#also this is obviously a joke post but I really would recommend just going outside and breathing for a bit

[charaunderwood]

taking a neighborhood walk while listening to the pikmin 4 credits music and looking at the way sunlight filters through tree leaves is singlehandedly keeping my joy and whimsy alive rn, would totally recommend if you're able

[goat-guy-tm]

I was talking about deep analysis of Curly and Jimmy's dynamic in my discord server (which you should join), and I thought "Hey! Maybe tumblr would like this!" So, here this is! It's a rough copy paste of what I said, edited slightly to fit better in a post format:

Also long post warning.

I feel like because a lot of ppl haven't experience people like Jimmy irl they have a hard time understanding why Curly acts the way he does, and by no means is it still 100% okay, but when you know someone that's been mentally manipulating you for years if can become easy to be tunnel visioned to they pain they cause others. I think a big example of that is when Anya shows concern over Jimmy's last psych evaluation but when Curly does it Jimmy (from the little text we get about it) tells him it was just all jokes, which could have been, but when it's just Jimmy and Curly it's much lighter in perspective, because Curly believes him, and Curly sees no reason for Jimmy to lie to him about his mental state (which he obviously was doing as he has quite the psychotic break a few days later)

Not to mention, Jimmy gets quite aggressive at Curly when he notices that Curly is rethinking his career. He activly calls him horrible things for 'not appreciating his position and wanting something new' (<not direct words but overview), when if Jimmy was a good friend he would have been talking about it with Curly. Instead he shames Curly for it, that in Jimmy's mind it's unfair for Curly to not be happy cause Curly has a better seat than him, but he'll frame it as them, the whole crew, to make Curly feel bad about it.

Like, when the rest of the crew learned they were going to be let go after that haul, none of them were really mad at Curly for him being the only one to be given a recommendation and compensation. Yeah Anya and Swansea are upset about it, but only Jimmy is the one to call out Curly for being the only one to relieve special treatment, when it's pretty established Curly is/was one of Pony Expresses' best pilots. But Jimmy doesn't talk about himself during the party. Swansea mentions how unfair it is that PE is throwing them to the side after all these years, Anya almost has a panic attack over not having any money in savings, Daisuke isn't really phased since he's only an intern, but Jimmy gets mad at CURLY, not Pony Express. He even full on calls it Curly running away, as if Pone Express closing them down is Curly's fault for wanting something different for his life

I mean what's wild to me is I'm p sure Curly even has a conversation with Jimmy in the game about how he hasn't been handed anything and has been working hard for where he is. Curly never out right really says it, but he does make mention of both of them working hard. Then again Curly doesn't talk about himself a lot even in conversation (minus the "on the edge of a bridge with your feet in the cememnt" one cause Jimmy made it about him)

When going back through the playthrough, I realized Jimmy is such a well written villian because he convinces even Curly that Curly is the villian here, the one in the wrong. Curly isn't perfect, he is quite literally the imperfect victim, but Jimmy is such a big manipulator that he convinces Curly it's HIS fault all this is happening, that Curly needs JIMMY so that he can fix all this, only for Curly to realizes what Jimmy's been doing when he finds Jimmy curled up outside the cockpit with a ship wide system failure blaring.

Buddy Corl: "Hey, just an idea, would Jimmy keep Anya alive so that Curly can stay alive? He berates her medical expertise but never elects to care for Curly beyond feeding him pills."

I'd say 50/50. A big thing is Jimmy quite obviously doesn't view Anya as a person, or at the very least views her as bottom of the barrel useless, but after the crash and with Curly how he was, there was no way he'd be able to do it and survive, because the entire time Swansea has the axe and Jimmy even recognizes that if he steps out of line too far within the lines of "I'm captian so I say so", then Swansea would basically usurp him. His own personal caring for Curly was most likely to keep him suffering. He voted on keeping Curly alive, and unless he was just trying to blend in with the others, then he did it because he wanted to keep Curly suffering.

Friend Corl again: "There was a Tumblr post that claimed the hands of the others were missing (the overview angle of Curly on the table was used as evidence) but this could just be the angle of the scene itself as he was going to die shortly after."

Hm, it could have been either the angle, a rendering choice from the devs or Jimmy could have cut their hands off. Idk why he would only go for the hands though, since he seems to show full intrest in cannablism. But you could chalk it up to a concept of keeping them from being able to do anything. Yes they are dead but Jimmy is far gone enough to believe that cutting their hands off could still make him better because they can't do anything to change what he's done.

Anyways that's it! For some context on why this is so important to me, from elementary school to the end of middle school I had a 'friend' that I was extremely close with. She was a horrible person who mentally, emotionally and physically tortured me for years, but since I was a child I never saw anything wrong with it. I would even rush to her defense when people would point out to me that what she was doing was bad. Now a days I hate her, and I love to talk shit about her, but I think a lot of people don't fully take in Curly's actions because they haven't gone through that (and they shouldn't, mind you).

I feel for Curly a lot, because I see myself in him in how he tries so desperately to protect someone he didn't even realize was killing him. Curly isn't perfect, and believe me I wasn't perfect when I was friends with her. She made me act out against people to gain her approval, she made me bitter and mean to others, do things I would never do. Very few people acknowledge what an over powering manipulator that has been controlling you for years can do to a person.

[drinkyourvillainjuice]

Reading Interpretation and You (and the Author) by the one and only Secretary

[id: From right to left. Head with Author written underneath with a block with Conceived Story written inside. An arrow extruding from the block labeled expression points to a box in the middle with Media and Discourse written inside. The middle points to the head on the left with an arrow with interpretation written on top. Head with Reader underneath with a block inside labeled Perceived Story end id]

Have you ever thought about art and how it affects you? I think most of you, and the people running this blog, have been on the left, but have you ever been on the right?

I think some of you haven't - or, I mean, not on a (semi)professional level. Some of you are (hello hpowell in the mentions, luv ur games btw), but some of you might one day reach that weird level of non-notoriety that is still above what anybody on a daily level which produces art may ever happen.

This isn't about that, but more on the fact that being suddenly on the right, and having ideas and a conceived story then having the story be interpreted and dissected by a non-considerable audience, and see how some developed their own perceived story. On a level from an outside perspective, I have experienced that.

For example, the Perceived story of Worm is quite different from the Conceived story. How many of you didn't realize that one of the characters rapes the other? How many of you noticed the unreliable narrator and the change of tone? How many of you noticed that people developed powers on the basis of trauma - but even those without that specific event, still recreate the cycle of trauma? I mean, this is less a 'haha you didn't get it!' and more a 'wow people really read things differently!'

By the way, Worm is kinda bad. I recommend Pact. I digress! This is an essay on Controlling the Narrative and Life Imitating Art, but I have thoughts and opinion about online fiction, and how people develop their own Perceived Story independent from the Conceived Story. Like have any of you watched the Boys?

In the box, the Peceived Story of many is that the main antagonist, a white supremacist rapist, is actually the good guy by portraying the image of a good American. You would think that's obviously wrong, and people would pick up on it, however, that's where you're wrong... because you're making those same assumptions!

Both in Worm and the The Boys (yes, I used two superhero fiction to prop DYVJ. Mix and compare at home), the Conceived Narratives are not accessible to the general audience. What did Wildbow mean by saying this 12-year-old black girl was a slut? What did The Boys's creative team mean by having a main character be raped twice and treated as a joke twice? It could mean anything. The yous at home could potential go: "Wildbow was representing the misoginoir violence that young Black girls faces, and that even someone with a positive read can still be racist" and "Wildbow actually had a racial bias while writing this bit of the story". For The Boys, it may sound something like "The Writer's team is simply using the rape-as-a-joke narrative that the comic repeatedly used as a safe way to create drama as the season ending which mirrored their love interest's arc" or "Perhaps, someone has a crude idea of what is funny, and they genuinely thought this was going to funny."

At the end of the day, neither of these entities has ever come forward to explain their reasoning for choices within their book. Is it their biases? Is it them willing to try to say something? Was it just unintentional and happened? What does this mean?

You may be thinking, where does this entire post fall in for this blog which is based on a direct line of communication (but not access) to us. In a way, this is to ensure that the Conceived Narrative of DYVJ is not kept under wraps. I think, some times, it's good for them to be, and we support people making up their interpretation of things. But it's also a question of balance: it sucks to have interpretation put on you when you have never said anything about the topic or meant something that way.

Anyways, since you are all in the left seat of this book, what is your Peceived Story of Drink of Your Villain? Do you have any questions about authorial contents? Do you think some themes may be intentional or unintentional? Do you think that potential real life biases (racism, transphobia, ableism) may be affecting how this book is written unknowingly?

Okay thank you for reading, bye bye :)

[jodilin65]

I definitely don’t have as much energy as I had yesterday. I’m not horribly tired, but I’m tired. Again I got the same 83 sleep score. Slept a little less than 8 hours this time, but there was one huge spike in my oxygen level and I do remember my nose was stuffy for a minute there, and I also got up to pee and had a bit of trouble falling back to sleep. So I don’t know if there’s a connection or not.

Obviously, the vitamins aren’t helping. I looked and found I had 19 days in March that I was either tired or exhausted, and only 12 good days so that sucks. That’s way too much! Even a third of the month would be too much. A quarter of the month is kind of borderline, but 19 days is way too much because you’re talking more than half of the month and it’s like, come on already!

But after doing some serious reflecting, no doctor has ever really helped me. The silicone stuff isn’t helping. I didn’t think it would. I still wonder if it’s worth running to the GYN because no one ever seems to help solve my problems. For years, no one helped me with the anxiety that I had, and no one has helped with the fatigue. So why would anyone be able to help me with the burning down there? I really think that unless they’re missing something, the next step would be for her to recommend estrogen-based treatment and unless it was in pill form or something I could put on my fingertip, I wouldn’t be able to use the stuff. Then there would be the side effects.

Someone was blasting music earlier. I could just make out the faint beat of it in the bedroom. So I stuck an ear out the door and there was definitely music going, but I couldn’t say if it was outside the park or not. It’s one of those things where it could have been loud but far away or softer and closer. There were no lights on next door and I doubt it was the party girl or the honker.

Speaking of the honker, he shared a post about where he was eating by the river, so I said that it looked like a nice place and to have a safe trip home. Then someone else asked him when he was leaving because they wanted to get together one more time with him. I was hoping he would answer but if he did, he did it in a private message.

On Facebook, you can list yourself as going to an event or interested in an event, and he’s interested in a motorcycle expo on April 20th. So he’s likely to be here until at least mid-April and maybe even May.

Okay, now onto a couple of mysteries. Let’s start with someone I thought was following me that I now don’t know if they are. I thought that one of my New York visitors who’s listed as being in Newark was them. Whenever I clicked through to their location, even though geo-tracking is a joke and is usually 10 or more miles off, it always took me to upstate New York where I thought they lived. It puts me in the middle of a canal above Finger Lakes, actually. But then when I was looking at a map at something else, I saw that Newark is actually in the southern part of the state. I don’t remember it ever saying one town while giving me a totally different location on the map like that. Usually, the town it says they’re in is the town that’s going to come up when you run the IP, so I don’t know where they really are or if it’s who I thought it was or not.

The next mystery of the night is actually something that happened in 2013, way back when you could get anonymous comments on my-diary. I got slammed with all kinds of criticism then since apparently, the only way people feel they can really speak their minds is if they can do it anonymously. It was kind of funny and I actually got a kick out of some of the shit I would get back then. I was sorry the day that option went away. You can still comment anonymously on Blogger but that site is dead in comparison and people know Google tracks. They don’t seem to know how to disable tracking or that they can go through browsers like Tor if they want to hide. If I don’t want someone to know I’ve been around, I use Tor.

So, anyway, back then I think I had more than one person trolling me. There was a person who had an empty account who loved to critique me for being a complainer, and I am. I’ve always been very vocal and very blunt. If something goes well, I say so. If something goes bad, I say so. That much is true.

But then there was somebody who used a fake email address. You didn’t have to have an account to comment. It required an email address but as long as the end of it made sense, you could plug in whatever name you wanted.

I got comments about waiting for my dead parents’ money to buy a place and all this literature sent to me about narcissists and psychopaths. One of their little tutorials talked about how narcissistic psychopaths trick people into forgiving them so they can manipulate them again and how they believe their lies and live those lies.

I looked back and read through their messages again because sometimes, after time goes by, you see things from a different perspective. I first thought Maliheh only befriended me long enough to get me to keep her name out of my book before she ghosted me but when I later looked back on it, I came to suspect that the real reason she ghosted me was because she didn’t like that I liked her. Only she knows, though.

Being the curious person I am, I’ve always wondered who sent those messages. I studied the wording, the writing, the style of writing, and the content. There are so many names that come to mind because there are so many people who could have had that link to that diary that knew me because I was much more open about sharing with people I actually knew back then. Nowadays I try to keep an unbiased audience who don’t really know me personally.

The first name that came to mind when looking at it from a modern-day perspective was Andy. I apologized for dumping him the first time. So there’s the forgiveness aspect. Also, he’s a very paranoid individual who thinks everybody is always lying about everything. So there’s the lying part. Hell, he thought I was lying about my sleep disorder. If anything, I’ve been too honest throughout my adult life. No one has any power over me or a hold on me of any kind and therefore I don’t have to worry about not being truthful. I would rather not say anything at all than lie.

He sometimes also complained when I complained. I was told on Ask around this time that I seemed like a very negative person and was there anything that made me truly happy? Well, this totally smacks of him, even though he can be pretty negative as well.

What doesn’t smack of Andy were some of the comments defending my parents. Andy always knew how fucked up my mother was and he never took her side. Ever.

Whoever it was seemed to know me personally, possessed a deep-seated hatred of me, and desperately wanted to hide their identity. No one ever came out later on and told me it was them, so they never wanted me to know who they were.

It was too well written for termite Tammy and her bratty brood unless they changed their writing style to throw me off their scent. I doubt it, though. They weren’t that smart.

Kim and Molly wouldn’t have been nearly that intelligent to write and send articles written by doctors but I wondered about Molly’s mother.

It could even have been Aly playing some kind of strange joke on me. The possibilities are endless. But I’ll never know who it really was…just like they never wanted me to.

[victorawhi]

*BE CAREFUL HOW YOU INSULT PEOPLE ON SOCIAL MEDIA*

Social Media has made us not to know who our mates are any longer.

Because each of us is holding a smart phone and has data to post, we don't take a minute to reflect on the possible personality of the person at the other end communicating with us.

And I will share a personal experience.

Few days ago, I shared a content on a particular WhatsApp platform which attracted a few positive comments from members of the group.

But someone slid into my dm and made some observations on things I could improve on the project.

I didn't know him or her from anywhere (but from the way he spoke I could almost tell he or she is my junior). Well, for me, that doesn't really matter. I just said "thank you, I appreciate" and let him go.

The next day, I implemented about 90% of his or her recommendations.

Then I did something that only a few people would consider doing.

I went back to the person, submitted the latest version of the work and asked for further criticism (critics are one of the greatest assets you have on any project, unfortunately most people don't know this).

He or she looked at it and confessed that I have a near perfect work.

I thanked him or her.

But then, I went back again, introduced myself and requested to know more about whoever he or she is if he or she doesn't mind.

At that point, I was expecting to get just the name and maybe gender so as to enable me save the number accordingly.

But I was shocked what I got instead.

I received a detailed profile of a man whose first son is about my age mate.

As at the time the man started his career with UNICEF, I wasn't born yet. He had gone ahead to work as a consultant to United Nations for over 20 years.

He spends at least 9 months outside Nigeria each year with his children living in UK, US and Canada - but see me in the same WhatsApp group with him.

After my conversation with him, I sat back and reflected on the different dramas I have seen on social media.

I have watched people insult people they have no idea what their profile is, especially on a WhatsApp Group.

Sometimes you may share a post and someone drop a comment that is not too complimentary and the next thing that will follow will be loads of insult.

In fact, I have watched one C-suite exec exit a particular WhatsApp Group with tears because of the insult he received from a young girl in the group (obviously the girl had no idea of whom the person is while releasing her poison).

This is quite common on Alumni WhatsApp Group.

Imagine you are in NIFES Alumni WhatsApp Group. On that platform, there are people that graduated in 1980 and there are people that graduated in 2021.

But they both have one thing in common - they are both alumni. And with that common factor they are both entitled to be on the same platform without any form of discrimination.

Now, you would imagine that the person that graduated in 1980 may have retired as a Director in CBN, he might be the owner of one of the best hospitals in US, he might be a Professor at Imperial College or a senior executive at Google.

Of course the person that graduated in 2021 might still be doing NYSC.

So imagine that on one of those occasions a controversial issue like why Peter Obi must not win 2023 election is raised on the platform and our NYSC guy start raining insults on the Imperial Professor for holding a different view.

I want you to just imagine that for a minute.

We also see this happen on Facebook comments.

Sometimes you just notice a comment on someone's post. Of course you don't know the person that dropped the comment neither do you care to know. But all you know is that the person must be "a bastard and a very useless person" for saying that and that is exactly what you drop as your own reply.

Friends,

I have an advice for you this morning.

Don't allow that device you are holding to deceive you. We are together on this blue App and on other social platforms, we share jokes and learn from each other, but we are not mates.

Resist the temptation of saying "who do he think he is, he should get out from here".

