#and post it on their social media. and i agreed because yay someone likes my art ^W^

[museganjin]

edit: eye design on the pin is based off of this video tutorial by yurie sekiya, creator of pero pero sparkles.

[yourpintilts]

Only Friends and Genre Theory

Well - I guess I'll start this blog off with post about everyone's (my) favorite series (it literally has not aired yet) of 2023: Only Friends.

Recently, the nominees for the ContentAsia awards were released, and my friends and I were celebrating the nomination of The Eclipse for Best LGBTQ+ Show (yay!) when a really interesting topic arose. Someone pointed out that Jojo Tichakorn's Never Let Me Go was chosen over The Warp Effect, which they felt was his better work in 2022. Regardless of your opinion on that (though, I agree), we wondered if The Warp Effect is even eligible at all. Of course, the category is LGBTQ+ Shows, but every single nominee is a BL.

I've noticed, in my perusing of BL Twitter and Tumblr that most fans seem to differentiate between BL, lakorns/dramas, and the LGBTQ+ genre, but nobody seems to define them. They are designating the genre by, for lack of a better word (although I consider it pretty accurate), the vibes.

I've seen the off-handed "I wonder what genre it will be" or "It seems like Jojo is leaning away from BL with this series" comment more than once about Only Friends. And really, it's hard to say at all when all we have is a trailer and cryptic social media posts from the cast and crew, but, uh, I'm gonna try. Sort of.

So, let's get into it: Is Only Friends going to be a BL, drama, an LGBTQ+ show, or something else entirely?

Alright, before we get into trying to put a label on the series, let's talk about the labels themselves: it's Genre Theory time!

So, what is genre? Well, most of us would consider it to be the category that we put a type of media or art into: country music, romance novels, etc. Genres help us differentiate amongst the huge sea of art, find patterns and create links between work, and, most practically, help us decide if we will likely enjoy something or not.

Normally, it's not much more complicated than that. Sci-fi, drama, noir, biography - each of these gives you a basic idea of what you're getting into, what tropes you might expect, or how you might feel while consuming it. But film theorists will be film theorists, and it's not actually that simple.

Let's take the horror genre as an example. At its face, we define films as horror because they follow certain tropes and patterns: things like jump scares, the final girl, dark and saturated style, slashers and paranormal, etc. But what about movies like Parasite or Get Out? These films rely less on jump scares and physical horror - it's their concepts themselves that are so scary. And so this is where sub-genres come in, in which Parasite and Get Out are labeled as psychological horror to further define them. And then there are films that just... don't seem to be anything at all. Something like (because I recently watched it) In Bruges, which mixes crime, drama, and comedy, but also never fully leans in to any of them. It sort of defies genre altogether.

So, that's the gist of genre theory. Basically, the point is that sometimes you can put a film or other piece of art in a category, and sometimes you can't.

But, let's be honest. We don't care about other movies. Let's talk about sexy, spectacular, groundbreaking masterpiece that will be Only Friends, and how we can apply genre theory in order to try to figure out what label best fits.

There are several different indicators of a BL, and Only Friends does fit some of them:

Most straightforwardly: the primary story in a BL is a relationship between two male characters. Of course, in this case there are six male leads (and who knows how many different pairings... TopSan, NickSan, RayBoston, and more have their advocates, some even seem likely), but the point is that the series is focused on their relationships together. Along with this, two of the three primary couples - ForceBook and FirstKhaotung - featured in the show are official pairings at GMMTV. BLs nearly always feature couples who have worked or will work together in multiple shows.

The series is also being produced by GMMTV, a company well-known for its stake in the BL genre, and it follows the logistical style of a 12-episode limited series.

But in several other ways, the show is in direct opposition to many of the components of BL. Some may not be intentional, or hard and fast "rules," but they occur so often that they are undeniably associated with BL as a genre.

As mentioned above, two of the lead couples are official pairings, but the other isn't. In fact, Neo and Mark both auditioned for their roles in Only Friends, and Director Jojo Tichakorn has spoken about his intention in casting them: to divert the expectation of clear masculine/feminine and top/bottom roles in queer relationships. The "seme" and "uke" trope, designating who gives and receives sexually (and usually indicating personality and relationship dynamics), has been pervasive in BL. It panders to the homophobic notion that queer relationships must still follow heteronormative standards. With NeoMark - and, as I believe, with all of the relationships in the series - Jojo will subvert that standard.

Also, Only Friends has a not insignificant amount of openly queer people writing, directing, etc. for the show. This certainly isn't the first time this has happened, but since BL began as a genre made by women and for women, Only Friends seems determined to be a series by queer people and for queer people.

And, because we've already established genre is not black and white, there are other aspects of Only Friends that blur the lines of its BL status. Only Friends seems to be much darker, grittier, and realistic the typical dramedy BL. We already know we will see smoking, drug use, sex, cheating, and according to Jojo, this is only scratching the surface. But, of course, the BL genre has evolved as of late, giving us shows like KinnPorsche, which also delve into such topics. So, while BL is largely more comedic and lighthearted, a darker series still can fit the genre.

Of course, there are many other characteristics of BL that Only Friends exhibits and opposes - I could be here forever if I wanted to list every single one, but we have less than a week until episode one, and personally, I want to watch the trailer a thousand more times before Saturday. So hopefully these examples gave you enough of an idea that Only Friends sort of straddles the line of BL (but also that BL itself is incredibly difficult to define, especially as it continues to evolve).

What about the LGBTQ+ genre - can Only Friends better be defined by this? Likely, yes, but my answer is so because the LGBTQ+ genre itself is even vaguer than BL.

(Some even argue that it isn't a genre at all. That's a post for another time.)

Shows labeled as LGBTQ+ are often done so because of a few defining characteristics, usually occurring at the same time: the show features LGBTQ+ characters, depicts LGBTQ+ themes (coming-of-age, acceptance, found family, etc), and is broadly accepted as such by the queer community. Only Friends certainly does the first two, but the third might be a bit trickier than it seems. With the divide between the LGBTQ+ and BL genres, some audiences will argue it fits one over the other.

And perhaps there are some important differences: the LGBTQ+ genre exists on an international scale, with media added to the queer canon from all over the world. Comparatively, I'm not sure I can think of a show outside of Asia that has been labeled as a BL. The LGBTQ+ genre does tend to be more diverse in gender and sexuality than the typical gay male leads in BL, too - BL does stand specifically for Boys' Love while LGBTQ+ encompasses any form of queerness.

But if we're focusing on these standards, I think Only Friends checks these boxes as well. The show seems to clearly be a test for a less conservative international market. And it is more diverse than just gay male leads; Namchueam is sapphic, Jojo has indicated that Ray is bisexual, and Yo is played by Jennie, a trans woman. Sure, there can always be more diversity, but this is absolutely a step forward compared to past, and many current, GMMTV series.

After positioning Only Friends next to the BL genre, then the LGBTQ+ genre, I would love to be able to make a judgment and wrap this all up in a neat little bow.

Actually, that's a lie. I don't want to do that - I am the complicated film theorist I was talking about before. So, it's a good thing I can't, isn't it?

Ultimately, Only Friends is a show that is here to break boundaries, to subvert expectations, to give us something we've never seen before in Thai, or maybe even international, entertainment. It would be an injustice to the series to try to put it in a box, to ignore its little nuances out of convenience.

It doesn't matter whether Only Friends is a BL or LGBTQ+ drama. We should be looking at the show holistically, taking it in as it is rather than through the lens of the things we come to expect from a specific genre. Genre can be useful, yes, but we can't get too held up on applying it where it may not be productive.

And yet (plot twist!), it sort of... does matter? It matters, not in the sense of changing what the show is, but changing the way we perceive and discuss it. The implications that come with a BL series are different than those of an LGBTQ+ series, even though both genres are difficult to define and are ever-changing.

The conversations we have about how innovative Only Friends is, its place in Asian versus international culture, whether it can be considered a success or not, if it's "good" representation and who gets to decide that... all of that is a product of the genre we label a series with. And I'm not really here to argue whether that is a good or a bad thing; like I said, genre can be useful, and fun - there's a reason specific genres remain popular! What I hope this post sparks is external and internal conversation about why we label, and how that might do a service and/or disservice to the media we engage with. Think about the way that you, personally, want to interact with Only Friends and shows like it, accept it, and then challenge it.

[fainthedcherry]

TIIIIME for another new post!! YAY!!! This is a new character of mine, Noodlebeard The Dreaded! I got into Deep Rock Galactic, due to a person IRL, who was obsessed with the game, just like I became so!

This is a coloured in doodle (don't rlly wanna call it shaded, as it was a lazy 2 hr job unlike my actual shading taking me days), it shall be a commission example for this year's revamp of the sheet I'm working on, between some other projects! I've gotten a new paint-skin in the game, so Noodlebeard's gear is purple now but..I STILL am also attached to his Santa-look. 🤣 But yeah, I might follow up my DRG posts with another commission example, but that one's ACTUALLY shaded in like 4 hrs instead LOL, WE GETTING FASTER BOIS.

--

I was surprised, at the super warm welcome in the official game's server, as the player who got me into the game, was super competitive, toxic, and didn't let me have fun. (We made up lately but agreed to not play the game together anymore as our play styles are vastly different)

The game has so much charm, man. I got it at a discount and thanks to my friend Hart, for commissioning me to get it (ALSO post inbound, that one's also from like..June/July of this year), but this game should've deserved my full money ngl. I plan to buy all the cosmetic DLCs, once I'm financially stable in a good bit. The devs deserve my money. For creating this amazing comfort-game of mine, and the positive and supporting community it created.

The moment I posted my sketch of him in the server, by request of the strangers I was playing with (the drawing was also my Discord pfp at the time btw), I got HELLA recognition some damn how. The thing is- I'm used to my art getting overlapped and drowned. Every time I was in a discord server with an art section, I was usually ignored and basically spat at, if not for one person who'd usually actually pay attention to me and my art, and made my whole day with being so kind to do so. ANYWAY. TANGENTS. GOD. So I've drawn my dwarf (version with my beloved little femboy dwarf peaking out on the right) and added, that I was working on renewing commissions, and- I had an AVALANCHE of interest. Which was WHACK?? Because like I said- I wasn't used to recognition. I'd usually be ignored in communities. So this was really surprising. I cannot thank the community enough, for making June/July a month, where I actually was a happy person for a bit. Like genuinely happy, out of the depression-hole I was dealing with at the time happy, happy I was alive happy. That indescribable happy.

I can't WAIT to draw his family, his teammates and develop the lore in my own universe, to connect to the lore of the game!! He might just be my favourite fandom character now, beside Pierrce,, (might post about Monster High too, don't you worry, the few people who actually wanna see my art LOL)

SO YEAH. HAVE A GOOD EVENING TO THOSE IN MY TIMEZONE AND ENJOY ARTE. I scheduled another post for tomorrow, so you're getting the luxury of 2 posts in a week! Or was it 3? BUT ANYWAY YOU'RE GETTING MY ART!!! I'm starting to get comfy on Tumblr so,, I can't wait to share my art in time in the future, instead of holding off for months due to my mental health! <3, Promise I'll also post eventually on InkBlot again, as mentioned, having several social medias is really hard for someone like me!!

Btw get ready to see him more often, as I loved drawing him LMFAO.

ROCK AND STONE MINERS!

[jayflrt]

Ok I’m going on anon because I’m pretty supportive on SMAU posts and I have been reading awhile. The author of that post talks about specifically Asian women, however in my time reading fic across multiple kpop and pop culture fandoms,I have seen white, black, latinx, desi, east/west asian face claims (yay diversity I guess?) though specifically east asian women are used as face claims more in kpop fics (not always though, I have seen the whole spectrum). I think you’re right that using someone’s face is a little touchy. And yes. For kids—minors in general—that’s a full on no. You can post a pic of baby shoes or something. There are plenty of free/no copyright/fair use photos online of like a smaller kid hand holding and bigger hand or something like that where it’s an image intended for use in multiple ways and no one’s identity is compromised.

