on the fact that they could do better than me. Don’t get me wrong, I know I’m a catch in a lot of respects, but I am also a hot mess. I’m a slow learner, but I’m getting better and wiser with time. 

Shit, it’s past midnight and I’m starving. I’m trying hard not to snack late at night, but I haven’t been eating well lately because of stress and my depression kicking my proverbial butt. Does this even still count as a diary entry for 7th September? 

Since I’m making up the rules for my own happiness now, I say it still counts. And from here on out, I’m gonna do whatever the hell I please. 

[blessuswithblogs]

Katsura Hashino is a Big Fat Creep and Other Observations

(for the record all uses of the word “queer” in this post are meant in the academic sense as shorthand for a wide umbrella group of gender and sexual minorities and not as a slur i hope that is evident from my past history and status as Big Gay Bitch Who Loves Girls but let it never be said i don’t cover my ass)

A few weeks ago, Catherine: Full Body Edition or whatever gross subtitle it got was released. Catherine has had a very checkered history as one of those games that is just kind of slimy, though it has endured with a cult following and a surprisingly successful competitive community by way of the game's multiplayer mode where you compete to see who can climb The Dream Sex Tower the best. Honestly, I don't know that much about Catherine because it is difficult to think of a game that repulses me more on a visceral level, but I want to do my due diligence and not talk out my ass. One of Catherine's initial claims to fame was that it was by Atlus Japan, specifically the same people who made the much beloved Persona games. This is evident in the game's art, music, overall style of delivery, and being basically hate speech.

The original Catherine was a greasy, misogynistic mess with some really vile politics about trans people in particular. Deadnaming your own fictional character in the credits is some next level petty malice. Full Body returns with, stupendously, a double down on this ideology that is actually kind of comical in how convoluted it gets in trying to decry the Degenerate Queer Lifestyle. The game adds a scene with Rin, who is apparently a gay crossdresser from space(???????), getting slapped away and running away crying from their love interest after he learns The Terrible Truth. In another game, with a different writing team, this could have been a teachable moment about the destructive consequences of taking too narrow a view of human sexuality and gender expression, but as it stands it's just another tiresome example of Trans Panic with a sheepish admonishment from the other characters that gosh maybe slapping their hand away was a mean thing to do.

So we're already firing on all cylinders here, but the best is yet to come. The bulk of the outcry comes from the addition of a weird "true ending" cutscene where Catherine, who is also from space, goes back in time to make everybody's life better. Or something. This is already pretty stupid on the face of it because its Fucking Time Travel Out of Nowhere, but the scene then depicts a pre-transition Erica, the game's trans character who got deadnamed in the credits the last time. There has been a lot of exceptionally tedious discussion about exactly when this scene takes place in the game's chronology and what it means for Erica, and some brain geniuses have tied their thinkmeats into pretzel shapes to prove definitively that all this means is that she delayed her transition in this Better Timeline, that might not actually be better, because Catherine is weird and selfish, maybe. And. Fine. Sure. Okay. Let's accept that for now. Given the game's previous track record, and continuing insistence on using Erica's pretransition name in the credits even in the rerelease, it is meanspirited at best to show her before her transition at all (many real life trans people would be utterly mortified for such a thing to happen to them) and overall just in poor taste and pretty lousy writing at that because it's so unclear what any of this actually means. Since the game has not yet received an official english localization, the context of this scene is to begin with muddled by amateur translators on the internet all with slightly conflicting interpretations of the scene. It's a fucking mess, by and large.

So I would disagree that this is a fake controversy manufactured by those damnable essjaydubyas. Even with the most charitable interpretation possible, it's still just really sketchy and gross. Erica's english voice actress, who seems to be very fond of the character, has been vocal about her dissatisfaction with the new scenes on twitter and has recently come out to say that the localization team is going to try and take some steps to make things less blatantly hateful. Between this and Jennifer Hale's recent tweet about it being time to grab our pitchforks in response to Activision-Blizzard's mass layoffs, I'm starting to think that voice actresses are pretty cool. I mean honestly I always thought that but we're getting off topic. One of the top competitive Catherine players, who was by all accounts really hyped for the release of Full Body, just straight up said on twitter that he was quitting the game because he couldn't support something like that in good conscience. I don't know if he's remained consistent on this position since, but it was a bold statement, to say the least.

Now, whenever an incident like this happens, the inevitable string of More-Progressive-Than-Thou white boys who watched an anime once and thought the bouncing titties were a little much appears to start pontificating about the cause of such untoward elements in media. And it's basically all just a bunch of Orientalist bullshit. Every time. For whatever reason, people still really love to be racist towards Japanese people because it's still sort of socially acceptable when couched in the language of "oh japan!!! ecks dee" and so the neverending procession of softboi neckbeards declared with confidence that Atlus's continual inclusion of Actual Hate Speech towards LGBTQ+ people was the result of the inscrutable Japanese Mind and its Mysterious, Antiquated Culture. Many mentions of the philosophy of Wa, wherein the nail that stands out gets pounded down, and lots of very lovely psuedointellectual claptrap. Evidently, people just seem to think that queer people don't live in Japan, or that they don't fight just as hard as we do for equal rights and protections under the law. They do live there, and they do fight as hard as we do. Obviously. You fucking imbeciles.