Respect for elders is not only for those in your village, it also applies on this Social Media street. Unfortunately you can't even recognise who an elder is here - so just respect everyone, respond to them with courtesy and deep respect.

*copied*

[catcatb0y]

I'm sure both of us came off a lot more "aggressive," upset, and/or 'pressed' than what was behind the acreen, because like. I need your to carefully read what I am saying right now. Because if I sound annoyed I honestly kind of am, but I'm trying not to be. Most people will not assume anything you say in good faith. Especially not when you say so aggressively.

"I just thought it was weird as fuck of you to say that BBj didn't have a personality..."

That is not what you said in your initial reblog. You literally just repeated what I had already said in the tags, which was that he suffers from not knowing who he is outside of his one goal.

And also, specifically pointed out the fact that you enjoy Trans!KT headcanons, so like. Honestly, if I didn't draw the conclusion that you were saying "I agree with Trans!KT, but you're wrong about Trans!BBj, because you're not even watching the show-" (when you repeated the same thing that I had said about the show), then I would have been fucking reaching.

"I don't care about canon compliance versus AU transmasc BBj"

Again, not what you started with, but I talked in MY BLOG in MY POST about MY HEADCANONS (/emphasis), and you as a random stranger got mad at that. So yeah like I'm going to pretty obviously defend the original intent of my post. Which is my headcanons.

I don't think you care about canon versus AU- or realistically, I don't care if you do or don't. That post was how I FEEL and the reblog why I made the post on MY blog. I am emphasizing that I did not make the post for you (not in a mean way, just genuinely).

The whole POINT was I DO care about canon compliance!!! That's why I made the first post, that's why I responded the way I did in the second post because I do!! If that came across as anything other than ME explaining the intentions behind MY POST, then Idk how to help you sorry homie. Right now you have proving my point and I am getting frustrated because I already know I navigate fandom differently that is why I am JOKING about it on my personal blog. (A point that you didn't acknowledge in your first reblog, since you went straight to getting upset at a point you didn't actually make in your initial reblog)

You were not at all clear about what you said was supposedly the reason you had reblogged my post, so, reasonably, I was Not Happy seeing someone read 'my headcanons don't make me an asshole' IMMEDIATELY then treating me like I was a fucking asshole.

"I just scrolled through the TnB tag like I always do."

I was, indeed, just asking how you found the post in curiosity and not anger. Because I am just Some Loser Dude who makes two note posts on a website with Endless Doomscrolling. None of my tags had lone titles or character names. I didn't namedrop in the og post.

I was just asking because like. Dude Tumblr's algorithm is SO FUCKING WEIRD. Sometimes partial tags show up. Sometimes they don't. Some people say base text show up if you look for it. Some people say it doesn't.

Tumblr literally still recommends me a shit ton of blogs who post exclusively about my blacklisted tags- I have ZERO clue how the flying fuck this website last decided to categorize its doomscrolling.

"Stop accusing me of being a stalker"

I'm not acusing you of being a stalker, I'm acusing you of being a /stranger/, because you are. If you were a stalker, you would have seen my dozens of rbs about how I don't like canon contradicting fanon.

I have an established personality and ongoing thoughts on this matter. If you were a stalker, you would be a really bad one.*

"I'm not the hc police. I just found your wording insulting."

Yeah homie again that is not at all what you said in your first out of the blue reblog.

Also YOU might not be the headcanon police but BELIEVE ME (/emphasis) there ARE headcanon police out there. I genuinely DO NOT KNOW YOU enough to know whether you're joking or being serious or being hateful or why you're getting irrationally aggressive over a random post.

* You seem to have taken "How did you find this? (No one else did)" as me accusing you of being a stalker, but I am pointing out that you are a stranger. Are you fucking with me? Are you joking? Are you going to send death threats and harassment because I don't like your favorite headcanon?

These have all happened to me. Most people aren't going to assume you're jokingly YELLING AT THEM IN YOUR POST.

"Why do English speakers (not translate words that would realistically just be translated)"

I find translated names weird because they sound out of their element. That's like, the closest thing she was given to a name, so that's why I use it like one. The characters in No. 6 who live in the slums don't have real names, so they go by Dogkeeper and Rat. I find this weird and call them Inukashi and Nezumi.

And also your last line is literally in all caps getting mad at me for spelling a character name more phonetically than it was on screen. YOU guess why /maybe/ I didn't just call her "grandma" and maybe think a little bit about why I would have specifically pointed out that I am bad at phonetic spelling.

When you aggressively made a point to single out the fact that I spelled a character's name wrong. Just reread that one for a bit.

"Who is asking you to just guess her name?"

Literally the only one making any comment on my spelling is YOU. I'm. Honestly a little baffled you read all that and your takeaway was "I don't want people to find my posts" and not "I don't want people LIKE YOU to find my posts," because as you already pointed out I very much emphasized the only one responding to my post was YOU.

I did actually say "Maybe I'll spell it wrong on purpose so that you don't find my posts," so like. Idk why you repeated it back to me like that, tbh. I didn't say "people" were getting mad at me for spelling her name wrong, I said YOU got mad at me for spelling her name wrong.

I don't care if your aggression is joking or real. I do not know you like that and stated in my initial post that I don't [deserve] aggression for a harmless difference in opinions. You, for whatever reason, decides that your best reblog idea was being aggressive. Not really setting yourself up for a heart to heart.

For future reference, homie, literally no one knows when you're "mad in jest." Like. I don't know you. I've never seen you. I follow the TnB tag and scroll through it sometimes, too. You could try and say the same about me, but YELLING IN ALL CAPS WITH NO BREAK does not exactly come across as "joking," and dude this is fucking Tumblr. If you haven't seen people get weirdly pressed and genuinely about stupid posts- I'm jealous, honestly.

You don't really get to start being 'a little irritated', when you walked up to a stranger and decided that the funniest thing you could possibly do is be An Asshole (for jokes).

I've already stated that I DO NOT KNOW YOU. I can explain myself and MY reasonings over MY post about MY opinion, and if that's not how you meant for your relpy to come across: that's not my problem. Your first reply was rude and frankly uncalled for, so I responded to it as it was.

If anyone heard me talk about some of my 'takes' on inclusivity/diversity headcanons, they would think of me as an asshole- but it's not because I don't want/enjoy/indulge in diversity/inclusivity headcanons, it's because you FOOLS the PERFECT candidate is right THERE!!

[watchmegetobsessed]

Update - Harry Styles

i’ve been deep inmy harry feels and this thought just wouldn’t leave me alone so i had to write it. im thinking about starting a taglist for harry, i think i’ll write more about him in the future. let me know if you’d be interested in the taglist!

word count: ~5.9k

masterlist

Sequel: The best present

Harry is not that into YouTube videos, has never really been, which is kind of ironic seeing the number of videos on the internet that is about him. The man himself who makes everyone talk online feels weird seeing someone talking on his screen, looking into his soul as if they were right there with him. But today he felt the sudden urge to be like his peers and get lost in random rambling videos from strangers, who felt the need to put themselves out there.

He has made a mean cup of tea for himself, made himself comfortable on his couch with his laptop balancing on his thighs and now is opening up his browser to unwind in an unusual way. As YouTube opens in front of his tired eyes, he stops when he tries to type in the keywords he is searching for. What is he looking for really? He thinks to himself trying to remember what he heard from his friends when they talked about funny or interesting videos. One thing is for sure, he is trying to avoid watching videos of himself in any content. He has had enough of him for the day, it’s time to focus on someone else, even if he doesn’t know the person.

He scrolls through several pages of many different keywords until he settles for a video where a girl talks about how her latest moving day went. Starting off Harry feels weird listening to her talk about such personal things as where her bed went in her room, how she packed all her stuff to fit them in the boxes, but soon enough this feeling settles and he starts to realize it’s kind of relaxing.

It doesn’t take too long for him to fall down a rabbit hole and by the time his tea empties out from his cup he is intensely watching a guy rant about his boss at Subway while doing a mukbang. The latter is a new discovery for Harry, he has never heard of it before, but he can see why some people find it satisfying.

The video ends, Harry checks the time and sees that it’s already after midnight and he hasn’t even realized how fast time flew by.

“Alright, just one more,” he mumbles to himself scrolling down the column of the recommended videos until his eyes stop at one particular upload at the very bottom.

July update for my Sammy, ready the title and an eye-catchingly beautiful girl is smiling from the thumbnail. He finds her breathtaking, the lack of makeup, the worn out hoodie she is wearing and the many various plants in the background makes it appear she is sitting in the middle of the forest.

Harry finds himself clicking on the video before he could even decide consciously to watch it. The screen loads and the girl appears in front of him, this time in a much larger size.

“Hi Sammy, welcome back to our channel,” she starts with an angelic little laugh as she pulls her shoulders up to her ears as if the camera is making her shy. She has no reason to be shy, Harry thinks to himself. His second thought is about Sammy, he is one lucky guy to know this angel and have her think about him. “It’s Y/N here, your one and only sister,” she adds.

Sister. The word brings Harry relief and he is surprised to feel this way, but he has no time to think anything of it because she starts talking again.

“Here is my July update, I’m sorry I’m a little late, but we got back from Oregon yesterday. Aunt Ella is sending you kisses and hugs, she missed you at the barbeque, or maybe it was just your helping hand at the grill,” she chuckles to herself, probably recalling the memory.

Harry has no idea who Aunt Ella is or where she lives in Oregon, but the way she talks about it makes him feel like he is part of the family a little.

Y/N carries on and starts talking about everything that has happened in July. Painting the shed at her parents’ home, buying a new armchair, one her cat absolutely adores and refuses to sleep anywhere else now, she went to the hairdresser to get a trim, but not too much. She tells about her plans for August, how she is thinking about going to the farmers’ market more often, and she has been playing with the idea of adopting another cat.

“I think Henry has been feeling a little lonely lately. He could use a buddy,” she tells the camera, her eyes moving to the side from where a weak but moody meow can be heard as an answer. “Yeah, I think he agrees,” she chuckles and Harry finds himself smiling at the screen.

At the end of the video she asks a few questions from Sammy, how he has been doing, if his wrist feels any better, even asks about a friend called Matthew. Harry wonders if she has ever gotten the answers to her questions and where Sammy saw this video. What is he doing that made her want to do an update on YouTube?

When the video ends Harry clicks on her profile faster than he would willingly admit to anyone and it’s like he opened the gate to paradise. Tens and maybe hundreds of videos are queuing on her page, monthly updates, birthday wishes, short story times about family gatherings, news and happenings in her life.

Harry gets lost in her tales. He watches video after video, noticing the smallest details about her, almost mentally taking notes about her updates, finding anything and everything she talks about so interesting as if he knew those people and places she mentions. He comes to realization that Sammy is her older brother who is serving somewhere in the military. Y/N is making the videos to update him about her life even if she knows most of them doesn’t get to him until weeks later, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. He also learns that Sammy sends them back lengthy emails once a month and always ends them with a joke they made up with his mates at the army. Y/N loves them even when they're not even funny, she never fails to mention that she smiled reading them.

Hours pass by and the rising Sun peeks inside the window pulling Harry back to his own reality, shocked that he just spent the whole night watching her videos and didn’t even realize how deep he has gotten in her life. Lucky for him he has nothing planned until the afternoon, so shutting his laptop he sets it aside and heads straight to bed, but lying between his silky sheets he catches himself staring out the window, wondering what Y/N might be doing right now. From what he collected she lives somewhere in Spokane and has family in Seattle and Portland, which puts her quite a few time zones behind him. He finds the thought of them going to bed at the same time despite the distance a little funny. He lies in bed for quite some time before he finally drifts off to sleep with a particular girl on his mind, who doesn’t even know he is thinking about her.

 “Do you think you can fall for someone you have never met?”

Harry’s question catches Mitch a little off-guard, but he is kind of used to his random bits of thoughts. Pouring some sugar into his coffee he follows the wondering singer to a free table in the corner.

“Isn’t it what all your fans feel?” he answers with a question, earning a surprised look from Harry. He hasn’t thought about this side, now the situation is kind of ironic, he supposes.

“Y’re right,” he nods stirring his coffee around in the small cup.

“Want to let me in on your thoughts?”

Harry feels a little shy to admit how he has watched all of her videos in the past few days, 207 to be exact and now he feels an oddly deep connection to this girl he has never even seen outside of a screen. Last night he dug up her Instagam profile, and even though she is not posting as frequently as she does on her channel, it was a refreshing change to see her in different settings. Chilling at a lake, having drinks with her friends, playing with her parents’ puppy, it amazed him that she has a whole life outside that small portion she lets him see in her videos.

Hesitantly, but he tells his friend about his latest hobby, if it’s not too weird to call it that, while his friend patiently listens and nods along his words while sipping on his morning coffee.

“D’you think I’m crazy?” Harry sighs leaning back in his seat, looking at his friend and colleague for validation that he hasn’t lost his mind entirely.

“Definitely not,” he chuckles shaking his head. “It’s like falling for that girl in school you know so much about but never really met.”

“Only that I’m stalkin’ this poor girl.”

“This is not stalking. We both know it’s far from that.” Harry nods with slight relief that his situation doesn’t seem as bad as he has been feeling lately. “Have you gotten in touch with her?”

“And what am I supposed to do? Comment on her video that I think her cat’s a cutie and I watched all her videos in three days ‘cuz I think she’s beautiful and I find her voice soothing?”

Mitch lets out a soft chuckle at the oddly specific answer he just gave and finds it amusing how interested his friend has grown about someone in such a short time.

“Maybe phrase it a little different.”

“So you do think I should reach out?”

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t. Use your personal YouTube, leave her a nice comment. Maybe she’ll reply.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know, Harry,” he chuckles. “Just go with it and you’ll see. You are obviously interested in her, it’s better than just sit and watch her videos.”

Harry agrees. It wouldn’t hurt to try to reach out to her, possibly in a not too creepy way. Maybe just a sweet comment on one of her videos and if she replies… Well, he doesn’t know what comes after, but he’ll figure it out.

 Y/N updates regularly. Usually once a week and mostly it’s Sunday when a new video gets uploaded. This next Sunday Harry finds himself checking her page occasionally through the day to see if there’s a new update, but it seems like she is missing today. Right until he is driving home and gets a notification from the app.

Y/N has just uploaded a new video! It reads and Harry’s heart beats a tad bit faster. He thinks about pulling over to see it right away, but he tells himself that would be a bit too much, so he is forced to wait until he is in the comfort of his home.

Finally sitting on his couch he opens up his laptop and clicks on the video that has the title: September update.

Y/N sits in her usual spot, Henry in her arms as she is gently stroking his head with a warm smile on her face.

“Hi Sammy! Welcome back to our channel,” she greets him with her usual words and Harry loves how she calls the channel theirs. “This is my September update, even though not much has happened,” she breathes out, eyes wandering to the window besides her and Harry wonders what she sees from her window every day. Does she live in the city? Is it an apartment or a house with a backyard? Are there any trees or does her room have a terrible view, maybe just another house next to hers?

She starts her talk about the month, which she spent mostly with working, a little shopping and meeting her friends. She tells him about her planned trip to the local shelter to see possible new kittens to add to her household and Harry feels himself growing excited about it. He even thinks about what kind of cat he can see get along well with Henry even though he has never even met him.

“Anyway, mom and dad miss you, I miss you too. I loved your joke about ducks in your latest email,” she chuckles sweetly, bringing a smile to Harry’s face as well. “Mom is excited to see you at Christmas, our cousins will come to Portland as well. Maya can’t wait to play Jenga with you, she said she’s been practicing.”

The video soon ends as Y/N tells Sammy how much she loves him and eventually turns the camera off.

He straight away moves the cursor to the beginning of the video and as she starts talking again he scrolls down to the comment section that’s entirely empty. There are only two views on her video, usually a hundred is the max, but she doesn’t seem to care about the views, it’s more about the message.

He clicks to type a comment, but his hands stop above the keyboard as he tries to think of what to write. Mitch was right about taking a chance at reaching out, but what is he supposed to write exactly? Everything that comes to his mind sounds so creepy and scary, and he knows it’s weird that he formed such a deep connection to an unknown girl online. At last he starts typing.

“Hi Y/N! I’ve stumbled across your videos the other day. Love how you keep your brother updated, it’s such a nice gesture. I hope life treats you and Sammy well, you truly deserve it. Good luck with finding a buddy for Henry! Love, an admirer of yours, H.”

He reads it back several times, deleting then retyping it again until he decides to just go with it. A rush of adrenaline washes over his body when he sends the comment and it’s officially out there. Secretly he wishes she would reply right away, but moments pass by, then moments turn into minutes and nothing happens. His comment stands there alone and he has to realize that maybe she will never even reply or even see it.

It doesn’t matter, he tells himself as he shuts the laptop down and goes on to do his things, but he finds his thoughts wander over to her from time to time.

He has a busy day ahead of him the next day, quite a few meetings and a fitting. He checks back for a reply in the morning, but it slips his mind the moment he leaves from home and his phone rings right away. Throughout the day he basically barely has time to check his emails, his other notifications are just sitting patiently on the bar, waiting for him to acknowledge them. It’s way past five in the afternoon when he finally have some time for himself after his fitting. He is sitting in his car, people walk past him without even realizing who is sitting behind the tinted windows. Scrolling down he gets rid of everything that doesn’t seem urgent until his eyes stop at one particular notification.

