#and often they do it for like shipping stuff which is so annoying when its gay ships cause its like that fandom dynamic of having to have t

[waaaffle]

Dumping my thoughts here about something I have noticed because why not (a few spoilers for anime-onlys):

Shipping / headcanons are not an issue, but it's not lost on me that some of the people who ship Shisui/Loulan with Maomao are always hoping Jinshi — who is clearly the deuteragonist — dies or is written out of the story in some other way because he is considered an "obstacle" for the ship. I am not claiming that it is all or even most, but it is enough to where it's noticeable imo. This is a bummer because I think he is an interesting and well-written character in general (not just for his devotion for Maomao) but he is often reduced to some one-dimensional evil. Also, any Jinmao fans hating unprovoked are wrong as well, but I have already seen posts about that side of things, so I don't need to say much else.

I have seen people insinuate that the author should "fix" her story (disrespectful) or that she intended to write yuri between them but was forced in the other direction (flat out misinformation).

I saw a take recently where someone said that "Shisui is the closest maomao has come to feel affection for someone" which is a poor analysis of Maomao's character (this person said they are on LN 7 btw; such a take makes no sense if you are an anime-only imo, but is much worse coming from a supposed LN reader). She cares deeply for Luomen, Xiaolan, her sisters, etc. so this take is odd. The attempts to downplay Maomao's care and romantic love for him in the story (the tired take of "Maomao clearly hates him") to make their ship appear more "legitimate" (???) are just unserious 😭 why can't people just enjoy something without spreading misinformation. I don't think anyone should feel the need to prove why their ship is more legitimate and / or minimize what is written to enjoy it.

Side note: Someone else was mad that Jinshi came to save her + stop the rebellion because he was putting Loulan in danger by doing so, and that he should have left Maomao with the Shi clan. Just ridiculous. 😵‍💫

Unfortunately, blocking and muting does not fully help when this kind of stuff is even under posts and in spaces that like Jinshi and / or Jinmao. Imagine trying to find a space to talk about your favorite character, and instead you find people constantly bashing them, primarily for romance that was set up early on in the LNs. I think most people would be annoyed after a while — especially considering the particularly visceral hatred for and rampant mischaracterization of Jinshi that seems to run deep in the western fandom. I know the hate for him won't change and that's fine, but I think it's weird to go into spaces where people like him just to argue.

The author decided that Jinshi was going to be the deuteragonist very early on in the development of this story because he was already inseparable from the plot by LN 2 at latest.

She didn't have to (and no, she was not forced to) but she did.

Shisui was introduced for the Shi clan plotline and her character arc concluded nicely with its end (even died in the web novel). Definitely an important character for various reasons (the Shi clan rebellion and her actions lead to events that mark a key turning point in the series, an important role in Maomao making friends / opening up, etc.). However, based on the writing, there were likely no plans to make her role much different from what it was.

The author recently stated that she rarely makes big changes to the plot, so making Jinshi integral to the story as a whole (as in the plot would be completely different without him) and making their romance integral to the plot was a very deliberate decision on her part.

You definitely don't have to like him or their romance at all, we all have our personal tastes, but the story isn't bad for not going in a direction that it never intended to go in (or for taking a direction that you don't like).

[brainworms-all-night-long]

Drops this without any warning

A compilation of all of my prime bros headcannons that I could think of put together over the course of a few months👍👍

———

Sails

-one that is practically cannon to me now; he's is missing his right ear

-he likes making little wood carvings and insists on doing most of them with a sword instead of a knife or a dagger just to be extra (it backfires on his hands most of the time.) His favorite ones to make are models of ships

-generalist but hes the most skilled in woodwork and sea vessel maintnance

-has a beautiful singing voice but rarely uses it and instead opts to sing awfully on purpose.

-will not pass up an opportunity to literally "give you a hand" if you ask and he thinks its funny, but do not funking mess with his prosthetic unless allowed, you will go to sleep with less fingers than you woke up with

-knows how to juggle. No reason for this one I just think Sails knows a bunch of useless but cool party tricks (now there's ripe potential to make this angsty, but I shan't. Not yet.)

-ok so him and Mangey stumbled upon the third episode of Ninjago and rebuilt the Angel's Voyage and it flies now. Don't worry abt it

-insufferable when it comes to any sort of table or card games. He will crush you and play you for an idiot. Somehow, no one can ever prove hes cheating even when he absolutely is. The only one who has enough experience and same low blow tactics, and as such can stand up to him, is Tails

-speaking of which, being annoying is his biggest weapon and also favorite love language. Trust that you will know if the annoying is affectionate or meant to drive you insane (derogatory) though

-adrenaline seeker and worse one than Sonic honestly. Having multiple near death experiences in a single day awakened something in him and by god will he make it everyone else's problem

-his favorite to rile up are Nine and the various Knuckles for obvious reasons and usually clowns on them in the end

-hes also the one you go to if you need to properly get through to Nine and Sonic failed or is unavailable. No one really knows how he does that.

-also loves blowing shit up, explosives are his favorite thing ever

-naps whenever and where ever, most likely outside in the shade of a palm tree either under or in his hammock.

——

Mangey

-NOT stinky or mangy alright, he takes grooming very seriously, he maintains a mohawk of all things like come on!!

-except during the whole friendship breakup exile and purposeful starvation thing between Prim and Thorn, he didn't have acces to water to clean properly and he does not like the feeling of being dirty (holy shit the scavengers were under constant sun with no food or water for God knows how long meanwhile Thorn was suffering from vitamin D deficiency they fucked up fr fr)

-autism be damned my boy figured out how to work the grill (I cannot explain this one beyond do NOT give him access to any sort of fire. And do not tell Sails. By god do not tell Sails.)

-loves those little "impossible to solve" puzzles and especially rubix cubes, he usually gets the hang of everything in under two minutes but it keeps him entertained endlessly

-also loves taking apart things and see how they work and often attempts to replicate the mechanism within in another form. Problem is, not every time he considers if the thing is important or dangerous before he guts it, resulting in... a few incidents, and a lot of calming breathing exercises for Tails

-not a big fan of flat digital interfaces, he needs buttons and levers and stuff

-he wears mismatched black and white gloves (to match Nine!!) and actually gets proper lime green shoes he sometimes wears but prefers not to. He likes the simple familiar leaf shoes he crafted himself

-you know those little simplistic wooden toy trains with train tracks? Sails carves them and Mangey assembles them into increasingly convoluted tracks all over the place. If they get really lucky they can also convince Nine to paint them (which he both hates and loves because by god can he not hold his hands steady but more on that later) There's a whole Rube Goldberg machine set in place involving the track. What it does and how it's triggered varies on a weekly basis.

-really strong sense of hearing and smell due to which he gets overstimulated easily and has headaches often, especially if hes in an area hes not used to.

-speaking of smell, he can not only tell where but How Much food there is, so lies of "sorry this was my last one" will never work, he knows

-he can pretty easily pick up on weather changes, sometimes with the same accuracy as Tails' forecast

-terrified shitless of thunder and lightning, and while it's fairly easy to calm him down, he's unfortunately even easier to startle and not so surprisingly agile

-doesn't have any particular strong feelings abt his tails since people were displeased with him as a Whole and he dissapeared into the jungle before any of that hatered could stick. He likes them because they're a good blanket :]

-hates conflict of any capacity because that just reminds him of Thorn and Prim and the fallout of their falling out, which is why it's for the best to NOt let him witness Shadow and Sonic in close proximity cuz boy Will be UPSET and no matter what you can't explain it to him that they're just gay like that

- he also naps wherever he wants whenever he wants, ussually in a warm and hidden place such as a pile of sun warmed blankets or moss under a tree. Please always dutifully check the dryer before starting it, double check if it was recently used.

——

Nine

-also cannon to me, he's declawed in his left hand and those metal tips serve as a prosthetic so he can actually grip things properly. The same goes for his right wrist that was shattered weirdly once and now needs to be reinforced

-the weird green glowing thing on his right hand he uses as a communicator later in the series is a fucked up looking watch (I was also thinking there's some connection between it and his metal tails since they have the same poison yellow glow but i don't know enough technical lingo to explain myself)

-prefers to stay indoors for all accounts, but loves to star gaze and chill outside at night. Mangey often silently joins him or is the one to drag him outside in the first place. Tell no one else abt this though

-cannot handle literally any spice in his food and he actually nearly died the first time Tails cooked for him since adding chili was just muscle memory and he didn't even think to ask

-but it urns out Nine likes food even more than Mangey which is, concerning, to some people. Always with a snack in hand and eating something, he especially loves fruit. Bro got an apple for the first time in his life and cried (canon I imagined it real hard)

-after the whole prism debacle he was left with some hefty nerve damage and now has fine motor issues, and regular. And has frequent migranes which pisses him off to no end

-actually gets some color into his wardrobe, since he no longer needs to camouflage all the time. His fashion sense is literally just a shirt and pants anyway

-On the off chance he goes into public and someone addresses him there is a tiny gender confusion. This will not have any internal ramifications for her whatsoever

-his nose is absolutely jacked, and so are his lungs. This will also not cause any further concerns either

-Do not fucking touch his tails ever. Mechanical or organic. He will kill you.

