#also this blog does frustrate me a bit Lol. its way more popular than my other ones

[kirbydaily]

are you gonna do the leap year?

i've been thinking over if i want to stop it at a year or keep going

ive been doing art for this blog with a little less effort just bc ive been more focused on drawing other things, but i still enjoy running it

i think id be disappointed if i stopped doing it but i also don't know if its as worth it if i don't make like. quality art for it anymore

[sketching-shark]

LMK fandom: Oh, what do we do about this guy who has nothing but hurt Xiaotian, tried to replace Sun Wukong and his crew, hurt Tripitaka and ordered servants to cannibalize a monkey? Oh I know! We’ll turn him into our little meow meow~ he’s so innocent and Sun Wukong is obviously the villain!

What doesn’t help is this idea is perpetuated by multiple fan fic writers and artists for some reason. Especially some aus they make that turn SWK into a bastard for the sake of the story rather than considering cultural context and thinking they should be respectful.

And almost everyone lets them get away with it just because the art or fanfic is good and they get so popular that no one can point what is actually wrong without feeling like they’re going to get attacked.

I'm starting to feel like my blog is the one anons go to specifically to vent their frustrations about the Six Eared Macaque in his lego monkey show form & the associated fandom lmao. But I guess this makes sense, as I’ve had fun quasi-dragging him before & will in fact use this anon submission as an opportunity to have my own, to put it academically, bitch fest about not just this fandom's favorite protagonist-traumatizing meow meow, but about the way villains are often treated in not just fanon, but increasingly in canon works as well. But same policy as with the last anon; I'll post my opinions below the cut, and as fandoms love to say, don’t like don't read if you don't want to see me dunking on the six eared simian & common fandom tendencies towards villains.

Oh man I would say where would you even begin with this but anon you’ve pretty much started yourself with my main gripe with a lot of ways that the Six-Eared Macaque is portrayed in fandom; there seems to be this unspoken agreement that his acts of violence towards Sun Wukong, Qi Xioatian, and Qi Xioatian’s loved ones are either to be framed as somewhat or totally justified, to be immediately forgiven/excused, or to simply & completely be ignored. Like friends maybe this is just me not seeing the proper posts but while the fandom is inundated with art and fanfics of Macaque as a generally decent individual & a true member of team good guy, I have yet to see one person address the fact that this monkey literally kidnapped & mind-controlled Xiaotian’s best friend and father figures & forced them to brutalize Xiaotian while ol’ Six Ear looked on and laughed (X_X). Like this kind of fandom villain treatment is definitely not something that’s solely at work for Monkie Kid, but it is kind of nutty how fandoms will swing between yelling that people should be allowed to like villains without even mild critique, and then will just flat-out not address the villainous behavior, and will even bend over backwards to frame even characters who committed genocide as just poor innocent widdle victims who need a hug. At its worst, I’ve even seen tons of people in a fandom get really angry at other people who don’t like a villain, and will even start accusing those people of hating real-life mentally disabled or abused individuals all because they don’t like the fandom’s favorite literal war criminal. The Monkie Kid fandom is FAR more chill & better than a lot of other fandoms I’ve come across in that regard, but that is an exceedingly low bar, & the tendency to woobify certain kinds of villains-- as with Macaque and the extreme emphasis on his bad boy/sad boy thing--is very much at work.  

 I’ve also talked before about a kind of monoculturalization of certain character interpretations and story beats in fandoms, and one of the more popular ones that seems to be applied to Macaque a lot is the “hero actually bad, villain actually good” cliche, as observable from the general fandom assumption that Mr. Six-Ears he wasn’t even slightly lying or remembering things through a rose-tinted or skewed lens when he gave his version of his and Sun Wukong’s past. Like at this point it seems the possibility that people WILL NOT even consider is that Sun Wukong never did & still doesn't care that much about the Six Eared Macaque (in JTTW they weren’t sworn brothers & in Monkie Kid the only thing the monkey king really said to Macaque before attacking him was a pretty contemptuous "Aren't you ever going to get sick of living under my shadow?," & responds to his "beloved friend" getting blown up with "You did good, bud" to Qi Xiaotian, who did the exploding), or that their original fight may in fact have mostly been instigated by Macaque. After all, to repeat what this anon summarized & what I've said before about their original JTTW context (& in an example of the things that do feel like it's often lost in translation) is that the Six Ear Macaque was a villain not just because he beat up the Tang Monk, but because he wanted to take over Sun Wukong's entire life and identity so he could have all that glory, prestige, and power for himself. To quote the macaque himself from the Anthony C. Yu translation, "I struck the T'ang monk and I took the luggage...precisely because I want to go to the West all by myself to ask Buddha for the scriptures. When I deliver them to the Land of the East, it will be my success and no one else's. Those people of the South Jambudvipa Continent will honor me then as their patriarch and my fame will last for all posterity." And in order to do this, the Six Eared Macaque had apparently made Sun Wukong's "little ones," his monkey family, his captives through either trickery or force, and gotten a number of them to take on the appearance of Tang Sanzang and the other pilgrims. It's also made clear that in very direct contrast to Sun Wukong, he doesn't care about these monkeys beyond how they might serve him. In fact, after Sha Wujing kills the monkey posing as him the Six Eared Macaque not only all but immediately replaces him with another, but also "told his little ones to have the dead monkey skinned. Then his meat was taken to be fried and served as food along with coconut and grape wines." So this monkey is not only willing to risk the lives of a lot of other monkeys for his own personal benefit, but is also a literal cannibal. And yes yes, I know a lot of people have argued that Monkie Kid shouldn't be considered a direct sequel to JTTW & that's fair enough (for example, Sun Wukong probably shouldn't be smashing anyone into a meat patty in a children's cartoon lol). And of course, it needs to be noted that there are a buttload of really out there & really cursed pieces of media based on JTTW & that were created in China. Yet the above description is the oft-ignored in the west original facet of the Six Eared Macaque's character. And it is this selfishness, entitlement, and treatment of other individuals as tools for his own self-serving ends  that is, from where I’m standing, still very much present in Monkie Kid. Like besides repeatedly going out of his way to physically and psychologically traumatize Xioatian, with the last episode Macaque seemed to be going right back to his manipulative ways. I’ve seen people frame their last conversation as Macaque softening to Xioatian a little bit, but personally that read a lot more like that common tactic among abusers where even after they’ve hurt you they’ll dangle something you want or need over your head (in Macaque’s case, the promise of desperately needed training and information about a serious looming threat), with the implication that you’ll only get it if you do what they want you to, such as, in this case, Xioatian going back to Macaque as his student even after having been so terribly hurt by this monkey, which would give Macaque power over Xiaotian and probably Sun Wukong as a result. And it is this violence and manipulation that it seems the fandom at large has tacitly decided shouldn’t even be addressed, instead leaning more towards a (and this is an exaggeration) “Six-Eared Macaque my poor meow meow Sun Wukong has always been bad & has always been wrong about literally everything” reading. 

And while it is the case that I am not Chinese and feel that as such it would be best left to someone who actually comes from that background to provide more context into how common interpretations of the Six Eared Macaque from China may clash really badly with the stuff the western fandom creates, it also must be noted that, as much as we all want to have fun in fandom & in spite of all the out-there versions of JTTW from China, we westerners should recognize that there is a very long and very ugly history of western countries stripping other cultures’ important religious and literary works for parts & mashing them into their own thing while implying or even insisting that what they present provides a true understanding of the original piece. And while I trust most individuals in regards to Monkie Kid are able to step back and think “this is a lego cartoon and not a set guide for how I should understand JTTW” (especially given the insistence that JTTW and Monkie Kid should be considered there own separate works) there does nevertheless seem to be something of a tendency to take the conclusions people come to, for example, about Sun Wukong’s characteristic in his lego form & then assume that’s just reflective to Sun Wukong as a totality. I imagine a good portion of this is due to people not reading JTTW & especially to not having easy access to solid information or answers about JTTW’s many different facets (like geez awhile ago I was trying to get a clear answer on what is considered the most accurate translation of the names of Sun Wukong’s six sworn brothers & got like 5 different responses lmao), but that tendency to take a western fandom interpretation & run with it instead of doing any background research or questioning said interpretation is still very much at play. As such, & as made prominent in the way people have been interpreting the dynamic between Sun Wukong and the Six Eared Macaque in the lego monkey show, tbh it does seem kind of shitty for western creators & audience to sometimes go really out of their way to ignore all of this original cultural & narrative context for the sake of Angst (TM) in Macaque's favor, demonizing Sun Wukong, and shipping the monkey king with his evil twin (X_X).