In their quest to clearly illustrate their moral and intellectual superiority to the backward, collectivist Asiatic Peoples, these highly reasonable and enlightened manboys forsook a very important logical principle: Occam's Razor. Sure, you could blame jApAnEsE cUlTuRe for Atlus's impropieties and just conveniently ignore all of the fantastic queer media it has produced in recent years like My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness, Horou Muskou, Nier Automata, etc. Or you could go for the simpler and more logically consistent option: Katsura Hashino is a big fat creep. Who is Hashino, you ask? He is the director of every Persona game since 3, as well as Catherine, and all of these games' gross shit and self-contradictory themes of self-acceptance and rebellion against an unust society (unless you're gay, ew) can probably be traced to him and his gaggle of accomplices. In addition to the fact that Atlus games not by Hashino's team tend to just. not have these problems to nearly as large a degree or even at all, Hashino himself has gone on record saying some really kind of hilariously backwards shit. Most infamously, when asked why in Persona 3 literally all of your social links with girls ended up with Hot Makeout Sessions regardless of like. Previously Committed to Relationships. Hashino simply said he couldn't imagine friendships between boys and girls. So that's where his brain is at. Since subsequent games in the series graciously allowed the player the option to not be a Huge Cheating Bastard, one can assume either his moral development has progressed past early puberty or somebody on the team convinced him this wasn't actually a normal thing to think. Given the man's output, I would say it's probably the latter.

It is because of this man's decisions and behavior that so many people are simply unwilling to give Full Body the benefit of the doubt. The game's director is, quite simply, a well known louse, and not in the endearing, Roger Smith way. Once again, it requires far fewer leaps in logic to assume that Hashino is just being a bigoted creep again than to go through some fuckin galaxy brain Kingdom Hearts-esque dot-connecting to justify it as just a LITTLE BIT bigoted not REALLY SUPER bigoted, or simply blaming the whole ordeal on some strange ineffable property of the Japanese Character. He's a gremlin! An overgrown manchild with a warped view of human interaction and society put in charge of games about exploring those concepts for.... reasons. My bet is that his dad knew somebody and then Persona 3 was successful enough for the rest of Atlus to just go "alright fine let him do it while we do mainline games". Unfortunately, Persona became so popular that the mainline games sort of switched places and became side-projects, at least in the eyes of the Western consumer base (which let's be real is the only perspective that any of these Serious Online Commentators even pretend to care about).

So I would once again caution everyone against just assuming that Japan is some sort of quaint anachronistic country of weird gameshows and backwards social mores. This is both a gross oversimplification of an entire culture and the struggles of their own subgroups and minorities and simply a grand display of lacking self-awareness. Like have you fucking seen the guys in the White House? The preposterous media that gets routinely greenlit on prime time TV, theaters, and digitally? Don't make me laugh. The West has no claim to any sort of progressive superiority to anybody else. The white cishet bubble of comfortable middle class affluence might distort what you see of the rest of the world, but believe me: we got problems too. Big ones. Even the presupposed bastions of Demsoc Virtue like Sweden have an awful track record of discrimination and eugenics. But Dazzlyn that's different, you cry! All of these groups and forces don't represent the entirety of Western culture! Yes. Exactly. Oppression is not culturally bound like cuisine or art. It is a nasty, universal thing that worms its way into everything, and it will use any excuse it can find to murder and exploit. It's against Christian values! It represents a genetic defect that must be purged! It's ostentatious and immature! The list goes on. And every time you giggle and go "oh those silly japanese" you're just being another expression of the same vile ideas.

I'm going to relate some of my own personal experiences, because as a noted Big Gay Bitch Who Loves Girls, I feel like maybe I have some authority on the matter? Just a little? Enough that if I make a well reasoned argument it can't be dismissed out of hand? Let's hope. So, what's the gayest game I've ever played? Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn. Look yeah I know I'm talking about it again but come back this is important. Final Fantasy is a series that has had a lot of LGBTQ+ undertones pretty much since forever, and while they have largely been in keeping with the times in terms of tact and representation (the Crossdressing Cloud debacle is a deeply bizarre, uncomfortable sequence in a lot of ways but there's also some genuine Good Gay Shit in 7 like Cloud's surprisingly cute and genuine date with Barret. I think. It's... it's been a while.), by God, it was at least there, and 13 had honest to god Lesbians, Harold in Fang and Vanille. I don't want to say it has pedigree, but the series has dabbled. XIV continues on the tradition with a vibrant world that's actually got a lot of characters and NPCs that are just incidentally there and kind of gay. The adventurer couple that befriended the Tonberries in Wanderer's Palace, a vendor that appeared in the Rising cosplaying as Minfilia at her wife's behest, a miqote lady bathing in the oasis that lets on she wouldn't mind having cute girls stare at her instead of grabby boys, every horny Elezen in Ishgard, Samson and Guydelot (shoutouts to Lulumi Lumi), and probably more that I've missed. More than that, though, is that because FFXIV is an MMO, it is by necessity a social space, and in my experience it has been one that has gone out of its way to be inclusive to everybody, from the GMs handling reports of abusive behavior right up to the top decision makers who made same sex player marriages a thing just immediately on its implementation and letting boys wear the gold saucer bunny costume too (albeit after quite a bit of pleading). The game's got a huge queer community of which I am kind of part of sort of. It's one of the reasons I keep coming back to it. Hell, they've recently partnered with a pride group in Australia to have an FFXIV float in a parade. I usually turn my nose up at such things as meaningless corporate grandstanding, but it does seem to be more meaningful than two boy pastas getting married or rainbow colored oreos because like. Cheesy as it sounds, it's more than just a brand to a lot of people, it's a place, sometimes the only place, they can go to feel safe and accepted in a community. Having official, vocal support from the dev team means genuinely a lot, I think.

Now, there is one quality about this game of which I am speaking that might strike you as noteworthy: it is Japanese. It's made by Japanese people, in Japan, under a Japanese company. A middle aged Japanese man goes up on stage in Gunbreaker cosplay to speak in Japanese about the upcoming expansion, while a meme obsessed gremlin translates for him. It's not perfect, there are problems, etcetera, why do I even need to qualify that in 2019, when everything sucks, god. But it's better than most things. I hope that it serves as an example to people that even in the supposedly regressive countries of the world, queer communities are still living, fighting, and sometimes even being heard, and that the only thing you're enriching by dismissing them wholesale as socially backwards is your own internet penis. And nobody fucking cares about that you simpleton. I expect 5.0 to be gayer than ever before because they're taming up with Yoko Taro to do a Nier themed raid and by the 12 Warrior of Light Dazzyn Reed is going to kiss 2B or an equivalent model right on the robot lips.