I know a lot of kpop fics and other genres use either female kpop idols or actresses as their face claim as well. I kinda feel like that’s maybe less problematic? (Especially since we are already using the male kpop idols as face claims and name claims for what are technically our OCs) Those are public figures and their images are publicly shared to promote content and content creation. I guess I’m saying an author could always use like one of the NewJeans girls as a face claim. I mean if I was writing a SMAU about Karina then maybe I would use Sunghoon or Hee as a face claim (no idol shipping for me—strictly face claim). So I guess I’m saying if an author is wanting to use a face then…maybe just use another idol? Or an actress? Though some people make the same argument about influencers. That they can use their images because they are also posted online for a large audience? I personally don’t know where the line is (except with kid’s faces—that’s a clear no) and since I don’t write SMAU… But if I did… I would probably use a kpop idol or an actress as my face claim—IF I even chose to have one. (I know some people get really touchy about face claims in general though because…I mean no matter who your face claim is—even if it’s a pic of YOU the author—putting a specific face and a body to yn is less ‘reader insert’ for some readers. I mean it has never bothered me one bit, even in writing if there are distinctive features described—to me it’s just a story—but some people do get truly upset.)

i'm the author of that post just to clarify!! i just screenshot that from my twitter, but that's very true there's definitely more diversity in the face claims people use out there, i just think east asian face claims are more widely used in kpop and anime spaces maybe 🤧 diversity rep is great i just wish we could move towards more faceless ones?? idk just publicly posting people's faces in certain contexts just feels a little like an invasion of privacy but i'm sure people feel different ways toward that

and i agree in the context of smaus i think it makes more sense to use an idol/celebrity as a face claim !! i sort of see face claims as like casting someone in a role, so it makes more sense to use actors/idols who are already in the spotlight and have their pictures spread on the internet because their career depends on exposure and publicity (unless of course said actor/idol has stated that they don't want their face being used for such things). i was referring to a different sort of fic actually (not smaus) but yeah smaus could be a gray area too and i feel like the same rules should apply. i've read plenty of twitter social media aus where no selfies/pictures are used at all even from the idol and they've been some the best smaus i've read

children/babies are a hard no for me :( there's just so many ways to go about it without inserting a child's face,, so i rlly don't get it !! oh yes i've never exactly cared about how a reader insert looks because i always just imagine a character anyways but the privacy issue of whoever's the face claim is my main concern with it 🧎‍♀️

[ask-asexual-crystal-gems]

I appreciate the gesture but (oops here’s another spicy take) the overall point is I think (1) normalizing or endorsing surgeries in all but the most desperate situations is not a very good idea. I don’t experience strong dysphoria, and my mental health is not especially endangered by it, therefore taking on physical risks up to and including death is not within my personal aims nor my beliefs for the direction of humanity at large.

(2) There are also many individuals in the VoidPunk umbrella whose ideal forms are not human or not even physical at all. Therefore this reasoning applies to those types of ‘dysphoria’ (may have a different name idk) no matter what surgeries did and didn’t exist. I didn’t think of that ideal myself but lately I’m starting to agree with it, too. Makes a lot of sense for asexuals who experience ‘mirror shock.’

Oh and concerning (1) also, it seems that binary trans people who experience strong dysphoria lean towards endorsing any and all surgeries, which I’m skeptical of. And the general culture of lgbt is following suit. I’m not proposing top-down gatekeeping like transmeds do ofc, just talking about social interactions and decision-making. Like, giving unquestioned approval of someone who’s considering it or responding ‘yay’ to a social media post about getting a low-stakes surgery who’s stated it is such. (if they haven’t indicated personal info such as level of dysphoria, are keeping it to themselves, best to remain agnostic on it)

(Removing nipples would also be a huge leap that I don’t think current society would be ready for. If you wanted to endure a bunch /more/ interrogation or weird looks et al then go for it ig. It wouldn’t be like current passing or presenting. They’d at best assume it was from cancer, I guess.)

The thing is, (3) body positivity is about gradually developing the awareness to interrogate bad thoughts we have about our body and not taking them as gospel truth, and that conversation is healthy and sprouting among fat or obese people, people who don’t fit beauty standards, but suddenly hits a wall when the notion of gender is inserted. Which is particularly baffling to an agender person ig, because we’re on the outside looking in.

*Alloromantics talking about romance

Me, an aro: god make it stop

*Allosexuals talking about sex

Me, an ace spec repulsed person: god shut upppppp

*Gendered people discoursing enndddlesssly about gender which is so abstract

Me, agender: why. Just why.

(which is far more common in the ace community)

(I was gonna wait to post this until we found out whether Trump was thwarted in the election, but @galaxy--ace put out a call for spicy takes, and mentioned something very similar, so I guess here we go…)

*conventionally trans people waxing poetic about their ideal body and bemoaning the one they have

Me, agender: My ideal form is genital-less and maybe not even physical. I can’t transition to that. Oh, you can transition but are still complaining and not contemplating body positivity or body neutrality? Hm. I’m sure the people or teens you’re mentoring and those you’re socially influencing will benefit from that discourse omission.

*alloplatonic people talking about friendships

Me, an aplatonic(?): Yes. Yes that right there. Good shit. Keep going. More! Morrrre!!!! I have so much vicarious fun watching you do something despite the fact I don’t much seem to be interested in such.

*goes back to watching shows about various careers and stuff I’d never do

*returns

Wholesome! Nom nom! Feed me!

[cinnamonest]

Yandere Profile - Izuku Midoriya/Deku (BNHA/MHA)

I'm showing up in tags again yay! Time to repost this

Finally I am dishing out MHA content and kicking off with one of my favorite boys nice

TWs: Fem!Reader, Yandere, kidnapping, delusional mindsets, infantilization, mentions of violence/mutilation, mentions of murder, mentions of fake suicide, n//s//fw themes/mentions/brief content, mentions of virginity/sex shaming, dark content, mentions of a high school setting

TWs (n//s//fw section/below the cut): noncon, brief dealing with/mentions of past sex trauma, generally depraved/dark content, pain content, infantilization What are they generally like? Lucid, aware? Obsessive? How do they behave?

High key delusional. (I think everyone I've seen in the yan bnha community agrees on this lmao.) But really, he acts that way because he's not naturally that way - he has to make an active effort to lie to himself and to you in order to believe his delusions.

Obsessive. I mean, look at what this boy does to his heroes. You bet he has an entire notebook dedicated to your existence. It starts off simple, an entry regarding your quirk if you have one, or perhaps he feels compelled to write a simple entry about someone he met if you don't. Gradually it turns into a log of all his encounters with you, his observations of your day, his thoughts about you, a strict schedule of what you do. The things you do while he watches - you KNOW the boy is a stalker. He has a folder in his phone gallery of just quick snaps he's taken of you walking around, smiling, laughing, looking at your phone, lots of pictures from the back, sleeping at your desk, and a few more risky ones. The time he accidentally walked into the wrong shower room after a class and just happened to catch you getting out of the shower. Slightly blurry pictures through the window of the girls dorm of you getting dressed, laying in bed, sitting at your desk doing homework. Dark, barely visible images of your sleeping form just barely illuminated by moonlight. You really ought to lock those windows.

He's on the border where he's just comfortable enough to talk to you, but far too nervous to ever confess, or spend as much time with you as he'd like. Of course, preferably he could spend every waking moment by your side, but, he's aware enough to know you need space. He's fine with that. He's technically with you anyway, you just don't know it. And really, he likes stalking, genuinely. He likes the feeling of knowing you're unaware of his presence, the thrill of risk and the giddy satisfaction he gets knowing this is your candid, non-performing self, he can see what you're really, truly like when you think you're alone, and it's just so cute.

Particularly for a quirkless, civilian darling, or if darling's quirk has no combative purposes, he'll be much more protective. He's one to have the delusion that you're too fragile for the world, and that you're inevitably bound to get hurt, it's not safe out there. You're like a little kitten, one that's just a little too curious for her own good, doesn't know how big and bad the world is, how people who want to hurt her are out there. Kittens stay inside all day where they belong, safe to be the soft little housepets they are.

History/info stalker as well. He will find out everything about your past and you in general - memorize things like your height, birthday, grades, blood type, etc. Will also deep-dive through any social media you have, even managing to find anonymous ones, probably by sneaking through your phone as your sleep. He'll learn about your family, how well they treat you, gauges how hard they'll search for you. He'll want to know about any history you have regarding relationships and sex, too. He'll be disappointed to learn you've ever been with and done things with someone else, but that's ok. Everyone makes mistakes, and he can forgive that.

Massive savior complex. This goes double if he did save you from a situation -- he's literally your hero. And he expects that you should at least be grateful enough to acknowledge that. If your family or boyfriend or past boyfriends were abusive or unkind in any way, if you were generally struggling in school or work, if you had any sort of bad life, it will also emphasize this, and he feels he saved you from all of that, and is giving you a better life. And he'll remind you, frequently.

How likely are they to kidnap their darling? How quickly will they do so?

Inevitable, but he's a planner and he takes some time. He's smarter than he seems and he will formulate an extensive plan. If we're talking senior Izuku, well, he's limited, as he only has the dorms and his old apartment where his mother lives. He's likely to wait it out until post-graduation, wait until he gets his own place, which will now be as soon as possible. Whenever you plan to start university or hero work or whatever, well, you'll never actually make it there.

As for how, it depends on your trust. If he's managed to get close to you as he hopes to, at least to the point of friendship, he'll likely just invite you over, one last time before you go your separate ways in life. You walk right into your own imprisonment, not thinking anything is off when he locks the door behind you. If not, if he was never that close to you, or you turn down his offer, well, he'll just do it the old fashioned way. You're a naive little thing, and you'll inevitably be walking by yourself at night at some point for whatever reason, and he knows how to make chloroform. He may look small-ish, but he has a deceptive strength even without the use of OFA, you can't actually hope to overpower him. If he can't catch you out walking, well, once again, you really ought to lock those windows.

Now, a hero Deku, a few years into his 20s and quickly gaining popularity, that sees some poor little civilian getting hurt, he'll just use the excuse of taking you to get help. Clearly you've suffered a concussion, you're not in your right mind, and if you pick up on what's going on and try to call for help, he'll just say so to passersby. People have no reason to distrust him, he's a well-reputed, extremely popular hero, he would never harm someone. So when he says he's just taking you to get medical assistance, no one bats an eye.

How difficult is it to escape from them? How do they keep you restrained? How do they deal with attempted escape? 

Like some of my previous yans, he's one that will intentionally set up escape opportunities just to see how well your conditioning is going. Leave the door unlocked, but sit and wait outside. Make the bonds just a little bit too loose to see if you wiggle out of them. Leave things that could be used as lockpicks to see how smart you are. It's all a test, though, don't worry. He'll be waiting right outside to make sure you don't actually end up going out into the world and getting yourself hurt. He'll be disappointed in you, but don't worry, he's not too mad - it's just his way of knowing you don't understand yet.

Generally, it's tight security. He's one to invest in electronic security -- a shock collar, tracking anklets, cameras that sense motion, a bracelet that tracks your heartbeat, and all of which send him notifications to his phone if anything is out of the ordinary. The cameras he'll be able to watch a live stream of at any time - he's gotten to where he eats lunch alone in his office so that he can just kick back and watch you.

Now, he has something of an urge to show you off, he would love nothing more than for the world to see what a cute little wife he has, but he restrains this urge for your safety. He has a lot of enemies, and he can't have them knowing about his weakness, he can't stand the thought of you getting hurt because of him. So don't expect to even have anyone who knows about you to rely on.

As for attempts... Should you manage to get through all his measures, well, clearly that means they weren't enough. He's another yandere that, you probably shouldn't try unless you are one hundred percent certain you'll succeed, because if not you likely won't get another chance. Security measures will bump up, and he'd likely implant something in you - a tracking chip beneath the skin, deep enough you can't hope to cut it out. That way, even if you get out into the city, he can easily find you and save you again. If you seriously manage to escape for a while, he doesn't handle it well emotionally, to be honest, he might get pretty upset, but again, everyone makes mistakes, so if you apologize -- and you will, even if he has to resort to unpleasant measures to force one out of you -- he'll forgive you.