“Y/N replied to your comment,” he reads it out loud, just to make it real, as if he is seeing it wrong and saying it with his own mouth brings it to life. He quickly taps on it and the familiar video opens up and while Y/N starts talking again the screen jumps down to the comments where, in fact, there is a reply from her.

“Dear H! Thank you for your heartfelt comment! I always forget it’s not just my family who sees these videos, but I’m happy you found them interesting enough to watch a few of them.”

“A few?” Harry huffs to himself feeling a little ridiculous he has watched all of them.

“I hope I didn’t bore you too much. Thank you for the well wishes for me, my brother and Henry too. He is sending his love to you. Y/N xx”

The comment was posted three hours ago. The thought that she has acknowledged his existence with not only reading but also replying to his comment brings him extreme joy. He reads her words over and over again, looking for any clue that would give away that she found his comment weird, but it seems like she was more surprised and happy that someone else saw her video besides her brother. Harry starts to type his reply without hesitation.

“Bore me? You saved me from watching another “what’s in my bag” video the other day. It was a pleasant change. I love your plants, by the way. Your room always gives off the most relaxed vibes. It reminded me I should have more of them in my home. H”

Harry smiles to himself posting his comment, the fear of appearing like a stalker long gone from him, the interaction is making his inside blossom from joy. For his biggest surprise a reply appears just a few minutes away and Harry reads Y/N’s new lines with deep hunger.

“Those videos suck the life out of me every time! I might be having a problem with buying too many plants, but I can’t help myself. They truly bring peace to me just by looking at them. I’m glad you are planning on buying some more, you won’t regret it!”

Harry is dying to reply, but he doesn’t want to look too eager and needy, so he opts for just liking her comment to let her know he read it and agrees. He locks his phone and puts it aside with the widest smile on his face as he starts his car and leaves his parking spot.

Two weeks pass by. In those two weeks Y/N uploads two more videos, one about her time with her grandparents, for a change it was filmed at their home and they even said hello in it. Harry feels wholesome seeing her with her granny and grandpa, it’s clear she cares a lot about them. The other video is just a short one where she has met some of Sammy’s old high school friends and she had a check in from them, sending a sweet message to him through the video. Harry doesn’t doubt how much these little things mean to Sammy, even if he doesn’t get to see them right away. Seeing Y/N alone boosts his mood every time she uploads a new video, he can only imagine how they make Sammy feel.

He leaves comments on her videos without a second thought and she replies to all of them, a lot of the time almost immediately. These are the highlights of his days without exception. Knowing that she has anything to do with him just fascinates him and he is starting to realize what his fans feel towards him on a different level. Whenever he sees the notification that she has replied to what he wrote or that she uploaded a new video he flies right to her page to check it, no matter what he is doing. Some of their comment threads turn out pretty lengthy, almost like a chat conversation and it has Harry wonder how they could maybe move it to somewhere else from the comment section.

He wants to ask for her number, but figures it wouldn’t be the best idea. Regardless of how much he enjoys their short little conversations, the situation is still weird and complicated and he doesn’t want to forget that.

But he is pleasantly surprised when she brings it up herself, to move the conversation to somewhere else.

“Would love to discuss that more with you. Up for exchanging IG names?” her question reads and he blinks a few before he fully comprehends that she wants to talk to him more in private. However there’s no way he can send her his real Instagram profile and making a fake one would be way too suspicious. Opening up the private messages he sends her a short, but informative message.

“I don’t use Instagram, but feel free to text me,” and then his phone number.

He sits at the dinner table anxiously, waiting for his phone to light up from a new text, and just a few minutes later it finally comes.

“Hi! It’s Y/N,” he reads from the notification and he saves the number right away.

“Hello! Save me as Harry. I haven’t even told you my name yet, how rude of me!” he replies chuckling to himself.

“Will let it slip this time. Harry. What a nice name!”

“Is it what you thought about from the H?”

“It was one of my theories. The other one was Hayes, but Harry fits you better.”

“You haven’t even seen me, how do you know what name fits me?”

“I don’t know. You had a vibe. There are many great Harries in the world, you seemed to fit between them!”

Harry wonders if she is thinking about him without even knowing that… it is him. He wants to ask her, but decides not to. Instead, he is enjoying that he can now reach her immediately and not through a comment section. He never thought this would actually happen.

 The texts never stop. They have so much to talk about! Their entire life to share, millions of thoughts and so much to discuss! Harry is not proud of the time he has spent with his eyes glued to his phone, but he wouldn’t miss a chance to talk to her for anything. Their friends are not blind to the change in him, but Mitch is the only one with a guess about why he has gotten so addicted to his phone.

“Is it the girl from the videos?” he asks Harry one time when they are at the studio, having lunch break. Different food boxes are scattered around them, on the table and the couch. Harry’s phone just light up from a text and he immediately dropped his lunch to type a response.

He glances up at his friend with a shy smile nodding his head. He hasn’t talked about his newly funded friendship with Y/N yet, it feels like as if he tells it to anyone it might evaporate into just a dream.

“So you reached out, huh?”

“I did,” he nods returning to his food once his message is sent. “She’s great.”

“Does she know who she is talking to?” Harry’s lack of answer tells enough about the truth to Mitch. “You can’t hide forever, especially if you are planning on meeting her.”

“I know,” he answers shortly. “But I just don’t know how I could even bring it up to her without sounding like a mad man.”

“She’ll need proof.”

“M’not ready to show m’self to her. What if it changes everything?”

“Then it wasn’t worth it,” he simply tells him.

Deep down Harry knows it’s the truth, but he is not ready to be robbed from the joy she is bringing him. He has never felt such a deep connection to anyone before and they haven’t even met. It’s just a version of her he is seeing on the screen, not her real self. But it feels real to him and he wants to keep this reality to himself for just a little longer.

 “I wish I could hear your voice, Harry. You are one big mystery to me, you know that?”

He forgets to breathe for a moment as he reads her message, lying in bed one evening, getting ready to sleep, but he wanted to check in with her before ending the day.

“You know so much about me already,” he types back.

“Not enough, I feel like. Sometimes I’m afraid Nev and Max are about to show up at my door and tell me that I’ve been catfished.”

He chuckles at her words, though he completely understands her fear.

“What do you want from me then?”

“Send me a voice message so I know you are real. That would put my suspicion to sleep. For a while…”

Harry hesitates for a long time until he decides just one voice message couldn’t hurt. Just a short one where his voice is not that recognizable so his cover won’t be over immediately.

“Good night, Y/N,” he tells into his phone and then send the recording to her.

He watches the status change from delivered to read and a couple of minutes go by before she finally responds.

“Thank you. Now I know that you are real. I hope I’ll hear your voice in real life one day.”

“I hope that too.”

 His time spent undercover is coming to an end and he knows it’ll happen soon. It’s been weeks since they started chatting, almost an entire month and she’s been hinting her will to see his face and though he has been putting it off, he knows it has to happen.

Fate is playing under his hands, because he is traveling to Seattle for a few days, exactly when Y/N is traveling there to visit her parents.

“I hope you know you can’t leave without meeting finally,” she wrote when she found out they are going to be in the same city.

“It never even crossed my mind!” he wrote back chuckling to himself, however it brought him extreme anxiety that he is now going to be forced to come clean about who he really is.

He spends his whole flight to Seattle making up possible outcomes for their first official meeting. Not all of them end well and it’s just fueling his fear that he might lose her for not telling her the entire truth.

But she is a smart girl, she’ll see your reasoning, he tells himself, however he can’t entirely convince himself that it will be the case.

In hopes of squeezing in more than just one meeting into the weekend they agreed to meet almost first thing after he lands. So after checking into his hotel he heads into the city to finally meet her in real life in a local café she suggested for the occasion. Arriving to the place he is running a little late and she already texted him she’ll be waiting for him inside. Harry is wearing a beanie with shades to try to keep up his cover and it seems to be working, no one has approached him yet.

Stepping inside the cozy looking place his eyes roam around and immediately finds her sitting in the corner, pouring sugar into her coffee, not even paying attention to the door at the moment, but truth is she’s been intensely staring at it in the past ten minutes she has been there.

Harry takes a deep breath and nods to himself before heading in her way, hands shaking nervously as he stops at her table.

She glances up at him with innocent eyes, a smile spreads across her face as she sees that her mysterious Harry has arrived and she doesn’t recognize her until he finally takes his sunglasses off.

Harry watches her face turn from happiness to surprise then utter shock as she realizes who is standing in front of him.

“You are… my Harry?” she asks, confusion laced through her voice and Harry can’t ignore how she called him her Harry. He likes the ring of it.

“M’orry if it’s a little too much f’you, I really didn’t know how to tell ya.”

Keeping his eyes on her he pulls out the other chair at the table and takes a seat across her while she is still staring at him with a shocked and puzzled expression sitting on her face. Then she looks around in suspicion as he wiggles his coat off his arms, before her eyes settle on him once again.

“It’s not an episode of Catfish, right?” she asks making him chuckle.

“It is not, don’t worry.”

“I’m sorry if I’m being weird, but this was literally the last thing I was expecting,” she admits leaning back in her seat. “I believed things like this only happen in movies.”

“Not just there,” he smiles, slowly relieving that she is still sitting there and hasn’t ran out. It’s going way better than he expected.

She needs a little time to put the whole picture together and befriend the thought that she indeed just developed a friendship with Harry Styles through her videos for her brother. The absurdity is still shocking to her, but the more time passes by with him still sitting there, the more she finds peace with it.

Once the shock and surprise is gone they slowly realize they are seeing each other in real life finally. Harry feels overwhelmed, she is even more breathtaking than in her videos and through texts. He is mesmerized by her whole being and could listen to her talk in person forever, he wouldn’t get bored of her.

Time stops existing as they sit at the little café, talking for hours even though that’s all they’ve been doing through texts, but they just can’t get enough of hearing each other, seeing each other’s reaction and be able to see each other and not stare at a screen while talking.

Unfortunately, time never stopped just for the two of them and soon she realizes she needs to head back home. Harry doesn’t want to let go of her just yet so he offers to give her a ride, thanking himself for getting a rental for himself upon arriving. Y/N accepts the offer so the two of them head back to her parents’ home, soaking up the last minutes of their precious time spent together.

“Thank you for today, I really loved meeting you finally,” she smiles at him once they are parked on the driveway.

“I hope I didn’t shock you too much,” he chuckles scratching his chin.

“Just a little,” she admits before they both get out of the car and walking around it she stops in front of him, after a moment of hesitation she opts for a hug that he returns more than happily.

It feels as if her frame was perfectly sculpted to fit in his embrace and Harry can’t imagine how he could go this long without even seeing her in person. He knows it’s gonna be utter misery to be away from her after they leave the city.

“Will I see you before you take off?” she asks letting go of him. Harry looks down at her, the urge to kiss her growing bigger with each passing moment, but he is not sure if it would be appropriate to give it a try on their first time meeting.

“I’m free tomorrow for a lunch,” he tells her and she nods smiling.

“Then I’m free too,” she chuckles.

There’s an awkward moment where they are not sure what else should be done or said and the more they wait the weirder it’s getting so Harry clears his throat as he takes a step back, sad that he has to leave without feeling her lips on his, but he is not trying to be too greedy.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” he smiles walking back to his car. Y/N waves after him and sitting back to behind the wheel he takes a moment to himself to collect himself after everything that has happened today. His hands curl around the wheel and he is about to start the car when someone knocks on the window. Y/N is smiling at him through the glass and he rolls it down curiously.

“I just…” she starts hesitantly, her eyes wander down to his lips and Harry knows what’s about to happen, but it still catches him by surprise.

Y/N leans in through the window and presses her lips to Harry’s, capturing them in a sweet, long awaited first kiss they both have been dreaming of for quite a while. Harry smiles into the kiss, bringing his right hand up to cup her cheeks as they stretch the moment for as long as possible. Whenever one pulls back the other brings them back for just one more kiss that turns into two more, then three… It takes a long time for them to finally let go of each other.

“See you later, H,” she smiles backing out of the car and running up to the front door, smiling wildly as she waves in his way one last time before disappearing in the house.

 Lying in bed that evening Harry is scrolling through his Instagram feed when he finally realizes he can now follow her without a worry. He is quick to find her profile again and hit that follow button. He is happy to see she was already following him.

He is just about to put his phone aside and go to bed after such a busy but exciting day when a notification pops up on the screen.

Y/N has just uploaded a new video!

He taps on it quickly and her smiling face greets him from his phone’s screen.

“Hi Sammy! It’s me again. Welcome back to our channel,” she starts with a shy smile. The setting is new this time, he supposes it’s her parents’ home this time. “This is going to be a short video, but I wanted to tell you about something. Or someone.”

Harry’s heart skips a beat when he thinks about where it’s heading. He listens to her voice holding his breath.

“I met someone today. We’ve been talking for a while, but I could finally hug him today. His name is Harry, and he is a wonderful man. I think you two would get along well,” she says with a soft chuckle. “I love spending time with him and I hope he feels the same way. Actually…” Her eyes move up straight to the camera, something she doesn’t do often. She usually stares out the window or plays with Henry while talking. “I think he is watching it right now. Hi Harry!”

“Hello, Beautiful,” he greets her back with a smile as if she could hear him.

“I wanted to tell you how amazing you are making me feel. I hope I didn’t disappoint. I was so nervous to meet you today, I hope I lived up to what you imagined me to be.”

“You were so much better than that,” he answers again.

“Anyway… I hope you feel the same way. You are the first guy I’m talking about in an update, so appreciate it!” she tells him and he chuckles lightly. “I’ll see you soon, H. But until then… Know that I’m thinking about you.”

“M’thinking about you too, Angel.”

“Sammy, I miss you as always. I hope everything is well, can’t wait for your next email. I love you,” she smiles before the video ends.

Harry heads straight to the comments. This time he doesn’t leave a lengthy one, just a short line, but it has everything he wanted to tell her.

“I feel the same way.” The comment reads. Just a few seconds later comes the notification and he smiles sweetly at his phone.

Y/N liked the comment.

[heretherebedork]

Not to ruin any one’s morning with a discussion on my personal worst part of BL (fan service), but does anyone have any idea what nonsense is going on with the PlusMinus actors? Because I’ve seen some posts here and on Reddit, and there’s some information missing about this whole situation.

So, a few months ago, I got a community post recommendation from a BL compilation channel, saying congrats to MaxHao for actually dating. And I was obviously like: ugh, please no, we can’t feed into this guys. Now, what the comments actually said was that during a Instagram live someone asked the typical ‘are you really dating’ question (ugh) and one of the actors said “yes”. Like full stop. I checked to make sure this channel hasn’t posted this before for BL couples, and they hadn’t.

However, I couldn’t find the live (I didn’t look very hard). And people in their comments were mentioning it, and they were reposting stuff congratulating them, but their accounts seemed pretty typical to me. I hate even saying this, but nothing looked out of place for typical fan service. I did think their reposts focused a lot more on their relationship outside of the show as opposed to liking character edits, but, you know, whatever floats your boat and gets you those followers

But there wasn’t the huge expolsion in BL world that I would have expected to see if two actors openly said they were dating. So, I was like, whelp, looks like we’ve found another awful side of fan service.

But now it actually seems to be causing a stir and I’m slightly worried? My concerns about fan service always go back to how it will set precedents for future actors, who will now think to build fan bases they have to sacrifice their personal lives and feed into fantasies of their audiences.

Especially for a couple from Taiwan, who usually hasnt gone as far as Thailand with their fan service, I would hate to see this become the norm.

(I also hate that I’m even thinking about this. Because what kind of environment am I in where someone’s Instagram is them reposting ‘congrats on your relationship’ and I’m like “but is it really a relationship thou?”

Yeah.

I don't know anything about this, I will be honest.

I have no idea.

I try to stay out of actor's personal lives as much as possible beyond making sure I'm respecting their pronouns, identities and comfort levels.

I have seen a bit of this linked around, though very little, and it is... wild.

I don't know what's going on, I don't really want to know.

They're real people.

Actors are allowed to date or not date or... whatever.

It is a scary precedent in terms of fan expectations if this turns out to be a joke. But that's just... scary in general. Fans can be very, very scary.

Unless the two actors come out and announce it themselves, publicly, I will make no assumptions. None. Ever.

Actors are REAL PEOPLE.

They are not fiction, they are not to be theorized about, they're not to be assumed.

They are actual, real human beings with lives.

I just... look, if they're dating? great! if they're not dating? also great! if they're faking dating to try to please fans? fuck that. if they're faking dating because the production company thinks it makes them worth more? double fuck that.

Ugh.

This is one of my most real dislikes in the fandom.

It's shockingly easy for fans to stop thinking of actors as people and to think of them more like objects, like toys... and I can't stand it.

[fresh-bag-of-ham]

ok let’s talk SUNSCREEN

SO the UV filters available in the US can at this point be considered truly terrible. One of the main reasons you’re supposed to reapply sunscreen every two hours is that many of the filters we use are destroyed by the very UV radiation they are designed to block. Killed in the line of duty, thank you for your sacrifice, etc. Counterpoint: sunscreen is gross and reapplying it every two hours is the worst. I am not doing that. Fortunately, Europe and Japan/Korea have been much quicker to approve newly developed more stable UV filters for use and at this point they have some really good ones. They also have much better UVA protection, both because of the better filters available and better labeling regulations.

