#also wg in her villain era let’s go | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

baekhvuns · 2 years

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Lmao my friend turned her TV once and France scored then she switched the channel, came back and another goal for France akgsuahajjsjs I didn't care who won, so I wasn't in shambles I also didn't watch the match thoroughly, but I still felt some kind of tension especially during penalties. Ahhh that sucks for PSG, hopefully the management gets their shit together.

Omg the stadium view?!?! Baek do you have a big backyard, maybe they can play there

Pique is the villain seriously, I'm glad he's gone. I couldn't believe miss Shakira got with him?! Though she's not doing well these days, girlie 💩

I used to be a big Ronaldo fan, yes. Please Pepe was out of control 😭 chill and calm was never in his dictionary

And you didn't reveal your true colours to me then... 🐍that's why I can't watch PSG 😭 I didn't spend years seeing Ramos playing against Messi and Neymar to now see them together. I'm hateful 🔫 but what's going on with Benzema and France NT 😭 but also Zidane might be their new coach? 👀 I do love that bald headbutting man, ngl

Yep agreed about Mbappe, sadly there are some good players who just cannot work in a team if they're not the centre of attention. His skills are good, but he needs to think more, his head isn't always in the game.

Pretty sure Wooyoung would get RED, remember him during Kingdom's sport's day? Wooyoung in his Ramos era.

Every webtoon guy is a Hwa look-alike lmaoooo. Act Like You Love Me apparently gets a bit better, but it's still bad, the beginning was fun, but over 90 chapters in and this shit is insufferable. I read comments from Korean fans and they're pissed as well. I hate most of the characters at this point, it's TB 2.0. Buuut I read spoilers about For My Derelict Favorite and it doesn't seem to be going downhill so fingers crossed!

All the bear emoji users assemble, who do we have, Kai, Seulgi, Jongho, Beomgyu... they need to fight, the ultimate 🐻 battle

No one needs new SuperM members unless it's Key 👀 EXO's freedom era let's gooo

Wait BAP getting plagiarised, what?

I didn't know what to expect from that Devil Wears Prada thing, but? I agree, he looks cuter than Miranda though sjudishsjansjhshs

Not to be like this, but why wasn't Hwa featured in today's collab, he literally did the Rush Hour challenge 😭 come to think, he's never been in any collab, neither vocal nor dancing (except for Kingdom but it featured everyone so it doesn't count). My friend pointed out that he's in a weird position he's either treated as a vocalist, dancer and rapper or neither, so he gets kinda omitted... and Wooyoung wasn't in Rush Hour as well 🤔

But Hwa's full leather fit and Mingi's too wow

Ohhhh he's a pianist (his ass is not playing but 🤩)

AAAAAAAAAA WANT. Ha ha ha I have normal feelings about this

YSL model Park Seonghwa (real) I keep forgetting to re-read model Hwa...

Ok ok bestie listen because, Yunjin opera and Kazuha ballet?! And they covered The Boys? Ive did Karaaaaaa, someone covered WG too I think

CUTE also D-100?! 😭😭😭 April 2nd omg a day before Seonghwa's birthday you know what he should do to celebrate... anyways Taemin finally ended our torture we have a dateeeeeee! - DV 💖

hi hello!!

LMFAOOOO 😭😭😭 i rly blamed france scoring on anything breathing at that point 😭i think the final had a very unsettling feeling (even w the city who hosted it) to it that increased at penalties, maybe it was mbappe’s face that was so relaxed and calm, scoring easily as the previous winners to agrentina’s hunger to bring the trophy in after decades,,, it was really a fight to the END, what a final but in the most unsettling way,,, hopefully psg does better! they got the best players they gotta make it useful!! also this tweet so true

Omg the stadium view?!?! Baek do you have a big backyard, maybe they can play there //// Pique is the villain seriously, I'm glad he's gone. I couldn't believe miss Shakira got with him?! Though she's not doing well these days, girlie 💩

KCHCKCLC I WISH I DID but theres a better one just an hour away! not w the mountain view but def the entire skyline and super pretty <33 no bc pique meeting with messi and suarez for christmas 😭😭 may b he’ll beg for him to come back to barca ANS then messi to convince ney to come and the world will heal,, fhsjdhsj miss shakira is still doing better then him 🤚🏼