[strawberry-jules]

the fourth

hi again. it’s 10:41pm.

today was a fucking shit show. like appallingly so. my schedule was supposed to roughly look like this:

6-7am: get up, get ready, go get coffee

8-9: vet appt

9-10: breakfast, clean the kitchen for mom

10-11: post office, quick target run

11.30-4pm: read 2 chapters from textbook

4-5.30: run, shower, etc

5.30-7.30: read half a chapter, take some me time, idk

9pm-11pm: vibe time baybee

here’s how it turned out, roughly.

got coffee, it was very fun. barista is making it very hard to not have a crush on them by simply existing. how rude! took belle to the vet, everything was fine and dandy, as i figured. came home, had a bagel with spinach and eggs, cleaned the kitchen, it was fantastic. my brother ended up needing to ship out his christmas gift to his friend in croatia, but his classes weren’t over until 1:30, so i was like no worries! i’ll just go study for my final till your classes are over, just let me know. i ended up reading absolutely nothing and getting sucked into whatever fucking dumb shit exists on the internet. i also picked 3 therapists from our network and emailed them, introducing myself, and asking for quick interviews next week to see if we’re good fits, because i want to start going to therapy. 

i was very excited by this development. it’s taken me over a year of saying i would go to therapy for me to finally get the courage to reach out. at about 12, i went into my parents’ room and said “guess what? i’m finally starting therapy!” and my mother, without missing a beat, says “oh, sorry we did such a bad job raising you. why do you need therapy? i thought we did a great job.” i was fucking stunned. i was like, “woah, no! this isn’t a reflection of you. this is me finally taking care of myself, i have personal things i need to work through. however, i do think that therapy is useful to anyone, and i think everyone should try therapy, at least once,” to which she had the brilliant insight, “there’s nothing wrong with me. should i just make something up about my family and go talk to a stranger about it? is that what you’re doing?” and my dad was like, “hey, that’s not what she’s saying” and my mom basically went off saying that i was weird for thinking that everyone should try therapy, and that i didn’t actually need it, and that it’s weird that i’ve been to therapy twice now, wasn’t complaining to that high school counselor that my parents were so strict enough for me?

those quotes are as close to word for word as i can get, i’m pretty sure it’s exactly what was said. the conversation lasted less than a minute, before i said “i think i need to excuse myself,” and walked away. i came and sat at my desk for i don’t even know how long. i looked at myself in my phone camera, and my face had become so translucent, it was almost green from my blood veins. i walked up to my window and contemplated trying to take the screen out to climb out, but i realized that if i did jump, it would be in my neighbor’s driveway, and that felt really insensitive, so i walked away. i sat back down at my desk and contemplated all the reasons my mom was right, before i realized that she wasn’t right. i have finally realized that i’m not fine. 

i’m a depressed, suicidal 20 year old with undiagnosed adhd and ocd, a diagnosed eating disorder, and i’ve been a closeted lesbian for 13 years. i have every right to feel not okay. i didn’t need my mother’s permission to go to therapy, i have my own health insurance and i’m an adult who feels the need to ask for help, and that’s okay.

so i did what i do best, and spewed verbal diarrhea onto my private snap story about what happened and how i’ve been feeling these last few days. my brother’s classes ended early, so i took the opportunity to leave the house as soon as possible, and we took as long as possible to get to the fedex drop box, before i dropped him back at home and kept driving around, trying to process how i felt. i didn’t return either of my textbooks. i think i’m just going to send the one i bought in october after christmas, idk when it’s due but i can’t deal with the fucking lines at the post office anymore. i walked up to the post office, looked at the winding line into a building where the lovely hicks in my hometown refuse to wear masks, decided i wasn’t ready to get covid yet, and went to deposit cash so i could buy weed. i’ll just bite the $40 and buy the one that was due today, maybe i’ll give it to someone next semester. 

i got home and responded to my friends’ responses to my story. i got an overwhelmingly positive and loving response from my friends. every single one stuck up for me, supported me, and shared that they’ve been feeling similarly. which is heartbreaking, i can’t believe that all of us have been dealing with this so privately! but anyway, that’s a tomorrow issue. 

after i did that, i was ordering my weed when barista texted me, saying they had a question for me, which, when you have a major crush on a coworker with a girlfriend, is a very concerning text to receive. turns out, they just made me earrings! they walked their dog to my house and delivered the insanely cool polymer clay snake earrings. when i greeted them with a hug, they pulled me in so close, literally every part of their body was pressed against mine and my cheek rested on their head so perfectly. they’re on the shorter side, probably 3-4 inches shorter than me, but so strong. the way their arms felt around my back was wild, it was so tight but so gentle but so firm but so, so warm and soft. their hair was soft but frizzy and smelled like them and a little bit like an argan oil shampoo and a little like coffee. their eyes are so much more intensely ice blue in the sun. they hugged me the same way goodbye, and we chatted for a good portion of the evening, about our coworkers and being homeschooled and being nerdy high schoolers and the earrings.

i finally got one chapter done before dinner was ready at 8:30pm, which is late, even by our standards. after dinner, as i was decorating a sugar cookie named gerard, my parents kept making snarky comments about me being a stoner, and i was like yes, bold statements coming from the parents that just used my account to buy a tincture and edibles. anyway, i came upstairs and tried to read more but i’m too emotionally exhausted. eve ended up giving me a call, finally, and filled me in on her life, which is always crazy but i love to hear her voice, so it’s okay. then i learned a tiktok dance, which left me concerningly out of breath, considering it’s only been like 4 days since i ran and i can’t be that out of shape? but i showered and did my skincare routine and made sure my laundry was in the dryer before i sat down to start this. 