And speaking of which, even beyond the potential inherent creepiness & revulsion that can be inspired by this specific ship given common interpretations of the og classic's original meaning (again, it's my understanding, given both summaries of translated Chinese academic texts I've been kindly provided with, my own reading of the Anthony C. Yu translation of JTTW, & vents from a number of Chinese people I've seen on this site, that the Six-Eared Macaque is commonly interpreted in China as having originated from Sun Wukong himself as a living embodiment of his worst traits, hence why only Buddha can tell the difference between them & why the monkey king is much more slow to violence after he kills the macaque), I'd argue that in the face of all the uwu poor widdle meow meow portrayals lego show Macaque is, especially if you include JTTW's events, still in the role of “Sun Wukong but worse” as he is very much a violent & selfish creep. Like he was basically running around in JTTW wearing a Sun Wukong fursuit, but there he had the sole reason of wanting to replace Sun Wukong wholesale so he could have all the good things in the monkey king's life without actually having to work as hard for them. But if you combine that with Macaque now claiming that he used to be best friend with Sun Wukong in his pre-journey days (something that's made funny from a JTTW context given that that status actually belongs to the Demon Bull King lol), his original violence has now blown into this centuries long and really unhealthy obsession with the monkey king. Like he's apparently gone from wanting to literally be Sun Wukong to being so obsessed with getting revenge on Sun Wukong that he's got basically nothing else going on in his life. Like he's only appeared in two episodes but...does he have any friends? Any family? A career or even a hobby that DOESN'T center the monkey king? Anything at all outside of his "get revenge on and/or kill Sun Wukong/use his successor as my personal punching bag” thing? Like dude! That is extremely creepy and extremely bad for everyone all around! As I’ve said before, this seeming refusal to see beyond the past or to do something that doesn’t involve Sun Wukong in some capacity is a trait that makes Macaque an interesting and somewhat tragic villain--he even seems to be working as Sun Wukong’s reflection in a mirror darkly, with lego show Sun Wukong pretty clearly not being able to heal from his own past which is hinted to be defined by one loss after another, and with Monkie Kid even kind of having these two characters somewhat follow their JTTW characterizations in that in the latter half of the journey Sun Wukong often gets sad & starts crying in the face of what seems insurmountable odds (& Monkie Kid Sun Wukong does seem to be hiding some serious depression behind a cheerful facade), whereas the Six-Eared Macaque retains a worse version of Sun Wukong’s pre-journey characteristic of getting pissed and lashing out if things don’t go his way--but it’s also what would make any current friendship or romantic relationship between these monkeys horrific. Although to be fair even the fandom seems to recognize this in an unconscious way, in that a lot of the art & fanfic seems to swing erratically between them kissing & screaming at each other in yet another example of bog-standard fandom adulation of romanticized toxic relationships lol.  

At the end of the day, of course, this is nothing new. You'll find versions of this dynamic across a ton of fandoms and now even canonical work. And as such, I can only look at this kind of popularized relationship dynamic with a kind of resigned weariness whenever it pops up, & my frustrated question with the popularity of this kind of pairing is the exact same one that I have for a multitude of blatantly toxic villain/hero ships, given common fandom discourse & the tendency to either ignore or justify the villain's actions & demonize the hero: if you're THAT convinced that everything is the hero's fault, if you believe THAT much that the hero is the one in the wrong for the villain's pain and their subsequent actions, then why are you so set on them not only becoming a romantic pair, but framing this get-together as a good thing? Like I know we contain multitudes but that's waaay too many contradictions for me to wrap my head around. And it definitely doesn’t help that one branch of underlying reasoning behind this kind of pairing seems to be the ever-present “you break it, you fix it” mentality, where the assumption is that if you’re in a failing, abusive, and/or generally toxic relationship (platonically or romantically), if you put in enough time and effort & attempts to compromise, you’ll be able to restore/have the relationship you dreamed of, even with someone who hurt you really badly. And this assumption isn’t limited to fandom: I’d even argue that it’s everywhere in the culture, hence why a lot of people feel like they “failed” if they have to get a divorce or make the choice to leave an unhealthy friendship. Personally, I feel like people could really benefit from more stories about how it is not only the case that the people you hurt don’t owe you their forgiveness & you can still become a better and happier person without the one you hurt in your life, & that while it can be really hard it can also be a good thing to leave a relationship, even if it’s one that once meant a lot to you. 

  But in all honestly, from my own perspective this kind of pairing is starting to read far less like enemies to lovers and far more like a horrible fantasy where you can pull whatever shit you want, even on the people you "love," & never be held accountable for your terrible behavior or even have to consider that maybe you were in the wrong. It's another facet that makes me larf every time I see people insist that fandom is an inherently "transformative" or "progressive" form of storytelling like friends you are literally just taking status quo toxic monogamy & rebranding it as somehow beneficial & romantic (X_X).

But as to anon’s last frustration, it is hard to know what is the appropriate response with this kind of thing...like for my own part I’m keeping my frustrations to my blog & now increasingly to posts that you would have to click on the “read more” button to see what I have to say, but I totally get the hesitation to give even a mild critique to big names in a fandom. Like I've now seen it happen repeatedly where someone who has a big name in a fandom will make something that's kind of shitty for one reason or another, someone will message them with some version of "hey, that's kind of shitty, you shouldn't do that," and the typical response is either to blatantly ignore the issue completely, or more popularly to make a giant crying circus that seems deliberately geared towards stoking emotions on both sides of the, for example, fiction does/doesn't affect reality issue so that something that didn't even have to be that big a deal gets blown out of all proportion, with the big name often framing what often started out as a very mild critique into a long crying jag about how the initial response to their kind of shitty thing was so mean/cruel and they're just a poor innocent & that YOU'RE the true racist/sexist/bigot etc. if you don't agree with their opinion. It must of course be noted that there have also been numerous instances of people taking it too far the other way & sending not just big names but smaller creators literal deaths threats over stuff like innocuous ships which like holy hell bells people that’s a horrible thing to do. But for the big names at least, the end result of all this fighting is usually that once the dust has settled they have more attention/fame/money/power in the fandom than before, and with anyone who might have a problem with their stuff feeling afraid to voice their opinion lest they be swarmed by that person's fans. In that way fandom does often seem to increasingly be geared towards presenting an “official” fandom perspective about various facets of a piece of media instead of allowing for a multitude of interpretations, and with criticism, no matter its shape or form or how genuinely warranted it may be, being hounded out of existence. I feel like a lot of this could be made less bad if there wasn’t this constant assumption & even drive to think that a different interpretation of or criticism of your favorite work of fiction or your fanwork isn’t a direct claim that you are a thoroughly loathsome individual (& maybe also if people cultivated an enjoyment of learning things about important works from a culture outside their own, even if what you learn clashes with your own initial understandings), but I guess we’ll see if that ever happens. 

So these are my general thinks about the Six Eared Macaque’s current fandom meow meow status & some of my bigger gripes with fandom tendencies as a whole. I stand by my idea that the most interesting & beneficial route for Macaque moving forward would be a kind of “redemption without forgiveness from the ones you hurt” arc--as I think was done pretty excellently with the character Grace in Infinity Train--and if for no other reason than gosh dern this monkey really needs to cultivate some sort of identity beyond his “Sun Wukong but worse” persona. 

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

Hello! If you don't mind me asking, are you planning on watching House of the Dragon? I'm personally unsure about it. I was cautiously optimistic about it since D&D are not involved, but the recent casting news have been ugh disappointing imo. What do you think?

Hey anon! Sorry to say I kind of mind you asking because my inbox is still closed (to everyone except my secret Santas, which is why the ask page is accessible at all), but then I realized it’s possible if you’re on the mobile app only, you haven’t seen said note in my askbox, or my FAQ, or anything of the sort. And with older metas of mine being reblogged recently, it’s possible you may be confused. (I hope you’re on mobile only and not just ignoring my requests.) So I wanted to inform you of that... but also, y’know, I kind of wanted to make a post about the HotD cast anyway? And this ask is as good a prompt as any... so, you’re lucky, but please don’t push your luck. ;)

So, straight up: I currently have no plans to watch House of the Dragon. HBO is not getting any of my goddamn money, I don’t trust like that. And hunting down illegal livestreaming sites is a pain in the ass and I regret ever doing it for GoT, as well as regretting getting drunk every weekend enough to dampen my senses to ever tolerate that show. Yeah it’s different showrunners and writers, I know. It’s still (mostly) the same executives at HBO and even if the pervert producer is gone (or is he?), you know they still just want to sell sex and violence and dragons to an audience that thinks fantasy is for geeks.

Also, considering that Fire & Blood’s story of Dance of the Dragons has very little actual narrative or dialogue, and the historical record is deliberately untrustworthy, that gives them pretty much full rein to do whatever they like with the story and characterization and words without even being slightly obliged to GRRM at all. Furthermore, since the story is wholly political with virtually none of the magical side of ASOIAF (excepting dragons), and honestly does not have much in the way of themes or depth that main ASOIAF or even D&E has, I think it will be very hard for an adaptation to show even those brief sparks of quality that used to make me wistful GoT couldn’t be that good all the time and eventually just made me frustrated and depressed. Note I do like the history and characters of the Dance despite myself, despite its many many many textual issues, but I don’t need to see an adaptation, I have a very visual imagination. I don’t watch a lot of television to begin with, I don’t see why I should start again with this.

However, I’m not going to avoid spoilers or discussion, and I’ll probably follow the show the tumblr way, through gifsets and video clips and people bitching on their blogs etc. If, somehow, by some miracle of good screenwriting and acting, the show manages to transcend its source material, I’m sure I will be informed. And then, if and only if then, I may try watching. (Without, of course, giving HBO any of my goddamn money.) We shall see.

(Though I certainly don’t know why anyone in Targ standom would ever watch a Dance adaptation considering almost every Targaryen and everyone else in the story is terrible except Helaena and the kids, and considering how the story ends, unless y’all are gluttons for punishment? (I do not comprehend hatewatching, sorry.) It’ll probably be fun at first to see the adventures of those “precious silver douchebags” (to borrow a friend’s tag), but eventually rocks fall, everyone dies, including the girlboss you know you’ll hope the story will be changed enough that she succeeds. Just letting you know now, she won’t.)