-if he let's you touch his tails, congratulations, he will kill and die for you.

-avoided Tails, Knuckles and Rouge like the plague for the first few months he moved in Into green hill for, obvious reasons.

-surprisingly close to Shadow actually??? When did that happen no one really knows

-graffiti!! He does graffiti and paints!!! Him and Sonic take random nights off and commit artistic vandalism on the most hard to reach surfaces for the avarge person. Nine also gloats over Tails and his lacking impressionist artistic skill

-but he's never drawn a blueprint physically and just used a digital program, so it evens out

-actually has a somewhat stable sleep schedule, unfortunately the time dilation between the Shaterspaces makes it seem like he doesn't

-in the event he falls unconscious/asleep his mechanical tails form a silly little cage around him and strike at anything that gets too close. He usually gets to bed before sleeps but in the event he chonks out on his table? Yea no one is getting him from there without having to wake him up first.

[tesalicious2]

Why you don't prank the Guard commanders

Since they are almost constantly tired and at the end of their rope, anything could set them over the edge and no one wants that

not only that but they will usually react very strongly because of their extenuating circumstances and it is often blown out of proportions

HOWEVER, the other battalions don't know that and just want to help their brothers have fun! what's wrong with that

THIRE:

Thire got off a three day mission with General Yoda that ends up with Thire covered in some giant monsters stomach fluids and snot

He had to sit in it for a ten hour ride back and is humilated, with Yoda attempting to comfort him which only makes it worse

On his way back to the HQ, some troopers from the 104th decided to hit a guard with fake slime, a funny little prank

When Thire is at the end of his rope, he goes for violence

Thire waltzes into the mess, calls out whoever pranked him, and proceeded to dress them down, chew them up, and spit them out in front of everyone in the entire mess (made up of a few battalions and some Padawan Commanders)

It boiled down to 'you morons, i will kill you, you tiny roaches are nothing to me and i will throw you in the trash compactor like the disgusting garbage you are' with much more colorful and degrading language thrown in

Many now fear Thire and Wolffe outright refuses to work with the man out of fear

STONE:

Stone had just stopped three prison riots, captured two escapees from said riots, updated the entire security system, and hadn't slept because of the previous items for four days

Some men from Kit Fisto's SCUBA battalion thought it would be funny to hide some of Stone's stuff that was in his office (ie, datapads, pens, etc) and moved his stuff three inches to any side

Stone, who usually just jumped onto the coach in his office with the lights off, missed the middle and went to far up and smacked his nose on the wooden arm of the couch and cracked a tooth

This was not a fun way to cap the last four days

He found the troopers and filled their SCUBA tubes with spiders for them to find when they shipped out. Too bad the spiders crawled onto their faces on the ship and not in the water :(

THORN:

Thorn had been assissting senators for three full days with only 5 hours of sleep while standing throughout meetings

He had been ready to sleep and was heading to his last meeting with General Kenobi and some of his troopers present

Wooley and Longshot decided to lighten the mood by setting their voice coders to a different language and telling him he was going crazy

They also removed the nonslip pads from the couch and it slid out from underneath him

This may not have been bad at all but after three days, every little thing is annoying as shit and exhausting

After that meeting, Thorn decides to take revenge

Thorn is a believer in you get what you give so he does something harmless

relatively harmless

He sneaks onto the 212th barracks on the ship and places a speaker into the vents of the barracks, above Wooley and Longshots bunks (as close as he could get, the sound reverbs so everyone is pretty mad about this prank)

Every so often, in random intervals (no more than 4 hours, no less than 1 hours) a beep would sound, not too loud but loud enough to be annoying after 2 days

At night, it gets louder and more frequent and quieter during the day

Many troopers lose sleep over finding the thing (Thorn literally unscrewed wall panels to hide it), its been 3 weeks and they arrive at their new battle field in a week

Four days before their arrival, as the speaker is about to die, in the middle of the night, the speaker goes to full volume and shouts 'THIS IS COMMANDER THORN. I MAY BE THE CAUSE OF YOUR SLEEPLESSNESS BUT LONGSHOT AND WOOLEY STARTED THIS. I WILL DO IT AGAIN ASSHOLES. THE SPEAKER IS GOING TO DIE SO ENJOY YOUR *TEMPORARY* FREEDOM. HAHHAHAHAHAH-' and then the speaker dies (Thorn hacked the cameras and enjoys playing the screaming arguments and shouts at the speaker during rough days)

Longshot and Wooley never hear the end of it

FOX:

Fox had been going through hell the entire week and he was ready to kill someone, even though his shift wasn't over yet.

Jesse, Fives, and Hardcase had decided to help Fox lighten up by shooting him with silly string throughout the day, switching armor with blank armor to keep hidden

Fox was paranoid and had to be sedated. He eventually tracked down the three and had his revenge not through their own annoyance

At first, he replaced their weapons with modified silly guns that quickly ended, leading them to believe they were free (the whole revenge lasted an hour ish as the three enjoyed playing with the silly string)

Unknown to them, Rex's entire room had been filled with silly string, his blasters, the padding in his matress, the drawers in his dress, the hair wash was liquid silly string, the soap was frozen strong, his pillow, his chair was broken then 'welded' back together with silly string and fell apart when he sat on it, etc.

He kept finding it and it lasted for days, the moment he thought it was over, more string came up. He was paranoid, everything was silly string

When he finally complained to the command chat, Fox told him that Jesse, Hardcase, and Fives caused it and that he overheard them planning it

When Rex punished them, they said they never did anything with silly string but many others saw them spraying each other with the silly string FOX pranked them with so everyone assumed they were messing with the leftovers from Rex's prank. Not only that but they weren't quiet about pranking Fox so everyone thought he was the warm up for Rex.

No matter what they said, Rex didn't believe a word and they were stuck on latrine duty for a whole month

When Rex found out about Fox getting pranked as well, Rex let them get punished by him too

Fox made them clean out all the massiff kennels and play areas, cleaning any stains from the puppies and getting used for bite practice by the adults everyday for their next leave.

Fox came by and watched them everyday, laughing at their misery

HOUND:

Hound loves pranks and jokes and will happily engage and laugh at them

however, the timing has to be right and most don't get that part (only the other ARF troopers know)

Some troopers from the 41st took his bed sheets and pillows and blankets and towels after some of his troopers and Hound ended a four hour chase through the sewers (they didn't know about the chase).

Hound normally would've thought this was hilarious but after spending two hours covered in sewage looking for towels around HQ just to shower, he was pretty mad

After cleaning up and ready for bed, he snuck into the 41st barracks and woke them up with a growling, snarling grizzer leaning over their face and a hand over their mouth.

He whispered, 'don't scream, you touch my shit again, I will end you and everyone you love.'

Rinse and repeat then he sneaks away

[logosbot-tm]

I'm not even a shipper but I did see a post (and several tbh) about Mumbo's death in wild life being turned into Mumbo being a rebound/replacement for Scar??? It's so weird even as a nonshipper I know Grian and Mumbo have been iconically Like That (and everybody knows it and jokes about it) for years. I'm convinced a chunk of this fanbase just skips through video

I will say that I'm not fully sure why this was sent to me, but yeah, I've seen it too. Gonna take off the shipping goggles for a hot sec.

(More below the cut...like a lot more, this ended up as a long ass ramble)

Mumbo's treatment within fandom is rather... odd, in my opinion. He gets pushed to the side a lot, he's treated as if he's pathetic (which yes, Ik that the "wet cat" thing is a joke, but when he's consistently portrayed as pathetic you start to wonder), he's treated as a replacement/rebound for Scar, Grian and his interactions are spun into being about Desert Duo (yes, I've seen this happen multiple times, its weird), disloyal, completely incompetent, and when he died he was immediately talked about as "The new canary".

Which

1) That was Jimmy's curse, why are you trying to apply it to someone else who doesn't fit?

2) No, Mumbo wasn't the first one out when the curse was first broken, that was Lizzie

Mumbo and Grian's friendship is also treated as Not As Important As Desert Duo™️. Grian being distraught about Mumbo's death? Nah, let's focus on Desert Duo being friends instead. Grian bringing Mumbo (and Skizz) back to life? Let's focus on the fact that Scar and Grian flew around together (which is cute don't get me wrong). Mumbo killing Grian after being instructed to do so? Let's talk about how this a Desert Duo parallel.

Hell, Grian and Mumbo's friendship isn't even the biggest "victim" of being twisted as only existing to further the Desert Duo narrative. The friendship that has been most affected by it (within fandom ofc), is Grian and BigB's friendship.

Which, is even odder to me. Grian and BigB have known each other for ages, Grian went and looked for BigB himself (because He Wanted To Be Secret Soulmates), Grian said in 3rd life that he didn't want to kill BigB, and the two of them have known each other for long as hell and have even travelled to Sweden together irl (wayback in like 2017).

There's a lot to say about the fandom's treatment of BigB but yeah, not what this post is about.