I used to be a big Ronaldo fan, yes. Please Pepe was out of control 😭 chill and calm was never in his dictionary

NO FUCKING Y SHAKDHWKDH I SMELLED HIS FAN OFF OF U BFKWHDSK WHAT A COINCIDENCE A MESSI LIKER AND A RONALDO LIKED HAVING A CIVIL CONVO DBDB

LMFAOOOO NO BC PSGS GOOD THEY GOT THEM AND DI MARIA ITS RLY ENTERTAINING TO WATCH IT AS A WHOLE DBDBDB the beef of mbappe w messimar, the neymar messi giggling and the fight w defence 😭😭 HATEFUL FBWNFHWK NOOOO THE BENZEMA FRANCE THING IS SO MESSY BUT FUNNY GBDNFBNE HE DIPPED AFTER THE BALLON D’OR 😭😭😭 zidane ayo 👀 hoping for a mourinho and guardiola return,,, the 2026 wc is so confusing the math is not mathing 😭😭

absolutely 100% !!!!! he’s predictable and it won’t take long for ppl to notice (and they are) before they start eating him up bdbdbd his head is always to just win 😭😭

Pretty sure Wooyoung would get RED, remember him during Kingdom's sport's day? Wooyoung in his Ramos era.

RBQKDHQKHDQKJCJCJC WOOYOUNG RAMOS ZLATAN AND PEPE MIX add neymar for the drama and the winks, he’d ask the goalkeeper where to shoot for pen’s just like him 😭😭😭😭

seonghwa perfect face agenda is shown every time i open a webtoon and it’s always a replica of him in a diff hair colour,,,, OKAY BET IM READING THIS AND SO FAR SO GOOD,,, TB TROPE HAS RLY TAKEN OVER EVERY FIC ATP COME ON GIVE THE BEST GUY A CHANCE 😭😭😭 webtoon y/n’s <<<< fic y/n’s

All the bear emoji users assemble, who do we have, Kai, Seulgi, Jongho, Beomgyu... they need to fight, the ultimate 🐻 battle /// No one needs new SuperM members unless it's Key 👀 EXO's freedom era let's gooo

ADDING SHOWNU TO THAT, not cat fight just beats going head to head,,, UR SO RIGHT EITHER KEY OR CHANGMIN !!!!! exo freedom era 😭😭😭 everytime i open twt i see them and ive or make sure it’s not an edit 😭😭 traumatized forever

Wait BAP getting plagiarised, what? ///// I didn't know what to expect from that Devil Wears Prada thing, but? I agree, he looks cuter than Miranda though sjudishsjansjhshs

yeah! right here! BDSNBD if miranda was cute,,,,, hear me the fUCK OUT fashion designer hwa and his intern 🤚🏼but it’s his ex 🤚🏼

wait….ur kinda right ive never seen him in a collab,,, he’s like on a cusp between so many positions that in the end of the day he’s like no where, will put myself into delulu and say he doesn’t participate in them bc he will steal all the attention <3

Ohhhh he's a pianist (his ass is not playing but 🤩) //// AAAAAAAAAA WANT. Ha ha ha I have normal feelings about this //// YSL model Park Seonghwa (real) I keep forgetting to re-read model Hwa...

if he steps on the piano in the mv, that is peak taemin core! STOP BC HE LOOKED SO GOOD IM AFRAID LEGO CAN FUCK OFF I NEED A DIOR AMBASSADORSHIP !!!!!! …..omg….that is indeed model hwa….u keep forgetting to read and i be re-reading that fic like my life depends on it, reminded me of that mingi hwa runway video and this,, convinced this is a look he’d wear as a model in the au

Ok ok bestie listen because, Yunjin opera and Kazuha ballet?! And they covered The Boys? Ive did Karaaaaaa, someone covered WG too I think

THW WAY I FUCKING SCREAMED AT THEIR PERFORMANCE FINALLY AFTER SO LONG ITS THE SONG AGAIN !!!!!! no bc lsf can do a horror concept so well, like a black swan concept and yunjin’s doing opera 😩😩 IVE DID KARA 😭😭😭🤚🏼 GGS DOMINATING