it’s now 11:20pm, and i’m very proud to report that i am no longer angry with my mother for what she said to me. i’m sad that it’s how she feels, but i recognize that what i’m going through is something she will never understand, as a straight woman who, while prudish, has a healthy relationship with drugs and sex. i love her, and i forgive her, but i’m going to talk to her tomorrow and hold her accountable for gaslighting her already unstable daughter. what she did wasn’t fair, and it hurt. i know she probably feels insecure because she definitely does have things she knows she should go to therapy for, i know for a fact that she faced a lot of childhood and adolescent trauma and i would personally love to make sure she’s in a healthy place with it. but i can’t force her to, obviously, so i have to just hope that she doesn’t project on to me too much in the coming weeks.

i’m exhausted, and i think i’ll go to bed. i feel good about how i handled today, i caught myself in time to think through my actions before i did something completely unwarranted and unhinged. i know that at the time, my brain was in flight mode and i couldn’t cope immediately so i just followed the “i want to die” instinct because it was the strongest, but i still had enough of my logical brain in gear to have forethought. look at you go, prefrontal cortex! knowing that the part of me that is still healthy and wants to live is strong enough to put the kibosh on that maneuver is enough to give me hope that i will be okay someday. i never thought that i would be someone to be experiencing things like this. i really thought that people were being dramatic, if i’m being totally honest. now that i’m experiencing it, i understand. i’m sorry that i didn’t have more empathy.

[takaraphoenix]

Sense8?

Okay, let me start with the flaws and then move on to the good stuff.

This show suffers in its first season from having too many characters at once. I understand that for the sake of the pun you need 8 main characters and by the time season 2 rolls around, you’re very familiar with them all and I wouldn’t want to cut any out.

But it’s so hard to digest in the beginning.

This show was recommended to me by both of my best friends separately. And both came with the warning that I need to watch at least until episode three before I can make a proper decision on whether or not I’ll continue watching it.

The thing is. They were right. I wanted to turn it off after one episode. But I trusted them and pushed and by episode four, I was totally addicted.

I recommended the show to my parents and they started watching it. My mom walked out of it after one episode, my father kept watching episode two and told my mother that “it got better” so she gave it another chance too. And by episode four, they were both hooked. Now they’re complaining to me about the lack of season three, shesh.

That’s a problem. A problem. Because me and my mother are certainly not the only ones who don’t give a show half a season time to grow on them. My rule of thumb is one episode and if it can’t hook me, I move on to the next show.

Since, as mentioned above, with season 2 I really wouldn’t want to cut any of the characters, I think it would have benefitted from… a different kind of split.

Tell the stories of less characters, but tell more of their stories per episode. Have the first episode only focus on four of the characters and give us a better chance to get to know them right away. Have then the second episode focus on the other four with the same. But throwing people right into just a tiny little bit of eight different characters is, certainly for many, overwhelming and confusing. Later on, when you know the characters, you can switch easily between them, but especially for the start when you 1.) don’t know any of them and 2.) have no idea what is even going on, it’s just too much at once.

That’s actually kind of my only complaint about it, because this show is fucking brilliant. And it deserves to be watched and not to be tuned out because its beginning is so confusing and overwhelming.

I mean, the idea behind it is a bit bogus, but I like bogus so there’s that.

This show… I don’t even know where to start.

The story telling is brilliant, once you’re actually used to who’s who and who’s where. The way their stories intertwine, how they interact.

I mean, personally I’d have wished for a couple more bonding moments between the individuals who don’t have that much screen-time together because it… is mainly certain pairs between the group that meet up and help each other and have more of a connection whereas I’d… I’d have loved for the seasons to have 15 episodes to stretch the plot and give them all more time to also just interact with each other. Because they’re amazing and their relationships are amazing and I’d like to see more interactions.

I have one very personal problem with the show and that’s Kala’s character and her relationship with Wolfgang, because I despise cheats. They’re the scum of the Earth and come for me riiight after rapists/child molesters and abusers, because that’s just how my moral compass is tuned. And the fact that she has multiple outs of the wedding with the really cute and sweet guy who adores her and she still pulls through with it and she still decides to cheat on him makes me hate her the most. If she had been set up into an arranged marriage, she’d at least get some leeway, but her parents never pushed - honestly, her dad is such a sweetheart - and it was all her idea. So really absolutely nothing gives her an excuse to act or feel like a victim when she decides to get married and then decides to cheat on him. It just makes her a bad person. I mean, if you got nothing against cheating and if you sail the ship, you go, but… it’s just not within the parameters of my moral and thus, I personally disapprove.

On that note, let’s move on to the good stuff!

Amanita Caplan is a treasure. I swear, Neets fast became my favorite character and the favorite character of my parents.

The supporting cast in this show is brilliant. You’d think that with eight main characters, it’d be so busy working with them that the supporting cast would fall flat in their development and design, but they’re amazing.

Kala’s dad is a pearl, Amanita is a treasure, Bug is so adorable I just wanna give him a hug, Daniella is literally me, Sun’s former teacher is such a calm sweet mentor and just… Every secondary character, they all have their own personality, they all have their well-defined relationship to their Sensate and they’re all memorable.

This show is character design and development on point.

What’s very important about this show and obviously needs to be addressed is its representation.

It blows my mind in what way they managed that. I genuinely can’t remember ever having seen representation for trans people in such a heartfelt way. It allowed me as a CIS woman to relate to her in a way TV has never done before, because they mostly just… put it in the sidelines. I’ve never seen a show that went into the struggle like that. That also managed to convey this… utter frustration over being misgendered in a way that had my mom nearly throw a shoe at the screen when Nomi’s mother just opened her fucking mouth.