It's very difficult to interact with fandom content within both the Life Series and Hermitcraft nowadays. You can't escape Desert Duo or Scarian, even if you try. A lot of the time another ship tag, duo tag, or character tag ends up clogged with Desert Duo/Scarian stuff, and if you block the tag it gets filled with blacked out post saying "This post contains Scarian, do you want to see it anyway?" (<can't remember the exact wording), and often UNTAGGED Scarian/Desert Duo posts pop up in other tags, often tagged with another ship that has nothing to do with the post (<Seen this happen a few times in the Grumbo tag). The Scaridarity tag is filled with Scarian posts, which makes it hella annoying to go through/follow that tag.

And yes. Grian and Mumbo have been a duo since... 2017? 2018? Somewhere around there. They're genuinely close as all hell, having gone on a roadtrip together, and having travelled to Sweden together. They both put references to each other in their videos all the time, they have a robot son named after their (at the time) duo/ship name, and in the life series they've been on a team 2/3 times + they always base closely on Hermitcraft (more than once they've linked their bases, more than once they've had a messaging system).

But nowadays that's largely ignored/pushed to the side, and for a little while there was this odd idea about a "Grumbo divorce".

Which, yes I know it was a joke, but also...what???

On the Hermitcraft server, the Hermits doesn't interact all the time. It's literary called /Hermit/-craft. Often, this is because the Hermits are busy with their own projects, things irl, or they just don't interact. This doesn't mean that a ship is getting "divorced" or anything. Hell, it's a ship. The shipping shouldn't be your main focus when watching a video. The shipping is just something for fun.

So yeah, it was weird to see the "Grumbo divorce" jokes be made, when they're still very close, and Are Still Like That™️ about each other.

There's also this odd thing I've noticed within the fandom, where people can't let Grian and Scar do things on their own without twisting it into Scarian.

No, I promise that in the escape room video that Scar wasn't in, Grian didn't think at all about the fandom's headcanon that Scar is a vex.

All this being said, I also have to say that:

I don't hate Scarian. Does it frustrate me? Yes! Very much so.

But that's because of the fandom. I am a Scarian shipper, I enjoy Scarian, and I enjoy Desert Duo a lot. The fandom has made that experience a lot less enjoyable, because of the weird treatment of other people, because you can't escape it even if you try, because everything gets twisted into Scarian/Desert Duo all the time.

It's frustrating, because it's barely the Hermitcraft or the life series fandom anymore, it's basically the Scarian fandom.

Which, fine, I get it. Its the biggest ship, and I understand the enjoyment of it, nothing wrong with that.

But there's other people on both servers, other duos, other teams, and I promise you everything isn't about Scarian all the time.

I think that Scarian shippers/Desert Duo enjoyers mainly watch Scar's videos, with shipping goggles already on, and then they watch Grian's. They read into things that genuinely doesn't matter, all to further the narrative of Scarian. (I'm not saying everyone does this, or that they do it on purpose, but it comes across as such.)

I can't say that I haven't read too much into something because of a ship, hell, I've been here for Mumbo and Grian as a duo since before the duo even existed.

But to me it feels as if it's going a tad bit too far now.

I keep seeing more and more people get frustrated and tired of Scarian/Scarians, and I get it entirely. I see this happen from multiple corners, from multiple people.

Also, Grian and Mumbo are a duo to such an extent that the Hermits comment and joke about it, hell, even non-Hermits do that. I mean Tommyinnit straight up said "You (Grian) and Mumbo come as a pair".

I'd also like to mention the odd treatment of Grumboers from Scarian. Yes, I know that some Grumbo shippers have entered the Scarian tag just to hate on it, don't do that. Just... genuinely, don't do that, what the hell are you even doing actually.

But when Scar said that people were "Annoyed with him and Grian teaming together all the time" (Which they haven't done. They've interacted a lot, which ain't surprising. They're p good friends), there was an odd wave of posts I saw that blamed Grumboers?

I assure you, that whole thing wasn't our fault. People who've complained about that have done so in the YouTube comments, on reddit, and ofc some have done so on twitter (which is just an awful cesspool of negativity, which is why I don't use it).

It's not our fault. A lot of Grumbo shippers are also Desert Duo enjoyers/Scarian shippers. I mean, I am.

There's also this odd narrative that "Grumbo shippers never experienced this much hate when Grumbo was the biggest ship"

Which is just blatantly false.

In the past, people got hate and death threats for shipping. Didn't matter what you shipped, you got hate for it.

At the time, there was a bunch of posts, much more negatively charged than this one, where people went "This isn't the Mumbo and Grian fandom, stop treating it as such." There were a lot of posts about how Grumboers were annoying as all hell, and how we clogged tags. There were straight up hate posts being spread, often by the majority of the fandom.

Shipping with in the Hermitcraft fandom wasn't accepted at all, and Zombiecleo got bullied of off tumblr for saying that she didn't care if people were engaging in shipping.

I'm glad that shipping is accepted now, because by god it was an awful time, but don't say that "Grumbo shippers never had it this bad". We had it a lot worse. Shippers as a whole had it a lot worse. Don't pretend like it didn't happen, and don't try to act as if it's only Scarian shippers that have been hated.

In all honesty, I'm just tired of all of this. Like really tired. I'm tired of seeing everything get twisted into Scarian/Desert Duo, I'm tired of the ignorance of the fandom's past, and I'm tired of seeing hate aimed at any ship/shippers

But I do think that its time to leave the desert. It's not fun to be in the fandom anymore due to the behaviour. Sure, keep shipping, keep having fun. But for God's sake please stay in your lane, tag your things properly, and please stop trying to force Scarian/Desert Duo upon everyone.

I don't think that the hate is deserved, but everything isn't about Desert Duo.

This is most likely the only time I'll make a post like this, and I'm only making it because I'm finally fed up and tired.

Thank you for the ask.

[separatist-apologist]

I think the Mor being gay was handled so fucking disrespectfully it would have been better had she just not made her gay at all at this point. Just introduce new characters instead. Azmor was cute to me and I would have liked at least one of the main ships to be similarly aged but even if that never happened why would Mor ever need to hide it from the night court? Her friends and family of centuries!

All my thoughts are under the cut because I think some of this could be perceived as anti IC (ITS NOT) or anti Azriel (not on purpose)

I get kind of frustrated with the Mor reveal because that came wildly out of left field to me. ACOMAF is so clearly setting up some kind of love triangle between Mor/Cassian/Azriel and I think that continues to linger even in ACOWAR/SF with how Cassian is around Mor. SJM can say all she wants that its just brother/sister love but some of Mor/Cassian's behavior is very romance coded in an undeniable way (and an annoying way for Nesta imo).

I have been told that people were pressuring SJM to be more diverse which is always so weird to me because why would you look to SJM for representation? Her niche is aggressive heterosexuality, it's clearly where she's comfortable and the little representation we've ever gotten has not been handled well. I think she just doesn't know how to do it, there's no shame in that. We should be uplifting and supporting diverse authors telling authentic stories, you know?

Regardless, back to Mor- I do wonder if SJM ever considered the implications of that reveal. It makes sense that Mor wouldn't want her father to know, but Rhys? Cassian? Azriel? Her found family for 500 years, who uplifted her and protected her, often at their own expense? She doesn't feel safe telling them? Again, SJM is a teller, not a shower but sometimes she accidentally shows us the wrong thing when she's telling us something, and what I think she inadvertently showed us was that the IC is not as close as they first appear.

Which COULD be such an interesting story IF she was interested in exploring it at all. But she told us they're an unshakable family, and so they are, regardless of the subtext that suggest there are DEEP foundational cracks there. Like Mor is SCARED of Azriel, we don't want to delve into that? Or Mor is Rhys' second in command, but he actively makes a deal with Eris, who she is genuinely afraid of, and tells her to suck it up? Is that role ceremonial then? What sort of family/friendship is this?

And finally- I have always kind of assumed Mor is bisexual given she has relationships with men. There is something deeply uncomfortable and almost coercive about the thought of sleeping with other men to get Azriel to leave her alone. Like if what SJM is telling us is true and she doesn't enjoy these intimate moments with Helion, for example, and is only doing it because Azriel can't take a hint, thats....right? Like, I'm not the only person who just decides not to think about it too closely because the implications are terrifying and gross?

Cassian and Rhys KNOW (that shes not into Azriel, not that she's sleeping with Helion even though it repulses her, to get Azriel to leave her alone) this, and they choose to look the other way- how much do they even love her? It's giving "oh, he'd never hurt her" but then they all know she has no interest in him and rather than taking Azriel aside and being like, "my man its time to move on" they all just do nothing because its none of their business. I have siblings, and once when a man wouldn't take the hint with my sister, he took it up with me in the hallway at high school when I shoved him into a locker and started yelling at him.

Again, I think this kind of comes down to SJMs tendency to lean toward telling us everything, including how we should feel, but not showing us stuff. So she can say until she's blue in the face that the IC is an unshakable friendship group with a love that moves mountains but then the reality is that one of them has been tormenting the other for CENTURIES, refusing to take what I consider a very obvious no as an answer- to the point she feels like she has to perform heterosexuality so he'll back off- and no one does anything about it.