A quick simplified summary: UVB causes sunburns, is directly absorbed by DNA strands which causes the mutations that lead to skin cancer, SPF measures protection against this only. UVA does more generic damage, creates free radicals associated with aging, wrinkles, collagen loss, pigmentation, etc. etc., but can also contribute to immunosuppression and therefore skin cancer. It’s more complex than this obviously but that’s not really the point of this post.

My sunscreen criteria: I hate wearing sunscreen. However, Accutane + sun = an extremely bad time. My ideal sunscreen is something that doesn’t feel disgusting to wear so I will wear it regularly in the first place (i.e. dry-touch), something I ideally don’t have to reapply super often under normal daily use (i.e. photostable UV filters, water-resistant when necessary), and has maximum protection. As long as I’m wearing it, I also want as much UVA protection as I can find, without compromising the former criteria.

Note: The sunscreens I tried are almost all chemical UV filters and several are loaded with alcohol, so if that upsets your skin then proceed with caution/ask me for a specific rec!

Note 2: All of these are SPF50+ (the highest rating allowed in the EU (meaning they tested at at least SPF60) unless otherwise specified *cough*Supergoop*cough*)

Best Face: Kao Biore UV Aqua Rich Watery Essence (x)

Best feel, best protection, best price point. This gets recommended everywhere for a reason. Bit of a silicone feel on the face. No white cast. Smells like alcohol at first. Really, really quality daily face sunscreen. Water resistant. Caveat that because of the alcohol I would make sure to throw a layer of moisturizer on beforehand to make sure I’m not totally drying myself out.

Also make sure you get the name exactly right, there’s a blah blah Watery Gel that’s totally different consistency, totally different filters, etc. etc. It has to be Watery Essence.

Best Body: Eucerin Sun Sensitive Protect Dry Touch Sun Gel-Cream (x)

This was a sleeper hit, so shout-out to Eucerin for the greatest body sunscreen I’ve ever tried. This stuff is SO protective and dries SO. DAMN. DRY. Zero grease somehow, feels like nothing. It’s even water resistant. I tried a couple LRP body sunscreens but they honestly aren’t worth mentioning. Eucerin or bust babey!

More Face Sunscreens:

I’ve also tried all top five sunscreens from this Stylevana listicle of Asian face SPF (x). The thing about face sunscreens that they’ve started doing is loading them up with silicones and acrylate polymers, which leaves a silicone-y feel on your skin like a makeup primer. As far as I can tell from poking through various patents, these polymers are doing a few things in the formula: a) emulsifying/stabilizing the newer/bigger UV filter molecules, and creating an occlusive layer over the UV filter molecules on the skin to a) improve water resistance and b) reduce eye stingy-ness. At first I thought I wanted to avoid these seemingly unnecessary additives but considering their function, these are all features I want/need in a face sunscreen so we’re living with them.

1. Shiseido - Anessa Perfect UV Sunscreen Skincare Milk: really good, sliiight white cast but absolutely no streaks, more like a foundation just a hair too light for my skin tone. However I can’t imagine buying this because #2 on the list is better and 1/3 the price. Medium silicone feel. Something I’d probably only break out for when I went to an outdoor summer wedding.

2. Kao - Biore UV Aqua Rich Watery Essence: I have already sung its praises.

3. MISSHA - All Around Safe Block Essence Sun Milk: closest to a US milky/greasy sunscreen experience here, though very fluid and still absorbs nicely. No silicone feel. Not a bad choice but nothing special.

4. Canmake - Mermaid Skin Gel UV: probably second favorite after Biore. Similar, bit less of a silicone feel. I’ve gotten red a couple times using this though, possibly because less silicone feel = no layer of protection against sweat/physically rubbing off? I bet this would be perfect under makeup though, it’s super light.

5. COSRX - Aloe Soothing Sun Cream: SO moisturizing, almost a dewy feel that sits on your skin and never dries. I wanted to love her, but unfortunately she is so loaded with the aforementioned polymers that when you reapply/put the appropriate amount on to begin with, it completely gums up and pills and you lose all protection. Also definitely not water resistant. Probably my top pick for a winter daily face sunscreen that I wouldn’t ever be worrying about reapplying though.

Other Contenders:

La Roche-Posay Anthelios Invisible Fluid (x) and Bioderma Photoderm Max Milk (x)

These two bad boys have the highest rated UVA protection currently on the market, 46 PPD for La Roche-Posay and 42 PPD for Bioderma. The LRP is extremely watery (technically alcohol-y) and comes in a teeny bottle(though same size as a lot of these I guess) but it is The Best UVA protection money can buy. The texture is really nice too, and feels super water resistant. If I’m outside sweating or on the water in the summer, this is going on my face. I've also seen it on sale multiple times since I’ve started researching sunscreens (because it’s extremely popular) so you can definitely find it in the $0.30/mL-or-less tier if you keep an eye out.

This Bioderma is cheaper and also extremely protective (thanks Helena @bronyraurmp3 for the rec!) but unfortunately it stung both my and Mr T’s eyes like a BITCH. Extremely unpleasant experiences for both of us. TBH if I’m out in midday sun, swimming or kayaking or something, I’m gonna be wearing a long-sleeved UPF rashguard to protect my arms and upper body and not worrying too much about whatever cheap greasy sunscreen I put on my legs. This Bioderma stuff would be going on my neck, ears, and hands though bc it’s super water resistant.

Eucerin Sun Sensitive Protect Mattifying Fluid : bit of a white cast, really slippy texture going on and nice dry touch texture when it dried down, but drying down took foreeever. Probably really nice if you’re sensitive and pale.

Eucerin Sun Oil Control Gel-Cream Dry Touch : VERY matte and dry-touch, would have loved it if I hadn’t gotten burned using it (doesn’t have all the newest most stable UV filters). Approaching the expensive end of things too, but would be a lovely option if you really prioritize non-greasiness and don’t need the premium protection? Mr T really liked using it on his bald head lol.

Supergoop Unseen Sunscreen SPF40 (US): This is recommended many places but it has to be a joke that people are actually paying Shiseido Anessa prices for old American UV filter selection, only SPF 40, and no UVA rating to speak of, right??? (ok they do have a PA+++ rating meaning a PPD of 8-16, so. this is acceptable.) I did not test this one but damn wtf. The texture is probably nice though and it looks perfectly sheer in the photos on their website, so maybe as a last resort for darker skintones that show a white cast with everything else? At that price tho... you do you but damn.

Jigott Snail UV Sun Block : This had good reviews on Yesstyle but it sucked. White streaks, bad.

La Roche-Posay Anthelios Ultra-Light Tinted Mineral Sunscreen SPF60 (US): Another in the outdoor-wedding only price range. There’s a tinted and a non-tinted mineral version and I ended up mixing them together to get a shade that looked pretty good on me, but needing two bottles for that puts it in the extremely ridiculous price category. Really slippy nice texture that takes a bit to dry but dries down perfectly matte. I guess the person who wants to shell out for a high end all-mineral tinted sunscreen exists somewhere out there but I would bet there are many nice cheaper mineral options out there that I haven’t tried.

And that’s it! For EU sunscreens, I was able to order them on caretobeauty.com, and Japanese/Korean ones from yesstyle.com or stylevana.com, though I had to go to eBay for the Biore and Anessa. I ordered some Biore from a seller on Amazon but they shipped from Japan and I think they got taken by customs because the last known location on the tracking info is Chicago, so finding a seller in the US that has already imported them seems like a good idea (vendor lullabellabeauty on eBay worked great for me, fwiw, I will definitely order my Biore from there in the future).

If you have specific questions about any of these, or if you have any recs you think I should try, hmu! You will be shocked I’m sure to hear I have a whole sunscreen database at this point.

[itsclydebitches]

TBH I think the whole "You didn't have an issue with this in 'insert x show here' but you have an issue with it in RWBY? What are you, sexist?" thing can easily be defused with a simple, "How did RWBY present this plot-point compared to the show I like?"

Sure, technically Cinder Fall and Darth Maul are the 'same' character, but how are the two presented in their respective shows? Cinder eats up screentime and none of it goes anywhere and gets frustrating. Maul is a relatively minor villain that had one season's worth of attention in CW and then was the villain of a few episodes throughout Rebels before getting killed off.

The only reason someone would be confused as to why people like Maul but hate Cinder is if they just read the two's respective wiki pages.

Really the whole "Your issues with RWBY are just subconscious misogyny" is just some people wanting to slap labels onto others so they can feel validated on not agreeing with their opinions.

Generally speaking, I'm wary of any take that boils down to a single sentence, "You're just [insert accusation here]." Not because such accusations are always 100% without merit—with a canon dealing with as many sensitive subjects as RWBY, combined with a fandom as large and diverse as it has become, you're bound to come across some people whose "criticism" stems primarily from bigotry—but because such dismissive summaries never tackle the problem a fan has pointed out. If one fan goes, "Ruby's plan was foolish because [reasons]" and the response to that is "You just can't handle a woman leader," then that response has failed to disprove the argument presented. The thing about "criticism" based in bigotry is that there isn't actually a sound argument attached because, you know, the only "argument" here is "I don't like people who aren't me getting screen time." So you can spot that really easily. The person who is actually misogynistic is going to be spouting a lot of rants about how awful things are... but very little evidence as to why it's awful, leaving only the fact that our characters are women as the (stupid) answer.

And yes, there is something to be said for whether, culturally, we're harder on women characters than we are men. Are we subconsciously more critical of what women do in media simply because we have such high expectations for that representation and, conversely, have become so used to such a variety of rep for men—including endlessly subpar/outright bad stories—that we're more inclined to shrug those mistakes off? That's absolutely worth discussing, yet at the same time, acknowledging that doesn't mean those criticisms no longer exist. That's where I've been with the Blake/Yang writing for a while now. I think fans are right to point out that we may be holding them to a higher standard than we demand of straight couples, but that doesn't mean the criticisms other fans have of how the ship has been written so far are without merit. Those writing mistakes still exist even if we do agree that they would have been overlooked in a straight couple—the point is they shouldn't exist in either. Both are still bad writing, no matter whether we're more receptive to one over the other. Basically, you can be critical of a queer ship without being homophobic. Indeed, in an age where we're getting more queer rep than ever before, it's usually the queer fans who are the most critical. Because we're the ones emotionally invested in it. The true homophobes of the fandom either dropped RWBY when the coding picked up, or spend their time ranting senselessly about how the ship is horrible simply because it exists, not because of how it's been depicted. Same for these supposed misogynists. As a woman, I want to see Ruby and the others written as complex human beings, which includes having them face up to the mistakes they've made. The frustration doesn't stem from me hating women protagonists, but rather the fact that they're written with so little depth lately and continually fall prey to frustrating writing decisions.

And then yeah, you take all those feelings, frustrations, expectations, and ask yourself, "Have I seen other shows that manage this better?" Considering that RWBY is a heavily anime-inspired show where all the characters are based off of known fairy tales and figures... the answer is usually a resounding, "Yes." As you say, I keep coming across accusations along the lines of, "People were fine with [insert choice here] when [other show] did it," as if that's some sort of "Gotcha!" moment proving a fan was bigoted all along, when in fact the answer is right there: Yes, we were okay with it then because that show did it better. That show had the setup, development, internal consistency, and follow through that RWBY failed to produce, which is precisely what we were criticizing in the first place.

What I also think is worth emphasizing here is how many problems RWBY has developed over the last couple of years (combining with the problems it had at the start). Because, frankly, audiences are more forgiving of certain pitfalls when the rest of the show is succeeding. I think giving a Star Wars example exemplifies that rather well. No one is going to claim that Star Wars is without its problems (omg does it have problems lol), but there's enough good there in most individual stories to (usually) keep the fans engaged. That doesn't mean that they're not going to point out those criticisms when given the chance, just that disappointment isn't the primary feeling we come away with. Obviously in a franchise this size there are always exceptions (like the latest trilogy...), but for most it's a matter my recent response to The Bad Batch, "I have one major criticism surrounding a character's arc and its impact on the rest of the cast, and we definitely need to unpack the whitewashing... but on the whole yes, it was a very enjoyable, well written show that I would recommend to others." However, for many fans now, we can't say the same of RWBY. Yang getting KO'ed by Neo in a single hit leads into only Blake reacting to her "death" which reminds viewers of the lack of sisterly development between Yang and Ruby which segues into a subpar fight which messes with Cinder's already messy characterization which leads to Ruby randomly not using her silver eye to save herself which leaves Jaune to mercy kill Penny who already died once which gives Winter the powers when she could have just gotten it from the start which results in a favorite character dying after his badly written downfall and all of it ends with Jaune following our four woman team onto the magical island... and that's just two episodes. The mistakes snowball. RWBY's writing is broken in numerous ways and that's what fans keep pointing to. Any one of these examples isn't an unforgivable sin on its own, but the combination of all of them, continuously, representing years worth of ongoing issues results in that primary feeling of, "That was disappointing."

Looking at some of the more recent posts around here, fans aren't upset that Ruby is no longer interested in weaponry because that character trait is Oh So Important and its lack ruins the whole show, they're upset because Ruby, across the series, lacks character, so the removal of one trait is more of a problem than it would be in a better written character. What are her motivations? Why doesn't she seek answers to these important questions? Why is her special ability so inconsistent? Where's her development recently? What makes Ruby Ruby outside of wielding a scythe and wanting to help everyone, a very generic character trait for a young, innocent protagonist? We used to be able to say that part of her character was that obsession and we used to hope that this would lead to more interesting developments: Will Ruby fix/update their weapons? Is her scythe dependency the reason why others need to point out how her semblance can develop? What happens if she is weaponless? Surely that will lead to more than just a headbutt... but now we've lost hope that this trait will go anywhere, considering it has all but disappeared. Complaints like these are short-hand criticism for "Ruby's character as a whole needs an overhaul," which in turn is a larger criticism of the entire cast's iffy characterization (Who is Oscar outside Ozpin? Why was Weiss' arc with her father turned into a joke and concluded without her? etc.) and that investment speaks to wanting her to be better. We want Ruby to be a better character than she currently is, like all those other shows we've seen where the women shine. Reducing that to misogyny isn't just inaccurate, but the exact opposite of what most fans are going for in their criticisms.

[hauntedbythefanficsofmypast]

Daminette Rough Layout AU #1

Warning- This is a Salt AU, it contains Lila salt, Adrien Salt, Alya Salt and Class Salt. Some of the Salt is dramatized, pkease read at your own digression.

Note- Changing things up a bit-they are in high school now-Damian 16 and Marinette 15 and juniors, obviously things are different from canon. Gabriel gave up both miraculous after Adrien dies in one of the akuma fights, he has Nooroo and Duusu bring them to the guardian. Marinette helps heal Duusu so that if he is ever used again the holder will not start to die. Soon after Master Fu takes back Adrien's miraculous and names Marinette the guardian.

He doesnt lose his memories but he does pass away a week later. Marinette also deletes her original website and makes and entire new one under MDC designs after Lila threatens to leave bad reviews.(This happens before she meets Damian, right when they are entering high school.)

They met online after Damian got tired of his brothers making fun of him for talking like an old man. He found Marinette on Twitter, (She has a very popular Twitter blog where she Tweets in English and is considered a meme god.) and after reading her tweets decided that she'd be a good teacher.

After reaching out they agreed on how much she'll be paid and a time that works best for both of them. Every Monday & Wednesday the video chat when Damian has his lunch and study period. For Damian it is 12 to 1 pm, and for Marinette it is 7 to 8 pm. After two months Marinette has successfully made Damian her friend, and he has began opening up to her more. Meanwhile Damian begins to mess with his brothers using memes.

Tim to Jason- I will die if I don't get coffee soon.

Damian passing by the kitchen on his phone- Then perish.

Jason-...Did he just?

Tim- Impossible.

_____________

Dick over the coms while on patrol-I really want candy right now.

Damian drops down next to him and pulls a tidepod of of his belt giving it to Dick before continuing on.

Dick-What the fuck...

Tim having seen from a distance-What did Damian give you candy?

Dick- He gave me a tidepod.

Jason-Your shitting me Goldie.

______________

Jason-What are you eating Damian?

Damian taking a bite of a pop tart- Ravioli...

Jason-Im going fucking crazy.

Alfred-Language Master Jason.

They now text each other durning their free time, Marinette loves receiving pictures of Damian's pets and silly pictures of Damian's friend Jon. Damian loves seeing pictures of her newest designs and Paris at night.

Jon is the only person who knows about Marinette and thats because he crashed one of Damian's classes. He gushes over the fact that Damian is talking to his favorite person on Twitter, then full on fanboys a second later when she follows him back on Twitter. Soon after she becomes friends with Jon too, Lila comes back. After two weeks of fighting her she stops after both Damian and Jon point out that if her classmates were really her friends they wouldnt believe someone they just met over her. Marinette stops doing extra things for the class no more free pastries, banners, clothes or anything. She spends majority of her time on school work, her comissions and talking with Damian and Jon.

Madame Bustier at one point asks her to stay after class. She tells her she is disappointed that Marinette is distancing herself form the class so much. Marinette just tells her that she is done, that if she wants a perfect role model then she should use Lila instead and leaves. The next day she tells Madame Bustier she is stepping down as class president, everyone in the class except for Chloe and Marinette vote for Lila. Marinette has had more free time then she has had in a while and is thriving. She is able to take more and more commissions and even allows Jagged and Clara to give other celebrities access to her website. With a push from Jon she also sets up a Twitter and Instagram account under MDC Designs. With in no time everyone is trying to get an MDC original.