That said. I’ve been following the casting news and I think the hate/fear/wild screaming is entirely overblown. Yeah, I know, but wait, just listen. On Friday I officially welcomed @naomimakesart to the “favorite character is now played by an actor who looks nothing like most fanart and is mostly known for wildly different roles” club. I still remember that day in September 2009 when my brother texted me “yarp”... and that right there is the thing. Yeah. Rory McCann looks very little like most pre-GoT Sandor fanart... but many fans grew to love him anyway. (There are some who never did, of course. And yeah the character went off the rails by the end, but truly, who didn’t. Having seen his audition, having spoken to him and heard him wistfully talk about book scenes he loved, I’m convinced if Rory had only been given Sandor’s actual scenes and such, he would’ve killed it. Sigh. Deep, deep sigh.)

And Rory isn’t the only one. Neither of the actors for Jaime and Cersei were considered “beautiful” enough at first. I recall very clearly people bitching about Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (about his nose particularly?) because they had wanted Tarzan-era Travis Fimmel to be Jaime. (Seeing people bitch because current-Fimmel isn’t playing Daemon made me laugh out loud for both BEYONCE?! meme -type “why would you ever cast him omg he doesn’t fit my headcanon Daemon at all”, and amazing amounts of fandom flashbacks.) Lena Headey was “too square-jawed”, “too mean-looking” (since at the beginning you should never be able to guess she’s evil), “too dark-complected”, “too mannish”, not at all attractive enough. (Tricia Helfer was the most common “but I wanted” for Cersei, btw.) And of course “they don’t remotely look like twins, ugh!” Note, there’s receipts for all of this, none of it is made up. (Unfortunately.) Those two actors are just the ones whose casting wank I recall most clearly, particularly because oh how the turn tables.

Also. You know, there’s a post with Matt Smith and Mark Simonetti’s TWOIAF Daemon going around with shrieks of horror... and I’m finding it maddening in a “am I crazy? am I  the crazy one???” way, because Matt looks like the painting. Their features are not that dissimilar.

Same deepset eyes. Same cheekbones of doom. Same thin lips. Same protruding chin. Same high forehead. Same invsible eyebrows ffs. Matt has a squarer jaw, and a longer more rectangular face, and a wider nose, but considering that Daemon’s features are not described in the text, and this is the only official ASOIAF artwork that shows Daemon’s face straight on, I can for sure see why he was probably shortlisted to begin with. And that’s not even getting into to his role in The Crown, which I’ve heard is very well played with politics and palace intrigue... and if you doubt Smith can play seductive/roguish and/or evil (depending on how you LARP as a Westeros historian), or look good with long hair... well. I do not want to watch the movie, but this trailer is disturbingly enlightening.

And as for Rhaenyra... y’all know this show is starting at the beginning of the story, right? When she’s a teenager? Not a voluptuous MILF? Yeah, Emma D’Arcy doesn’t look like a Magali Villeneueve painting (though who does, good lord), but you know who she does look remarkably like? Harry Lloyd.

Same jawline. Same nose. Same thin lips. Same sharp cheekbones. Notably, same kind of sharp cheekbones and deep-set eyes as Matt Smith. HBO evidently has a concept of a “Targaryen look” that’s a little bit quirkier than supermodel-Greek statue-gods on earth, yeah, fine. But it’s consistent, and they look like family, and that-- that is good casting.

And yeah, in a few months to a year or so, you’ll see them in costume and wigs and makeup, you’ll see them in motion and speaking lines, and go Oh. That’s different. Never mind. And while people will make fanart of the show depictions of the characters and those will probalby get popular, they’ll also keep doing fanart of their pre-show headcanons, and those too will be popular. (God knows when I draw or visualize book!Sandor, Rory does not come to mind, lol.) Either way, there’s no reason to panic. We’ll live.

(Though will we live well? Got to wait on the writing and showrunning for that, alas.)

[edwardslostalchemy]

the thing that kills me about bakugou is when the plf go "having a powerful quirk means i'm better than you"and basically advocate for eugenics, it's horrible and corrupt, but when bakugou does it, it's lol funny and 'oh that gremlin.' in a recent chapter he made fun of the past OFA holders for having 'weak' quirks and dying and he said these things in front of Toshi, who has himself given so much. just...what was the point of him knowing about OFA if he was just going to be a disrespectful ass?

I have no idea why it was necessary for him to know, tbh. I think it was a waste of an opportunity to give him growth by NOT telling him. And honestly, I agree that k*tsuki and the plf have similar ideals because they’re elitists. :/ They think they’re better than others. Unironically, the lov wanting k*tsuki on their side would have been like, them all sharing this same thought. Idk, I just don’t like him. The things he says and does are played off as comedic relief now and it’s honestly so annoying. He needs to be brought down from his pedestal. 

(I have multiple messages so I am putting them all in one post under a read more, I hope it works, but if somehow it doesn’t, I’m really sorry. My computer says it works, but mobile doesn’t show it. This will be a long post.)

Anonymous said:

You know... I wouldn’t mind Bakugou winning vs Ochako so much if his blast had simply redirected enough rubble for him to make it though the pelting, and the fight had ended with an actual visible inflicted injury on his part, like a cut on his face, that stuck around for the rest of the tournament. Make the close call have more concrete, visible consequences for him then his arms aching a bit.

I agree with this completely. That thing about his arms aching doesn’t show much of the consequences at all. And he gets over it rather quickly. I hate that he has so much plot armor.

Anonymous said:

Ngl i dont ship Todo/deku (dont really ship Izuku with anyone lol) but its such a nice ship like?? People can ship what they want but why ship Baku/deku when Tododeku is RIGHT THERE. I would rather have todo/deku be the twin stars like.. Todoroki having to overcome his fathers legacy and be a better hero then his father ever could be while Izuku perpetuates all mights legacy and carries the legacy of One For All?? Poetic cinema

+ I SENT AN ASK ABOUT PREFERRING TODO/DEKU TO BAKU/DEKU AND I WANTED TO ADD SOMETHING SKSKS. we could totally have an "its your power" moment. Izuku getting Todo to accept his left side and Todo getting Izuku to remember that OFA is his power now.

Todo/deku is really the poetic cinema we need and deserve. Idk why people like b*kud*ku, that’s what they prefer, but the ship itself is not healthy in the slightest and I find it pretty disturbing. I agree with you, nony. Everything you said is correct.

Anonymous said:

If I'm gonna be honest the whole "he was raised in a household of screaming and abuse" isn't a good enough reason as to why Bakugo has no chill. Like we've seen people like Todoroki raised in a household much worst but he didn't come out as a jerk or bully. I'd like to see more of Bakugo's interactions with his parents but for the most part the dad seems like a pushover and his mom is just loud at times. But no where close to Endeavor. So yeah Bakugo shut up challenge

Yeah, idk how their dynamic works, it’s just mitsuki screaming at k*tsuki while his dad tries to intervene, but doesn’t do a good job about it. I don’t like that she smacked his head. But I think people really stretch it to give him a tragic backstory when in reality, he doesn’t have one. He is a spoiled brat. Shouto has proven how to be a better person. He’s just a better character in general.

Anonymous said:

This might be long but I want to get something off my chest and I love your blog so I used to like bk//dk. If you asked me why. It's because I was enamored by the fanon ver of this pair with a better bkg and the whole appeal of childhood 'friends'/reconciliation trope it had going on and some fans have convinced me that their relationship wasn't as bad as it's portrayed before UA and that bkg was only like that because of society and thinking Izuku was "looking down" at him. 1/3

Thinking about it. it's really stupid and the verge of victim blaming but anyways. What stopped me from liking it and instead hating the pair is that after dk vs kc 2 I was expecting the improvement in their relationship, for a moment I thought we got it. But in reality it's just bc we haven't seen them interact much after the overhaul arc and before the joint training arc.Then the joint arc came and the 2nd internship arc came and whoo boy, I feel like I was cheated on. 2/3

Rather than making bkg's behavior improve towards Izuku, He's still as much of an asshole who belittles him, mocks him ,acts like he can't stand him but less threats of killing him combined with Izuku who just takes it because he's a nice person. But the narrative acts like their good friends now and I have been feeling so frustrated with this, I wanted a mutual relationship with mutual respect on both sides and bk//dk hasn't reached that part and it shouldn't take this long for it to be. 3/3

Thank you for sharing this with me, nony!! I appreciate it. It’s really sad that their relationship hasn’t improved at all. It’s so long overdue and now things are played as comedic relief like him hurting Izuku with his spike and also being extremely disrespectful during the ofa meetings. Their relationship isn’t healthy and it isn’t friendly, no matter how canon wants to paint it that way.

Anonymous said:

the only reason bkg gets to know OFA is because he guilted Izu into telling him a half truth in S1 then guilted AM and Izu with his tantrum in S3 He also had the privilege to know Izu since childhood and saw AFO so he had the advantage Izuku would have never told him otherwise. Same time Izuku's friends don't "deserve" to know about OFA, rather, Izuku deciding to tell them himself will make the revelation to them more special since its Izu deciding to tell a piece of himself than being forced to

HOT TAKE

@havocsss said:

i just wanted to say i appreciate your opinion on bnha about bakugo (bc someone finally said it 👀) and you put into words for me how i feel abt that character - and that's partly why i just can't watch it. he's the bully that everyone idolises and gets let away with murder and naaaah mate that's not how it works

Thank you, I’m glad to hear it. I don’t like that he, a literal bully who has suicide baited Izuku and has hurt him with his explosion quirk, is the fandom’s favorite and the most popular character. Literally any other character would have been better to stan than him. He’s everywhere and I can’t enjoy part of the series because of him always being there. It’s so annoying. I will continue to yell about why he is not a good character until horikoshi gives us the development he desperately needs AND an apology to Izuku for being so abusive to him. And yes, bullying is abuse.