How easy are they to trick, deceive, or manipulate?

Izuku is significantly smarter than he seems, much like his strength. Despite his deluded nature, he still recognizes that, since she's too dumb to comprehend her own safety, she's likely to try and pull tricks to get back out of her cage. He's perceptive and can read facial expressions and tone of voice very well, so if you're a good liar there's about a 75% chance he'll pick up on it -- anything else and he definitely will.

He's likely to go along with it, just to expose your lies or plan in the end. He likes giving you the humiliation because it will hopefully make you even less likely to do it in the future.

How lenient are they? What privileges can you have, and what will you be denied?

Izuku goes out of his way to keep you well-entertained, but it's all very... infantilizing. For example, he gets you streaming services and the like, but puts parental content locks on everything so you basically can only consume extremely g-rated type of content. He doesn't want you watching anything violent, or dirty or vulgar, it's not suiting such an innocent little thing. He won't even let you watch the news, unless occasionally forcing you to watch something that he knows is being aired about him, in which case he wants you to see so you're reminded of how good he is. He'll also be able to see your search history, and know if you tried to look up anything he wouldn't approve of, especially things like lockpicking or "how to disable human shock collar," you know, that sorta thing. Or more... adult things, which are also blocked. Besides, you have him, you don't need that.

He'll let you cook, but only in his presence, can't have you getting hurt without him there to fix it. You'll probably start off restrained to a bedroom -- a very heavily safety-proofed one -- in the beginning, gradually earning the privilege of going to other rooms once you've proven you can be trusted.

He'll also really try to get you almost anything you want, really. Clothes, books, hobby supplies, anything he thinks will make you happy and adjust more easily. You can use this to your advantage, really, if you're willing to settle in for your new lifestyle.

What kind of rules do they have? What kind of punishment would they use?

Of course, besides the obvious no escaping, no outside contact, and no attacking him, he's actually still got a lot of behavioral rules. Much like the content he allows you to consume, he expects the same from you -- no cursing, no drinking, no vulgarity. No handling knives while he's gone, and he'll know if you do, from the motion-sensing cameras that will alert him of your presence in the kitchen. He's one to humiliate you. Specifically, if you've proven you can't behave at all, or tried to really fight him, he'll get you a nice big cage to live in until you have learned your lesson. The kind they make for big dogs, short enough to force you on all fours, complete with bedding, a padlock, and a water bowl for you to drink from. You'll stay there until you can understand what you did wrong and are ready to grovel at his feet about it. During that time, he'll also ignore anything you say, acting like you're not there.

How do they deal with rivals, or perceived rivals? Will they get rid of them? Will they kill them themselves, or find another way?

He can't risk anything that would damage his reputation and career, so murder is off the table. Unless, of course, it's not murder, but rather a sort of, how do they call it... suicide by hero. There was no other choice, really. It's sad to have a kill on his record, but people understand that sometimes these things happen.

This changes if someone has hurt you in any way -- in that case, he's not hesitating to actually kill someone. The thought of someone hurting his little treasure is infuriating, not only at them, but at himself for not coming into your life and saving you sooner. He'll be sure they know exactly why they're dying, that they spend their last moments begging for forgiveness for what they did to you.

How easy is it to make them mad? What does their anger look like?

Easier than you'd think. Izuku doesn't like his delusions being challenged since, again, he has to put in effort to believe them in the first place. If you're being bratty and having tantrums he won't let it slide - even the slightest step out of line is dealt with to ensure you'll at least hesitate before doing it again. If you are the bratty type and blatantly go out of your way to defy him and his rules to his face, it's ground for immediate and pretty intense punishment. His anger is terrifying in its own way. He's beaming, grinning from ear to ear, talking to you so sweetly, but with just the most subtle underlying tone that lets you know he's furious. It's a warning voice, telling you to fix your attitude or else. He doesn't cease the babytalk or petnames when he's mad, it actually gets worse, it helps him contain his fury. But when you hear him say sweetheart in that quiet, sweet, but low voice you've come to recognize and immediately become afraid, he's pretty pleased when it reaches a point where that alone can shut you up. He believes there's a healthy degree of fear that pets should have of their masters.

The easiest and fastest way to set him off by far, though, even more than being mean or disobedient, is silent treatment. That sets him off unlike anything else, and is most likely to make him snap to actual, unrestrained anger, finally showing his true rage and snarling at you, grabbing you by the throat and lifting you off the ground. It will only last a few moments, though, before he comes back to his senses and lets go, apologizing, telling you he hates doing that, but you really seem to try to make him mad, sometimes.

So they see you as above them, beneath them, or equal to them?

He kinda bounces back and forth. He's a bit of a worshipper, telling you how beautiful and amazing you are and how he doesn't deserve you, really no one does, you're angelic, nearly a goddess - but at the same time, you're also his little kitten. A pet to be controlled because you don't know what's good for you. Kept away from a world hellbent on harming you. When you agree with him or do what he wants, it's the former. When you disagree with him, it's the latter, and he talks down to you like you're a child.

How determined are they for you to love them? How hard will they try to make it happen? Or are they content just having you?

He'll try until the day he dies. And try he does, very much so, always buying you gifts, telling you sweet things, reassuring you how much he loves you. Even if you show no sign of ever giving in, that doesn't deter him, ever the optimist. It can become infuriating... and maddening, slowly driving you to the brink of insanity. When it comes down to you trying to break him of his delusions versus him trying to break you into them... he will win, you will crack first. No matter how stubborn you think you may be, rest assured, he's even moreso.

Bonus: Is there anything that makes them unique, in comparison to other yanderes?

I have a unique little headcanon... he hints to someone about your existence, and will select someone as a back-up caretaker. See, he's worried about the possibility of being killed in his heroism, and what would happen to his poor little kitten then? It might be weeks before someone enters his apartment, and they would never understand -- they would think he did something wrong, they would try to recondition you to the world, sure they'd have good intentions, but they wouldn't realize they're making things worse for you. So, he gets a very trusted friend, someone he knows would understand and... perhaps whom he gets the feeling has a bit of the same tendencies as himself, and more or less tells them that if something should happen to him, they need to go to his place, because something very important to him is there. As jealous as the thought of someone else having you makes him, he can't bear the thought of you being released back into the world... and you're still in the denial phase, so you still act like he's a bad guy and all that, so you might tarnish his name and legacy with lies. He can't have that. So, after careful consideration, he picks someone to take over as your caretaker, should something happen. He would rather know you're in the capable hands of someone he trusts than left to starve in his apartment or thrown out into the world, even if it means someone else having you.

Maybe an odd choice, but I could see him going for Shoto on that one. His personality may be very different from his own, and he may not be as close to him as some others, but he senses they have the same... tendencies and inclinations (am I implying he's definitely a yandere too? Yes), and be trusts him to care for you but also be able to handle and tame you. And honestly? He's one person he knows without a doubt will actually prefer to follow through and have you rather than disregarding his wishes - anyone else, and he's got a little doubt they might just not understand the situation, not understand your unique case, and take you to the police or God forbid, just release you back into the world. He leaves a little note with you (making sure to detail how you can be hard to handle, be patient with her, ok?) and tells you that should anyone with this physical description (I mean, it's a pretty unique description, not too many people look like Shoto), ever come and tell you that he's gone, give them the note, and be nice to your new owner, he's sure he'll love you too. But never forget, he loved you more.

General perverseness: how sexual of a person are they? What’s their drive like? How touchy do they get? Do they have any reservations about sexuality?

Horny lil thing. His stalking tendencies result in a lot of perverted shit -- stealing your clothes, jerking off to all those pictures of you he's taken, putting hidden microphones in your room so he can hear when you're touching yourself. He's got a high drive, and jerks off quite a bit. Watching you in class often leads to his thoughts racing, and you notice he gets up to use the bathroom pretty frequently during class.

Prior to abduction, he's not brave enough to be touchy, although he will use his innocent demeanor to try and get a nice full-front hug every now and then that seems to last just a bit too long for comfort. After abduction, though? He makes up for all the touching he's wanted to do since he first saw you, wrapping arms around you all the time. When you're cooking he'll come up behind you and just wrap his arms around you, standing there and just enjoying feeling you. At night he's always very cuddle and wants to snuggle on the sofa or have you in his lap in some way. He also gets very grope-y beyond that point, frequently reaching up to cup your chest in his hands, squeezing your ass or thighs, or just spooning and grinding a hard-on against your ass.

How forceful are they? Do they care about your willingness?

Too far into the delusions to care. Granted he understands why you are so resistant, why you fight so hard - you're just scared, but don't worry, it will only hurt just a little bit. Or you're insecure - he'll tell you lots of sweet things, he would just hate for you to not know how much he worships you, you know.

Or maybe you're just prudish, or traumatized. Repeated resistance with time and failure to quickly give in leads him to this conclusion, he becomes convinced that maybe you were raised in a sex-negative environment, a too-conservative household, and you were taught to think such a thing was wrong. Maybe you had some kind of negative experience in the past. If you confess to either of these being true, that just solidifies in his mind that that's the sole reason you're so resistant. He'll adjust based on whatever the issue is - are you one of the "until marriage" people? Well it's not official, but he'll try to prove to you that you're basically married, even make a fake contract for you to sign, buy you a cute white dress and a cake and basically say this is no different from being truly married, after all, the government approval is a modern convention and in the past people were married just by vows.

Is it trauma? Well, as said before, he's reluctant to murder, but if that turns out to be the case, that knowledge is enough to push him over the edge, and he'll be sure to make them regret it while they die - he'll even be sweet enough to take a picture, show you how much they rightfully suffered, and he'll be so so sweet, reassuring you he's not like them, kissing your forehead even as he's ignoring your little cries to stop and sinking deep into you.

Just a prude? That's ok. He'll teach you otherwise, rid you of that mindset -- all the more reason to ignore your struggles and pleas, because once you feel good enough, you'll stop resisting. Once you understand how good sex is and how nice he can make you feel, he's confident he can turn you into his own little cock-hungry slut. And managing to do so -- making you cum despite how prudish you are -- gives him a massive ego boost. Especially if you did have past partners, because clearly they weren't doing their job well, since you're so frigid. He'll make you tell him how much better he is than anyone else from before.

He's not a patient man, he's far too eager and really there's nothing you can do to stop sex from happening like... probably within the first hour of your new life together. He's been waiting such a long time, you know. If you happened to be a civilian in the situation mentioned previously, and you didn't know each other beforehand, he might give you, say, 24 hours to adjust, but again, he's not patient.

What sort of kinks or fetishes do they have, or would they fill?

Oral fixation

Just. He likes eating you out. A lot. Even if you don't. Even if he has to restrain you, holding you down so you can't squirm away. He likes the taste and the way it makes you squirm and writhe and whimper. He loves blowjobs, too. Just. Suck him off and he's wrapped around your finger, but be warned, he lacks self control in this area and will definitely end up grabbing your hair and just jerking your head like a fleshlight, forcing you to deep-throat him until he can cum down your throat.

Infantilization/Lingerie, corruption/defilement

Specifically the cute kind. He likes things like the kitty keyhole lingerie, thigh highs, schoolgirl uniforms, that sort of thing. Innocent looking, cutesy, lots of soft pinks and pastel colors. He never really ceases treating you like a dumb baby, even with sex, cooing at you and making you whimper, softly reassuring you everything is ok, and he'll make you feel good. He likes the innocence, even if you're not (convinces himself any past boyfriends "don't count" for whatever reason), and gets off to the idea that he's corrupting that innocence, ruining you, making you his and his alone. His little toy to play with and break and ruin, make sure you're so trained to his body and voice that no one else could ever make you feel as good as him. As aforementioned, he likes the idea of taking a little prude and turning you into a little cumslut that begs and whimpers for him. It's an ego, pride thing for him.