I’ve seen trans story-arcs in Glee, Shameless and The Fosters. They all either only scratched the surface or only showed the trans character as agressively defensive without showing the struggle that led to that attitude (looking at you there, Shameless… though also The Fosters, until like over a season later when we got into his background story). This was the first time a trans story-arc clicked for me in the sense that it wasn’t just “another character and their background-story”, it was more than just a story-line or just a plot-device. It was very, very heart-felt, it was very, very relateable and it gave me, personally, more of an insight than anything I’ve ever seen before on TV.

Continuing on the note of representation. I, as a lesbian, felt very proudly represented by Neets - maybe another reason why I love her so much. TV lesbians are so badly done most the time. They’re just… plot-devices when the straight female lead has gone stale and they need to mix it up so the normally as straight portrayed female lead meets a lesbian and they have a relationship for a season or less before the lesbian is written out of the story and the other one goes back to her straight relationship, most of the time with the male lead (Mistresses, Gotham, I know there are more but I might have deleted them from my brain out of sheer frustration at this point). It’s never really clarified if the female lead identifies as pan or bisexual or if it was really just “the plot grew stale, we needed to mix it up so we had hot woman on woman action” - because that’s what it mainly is when there is a female/female relationship on TV. Two really hot chicks, kissing, making out and having sex as often as possible. Rarely do they involve the romantic sub-plot or feelings. It’s just about… jerk-off material for the men.

Amanita is so much more. Her love for Nomi is amazing. Her character is amazing. She is so much more than just The Love Interest, she saves Nomi’s ass so often, she is 120% behind her girlfriend and the cluster, she’s supportive, strong, witty. I love her. I love for what she stands, I love what she does, I love how she’s used in the show. She makes me, as a lesbian who has grown very frustrated with TV shows, have a little more hope in humanity.

Same goes for Lito, because it wasn’t just “He came out and everyone adored him and there were no problems” like TV sometimes does or “He came out and everyone hated him and there were all the problems” which is TV’s other route of action.

He was the perfect mixture, he showed the complexity. You got to see his struggle with coming out, the social problems it entailed, but also the support of those who loved him, the way his career seemed to be driven into a wall just to emerge even stronger.

And talking about Lito brings me to Danielle. I love Dani. She’s, after Neets, my favorite character, because she’s just… every fangirl ever. The way she reacted to finding two hot gay guys in bed was just “Hey! That’s the same face I just made!”. But, again, she is so much more than just a shallow “I like gay guys!” stereotype. With her abusive boyfriend, the way that it becomes obvious that she is so hung up on Lito and Hernando because she’s never been loved before, not by her parents who turn blind eyes on her abuse and rather have her stay with a man who beats her than with two gays, certainly not by said abusive ex. She just wants platonic love and Lito and Hernando are the first time she’s allowed to experience that without pain and it’s beautiful.

Something that I admire about Sun too. At first, she came off as very… flat and unemotional and just also unengaged and I thought that she might just be the one that slipped through the cracks when they did the character design, but season 2 beautifully unveiled her struggles and showed that she is indeed so much more and she too, just like Dani, just really needs and deserves love. And that she finds that for the first time in the cluster, but that she also really struggles with it. She’s always right there to help them whenever one of them needs her, but she is so reluctant to ask anything of them. But they’re there and they help her.

Jeez, I didn’t want to go through all the characters…

So let’s throw them together a little bit. Kala and Van Damn. Because they stand for something that amazed me too about this show. It didn’t just focus on this character’s personal struggle. It’s also getting political about countries I have zero idea about how things work and what’s going on there. Like, you as a Western person are aware of the lack of fresh water and the struggles, but the way Van Damn’s plotline just dove right into it and gave this insight into the situation, into how he handles life, it was… amazing. His family, his still carefree attitude about anything and I really liked when he actually got a love-interest in season 2 because that was its own version of two worlds clashing and he was just so cute about everything. He came so far and it’s amazing.

Same goes for Kala’s sub-plot about religion in India, showing a side that... hasn’t been shown often in TV (which is the only thing I want to say about her, because I think I made my opinion on her character clear up above already).

I have to admit that Riley and Will are coming a little short in my opinion. They didn’t start out that way, they started out with the same potential as all others, but while the others got to stay in their lives and tell their stories, those two just merged into not just their relationship but also the front representing their struggle against the bad guys. They sacrificed their own stories for the sake of being on the forefront of their fight, which yeah, someone had to, and I’m not too sorry it was them because I really don’t like their relationship and having the two of them just… do something useful while being together, that pleased me.

Now. Lastly. Wölfchen. Sorry, been calling him that since episode one. I just can’t with Wolfy. No. I dunno which German would call him that but I kinda doubt many. Wolf or, well, to tease, Wölfchen. But yeah, totally beside the point, It’s just that I always crack up when they call him Wolfy.

I LOVE THAT THE GERMAN’S THE CRIMINAL AND THE ONE WITH THE PAST ABUSE. It totally bothers my dad that the German is the criminal, but I just love myself a good criminal and thief. I mean, it took me… like… way too long to figure out that his plotline takes place in Germany but I instantly liked him from his first scene when they stole the gems. Like “Yees. I like a good thief”. It’s a thing, I blame Kaitou KID.

And, well, the child abuse. If you know me, you know I have a weakness for the characters who were abused as kids and keep fighting on. Just look at Percy Jackson and Jace Wayland, my little precious darlings.

But I also loved that it was just so… German.

When they had the flashback to Wolfgang and Felix in school, I just sat there in awe because… yeah, that’s a German classroom. That is a German classroom. It’s kind of… so different from the ones you get used to seeing on TV because it’s all American and just this little detail already really made me happy because yeah, I recognize “home” in it.