At one point she gets a call from Jon asking her how much it would cost for a MDC original for his mom. Marinette smiles softly telling him to just get his moms measurements for her. When he argues she finally agrees to accept payment but gives him a family discount. Jon agrees with a huff, a month later Jon sends her a video of his mom opening his gift.

Lois-Oh Jon love you know you didnt have to get me anything.

Jon-And let Connor out do me this year? No way.

Connor laughing-Oh shut it Jon!

Jon-cone on open it already mom!

Lois lauging before unwrapping the box- Is this? Jon is this a MDC box?

Connor looking at him with wide eyes.

Jon-open it and see!

Clark-So thats why you asked me for her measurements.

Lois pulls a beautiful knee length navy blue pencil dress. It had a classy V neck and flounce bell sleeves Jon is this and MDC original?

Jon-weeell if you look at the inside of the right sleeve your see her signature marking. Thats not all though mom theres another box!

Lois grabs the other box and unwraps it opening it quickly to find a pair of white lace up Oxford pumps with matching navy laces, MDC hand stitched on the back in navy.

Lois-How did you-how did you get MDC originals?

Jon laughing-I'll never tell!

Marinette saves the video on her phone and tells him he wants a photo of her in it for her website. A week later he send her pictures of his mom in the outfit posing with his dad and the next day he send pictures of her posing with Bruce Wayne on the red carpet. She quickly posts them on Instagram and Twitter tagging Lois, Clark, Bruce and Daily Planet.

'I knew Mrs. Lane would make this one of a kind outfit look beautiful! I was happy to make the dress and shoes as a surprise from her son! Mrs. Lane your son has my number, if you ever want another original talk to him! 💋'

Lois immediately responds to her tweet thank her for the amazing gift, while also asking how her son got in contact with MDC.

Marinette- ' 🤫🤫😘😘💋'

Jon-'You'll never know!!'

Lois, with her bosses approval, writes an article joking about the mystery that is MDC at also an interview where she grills her son on how he knows MDC.

Its a blows up and part of Jon's interview becomes a meme. This part;

Jon-Superman, please come save me from my mom!

Marinette being the meme godess she is decides to quote it on Twitter, but she messes up and posts it on MDC desgins.

MDC-Superman, please come save me from these deadlines!

Half an hour later

MDC-That was meant for my personal Twitter...

Now everyone is also talking about MDC memeing.

After talking with the Kwami Marinette decides to tell Damian and Jon about her time as Ladybug, and how she still goes out and patrols to stop muggers. In return one day Damian and Jon flies him and Damian to paris and they finally meet in person and they tell her their own identities. They leave Gotham at 7 am in Gotham and make it to Paris at 3 pm and wait for her outside of her parents bakery. Marinette flips out and practically tackles the both if them in a hug. She pulls them inside happily introducing her parents to her American friends. After they tell her they decide to spend the rest of the day together. Marinette also takes their measurements telling them its for a surprise. Damian tells her that his brothers are obsessed with MDC and how the wouldnt stop hounding Jon when they found out he had gotten in contact with her.

They go out and Marinette shows them Paris while Jon is slowly pushing them together. He is ecstatic when Marinette wraps one of her fingers around Damien's finger and he respond by grabbing and holding her hand. They are all immensly happy until they are passing by a park and notices her class having a party. At first she doesnt care and just shrugs it off, until the class notices them. Alya accuses Marinette of trying to start drama, she rolls her eyes telling Alya she didnt even know about the party and was just showing her friends around. Damian frowns glaring at the class when he feels Marinette hand start to shake and releases her hand wrapping an arm around her waist in support. Jon is also frowning but simply reminds Marinette that they were going out to eat. Marinette nods and begins telling them about the restaurant they were going to while leaning into Damian's side.

They turn leaving the class behind only for Adrien to hurry after them. Adrien tries to convince Marinette to return and spend time with the class saying he missed his friend. Marinette tells him that they arent friends anymore, that friends dont allow lies to be spread about their friends. She takes the boys and they finally make it to the restaurant.

Damian pays refusing to let Marinette or Jon touch the check. They spend the rest of their time at Marinette's house watching movies until they leave at 9pm wishing Marinette goodnight and making it back to Gotham at 3 pm. When they get back to the manor Bruce confronts Damian asking why he got notified that Damian's card had been used in Paris. Thats how Bruce finds out about Marinette.

Bruce- shes been teaching you memes?

Damian-yes.

Bruce-...well at least your making friends.

Damian-dont tell the others, they'll want to meet her and Id rather not be embarrassed

Bruce-I wont say anything until they catch you then.

Around the end of Marinette's junior year Lila accuses Marinette of theft and she is once again expelled. Only this time Marinette gets the school board involved and she is quickly cleared of charges. once again. However she decides not to return to the school tired of their treatment. Instead with the help of Jagged and her parents permission she enrolls at Gotham Academy and doesnt tell Damian to surprise him. Jon does know that way he could help her.

Within the week Marinette is in Gotham in her new penthouse apartment with her new gaurdian, a maid/nanny that Penny had recommended. Her name is Margaery she is in her 60s. The next day Marinette is dropped of at school by Margaery, Jon is already there early and helps her get his schedule and everything. Then they wait for Damian to arrive hiding until the see him open his locker Jon distracts him while Marinette hides behind the locker door. The school is very surprised whe. Damian smiles brightly at seeing her. Within the day she is known around the school as both Sunshine and Gotham's new Goddess.

Soon enough Damian Marinette and Jon are never seen withiut tge other except in classes. Many teachers see Marinette as a blessing classes have been calmer shes always willing to volunteer and shes even started tutoring some of the students. Even though she entered late in the year she starts to help the student council and things were more organized and running smoother. What everyone is really happy about is how she seems to bring out the teen in Damian and encourage him to act his age. The only reason they havent posted about her and Damian's relationship is because Damian made it clear he didnt want his family to know.

He starts calling her Angel and Red Bird. Marinette starts calling him Dove and Birdie. They slowly start going on dates while also making sure to hang out with Jon so he didnt feel left behind. Its the beginning of summer when Marinette gets invited to a Wayne gala by Bruce himself with a little note.

'Miss Dupain-Cheng, I would like to meet the girl that has stolen my youngest's attention. Please do not inform him I invited you, I think it will be quite the surprise for him. -Bruce Wayne

She tells Damian to wear a seafoam green tie because it will bring out his eyes, in a sly way so that they will be matching. She then makes a seafoam green Asymmetrical A-line off the shoulders dress adding layers of tulle that forms teirs and finishes with horsehair hemlines. The MDC signature is stictched on to the second layer of tulle.

The night of the Gala she is dropped off by Margaery and Jon leaves his parents to meet her. She tells him that Damian didnt know either and Bruce wanted to surprise him. Jon starts laughing causing Marinette to dissolve into giggles. This catches Jon's parents eyes and they walk over. Jon wuickly introduces her as one of his best friends. Lois and Marinette quickly hit it off and enter the gala together with Jon and Clark following behind them. After 5 minutes Damian spots them, and discreetly hurries over to them.

Damian-Angel!

Lois and Clark are surprised at the nickname and that Damian is smiling even more surprised when he hugs her and holds her hand gently. They stare into each others eyes for a moment until Lois coughs catching boths attention. Damian greets them as he lets go of Marinette's hand wrapping an arm around her waist as she does the same. They stand talking with each other until Lois spots someone she wants to interview and hurries off with Clark. The three of them share a look before all saying food at once. Jon walks ahead of them as Marinette and Damian follow talking to themselves.

M-'Your father wanted to meet me so Im afraid I will no longer be a secret.'

D-'Of course he did, I was hoping to keep those embarrassments known as my brothers away.'

This causes Marinette to laugh leaning her head on his shoulder.

M-'I am sure they arent that bad.'

They spend a good half hour talking with Jon and eating before Bruce finds them and introduces himself to Marinette. Five minutes later she notices Damian's brothers starring at them in shock. She starts giggling and points it out to Damian who groans. Soon after the boys rush over to interrogate their brother dragging him away from Marinette Jon and Bruce.

While Damian is dealing with them Jagged and Penny both find Marinette. Eventually the boys force Damian to introduce them to Marinette. She hits it off with all of them promising to visit the mansion. Jon convinces Damian to ask Marinette to be his girlfriend. He asks her to dance with him and asks while they are dancing. That night Marinette Damian and Jon leave together for an impromptu sleepover at Marinette's. Margaery picks them up greeting both parents and assuring them that there kids will be safe, and they will be camping out in the living room.

Marinette surprises the boys with handmade pjs once they get to her house and Margaery surprises them with cookies. The next day she goes to the mansion with Damian and gets to know his brothers more piecing together who is who of the Batfamily. At one point Jason insinuates that Marinette couldnt fight so she challenges his to a spar. Jason being cocky holds back and gets his butt kicked, he asks for a rematch and doesnt hold back this time, still gets his butt kicked.

While Damian and Marinette are saying goodbye she jokes about how long its going to take his siblings to realize shes a hero not a civilian. Damian finds it hilarious. When Marinette gets home she tells Margaery that she was going up to the roof to look at the stars for inspiration. Margaery allows her making her take a blanket, hor chocolate and some cookies with her. That night Nightwing lands on her roof and 'startles' causing her to throw her cup at him hitting him in the gut

Robin chuckling-That bitch empty,

Mari and Robin together-Yeet!

Marinette laughs offering him a cookie as Nightwing gets up

Nightwing-Nice throw.

Marinette laughs harder her eyes twinkling.

Mari-Sorry you startled me I must have lost track of time I should head back home now. Have a safe patrol Birdies!

She says before passing other of them leaving the plate of cookies behind for them. Over the summer Marinette and Damian visit her parents for two weeks before returning to Gotham. The rest of the summer is filled with dates between her and Damian the Gotham Gazette is having a field day with them.

They're referred to as the Goddess and the Prince and every date is talked about the next day. When summer is over Marinette Damian and Jon are back for their senior year. Marinette decides to run for student body president and Jon runs as her vice president, they both tease Damian about being the trophy boyfriend and he responds that he is fine with it as long as hes the trophy boyfriend to Marinette. Marinette and Jon win with an almost unanimous vote. It is half way through their senior year when Damian's brothers realize she knows. Bruce and Babs already know. Jason teasingly jokes about Damian outing them to a civilian and Marinette jist goes

Marinette-Jayby(This is her nickname for him), I have beaten you in spars 9 out of 10 times and you still think Im a civilian.

Tim-What?

Marinette sighs before calling Tiki out and transforming. (She has a different outfit. Period. Her hair is pulled into a high ponytail, held by a red ribbon. It has a completely black mask, her top was sleeveless and was a deep red. She had gloves that stopped at her elbows the same deep red but with black poka-dots. Her pants were completely black with a red belt holding her yoyo. Her outfit was finished with red combat boots with black soles.) Everyone is silent as they taken in her outfit.

Damian-God your so beautiful.

Marinette-Aw Dove

Que a sweet kiss where Jason gags jokingly before Tim flips out about her being Ladybug. Marinette jokingly says that he didnt react that way to her being MDC.

Tim-what?

Dick-This time your oulling my leg.

Marinette-You didnt know? I was always giving you guys family discounts.

Tim-Your MDC...my favorite fashion designer is my future sister-in-law. Thats why your commissions always seemed cheaper than others. Im chalant right now.

This causes Dick to burst out laughing.

Dick-Really becuase Im whelmed!

Bruce smiles slightly remembering when his eldest would use to his 'Unwords' all the time.

That night Marinette patrols with them and Gotham gains a new hero LadyBird. With a little shove from Damian and begging from Tim, Marinette begins to grow MDC even more by partnering with Wayne Enterprises. Marinette and Damian are the power couple of the school, they have majority of their classes together both being in AP and Honors classes. As the school president Marinette is notified that during the last quarter of second semester a French class is doing an exchange program at Gotham Academy.

Her and Jon have to escort them around the school the first week. Marinette argues a bit at first.

Mari-I understand that it is important but Jon and I are still heavily working on Prom, Senior's Last Peprally, Senior Awards, Senior vs Freshman Football, Prom King and Queen vote and The Senior trip.

Jon-Mari is right is there anyway we could pick someone else to show them around. There are a few other people in student council that speak French.

They both convince the Principal to allow the Secretary of the Student Council, Candy St.Cloud, to show them around. Marinette, Jon and Damian avoid them, none of Marinette's old class knows Marinette is there until votes for Prom King and Queen pops up and Marinette's name is on the ballet.

Lila bursts into tears claiming her Dami promised her she'd be on the ballet since he goes to that school. They all try to hunt her down and give her shit for booting Lila off. However majority of Gotham academy has noticed their attitude towards Gotham's Goddess and everyone makes sure Marinette is unreachable.

They pretty much only see glimpses of her until Senior's Last Peprally when she and Damian are announced Prom King and Queen. Their boos are covered up by the school's cheers. Marinette and Damian share a quick kiss which causes more cheers as the teachers roll their eyes calling out Pda. Then both her and Jon announce whats going to be happening at the peprally.

At the end of it all the seniors get together for one last class photo in the front is Jon Marinette and Damian. Damian and Marinette are wearing the sashes and crowns and Marinette is in the middle of them. Bustier's class is upset they cant be a part of the picture because they arent actually seniors at the school. The next night is Senior awards the class doesnt go but the trio does.

Marinette and Damian get best couple.

Damian gets the award for best grades.

Jon gets the award for most likely to secede in life.

That night all three are on the news and trending on Twitter when they go out to celebrate at Bat Burger, videos and pictures are posted off Marinette and Jon dying of laughter as Damian cuts his burger with a knife and fork. At the hotel Lila is crying claiming that Damian is cheating in her with Marinette. The class continuously message Marinette even when they get a response saying that the person is not Marinette amd that they've had the number for two months.

The next day at lunch they confront Marinette, they followed Jon to the room the Student council eat lunch in. Que them berating Marinette infront of everyone including the teachers. Marinette just rolls her eyes not wanting to give them the time of day.

Alya-I cant believe you tricked Lila's boyfriend into dating a bully like you!

This causes Jon to launch to her defense, he steps in front of Marinette glaring at the class.

Jon-Lila's boyfriend?? You mean Damian, so Lila was dating Damian first?

Lila-Yes! And Marinette purposely seduced him!

Jon-Really tell me when did you firat meet Damian?

Lila-oh he was so sweet! It was when we were 6 and we met at a gala here in Gotham! A older women was being incredibly mean to me and he stood up for me telling me that he'd have his dad kick her out. We were always meeting up over the summer and started dating at the beginning of senior year!

Jon-Oh so you know Arabic?

Lila-What?

Jon smirking-Well Damian didnt learn English until he was 8, his first language is English. Also you couldn't possibly have met Damian here when he was 6 because Damian didn't come to Gotham until he was 10. When his dad was informed that he had a son. On top of that Damian spends every summer with his family and closest friends. Actually he usually spends a few weeks on my family's farm, this summer he didnt because he went to Paris with Marinette. Also at the beginning of senior year? St. Cloud, when did Damian ask Marinette out.

St. Cloud- Beginning of the summer at Mr. Wayne's first charity gala of the summer, he asked her while they were dancing. It was really cute and Marinette looked amazing in her MDC dress!

Mari-Thank you St. Cloud, I could give you her number if you'd like a dress

Lila runs away embarrassed the class starring at Jon and Marinette in shock.

Alya-who-who do you think you are?!

Mari-Alya do you really not recognize your idols son?

Marinette is disappointed as she introduces them to Jon Kent, after that the teacher finally forces the French class out, while also telling them how kuch trouble they'll be in.

The class starts trying to get on Marinette's good side for the rest of the year but she ignores them. Prom comes and goes and when its finally time for graduation Damian is valedictorian. He gives a fairly inspirational speech and at the end he smirks finishing it with.

Dami-And lastly I would like to thank my eldest brother, without him Id never be able to give this sappy inspirational speech, he is really good at them.

When they throw their caps in the air Damian finds Marinette and dips her pulling her into a deep kiss.

That night while they are all celebrating at the Wayne Mansion Marinette finally lets go of Paris, she decides that her place is in Gotham with Damian.

Lets do a time skip!

Marinette is the top name in Fashion, Damian is Co-Ceo of Wayne enterprises with Tim. They are both married and living in Marinette's penthouse together with Margaery, I am to emotionally invested to kill off her or Alfred even if it is do to age. They visit the mansion almost every day, and family dinners are common.

Jon started going out with St. Cloud and are engaged, he has also taken up the mantle of Superman.

Damian has taken up the mantle of Batman with his Robin, Johnn'i Thomas Grayson-Wayne, Richard and Koriand'r's second child that did not inherit his mothers powers, and his partner Ladybird. That is until Marinette discovers she is pregnant. She surprises the family while they are getting their family portrait redone, with only Kori and the photographer knowing.

All the girls are in chairs with the boys behind them. Seating goes.

Babs, Kate, Selina, Marinette, Kori, Stephanie, and Cass. For a few of the pictures Marinette holds up a sign saying, "Another Wayne is on the way!" Then they hide the sign so they have a regular family portrait.