CUTE also D-100?! 😭😭😭 April 2nd omg a day before Seonghwa's birthday you know what he should do to celebrate... anyways Taemin finally ended our torture we have a dateeeeeee! - DV

WE FINALLY 😭😭😭😭 FINALLY 😭😭😭 KNOW HIS RELEASE DATE 😭😭😭😭 I THINK THE DATES APRIL 4TH BUT CLOSE ENOUGH TO HWA’S SCREAMING HE’S FINALLY COMING BACK 😭😭😭😭😭 STOP IT 😭😭😭

also just turned christmas when i finished this so merry christmas to u!!!

and. correct.

#✉️ : ask #dv 💖 anon

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fromtheplanethexagon · 4 years

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the robot problem: a critical look at tobecky, 5 years late

hello wordgirl fandom i am back :) and i have a lot of thoughts that i never got around to expressing before i moved on from the show. so be aware that everything i'm saying is based on my experiences during the 2012-2016 era of the fandom & state of tumblr in general, and i am not familiar with more recent fan content.

it's been over five years since the show ended, and @ifbrd reminded me (along with some great analysis) that while tobecky was super popular since before the show technically started (thanks to the play date shorts), it's pretty unhealthy in a lot of ways that tend to be excused or flat out ignored in fanworks. i'd like to reflect on that a bit (a lot); specifically, how both the show and the fandom approached this enemies-to-lovers ship, and how easily this ship can slip into uncomfortable territory if we're careless about how we interpret the ship and create fan content of it.

i will admit, i'm mostly writing this as a response to past me and my old creations - though i moved on from the show as a whole years ago, i do like taking the time to reflect on old interests once in a while, and reevaluating my thoughts on them. and this ship is probably the biggest one that still lurks in the corners of my mind once in a while, so let's go.

cherish is the word: a short positive note before a much longer negative one

i wanted to start this essay off with some positivity, because i am going to be very negative after this. tobecky was, in some ways, cute. it's obvious from the very beginning that these two characters are on pretty equal ground, even if one of them isn't aware of it. and that's part of the fun - the irony of how unaware tobey is that his nemesis/crush/person that pretty much always wins against him is someone that he completely dismisses as incompetent. i want to point this out because honestly, in general i don't like enemies-to-lovers because a lot of them use a power imbalance within the dynamic, and i hate power imbalances, especially when it comes to actual life-or-death scenarios (at least, as much as cartoons can do that). in most episodes, becky is never actually forced to go along with his wishes. she's not held in a 'date' against her will, nor is she ever really outwitted by him. i bring this up because there is one huge, uncomfortable exception, which i will get to later.

another big plus to the ship is the fact that they just... get along? even when fighting? of course we get brief moments where they just hang out and talk about paintings or whatever, but i'm talking about how much they get each other, even if they don't realize it. like the word banter, for example. been there since day one. becky loves words, and while most other people in her life don't really care (ranging from 'eh, that's cool i guess' to her brother calling it annoying), tobey gives her a chance to show off and thus treats her as a worthy adversary as herself, not because of her more generic superpowers - something that we've seen in canon that she feels self-conscious about (see: her motivation in patch game). one of the less noticed examples, to me, is "it's your party and i'll cry if I want to", because it's just - okay. they both are excluded from a social event, and while it's obvious that tobey deals with it by destroying the city, it's also pretty obvious that becky also deals with her frustration by fighting in that battle. like, yes, realistically it's just objectively bad that he's destroying buildings. but they're also providing each other with a way to work through their frustrations, first by fighting and then by talking things out, and finally by hanging out together instead of dwelling on being excluded from the party.

so it makes a lot of sense to me that many tobecky fans gravitated towards writing far-in-the-future fic, usually by implying that some growth had taken place before starting to write the ship. (there are, as far as i'm aware, 2... maybe 3 exceptions, that take the time to attempt a real redemption for him, at least when i left the fandom.) because if you take away his worst moments, either by reasoning out that he was 10 years old and a mess, or that he was a cartoon character in a cartoon world where everyone's actions are over-the-top, or by just flat-out pretending that certain episodes never happened, there's some pretty solid ground to start a ship on.