Petplay/D/S dynamic/Worship

Just. Kitten. It's good. He's super into the cat ears and tail, finding cute ears that perfectly match your hair color, and a little tail plug that makes you whimper when he slides it inside of you. Definitely calls you "kitten," or "kitty," and importantly, makes sure you call him your master. And good pets love their masters, worship them the way they deserve to be worshipped for taking care of you, feeding you, doing everything for you. Masters are their pets' whole world, and he will be to you, too. Also buys a collar, a nice thick one with a leash he can use to make you walk around on all fours, or use to yank you back onto him when you're getting fucked on your hands and knees.

Cockwarming

Unfortunately, the part of hero work they don't talk about as much is the paperwork. There's quite a bit, actually, and studying for license renewals. He's got a kinda short attention span and he needs some stimulation to keep him focused. Which is how you end up sitting in his lap at his desk, panties down on your ankles, holding perfectly still with him deep inside of you. He tells you not to move -- you'll distract him too much. Eventually, though, it can get to be too much, so he just ends up fucking up into you right there, but after he's done he'll stay inside, gradually getting hard again and repeating the process.

How do they feel about pregnancy or babies? Do they want them?

He likes the idea in theory, but ultimately decides against it for a couple of reasons. See, his little kitten is so... difficult, and he fears you might teach them to resent him. More importantly, people would wonder -- if he's got kids, where's the mom? He can't afford to have people snooping about that. Finally, much like with you, he fears that his enemies might kidnap his kids, or hurt them somehow to hurt him. If darling is especially well-behaved, once she's finally broken in and understands his way of seeing things and becomes more agreeable, there's a chance he'd consider it, but the concern over their safety would likely still stop him.

What kind of (nsfw) punishments would they use?

Definitely spanking and impact pain. He's gonna invest in it, too. Leather straps and hard rubber paddles -- probably gets one of the ones that have a little shaped hole or raised part that puts a nice little design imprint on your flesh. Likes making you count for the added humiliation, or making you choose a number of swats that you feel is appropriate for what you did -- but of course, if you go too low under what he had in mind, he'll go with his number and add extra, being sure to let you know you get more for underestimating what you deserve.

Speaking of the monitoring from cameras and all that above, he also has a firm rule that you can't touch yourself. And he'll know -- the bracelet you have alerts him to any increase in heart rate, and he can look into the cameras and see what you're doing. If you're trying to be sneaky, it's still obvious when your heart is racing while you're locked in a bathroom, or the little movements he can make out from under the covers. It also warrants punishment. You want orgasms that bad? Have some. Too many. He'll make you cum over and over, to the point it's horribly painful and sensitive, tying you firmly so you can't move an inch and can't get away from his fingers, tongue, vibrator, or whatever else he chooses. Keep going until you're sobbing and gasping for air, apologizing and crying that you won't do it again.

What body parts of their darling do they like the most?

Thigh boy. He likes using them as a pillow, feeling them wrapped around his head when he's eating you out, running his hands up and down the soft flesh. He's also fond of leaving little bite marks and hickeys all up the inside of your thighs -- not that anyone else sees, but it's just a little reminder to you of who you belong to.

[tsukkisbean]

how they cheer your up | headcanons

genre: fluff

characters: iwaizumi hajime, miya osamu, terushima yūji, kunimi akira x gn!reader

warnings: none!

a/n: hello if you’re seeing this, that means my scheduled post worked, yay!! hopefully this shows up in the tags otherwise i’ll have to reupload it at a later time (sorry in advance if that’s the case hehe). i’m also trying my hand at writing for other characters so hopefully this does their characters justice??

anyways, i hope everyone is doing well and staying healthy and happy! if you requested something from me, sorry i haven’t gotten to it even though i said i would. i’ll try my best to complete them when i get the chance, thank you for being patient with me 💖 all boys after iwaizumi are under the cut!

iwaizumi hajime

best boy iwaizumi would without a doubt use exercise as a way to cheer you up

but don’t get me wrong, he’s not going to force you to run a marathon or anything like that

i imagine him taking you to one of those entertainment/game parks (not really sure what they’re called ahh) where you guys just hang out all day

when you get there, he’ll immediately take you to the batting cage so you can just channel out all your anger into your swings

once your blood is pumping from the adrenaline he’ll take you to the trampoline area where you guys just bounce around and do flips into the foam pit to burn off all your extra energy

you’ll just be chilling, jumping up and down on one of the trampolines, your back turned to iwaizumi when he straight up scoops you up and tosses you in

he’s cackling and dying of laughter and when he finally offers to help you out you grab his hand and pull him in

when he doesn’t resurface you get nervous, where could he be?

from the corner of your eye you see the foam rumbling slightly but you react too slowly and iwaizumi pops out and tackles you in the biggest hug, peppering kisses all over your face and people are staring as you scream your head off trying to pry him off of you

for dinner, you guys indulge in all the greasy food the park has to offer, and by the end you’re stuffed

to help with digestion you suggest a game of mini golf which iwaizumi gladly agrees to

for someone who played volleyball his aim is absolutely horrifying

he argues that the windmill is IMPOSSIBLE to get a good score on and no one can ever get a hole in one

luck must have been on your side because you get a hole in one right after (and so does the small child behind you guys, but you choose not to tell him that)

you end up destroying him (he lowkey hints that he let you win but we know that’s not the case)

when the park closes, instead of taking you straight home, he’ll take you to a nearby park and the two of you just stroll around enjoying the chill of the night and the stars in the sky

miya osamu

he pulls you onto the couch next to him and the two of you look through baking videos on youtube and osamu being osamu cannot decide because he wants to make them all

eventually you guys settle on a cake recipe by cooking tree (a/n: 10/10 would recommend watching them, their videos are super soothing and aesthetic esp if you enjoy cooking asmr!!)

so at 9pm you guys set off to the grocery store to buy the ingredients you guys are missing 

the trip takes much longer than expected because osamu keeps putting in more and more snacks that you guys definitely don’t need

so instead of shopping osamu is trying to grab as many snacks as you can while you trail behind, trying to put them away  because your pantry is already way too full

by the time you get home it’s close to 12 and you’re tired but osamu insists that you guys start now

for the most part all goes well, you guys manage to get the batter to look smooth in the cake pan (definitely some playful flour throwing here and there)

the real problem is assembling the cake. at this point you’re wondering why you guys decided on a 3-layered cake that required cutting

teases you for cutting the first layer slanted and so you pass over the cutting to him but his slicing work is just as bad and you just have to bring up the fact that he owns a restaurant but apparently his knife skills suck

you thought cutting the cake would be a problem?? now you guys have to fill the layers and it’s a complete disaster; there’s whipped cream just everywhere and at this point you guys are half filling the cake half throwing it at each other

cake ends up being iced unevenly but that’s the least of your problems

you guys pour the decorative icing on top and instead of running over the sides only slightly, it drips messily down the cake and onto the counter and now you guys have a blob of a cake

you guys spend the rest of the night cleaning up and pass out on the couch and in the morning you guys enjoy a sweet breakfast together <3

terushima yūji

terushima is a free soul and so he believes expressing yourself through art is one of the best ways to feel better

when he sees that you’re down, he’ll immediately whip out all of his salon products and pull you into the bathroom

he takes you by surprise saying that he wants you to whatever you want to his hair - today his hair is your canvas

at first you’re reluctant, but he insists - as a hair stylist it’s all about experimentation with styles and colours and plus he can easily fix whatever you do considering that it is his job after all

so you guys scroll through pinterest together, trying to find some fun hair ideas that you’d be able to pull off on your own (with some instruction from teru of course)

you finally decide on a style and so together start on getting all the hair dye ready

he explains to you the different types of develops and how important they are in the hair colouring process - there are different volumes and will essentially affect how much your hair colour changes

after all the colours are mixed and ready to go, you gingerly grab a piece of hair, constantly checking your phone to make sure you’re doing it exactly like the photo

meanwhile terushima has the softest smile on his face, watching you through the mirror - he thinks you look absolutely adorable with the way your brows are furrowed and your tongue sticks on slightly as you focus

as you run the colour brush along his hair, he’s constantly encouraging you, telling you what a good job you’re doing and how he’s so excited to the end product

while the dye sits in his hair, you sit in his lap

once it’s time to wash out the hair dye, you bring him to the sink and carefully run your hands through his hair, trying your best to give him the best head massage he’s ever had!!!

after toning and a hair treatment, your masterpiece if finally done!! ofc being the boyfriend he is, he takes a million photos and posts them on social media to show how talented his significant other is - like not only is it your first time dying someone’s hair but you managed to pull off RAINBOW hair!! (a/n: think sehun from exo as a reference hehe) he literally will not shut up about you to his clients tomorrow

kunimi akira

kunimi has a rep for being lazy and just overall a really nonchalant kind of person but he’s sharp, so when you’re feeling down he immediately picks up on it even if he doesn’t confront you about it

however i don’t think he’d be as aggressive as the other three and do something huge rather he tries to make you feel better only in smaller ways and it definitely adds up

like in the morning he’ll make you coffee or tea or whatever you want - orange juice, a bakery bun? he’ll make an excuse saying he wanted something from the convenience store anyways and head down. when he comes back  with three bags of food and drinks he’ll insist that he just grabbed whatever he saw because he was “too lazy to decide” n b d

throughout the day he’ll be a lot more affectionate than usual, hugging you whenever he gets the chance, maybe even a kiss on your forehead

when you tell him you want to go out on your own for a bit  he doesn’t argue - whatever you need to do but when your back is turned he’ll slip you a handwritten note telling you to enjoy your alone time and that he l-word you and it’s even signed off with a teensy teensy heart that you almost don’t notice

when you get back, you’re greeted with the smell of your delicious food mixed with a burning smell and on the kitchen table you see takeout from your favourite restaurants and in the garbage is a black burnt mess - kunimi insists he doesn’t know how it got there even though its quite obvious

you bring the food to the living room and to your surprise there’s a blanket fort set up with pillows spread out all across the floor

when you try to question him, he just shrugs saying that it’s not that hard to throw a blanket over a couple of chairs, even a baby could do it

today he lets you choose the movie even though it’s technically his turn and when you choose a  comedy he doesn’t complain about the obnoxiously loud and hot headed lead character

when the movie is over, he quickly cleans up all the trash, making sure you don’t have time to move from your spot

when he comes back, he flops on top of you, holding you close

then he plays the spotify playlist that he made for you; it’s a whole mix of songs - slow, upbeat, instrumentals - anything he thought might help you feel even the tiniest bit better

and so you guys just lay there not speaking, enjoying each other’s presence until you fall asleep

[everything-laito]

the FBI agent looking at my computer must be so incredibly concerned. Here’s Laito and Cordelia analysis, Part II

Hiya, Corn here! This is Part II of this analysis series! Part one’s here! 

Not getting into the trauma part of it yet. Just explaining abusive power dynamics and how incestuous relationships work. As well as Stockholm syndrome. Lovely! Lovely combo! Fuck!!!

Same trigger warnings as last time still apply!

As always, rant under the cuuuuut!

Ok, from last time, we’ve established the elements that were set in place for Cordelia to do this to Laito, when Laito’s trauma began, and the possible fact that he was groomed as a child for sexual exploitation. Wow. Yay. Amazing. This is so gross!!! Thanks, I hate it!!!! I know I usually cary these topics with just an informational tone but I just can’t with this ;lskfjklsajf But I’m here typing this, you’re here reading this, so let’s just get on with the grossness!

Section 3: Legal Definitions of Incest and Power Dynamics 

Now we’re gonna get into the flesh of the problem, and what we know happened. From last time, and common DL knowledge, Laito was coerced into having sex with Cordelia. I say coerced, rather than forced, because it’s not like Laito seemed to resist it. He seems to “willingly” give Cordelia that. Is dubious consent, consent? Oh fuck no, and dubious or coerced consent shouldn’t even count in here considering it’s straight up incest. Any type of incest, most especially between a parent and a child, is not considered consensual, even if it “technically is.” That’s how it’s handled in a court of law, at least in America (where I’m from and reside in), and I do agree with that morally as well. A “romantic” and sexual relationship between a parent (or adult family member; aunt, grandfather, etc) and a child (is just gross) preys upon the power dynamic between them. This isn’t any consensual BDSM power dynamic (obviously), or a constructive power dynamic in the workplace; it’s just a power dynamic already instilled into the relationship where it is taken advantage of. That’s not just fucked up incest, that’s an example of a toxic relationship from the get go. Also, there’s a power dynamic usually between a parent and child, but that doesn’t mean it’s always toxic. It just needs to be done responsibly, which good parents (or any adult in power) know how to maneuver around it and not take advantage of it for manipulation etc. 