And I think thats rough.

[chainnoli]

I feel like I need to make this clear about my own personal headcanons within the “Batfam” because apparently lately everyone is obsessed with the term to the point they believe they’re all actually fucking related and I ship Jaytim even though I don’t write about them often anymore and I do nawt want people assuming shit about me LMFAO

Ages in “main” continuity

Bruce: 40’s

Alfred: 60’s

Dick: 24

Jason: 22

Tim: 18

Damian: 13

Familial Relations

Damian is Bruce’s blood son, Damian thinks of Dick, Jason, and Tim as his brothers.

Jason only thinks of Damian as his brother, maybe Dick but its history. Doesn’t consider Bruce his father, completely moved on from that part of his life. It’s unrealistic to me to write or imagine him playing happy big family with people he viewed as part of his dead life. Damian was there when he was reborn and he practically raised the squirt (in my hc).

Tim doesn’t think of Bruce as his dad but views him as a paternal figure since he was taken in. Thinks of Damian and Dick as his brothers, Jason was his idol and someone he looked up to. They barely interacted and it’s annoying when people act like he and Jason have the same dynamic like Jason and Dick did.

Dick considers Bruce his dad, Damian and Jason and Tim his brothers.

Sexualities/Gender HC

Bruce: Bisexual Man with a preference for women. Cis: He/Him

Dick: Unlabeled but has rizz with everyone. Doesn’t really give af about the gender thing so if you called him a woman he would just roll with it but personally just goes by He/Him or “any” if asked for a preference

Jason: Pansexual on the Aro spectrum. Probably due to a lot of his traumas, so outside of that probably also just panromantic. He’s a cis man but has definitely thought about identity stuff after the Lazarus pit. Goes by He/Him or They/Them. It/Its if he’s feeling funky.

Tim: Bisexual with a preference for men. Enby icon. Goes by He/They pronouns but sometimes just forgoes them altogether if possible. (Just use Tim in place of pronouns for entertainment).

Damian: In some aus he’s cis in a lot he’s transmasc (honestly if I don’t specify just assume Trans! Dami). Goes by He/Him. Aroace spectrum, really only falls for Jon (sometimes Billy or Colin). Unlike Jason, his isn’t due to traumas or emotional blocks. Maybe he’s born with it, maybe it’s maybelline.

Alfred: deffo has done drag at some point. Could see him with an ex bf on the battlefield before losing him tragically.

Shipping Wise

Literally none of the Batfam with each other with the explanations above because I do believe the others do have a familial relationship aside from JayTim- and even then I ship KonTim as well and BerTim or whatever the ship name is lol

Damian: Jon, Billy, and Colin (boy is not fucking straight LMFAO)

Bruce: Talia and Selina, they’re both goated ships I cannot pick which one is better (Joker only in the Lego universe and also the one joker from telltale’s Batman)

Dick: literally only Kori, I’m fixed shipped for life 🫶

Jason: Tim, Kori (sometimes the dynamic be dynamicing), Artemis- but also I like him single a lot of the time because I feel like he would avoid relationships and human connection bc he has issues

Tim: Connor, Bernard, and Jason (get Stephanie outta there let my girl live outside of their toxic ass mess 😭)

And that’s all, obviously no one has to share my headcanons and if you want to headcanon Jason and Tim being brothers because it’s just more fun for you then go right on ahead I ain’t discouraging anyone from that! Just wanted to write this so people understood I wasn’t shipping from a certain point of view and so they can be prepared if I do include jaytim in anything (which I may not considering how the fandom is nowadays).

Also I didn’t do the girlies or Duke Thomas because I only included the “inner circle” Batman and Robins Batfam to explain since the others don’t have the weird drama and stigma these ones do.

[vividvixie]

my hot takes which might just be poorly covered up complaints [ sorry madohomu fans ]

- madohomu has a large issue with power dynamics which is what makes them a fundamentally more toxic ship than kyosaya**

- kyoko is always watered down to only serve a purpose to sayaka when in reality shes one of the best written characters in the show

- kyoko had the saddest past of them all and it makes me more upset than everything homura went through

- madoka is too often pushsd to the side and characterised to be the "innocent one" / is only spoken of in relation to homura as if shes not the main character of the show [ and a very good main character at that ]

- mami is NOT the mother of the group. the whole point of her conversation with madoka is to illustrate that she just wants FRIENDS SHE CAN TRUST AND RELY ON. SHE IS 15 NOT 35

**not to say theyre a bad ship it's just a fact which gets ignored.

those r the ones i can think of rn ;;;

YOOO THESE ARE ALL SO REAL I ALSO WANTED TO PUT SOME STUFF ABOUT MADOHOMU BUT IM NOT THE BEST WITH WORDING AND DIDNT WANNA GET JUMPED LMAO i dont really understand why people get so defensive and upset when people say they could be considered toxic since they definitely arent healthy, and thats not to say they cant be together! you just gotta acknowledge that their both gonna need some YEARS of therapy if they ever want to get to a good point😭

and i heavily agree with kyoko! she’s probably my favorite character as ive been reading into her more her story is so sad its the only one that manages to make me cry shes been through so much :(

AND YESS i LOVE kyosaya but it annoys me so much when people just use kyoko as a support for sayaka and make her entire character revolve around her solely like guys she i SO much more than that PLEASEEEE READ INTO HER

yeah so many people do that with madoka too and i feel they make her way more naive than she is she KNOWS theres bad stuff in the world shes just positive (there’s probably a better word to use but i cant think of it lol) AND YES MAMI GETS MISCHARACTERIZED SM IT DRIVES ME INSANE

[orchideous-nox]

I love your stuff so much!! I was wondering if maybe you had some headcanons for some of the girls?? I'd love to hear them :3

Hi anon, thank you so much! This is so fun, I want to yap about the girls more often so I guess this is a good starting point!!!

Lily

I love Lily so much, since dying my hair ginger one of my favourite comments I get on tiktok is people saying I look like how they picture Lily which is the biggest compliment. I hc Lily as being bi and currently my favourite person to ship her with is Pandora but I have Chappell Roan related plans to write a one-shot of MaryLily. Lily's favourite flowers are daisies and angel's breath and you can find them in her hair during the summer. She loves to read either by the fire when it's cold or under a tree in the park in July. She's an omnivert and enjoys quiet study sessions with Remus where they don't have to talk but also is very happy to be dragged up to do karaoke with Mary and Marlene. Her favourite colour is sage green because it brings out her freckles and her favourite season is spring because she says "the air just smells different". Also plus-size Lily all the way!

Mary

Mary is a girl's girl. She is the one who teaches the younger students how to do their makeup and and is the chief hair braider. She has a diary the whole way through school and she writes all of her juiciest secrets in there because she knows all the gossip about everyone and keeps them all in the bottom of her trunk. Her favourite song would either be Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac or Does Your Mother Know by ABBA. She is the biggest flirt with everybody and the real Casanova of Gryffindor Tower. Her signature lip gloss is cherry scented and everyone is the group has had at least one kiss on the cheek from her which has left a pinky-red lip gloss mark there. If I was going to assign a fc for her it would be Rachel Chinouriri, I think she's so beautiful and the Mary vibes are just there.

Marlene

Marlene being from Manchester is so real for me. She grew up supporting Manchester United and went to the matches with her dad. She is the masc lesbian of my dreams (I saw someone who looked like her once and I might have fell a little bit in love) and they own the wolfcut. Marls can be sighted wearing a little top (baby tee/ tight crop top) and big pants (literally the baggiest jeans you have ever seen). When Chelsea Dagger by The Fratellis comes on, she is singing the loudest. Marlene never came out, everyone just knew they are gay and when they got their first girlfriend everyone just shrugged and was like "cool". Marlene uses she/they pronouns and will punch anyone in the dick if they are mean to her friends. She absolutely adores Dorcas and is like "my girlfriend" at any opportunity. You can catch Marlene dancing along to Seventeen Going Under by Sam Fender because "he just gets me", she she will insist he is the only man she could ever love just to annoy the Marauders boys.

Pandora

My Ravenclaw girliiieeee!! If you couldn't tell, Pandora has really grown on me recently and I am slowly working up to writing a fic where she is in the main ship. Pandora being a Ravenclaw like Luna is so important to me and I hc her as a Rosier and is Evan's twin when I write her, but not the way that people normally write them. Pandora is very adamant that she is her own person and there is more to her than being a twin. She loves her experiments which we know from canon, she would have loved watching How Its Made (the tv show), and was that kid who would take things apart to see how they work. She collects insects like butterflies, moths and beetles and keeps them in a display in her room and has pet stick insects that she loves to freak people out with. Pandora would LOVE Paris Paloma, she's vibing with Labour and Notre Dame and The Fruits. Although I said I love shipping Lily with Pandora, Xenophilius and Pandora (xenodora) have my heart, I love them, they are my favourite straight-presenting queer couple. I think they chose the surname Lovegood when they got married (I hc Xeno as a disowned Malfoy) which I know a few people hc. I could talk about Pandora forever but I will move on.