go gadget go: we all do not see it, we simply close our eyes (review of canon)

when the show began, i was the same age as the characters. a lot of other people were, too - at least in my cohort of the fandom. i think it's pretty safe to say that many of us have fond memories of the show's earlier seasons, and held on to that interest as we got older, for whatever reasons. so like, not to be all 'as an OG fan...', but i remember seeing the shorts air for the first time in 2006. i have a diary entry in july of 2009 about how i, a 12yo with no concept of the idea of 'shipping', was disappointed in the new tobey episode because i wanted more tobecky interactions. (that was robo-camping, btw, lol.) and so i remember how exciting their rivalry felt, watching them as someone literally their exact same age, and then watching that again as a nostalgic 17yo, and then uh... growing up, to put it frankly, and realizing just how unhealthy most of their interactions were.

okay what i meant to say was, this section is an overview of the relationship's canon portrayal throughout the years.

first, we have early tobecky: this includes the shorts and the first few seasons. this is their classic relationship: he likes her and takes robots on rampages to get her attention, she majorly disapproves and has fun taking him down. we've all seen the show, you know what i'm talking about. his backhanded ways of trying to find out her identity often feature prominently in the episodes, which - sigh, i've mentioned this whole issue before, but it's kind of a grey area in the whole uncomfortable-factor thing, because while trying to find out her identity is VERY invasive, it's something that like... everyone in the show tries to do, even her canon crush (scoops). on the one hand, it's really not a great look, but on the other hand, this is a cartoon meant to parody a genre in which this trope is extremely common. so i just wanna say that i have Issues and Thoughts on this aspect of their relationship, but there are other things i find more important to discuss here.

second, we have late tobecky: this is seasons 7-8. this is... a very strange and huge shift from the previous dynamic, though it's not necessarily obvious. what i mean by that is that for some reason, the show writers made it so that half of tobey’s rampages have nothing to do with his crush on wordgirl, even though that used to be the sole reason for his villainy. seriously. we have the birthday episode, where he's upset because he feels left out; wg vs tobey vs the dentist, where he's mad that he has a cavity; and trustworthy tobey, where his robot goes on a rampage... after becky accidentally makes it malfunction. the two outliers are ‘guess who’s coming to thanksgiving dinner’ and ‘patch game’, but they still differ from previous seasons because 1) his destruction is isolated to a forest far away from the city, and 2) his motive is still to impress wordgirl, but his methods are relatively tame. also he completely gives up on the secret identity thing??? i may have missed some things but i think he straight up tells her 'yeah there's no way you're wordgirl, lol' and the subject is just dropped for the rest of the show.

i also want to include 'the robot problem' here, because it's one of two season 6 tobey episodes, and follows the 'doesn't destroy buildings to get her attention' pattern: in fact, he teams up with her to try and stop someone else from going on a rampage (even if his reasons are selfish, lol).

and finally. the other season 6 episode. we have go gadget go, the bane of my time spent in the fandom. because GGG is the single episode where tobey truly manages to take away her autonomy, and proceeds to abuse that power for an extended period of time, for his own amusement. it's bad. it's Very Bad. put in the context that it's a white boy doing this to an (ambiguously) brown girl, it's REALLY REALLY BAD. and the more i look back on it, tbh, the more weirded out i am that the show not only made it seem like she wasn't affected at all within the episode, it just... forgot about it (which is not unusual for shows and especially children’s shows, but WG does make some efforts to either retain continuity or create canon reasons for why things are forgotten about). it's the kind of thing that you can't excuse and honestly you can't redeem (like at this point, you gotta ask yourself why you're spending so much effort trying to redeem this guy when becky has several other possible ships that are nowhere near this unhealthy - violet, scoops, honestly even victoria if you want another hero/villain ship, my absolute fave rarepair rose, etc).

so if you want to still ship it you have to just pretend that it never happened. (i remember trying for weeks to write something exploring the aftermath of this episode, to try and make myself feel better about it, but the more i wrote the more i realized just how traumatic this event should've been, so i eventually just dropped it.) and i brought up my own timeline of experiences earlier to point out that this episode aired eight whole years after the show started. which means that when i saw it, even though i was a huge stickler for canon at the time, i'd built up my own idea of the show and characters strongly enough to go 'yeah, no, this episode sucks and i am going to pretend that it doesn't exist'. and i think a lot of other people did too, because i really saw like... no one mention it, ever, except for some rogue fanfics over on ff dot net that already liked dynamics like that.