In healthy relationships, you both start on equal ground. It usually never works out if you don’t see the other as an equal, whether you have a predisposed power dynamic at the beginning or not. I’m talking any relationship; family relationships, friendships, romantic, sexual, etc. Although you older folks might know about BDSM and how there’s a “power dynamic” instilled in the relationship, a chosen and consensual “power dynamic” still involves both parties seeing the other one as an equal––intrinsically. It’s just very different than a predisposed power dynamic. That even goes with friendship too! Or any kind of healthy, nontoxic social interaction! Taken directly from Psychology Today, “Shared power creates happy individuals and satisfying interactions.” People need to be on equal ground in order to have a healthy relationship. Which,,,, we know does not happen with Cordelia and Laito (and Laito and Yui for that matter, but that’s during another part of this series). An article I saw during the research of this explains further about how power dynamics can be constructive. This focuses more on the workplace, but it applies to this because it’s looking at the other person as another person (an equal) but uses that predisposed power for encouragement, empowerment, and constructiveness (like a good parent or adult role model would do). I hope this makes sense!

Basically Cordelia is abusing her power in order to do all this to Laito. That’s why grooming would make a lot of sense in this as well, because we know it’s definitely not the first time Cordelia has taken advantage of a power imbalance to her own selfish benefit. That’s why incest isn’t really explained with the same science as pedophilia. I forget if I’ve mentioned it before, but one way pedophilia can occur in a person if their brain was originally biologically wired in a way that sees children as sexual objects. With incest, it could also work like that as well, but it is mainly power abuse, like most sexual exploitation, harassment, assault, etc is. 

Section 4: Incest (I’d make a sweet home Alabama joke but that’s low hanging fruit)

Ok so now that we’ve gone over the legality of incest, and how power dynamics can be taken advantage of, we’re gonna look into the type of incest (yes apparently there are types) that Cordelia and Laito fits into. Also if this already wasn’t clear or anything, hi incest and pedophilia etc are forms of abuse, there is no justifying it at all. It’s abuse, no matter what’s said. I know these are fictional characters but I sometimes see Ayato x Cordelia and Laito x Cordelia etc posts and I kinda just wanna commit heinous crimes whenever I see that. Just the idea of that absolutely sickens me (on top of the abuse shown in DL already). Anyways, after all of that out of the way, let’s go into this. 

Since Laito is biologically 17, I’d say that he’s considered as a child (teenager) by demon world standards. We don’t know his age when Cordelia first physically exploited him, but we do know that his same “teenage” sprite is used during the flashbacks. Since his trauma fits so well with the aftermath definition of parent/child incest, I’m just gonna give y’all information on that. This is also called “child incestuous abuse,” which is also a form of child sexual abuse. 

I learned an interesting factoid researching this, and that is in Japan, the most commonly believed incestuous relationship was between mothers and sons. In the West, we think of fathers/daughters. In Japan, the media covers more on mother/son incestuous acts; while statistically, more father/daughter incestuous acts are taken place. Just something interesting(?) I found, and probably why DL chose that for storytelling too. 

In this Wikipedia article, taken from a scientific paper (I’d take it directly from the source but you need an account to get in and I think you need to pay for it), it says this:

A study of victims of father–daughter incest in the 1970s showed that there were "common features" within families before the occurrence of incest: estrangement between the mother and the daughter, extreme paternal dominance, and reassignment of some of the mother's traditional major family responsibility to the daughter.

Sure, this talks about father/daughter incestuous relationships, but if we take this and reverse most of the roles, it shows Laito’s situation to a T:

Estrangement between Karlheinz and Laito 

Extreme maternal dominance (aka Cordelia being very abusive/manipulative)

Reassignment of some of the parental responsibility to Laito (there’s many examples of “big bro Laito,” and Ayato and Kanato considers that they used Laito as a “sacrifice”––as a “shield” for the both of them. Sure this isn’t explicit parental responsibility shown through Laito but I’d say he acts more like a family member to Ayato and Kanato too)

Section 5: Stockholm syndrome? With parental figures? 

Laito had some interesting situations occur during this whole thing with Cordelia. One of the most infamous scenes from the game (that’s also illustrated in the HDB manga) is a flashback Laito has where he’s locked up, forced to see Cordelia and Richter have sex. He’s appalled by the fact at first, but then attempts to convince himself that he’s into it. However, I won’t get into the effects until the next part. 

I didn’t find much about Stockholm syndrome being in this specific case with incest and kidnapping a child etc. When you look up Stockholm syndrome related to parents you get quite the sexist “article” that definitely mocks the whole Stockholm syndrome thing and makes fun of guys being into Glee and such,,,, so that wasn’t a very helpful article. However, I’m just gonna mish mash and put a lot of concepts that we’ve learned together. But first, a look into Stockholm syndrome.

Stockholm syndrome occurs when an abuse victim develops empathy or even intimate feelings for their abuser or captor. This happens because any bit of kindness the abuser enacts towards their victim is taken so positively, that the victim “forgets” all the negative actions, and focuses on the positive ones. This isn’t some sort of “oh ya gotta think positive!” kind of thing, it’s how abusers get away with their bullshit and how someone can be so trapped in a relationship with them. It’s also called traumatic bonding or victim brainwashing (source). This doesn’t always happen with people who are held hostage, like in Stockholm syndrome’s name origin.

A parent’s influence can be a strong one. Doesn’t even have to be related to by blood. But a figure that is supposed to be nurturing—whether they are or not—still has power over the “child.” He definitely went through Stockholm Syndrome himself with Cordelia, considering the grooming and the “love”/hate relationship he has with Cordelia. I did some more digging, and apparently Stockholm Syndrome can still occur more commonly with sexually abused victims. Which we all know he is. With the possible grooming, on top of the power abuse and sexual abuse, creates an incredibly toxic concoction. Here we go. The (rotten) cherry on top. Directly from my HDB notes, here’s a snippet from his Maniac Prologue: 

Cordelia: Nnn…Hey, Laito. You are a good boy. Laito: …!! Cordelia: Right, Laito? Laito: Yeah, that’s right. I’m…I’m a good boy after all.  ーー Besides, I’m the type of person who only get more aroused from this kind of thing.

(from my notes:) Basically Laito convinces himself to be a “cuckhold.” It’s definitely implied how he just wants approval from Cordelia; this is how this abuse prolongs. 

(Also, if I ever said that Laito was locked up by Cordelia, my bad; it was Karlheinz who gave that order. I’m unsure where I ever said this, but I feel like I said it before, so I’m gonna clarify that right now too, oops! My memory hath failed me.)

Cordelia’s praise effects Laito in such a visceral way that he tries so hard to cope with the trauma in her favor. It’s incredibly messed up. But that’s the defining factor in this. From this, I do believe Laito has Stockholm syndrome on top of all of his issues. 

I think I’m gonna end it here for now. Didn’t expect to be this long, oops. Stay tuned for next time, where I’m gonna go over Laito’s trauma and how he’s been effected by it. Thanks for reading, FBI agent! And oh, you as well, dear reader! 

If you’ve read this far holy fuck I commend you -Corn

[dappersheep]

Food Fantasy: An Analysis on what killed a Golden Goose (3/3)

Ladies and gentlemen, we've arrived at our final destination.

Again before we start, we have our obligatory disclaimers. I do not own the game or its characters, nor do I claim to know the true history and likely fate of this game. I am entitled to the thoughts and opinions written within this post. Feel free to agree or disagree with the points being made.

This post also remains untagged from the main foofan tag. Only my followers will see this.

We are in the third and final stretch, and the checkpoint is past the cut.

Community

So... here we are, fellow Master Attendants.

As consumers of this piece of entertainment media, we are free to enjoy it however we wish. Appreciating what is there, creating something new from what exists, playing the game by the meta or however you want to play it (within your means and at your own risk of course). There's no one true and absolute way to experience the game.

However, just as you can enjoy something, doesn't mean you can't also point out flaws or shortcomings of the media in question. As an active veteran player, I've already pointed out the many gameplay design flaws  already. And I'd be pretty dumb to say that Food Fantasy's writing is perfect. Hell, it has a lot of holes from a worldbuilding consistency standpoint. 

And what of things from the community side? Yes, there will be times you'd see content you consider cringe, or something in fanon you don't agree with. Or there happens to be fan theories and fangirling posts you don't like the take of because of X or Y.

And that's fine. If we all happen to play the same way, like the same thing, agree on the same thing and produce the same thing, well, this would be one helluva boring community, wouldn't it?

But what if someone decides the way you're playing the game is wrong and harasses you over it? What happens if someone decides that their interpretation of the game's flavor text and lore is more important than what anyone else thought about it? What happens if someone decides that they're absolutely right, and you and everyone else who disagrees deserves to be bullied out of the fandom?

As much as I want to say we aren't part of the problem why the game is deteriorating, we are unfortunately, part of the reason why the game is as such even if most of the blame is directed towards Funtoy and Elex themselves.

⦁ Whale Authority. Whales will always be part of a gacha game's ecosystem. Without them, the game won't be able to maintain its upkeep costs, moreso  for one that services global regions instead of just one. But when a game decides to cater its decisions of what features should be prioritized and when it should be launched around only its most elite paying players' voices  -even if that influence has since tapered off-, you know there is something wrong with the publisher's management team and priorities.

⦁ Interguild drama. While I did not personally follow any of this, this has certainly been the peak of in-game tension back in the day. Poaching good players from both competitive and smaller guilds, guild mergers that often ended up making the annexed guild/s the equivalent of UK colonized India or Australia, suck-ups chummying up to guild leaders to keep a spot in an active, high ranking guild (for bragging rights!) despite never contributing much to overall damage, and just general dislike of certain players' attitudes. Actions like this have disillusioned many players about their playing experience and the reason why many eventually just lost the motivation to log into FooFan.

⦁ Cheaters. You know very well about the Hacker-teme I've mentioned before, but that was in context of Elex being incompetent with dealing with them. Here, I would like  to point out the players who are desperate to dominate  the playing field for whatever reason to the point that they would resort to cheating the ranks with forceful modifications of the APK. Whether it is to rank high in catacombs weekly, get a top spot in daily disaster damage, or weasel their way into the competitive whale ranks of a major ranking event, these are the people who have no qualms messing with the code to give themselves an easier time with the game. And if they're caught? Some pretend that they've made a mistake, some quickly sell the account to escape the blame, some others just scamper away into the dark and hide in the lower ranks where they can't be found. Others simply don't care and keep cheating until Elex decides to finally ban them... if Elex ever decides their rebates score isn't worth saving the account.

⦁ Ship wars. Ah yes, a staple of drama in any fandom. There doesn't need much explanation to this as we've all had our fair share of running into a battleground in whatever fandom we visit. Someone ships BB52 wholeheartedly? Nope, problematic 'age gaps'. Someone likes Napoleon with Pastel? Someone's bound to misinterpret their bios in order to justify that Napoleon was being abusive. Spaghetti and Borscht? Borscht is minor coded, ship her with Vodka instead. Whiskey and Pizza or Cassata? Cancelled! And I've never heard of the Foe Yay trope or pretend I don't know about it! Rarepairs? Disgusting! No fanon in my canon playground! Turkey and Eggnog? Gasp! How dare you, you pedo-shipper-even-though-you-never-said-you-shipped-them-romantically-but-that-isn't-my-point!