Anonymous said:

I know that feeling. I also greatly dislike Bakugou. He almost ruins the manga for me at times. I can't even think of a plot with Izuku where Hori won't try to include him in some way. I tried reading metas abt him, tried to look at him in a different light but I realised that I really hate his personality, combined with his overhyped popularity just makes me can't stand him. I wish I could even just be neutral for him but that's being a challenge.

Yeah, he’s not a good character. Very infuriating and annoying. We do not stan him in this house.

Anonymous said:

I feel like if Aizawa actually knew that Bakugou used to bully Izuku he'd probably whoop Bakugou's ass

OOF I’d like to see him expel him.

Anonymous said:

I like how it's framed like I'm supposed to feel sorry for Bakugou because he feels manpain for not being the strongest in the class. Like the dude went from a regular school to the best of the best and he still expected to be the strongest person there is with no challenge?

Awww, is the spoiled brat sad? Good. He can die mad about it.

Anonymous said:

If Aizawa did the combat training instead of All Might he would've stopped Bakugou the first time he used his gauntlets and automatically failed him and I really wish that would've been the outcome

Tbh he should have been expelled for trying to kill a classmate.

Anonymous said:

Oh yeah I remember that character entrance when he just basically I insults his partner for training. Look I love the kid but if I was a teacher I would've flamed him so hard like there could've been a hostage, that weapon could have went off, his partner could've been captured. That's how you ended up failing the license exam

OOF. When will he learn.

Anonymous said:

Um excuse the ever living fuck out of me but I just saw a fic that was bakugou/consequences where Izuku attempted suicide and you know what the ship was?? My pure green son who deserves the world and his literal bully/abuser are you SHITTING ME???? I try very hard not to hate ships I do really try but I just CAN'T with this ship it disgusts me

It's not a healthy ship. I am disturbed by this fic and I don’t even know what it’s called and I don’t want to know. Eww.

Anonymous said:

I see myself as Izuku cause I relate to him a lot and I just read something where Bakugou does what my abuser did to me to Izuku and now I'm having a very hard time stomaching the thought of him and like I really loved kiri/baku too but now I can't even think about it cause someone who shipped my notp thought it would be a good idea to make Bakugou an abuser and give Izuku Stockholm syndrome ☹

Oh nony…I’m so sorry to hear about that. That really sounds rough and I hope you’re feeling better. That sounds awful. I’m just…I’m appalled. Also giving Izuku Stockholm syndrome with this ship is just. Wow.

[adorable-elsanna]

I don't mean to be rude, and I apologize in advance if I am!! But why do you ship this nd WHY does this ship exist? Aren't Elsa and Anna sisters? And blood related at that. I don't want to hate on ships, you can ship washer you want as long as you aren't hurting anybody!! It's just that ships like these with incest startle me a bit. Maybe I'm just confused since I really shipped Kistof and Anna so I'm missing out on this? Ahhh sorry if this is annoying!! -confused anon

 Hi Confused Anon ( aren’t we all? ;) ),

Thanks for your polite ask, lol finally I get to dust off this blog’s ask box! :)) I’d love to respond with a whole essay xDD but I don’t really have time :’( so maybe I’ll just give a quick rundown for now. 

I might not be the most representative person to pose this question to lol because I am an outlier in general, meaning due to my life experiences, my development, my major in college, my deep meditation practice, and more, I do not abide by normative, dominant, hegemonic social structures and social constructs (nor do I actively resist them per se), so I am unfazed by anything. 

I started shipping this after I watched the first movie when it came out in Nov. 2013. One of my first posts on this blog, 7 years ago, was me explaining how I came to ship this (I had made the post private, but now you can read it here. Also this other post, but I wrote it when I was a college student, so it’s a little too analytical for my tastes now. Those were my views at the time). 7 years is a long time, so my mindsets and reasonings have changed, but all the reasons I had for shipping them from before are still with me today. 

I didn’t go into the movie with the intention to ship them, but while watching it, I picked up on a lot of chemistry between them because their interactions and even storyline were infused with strong popular romantic tropes, tropes that were used in other classic Disney movies themselves. I used to watch a lot of romantic comedies so I was very familiar with common romantic tropes. Of course, having came away from the movie having noticed all these romantic notes between them, I was a little confused and thought maybe it was just me. But when I went online to search a bit to see if others saw/felt what I saw, I found out it wasn’t just me! 

So one of the reasons why this ship exists is because people picked up on the romantic tropes that colored some of Elsa and Anna’s interactions, tropes that have usually only appeared between romantic couples, in films and in real life. Even if the creators didn’t intend to and didn’t actively put the tropes there, they are there. 

If we apply the principles of Buddhism (not the religion. Many ppl mistakenly practice things as devotional worship or for superstitious reasons. But if ppl really want to know everything about the mind, how the world works, the universe, who they are, about themselves and “other” people and why people do what they do, the meaning of life, true happiness, the end of suffering and stress and conflict, and consciousness, then forget psychology [not saying it’s not useful though]. Buddhism, or rather Buddhadharma, is the true science of mind, or at least the much more effective tool), it says that there is the law of cause and effect, the universal law. Everything that is created in the universe and each phenomenon that happens is the result of the momentary coming together of causes and conditions that make that thing happen. There are many many causes and conditions and intricacies and things are interconnected and interdependent, no one person can control something to happen (certain conditions have to be there for something to happen). Something can not come from nothing. If something happens, then certain causes and conditions have been created to bring that result. A seed was planted. If we plant an apple seed, what comes out will be an apple tree (provided the right conditions were met, like water, soil, sunlight, etc.). It will never come out as a banana tree. And so we can understand the underlying principle behind how each situation and phenomenon arises, about existence itself, why each thing exists. 

Now WHY did I go off on that tangent??? LOL All of this is to say that certain causes and conditions have been created to result in the effect of many people shipping Elsa and Anna together and there being a fandom for them. (These principles and explanations might seem very simple and like kindergarten stuff, but despite that, many people can’t accept it. ESPECIALLY when it applies to heavy stuff in their regular everyday life. Or even trivial things tbh lol) The last I checked, there were people from at least 26 different countries shipping Elsa and Anna together. 

Everyone thinks they see reality exactly as it is and takes it for granted, and thus attach strongly to the notion that they’re right. But if that’s the case, then why are there so many fights over who is right? So who is actually right? Even if someone were to follow the majority consensus or some popular, ingrained, long-standing ideas / societal rules, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re right. There are many cases of the blind leading the blind. People used to follow the geocentric model of the universe before they discovered heliocentrism. Ideas are always in flux and keeps changing and transforming, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, sometimes imperceptibly and sometimes conspicuously. If you ask 100 different people why they ship Elsa and Anna, you will get 100 different answers (with a lot of overlap of course) with unique spins on their reasons. Because in the world, each person sees reality through their own color-tinted glasses and filters and adherence to labels, concepts, beliefs, upbringing, etc. And then the person seeing “reality” through red-tinted glasses gets mad at the person seeing with blue-tinted glasses for not seeing the world how they see it (and gets frustrated not understanding why), and vice versa. In this scenario, what is actually best? To realize you’re seeing “reality” through color-tinted glasses, and so you should take them off and truly see reality without any filtered lenses. (This is a little off-topic, but I had to bring some Buddhism into this because first of all, dharma applies to everything lol, and secondly, Buddhism is all about dispelling confusion. There is definitely a way to see reality exactly as it is, it typically involves meditation.) 

Yes, Elsa and Anna are sisters. But I’ve never seen any pair of sisters act like them before (if there are, then that’s great!). I have a sibling myself, and we are very close, but we don’t act like how Elsa and Anna act with each other. With most siblings, I would say there’s a lot more joking around, teasing each other, sarcasm, pranks, and casual relaxed communication than the intense intimacy, deep eye-contact, and soul-bonding that Elsa and Anna share. Disney has portrayed many other sibling relationships before, but it seems like they tried something a little different with Elsa and Anna’s relationship that made it pretty easy for many people to ship them together. 

I ship Elsa and Anna together because their pure true love for each other transcends all labels, concepts, preconceived notions, and time and space. They are completely selfless when it comes to one another and that’s what true love means. They make each other better people and it empowers them to extend this selflessness toward other people. Their sacrificing themselves for each other and selflessness in action is true love exemplified. No one deserves Elsa more than Anna, and no one deserves Anna more than Elsa (speaking from my shipper heart xD). Confining and defining their love as just sisterly seems limiting and not allowing the full potential of their true, expansive, infinite love to manifest. (A sibling relationship is really beautiful, but it still has to be shaped and look a certain way, it has to fit into a particular mold and box and abide by certain conditions. Otherwise, as we have incontrovertibly seen, people will scream bloody murder and be squicked out and all hell will break loose.)  