because here's the thing, and i don't know if people nowadays are aware of it? but i'm 80% sure (cannot find a source, so the other 20% is that it was just a rumor) that the show was originally supposed to end after season 6. and even if it's a rumor, it makes a ton of sense, because we get 1) an 'ending' to tobecky, which is a bad one, 2) a permanent wordgirl identity reveal that significantly changes one of the major dynamics in the show, 3) an episode where TJ gets to work with wordgirl and get a nice potential ending for their sibling dynamic, 4) an episode where we see Two-Brains explore life without his henchmen... the list goes on, and idk how many of these are just major stretches. but the point is. if the show had ended there, that would've been a pretty solid ending for many things, including their relationship: aka, it would prove that it was only ever heading somewhere bad, and when tobey finally has his moment of triumph, he is truly evil about it. and this provides us fans who HATE go gadget go with an easy reason to dismiss it - we can say that it was an attempt to conclude things in a way that wouldn't have happened if the writers had known they'd get more time. but despite that... it is still a canon episode.

it is odd to me how dramatically the dynamic shifts after that, though, because we seriously go from 'worst case ever, tobecky is toxic, your ship is dead' to 'no actually they get along and hang out and get ice cream together and tobey isn't even pressuring her into it, she's happy to go along with it :)' like, immediately. i never knew much about the show writers, so i don't know if the writers changed in between these seasons, but i would absolutely not be surprised if they did.

the earlier episodes are definitely problematic as well (though they pale in comparison to GGG) but i think everyone who ships it is aware considering that tobey is, yknow, a villain. from memory, he destroys buildings to get her attention, lies to her about the level of danger that people are in to trick her into spending more time with him, blackmails her into reading his poetry, and he creates a robot based on her that’s supposed to be devoted to him (but of course, all of these things backfire). not great stuff of course, but like... he’s a villain, that’s the point of his character. and considering that he’s a child these are things that can be redeemed, if done thoughtfully.

anyway, to sum up this section, the show starts off with a pretty standard 'enemies with an unrequited crush' setup, takes a really dark turn for a single episode, and then for the rest of the show takes their dynamic in a direction that makes it much, much easier to ship. as long as you ignore a lot of previous content.

wordbot: where's becky's autonomy in all of this? (misogyny)

we've finally gotten to the fandom. i recognize that a lot of this is going to come across as hypocritical considering how active i used to be re: this ship, but like... i'm a very different person now. anyway. disclaimer i guess - i don't write this to accuse all tobecky shippers of being like this - i know a lot of us aren't/weren't! but boy do i have things to point out, so without further ado:

it is very hard to ship this without allowing some bit of misogyny to slip into it. very, very hard. the entire premise of the ship involves a girl falling in love with a boy that repeatedly pressures her to date him via threats to the safety of herself and people she cares about, which... it's 2020, i shouldn't have to explain why that's terrible & a terrible example to set for children (which is why i am glad they never made it canon, tbh). best-case fan content has tobey stop pressuring her and start working to redeem himself out of an actual change of heart, which leads to becky seeing him in a new light. worst-case fan content treats his incessant pressuring and sometimes outright threats as something romantic - and even worse, romantic to the point where he deserves her attention and love as a reward for not giving up or whatever. i did see this pretty frequently for a while, especially in the earlier 2010s (didn't read much, Not My Thing At All), but i don't feel like going into detail here because of how obviously problematic it is. one medium (but still bad) case is where the fan content makes him start his redemption, but treats her liking him back as a reward for not knocking buildings over anymore. another not great case is where she tries to fix him with her love, which is a very common and very dangerous romantic trope. both are just... so incredibly unfair to her.

in content where she tries to 'fix him'... yeah i feel like it's really obvious how misogynistic that is. girls and women should not feel responsible for the evil actions of men, plain and simple. idk what else to say here i just really hate that trope and hated it back then and it just sucks! so can we not do that anymore, thanks.