When they went to the Holocaust Memorial, I just sat there in awe at how well they filmed that. Because it is... very borign when you’re there, actually. But the way they filmed it perfectly conveyed the claustrophobic feeling you’re supposed to get there.

When they had the epic battle-scene on New Year’s Eve, I squealed because “Oh my gosh, that’s where I spent New Year’s six years ago when I was in Berlin! EXACTLY THERE!”. It’s kind of stupid but also not, but… Everything is New York and Los Angeles and San Francisco and Chicago, all the bigger American cities, but to see your own home on TV, to see something you actually recognize because you’ve been there before, it’s a weird kind of happiness. You won’t believe the squealing I did when my favorite character on Grimm said that his uncle was born in my home-town.

So, I think it’s really time to wrap this up now.

This show is absolutely worth the watch, even if you’re struggling through the first two episodes with confusion and a feeling of being overwhelmed. Its character design, its character development, its story-telling, its representation, its relatablitiy - they’re all so on point and beautifully done.

Story-telling wise this is an absolute masterpiece, in desperate need of others of its kind and I will be so sad to see it go but I’m also happy that at the very least we get a special to wrap it all up and not leave us high and dry.

[lilietsblog]

my mirai nikki liveblog notes from last night

yandere is a gross and creepy fandom trope beloved by gross and creepy fandom dudes but I really like Mirai Nikki and personally Gasai Yuno, and I hope she finds some stability in her mind orrr she could kill either herself or Yukki to get the other to be the god of time and space and I'm honestly not sure which of those would be a healthier decision or more fascinating to watch. but i dont want this ending bc of the cop )= (my taste in anime is impeccable)

I like how Yukki is still majorly creeped out by Yuno, even if making out with her is no longer even a Big Thing for him

WHY DID THIS THING JUST HAPPEN THIS IS LIKE THE WORST POSSIBLE SCENARIO HONESTLY WHAT THE FUCK I like the girl just snapping photos of everything I aspire to be this chill

Yuno if you fuck up Yukki's friendships because you are jealous I'm going to be very cross with you that's exactly what you're going to do isn't it I mean you've been 100% right about Tsubasa and you've been actually very charismatic with Yukki's mom but I can just feel the trainwreck coming

huh, they all end up just hanging out together, that's surprisingly nice I'm glad things other than blood and carnage are allowed to happen in this anime it won't last long will it

shine shine shine wow Yuno maybe chill

Mao and Hinata, I swear I'm going to remember this

HINATA PLEASE OH PLEASE DON'T GET MURDERED BY A SERIAL KILLER WHAT THE FUCK ANIME WHY ARE YOU GIVING ME THESE THOUGHTS DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE HAVE ME BE RIGHT ABOUT THE FORESHADOWING

okay what followed was teeth snapping not blood from a bitten throat so maybe she won't die after all thank god

NO HINATA WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TRYING TO GET EATEN ON PURPOSE YOU ARE THE PUREST CREATURE IN THIS ENTIRE ANIME PLEASE DONT DIE

guys you are discussing it with them walking right behind you how well have you thought this through I guess they were further behind?

I SURE HOPE RUNNING CHANGED THE FUTURE AND SHE IS STILL ALIVE

Akise is another Diary owner isn't he

I feel Yukki on his Definite Overload With Everything

I sure hope those are not Akise's dogs that Akise deliberately set on them to engineer this situation

hm well at least this is not personally Akise, doesn't mean he's not affiliated with this guy at the very least they seem to share hair color

I love Mary tho

hmmm this might actually not be the guy with the flesh eating dogs, these look different okay I'm holding off on further speculation right now and giving it a tentative 50/50, as well as to Akise turning out to have been behind the attack

okay what the FUCK that looks like Hinata

fuuuck i am SO tempted to like Akise but that would also come with a sore wish to have him Join The Team and I hoped that for Tsubasa too >_> my heart can't take it

...that feeling when Yuno is being the Voice of Reason

aaand it's gone

shit I hope Yukki figures out what to do about this shit situation because I'm out of ideas HEY NICE PUTTING THAT DIARY TO WORK I SURE AS SHIT HOPE THERE WON'T BE AS MANY DEAD BODIES AS WITH THE SIXTH THO TO BE FAIR THEY WERENT NAMED CHARACTERS I HOPE THESE KIDS' PLOT PURPOSE IS NOT TO DIE POINTLESSLY HINATA WAS ENOUGH OF A SACRIFICE WHICH I WAS RIGHT ABOUT BTW DEPRESSINGLY ENOUGH STILL DIDN'T EXPECT THIS THO this anime just kind of keeps escalating in ways I fail to expect time after time

please Yukki don't tell them about your diary there's nothing about that that's not a bad idea don't drag them into this aaand of course that's what you're doing and once again, Yuno is me

aaand there's Mao isn't there fuck not the one I was expecting at least thank you Akase for it not being you

okay Hinata is alive that's fair enough except she won't be for long will she why must you take away Pure things from me anime why ugggghhhh

a Breeder's diary??? oh right dogs whew

oh my god Akise too????? okay this is kind of hilarious now I hope they go for a reverse of the temple thing and he actually gets to join the squad I guess the girls were doomed because of Yuno anyway but he has a chance

so I think Deus rigged this whole game specifically for Yukki his random observations diary made the future diary a very interesting idea and a very powerful tool but then Deus threw a bunch of various... interesting characters into it, and I imagine physical proximity (or ability and willingness to get around fast) and, ah, interestingness of character were the main criteria, and he went for ANY kind of diary at all, which made most of theirs much less potent

another thing I'm thinking is I've been noticing the small child holding hands with ?parents? in the end credits for a while, and it looks like Hinata, and she might be an important character

maybe this anime just burned through a few expendable characters at the beginning to set up the situation and create the athmosphere, and the main plot is going to be about a bunch of high schoolers after all, because that's just how anime rolls - high schoolers would be the major characters out of the whole bunch of diary owners