Dorcas

Last but not least, Dorcas! She's the kind of girl who calls everyone babydoll (Barty loves it). She's such an it-girl and would be the person you see on Instagram posing in front of the houses in Kensington with her iced coffee. Dorcas is taalllll and has legs for days, models should be glad she decided to stick to being the office siren. Her favourite hobbies are judgingly people watching in the window seat of coffee shops, and taming her girlfriend to stop them from trying to fight everyone who looks at the two of them funny. Everyone thinks Dorcas hates them at first (even Marlene who spend months thinking Dorcas was rebuffing her advances), but she just looks at everyone like that, she shows her love by being mean. Dorcas loves to listen to Rina Sawayama, her favourite song is STFU!

I'm just gonna stick with those 5 for now because they're the ones I write in my fics. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to yap about them!!! <3

[ominus-potato]

Just asking how do you feel about smg34?

Prepare for a long rant lol bc oh boy do I have opinions on this.

I like the ship, don’t get me wrong, but they’re just really god damn boring for me. Not quite as boring as Melony x Axol but still very vanilla.

It’s just a typical enemies to lovers trope which is so overdone now. They aren’t even enemies anymore. Just frenemies. Let’s face it, they’re never going to be canon. Their relationship will forever be teased but I will be VERY surprised if the SMG4 team actually follow through with them. The moments are nice but it’s just fan service.

2023 was an amazing year for SMG34 and it showed a real development in their relationship with IGBP and Wotfi 2023. But honestly, outside of a few teases, I really don’t think we’re going to be getting any concrete development for them for a while.

Without development, they really are just textbook enemies to lovers and that trope just doesn’t interest me on its own. Especially when they’re past the enemies phase but not quite lovers. It feels like they’re just eternally stuck in this weird grey area that only exists for the sake of fan service and I just couldnt care less about that kind of stuff.

Especially when SMG34 fans absolutely loose their shit about them standing next to each other when they’re the two characters who have had the most development out of everyone! Like bro. The SMG4 team are just fucking with you lot and you eat it up every time until it becomes the whole focus of the entire show!

Like, a side character could appear that we haven’t seen in a year and I just see countless people complaining that “ohhh SMG3 wasn’t in this episode!” Or “Ohh why didn’t SMG34 interact!” But if they DO interact then everyone just completely brushes aside the side character to just fawn over the thing that has more content than anything else!

Oh and god forbid you say you ship SMG4 or SMG3 with someone else. This is mostly directed at the TikTok SMG4 community but bloody hell it’s so annoying.

“NOO SMG4 LOVES SMG3! NOT MARIO!!”

“*SMG3 comes in to steal SMG4 away from Peach*”

“Hmm but I like SMG34 :(“

LIKE STFU THIS ISNT ABOUT THEM! I posted a video dedicated to rarepairs bc I love rarepairs and want to bring more attention to them and I got way too many comments about SMG34 when they are by far the most popular ship in the fandom.

And don’t get me started on the Snowtrapped jokes.

Fuck. Ing. HELL CAN WE PLEASE GET A NEW JOKE?

“Ha ha they did the boombaya in an igloo”

“Snowtrapped 2.0 when??”

“They need to remake Snowtrapped.”

The obsession some fans have with that episode just bc SMG3 and SMG4 had sex in it is honestly just irritating at this point. There are so many good episodes about their relationship! To show their development! One joke every so often is fine but for some people it’s every other word out of their mouths and I’m just sick of it.

What if Mar4 shippers just started going:

“Haha Wotfi 2014!” Over and over again. Or some of the other episodes where they are insanely homosexual with one another. Bc I’m telling you, way too many people brush over the Mar4 tension in the earlier episodes.

In conclusion, SMG34 is that ship you start to ship when you first join a fandom bc it’s cute, there lots of content for it, and it makes sense. A lot of people hold onto that first ship but for me, I end up finding dynamics that interest me a lot more. Now, I only really interact with SMG34 content if one of my friends has made it bc I just struggle to get excited about it now.

If ever there’s a moment in an episode that’s cute, instead of enjoying it, all I can think about is how a scene of SMG3 and SMG4 standing next to eachother is going to completely destroy any actual conversation about the episode.

I don’t hate the ship. I do like it. But it’s just so basic.

I’ll take a rarepair over SMG34 any day.

[sammygender]

hi.. erm im back (anon from the last 2 asks) (im too scared to un-anon sorry) i want to ask (another) genuine question abt wincest because ur the nicest person ive ever met who's willing to talk abt it from both sides.

i guess i just don't get why people ship wincest? background: im aromantic and have a hard time understanding certain shippy stuff, but i do notice alot of arophobic statements in regards to the evidence given as to why people ship. ex: a lot of "brothers don't look at each other like that." type things. (which i know is not wincest exclusive and is often used by destiel shippers too)

also i notice alot of people being quite amatonormative (definition: the assumption that all human beings pursue love or romance.) so it's hard to even take wincest shippers seriously when all their evidence tends to be perpetuating arophobic sentiments and stuff.

we can all agree that their relationship is seriously unhealthy. but i just have a hard time with it being even borderline incestuous. i also really like the idea of relationship anarchy (definition: relationships within this structure are fluid, and therefore have no solid differentiation between sexual, romantic, or platonic relationships.) so to me it's like. well it's platonic because they say it is? only the people within a relationship can determine what that relationship is and they have?

anyways i know im throwing a lot of words and definitions at you. you're just extremely helpful to talk to and i like what you have to say, so id be extremely interested in your opinions about this.

hi anon!!! im so sorry i literally yapped like crazy in response to this. had no idea i was capable of this much thought on this topic. everything is under the read more

TLDR for the TLDR: for me the 'borderline incestuous' nature of their relationship isnt actually the way they act with each other cause i do think boundaries of romantic/platonic r weird and fake (tho by normal 'societal standards' sam and dean r strange). its more the framing of it by the narrative and genre conventions of spn as a horror. i think. <3

everything im abt to say has been written on at length by much smarter people than me - if ur interested i probably have reblogged other peoples posts on similar topics and tagged them somewhere under #poison in the water and maybe #she walked in on us. i am SO sorry for the mountain of yap you have unleashed.

before i rly start, re: talking abt the concept of wincest from different angles/sides - its honestly so totally beyond me why people dont actually DISCUSS this stuff more. ofc wincest shippers are sometimes obnoxious when they go ‘NORMAL BROTHERS DON’T ACT LIKE THIS!!!’ over anything (like i personally don’t like the whole ‘sam and dean are OBVIOUSLY in love because they bring each other back from the dead!!’ thing. like why is that romantic. i’d try my hardest to bring my siblings back from the dead too.) but like u said pretty much all shippers do that. i think people are (UNDERSTANDABLY) squicked out by the idea of incest, even fictional, and have an immediate kneejerk reaction when people ‘corrupt’ their favorite characters by talking abt it in relation to them. and i completely understand just not wanting to engage with readings you find uncomfortable or odd!! TV can just be escapism there’s nothing wrong with that!! but i tend to find immediate negative reactions against anything that even ACKNOWLEDGES the incestuous subtext in spn uncharitable and annoying. for one, incest is a real thing that happens and its not shipping goggles or creep behavior to look at fiction through the lens of it, just as its not whatsoever unreasonable to look at, for example, the azazel demon blood storyline as a CSA allegory (again of course all this is real heavy and just one interpretation and absolutely no hate for fans who like… just don’t want to think like this <3). for two, i do think there is an undercurrent of it written into supernatural with intentionality to further the themes of familial horror.

so to kind of…. explain i guess… why i say i can see canonical backing for sam and dean’s relationship as incestuous or incestuous-adjacent (lol), i have to go back to the general incest subtext in supernatural as a whole, from a completely academic-interest and not at all shippy way. like i said ofc SPN is primarily a show about FAMILY HORROR - ‘family is hell’, to quote eric kripke in the pilot commentary. or at least this is how i view it; a lot of destiel fans, for example, tend to see it more as…. idk really, i don’t claim to have much contact with them, but certainly not usually a horror. an action-adventure. a western. a story about a Tragic American Hero (sorry im being tongue in cheek and bitchy). i think viewing the show with a sam-focused lens tends to make you view it as horror for… a lot of reasons which i won’t get into here. but i PERSONALLY - getting off track here, sorry - view it as horror. that’s what he originally intended, and it’s what supernatural is most successful at doing. and incest in horror, especially gothic horror, especially gothic horror about the family and the home, is well-trodden territory (where’s my essay from last term about incest in wuthering heights where i somehow ended up, while researching, on an essay about wincest itself). - and supernatural is full of allusions to it. azazel’s silhouette in the pilot as intentionally strikingly similar to john’s, when he first feeds sam demon blood (framed as a CSA allegory, whether intentional or not). then azazel actually possessing john later. mary making the deal that dooms her family for years after via kissing her father on the mouth. hunting portrayed as something abnormal, irregular, taboo in direct opposition to a ‘normal family’ (tho abuse also comes from the nuclear family etc etc). then you can look at sam and dean specifically….

from the pilot, you have the woman in white telling sam, who has just left to go on a roadtrip with his brother, that he’s about to be unfaithful to jess; even if this could technically be said to be about the fact she then attempts to assault him (tho that doesn’t really fit with woman in white lore?? she goes after people who have already cheated…), it’s still portraying jess and dean as innately in opposition, just as jess has to die in order for sam to join dean. all the loaded lines about ‘the way they were raised’ - dean telling sam he can’t escape it. supernatural is clear: the rot is IN the family.