⦁ Character Obsession: Bias. On one hand, you love a character so much. Relate to a character so much. You have thus pulled this character into the folds of your bosom and coo at them like a mother dove and get so minutely triggered if someone so much as makes one disagreeable or joking comment about the character that you fly into an overreactive ballistic rage that would make a Canadian goose honk in fear. You don't care what they are in canon. You don't care about the possibility of mistranslation. What matters is the fanon space you carved out for them to exist in and that's all that matters. The problem with this is when this obsession takes over common sense and social etiquette and it steps into harassment territory. You begin to think: I'm the only one who 'understands' the character. I'm the only one who wishes better for the character, everyone else is out to defame them! Oh wait, you like them too? Do you like them the way *I* like them? No? Maybe if you're my 'friend', I'd let it slide. But to everyone else? No one else has the right to like them as much as I do. No one! Never mind that they're completely fictional- No one hurts my bias because in turn, they're hurting *me*!

⦁ Character Obsession: Anti. On the other hand, you hate a character so much. This character just makes you see so much red. Their smug little smirk just makes your blood boil. Their fictional backstory makes you recoil in disgust. You hate that someone else loves a character you hate so much.  You cannot *believe* that someone could be so daringly stupid to like a problematic character. They must be problematic too then. They must be hiding real life secrets that are problematic! Yes, yes. That's right. That person's a supporter of abuse. That person's into pedophilia. That person is into military lolita fashion that Japan started the trend of but clearly Japan was part of the Axis Powers! And that... that person... that person... is a roleplayer and a yaoi fangirl properly interacting with minors and adults. How dare they...!

⦁ Fan Translations.  Normally it wouldn't be a problem that a group or two or several are translating pieces of the game's lore ahead of the official. But with Elex's very delayed translations and extreme allergic reactions to translating Food Soul bios, people have become dependent on fan-translation groups to get their fix. The problem herein lies... is when the translators get drunk off the power that they are one of a handful in a small community who can magically transcribe the oriental moonrunes into English. The problem starts when the translator starts to have an inclination. The problem starts when the translator loses their professional detachment and start adding in details here and there into the fan translated product that ultimately changes the meaning and direction of the entire story. The problem is also escalated when that translator's embellished product is touted as the truth by their followers. If there was an upcoming character whose backstory is connected to a character they hated (either because of someone or they just don't like the character) and you were hoping to read the fan translation? How would you know that what you get isn't something doctored to the point it's basically fanfiction?

⦁ Social Justice Vigilantism. Sometimes someone does not have a character obsession or need it to be annoying. Sometimes, someone just wants to ring the alarm over something they find 'problematic' in order to police and sanitize the enjoyment of the media for 'everyone'. They no longer really take enjoyment out of a new Food Soul design being leaked, they no longer read the lore just to enjoy what it has to offer. Instead, they nitpick bits and pieces of the design and point it out repeatedly as a reason why the whole thing is bad. They point out bits of the story and inject their interpretations of it without really comprehending what they've read in full and react badly to it. What's worse is that they have no qualms publicly posting their reactions and eagerly and hungrily await those likes and echoes of agreement that they were right.

⦁ Circles of Influence. Everyone has a group they eventually gravitate to in a fandom. It comes with its own pros and cons. Sometimes you join a group because someone you admire is in there, sometimes you join a group because you just want to mingle and see more content. All valid reasons. Arguments can't be avoided in a group, it has to happen... But you have to take care. You have to take care to feel the change in the air of the group. When someone starts pushing people to agree with them. When your most admired people start to feel overly sensitive about certain characters or issues. When you start to feel obligated to spy on other groups outside of this one for 'nonbelievers', 'traitors' and 'heretics' who do not think the way this group does, and that bringing back bits and pieces of gossip as offerings would somehow make you more favored in the eyes of the inner clique or remain inside it. There is a gripping sense of annoyance when that person comes in to complain but you can't do anything about it but nod and agree. There is a pervading sense of fear and apprehension of overstepping an invisible boundary. There is fear that you might be next on the chopping block, after witnessing one of the others being ganged up on and thrown out without a second thought, their name spat upon like they're worth less than dirt. And so reluctant you are to give up what you have with them that when they push you to do something you are reluctant to do, all in the name of 'harmony and justice'... You do it. Even though it would mean offering yourself up to the mob with no salvation, and the stark realization that... [they] never cared about you as a friend.

And we've come to the end of this analysis trilogy. The writing got a little bit strange in this post, but honestly this is the best way I could put it. I'm aware things can and will be more complicated than the bullet points I've written but I'm just one person and I tried very hard to keep details of all the drama that happened in this fandom as vague as possible. Of course, that wouldn't work if you know what I am talking about.

The community is quiet now for the most part, the game is somewhere between limbo and the living plane. Things could be better for us, but I don't really count on it.

I wish I could leave a bit of a moral warning or something. But rather than do that, I just hope this was an entertaining read into one individual's eyes into Food Fantasy and everything that makes it up.

[frogsoks]

Ninjago HeadCanons

Hey friends!! I’m back:) Today we have some headcanons for the ninja! These are probably movie verse, as in ninja-actually-go-to-school AU, so YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! lol. 

Anyways, I hope you agree with them, but if you don’t please remember that this is just my interpretation of these dorks, and what I think of them. 

This is also kind of an AU me and my brother made up, that they were almost at a war but Lloyd brought them together. I thought it was kinda cute:D

Kai: The impulsive social media addicted cool kid, who didn't really do anything to be cool. He's decently rich, because both his parents work in the movie industry. Pros: money! Cons: they don't stay in once place much, leaving Kai and his sister alone.

 Kai's best friend is Zane Julien. They met in middle School, because Kai needed someone to do his homework for him. Over time, though, they got to know each other, and if you know him well enough, Kai really is a caring friend. He's very short tempered though, so don't anger him. The good thing about Zane being his friend, is that if Kai overheats, Zane has no problem in helping him cool down. 

Zane: Being the smartest kid in school has its advantages. That's how Zane met his best friend! This wild teen is actually an android, but he doesn't like it when people call him that. In his mind, he’s a Nindroid. He tries to act cool. Zane's dad is an inventor, who works at home and sells his inventions online. 

Zane is the kind of cool kid who used to be unpopular, but Kai warmed up to him, (quite literally) and now Zane hangs out with the coolios. He might seem serious at first, but if you get to know him better, he's actually got a funny switch, and can make you laugh. 

Nya: Kai's little sister. Or that's what everyone knows her by. She hates it though. Nya wants to be known as her own person. She's a feminist. Jay's got a massive crush on her, but Kai will die before he lets anyone near his sister. Another thing she hates. 

She's really good in carpentry class, and she's in the inventors club. Decent amount of friends, Skylar Chen being her best friend. She doesn't really care for Jay, yet. She's the first one to talk to any new kid, and they usually warm up to her really quickly. 

Jay: The video game nerd, or in other words, the loser. No one hates him, they just don't acknowledge his very existence. Jay is in the video game club. The reason why he even has a 3/10 is because his best friend is Cole Bucket. The two are nearly inseparable. Some people wonder how they even got together in the first place. They met when they were in preschool, when Jay moved in next to Cole's house. Their parents made them play together the first day, and they've been buddies ever since. 

The two of them often hang out and play video games together. They also often sleepover after watching a movie together. The two have talked it over, and both agreed that they are friends, and nothing else. The two of them take dance lessons together, but usually just goof off. 

Cole: The ultimate cool kid. Cole is a jock, there is no arguing in that. The question is, does he like being a jock? The only reason he is, is because, he's the captain and most prized player on the basketball team, he's got muscles, lots of fangirls, and legend says he's hot? Anyways, some people scold him for being friends with Jay, while others ship them. The 2 boys often say "Ew gross." to that. 

He doesn't care what others think, and says he isn't ready for a relationship with anyone just yet. Instead, he helps Jay make plans to impress Nya. The two have some utterly stupid nicknames for each other, and they tease one another very frequently. He might seem like a rock on the outside, but deep down he cares for his loves ones, and can get very emotional during Titanic. 

Lloyd: The new kid. At first, no one talked to him, but then came Nya. He warmed up to her pretty fast, and then he met Kai and Zane. Then, he met Jay and Cole. Then started the rivalry. "Team Pink versus Team Purple," as Nya had said. 

Lloyd loves photography, and that's how he became friends with Team Pink, seeing as Kai asks Zane to take pictures of him for his Snapgram. Lloyd also loves gaming and Starfarrer, and that's how he became friends with Team Purple, seeing as Cole and Jay invited him over quite frequently for gaming nights. But then the two teams started fighting over him, because they both wanted Lloyd for themselves. That's how Lloyd then suggested they all become friends. That's how the team was brought together.

YAY!! The end. I hope you enjoyed lol, i wrote this a while ago but only thought of posting it here now heh. Let me know if I should write more often! Baii

[photolover82]

The Masked Singer Season 5 Episode 4 Recap: Group B once again with a wildcard (Commentary & Guesses)

Hi everybody! Welcome or welcome back to Ana’s Masked Singer recap where I, Ana, recap every single episode of The Masked Singer. We’re back with Group B and this time we have a surprise wildcard which stay tuned until the end for that one. So yeah let’s get into that, starting with the *sigh* eliminated contestant (oof this one is gonna be um interesting to say the least because I have a lot of opinions and probably so do you so here we are... let’s do this)

The contestant who was eliminated this round was...

*DRUMROLL PLEASE*

Grandpa Monster 👹 👴🏻

Commentary: Am I surprised? Not in the slightest bit. He was honestly the weakest link of Group B, even though he didn’t suck, he was actually pretty ok (I am not gonna say good, ok is the best word I will use) , but he really ruined it with this performance of Bad Reputation by Joan Jett. It was like he was thinking who cares if I sound good, I am just gonna throw caution into the wind (is that how the saying goes? Idk). It kind of had the same energy as Sarah Pailin aka the bear in season 3 singing Baby Got Back. It wasn’t awful, just meh at best.

So yeah, he was revealed to be (as I unfortunately expected/guessed)...

*DRUMROLL PLEASE*

Logan Paul

Yeah, yeah, yeah... I know he be controversial and I am honestly not his fan by any means because those Paul brothers are the spawn of Satan especially the other one (that name is cursed, we don’t say it here), but you know what, I don’t think he’s the ABSOLUTE worst anymore, so I guess that’s a markup in his favor. He has stopped sucking, I gotta give him that, but I feel indifferent towards him right now, even though there are things that he has said that I am like hmmm why am I agreeing with you dude, stop being sensible. I know a lot of people were mad about this one and rightfully so, I wasn’t too thrilled either seeing him under the mask, but just think he’s gone so we won’t see him anymore. This was one of the only times where I wanted to be wrong, but here we are, 3rd correct guess of the season yay!

Anyways, let’s move on to the remaining 4 (yup wildcard included baby!):

1. Piglet 🐷

Commentary: He sang Good to be Alive by Andy Grammar and I really enjoyed it ngl even though it wasn’t my favorite of the night nor was it as good as his first one. He started off a bit shaky and then he really got into the groove of the song, I really liked it a lot. His voice is really smooth and sounds familiar *wink wink* 😉

Having said that, I am gonna double down on my guess of:

Nick Lachey

Clues/Reasoning:

Football clues and don’t be a ball hog= brooo get this... this man got kicked out of a football game for starting a fight with fans of the other team (like excuse me sir... what?! These celebs are crazy)

oh and in the first clue package he says how he falls so fast that he said I love you on the 2nd date= which is something that he did say to his wife Vanessa

Oh and Piglet can stay cool even in the heat= 98 degrees reference baby!

2. Black Swan 🦢🖤

Performance: OMG I KNEW THAT SHE WAS GONNA PICK A BETTER SONG AND THEN SMASH IT.... which she absolutely did omg best performance of the night. She sang In My Blood by Shawn Mendes and wow is all I have to say. She really redeemed herself with song choice, THIS IS WHAT I WAS TALKING AB... it suited her voice so well. It started out so pretty and sweet and then BAM STRONG AF VOCALS BABY! Like wow wow wow... she is so a contender for the finals!