We can even go one step further to say that the same similarly applies to people’s definitions, notions, concepts, ideas, and beliefs about love. They say this love is like this and that love is like that, this is what love should look like, this person can love this person but only if it’s like this and not like that, this is what it means to love and to be loved, etc. Again, it’s limiting, and placing restrictions on something whose essence is boundless. In Buddhism, with the realization of Enlightenment, one realizes that true love is selfless, unconditional, boundless, free, all-encompassing, nondual, timeless, compassionate, wise, nondiscriminating, infinite, universal, endlessly flowing, non-judgmental, creative, indescribable, and inconceivable. So THIS is the love that I see and ship between Elsa and Anna. I love their relationship as sisters, but their love is so grand that it cannot be contained inside that label, so it transcends and goes beyond any attempts to neatly define and characterize it.

It’s okay if incest ships startle you. Uncomfortable feelings come up whenever the ego experiences anything that challenges its worldview and everything it’s ever known and held to be true, and that prompts it to question and reconsider its mind-constructs. We have a knee-jerk reaction to grasp, hold, and attach to what we like, and to avoid, reject, and push away what we don’t like and what makes us feel uncomfortable. For what it’s worth, Buddhism tells about the cycle of life, death, and rebirth from beginningless time, so we have all lived infinite past lives and been each other’s lovers, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, enemies, grandparents, etc. at one point or another. (Deep, but intriguing!, topics for another time.)  

If you really like to ship Krist0ff and Anna, then go ahead and ship happily. First rule of Buddhist meditation: Whatever you do, ONLY DO IT, 100%. ;) And if you don’t do something, then don’t do it, 100%. And then move on to the next moment. Be in the present moment. And remember that everything is changing moment by moment. Mind is changing moment by moment. Don’t need to anticipate the next moment. Who knows where our shipper hearts will take us. 

I like to ship people based on their chemistry and characterization. Elsa and Anna have a great true love story that is theirs and theirs alone. I don’t like to ship relationships that seem contrived, thrown in there for the sake of it, not fleshed out, lacking in substance, trite, and with characters who are underwhelming or underdeveloped. 

Lol no worries, this is not annoying, I’m sorry this is so long and that I took 7 days to get back to you. I wish I could give specific examples from the movies with beautiful gifs to explain why I ship them (I’ve probably written such posts in the past. Maybe I’ll come back to edit this reply one day), but I’ve gotta skedaddle! I’d like to hear your thoughts about my reply if you actually read this, so please send me a message in the ask box again if you can. 

Also I’m a girl if that makes any difference, but yeah anyway, skedaddle time, love you all! 

Oooooh I never finished replying to someone else’s ask box message asking me why I shipped them, it’s from years ago :’(, I started typing my reasons and saved it in my drafts, but it’s incomplete. But here’s what I wrote at the time!

1. I just love everything that Elsa and Anna feel and do for each other. Elsa isolates herself from Anna to keep her safe, and Anna persists in trying to get Elsa to open up to her and goes to find her when she runs away. They’re always thinking of each other and worrying about each other. They act selflessly for one another and their unconditional love is expressed so genuinely. This kind of devotion in any relationship is rare.

2. There was a lot of chemistry between them in the movie. At the coronation ball scene, I get that the creators were trying to depict awkwardness between them since they haven’t spoken in a long time, and Anna wanted reassurance that Elsa didn’t hate her so she was nervous about getting Elsa’s attention and approval, but the scene came off as Elsa being kind of suave and flirty and Anna being flustered because her crush just complimented her. Then Anna gave Elsa a playful smile when she was dipped upside-down as if she only had eyes for Elsa.

When Anna stares admiringly at Elsa as she stands atop the staircase, it was like a scene straight out of A Cinderella Story or Enchanted where the prince stares at his true love like she took his breath away.

[onepunchmiss]

OPM s2e5 Live blog

“The Martial Arts Tournament”

Alright I’m back to the regular live blog schedule and theres 2 things before we get started. 1) OH MY GOD DO-S IS THE EPISODE THUMBNAIL WE GET TO SEE ALL THE MONSTERS POPPING UP and 2) DOES THAT MEAN WE’LL SEE ZOMBIEMAN TRAILING MARTIAL GORILLA BECAUSE IF SO I sincerely apologize in advance yall must be aware by now how that’s going to go down on this blog. Anyway, as always I’m watching this from the perspective of someone who is caught up on both the manga and web comic. Los geht’s!

Yup the centipede movement is still creepy as hell. I saw people saying it was cgi last week which I didn’t catch right away, but regardless it’s done so well because it looks unnatural.

EYYYYY ok actually I kind don’t care about Metal Knight. What this episode is actually going to be is me screaming about all the monsters liKE RHINO WRESTLER AND PHOENIX MAN GUYS I LOVE THIS STUPID BIRD SO MUCH HECKING HECK. I’m gonna vomit like him and Do-S PLUS Garou vs Bat PLUS the other S Class heroes (Tatsumaki and Flashy Flash??) I am not physically mentally or emotionally prepared.

Yo this seems to be a trend with the monsters and me, I am evidently never prepared for the garish color schemes they get. Not mad just surprised every time?

hhhhhhhhhhhhh Ok the fight! I’m… I’m gonna try really hard to not pause every 2 seconds because I will inevitably have many words to say and screen grabs to take but that would be more than excessive sooooo ok here I go

Lol I failed immediately. I love that they’re going shot for shot with the fight. I’ve said it before, but I really think Murata captures movement and action sequences so well in the manga that if the anime were to try and deviate, it just wouldn’t be as good (especially with all the flack JC staff has been catching). Also I ADORE Metal Bat’s theme music when his fighting spirit comes out??? It’s so corny and triumphant and bad ass at once it fits him so well?? Ok wait a second I thought that after metal bat hit the manhole cover it ricocheted and came back at Garou what the heck??? That was such a cool move on Bat’s part and demonstrates he’s not just brute force, but tactical too. Why’d they leave that out??OH COME ON THEY DID WHAT THE HELL WHERE IS THIS??

This is actually my least favorite thing about season 2 biggest complaint what the fuck they did my boy dirty here. Oh thank god Zenko is here to quell my anger. Also Bat’s glowing eyes of murderous intent. Look at her. A legend.

Garou: “...haa?” Yup still love his voice actor. Perfection. Also Zenko. Just. Metal Bat and Zenko. Moshi moooshi? Just. This whole thing was almost perfect. So close. The fight felt so short, and it was because they cut out some good stuff. So close to perfection uhg

AH MY STUPID BIRD MAN he sounds exactly like what I wanted him to I’m so glad and HAH the fuckin hand I forgot about that. Side note, Anyone else play Arkham Asylum? The monster association logo looks like Scarecrow’s symbol in that game…. ANYWAY I need to take a moment to appreciate that little Phoenixman chuckle it was hella cute ok

Rh-Rhino Wrestler basically just said “Then Perish”

Oh Fuck

Oh God

Martial Gorilla  

Oh fuck

O H F UK

oh false alarm im ok my heart rate skyrocketed for nix Oh Maiko Plasma!! I love her voice wtf its cute? Phew ok the tournament. Wait that’s not giving me a break either because MAX AND SNEK M A X AND SN EK

I love him and his stupid hair omg. I’m REALLY hoping that the anime branching out and giving other characters more spotlight will help them grow in popularity a bit. Every single character in this series is underrated imo. Even the popular ones like geNOS LOOKIT HIM clapping for his sensei. Genos is baby boy I lov

“Dark Corporeal Fist?” Isn’t Void Fist just easier to say? really now. Oh My God Sourface chanting “I’m ok I’m ok I’m ok” is literally my daily Mood™. Damn look at Bang taking out some frustration I’d hate to be that monster. Me too my dude Smile Man.

WHOA I was NOT expecting that transition!! Heart! Hard! HIT! It’s the Monster Wife!! And She definitely looks more monstrous in color oof those eyes ❤❤

OH FUCK OH GOD WAIT MARTIAL GORILLA AGAIN DAMN IT I WISH I REMEMBERED EXACTLY WHEN Z SHOWS UP MY BLOOD PRESSURE CANT TAKE THIS ofuck ok false alarm again but I’m low key freaking out as they pan through all the monsters because the S Class is so close like we’re about to get Child Emperor, Flashy Flash, Pig God, Drive Knight, Darkshine and so on who got next to no screen time in season 1 its giving me anxiety im so pumped??

OH FUCK GUYS PUREBLOOD OH SHIT FUCK I FORGOT WE SEE HIM THIS EARLY CAUSE HIS DESIGN KEPT CHANGING he looks stupid with his hair behind his ears and his voice is NOT what I imagined and that manga panel redraw I did was way off with the color scheme but I don’t care I have read and re-read that fight countless times this monster just grew on me by default oh no UHG and look at Super S again it looks like they’re going panel for panel here with her and I’m not complaining

They keep hopping to the tournament but I don’t have much to say about it until the shit starts going down….. and like I’m so excited for that Snek and Max moment (you know the one) but until then I’m just so overwhelmed by all the other plotlines happening I don’t have much in the way of comments for it

I lied ok that eye twitch got me. But see then it cuts away too quickly and the episode is over. I get that there’s a lot happening at once but the tournament feels dragged out a bit. It’s different when you read the manga at your own pace but cmonnnnnnnnnnnnn gimme moreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

HAH THANK YOU POST CREDIT STINGER YOU DELIVERED MY WISHES AND ZAKKOS IS SOME WEAK SAUCE.