A few days later when the entire family is gathered to see the photos they are surprised when Bruce stars at them in shock. Alfred and Margaery merly smile offering congratulations, everyone is confused until Bruce turns the picture around.

Damian is looking at the pictures in shock until he jumps up and picks up Marinette spinning her around. Soon everyone is screaming and cheering offering congratulations. While Damian and Marinette hold each other close crying softly.

Mari-Your gonna be a Daddy Dove.

Damian-I love you so much Marinette. So much.

[diyeoracha]

fanfic recommendations

for @kittensocute bc i heard “atsukita” and “iwaoi” in reference to fanfiction and i am There

i took your “i love slow burn or slow build fics... so i like relatively shorter burn fics (20-30k). If its a 10k oneshot slow burn hELL SIGN ME UP” and absolutely ran with it.

i listed my fav iwaoi fics (17) with a longer word count (longest is 80k) that are all mostly either canon compliant or divergent with only two straight up AUs. none of them feature heavy nsfw content and most if not all are tagged as friends to lovers lmao. feel free to read the my thoughts or just go into them blind!! and they’re all in order of how much I absolutely adore them :^)

now atsukita is not a big ship *sobs* but here are some of my favorite fics (7) of them! a lot of them are shorter bc i guess that’s just. what happens when it’s a small ship LOL. 

the formatting in this is fucked if you open it from ur dash but if it’s on my actual blog it should be fine!

Iwaoi

the courtship ritual of the hercules beetle

Word count: 66k

thoughts: my absolute absolute absolute favorite iwaoi fic. the characterization, the fact that oikawa’s a bastard but because he and iwaizumi are older (late 20s i believe), it feels more realistic and sad rather than oikawa being a bitch for the sake of it. spoiler alert it’s slow burn and pining and mostly oikawa not realizing his feelings. this world building is pretty cool bc iwaizumi is the professional player while oikawa is an entomology professor! also i love non-linear narratives bc of This fic. there’s mutual pining in this fic but it’s really really really subtle to the point where you dont even know if oikawa likes iwa. this made me cry like twice.

sunset towns

Word count: 33k

Summary: In the summer of 2020, Oikawa Tooru returns home from his first successful stint as captain of Japan’s national volleyball team. In one hand, he holds the undisputed weight of an Olympic medal, and in the other, his unresolved feelings for a childhood best friend.

thoughts: the tone in this is So similar to the courtship ritual that I liken this as an alternate story even though it’s still oikawa’s pov. professional player oikawa and regular guy iwaizumi and oikawa is just. bumming around at iwaizumi’s place and naturally he messes up but things happen.

told before and told again

word count: 4k

thoughts: i looked through literally all the tags i could’ve thought of for this and nearly cried when i found it agian. outsider POV!!

In damp earth my body

Word count: 15k

Summary: Onscreen, the nation’s favorite setter has arranged himself so that he’s bowing, forehead pressed to the court, like he’s thanking everyone for their kindness thus far, like he’s asking for forgiveness. Hajime thinks: shit, it’s really happening

thoughts: oikawa retires and moves in with iwaizumi and they blur the line between roommates/best friends and being fwb. this is an iwaizumi pov and the pining is obvious on his end. as a iwa stan the tone made me feel weird bc it makes it seem like iwa cares more abt oikawa than he cares abt himself but. its a good fic

i grew up, you grew down

word count: 19k

thoughts: this is also SO funny bc basically oikawa retires and moves in with iwaizumi and becomes his stay at home wife and a bunch of shit happens like people think that oikawa is dating ushijima and oikawa basically loses it every time. here’s one of my favorite quotes:

“Oikawa also bought a new ultra-strength vacuum cleaner he’d decided to name Ushiwaka out of sheer spite, because it sucked all the air right out of the room. Iwa-chan didn’t think the joke was that funny when Tooru told him, which was frankly very hurtful and insensitive.”

Mint

Word count: 19k

thoughts: iwaizumi is moving and oikawa planned a perfect last hangout and it goes to shit featuring matsuhana. oikawa pov where he pines more than iwa which is something i can get behind!! and this was written in 2015 and iwa’s moving bc of a sports medicine program so iwaizumi stans know and love him sm ;;

Almost a Stranger

Word count: 16k

thoughts: same premise as mint LOL except they’re on a trip together and there’s more non-linear narrative!! this one is a little more mature in tone than mint i would say (funny how people just like splitting them up and throwing them in different countries huh)

with every second that you could give

Word count: 9k

Summary: The journey of Iwaizumi and Oikawa going for gold.

Quote: He knows they’re too close. Iwaizumi knows it too, and they both decided to move in together anyway.

thoughts: iwaoi roommates and they’re both obviously and really pine-y for each other and everyone sees it but them. srsly. they’re sleeping in the same bed. like my god

Lost in Translation

Word count: 9k

Summary: Because misfortune come in threes, Iwaizumi Hajime starts his Thursday having a screaming fight with Shittykawa, spends his lunch break listening to the UCI women’s volleyball team gossiping about how Ushijima Wakatoshi had gone public about his longtime love affair with Oikawa Tooru, and closes out the day by drunkenly dropping his phone into a sewer grate.

thoughts: so funny. so sososoosso genuinely funny. the tone is so snappy and iwaizumi honestly just sounds like a confused teenager (which he is in this) and it gets extra points for including a lot of american culture that a lot of the other iwaoi college au ones don’t include for like. obvious reasons lol.

Something Borrowed

Word count: 16k

Summary: In which Oikawa and Iwaizumi have always been a foregone conclusion to everyone else, but a massive, unanswered question to one another.

thoughts: iwaoi roommates thats abo but it’s like. mentioned twice. whiny and possessive oikawa makes an appearance in this but it’s done really well

things that change, things that stay the same

Word count: 8k

Summary: Oikawa realizes he’s in love with his best friend; it sucks for a while. (But only for a little while.)

thoughts: high school getting together!! my second iwaoi fic ever and this one is just. so sweet. just an unsure oikawa realizing iwaizumi might be more than someone he wants as a best friend. this fic is honestly really really lovely.

galaxies, within you

Word count: 21k

Summary: Hajime and Tooru move in together at the start of university. Too bad they’re stuck with the two gremlins that haunt their apartment.

thoughts: ok this fic was so funny. theyre uni roommates and matsuhana just come fuck shit up and they all act like idiots together even though they go to different schools. and this really throws me back to university days.

Thirty Years and Change (the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad)

Word count: 19k

thoughts: pro! oikawa and iwaizumi haven’t been close for a while until oikawa invites iwaizumi to go to the games with him. there’s a lot of frustration and pining and actually talking about feelings (aka iwaizumi losing his mind and getting advice from people like akaashi)

when it starts to rain, they go inside

Word count: 33k

Summary: “Where?” starts Iwaizumi.“ My parent’s old lakehouse, silly, didn’t you hear me the first time?” OR: Oikawa takes Iwaizumi to his lakehouse for two weeks, post-graduation.

thoughts: this was actually my first iwaoi fic which is funny bc the author doesn’t even like oikawa much and i didnt even ship anything in haikyuu before i read this fic and now im in iwaoi hell. oikawa is really frustrating in this in that it’s basically a really good character analysis on how oikawa comes off as a Mean person all the time bc he’s manipulative and there’s some explicit content

shiver

Word count: 16k

Summary: Oikawa was always the brave one. Hajime just followed two paces behind.

thoughts: iwaoi roommates with oikawa admitting his feelings first back when they were in middle school and iwaizumi putting that thought on the backburner until. obviously. things happen.

Desperado

word count: 80k

thoughts: one of my favorite aus. it’s all from kyoutani’s perspective and it’s almost so au that they’re original characters (if that makes sense). basically iwaoi matsuhana are ex-grifters except iwaoi are estranged and daishou somehow brings everyone back together. excellent world building and reading the pov from someone not involved with the iwaoi drama was refreshing

sing with me a song of conquest and fate

word count: 26k

thoughts: a mythical kings au that’s just. so pretty. iwaizumi ends up becoming oikawa’s servant for some reason and the world building is a+ because you can feel the trust and frustration from both of them build

Atsukita

dreams of me and you

word count: 10k (incomplete)

my second atsukita fic that rly sent me down atskt hell ;; what is essentially post-break up when atsumu gets signed to msby and he’s just Pining and sad for the most part. but the established relationship pre-break up was written really nicely because it just fits my hc of them just being domestic and atsumu being blatantly head over heels

take me home

word count: 4k

i read this this morning and it wrecked me. domestic relationship atsukita?? sign me up

No time like the rest of my life

word count: 19k

mythology au with kita as a regular person and rest of inarizaki as fox spirits! it’s cute and the world building is absolutely lovely but it is an au so they might seem ooc but their core character values are still there

wild blue yonder

word count: 6k

literally full of similes and metaphors and it’s more of an abstract read i guess? but it’s so beautiful and soft and this is exactly how i imagine their relationship

reap and sow

word count: 8k

atsumu confesses and kita ignores him and it’s a couple years after the fact and it’s mostly just weirdly domestic almost roommate like except for the fact that atsumu makes it clear he likes kita LOL. they’re really in character for this!

weightless souls

word count: 2k

pillow talk before atsumu’s first game! the atsumu pov and voice is amazing

if we were both alone

word count: 7k

now this was actually my first atskt fic that sent me down this rare pair hell. it’s an explicit chat fic (both tropes i usually try to avoid) but atsumu types like me (except for the nsfw parts alksfjd) so i guess i like. feel appreciation LMAO.

if you do read like any of these fics pls let me know so we can discuss

♡＼(￣▽￣)／♡

[nancylou444]

I tried to be nice

Replies to this post:

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Became this:

THEM:  hi! thanks for the answers I really appreciate the discussion. normally if someone ships something I don’t like or something like that, I’ll just leave them alone but.. just to be clear I completely respect all of your opinions, even agree with some of them, even if we might disagree on the incest and Castiel haha. So I don’t mean any disrespect with this at all, please let me know if I’m out of line though!  

 But... I saw some things you said, and they come across to me in a way that I don’t think you intended? I feel really awkward sending this haha, you’re very nice and I don’t think you said anything on purpose, but I just.. wanted to let you know that some of the things regarding your opinion on certain characters come across not very well? I don’t think it’s intentional or anything, and I don’t mean to call you out at all which is why I didn’t want to point it out in the replies y’know?  

 Don’t get me wrong though, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with not liking castiel or destiel. I’ve been watching the show for a while with my dad, and he isn’t a huge fan either, I don’t think that’s a problem :) 

I’d continue without waiting for a response but I don’t want to say something you’ve already been told, or continue without knowing if I’ve said something out of line already 😅

ME:  I'm kind of distracted dealing with my Mom's rehab center. But you can keep going.

THEM: Alright! I’ve tried rephrasing this a million times but I don’t know how to make it seem not antagonistic. I promise I don’t mean that you’re doing it intentionally, it’s just, uh a lot of your criticism of spn feels like it could be read as homophobic? Again I don’t think YOU are I just wanted you to know it kind of reads that way!

That sounded so confrontational. I really don’t mean it that way 😭

ME: HOMOPHOBIC? Really? A lot of the 'proof' your fellow shippers use border on stereotypes but you think I'M homophobic? Considering my top two ships are Wincest and Malec. Yeah, sounds confrontational.

THEM:  I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I guess there’s no other way to say it, but I understand why you feel accused. What do you mean by proof..?

Also I don’t really think having gay ships means you can’t be homophobic. *I* used to be homophobic years ago, and I’m a gay person!

ME:  How old are you? https://nancylou444.tumblr.com/post/154098904136/a-guide-to-dean-winchesters-imaginary-bisexuality

THEM:  yeah this is starting to get frustrating. I’m gonna be real with you, why does it matter if people think dean is bisexual? like, bottom line, that is my question for you

and your answer will determine if your veracity is homophobic. why does it matter that some people think dean is bisexual. not the fans or actors or writers or anything. why does it matter that some viewers will watch, and they will think dean is bisexual?

ME:  My problem isn't that some people think he is bi IN FANON, my problem is that they want CONFIRMATION OF A FANON SHIP. And that some people DENY how the show ended. These same people think that fake weddings are more canon than the FINAL EPISODE.

THEM:  I get what you mean, but how is it a fanon ship when it’s confirmed romantic from one side, and interpretable as mutually reciprocated in Latin America? (I’m going to disregard the bit about the wedding, because I’m a firm believer in Neil Gaiman variety death of the author. Also that’s just people having fun with fanon, who cares?)

ME:  Confirmed romantic?By whom MISHA, who wanted to sell necklaces? Have you never said 'i love you' to a FRIEND or FAMILY member? The dub is not canon, so don't even try using that as proof. Death of the author is just another way of saying MY VIEW OF THE SHOW IS SUPERIOR TO HOW THE CREATOR WANTS TO SEE IT. Jensen has said many times that the ship isn't canon and that Dean is straight. But it's better to believe what Misha says because he agrees with you. You think somebody is bi because of how they sit or the color clothes they wear? That would make YOU homophobe.

THEM:  LOL You know what? I change my answer. I looked through your blog and you ACTIVELY and viscously hate Cas, Charlie, Claire, Kaia and the implication that Jack may not be straight. You’ve said Cas coming out as gay and in love with dean makes the rest of his actions predatory, compared him to a teenage girl, called him creepy, and openly rejoiced in your idea that dean looked ‘disgusted with him’. You said that Claire is awful, that Kaia is a wooden plank, that they ‘shoved them together’ for ‘woke points’ and said that Jody saying Claire was IN LOVE WITH Kaia ‘doesnt count’ and called it ‘lip service’. And it doesn’t end there! After all this, you said that you preferred the old better s4 Claire. Is it because she was ostensibly straight? Are you uncomfortable with queer women? And then you have the audacity to use these characters (Claire and Kaia and Charlie) as reasons to epicly own the Hellers and claim they already have represention. You are a completely disingenuous bitch and I don’t care to be nice to you anymore! I don’t feel AT ALL charitable toward you anymore, and I don’t care if you have gay ships. Gay people aren’t here for you to fetishize! You CONSTANTLY mock and ridicule jokes made by queer people regarding deans bisexuality or Cas being gay or any number of things. You constantly reaffirm that Dean is straight and call people who think otherwise delusional and disgusting, while you think dean is in romantic sexual love with his male sibling. You are openly hostile to the idea of non-binary jack and were pissed that Alcal endorsed that. You devalue Jack’s value and relationship to Cas who is, textually, his father figure. I have NO reason not to think that you are homophobic. I don’t care anymore! You’re a huge bitch and, judging by your prior responses and posts, a genuine dialogue regarding queerness in spn is impossible. You regard any instance of canonically queer moments ‘lip service’ and so regard it. You actively hate every canonically gay character and degrade them using traditionally homophobic tropes and stereotypes.

Feel free to explain how you aren’t homophobic. I’m so sorry if I got the wrong impression.

ME: Wow I see your true colors have come out HELLER.

THEM:  Idc if you think I’m mean. Go ahead and make a post about me lol, have fun with it. Give me a moment to respond to your paragraph it’s... a lot to dissect.

I’ll touch on your comments about the dub and the Spanish language in a moment. First though

I ’m gonna be real with you, I don’t think you know what death of the author is. Neil Gaiman’s variety of the dead author principal is that once canon ends, the story belongs to those that consume and engage with it. That’s... also literally the theme of supernaturals final season. Anyway I really recommend you read up on death of the author and Neil Gaiman’s takes on fanon. It’s a fun way to consume your media, and in the end that’s what I’m here for.

I don’t care what Misha says, and I don’t care what Jensen says! I think they are both queer because I have eyes and watched the show. I think it’s a lovely narrative that is supported by canon, and it’s fine if you disagree with that

On your last sentence there... lol. It’s a common joke in queer circles that gays can’t sit properly, specifically bisexuals. Same thing with the clothing, it’s a SUPER common joke for example that lesbians wear flannel. Maybe you need to go outside and talk to some normal, non-incest shipping queer people. But what do I know!

And finally... ‘the Spanish dub isnt canon’

I am literally cuban. My first language is SPANISH. my entire household speaks Spanish, and my family past 1st cousins don’t speak any English. My Boricua cousins have watched supernatural in full for years, and they watch it in Spanish. Do you think America is the center of the universe? Do you think our media is somehow less than yours, that our interpretations of English language media isn’t valid? What, do you think we are idiots who don’t know how to analyze literature and media? Do you think the people who work at Telemundo, people employed as dubbers and translators, you think they do a worse job than the American crew?

Why, because they aren’t American or don’t speak English? ‘Te amo’ said to a non family member is, in 99% of any instance, ROMANTIC. it’s something you say to your spouse in serious situations like weddings!! Even MARRIED people don’t normally say te amo, everyone uses te quiero unless it is very serious or romantic in context.

All of my family who are Spanish language, they heard dean say ‘y a yo ti, cas’ and think that they were in romantic love. Sorry dude! The United States might be the center of your universe, but Latin America is HUGE. Spanish is one of the most spoken languages in the WORLD. In fact, more people speak Spanish than English. Sorry that you seem to hate gay characters SO MUCH you have to say an entire language somehow isn’t valid to consume media in!

ME: 

Obviously this heller is batshit crazy. 

Some of those things she thinks I said just show she has no idea how to follow a tumblr thread. 