Having said that, I know (again doubling down) that this has to be:

Jojo

Reasoning/Clues:

Globe = she has a tattoo of a world map

Red X= She was a guest judge on X Factor

Castle= she was offered the role of Hannah Montana but she turned it down

Scales= she had a lot of legal problems with her record labels

3. Chameleon 🦎

Commentary: So he sang (or should I say rapped) 21 Questions by 50 Cent ft Nate Dogg and hells yeah this man is a pro. He’s so on the pocket with the song, you can tell that he does this for a living, like it’s not like them athletes who rap, he’s in tune with the music and very much a performer not an athlete even tho he is tall. Even though, to me, he is the weakest amongst the ones still standing, he is still a really strong performer.

I know exactly who this is and I am pleased to double down on my guess of:

Wiz Khalifa

Reasoning/Clues:

Rainbow Paint Brush= this is a mention of his sister who is trans and passed away a couple of years ago in 2017 (also when he says he helps others shine & the someone special he helped lift up, it refers to how he helped his sister be herself)

Peaches= his mom’s name is Peachie

Taxi= reference to his infamous song Black and Yellow

History with precious gemstones= he dated AMBER Rose and u could say Amber is a precious gemstone and his song with Charlie Puth, See You Again, is certified DIAMOND wow

Now our wildcard baby! Let’s give it up for.... The Crab! 🦀

Commentary: He sang Ain’t No Sunshine by Bill Withers and I am gonna be honest: I was pleasantly surprised. Last week’s wildcard was meh to say the least so I didn’t expect anything grand this time and wow what a raspy wonderful tone I heard in this crab. There was this one note that he kept repeating and holding that I was like woah baby this man can sing! It was absolutely wonderful of a performance, I really enjoyed it.

Ok, now for my guess:

Bobby Brown

Reasoning/Clues:

Tragedy & darkness endured in his family= the death of Whitney Houston, their daughter Bobby Christina, and his son

Butterfly and Bee= BB aka his initials

2+3= he was born February 5th and his band New Edition had 5 members

That’s all folks! Sorry for the delay in posting this but tonight is the next show and apparently we are gonna see this group one more time for the Group B finals, so I will see you then, I can’t wait! Bye guys! Don’t forget to like, comment, and do all the social media things.

[thecorteztwins]

I love how you care so much about obscure characters. Who is your favorite underrated female X-men character

Awww thank you! I love bringing them love, so it makes me really happy for you to say that! My absolute fave is Haven, but I read “faves” as plural so I wrote down a bunch...my faves can bounce around a bit but here’s a list of some of them! It’s under a cut because it’s long, I really like to explain who these gals are and why I like them so much! Warning, there is some description of pretty horrendous sexism and racism for some of these, since nothing makes me latch on to a woman harder than wanting to defend her from the SHITTY THINGS WRITERS DID TO HER! I kinda wrote novels for Haven and Madelyne, then I did links to previous things I’ve written about others. This is a LOT, I’m so sorry, I just love sharing!! Thank you for asking!!

THE BIG ONES Basically my consistent mega-faves I’m always ready to talk about! RADHA “HAVEN” DASTOOR - This lady has been at the top of my list for over five years and counting! She just really resonated with me on a deep level. She’s this mysterious woman who turns up in X-Factor for seven issues, and though she’s very benevolent towards them (even when they attack her) she is technically a villain, as she’s trying to destroy 3/4 of the world to bring about the Mahapralaya, a sort of Hindu apocalypse that will bring about an age of peace and end to suffering. So, her motives are very compassionate, and as it turns out, the horrible things she’s trying to do aren’t actually her fault. She’s being posessed by the Adversary, a demon of the highest order and an entity of cosmic evil. Or more specifically, her unborn child is. See, Haven was a really, really good woman. She was not a mutant, but she was sensitive to the pain and suffering of others from an early age, and she devoted her life to helping the poor and needy. She’s incredibly rich, so she could have helped just from afar, but instead she not only used her wealth to help others, she herself went out in the streets to attend to the poor and sick with her own hands. She bathed lepers, cradled dying babies, everything. She actually GOT the name “Haven” from a children’s hospital that she renovated, the kids started calling HER that instead. What a villain, huh? It all goes super wrong when she fell in love with a guy. After he took her virginity, he took off, leaving her pregnant. This was in 1970s India, and she was a very a religious woman, she felt INTENSE shame and horrible guilt and sunk into a deep depression, now living on the streets herself she was so broken. And then...then her fetus started talking to her. Yeah, see, technically she wasn’t posessed by the Adversary, her unborn child was. It incubated in her for twenty years, corrupting her mind, making her its pawn, all basically for its own amusement til it could be reborn into the world, killing her. And the guy who knocked her up? Got off scott-free. Basically she had sex ONE time and she had to be punished for it by being stripped of her agency, forced to betray everything she loved and believed, and then finally killed in the mud while a Marvel deity stood over and told her how she brought this on herself. It’s a slut-shaming Victorian morality tale of how no matter how good a person you are, you’re tainted forever if you violate purity culture just once, and we’re expected to AGREE with this narrative as readers. It’s sick. It gets even worse in how X-Factor treats her. She first appears RESCUING Polaris from government agents who are trying to kill her, because despite WORKING for the government at this time (X-Factor was a government team during this period) Polaris’s energy signature matched Magneto’s. Haven is the one who saved Polaris by teleporting her away. Polaris was distrustful and threatened Haven. Haven tried to talk her down, but also opened her arms and said that if Polaris truly did not believe her, then she would not resist. Polaris decided to “give trust a try” but I also truly believe that if Lorna had attacked her, Haven indeed would have let her. Haven is a human but the Adversary gave her INCREDIBLE power, she could WIPE PEOPLE FROM EXISTENCE by THINKING ABOUT IT, but she was a pacifist every step of the way, even as a villain. X-Factor would REPEATEDLY attack her later...she NEVER retaliated. The worst thing she did was, once they kept on attacking her, she just kinda put them in her pocket dimension as a time-out, but didn’t hurt them any. I really don’t think she COULD, possessed or not. Anyway, after meeting Lorna, she ‘ports Lorna back to safety and leaves her be. She is interested in recruiting Lorna and the rest of X-Factor to her cause, but she’s very moral about it, and never uses situations like these as leverage; for instance, when she heals Rahne of the Genoshan bonding process and gives her back her free will and her ability to resume her fully human form, Rahne is ECSTATIC and ready to do ANYTHING for her. And rather than exploit this, Haven just hugs her and tells her that her joy is thanks enough. Again, what a villain! Anyway, it turns out this Haven lady is also an activist! She’s big on promoting peace between warring groups (which I think makes it very significant that she’s an Indian character from Mumbai, then Bombay, who was created in 1992, the same year when Hindu/Muslim tensions in India resulted in the Bombay Bombings and subsequent riots, and she indeed mentions Hindu/Muslim tensions in her pro-peace speeches) and she emphasizes accepting MUTANTS in particular. It is very rare we see humans who are pro-mutant, though they had happened before, but this is the first time we see a human who is pro-mutant WITHOUT any affiliation or friendship with the X-men, and who is a public figure who seems to have some real social power---she’s a best-selling author, lecturer, and apparently her being a very wealthy woman has made some very wealthy people listen to her. She is basically the perfect ally for mutants if you take out the demon-possessed part, and I always found this super interesting and wish more had been done with it. So, she’s speaking at Brahma Hall (Brahma, notably, is the Hindu creator god) and...THIS happens. It’s...it’s really distressing. I’m sure it’s bad enough in its own time, but reading it NOW, in a post-9/11 world, a world where POC are routinely slaughtered by law enforcement (they always were but social media has made us more aware) it’s chilling. And we, the reader, are supposed to see X-Factor as JUSTIFIED in how they treat this unarmed, non-threatening, apparently-human-for-all-they-know woman who is promoting peace. Because no matter how nice she is, the US government says she’s an evil terrorist, and the US government turns out to be right! Yay, America! This might be a good time to mention Haven was the first Hindu character in X-Men comics, and the philosophy that the Adversary is manipulating her with comes directly from Hindu cosmology, and that is WAY IFFY to say THE LEAST. Holy xenophobia, Batman! And in an X-MEN comic of ALL PLACES! Oh yeah, and our good guys also describe her beliefs as “New Age psychobabble” and make fun of her temple decor as "very 60s" when BOTH ARE FROM HINDUISM, WHITE USA HIPPIES DID NOT INVENT IT, YOU IGNORANT SHITS So anyway, Haven’s very interesting to me as someone who is so deeply pacifistic and compassionate, that even when she’s being steered by a literal demon that has been talking in her womb for 20 years, she’s still someone who is perpetually polite, who won’t hurt the HEROES even when they want to hurt her, who SURRENDERS during a FIGHT in order to HEAL ONE OF THEM, and...who ends up with an abruptly aborted arc where she’s killed by her own “child” and victim-blamed in her last moments by Roma, the Omniversal Guardian Goddess and foe/counterpart of the Adversary. It’s made all the more tragic by the fact that Haven’s last pleas to Roma weren’t for herself, but for Roma to stop the Adversary, as she had realized now what her “child” really was. Even in her final moments, Haven was thinking of others, of the world. It’s just....awful to me that a character as interesting and unique as she was was thrown away like that, and that she was treated in such a sexist, racist, xenophobic way by both the HEROES and the story itself. I stan Haven 4 life. MADELYNE PRYOR- She’s maybe not “obscure” per se, I think most X-Men readers have a basic understanding of who she is, but the problem is that “basic” is not enough. What most people know is ”she’s Jean Grey’s evil clone” and some might know that “she was married to Scott Summers and went evil when he ditched her for Jean”. But that’s so far from the whole story, and it really does Madelyne a disservice, and canon has done her ENOUGH disservice already. Madelyne was originally created by Chris Claremont to truly be just a human woman who looked just like the dead Jean, with whom Scott would settle down and have a kid, and leave the X-Men. It’s a pretty nonsensical notion, the idea that this woman just happens to look exactly like Jean and meet Scott and fall in love, but this was his plan, he has confirmed it. And like...that’s pretty sexist from the start, in that she’s very literally created as a replacement for Jean on a narrative level, there’s NO REASON that she should have to look exactly like Scott’s dead ex besides as a way for Scott to still “get” Jean in a way. But Maddie rises above that swiftly by being a super strong, super cool character in her own right. She’s a pilot, she’s fearless, she’s adventurous, she’s got a mean right hook, and she’s got a tragic backstory when she crashed her plane and cost the lives of over three hundred passengers. She gets involved with Scott and by extension the X-Men, and she holds her own despite having no powers. Weird fact, this means that some of the X-Men, like Rogue, met Madelyne before they ever met Jean. She also gets a cool story where she gained healing powers, and the reason her powers specifically took the form of healing is because they were what she wanted them to be. She’s a good person, and also a total badass. Then, Jean came back, and the Powers That Be wanted her back together with Scott. But Scott was married to Madelyne. Rather than have them get a divorce or something, it was decided Madelyne had to be very literally demonized and then murdered, because we can’t just have two women co-exist, no, they must be divided into a “good” woman and a “bad” woman and fight over a man. Actual quote from Chris Claremont: “ Then, unfortunately, Jean was resurrected, Scott dumps his wife and kid and goes back to the old girlfriend. So it not only destroys Scott's character as a hero and as a decent human being it creates an untenable structural situation: what do we do with Madelyne and the kid? ... So ultimately the resolution was: turn her into the Goblin Queen and kill her off.” So, after something like EIGHT YEARS of being a character unto herself, Madelyne gets retconned as actually having been Jean’s clone all along! Which, okay, does make sense, certainly more sense than ‘this woman just happens to look EXACTLY like Jean and hook up with Jean’s ex” but then the REASON that Sinister cloned her...is nothing to do with Maddie or Jean themselves. Madelyne’s creation isn’t ABOUT her the way so many other clone/created-in-a-lab type stories are, like Laura Kinney. She wasn’t important. She was made literally just to have a baby with Scott, the BABY is what’s important. She is REPEATEDLY called a “brood mare” in fact (a female horse used specifically for breeding) So basically, her only value, her only REASON for existing, is her reproductive capacity. A lot of people think that Madelyne either found out she was a clone and went crazy-evil, or she went crazy-evil when Scott went back to Jean. That’s not what happened. Madelyne goes through a long, long series of arduous tragedies that piece by piece dehumanize and violate and traumatize her, and even then she doesn’t become evil until she’s TRICKED into being infected with demonic energy. Being “evil” was NEVER her choice, and everyone forgets that. See, first Scott walked out on her and the baby. Then, the Marauders attacked her, nearly killed her, and stole her baby and left her for dead in a coma for months. When she woke up, her baby was still missing, and she rejoined the X-Men to help them while they also helped search for her son. She sacrificed her LIFE alongside them to defeat the Adversary (yes, the same one Haven was pregnant with!) and then was resurrected with them too by Roma (yes, same Roma). She continued to work with the X-Men, despite the fact Scott had left her, and used her tech expertise to be the X-Men’s computer gal in Australia. When she saw X-Factor on one of the news monitors, including Scott with Jean, she realized why he’d abandoned her. She punched the screen and the explosion knocked her unconscious. While she was knocked out and dreaming, the demon Sym invaded her mind showed her a few different reflections of things she could be, one of which was a demonic reflection of herself. She chose that one, saying “What the heck, it’s only a dream.” And then Sym infected her with demonic energy. So she literally JUST found out her husband left her and their now-missing son for another woman, and she thinks she’s dreaming so yeah she picks the idea of being a demon IN THE CONTEXT OF A DREAM, A FUCKING FANTASY, WHEN SHE’S GOT EVERY RIGHT TO BE PISSED and oh well now you’re gonna be evil for real honey you don’t get a choice. Serves you right for being angry even for a moment, woman! But even then, she didn’t instantly turn evil. Horrible shit had already happened to her, but she still held out…so of course, more shit happened to her. While she and the X-Men were trying to help an escapee from Genosha (which was still enslaving mutants at that point) she ended up captured herself, and since their readings indicated she was not quite human (though what exactly she was, they didn’t know) they tried to put her through the “mutate bonding process” that would enslave her too. As a result, her latent psychic powers finally manifest, and she telekinetically explodes the place. From there, we start seeing big hints that something is going really wrong with Maddie, she seduces Havok and she’s entered into a secret bargain with the demon N’astrih, who promised to help her find her still-missing son (whom she still wanted to find and save at that point because she was still mostly herself) and of course, that bargain transformed her into the Goblyn Queen. After this transformation, though, she STILL had not gone past the point of no return. That didn’t happen until she met Sinister and she found out the truth of her origins—-not only was she a clone of Jean Grey physically, the few memories that she had also came from Jean, and her emotions from Scott had been PROGRAMMED into her (meaning she never had a choice at all in the man she loved) and it was all to be a brood mare, to produce a child with him. Only then did she go off the deep end completely, and agreed to N’astrih’s plan to sacrifice her own son (who he now found and gave to her, as this was his plan all along) because it was the absolute BIGGEST fuck you she could give to Sinister and to Cyclops. And like, yes, that’s evil, but given at that point she was not only magically infected/corrupted with demon energy AND insane with trauma that had been building up for months if not YEARS of development…she basically had a better excuse than ANYONE in all this who was also corrupted by Inferno. Yet she’s the one who doesn’t get a break. The unfairness is just…staggering, really. Even her death isn’t without indignity, violation, and depersonalization---she tries to commit a murder suicide, linking her mind with Jean’s and killing herself so that Jean will be dragged down into death with her. Jean, who really is the kindest to Maddie, urges Maddie to live instead, but Maddie’s last words are “not in the same world as you”. Jean survives. Maddie does not. And then...Jean takes Maddie’s memories and psyche into herself. It’s meant as beautiful, but to me it’s a heinous violation. Maddie wanted nothing more than be APART from Jean, so much so she KILLED HERSELF, and now Jean has made her a part of her forever, and we’re meant to applaud this? It’s DISGUSTING. Madelyne gets resurrected in the 1990s by Nate Grey, but it turns out that was an accident on his part, his mind was subconsciously seeking...Jean Grey, of course. And we he finds out he’s the one who brought her back to life, HE TRIES TO KILL HER. Jean stops him, but it’s no wonder to me that poor Maddie runs to the arms of Sebastian Shaw...who, of all people, actually treats her as an individual from the get-go and ends up being a pretty good boyfriend to her. Never even tries to use her in any evil schemes, it’s crazy. Madelyne has come back and died again and come back a few times since then, but she’s never really been “Maddie” again, whether it was brave adventurous Badass Normal pilot Maddie who just wanted to help people, or the bitter, conflicted, morally grey Maddie of the 90s. No, she’s just....she’s not even Goblyn Queen anymore, she lacks the pathos, she’s just this sexy evil misogynist caricature of herself and I hate it. I really love Madelyne Pryor. She came into this crazy world as a normal human, and when she got pulled into superhero shenanigans she held her own. She was a badass, she was a spitfire, she had a huge heart. She deserves a lot better than just being a gross Sexy Evil Lady with no personality, especially since she no longer has the whole “demonically possessed” issue going on. It’s just stupid and sexist at this point. I personally love original 80s Maddie, and also 90s Maddie where like...this shit has happened to her and she’s darker for it now, and understandably so, but she’s also still HER. Like, she leaves Sebastian Shaw not because he ever treated her badly, which he did not, but because he was doing things that could hurt OTHER PEOPLE, and that was where she drew the line. She was an enemy to the X-Men now or at least really hated them, she killed Threnody for bringing up her past as being “bred to breed”, but she also wasn’t about to be with a man who would risk the lives of millions of innocent people with his schemes, no matter how well he treated her, no matter if he was the one man who ever saw her for HER. Real Maddie is INTERESTING and Real Maddie is GOOD and I want Real Maddie back so she can call everyone on their shit and then go off and live her best life instead of being eternally dragged back into pointless villainy by authors who can’t think of anything better! MEGGAN PUCEANU - As with Madelyne, she’s maybe not UNKNOWN per se, I mean she’s one of the lead characters of Excalibur, but I also don’t think she’s an A-lister at all either. I’ve written about her HERE and HERE and her relationship dynamics with Brian Braddock/Captain Britain HERE so I feel like those links will probably be better than another novel like I did for Haven and Maddie! CATSEYE AKA SHARON SMITH - The deaths of all the Hellions were a tragedy, but Catseye is the one I found most interesting and with the most potential! I’ve written about her HERE and the Hellions in general HERE with a segment on her. She’s just so cute and innocent and INTERESTING, I want to know so much more about how she behaves, how she perceives the world and interact with others, how she gets on with her teammates, how she reacts this and that, I just love her! MINDMELD - Appears for only one issue, is arguably the first transgender mutant in Marvel, and also a total badass who I think is really sexy. I write more about her HERE and HERE. HONORABLE MENTIONS I’m not freaking out over these girls AS MUCH or AS CONSISTENTLY but they all have a place in my heart!! Really all it takes is someone MENTIONING them to get me revved up all over again!