OF COURSE all of this can equally just be about familial abuse!! and IS about familial abuse!! but the way the story unfolds DOES position sam and dean in…. shall we say Roles. sam is the feminised ‘bitch’ to dean’s ‘jerk’; they’re mistaken for a couple in 1x08, in 1x18, in 2x16, in s8; they’re compared to bonnie and clyde, to mallory and mickey, serial killer lover duos. crowley tells dean, ‘you’re lying to sam like he’s your wife’. dean says, at a later opportunity, ‘what about sam? does he want a divorce?’. an ANGEL tells their HALF BROTHER that sam and dean are ‘psychotically, irrationally, EROTICALLY codependent’. dean himself is unable to name what’s between them, explicitly saying ‘love, family, whatever it is’ (which is just SUCH an odd line. Like it’s love and family between you two Dean is it not??? Why are you acting like neither of those words describe it???). then there’s the way jensen and jared act it, their physicality, eg. sam looking genuinely like he’s about to pull dean in for a kiss during playthings 2x16… i also find the whole ‘brothers don’t look at each other like that!!’ annoying, but tbh, they do give each other wild looks sometimes. the end of wendigo sticks out to me whenever i watch it as a genuine ‘why is jared/sam looking at jensen/dean like that… what possessed him…’.

wait another addition - when i first wrote this i also totally forgot about 4x14 sex and violence, which iirc has dean’s siren, originally described only in terms of sex/romance, literally telling him ‘i should be your little brother’. of course the concept of a siren that isn’t really about sex or even romance is really interesting and one valid reading - and also lends itself to a reading of dean as aro which i rly like. but i don’t think that reading is any more or less valid than the more obvious one. (irrelevant side bar but there’s a 2003 sociology book about sibling incest that i read for an essay on wuthering heights called ‘Siblings: Sex and Violence and that makes me go ??? every time i think about the episode. Literally what. That has to be a coincidence. But??)

i think in regards to why people ‘ship’ wincest, a lot of it is of course just that they just kind of See It, for whatever reason. whether it’s the thematic (which i talked on at length already sorry <3) or just the way they look at each other or just because jared and jensen are hot or just because they think it’s really interesting to explore an added dimension to sam and dean’s already messed up relationship. same with destiel, same with sastiel, same with whatever, like u said. shipping culture in general IS hugely amatonormative - people love to declare wide statements about what people who are In Love do and don’t do, which are always silly and shallow. partly why i don’t really consider myself as someone who ships things in general.

i also totally agree w u that only people within a relationship can determine what that relationship is. im not aro but i also really like the concept of relationship anarchy. however, when i see the incestuous subtext between sam and dean, it’s more in a media studies way than in a way of analysing their actual Relationship (though to be fair i’m not a wincest shipper); eg. asking the question why is their relationship portrayed ‘like that’, and what does that say about the themes of spn itself. also it is just an interesting concept to a lot of people.

TLDR the reason i can view sam and dean’s relationship as borderline incestuous isn’t due to their codependency, or dean’s intense possessiveness, or how close they are, or because they spend all of their time together, or because they’ve brought each other back from the dead multiple times and get suicidal without each other. this is even though in our society all that together IS often coded as romantic/sexual and is definitely acknowledged in that lens by the writers (hence constant comparison of them to married couples) - because it could also just as equally be completely platonic and completely insane and the result of the world’s worst trauma bond (the latter which it CERTAINLY is <3). when i talk abt canonical backing for their relationship as borderline incestuous, it’s more about the narrative framing and context surrounding it. at the very least, their relationship is ‘abnormal’, deviant (meant in the most literal meaning as an digression from social norms); different from accepted ‘sibling relationships’, pointed out by the characters around them. <- none of this makes any sense but its 3am and im on tumblr so its ok.

feel free to dm also if u want to or just send an ask back!! and also ofc feel free to argue with/disagree with me in any way u like. or ask wtf i mean by anything cause i talk too much. tbh from what u say it sounds like u just don’t really vibe with shipping culture in general (might be an assumption sorry if so) which i totally understand/agree w. but i hope i answered ur question in some way somehow

[dearweirdme]

Hey Rain,

I'm the anon who asked you if you recommend watching AYS. Well, I started watching it, and I'm so glad I did because it's so freaking hilarious. I'm kicking myself in the butt for not watching it when it first came out. I just started episode 6 but paused because I didn't want it to change my initial thoughts.

I apologize ahead of time if this is all over the place 🙃

So I've never been someone who has sat down and watched any of these series like BV, in the soop, docu series etc. Mostly because it's a bit pricey for me, so I usually just watch clips that I see on socials and call it a day. The reason I bring this up is because watching episodes 1-5 of AYS showed how out of context a lot of scenes are taken by shippers. And I can see why a previous anon said that after watching the show, they don't see anything romantic with jikook. For the most part, I agree with them. I tried to watch the show unbiased, and I will admit there were a moment or 2 that I could see why people ship them. With taekook, there were sweet moments but also moments that made me question the ship and that's why I'm here lol 😆

The main thing that stood out to me is that Tae seemed a bit disinterested the majority of the time. Did you also feel that way? It kinda irked me how at the start of Jeju they made it seem like Tae wasn't invited and was crashing their trip because they could've told him no. It sorts reminded me of when tae showed up during jungkook suchiwita episode. It also felt like Tae was third wheeling majority of the time and idk if it's because it's a jikook show and they wanted the main focus to be on them or if it's again that Tae was just disinterested. I would expect Tae to wanna be with JK but instead he would often go to bed early, on his phone, and then in the boat episode, he stayed on the boat instead of swimming with them plus they also had him on the other side fishing by himself. I would love to hear your thoughts on that.

But then there were also some really sweet moments, like when Jungkook told Tae that the trip was better because he was there. And so many more. There was one specific moment that did make me raise an eyebrow and would like to know your thoughts. I believe it was episode 5, JK says he's gonna go shower and then it cuts to Tae who's on his phone but quickly jumps out of bed takes his shirt off and goes to take a shower too. The door seems to be locked and even tho tae didn't knock it opens almost like JK was waiting for me him. Do you think that's the case? Could JK have texted him or am I reading too much into it?

Do you have any recommendations of other bts shows that you would say show more of taekooks relationship?

Hi anon!

A quick tip, I watched most of my BTS shows like BV and ITS on Dailymotion (which is free.. though the site is a bit annoying at times). I don't think everything is on there right now, but I only did a quick check.

Haha, I'm glad you're enjoying yourself! So, let me start that I feel there is no BTS show (not ITS, not BV, and not AYS) that gives you actual insight in Tae and Jk's relationship. In this context I think ITS's show them a bit more freely, but still with clear boundaries. But hey, they're not supposed to be shown like that. They are closeted. Each show has it's cute moments. BV 1 has Jk getting into Tae's bed and hugging him while going back to sleep.

Bon Voyage 2 has them talking about wanting to live in Hawaii subtly.

Bon voyage three is Jk scheming to get Tae to share his room (ignore the edit's btw, I'm just posting as an example).

Bon voyage 4 is possibly the least tkky? We got Jk buying Tae a jacket which was cute. And some background stuff.

The ITS's got more cuddly moments overall and felt a bit less structured to me. But still.. you can't say of any of these series that it's clear they are together. I always feel it's good (and fun) to watch because you get an overal feeling for how members interact and how these things are structured. And you know what you're talking about whne certain moments come up in fandom.

When it comes to AYS my headcanon is that Tae was indeed a bit uninterested and he joined mainly because it gave him an opportunity to be with Jk inbetween busy schedules. Something to take into account is that Tae was suffering from neckpains (which can get extremely annoying and give you headaches as well). We only see a tiny percentage of the time they spent there, so you can't really speak to how they spent most of their time. I truly enjoyed seeing them close and seeing them in sync so much.

The shower incident to me does look like Tae is waiting for the door to be opened from the inside. It would make sense to me that it was Jk inside.

[icryink]

Hi! Do you have written explanations for the Cringetober themes? I understand you already have made a video where you explain the themes but because English is not my first language it's sometimes hard to understand everything from just speech.