You are a completely disingenuous bitch and I don’t care to be nice to you anymore! I don’t feel AT ALL charitable toward you anymore, and I don’t care if you have gay ships. Gay people aren’t here for you to fetishize! You CONSTANTLY mock and ridicule jokes made by queer people regarding deans bisexuality or Cas being gay or any number of things. You constantly reaffirm that Dean is straight and call people who think otherwise delusional and disgusting, while you think dean is in romantic sexual love with his male sibling.

Wow. 

I have NO reason not to think that you are homophobic. I don’t care anymore! You’re a huge bitch and, judging by your prior responses and posts, a genuine dialogue regarding queerness in spn is impossible. You regard any instance of canonically queer moments ‘lip service’ and so regard it. You actively hate every canonically gay character and degrade them using traditionally homophobic tropes and stereotypes.

Where have I hated canon gay characters and degraded them using tropes and stereotypes? The bitch has me confused with HER FELLOW SHIPPERS. 

Gotta love how she is defending the Spanish dub. Hit a nerve did I? 

It’s a common joke in queer circles that gays can’t sit properly, specifically bisexuals. Same thing with the clothing, it’s a SUPER common joke for example that lesbians wear flannel. Maybe you need to go outside and talk to some normal, non-incest shipping queer people.

Now who is using stereotypes? 

[tyrantisterror]

I did a four part series of trivia posts when ATOM Volume 1: Tyrantis Walks Among Us! came out, and that was pretty fun!  You can see that set of trivia posts here if you’d like.  I thought it’d be fun to do another now that ATOM Volume 2: Tyrantis Roams the Earth! is out - just one this time, because a lot of the trivia I talked about with Volume 1 still applies.

I’m gonna divide this into two sections: non-spoiler trivia, for things that really don’t give a lot of plot points away, and spoiler trivia, for things that DO give away major plot points.  I recommend not reading the spoiler trivia until after you’ve read Tyrantis Roams the Earth!, for obvious reasons, and will put the spoiler trivia under a cut.

Ok, let’s go!

- So if you read ATOM Volume 1, you probably noticed that the book is split not only into chapters, but “episodes,” which consist of four chapters a piece.  It’s kind of a nod to how the series owes a great deal of its DNA to various monster of the week shows, with Godzilla: the Series and The Godzilla Power Hour being obvious influences.  It also allowed me to pepper in some illustrations and cheesy b-movie style titles into each volume.

- The first “episode” of Volume 2, Tyrantis in Tokyo, pays explicit homage to the giant monster movies of Japan, perhaps even moreso than the chapters that came before it.  Given how much Japanese media influenced ATOM - from tokusatsu like the Godzilla, Gamera, and Ultraman franchises to anime like Digimon and Evangelion (hell, the title of this episode itself is a tip of the hat to Tenchi Muyo by way of one of its spinoffs) - it kind of felt obligatory that Tyrantis visit Japan and pay his respects.

- Tyrantis in Tokyo also fits in a tribute to another staple of Atomic Age pop culture: Rock and Roll.

- Kutulusca, the giant cephalopod that appears in Tyrantis in Tokyo, is one of the oldest kaiju in this series, dating back to the first iteration of Tyrantis’s story that I put to paper back in 2001 or so.  It’s changed a lot since then, but its fight with Tyrantis goes more or less the way it originally did.

- Old Meg, the giant placoderm/shark, and Nastadyne, the bipedal beetle, both owe their existence directly to Deviantart’s Godzilla fandom.  Old Meg originated as a dunkleosteus monster I submitted to a “create a Godzilla kaiju” contest held by Matt Frank, while Nastadyne is based on a Megalon redesign I made during the “redesign all the Godzilla kaiju” phase of DA’s kaiju fandom.

- The second episode, Tyrantis vs. the Red Menace, gets dark as we visit the USSR, which had enough REAL horror with atomic power in its history to make creature features seem a bit defanged by comparison.  It’s probably the episode with the strongest horror elements - ATOM’s always been influenced by Resident Evil, and this is probably where that influence shows the most strongly.

- It also features the first fully robotic mecha in the series, the mighty Herakoschei!  Its name is a combination of “Heracles” and “Koschei the Deathless,” with the former part being added by its Russian creators to make it seem a bit more international as they offer it to the U.N. in hopes of gaining aid for a very extreme kaiju problem they’ve developed.

- Most of Tyrantis vs. the Red Menace takes place in the Siberian Monster Zone.  Its name is a reference to the Lawless Monster Zone in Ultraman, which is such a cool fucking name I wish that I wish I could go back in time and steal it.

- The next episode, Tyrantis’s Revenge, is... full of spoilers, so we’ll move on for now.

- The penultimate episode, Tyrantis vs. the Martian Monsters, is a love letter to MANY different sci-fi stories that involve life on Mars, though the most prominent of them is of course The War of The Worlds (one of my top 3 favorite books) and its various adaptations.  From its tentacles sapient martians, the tripodal leader of the titular monsters whose name includes the word “ulla” which is uttered by said sapient martians, the plant monster made of red vines, the cylinder-shaped spacecraft the Martian monsters are sent to earth on, the copper-skinned stingray-esque flying martian who shoots lasers from its tail, and the fact that every chapter title in this episode is a quote from the book, the H.G. Wells influence is STRONG.

- The final episode, Invasion from Beyond!, is shamelessly inspired by Destroy All Monsters, although there’s a dash of “To Serve Men,” Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, and The Day the Earth Stood Still mixed in as well.  It’s also sort of a tribute to my first “published” bit of a kaiju fiction - a rewrite of Destroy All Monsters that included EVERY Godzilla monster that had appeared at the time, which my middle school self wrote back in 2002 or so for Kaiju Headquarters, a kaiju fansite I’m not sure exists anymore.  Invasion from Beyond! is just as ambitious (but hopefully better executed) as my DAM Remake, with dozens upon dozens of different kaiju duking it out, earthlings vs. aliens.

- There were three different documents I made to outline the final battle of Invasion from Beyond!  It’s the largest episode of the series so far and more than half of it is that fucking fight.  My inner child is pleased, though, so hopefully you will be too.

Ok, that’s all I can share without spoilers.  READER BEWARE WHAT FOLLOWS BELOW THE CUT!

JUST MAKING SURE you know that SPOILERS will follow from here on out.  Read at your own peril!  YOU WERE WARNED!

(I’m gonna start with lighter ones just in case you scrolled too far and want to turn back)

- There’s a number of explicit Spielberg homages in ATOM Volume 2, from a “we need a bigger boat” joke during a chase with a giant shark to the fact that Invasion from Beyond! opens with a group of people flying to an island of monsters to review whether or not it should get more funding.

- When Tyrantis appears in the first chapter, I snuck in modified lyrics of The Godzilla Power Hour’s theme song.  “Up from the depths”... “several stories high”... “breathing fire”... “its head in the sky”... Tyrantis!  Tyrantis!  Tyrantis!

- The two rock bands in Tyrantis in Tokyo have real life inspirations ala Gwen Valentine, albeit a bit more muddled than hers.  The Cashews are inspired by The Peanuts (see what I did there), while The Thunder Lizards are a mix of The Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Buddy Holly, and the Big Bopper.  I wanted The Thunder Lizards to be more akin to the myth of a famous rock and roll band than the reality - less the real Beatles and more the Yellow Submarine cartoon version of them.

- The song The Thunder Lizards write for Tyrantis was written to fit the tune of “The Godzilla March” from Godzilla vs. Gigan, though ideally if someone made an actual song of it it would be its own song.  I got the idea from Over the Garden Wall, which used the Christmas song “O Holy Night” as a a starting point for “Come Wayward Souls.”

- Perry Martin, UNNO reporter and peer of Henry Robertson, is a nod to Raymond Burr, with his name being a combination of two of Burr’s most famous roles: Perry Mason, and Steve Martin from Godzilla King of the Monsters (1956).

- Dr. Rinko Tsuburaya is a few homages in one.  Her name comes from Rinko Kikuchi (who played Mako Mori in Pacific Rim), while her last name is obviously in homage of Eiji Tsuburaya.  Her being the daughter of an esteemed scientist is inspired by Emiko Yamane from the original Gojira.

- Nastadyne’s Burning Justice mode is named after a similar super mode from various Transformers cartoons, though it’s more directly inspired by the Shining/Burning Finger super move from G Gundam.

- Martians sending kaiju to different planets via shooting them out of cannons (with or without cylinder spaceships around them) is another War of the Worlds shoutout.  So is martians living on Venus after their homeworld was made uninhabitable, actually.

- Kurokame’s vocalizations are described as wails in explicit homage to Gamera.  His name can be translated as either “black tortoise” (a reference to the mythical guardian beast Genbu, which can also be construed as a Gamera reference thanks to Gamera: Advent of Irys implying Gamera and Genbu are one and the same) or a portmanteau of the Japanese words for crocodile and turtle - “crocturtle.”

- Burodon’s name is just a mangling of “burrow down.”  It also sounds vaguely like Baragon, who Burodon is loosely inspired by.  AND, since Burodon is sort of a knockoff/modified Baragon, that kinda makes him a reference to various monsters in Ultraman!

- The final battle of Tyrantis in Tokyo is sort of a hybrid of the finales of Ghidorah the 3 Headed Monster and Destroy All Monsters.  

- The Japanese kaiju teaching Tyrantis the art of throwing rocks at your enemies is both a joke on the prominence of rock throwing in Japanese kaiju fights AND the tired trope of an American hero learning secret martial arts from a Japanese mentor ala Batman, Iron Fist, etc.  In this case, the secret martial art is throwing rocks at people.

- When introduced to Herakoschei and its pilot, we are told that the strain of piloting this early mecha is so intense that many pilots have died in the process, with the current one passing out on more than few occasions.  This is of course a Pacific Rim homage - sadly, no one invents drifting.

- Herakoschei’s design is a loose homage to Robby the Robot and Cherno Alpha, because big boxy robots are cool.

- The Writhing Flesh and ESPECIALLY Pathogen are both hugely influenced by Resident Evil and The Thing.  Giant body horror piles of raw flesh, tendrils, mismatched mouths and limbs may be a bit outside the main era of monster design ATOM homages, but they fit the themes and bring a nice contrast.

- I came up with Pathogen long before Corona but MAN it definitely feels different in 2021 to have a giant monster whose name is a synonym for disease driving other creatures crazy in a quarantine zone than it did when I plotted out the story in 2016.

- The chapter title “Hello, Old Foes” is a riff on “Goodbye, Old Friend”

- Minerva, the kaiju-fied clone of Dr. Lerna, is meant to be an homage to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, which is a genuinely good giant monster flick.  I am sure many of you will also believe I included her because I’m a pervert whose into tall women, but you’d be wrong!  I included the seven foot tall Russian mecha pilot Ludmilla Portnova because I’m a pervert whose into tall women.  Minerva’s inclusion was just coincidental, I swear!

- Since Promythigor is a play on the archetypal ape kaiju to contrast Tyrantis as a play on the archetypal fire-breathing reptile kaiju, their fight has a lot of nods to King Kong movies.  Promythigor attempts the famous jaw-snap maneuver of Kong (with less success), J.C. Clark paraphrases the “brute force vs. a thinking animal” line from the King Kong vs. Godzilla American cut, and Tyrantis slides down a mountain to knock Promythigor off his feet in a reversal of Kong doing the same in King Kong vs. Godzilla.

- Tyrantis sliding down a mountain on his tail doubles as a Godzilla vs. Megalon homage.

- Though Promythigor is the archetypal Ape and Tyrantis the archetypal Fire-Breathing Reptile, I think it’s fun to note that in some ways, Promythigor is the Godzilla equivalent in their matchup, and Tyrantis the Kong.  Promythigor has a slight size advantage, was scarred by humans performing unethical weapons technology, and is associated with violent explosions.  Tyrantis is a good-at-heart prehistoric beast who humanized in part by his unlikely friendship with a human woman.

- Of course, in the context of the famous quote from the American cut of King Kong vs. Godzilla, they remain in their archetypal lanes.  Promythigor is the more intelligent of the two (though not necessarily wiser), and Tyrantis is in many ways a brute reptile.  Their battle is a rebuttal of sorts to the assertion that Kong is the “better” animal because he is closer to human.  Promythigor’s near human creativity and emotions don’t make him the kinder/more benevolent monster, but instead fuel a very self-centered and destructive attitude that makes him the far more dangerous threat.  On the other hand, Tyrantis, who is less intelligent, limited in communication with others by his reptilian mindset and instincts, and simple in his thoughts and desires, is nonetheless a sweet creature that is easily dealt with when others consider his animal needs and mindset.  There’s a quote from Hellboy I love that probably sums up all of my writing thus far: “To be other than human does not mean the same as being less,” and that’s what the matchup between these two in particular tries to illustrate: the “less” human Tyrantis is nonetheless more benign than the “more” human Promythigor.

- Kraydi the psychic lizard began life as a soft sculpture I made of the Canyon Krayt Dragon from The Wildlife of Star Wars.  The sculpture didn’t look much like the illustration, but I liked how it came out, and so I made it an original monster named Kraydi (see what I did there).  Figuring out an explanation for that name in ATOM’s world was possibly the most difficult kaiju naming task in the series, but it worked out in the end.

- Kraydi and Promythigor having psychic powers is a result of my time on Godzilla fan forums in my middle school years.  Most of the forums had OC kaiju battle tournaments, and SO many of those kaiju had a wide array of beam weapons and psychic powers just to win the tournaments by beam-spamming and mind controlling their foes into oblivion.  There’s a special kind of rage you get when your original creation is beaten by “Fire Godzilla” because he has a genius level intellect and the power of unstoppable telekinesis.  Kraydi began as (and still is I suppose) my attempt to do a psychic kaiju well, while Promythigor’s villainy being tied to psychic powers being forced on him is sort of my passive aggressive commentary on people foisting powers on a monster without any real thematic reason for them.

- Henry Robertson and Dr. Praetorius chewing out the laziness of people giving kaiju completely unaltered names of mythic beasts will probably be seen as a jab at the Monsterverse and/or the numerous writers in the kaiju OC scene who do the same, but it’s ACTUALLY a jab at my past self, who had DOZENS of kaiju whose names were just Greek mythological figures verbatim.  There are dozens of kaiju named Hydra, Scylla, Charybdis, Chimera, etc., past me, try to make the names stand out!  Oh wait you did.  I mean, don’t pat yourself on the back too much, you still went with “Mothmanud” as a canon name and never came up with something better, but, like, good on ya for trying I guess.

- Dr. Praetorius takes his name from the evil mad scientis in Bride of Frankenstein, who basically has all the wicked traits that Universal’s Frankenstein downplayed in their take on Dr. Frankenstein.  Ironically, ATOM’s Dr. Praetorius is a bit less evil than his fellow mad scientists in ATOM.  I really like how his character turned out, he surprised me.

- Isaac Rossum, the pilot of the USA mecha Atomoton, is named for Isaac Aasimov, whose robot stories are to robot fiction what Lord of the Rings is to high fantasy.  His last name is a reference to Rossum’s Universal Robots, which is where the word “robot” came from.

- The unfortunate pilots of MechaTyrantis in ATOM Volumes 1 and 2 are all nods to Jurassic Park.  John Ludlow = John Hammond and Peter Ludlow, Ian Grant = Ian Malcolm and Alan Grant, Dennis Dodgson = Dennis Nedry and Lewis Dodgson.

- A good way to pitch Invasion from Beyond! would be “what if the staff and monsters were able to fight back when the Kilaaks tried to take over Monsterland?”

- Ok, here’s a fun joke that no one will get but me because it requires a very specific chain of logic based on some obscure and loosely connected nerd bullshit.  There’s a rocker in ATOM’s universe named Sebastian Haff, right?  One of his songs, “Darling Let’s Shimmy,” is referenced right before a mothmanud larva emerges from the ground in both ATOM Vol. 1 and 2.  Ok, so, in the Bubba Hotep, an aging Elvis impersonator named Sebastian Haff claims he is actually the real Elvis Presley, having changed places with the real Sebastian Haff as a sort of Prince and the Pauper deal that went wrong.  Got that?  Ok, so, in UFO folklore, a common joke is the theory that Elvis didn’t die, but was rather abducted by aliens (or he actually WAS an alien the whole time - the whole “Elvis didn’t die, he just went home” joke in Men in Black is a good example of this).  Ok?  Ok.  So, in ATOM’s universe, we can surmise that their equivalent of Elvis, whose name is Sebastian Haff, WAS abducted by aliens, and that his song “Darling Let’s Shimmy” is subconsciously influenced by his repressed memories from his time aboard the Beyonder spaceships, which is why it accidentally awoke a Mothmanud larva in Volume 1.  There’s a lot of bullshit jokes I put into ATOM, but this is perhaps the bullshittiest of them all.

- One of the most common bits of feedback on ATOM Volume 1 I got was “I kept waiting for something to eat Brick Rockwell, he’s such an asshole.”  And I had to smile and go, “Oh, yeah, guess he never got his, huh?” the whole time without letting on that he was going to die here all along!

- Dr. Lerna and Brick Rockwell’s nature as foils to each other is probably most apparent in Invasion from Beyond!, where both are given fairly similar situations - a nonhuman approaches them with a solution to a global crisis - and react to it very differently.  I worry that some people may think they both made the same choice and got different results, and that that’s hypocrisy on my part, but I hope I wrote it so you can see how their choices and situations actually differ in key ways, and why their decisions, while similar on the surface, are ultimately very different, and thus result in almost opposite outcomes.