so maybe they're not all dying next episode is what i'm trying to say

Murmur is amazing btw

hum so Akise got his diary late? or does he not have one after all oh my god I love Akise so much already his expression here like 'i can't believe i'm going along with this' and yet he's going along with this like sure ok

aaand SUDDEN DORK MODE oh no I have a new favorite character please don't turn out to secretly be a mass murderer that's all I ask ;~; hum might he not actually have a diary after all dammit these are supposed to be post credit scenes not revealing plot twists I'm just confusing myself at this point aren't I

lol oh my god they thought Akise was a diary owner but he's just a guy who's good at investigation isn't he

or is he??? godfuckingdammit I need to stop doing this to myself theorizing is a bad habit that I get way too into I don't like bumpy rides of plot twists I like being able to follow what the fuck is going on )=

yeah he does not have a diary nor any idea what's going on does he lol I called it seconds before Yuno caught on it's kind of interesting how it seems her job is to be the genre savvy one, whose usefulness is however kind of fucked up by her brain cockroaches

Yuno??????? why are you doing this HE IS TRYING TO WIN BACK YUKKI'S DIARY WHY WHY WHY HE IS ON YOUR SIDE DOn'T FUCK UP HIS GAME

I guess she caught on that he was bluffing but??? ??? ???

and Akise's just going nuts and laughing because what else is left to do honestly

Akise why are you so fucking likable how dare you I'm actually angry at this development HAVE A FLAW DAMN YOU I CANNOT RELAX BECAUSE OF THIS SHIT I CANNOT TRUST WHAT I AM SEEING THIS FUCKING ANIME

oh man I thought they were lesbians when Mao first brought up that she's taken, but this is V Cute

oh my fucking god Akise have you MISSED Yuno's thing in your investigation or are you doing this ON PURPOSE

wait what just happened was that yandere on yandere combat or what

Mao what the fuck were you doing

Yuno you are an ASSHOLE I hope everyone other than Yukki keeps just ignoring everything you say and do

I love this one normal guy who's kind of a dick and just reacts normally to things and his contrast to Akise whom I love

honestly Yukki I agree I think I DON'T WANT TO is the only argument Yuno can be receptive to

oooor that only makes things worse huh Yuno honey please settle down believe in Yukki a little more than that

oh hey good solution even if it's just getting yourself deeper in I guess in a BLOOD DEATH situation it's kind of the best available option

"You don't want me to hate you, do you?" A+ game Yukki hit her where it hurts aka explain basic facts of human relationships >_>

aaand yep he's freaking out because he doesn't even like her that way and he's getting deeper and deeper in )=

oh my god Hinata's dad do you realize you've GIVEN HER YOUR DIARY YOU DUMB FUCK ALL ANYONE PRESENT NEEDS TO DO TO KILL YOU IS BREAK IT

uuunless that was a lie huh can't deny that possibility

lol Akise also has voice of reason tendencies <3

hum okay dammit I liked the cop a lot then again Akise is like him+ as far as having an Awesome detective character goes and Yukki has a Squad his age now I'm surprised by how well this went actually

another episode and I'm going to sleep (yes i'm aware these are Cursed Words but what if I'm lucky)

Yuno? Uh, are you okay?...

see the thing is I really can't find a way to apply to this anime the standards of 'healthy relationship with a mentally ill person' because PEOPLE ARE DYING AND EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE LET'S PUT THAT OFF UNTIL THE FUCKING GAME IS OVER like Yukki can't just ditch Yuno because she keeps fucking saving his life??? and Yuno can't just resolve to Not Murder because that keeps fucking saving both of their lives??? they can't do what would have been the Reasonable Thing To Do under normal circumstances because these SURE AS FUCK AREN'T NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES

oh please girl are you sure anyone's MAKING you do anything

wait what the fuck is going on here oh it's Murmur fucking around isn't it yep there it is

hum

okay I'm not sure what's happening like, what? seriously? what the fuck

okay so that's what happened huh that still leaves a lot of holes but okay

uh Akise why what makes you think this is a good idea I mean I've noticed you don't exactly have conventional emotional responses to fucked up stuff either but like seriously

oh Yukki you're starting to become more OK with murder that's just the world you live in huh

awww he cares about her when they are one on one as much as he cares about EVERYONE which he does because he is wonderful and I love him it's just in mixed company that Yuno's stalkerish shit gets lower priority to everyone else's normal shit and Yukki is 100% right in that

aha I'd been wondering whose last name I forgot

ahhh so that's what he was doing that makes more sense than him being a shipper on deck -_- just throwing Yukki under the bus for the sake of investigation that's p much normal... by this anime's standards...

also holy damn Yuno you can work when you try hum self-induced amnesia or something? that's almost a sensible coping mechanism I'm glad the anime is actually paying attention to that

augh what the fuck Kurusu why do you gotta hum and there's that other detective uuugh this anime has way too much going on I guess it IS 11 pm and I HAD decided to go to sleep after this

[arielmagicesi]

all-girl trc intro post

the only men who exist in this world are everyone’s terrible dads/tree dads, Jesse Dittley, Glendower, Whelk, and various background characters. obviously like the world is populated with men and women and nonbinary people and whatever but like, for our main cast, ALL WOMEN. maybe some nonbinary women too. like my gf Blue

here’s an intro to all of these women:

Blue Sargent: the original, the one and only, in canon she really is the one and only. she identifies as nonbinary and fluctuates between she/her and they/them pronouns. also she’s explicitly a woman of color. hairstyle ranges from completely shaven to messy bob haircut filled with hair-clips. bi but female-favoring. denim jacket and patches aesthetic. intersectional feminist who feels exhausted and stifled by her shitty school and town. loves her family a lot. makes friends with women and girls for real and has a bunch of Internet friends who yell about, idk, anarchy. she came out as bi and nonbinary pretty young because she was always encouraged to research feminism and shit and so her family was like “yeah cool awesome!”

in regards to magic shit: loves trees and environmentalism; when she finds out she’s a tree-light she’s thrilled and uses it to do forest shit. contacts Neeve at a young age and learns more about her mirror powers and amplifier powers and writes slam poems and makes bad art about the implications of woman as reflector. she was always told that when she kissed her true love, THEY would die- not “he.” this was slightly disappointing but she got through it by doing lots of stuff that she thought would make herself unappealing, like wearing garbage clothes and not doing any makeup or whatever [which was her kind of style anyway]. too bad that appealed exactly to her future gf...