I didn’t until 2 minutes ago, but here they are!

screenshot redraw - something easy we have screenshot redraw, this can be from a TV show or cartoon or movie or whatever. you can replace the characters or just redo it in your own style

tsundere - a tsundere is the trope where a character, usually a girl, pretends to find their love interest annoying out of embarrassment for their crush

oversized prop - pretty straight forward. love a good disproportional hammer

fursona / fursuit - first bit of encouragement to explore outside 2D illustration. i know full suits are expensive, so let this be your sign to make or design a partial yourself out of whatever you have lying around; cardboard, fabric and wire, even paper. of course, you can stick to drawing your fursona

gjinka - it's a humanization of anything, whether that be a pokemon or other monster character, an animal, a concept or emotion like inside out, an object or even something like an app

unnatural eye color - fairly straightforward, character with weird eyes

crossover - characters from different media interacting with one another

dead meme - perfect opportunity for people like me who see a meme or trend going around and then, by the time they get around to it, its well run its course

childhood videogame - this can be any game you played when you were younger, but i was specifically thinking of stuff like pokemon, sonic, mario, minecraft, five nights at freddy's, or undertale

ship dynamics - a relationship dynamic or overused cliche

5+1 things - fairly common trope in fanfiction, it refers to a character or characters experiencing 5 similar events that all go roughly the same way, as well as another similar event that this time ends up pretty different. it can be happy or sad, and of course you can stick to a comic or illustration, but fanfiction or creative writing in general is often looked down upon, so i think y’all should at least try to write something

hatsune miku / vocaloid - any vocaloid, doesn’t have to be part of the main vocaloid suite. people make cool interpretations of hatsune miku’s design specifically, but you can do any character you’d like

rule 63 - for every male character, there exists a female counterpart, and for every female character, there exists a male counterpart. basically, genderbends

incorrect quote - you can depict a character (original or not) saying any kind of iconic quote that you think suits them

animation meme - most classic animation memes are actually really simple with somewhat jerky movements, which is ideal for those just starting animation. if you've always wanted to animate but the concept seemed too daunting, here's the opportunity for you! of course, you can just reference popular animation memes with a still image if you’d prefer

something you've been bullied for - there are a lot of things that are considered cringe that a person can't change about themselves, even if they want or try to. i didn't want to single out any specific insecurities, so i left it broad enough for it to apply to everyone. it's kind of like a free space to celebrate anything about yourself that you've felt ashamed of

f2u base - f2u stands for 'free to use', basically an empty sketch you can use to draw whatever characters you want. this can be interpreted as either making or using a free base, so do whichever one you'd prefer. if you're using a base, just remember to credit the original artist if you post it

Fandom AU - good simple fun. draw characters you like from a piece of media you like in any alternate universe you like

alternative fashion - your opportunity to experiment with a fashion style you've always thought was cool but were too nervous to try. alternatively, (haha) draw a character in alt fashion

tumblr sexywoman - a female character that is, for whatever reason, incredibly popular and found attractive

closet cosplay - build a cosplay using only things you already have in your closet! I wanted to encourage people to get into cosplay since it’s such a fun hobby

candygore - gory drawings that involve pastel colors and sometimes literal candy iconography

adult cartoons - cartoons intended for older audiences, ex. Hazbin Hotel, Smiling Friends, Amazing Digital Circus

niche interest - another free space that lets you make something relating to a pretty unpopular or not very well known thing that you really like

gacha life (I spelled it wrong on the list) - it’s a website where you can design characters and move them around and make up stories. it was super influential for a lot of artists

Y/N or Mary Sue - could be a male Mary Sue too. A very overpowered, perfect character. Alternatively, you can interpret this as literally “your name” and insert yourself into whatever media you want

YouTuber fanart - do some fanart for a YouTube channel you enjoy, whether that be for an art channel, a commentary or video game youtuber, or sketch comedy

mascot horror - anything relating to horror that involves cute marketable characters. FNAF, poppy playtime, Amanda the adventurer are all some examples

experimental makeup - trying out a makeup style that you haven’t done before. of course, if you aren’t comfortable wearing makeup, you can totally draw a character experimenting with their own makeup style

supernatural or monster character - demon, vampire, werewolf, fairy, or any monster type character you can think of

HALLOWEEN - anything spooky to celebrate Halloween!!

While I hope this compilation was useful, please remember that all the prompts are completely up to interpretation. There are no rules to Cringetober! Just do whatever you want and have fun :)

[elftwink]

does anyone else ever notice that often when discussing sustainable/environmentally friendly animal products, it's often phrased not about the thing itself but rather about how vegans should be advocating for the thing [implied: instead of advocating for avoiding animal products altogether]. and like im really uninterested in getting into the reasons why vegans should or should not advocate for specific things but the thing i ALWAYS think when i see this kind of rhetoric is: why can't you do it?

if you think thats a cause worth fighting for, you should fight for it, not point at a group who "should" fight for it based on your interpretation of their politics. people have never and will never do things because someone else feels they should. should is not a good foundation for real material change. like, why is it the job of vegans to advocate for various forms of farming that you think are ethical? who made it their job? you? why did you delegate something you clearly think is important to a group you clearly don't respect? and who gave you the right to delegate that anyway?

at the same time, i can't even really blame anyone for speaking this way because it is largely the only way anyone talks about this stuff. every post about leather includes a dunk on vegans. every post about honey includes a snide comment on how vegans are stupid for avoiding it, every post about plant agriculture being rife with exploitation has to have a quip about how vegans must not understand the reality of agriculture (notably absent in these posts is even the barest acknowledgement of the exact same issues in animal agriculture, but that would necessitate a conversation about food sovereignty and imperialism and colonialism, which frankly nobody wants to do for the same reason settlers throw temper tantrums at the idea that we shouldn't be able to get bananas year round for cheap. we would have to acknowledge how alienated those of us who benefit from imperialism really are from food production of all kinds, and how that alienation allows us to pretend at ethical food choices where few or none exist, or more frequently to completely ignore everything about the issue as out of our control, which reinforces the violent bloody status quo as 'just the way it is'. mocking veganism i think plays a major part in this— in order to maintain the belief that your food is ethical/that you're not responsible/that actually you deserve what you have in a way others dont/whatever, you do have to dismiss, in whatever way possible, the actions of those who disagree and are Doing Something. vegans arent exempt from this alienation of course, and sometimes i think we're getting close to exploring the topic when people discuss the marketing and greenwashing of "vegan" products, but i am always disappointed that's where the conversation ends. what is it about veganism that makes people so willing to discuss the ways that, for example, agave nectar is marketed and sold such that the people who buy it believe its sustainable and ethical when its not, but immediately shut down when the exact same conversation is had about beef? do you know where that cow lived? where it died? where it was butchered? packaged? shipped from? do you know LITERALLY anything at all about what happened to this meat before you bought it? if it's labelled as something specific [organic, grass fed, free range, etc] do you know what that means, if someone checks, and what standards they use? if not, in what way are you different from the vegan who buys agave nectar thinking its more ethical than honey because that's what the bottle says? you happen to know agave nectar is environmentally destructive and exploitative and get annoyed when this concern is dismissed, rightfully so, but then when the same scrutiny is applied to your eating habits suddenly its cringe? i'm not saying you need to know all this for everything you ever eat to discuss food production or even be critical of others choices, but i am saying you should take a moment to check if you can see through the walls of your own house before you start throwing stones). like ultimately dunking on vegans is The Way to get attention on these topics, so it is frustratingly common, even when bringing up veganism is a nonsequitor or actively impeding the argument being made

anyway. let's all take responsibility for our own beliefs and actions & next time you're asking yourself why xyz group isn't advocating for abc please STOP. and remind yourself you are a human being with agency and you can change the world around you with your actions, if even in a small way. if you think someone should be doing something, remember that you are someone, and you can do something. go forth and advocate for practices and policies you think are most just without simultaneously trying to offload the responsibility onto some nebulous other who should be doing it in your stead. assume they won't. it's up to you. it always was.

[dolphingirl1234]

its time for more headcanons yippeeee

this is kwazii if you couldn't tell

I forgot to make his eye green but we can imagine

also I think his hair would be more red but I couldn't find the right colour

anyway no one cares so here are the headcanons:

early-mid 20's

trans ftm

he/him

he is possibly the gayest person to ever exist

he has heterochromia, the covered eye is brown and the other is green

bright red hair that's always messy

so many freckles

ADHD and dyslexia - he loves to complain about how things are spelled

wears whatever he finds of his floor

he is convinced he can handle spicy things but he really cant

he is definitely lactose intolerant but refuses to admit it and eats dairy anyway

has really bad gender dysphoria and tweak is king when it comes to helping him with it

he definitely purrs like a real cat but you can only hear it if you're really close to him

everyone in the crew knows his deadname but they're all very careful to never call him that

forgets everyone's birthdays every year

he lives by the 5 second rule and eats shit off the floor

^^^tweak once paid him to lick sugar that shellington spilt on the floor (he did it)

he definitely uses all the hot water and everyone hates him for it

he gets attached to things very easily and has a hard time getting rid of anything even if its just a pretty shell or something

^^^he keeps all his random stuff in the treasure chest next to his bed and adds to it constantly

he sometimes sneaks into barnacles' room to play with his model ships

he didn't come out for ages. when he first joined the crew he had no medical files bc of his backstory (I'm not gonna get into that right now, long story short he was an orphan) so peso had to make one and he asked for kwazii's legal name and gender at birth so he was kind of forced to come out, but he came out officially to peso later.