- So, when I planned out this book in 2016, I swear I didn’t know about the Orca from 2019′s Godzilla King of the Monsters.  Having the plot hang around Dr. Lerna deciding whether or not to use a sonic device to rouse all the kaiju to save the earth was not INTENDED to be a Monsterverse reference - it came about from me looking at Pathfinder’s take on kaiju, who are all explicitly influenceable by music, and thinking, “Oh, wow, music and songs DO have a major connection with kaiju in a lot of media, I should do something with that.”  Whem KOTM came out a few days after Volume 1 came out I realized I was kinda fucked here, because the comparison was definitely going to be made, but I’d also set this all up already and you can’t just change suddenly to avoid looking like a copy cat and make a good story, so... I dunno, I leaned into it a bit, but it is what it is.

- While most people will probably think they’re a reference to the Reptoids of UFO folklore, the Reptodites are more inspired by the Dinosapien of speculative evolution fame and, even morso, by the Reptites from Chrono Trigger.  Me wanting to avoid the “lizard people control the government” conspiracy theory trope is one of the main reasons why Reptodites have this non-interference clause with humanity.

- Lieutenant Gray is a bunch of different humanoid aliens rolled into one - a little Hopskinville goblin, a little classic gray, a little this one weird alien with five-fingered zygodactyl hands, etc.

- There’s some Beyonder Mecha in this volume that are basically kaiju-fied versions of the Flatwoods Monster.  The species that built them ALSO engineered the Mothmanuds, because connecting Mothman and the Flatwoods Monster is fun!

- Pleprah is, obviously, a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater.

- Tyrantis’s brush with death, in addition to being so very anime, was inspired by my dad outlining how mythic heroes often have to travel to the underworld/land of the dead before they can finish their journey.  It’s one of the plot points that I’ve had planned for this series since middle school.

- I’m sure some will view it as hackneyed and corny, but as a person who’s battled with depression for decades, having Tyrantis’s choice to live be the big heroic turn of the finale was very important to me.  Tyrantis incorporates elements of a lot of imaginary friends I made as a kid, and in many ways he’s kind of the face of my more positive side in my head.  He’s been telling me to choose to live for a while, and while maybe to an outsider it may seem hackneyed, it’s just... very Tyrantis.  He chooses life and kindness in the face of pain and struggle.  That’s Tyrantis.

- Tyrantis’s powered up form is called “Hyper Mode,” which is another Gundam reference.  Originally it was a lot gaudier and involved him turning gold like a fuckin’ Super Saiyan.  I opted for something a little more toned down here.  

- Also, speaking of KOTM references, I decided to make Hyper Mode Tyrantis’s final duel with Pathogen be a sort of foil to Burning Godzilla’s final bout with Ghidorah in KOTM.  Instead of ravaging the city, Hyper Tyrantis’s pulse of energy rejuvenates his fallen allies, and as a result he is “crowned” not out of fear for his supremacy in the wake of killing a powerful enemy, but in gratitude for his kindness.  See?  Leaning into it!

- And now I can finally reveal that Yamaneon is ATOM’s equivalent of The Monolith Monsters - that is, a kaiju that is also a mineral.  I took the “strange continuously growing rock” thing in a very different direction, though, as unlike The Monolith Monsters, Yamaneon is actually alive.

- At various points in the pre-writing process, either Promythigor, MechaTyrantis, or both were going to die fighting Pathogen.  I ultimately decided to let them both live, with MechaTyrantis even getting his flesh and blood body back, because I think it’s more interesting and thematically consistent that way.  They get a chance to heal their wounds by changing their ways.

- The Great Beyonder and Dorazor both almost didn’t make the cut, as I felt they didn’t have the same pull as villains that Pathogen, Promythigor, and MechaTyrantis did.  But then I thought that could actually be the gag - build them up as the final boss, only to have Pathogen take their crown.  I want to explore post-face turn Dorazor a bit more, though.  We’ll have to see about that in a later volume.

- Volumes 1 and 2 make up what I call “The Ballad of Tyrantis Arc” for ATOM.  I call it that because Tyrantis’s storyline in these two volumes was patterend after Chivalric ballads like Yvain the Knight of the Lion.  Tyrantis, a heroic warrior who is kind but dumb of ass, learns of strange goings on outside his home and investigates.  During his journey into the unknown he falls in love with a powerful woman, whose favor he tries to win.  Through happenstance he is separated from his love and, distraught, wanders around fighting various foes to prove his worth, before finally returning to his love a better hero.  Invasion from Beyond! could even be seen as a sort of Morte d’Artur, with Tyrantis and a bunch of other kaiju heroes (including Nastadyne and Kemlasulla, who are built up as Hero Kaiju of Another Story) take part in a huge battle that threatens their idealic kingdom (of monsters).

- Volume 2 isn’t the end of ATOM, but it’s designed to work as an ending if you want to tap out here.  As a reader I feel a definitive ending is important, but as a writer I’m always tempted to revisit my beloved characters, so I feel giving closure while leaving a few doors open for possible future adventures is a good compromise between these positions.  There will be more ATOM stories, some (but not all!) following Tyrantis and Dr. Lerna, but if you want to know that Tyrantis and Dr. Lerna get an ending and the resolution to their arcs such a thing promises, here you go.  An ending, if not THE END.

[siswritesyanderes]

about Rule One, do youuuuu perhaps have any thoughts on how close everyone in the cullen family would be with sadie once she joins them? and also what activities they'd like to do most with her?? ^_^

Most obviously, Alice and Jasper would be ecstatic to have her around, and they would have to get comfortable with sharing her with the rest of the family; knowing that Sadie is talking to someone else in another room would take some getting used to, and they'd both have to overcome their clinginess.

Nessie already adores her, and that would only continue once she finishes Lord of the Rings and continues looking to Sadie for fantasy/sci-fi recommendations. Sadie would become her window into both the highly-respected works, like those of Isaac Asimov and Ursula K Le Guin and Octavia Butler, and the less respected. (Not listing those, because it feels mean.) Sadie would casually mention Doctor Who and Nessie would just have to watch it, and Nessie quickly becomes a huge fan. (Basically, Nessie inherited her mother's nerdiness but not her genre preference.)

Just as a symptom of existing in the same house as Nessie and Sadie, the rest of the family gets into various shows, movies, and books to various degrees. Edward secretly reads everything Nessie is about to read, just to make sure there's nothing inappropriate in any of it, and gets surprisingly into the Tolkienverse and the Legacy of Orïsha series. Emmett watches Doctor Who with Sadie and Nessie and starts referencing it kind of a lot. Jacob already likes Star Wars and both Avatars; Rosalie finds that she likes Star Trek. (Rosalie knows at least a little about all of it, though, because Nessie will ask for hair styles she's seen in various shows and movies or imagined from book descriptions, so she'll show them to Rosalie with her power.) Jasper enjoys the works of Octavia Butler, and he and Sadie have a few sober conversations about Kindred. Bella remains staunchly loyal to the classics, but she does find she enjoys the Inkheart series, when Nessie asks her to read them to her at bedtime. This all culminates in the Cullens going to various fan conventions ("for Nessie"), some of them in costume. (One time, Sadie dressed as Uhura and Rosalie dressed as Seven of Nine. Nessie dressed as Elva, from Eragon, as she preferred to dress for high fantasy settings. Another time, Rosalie and Emmett were Thirteen and "Sexy Eleventh Doctor". Alice insists that they can't repeat costumes, so things grow progressively more imaginative and Esme for sure dresses as the TARDIS at some point.)

Like I mentioned in the other posts, various family members would designate Sadie as their conflict moderator, so Edward and Rosalie might run up to her, both ranting at the same time about something the other did, and she would, slightly amused, unwind their conflict and analyze why they're feeling the way they are and get a sense of what behaviors could be changed. At a point, she'd have done this so often that she would designate specific "office hours", outside of which they can't bombard her with their disagreement unless it's an emergency. (Jasper does something to annoy Emmett, and Emmett goes, "I'm gonna tell Sadie!" and Jasper smirks like, "It's 8:31.") There is honestly still a fair amount of "Sadie, I know it's outside of your office hours, but...", and a lot of times she'll still listen and offer advice, but sometimes she'll say, "Not right now. I want to finish what I'm doing. Come back a bit later."

Sadie's well-maintained moral code tends to keep her out of trouble, but her curiosity and Emmett's eagerness to just Do Stuff means they can really just go nuts, if left alone together. Sadie might wonder, "Can vampires do this?" or "What happens if a vampire does this?" and Emmett will go from zero to "Let's find out" in a millisecond. (He does not follow the scientific method, so Sadie has separate journals labeled "Shenanigans" to account for their time together.)

Carlisle and Esme immediately and not entirely consciously dub Sadie the good one, often telling the other kids to follow her example. If she does get into mischief with her new siblings, Carlisle and Esme have been known to completely ignore her role in the mischief and only chastise the others. Sadie might say something like, "It wasn't just Emmett; I was involved, too," but at that point Carlisle or Esme would point out that Sadie is taking responsibility for her actions and the other should learn to do that, as well. No one holds it against Sadie; it becomes both a joke and a known fact that she gets away with pretty much everything just by virtue of being a super decent person.

Bella and Sadie are pretty much comfortable with just existing parallel to each other; they might read different books in the same room in silence and consider it quality time. Or they might talk about their human lives and shared experiences from having grown up at around the same time. Sadie finds Bella fascinating and enjoys studying her seemingly-contradictory personality traits. Everyone is contradictory to some degree, but Bella seems especially hard to figure out.

This is getting long, so I'm going to stop here, lol. Hopefully more of the relationship dynamics between Sadie and the Cullens will be clear in Rule One, but if not, you can always send another ask! 😁

[giantroboticplatypusbutt218]

I finished watching Loonatics Unleashed and I have Some Thoughts. I guess this is like a part 2 to the other post I made about the show so yeah.

I swear I don’t intend for everything I write to be an essay but whatever. It’s all under the cut. No massive story spoilers, but I will talk about episodes and will warn accordingly. (But who actually cares about being spoiled on the plot of Loonatics Unleashed?)

Alright so I finally figured out why Ace has laser vision. ...It’s kinda dumb but it’s because rabbits eat carrots(in cartoons). It’s... a reason at least. Still kinda sucks that it’s his only power when everyone else got 2 and some change. Kickass swords don’t count, even if they are magic. Seriously; Transformation. Duplication. Imitation. Tons of other “ation”s. They could’ve leaned into his trickster side but no. He eats carrots... so he got laser vision. Also he only ate carrots like three times in the show so wtf...

Okay so the pacing... improved somewhat in season 2. Don’t get me wrong there were still problems in some episodes but at least they learned how to build the stakes until the climax. They still sometimes went from zero to eighty after the opening credits, but at least it wasn’t zero to a hundred. Much less whiplash was had is what I’m saying. 

I don’t think I really mentioned the villains before but they’re uh... generally not very good. They’ve got cool gimmicks but most of the time they’re just two stereotypes and a cliche in a trench coat. Season 2 brought back classic anthro characters to be villains a few times, and while they still weren’t well written and just referenced old bits half the time... at least they weren’t dehumanized humans. 

I also don’t think I mentioned the animation so... it’s fine. It’s got cut corners but all cartoons do. Sometimes fight scenes look cool, sometimes they’re stiff. Sometimes the slapstick is well timed, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes the facial expressions match the voice acting, sometimes they don’t. Speaking of voice acting, it’s good. There’s not really anything stand out to perform in the first place but everyone does a good job with what they have. 

Okay random note before getting deeper into things... the intro themes were... not good. I swear the first song ended on a note that it wasn’t supposed to. The second song fixed that but added people announcing the characters which... is just worse to me. Not much else to say because I skipped them after the first few times. 

(Very mild spoilers for the general plots of episodes past this point.)

Ace and Lexi improved a little in the second season, but I still find them kinda bland. Ace still just feels like zero calorie Bugs Bunny. His wit is confined to being the leader, snarky comebacks, and some decent sleuthing skills... and that’s really it. He doesn’t really play around with the villains the way Bugs would. Ace was also supposed to have an arc learning to use his magic sword which... didn’t really happen. Lexi’s defining trait outside of her powers is still that she’s “the girl” which... sucks... Uh... she upgraded to Gamer Girl in the second season which while neat, amounted to nothing outside that one episode. At the very least she was never kidnapped for more than 5 seconds?(That “honor” goes to Zadavia) They also never really brought up their backstories in a meaningful way again, which sucks. 

I still like the rest of the team. Slam got an episode about wrestling that built on his backstory and was fun to watch. Duck discovered that his egg powers work differently in water which was neat and matched him being a waterfowl.(Lexi’s powers work differently in water too but it’s never brought up again). Rev is still Rev and I still love him. He got an episode about his family and struggle to impress them(specifically his parents) despite his career choice which was also neat, but I will be coming back to this episode later. Tech is also still Tech and I also still love him. But uh, every character and also me wanted to see him get out of the lab more, and then he got like a nibble of an episode to get out of the lab, and then the show was over. Oof.

Speaking of Tech, it might be for the best he hardly ever left the lab because his powers are... possibly way too effective against all the robots and machines the team fights. Now, him being “overpowered” could’ve been used as a fun writing challenge. Robot goons aren’t a good option for villains anymore. Fighting against him in a city filled with metal is harder. Villains can’t rely on simply killing him thanks to his regeneration. Fight scenes including Tech would have to be handled in a fun and interesting way. But... no. In a team with two tech guys, the one with super speed and flight comes with while the one who can control metal and literally can’t die stays behind. Oh well. Doubt they could’ve added him into more fights without accidentally dumbing him down anyway. 

Oh crap I forgot to talk about Zadavia! Uh... she exists. She’s the team’s boss who sends them out on missions. Uh... I can’t talk too much about her without spoiling what little overarching plot this show has, but just know that she’s neat, but affected by the usual sexism going on in the show’s writing.

(Character and episode spoilers past this point.)

You know, for being The Loonatics the main cast wasn’t very loony. You know who were though? Basically all the villains. Yeah I don’t wanna go there but oops here I go anyway. It’s pretty messed up that all the main characters’ zany traits were dialed down, while the defining feature of practically every villain (besides their stereotypes)is that they’re insane. I mean, if you’re looking for good mental illness rep in The Looney Tunes you’re gonna be disappointed, but at least in the shorts almost every character was a little unhinged and a bit of an asshole, making none of them stand out for those traits specifically. 

Also messed up is that a lot of the villains are disfigured and made fun of for it by the main cast. Hot take of the century, but I think making fun of people for having a big head or only one eye is... bad. Oh and if they’re a woman then they’re also judged on how hot they are. Actually all women in the show are subjected to sexist writing. I remember like one episode where women were treated with a sliver of respect for a split second and that was in the obligatory “the cast comes across an island of amazon women” episode. However since most of the time was spent painting them as villains until the “actually sexism is bad” ending, there was hardly a moment of reprieve from the bullshit if a woman was on screen. 

I’m not the best person to speak on this but uh... it’s fucked up that since literally every notable human is a villain, all the people of color are bad guys, right? Like, obviously it’s not as bad as some of the shit the old shorts pulled, but that’s like saying getting punched is not as bad as getting stabbed. It’s true... but I’m sure most people would prefer neither. 

And here’s where I bring up that Rev episode I mentioned earlier. Rev’s parents are racist against coyotes (cartoons sure love to make carnivores allegories for black people don’t they?) and obviously with Tech E. Coyote being his close friend, that causes trouble. ...Right? Uh, no. They say some racist crap to Tech, and that’s it. There is not even an attempt to correct their behavior from anyone. It’s just treated as some unfortunate quirk. In fact the episode’s conflict actually revolves around Rev’s brother, Rip. Honestly, I doubt that they could’ve handled a decent “racism is bad” episode anyway. But they could’ve also... just not brought up racism if they couldn’t handle it? I’m sure having no racism topic at all would be better than having Tech just take the parents’ racist bull crap lying down and then help Rev impress them with an invention he doesn’t get credit for. Also at one point Rev says if Tech wasn’t a coyote and a guy he’d kiss him, which has two uncomfortable implications, but this section is already too long. 

(Spoilers end here.)

Overall... yeah the show’s not very good. Of course it wasn’t. It was always going to be a little garbage. And no not because of the darker style or strange setting or any of that superficial crap. Team dynamic shows are popular and with Teen Titans doing so well WB probably thought they might as well shove out a 2 season Looney Tunes version to grab a little more cash, probably minimizing the budget to squeeze out as much profit as possible. If anyone working on the show was passionate about it, I doubt they had the budget or time to act on most their ideas. 

Still, there were things to like. There are some funny jokes throughout the show, a few of which even managed to come out of Ace’s mouth. Danger Duck was literally just Daffy and he’s always great. Ironically, Rev and Tech were the most fun to listen to, and also to watch interacting in general. Slam didn’t do much but was a sweetheart who deserves success. There managed to be some decently twisty twist villains, if only because Disney ruined my brain with their ceaseless and lazy attempts at them, and I wasn’t looking out for them in this show. And, while almost nothing was properly developed, at least the concepts and characters are fun to think about?

I can’t say I’d recommend this show to everybody, but uh... if you’re a Furry with low standards and too much free time like me, maybe you’ll like it? Just go in with low expectations so when nice things happen you’re decently surprised.