Jane Gansey: a trans girl and lesbian, neither of which was approved of by her WASP family. she got stung by bees at age ten and believed that the woman’s voice she heard telling her she would live because of Glendower was proof that she was fated to find Glendower’s tomb and wake him. She ran away at age twelve and caused a huge stir when she used her bank account to go to England to meet with the professor, Dr. Ramona Malory, who she’d been chatting with online. Malory let Gansey live with her while things were sorted with the Gansey family, who were terrified about the scandal, and finally they came to terms with their daughter being a girl and allowed her to start taking puberty blockers and start transitioning. At fourteen, she left home again to travel the world in search of Glendower and finally made it to Henrietta.

She enrolled in the all-girls school, Aglionby, halfway through freshman year of high school, and used her trademark Gansey charm to make friends. Being a history nerd and well kind of a nerd about everything to do with the humanities, she had an easy time in school. But she dealt with constant panic attacks, anxiety, insomnia, horrible guilt, etc, on her own, until she met her best friend...

Rose Lynch: butch dirt lesbian who had a tough time coming to terms with uh everything. she grew up on a farm with her older sister, Diana, who was always the perfectionist, but Rose was the favorite child. she dreamt her younger sister Madeline when she was three, and always dealt with the ugly repercussions of the powers she inherited from her father Niall. the Lynch children were told to keep everything secret, and Rose especially was taught to repress everything. that came in handy not only with her dreaming powers, but with how she felt about girls. She wasn’t fond of girly stuff, but that was OK, because she lived on a farm, and wore overalls and plaids and messed around in dirt and hay since childhood.

When her father died and her mother fell into a coma and the Lynch sisters were cast out of their home, she fell into a deep depression and started coping by shaving all her hair off, listening to shitty EDM, street racing, and drinking excessively. She also had a self-harm habit. She’d made friends with Jane Gansey a few months before Niall’s death, so she moved into her weird-ass factory house. She and Gansey spent a lot of late nights talking about their feelings, or avoiding their feelings, or yelling at each other, but they loved each other a lot. when their sophomore year started, they were joined by a new girl that Gansey latched on to...

Adele [Addy] Parrish: she grew up in a trailer park, like in the books, and is more or less the same except for what changes by being a girl: like that she faces more sexism, that she’s seen as a disappointment for not being pretty enough, and that certain stuff about abuse/classism she faced was gendered, i don’t think it’s my place to get into what ways because i’m not really an abuse survivor. Anyway she spent all of her life dealing with lots of horrible shit, and coped by burying herself in books and studies and work and telling herself that she could leave this place by merit of her brain.

When she finally managed to get herself into Aglionby, at the start of tenth grade, she joined a lot of student clubs for stuff to put on her college applications, and met Gansey through them. She was pretty in awe of Gansey and fell a little in love with her, intrigued by the Glendower project, and willing to put up with shit from Rose if it meant being friends with Gansey. Much later, she and the others met Blue at Nino’s and Addy tried to invite her over to hang out with them, Gansey messing it up somehow, and then Addy went after her later to apologize and Blue, overly charmed, asked her out. Addy was like, “oh, uh... wait, you can do that, to another girl,” and Blue was like, “yeah sure [but I can’t kiss you but I’m not gonna tell you that because needless conflict]” and Addy was like, “oh. nice. good.”

Anyway the point is both Addy and Blue are bi and sort of awkwardly work it out together and then the relationship develops a lot of issues, similarly to in the books, and they break up, just in time for Cabeswater to unleash magic-forest hell on poor Addy who was just trying to make connections at Gansey’s fancy Washington party. also if it isn’t clear she’s clearly my favorite

Noa Czerny: always a weird, genderfluid skater, fond of early pop punk bands and bad 90s trends. and arts & crafts. until they were murdered by asshole “friend” Barrington Whelk, who went to Aglionby’s brother school... idk some other rich-people name... and made friends with Noa at a dance party or something. they would hang out, and Noa had bad self-esteem so they just hung on to Whelk’s every word, and eventually got sacrificed. they came back as a ghost and warned Gansey, in a gentle voice, on the ley line about Glendower when she was ten. then casually hung around Aglionby and Nino’s and sort of made their way into the group via ghost magic, and slipped from time as a final sacrifice. seriously about as sad as the books

Hannah Cheng: raised by Seondeok, she learned to love and hate herself at the same time- both being told of her potential to be amazing, while it was made clear her mother saw her as a tool a lot of the time. She hated the magical artifacts industry from a young age and, shortly after being kidnapped, spent a lot of time holding onto silence and safe spaces as a way to deal. Then she grew into using humor and apathy as a coping mechanism, and became fond of dark jokes and terrible pop culture references balanced chaotically. When Seondeok sent her to Aglionby, she gathered friends pretty quickly through the handful of students of color and kept them through astonishing bursts of kindness and general charisma. She was always comfortable with casually flirting with her girl friends because, well, she was pansexual and didn’t see any reason to hide it, but when she met Jane Gansey, she saw a lot of herself in her- scared and charming and smart and, somewhere in there, a genuine heart reaching for the stars.