tweak was the first person he told officially and she was so chill about it and helped him make a binder because he was literally using tape before

barnacles seriously tried to be chill about it but kwazii could tell he had questions and he happily answered them

he was terrified to tell inkling because old people old mindset but when he did tell him, inkling was so supportive and kwazii cried

as well as arachnophobia he's also scared of needles but he doesn't tell anyone

barnacles is his dad and his best friend at the same time

peso is his little brother and his best friend at the same time

he has mild ptsd from something in his childhood. it doesn't affect him that much but dashi has more severe ptsd and she helps him through it

he LOVES hanging out with dashi and tweak and they love hanging out with him

he is always included in boys night but is also accepted into girls night because if he annoys tweak enough she gives him a tool and he can break stuff

one Christmas the crew had saved up their money all year and payed for his top surgery. tweak secretly got a job doing online stuff for her family friend and payed over half of the cost. kwazii cried and hugged her which she loved but hated at the same time

he's English but the accent mixed with the pirate voice makes it come out australian

he's not allowed catnip for obvious reasons

he hates when people gender clothes but he will not under any circumstances wear a dress

tominnow is also trans (mtf) and they're besties

he hates that creatures are scared of him because he's a pirate and has even considered giving up being a pirate because of it, but he realised its a part of his identity and he didn't want to change it

he loves making bracelets for the crew and everyone wears them sometimes, but barnacles wears multiple every day

dashi crochets and kwazii steal her yarn balls and she gets super pissed at him

he loves calico jack more than he lets on and he misses him constantly. every time he visits kwazii dreads when he leaves

he definitely plays 2048 cupcakes

tweak is his comfort person but he often goes to barnacles as well

maybe I should write a fanfic of kwazii coming out to everyone that would actually be fun

anyway that's all for now I will hopefully be back with some peso hcs tomorrow

[theguardianace]

Can I politely ask you to elaborate on the Aroace Nene fic you talked about some time ago? Or just simply how you see her in your brain after finding out she's aroace? If it's not much to ask, of course

OMG YES YES YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! absolutely. i will ramble about aroace literally anybody on the drop of a dime this is one of the best anons to get actually

nene's story is actually the one i have the least about, to be perfectly honest. i have a plot for both emu and tsukasa's stories, but haven't quite figured out one for nene. honestly, i think nene's the type of aroace to not really... care about it that much. she'd never cared about love or romance to begin with, so when she realized it was because she was aroace, it was mostly like "hm. cool. im gonna go play animal crossing now".

as for finding out... i think it would have happened in middle school, back when she was Online Gamer Nene TM full time. with how much she loves games and storytelling, it really only makes sense she'd want to engage with fandom content like fics. however, just... seeing the way people sexualize her favorite characters, or only write/draw shipping content... she didn't care for it. she didn't want to engage with that. not that there was anything wrong with it! people can do whatever they want with fictional game characters. she just. didnt care about it herself. which led to her feeling even more isolated even within her favorite hobbies. i think this would sort of lead her to playing a variety of games so she doesn't have to worry about getting absorbed in fandoms she doesn't care to be a part of. she still checks, every once in a while. for games that she really likes. i think its through this that she eventually stumbles across a popular aroace headcannon, goes "what", googles it, and is like "wow. thats me. sick". and then moves on

but like. even when she's moved on. it's still really nice to know, yknow? it explains why she felt like the odd one out not wanting to ship stuff, or even care to entertain it. there's people out there just like her. it makes her less anxious, a little more sure of herself.

she doesn't ever tell anyone. not even rui. (i mean, they hadn't talked in ages. how is she supposed to? "hi, we havent had a genuine conversation in years, how are you? by the way i discovered im aroace and you probably don't know what that means and honestly i dont really care about it myself. have a good day".) (and once they do start talking again, it just... never came up. she never felt the need to, and he never felt the need to ask.) until my epilouge chapter where they all end up coming out like WHAT WERE ALL AROACE THATS SO SILLY anyways

in casual life, i think nene would have been the type for adults to go "oooh, you have a crush on him, don't you? look at you, all red and shy just thinking about him" when shes simply Just Like That. it was really annoying. she knew she didn't like them like that and that was that. but shes too scared to say that so she just took it. definitely didn't help the "nene needs to learn how to make friends" department. honestly, her only relief from it was with rui- both her parents and the kamishiro parents recognized that the two really did care about each other, but it wasn't like that. also no way in hell they're ruining the one friendship their kids have.

later with emu, i don't think there was any point where people even considered a romance, at least not at first glance. it wasn't like people at school even knew about emu (minus when she snuck in, but why would this hyperactive pink thing be looking for that shy second year?). and people walking the streets didn't really assume they liked each other like that since they were two girls. nene's mom was a little curious if they were dating since emu comes over so often and is so physically affectionate, but she never really pressed. she was mostly just happy nene has friends over that aren't just rui. (also, emu's aroace too, so nothing in her demeanor even made nene consider it could have been romantic. shes just Emu.)

for tsukasa, it's a similar thing. by the time people have realized the two are friends, nene's confident in herself and her feelings enough to shut down the people who would even dare assume she likes a buffoon like that star in that way. there's those people that go "oh but you're mean to him and girls are mean to boys when they have a crush on them" but she's tough enough to go "ew" and move on. (she did complain about it a little to rui on a walk home once. if he ended up in her classroom the next day to "grab her for lunch" and weaponize his dangerous reputation to intimidate them when she wasn't looking, it was sheer coincidence.)

also, i think out of the four, nene falls most on the loveless scale. tsukasa, emu, and rui are all beings made of love despite the fact they don't fall in it. nene's a bit different. she cares about her friends, and she's super good at making them (despite what she thinks), but she doesn't really... love them. not in the ways people usually want to describe love. she would kill a man for them in a heartbeat, don't get me wrong. she just experiences those sorts of feelings differently. it's care, and determination, and hope, and happiness, but not... love. not completely.

anyways aroace gamer nene so real fic will happen once i figure out how to tie these ideas to a plot 👍

[lackablazeical]

AISJDIXJJDJ I DID NOT EXPECT THE BEGINNING OF THAT COMIC- Donnie was 100% in love with the uranium and not Gloob at the beginning tho

Ok I know its only been a while since I made Gloob, but I actually gave her lore this time and her design’s changed. (although she still contributes little to nothing for the au)

So most of Gloob’s lore is just lore comes from lore about her species because I cannot resist species lore. Basically, her species is very loosely based off of hagfish in real life, and dragons and their greed and hoards. Her species, woobers (Im not good at naming things) are these deep sea yokai that live in brine pools at the bottom of the ocean of the hidden city. Idk if you have planned lore for the hidden’s city ocean, but if this does interfere with your established lore, these yokai live in mytsic brine pools in the surface ocean instead. Brine pools are these pools of toxic brine in depressions on the ocean floor. There are only around five, more or less, known animals that can anter brine pools unharmed. This includes hagfish :3

So hidden city brine pools are considerably more dangerous because of the mystic magic that corrodes even metal (unless it has special mytsic properties). Woobers are unaffected by brine pools and live in these pools, and this is because they secrete gooey mucus thats similar, but not 100% to the brine in the brine pools. This mucus serves as an armor that makes sure their skin is unharmed by the brine (and even if they loose the mucus, they’ll only get ill and won’t die. tho being ill frine brine pool toxicity is still very painful and a woober will only be cured once it stays out of direct contact with brine for some time depending on how bad the sickness got) This mucus is sensory hell, imagine low quality shitty slime mixed with the texture of liquid snot and theres a lot of it. And see those little glowy dots all around the body? Those are eyes. The flowy tendrills are also antennae used to detect movement using electromagnetic fields. The ones with little mini spines at the ends are stingers that contain venom that can paralyse and/or numb depending on the dosage. As for the mouth, the teeth are located inside on the cheeks, which are turned outwards like shown in the img when they are eating something. This is so the flaps of skin the teeth are attatched to can move around to kind of cage and hook onto whatever the woober is eating then pull it in their mouth.

Woobers also naturally love treasure, or anything they consider treasure. Whatver a woober considers treaure differs from individuals, but the one thing certain is that a woober will hoard their treasure and keep it safe and secure in a cave in the brine pools. To further secure their treasure hoards, they put special mytsic seals on it unique to each woober. These seals can only be opened by the woober that made it, and can only be permanently destroyed from the inside of the barrier made by the seal.

Some woobers love treasure so much, they go out of their natural habitat to the surface and attack pirate ships for their treasure. This used to happen so often in the past that woobers were a well known threat by pirates, but this backfired when pirates began learning how to kill them or even negotiate/team up with them. Now, woobers are a rare and endagered yokai, and the ons that remain are never seen above the surface. Until Gloob was born and decided human technology was her special treasure after finding a lost nokia at the bottom of the ocean. Now, she uses her treasury to store both her treasure and the stuff she sells to buy more human technology.

Also yes, half her arm is missing because of Donnie. He’s banned from all her sales, less because he chopped her arm off and more because he didn’t pay for the uranium. She’s also annoyed that he basically got a free sample of her venom by taking her arm without paying. She likes money if you can’t tell.

Idk what else to do with her so like, do whatever you want with the gloober woober

She's so silly. Such a freak. Smooch smooch she's the only one with fashion sense god bless her