NEXT WEEK GUYS ITS HAPPENING

Final thoughts. Um. I wish the Garou vs. Metal Bat was a tad longer just for that ONE moment. I’m still heartbroken over it. But otherwise? I’m so excited for next week, I can’t convey my excitement without being excessively obnoxious? this episode was pure hype. There are no buts about it- we are getting the S Class next week. I… think I’m going to leave work at noon to catch the episode right when it airs. I was saving that for an episode with Z but I don’t think I’ll be able to function at work if I stay. At this point every character is a fave and now we’re getting all of them, I feel so overloaded and we haven’t even seen anything yet. I don’t know what to even say about the future of these crap ass live blogs- they have no structure as it stands right now, but like they are going to devolve into just me screaming. Not even real words. just something like keyboard smashing and tears, probably. I’m so sorry, but anyway, as always thanks for reading, see yall next week assuming I survive

[travllingbunny]

The 100 rewatch: 1x05 Twilight’s Last Gleaming

I’m a new fan of The 100, who first binged it last year, August to November. This is my first full rewatch of the show. I was planning to start it anyway and finish it before the season 6 premiere on April 30, and when I saw that Fox Serbia was airing a rerun (Monday to Friday, 40 min. after midnight, with repeats the next day), starting on 1st February, it was a great opportunity to start my rewatch in HDTV on my beautiful new TV. I decided to do write-ups and tag other fans on SpoilerTV website, as I did when I was first watching the show. But my posts turned into full blown essays. So, finally, after over a week, I’ve realized: Why don’t I post them on my Tumblr blog, too? I’ll copy my write-ups of the first 7 episodes, and then I’ll post my rewatch posts after I watch each episode. (The next one, 1x08, is on Monday’Tuesday.)

Spoilers below for all 5 seasons of the show. I go of on a tangents and make a lot of references to future events.

Rating: 8.5/10

This episode really shocked me and emotionally affected me back when I first watched, and it's when I first realized the show didn't pull punches.

Killing individual characters for shock value - that's nothing new, but killing a bunch of innocent people like that, having the audience expect throughout the episode for them to be saved at the last moment, and then instead they die anyway, when it could have been stopped... I really wasn't expecting that. Now it's far less shocking after you've seen The 100 use mass murder as a plot device multiple times. Well, this is not a murder, technically, since the people eventually volunteered for it to saved their loved ones. But before Abby decided to be seriously badass and show Jake's video to everyone and tell them the truth about the Ark dying, the 100 being sent to the ground, and the upcoming culling, the Council was planning to straight up murder 320 people and then lie about it, claiming it was an accident. And, as Clarke points out to Bellamy in this episode, it's certain that those would have been working class people rather than the Ark elite. The class issues the show keeps stressing is of those things that keep it from justifying the Ark leadership for their actions on the grounds of survival, tough choices, blah blah blah, and I'm glad for it. Jaha was here planning to be one of the people who died (but I bet a large part of the reason was because he thought his son was dead... which he was, just not for the reasons he thought), until Kane convinced him not to. They had a back and forth about who's the better leader, with Jaha arguing Kane had the strength to make tough choices, and Kane arguing later that Jaha was able to inspire people. And they were both kind of right, but not in the way they thought. Kane has changed a lot during the show, from pragmatist to idealist, from pessimist to optimist, but he's always been a guy who 100% believes in whatever course of action he's chosen, thinks it's right and throws himself into it, in a way that often comes off as a bit naive. But he does suck at winning the popular vote, going by the fact that he was never elected Chancellor and that he lost to Pike in S3. While Jaha somehow managed to get elected, bull&s.hits really well in a speech in episode 1x07, and in S4 we see him give speeches to the people for the benefit of Clarke and Bellamy that show how good he can be at swaying people, even when he's not in power. But S2-3 also showed the most awful version of his messianic complex and influence. Something else that has always bothered me about the culling is, we see people sacrifice themselves for their children (like Tor Lemkin for his daughter Reese) or their romantic partners (the guy who wants to do it for his wife), which is something we see multiple times in the show. But we don't see how their loved ones feel about it, whether they tried to stop them (Tor's daughter Reese didn't realize what was going on, but the adults did). How will Reese will about losing her father when she learns what he did, and that he did it for her? In the next episode, we see the husband of one of the victims in the culling in 1x07, and in S5 we learn Kara Cooper's father was one of the 320. I wonder how many of the people from the Ark that lost there loved ones are even alive by S6? This is also the episode that made me feel better about the Clarke/Finn/Raven love triangle, because it was dealt with much better than I expected. Another reason why this was a turning point when I was really on board with the show. Speaking of that love triangle - this show really loves the scenes where Clarke is shocked and hurt to find out someone has a girlfriend by seeing him reunite with her and kiss her. They did the exact same thing in S5. And both times the camera zooms on Clarke's face rather than on the couple, though in this case, they didn't go as far as to blur Finn and Raven out of focus. But these are two very different situations, of course. Among other things, because in S5, it was no one's fault, while this situation is fully Finn's fault. I've loved the way Clarke dealt with learning Finn had a girlfriend, absolutely not doing the "being catty and fighting over a guy" thing, but the exact opposite. She's heartbroken, but she immediately bottles it up. She clearly hates being the 'other woman' and her instinct when feeling unwanted is to completely withdraw. You know who definitely isn't dealing with it well? Finn. He's clearly uncomfortable as he wasn't expecting Raven to come, and then he goes to indicate to Clarke that he would like to continue a relationship with her, which she refuses... so he then goes back to Raven and acts like everything is fine, because if Clarke doesn't want him, why not stick with Raven, and has no intention of telling Raven that he slept with someone else, or that he's in love with Clarke or that he would like to be with Clarke. Just like he never thought it would be right to tell Clarke that he has a long-term girlfriend on the Ark. Speaking of relationships, but in this case, not very serious ones, one of Bellamy's friends with benefits we see him in bed with in this episode, Bree (the blonde one), is the same girl who came onto him and presumably had sex with him in season 4, while partying as one of Jasper's end-of-the-world suicide group, and who went on to be one of those who killed themselves. But I'd be lying if I said I would make that connection if I didn't see it on The 100 wiki. The other girl, Roma, ends up killed by the Grounders in 1x07. This was still the time when Bellamy was often acting in a very frustrating way - due to his narrow focus on just Octavia and himself and not yet the group as a whole or people in general - and massively screwing up things, and never more than in this episode, by stealing Raven's radio and throwing it in the water, so Jaha couldn't come down to execute him. Now, he did know about the Ark being on its last legs, but had no idea about the culling before Raven told everyone. I predicted at the time that we'll see Bellamy feeling super guilty later, since he doesn't outwardly show it much in this episode, and boy, did we see that in 1x08. (Much more than we ever did from Jaha, who was actually directly responsible for it, but that's what Jaha is like, always justifying his actions as necessary.). Here, Finn, Clarke and Raven confront Bellamy about the radio, and the former two learn about Bellamy shooting Jaha, while Bellamy learns Jaha survived, but with a massive difference between how Finn and Raven confront him and how Clarke does. The former two are basically like "You're the worst" and Finn calls him selfish, while Clarke - already at this point - seems to understand him better and have a much better opinion of him: "You're not a murderer. All you have done is to protect your sister", though she then gets angry at him a bit later, asking if he even cares that he caused the deaths of 320 people. It's so weird that the flares the 100 use to signal the Ark won't help at all (the Ark leaders, aside from Abby, will just dismiss them), but will end up burning a Grounder village and cause more conflict with the Grounders. Which is so consistent with Murphy's Law - not the episode or John Murphy, but actual Murphy's Law - whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. But just to be clear, the Grounders using that to justify their war was utter bullcrap. There's no way anyone intelligent could consider the 100 an invading force (LOL) after seeing what they were like (and we know they did: Lincoln was spying on them and making notes) and anyone who's not a small child knows that people can't be considered guilty for causing things by complete accident, which they never could have predicted happening. (I just had to have that mini-rant because people who try to portray both sides as equally responsible, or even demonize the Delinquents and/or excuse the Grounders, get on my nerves, a lot.) A minor-running theme in this episode: at the beginning of the episode, when Clarke and Finn are lying together in the afterglow, before their super-brief relationship came came to a crushing end after Raven came back, Finn - always the one saying romantic things - mentioned a falling star and making a wish, which Clarke was initially confused by, since she just thought of meteors in real world terms and didn't know about that old superstition, while Finn said he had read about it. At the end of episode (in a moment I've seen in a few Tumblr gifsets!), when everyone is watching the flares, Clarke and Bellamy are looking at them together and she asks "What would you wish on a falling star" and then assumes Bellamy wouldn't understand what she's talking about. But she obviously does (the guy has read a lot), since he says "I don't even know what I would wish for". Which is probably true, and sad - I imagine that he had never given any serious thought to what he actually wanted out of life, beyond "Protect Octavia - make sure she is not discovered." Of course, the scene was also an occasion to show Clarke looking sadly at Finn and Raven, so we'll know she's actually really heartbroken and pining. There's more pining from Clarke in the next couple of episodes, and after that, IIRC, fortunately barely any. BTW, let's just take in the fact that Clarke, in all 5 seasons, has never actually properly dated anyone, or specifically, she had one friend with benefit with no stronger feelings involved, and she had the two romantic relationships (with people she had known for a few weeks. and who both relentlessly pursued her romantically and made the first moves) which lasted a few hours each and consisted of having sex exactly once, but were portrayed as epic romances, where 95% of the overall relationship, in both cases, consisted of not dating, but a lot of angst, betrayal, and ended in death, and Clarke getting traumatized and feeling guilty (without actually it being her fault). It's amazing how similar overall her relationships with Finn and Lexa are, including in how much they lasted and how much focus they had on screen and for how long, but one is almost completely forgotten and ignored by the fandom now, while the other one is over-hyped.