in content that treats her like a reward for good behavior, there really isn't much of an explanation for what she sees in him. if she just goes 'oh wow, you're good now, i am going to fall in love with you for it' the whole thing falls flat because it makes NO sense whatsoever. we get to hear so much about tobey and his feelings and why he likes her and how he feels about it, but where is that energy for becky? why does she choose to trust him, to spend time around him, what does she enjoy about his presence? where is her getting over scoops in the process of falling for tobey? where is her telling her friends about this, confiding in them, asking them for advice? where is her choice in the matter?

win a day with wordgirl: do you guys even like becky or do you just like the idea of her (misogyny... 2!)

it was pretty standard for all fandoms the early-mid 2010s, but that's still not a good excuse for why so many tobecky fanfictions centered specifically around tobey's feelings while refusing to give becky the same level of empathy and nuance. it is true that to ship them comfortably you have to redeem him to some degree, which means spending time figuring him out and trying to find ways to pull him to the light without feeling super OOC. but ships take two people??? and there was so much potential for fanfics to explore becky's complex feelings on the matter - because she is! complex! she's heroic and kind but she's petty and has a competitive streak, she easily befriends villains but also doesn't trust them and doesn't believe they can ever really change, she's the savior of an entire planet but has feelings of inadequacy as her civilian identity and struggles with feeling like she can be successful without superpowers, she's great at the straightforward meanings and uses of words and loves reading but struggles to write passages that aren't dry as hell, it can be easily headcannoned that she's neurodivergent (special interests, issues with fitting in with her peers, taking things very literally, etc)... seriously there is SO MUCH to explore about her character, and a lot of it comes into play when you add tobey into the mix (literally ALL of the things i mentioned are explored at some point using tobey as a parallel or foil), but i rarely saw fanfiction that explored her thoughts on things further than 'he's evil but... maybe good?' or 'he's evil but... i kind of like him anyway?'.

if you want her to fall for him while being a villain, explore it!! why does she go against her morals? does she lie to herself about it to feel better? does she feel like she has to 'fix him' as part of her superhero duties to the city, and if so, how does that affect her as she tries and fails to help him? does she fall for him when she believes that he's turning good, only to feel betrayed when he starts acting worse because he feels like he can get away with it? it's such a shame that fanworks spend so little time even considering these questions, and it is absolutely a product of how deeply misogyny is/was baked into how we approach media (especially back then).

tobey goes good: but wait, i thought this show was progressive (a conclusion, i guess)

ifbrd wrote a great meta recently about how the show is a bit misogynist, despite being progressive in several ways. honestly i don't have much to add, but i'd really recommend reading through this; it makes a lot of great observations about the ways that male and female characters are presented differently through the show

i have little to add, so i'd just like to conclude with a reflection on the ship from my current viewpoint. i do think part of the reason so many of us latched onto the ship, despite how obviously problematic it was, is that the show treats a lot of things that would be serious in real life as normal or even comedic - which is fine lol, i'm not going to pretend that it's not a show for little kids, so they have to keep the tone light.

but if we, as teens/adults, decide to engage with this content in a more realistic manner, we have to be prepared to confront how messed up so many of the things going on really are. and if you still want to ship it, there's nothing inherently wrong with that! there's a lot of interesting things to explore in this ship, no matter what stage of enemies-to-friends-to-lovers you write them at, and it can be really helpful to have a space where you can explore a dynamic such as this in fiction. (speaking from experience here tbh, writing some fic for them helped me deal with complicated feelings about some ex-longtime friends.)

so to write this ship at all means that there are canon issues that you need to deal with if you want to have them end up in a healthy relationship in any manner that makes sense (unless you create an AU where none of that is applicable, which, power to you then). and i’m not saying ‘write them with a healthy endgame or you’re Bad’, not at all lol. but at least please, please take a step back once in a while to examine the dynamic that you’re writing, and please be careful about whether you mean to be romanticizing whatever behaviors you end up portraying as good.

#wordgirl #becky botsford #tobey mccallister #tobecky #tobecky critical #has anyone ever used that tag before LMAO #anyway: i may come back and reword the ending because i am not totally happy with it #but wow this is so many words. so many. send help

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