[the-far-bright-center]

Update :)

Hey everyone, it’s been a while. You may have noticed that lately there’s been a bit of a decrease in daily posts here, and that I haven’t been as consistent with tagging, etc. For the past three months, I’ve been in the middle of an unexpected and extremely stressful house move. During this time, I’ve had very unreliable and inconsistent internet access, so I decided to run this blog on a queue, and add to it with intermittent reblogs whenever I could get the chance. To say it’s been frustrating is an understatement, and I sincerely apologize to those of you who have messaged me or sent me asks during this time – I’ve been so exhausted, it’s been impossible to keep up with everything.

Thankfully, the house move is now winding down (we’re now finally in the new house, but still unpacking, settling in, etc.), so I should at least be able to resume curating this blog with more of my usual attentiveness. I’d like to say that everything will now go back to normal, but….I’m honestly not quite sure what ‘normal’ is anymore. Over the last few months, I have been thinking long and hard about my continued involvement in SW fandom, and have come to some difficult, but, imo, necessary, conclusions.

Don’t worry, I am not leaving tumblr, nor am I going to stop posting on this blog. It means too much to me to do that. However, I feel I must make it clear that, from here on out, I can no longer have anything to do with any current or forthcoming ‘New Canon’ material, whether it be films, tv series (animated or otherwise), novels, comics….just…none of it. 

Most of you know me well enough by now that I don’t think I even need to explain why, but I will do so, just in case.... 

I had always intended to completely divorce myself from the Disney stuff once Star Wars: Rebels had finished airing, but since, for a variety of reasons, it turned out that I was never able to finish watching that show through to its conclusion, this ended up happening far sooner than I’d expected. (I won’t even get into my thoughts on the renewed Clone Wars season – the less I say about it, or even acknowledge its existence, the better…for the state of my mental and emotional health, at the very least.)

My reasons for wanting—no, needing— to stay as far away as possible from Disney’s version of Star Wars from now on are many and varied [see here, here, here, and here], but ultimately it comes down to several inter-related issues, the most key being that ever since TFA, I have not been able to trust Disney with Star Wars, and will never be able to fully trust them with it ever again. It does not matter how much ‘good’ material they put out to balance out the bad, it’s too late…the damage is done. And since the version of SW as put forth in the sequels is probably the worst, most out-of-character, inaccurate, and disrespectful interpretation of my beloved story that I could possibly imagine, I therefore cannot help but view the rest of Disney’s output (however innocuous, and regardless of who writes/directs/creates it) with extreme skepticism, and an anxiety bordering on panic.

As I’ve gone over many times before, the entire premise of the so-called ‘sequels’ is anathema to pretty much all of my long-held beliefs and understanding of the saga as a whole…and to what I had, for decades, assumed that other fans implicitly understood and valued as well. And so, the fact that so many fans have so readily embraced those movies and swallowed down Disney’s bizarro version of the SW saga without hesitation or question, has continued to leave me feeling more and more heart-broken and ostracized. Not only from an entire fandom, but also from popular culture in general. It’s made me realize that, for far too many people, ‘Star Wars’ is indeed just a blockbuster series of movies, and is not the mythical two-part saga that it is to me. For far too many people, it is now, at worst, an endless, profit-churning franchise…at best, another version of an expanded universe, albeit one that has been corporately ‘canonized’. 

The fact that I can no longer relate to most other SW fans is beyond depressing for me. Something I used to take for granted – the universal appeal and relatability of Star Wars as a modern myth—no longer exists. I can’t even talk about my beloved Star Wars with people in RL anymore, lest someone let slip a spoiler that will break my heart all over again.  It is no wonder that the lead-up to every subsequent release since then (even the ones I have been actively ignoring, which is most of them) has left me a shaking, nervous wreck….and given the often fragile state of my mental health in general, this has been downright dangerous for me at times. Even just stumbling across or hearing about SW related news and announcement can leave me distressed and despondent for days on end. It takes a herculean effort for me to then reclaim a positive headspace and find my ‘happy place’ again after something like this. So I blacklist as much as I can, but it doesn’t always work, because… in order to keep this blog even remotely active, I have to peruse other SW blogs for content. And, given my need to AVOID spoilers like the plague, I struggle to do this at the best of times. Disney has so oversaturated the market with their output that sometimes it seems like every damn day there is yet another announcement of some new release. It’s just too much, and the fact that there is no end in sight is demoralizing as hell. (I dream of creating a time machine and going back to before all of this shit, just to make it stAHP.) Ultimately, all of this combines together to leave me feeling completely alienated, stressed out, and just plain unhappy.

But no more, I say. This is FANDOM….it’s supposed to be FUN. It’s supposed to make me happy. Life is already horrifically depressing and stressful as it is. And what is more… this blog in particular is supposed to be my safe space. That’s what I created it to be, in the first place.

In short, the conclusion I’ve reached is this: in order to continue enjoying the REAL my preferred version of SW in the way that I need to engage with it, I MUST completely remove myself from new Disney content. If I do not, I will lose the ability to enjoy any of it at all. 

So, my friends, while I’m not going anywhere (not just yet anyway), I do need to ask you all to please continue being patient and understanding with me about these above-mentioned issues. If you want to engage in meta discussions with me, for instance, please be aware that I will only talk about interpretations of ‘Star Wars’ as Lucas’ saga (and anything that is supplementary or supportive of that), and will not engage with anything that tries to insinuate that the sequels nonsense is even remotely part of the same story. Likewise, I beg you all to please refrain from commenting on my posts or messaging me about anything to do with upcoming releases, news, or any Disney Star Wars stuff from this point on. Again, I’m happy to discuss past content…to an extent (if you’re not sure what, please feel free to message me for clarification). But any new Disney content I just….don’t want to hear about. At all. Even if you THINK I will like it or be ok with it. The fact is… I won’t. Because Star Wars is finished. It’s a completed story. ‘IT IS ALREADY OVER. NOTHING CAN BE DONE TO CHANGE IT.’  I neither want nor need any more from it – whether as a story OR a ‘franchise’ – than what already exists.  And I become stressed and anxious the moment anyone (purposefully or inadvertently) suggests that I ought to be watching/reading/seeing/hearing about what I personally feel is just a fake version of the REAL THING that I hold dear.

Finally, I just want to clarify that, because of all of this, it’s unlikely that I will be able to keep this blog up-to-date with all the ‘latest’ content (not that I ever have done so, lol). I will, however, continue to keep it to the standards I have set so far. As always, the subject matter will be mostly be Prequels Trilogy, along with the (original!!) Clone Wars animated series (aka, seasons 1-5), Rebels (but only up through season 4a), Rogue One, and, of course, the Original Trilogy. Some supplementary material from those eras may creep in, along with occasional EU content. I just I thought I’d better make it clear that there won’t be any further ‘new canon’ on this blog…. at least, not unless some kind of unforeseen miracle happens and Disney decides to de-canonize their shitty sequel trilogy and magically make me trust them again! (ha ha I can dream)

Because it’s so difficult for me to find new content on tumblr without running into stuff I do not want to see, I have for a while now had the goal of creating my own content for those times when I can’t find anything new. Frustratingly, due to the house move, I’ve been way too busy to even contemplate that in recent times, but I do have some still-unfinished and in-progress projects that I’d like to eventually share here. In addition to this blog, I also ‘curate’ my own RL Star Wars collection, so once I get a new safe place to set it up, expect regular photoshoots of my action figures and other collectibles as well. :)

Most of all, I want to say THANK YOU to everyone who has stuck with this blog for so long. Thank you for respecting my various quirks, neuroses, and eccentricities, and for helping to keep this blog a safe space.

And to any new followers out there…. a belated, but very warm, welcome! :)  

[irregulardiaryposts]

16:35 01/03/2021

so. its now march!!!!! march is an okay month. but it also means its been a year since corona really kicked off and thats proper weird to think about. it feels like absolutely fuck all has actually changed but yet im a very different person yk. i played minecraft for 10 hrs last week. im addicted to it. this time last year i was kinda sick and we thought i had corona but since testing wasnt really available i just had to stay home ages. it was horrible but to think that was a whole YEAR ago is absolutely fucking wild. 

anyway back to minecraft. i absolutely love it. its such a simple game and you can truly play however you want to. like. if u dont want to bother beating the enderdragon or doing any serious grind stuff, you can literally just fuck about doing whatever you wanna do... u wanna build a little cottage in the woods? yes. u wanna pick lowers and decorate and build cute farms? yes. u wanna explore a vast and expansive world filled with literally endless possibilities and find pets and loot and different biomes and blocks? yes. you wanna mess around with ur friends? yes. u wanna do pvp or multiplayer games? yes. u wanna meet new people? yes. u wanna play by yourself and become exceedingly rich? yes. u wanna do all this and comforted by the melodic tunes and beautiful landscapes? yesssssssss. it literally has something for everyone but people get so pissy about how others play its soooo annoying. like so what if someone wants to go into creative and cheat or they wanna play on peaceful or they have keep inventory on? they are playing the game in the way they enjoy the most, the way that makes them happiest, makes them comforted, allows then to enjoy playing it. coz i bet if everyone was made to play the exact same way and there was no way to customise your experience, it would not be nearly as popular as it is. it probs wouldve died out if people werent enjoying it because they got frustrated by it, or too scared to lose their things to progress in the game, or too anxious to play because its scary and they dont know how to beat things. or if people play solely in creative and they enjoy that the most and wanna try survival, they dont deserve to get made fun of coz they want to ease their way into harder things. or if someone just wants to build or just explore or just tame a million dogs, as long as they are happy they are already enjoying the game to the max, they dont deserve people being like “ if u play without X youll enjoy it more coz thats the way we play it” like fuck off it would be like if a hardcore players was like “play in hardcore or ur stupid” ppl would get mad because thats not the way they want to play it and they wouldnt enjoy it as much or at all as the hardcore player does. and dont even get me started on this whole bedrock vs java bs. this its such a waste of time like??? who benefit from this argument? because its silly java players think they are automatically better than every bedrock player because they have java. 

like obviouslyyyyyy java is better and im sure a lot of bedrock players would rather java, but u cant lie and say that a lot of og players didnt start on bedrock and then upgrade to java, because as kids u cant really afford a proper pc but everyone has an xbox or an ipad lol. like they literally forget that they probably started playing on bedrock too. and its so stupid because yes while bedrock is a little shit in comparison to java, ITS STILL THE SAME FUCKING GAME just be glad were not fucking fortnite players jesus its pathetic. yes this is essentially a minecraft post and what fucking about it. i told u im obsessed with it. 

i should talk about something else. perhaps my crippling procrastination? its absolutely abysmal how shit at school i am now. i get two unconditional offers and suddenly i think i dont need to do a single bit of work (its kinda true tho) i only have three classes and in doing 1 and 1/2 of them. im not even bothering studying for prelims/exams whatever the fuck because im hopeless. theres no point because even if i do end up doing the exam and i fail theres absolutely no consequences because i have 0 shame. ill walk out of an exam i failed with my head held high because i know uni will be so much better - ill only have one subject, one i actually enjoy and want to do work for (only somewhat tho, my procrastination problems still carry through, im actually doing this instead of a 15 min thing for class but whatever) ill have a reduced working day, i can focus on just one subject, ill have other things to work on too like a part time (scary) and car (exciting) and ill get to meet new people that also want to learn spanish and are interested in it too, and i want to make more friends and i want to be more independent (moving out??? hopefully but also scary) 

i cant believe im actually at a point in my life where im actually interested in the future and want to live to see it (lol yeah) like i wonder what 13 yo me would think. even 15 yo me. i wonder how 20 yo me will look back on this. hi me if ur reading. do u have a s/o?? or new friends? how many new experiences have u had? are u comfortable in ur life? struggling ? happy? i hope ur happy coz u deserve to be. i deserve to be. i hope u have a good time reading these. i dont know if ill ever forget about this blog or not. what was i talking about tho. procrastination. its horrible, I hope u get that fixed pls tell me u do. also please tell me u get better at typing.  this has accidently turned into a speaking to ur future self thing. ill stop now. 

im a very good procrastinator. and my ability to actually focus on stuff has been getting comical. idk if its the pandemics fault or mine or schools but is a bloody issue and it needs to get better. i guess its coz i just have absolutely 0 energy do do what i need to or it just absolutely does not interest me to do it and i know theres absolutely no consequences to it looool. 

every now and then theres a day where i feel very unproductive and lazy and it feels like how it used to. a sort of growing annoyance at myself and feeling like a slug. idk some days i feel teleported back to like almost 4 years ago and idk what to do about it. i used to have a coping mechanism (?) where if i felt bad about stuff id just shower, wash my hair and put on new pjs and do something i wanted to do. it kinda put me in a clearer headspace and allowed be to get out of a slump for like 20 mins. u could call it self care or whatever but it genuinely was like washing the bad thoughts away and starting anew (is that the word) like i was able to think more rationally and get back into the semi real world but i was also doing it because i never used to have a proper shower routine, i used to go days without showering or getting out of bed for much and it kinda feels good to have this little reboot thing where i just shower to get me away from straying back there. 

idk. am i articulating well enough. ive written a lot i think. is there any more updates? nothing really apart from my growing disinterest in all things school lmao. anyway until next time i suppose (will probs be either never or like june lol)

[queerofcups]

why do u think tumblr is trash for fandom? not that i disagree lol, i've just never noticed u talking about it and would be interested in hearing your thoughts

 terrible for fanfic writers - i’m biased obviously but tumblr is a really terrible format for any kind of text based art. 

formatting - theme fonts are really variable and i’ve seen countless writers blogs (usually younger/newer writers who need the attention) with fics that I won’t read because I *can’t* read them. 

getting people to read your fic - Also, if you’re posting to tumblr only and not to the Ao3 (which I totally understand especially for drabbles) there’s a strong chance only your followers will see those as opposed to posting in a community where, if its a central fandom comm you’ll probably get decent traffic from folks who’ve never heard of you. and if you want more people to see something you have to keep reblogging it because it gets pushed down by your other blogging because you can’t have pinned posts (which is way easier than creating a separate masterlist page). also tags work like 60% of the time

feedback - if you get feedback on fic on tumblr its either a. a reply that you may or may not be able to reply to easily depending on if tumblr/xkit is freaking out or b. in a reblog that you then have to reblog to reply to cluttering your/your followers dash further

 terrible for building community

If I go to someone’s tumblr and they don’t have an intricate tagging system, chances are pretty good I don’t know shit about them other than their name/age/maybe pronouns. Y’all don’t know shit about me as an actual person unless you happen to catch the one post or hell, the one tag where I talk about being from the American southeast or the weirdness of planning a wedding while feminist, or how I’m working up to weightlifting. Meanwhile, I have a friend that I friended in 2007/8 when I was in bandom who just graduated with her PhD! She was just starting her program when we met. She also just proposed to her boyfriend whom she’d just met when I started following her. I know her, as a person, not just a fic producing machine.

Which brings me to my next point. Tumblr’s great for being a lil bitch without accountability. Don’t get me wrong. Wank is as old as fandom. Where there is fandom there will be wank, bet on that. And its not like the journal-based websites and forums didn’t often have an anonymous function. But anon hate on tumblr is so normalized and so easy-- you don’t even have to log out to ask a question on anonymous on my blog! And even if you aren’t leaving hate. I talk to 2.5 people regularly via tumblr chat regularly. I think of them as my friends. I know their names. They know mine. They call me by my name. You could be the same anon that’s asked me an anon question since I started this blog. We could be well on our way to fandom besties and I would have no idea. To be a lurker on tumblr is to be anonymous, whereas to be a lurker on your livejournals and dreamwidths still came with some name recognition. 

Also tumblr is great for BNFs. Which like. Whatever, I don’t think there’s any one unifying quality I can place on everyone who’s The Most Popular in a fandom (...and I’m not sharing my phandom bnf opinions with an anon) but I do think that tumblr makes it feel like you either have many thousand followers and a constant stream of anons or you’re Nothing and that’s some ol’ bullshit. 

Livejournal and Dreamwidth (the ones I’m most familiar with) had community functions where one person created a blog to which lots of people could submit fanworks. The bandom one I was most familiar with was called bandslashmania (go check it out!), there was minimal modding and it was on you to post your fic, post it with the correct formatting, tag it so people could find it later, etc. And it was a hub that everyone could go to. It could be your daily stop, congrats now you have a selection of the fic that got posted that day. And if you miss a day, or you read a fic and want to go back to it weeks (or even years) later, you can just go to the tag. I’m having very strong feelings about how much fic we’re going to lose because of fucking tumblr (seriously. post your shit to Ao3. Also if you have a favorite fic? C/p that shit and save it to your computer. That’s the only way to (sort of) guarentee you’ll always have it) and the fact that you can accidentally delete your blog.

You ever made friends in the replies or reblogs of a tumblr post? If you did you’re a rarity. That shit happened every day in forum/journal based 

And I love IDB, I think its a really cool space to have more extended conversations, but I still don’t think its a great place to get to know people unless you have time to be really active on there and pay a lot of attention to peoples usernames, lol.

This is. A delicate one. I’m not going to shit on the tumblr’s contributions to people’s growth in awareness of social justice and the experiences of marginalized folks. Its been a really integral piece to amplifying the voices and communities of people who, previously, would have been shut down and made to talk about their issues only on their blog. That’s a statement. And I think tumblr likes to get on a high horse. There’s some shit fandom does that I have real problems with (the fact that I have to block extreme underage on Ao3 is A Problem for me. The blatant racism of who fandom chooses to write about over and over again is A Problem for me. I could go on). But I do think that there’s a subset of fandom that’s like oh, I don’t like this thing, lets use social justice language to talk about why its Bad and Morally Wrong, rather than just not reading it. And that gets extra annoying because they then sound like people who are trying to point out some real ass problems and so people lump these groups together and I have to ask myself before I follow someone if they’re disagreeing with the idea that fandom’s collective love affair with whitecock is problematic, or if they just want to write their fucking otayuri fic.

This is probably way more than you were expecting! I don’t hate tumblr (...mostly). I just find it really frustrating that we’ve decided that this (and a little bit twitter and a little bit instagram which i’m just flummoxed by) is our fannish home when its actually The Worst for a hobby of which one of the main tenants is community building. Like we’ve glued and stapled shit together, we’ve adapted like fandom always does but like Dreamwidth is right there. We could have it all, we just don’t take it. 

Lol, other Fandom Olds that follow me, feel free to hop on this post, I’m sure you have other shit about fandom on tumblr that you hate.