THRENODY AKA MELODY JACOBS- Another Marvel gal who can’t catch a break, when she’s remembered by anyone at all. I wrote about her HERE prior to her most recent return in Deadpool, then HERE about said return. I just really, really want Threnody to be happy. She’s suffered enough. Admittedly, that could be said for most women on this list, maybe all of them. GOSAMYR- Wrote about her HERE! Most people who know of her at all typically hate her but I find her extremely interesting. She’s like everything people HATE about women, every stereotype of “toxic femininity”, but then this is explained as part of her culture and biology, and this is, to her, what is normal, and how is she to KNOW that everyone acts nuts around her when she has no basis for knowing how they act when she’s NOT around? She interests me in the questions and dilemmas she raises, and I just kinda have a thing for women we’re supposed to hate because of their feminine traits. KWANNON- The Japanese woman whose body Betsy Braddock had for years. I was very excited when she was brought back to life and given her own series, I wanted for her at last to be a CHARACTER with her own PERSONALITY and LIFE that wasn’t just an excuse to give a white woman a ninja makeover, and then I got...Fallen Angels. And she’s just...she’s literally just 90s Psylocke. I was very disappointed. But I still like Kwannon HERSELF in terms of potential, and now that she’s back maybe she’ll become a real person sooner or later. SATURNYNE AND SAT-YR-9: Wrote about them HERE! I really like Sat-Yr-9 as a villain (I especially enjoyed her short stint in the Hellfire Club as White Queen with Viper as her lieutenant and not-so-subtle girlfriend) and I like Saturnyne as a sort of celestial bureaucrat, someone who isn’t a force of good or evil but a force of ORDER, like the opposite of “embodiment of chaos” type characters. MURMUR AKA ARLETTE TRUFFEAU: I have not written about her before but HERE IS HER WIKI ARTICLE. As with Gossamyr, she seems like the “sexy shallow slut we’re supposed to dislike” type, so of course I like her. BIANCA LANEIGE- A Generation X villain who bore a grudge against Emma Frost from her days in the Hellfire Club, I wrote about her HERE. She’s pretty comedic as a bad guy, but that’s not a bad thing! I’d like to see her around again one day, either as silly as ever or made more serious. LIFEGUARD: Wrote about here HERE. She was in the first X-Men graphic novel that I bought and I’ve always had a soft spot for her since. I really liked that she didn’t give a shit when she found out who her bio-father was, it’s such a refreshing reaction compared to the usual “what if I’m just like my father/I can’t believe I’m adopted/etc” angst. Comparatively, she’s super upset about her Shi’ar lineage, because that actually altered her INTERNAL self when it manifested, she started seeing everyone around her as PREY and I reckon that’s pretty distressing for someone like her. Always wanted to see her come back; she’s in the background at a Krakoa party! SILHOUETTE CHORD: Wrote about her HERE and HERE. I just like her I guess! She’s maybe not obscure per se since she’s a main cast member of The New Warriors, but I’ve never really seen her get any attention. BLACK MAMBA AKA TANYA SEALY: Wrote about her HERE! THE ASP AKA CLEOPATRA NEFERTITI: Wrote about her HERE! SKEIN AKA SYBIL DVORAK: Wrote about her HERE and HERE! She was on the “Woman Warriors” team with Black Mamba and Asp, and I like the idea they just hang out as friends a lot!! ANACONDA AKA BLANCHE “BLONDIE” SITZINSKI: Wrote about her HERE! I just want her to hug me...really, really hard :) SHARADA DARTHRI: A minor villain that shows up during the “all female X-Men” team era in...2013, I think? Wrote about her HERE. DRAGONFLY AKA VERONICA DULTRY: Wrote about her HERE MANTIS : Despite the fact that she’s very well-known for her film version in Guardians of the Galaxy, most people don’t seem to know much at all about her comics version even though she’s been an Avengers member since the 70s. Wrote about her HERE and HERE and HERE, someone else writes about her HERE PENDING These are characters that I have not had the chance to personally read up on myself yet, but I want to! Their names link to their Marvel wiki articles! TOPAZ FIREBIRD SNOWBIRD SILVERCLAW There are honestly countless others I’m probably not remembering but this is a good handful I think! Oh, yeah, and also...COOTER. Because her name is COOTER oh my god.

[killian-whump]

I do believe it's a bad haircut 100% but I also have to say I was in a OUAT con in my country 3 years ago and I had a photo session with Colin (and other actors) and I saw he did have some gray hairs back then (I watched him intensively). People age, hair gets gray, skin wrinkles. What's wrong with that? Such is life and I don't see why we should deny Colin's aging because "it's offensive" to point it out. It goes beyond me. Sorry for my bad english.

Okay, so I don’t really want to keep talking about this, because @spartanguard and I have worked things out between ourselves and there isn’t really an issue any longer and we should all just move on at this point... but I do want to acknowledge this Ask, not least of all so that @spartanguard can see what you’ve said here, because I feel like reading about your con experience will make her spontaneously hear a choir of angels singing XD

But I also want to reiterate that the issue isn’t Colin aging or having gray hair. He is, and I’m sure he does. The issue is that until someone has embraced going gray for themselves, it IS kinda impolite to call attention to it.

Take, for instance, Josh Dallas’s beard. There’s gray in it. There’s enough gray in there that everyone can see it, Josh himself can certainly see it, and the fact that it’s there and NOT being covered or hidden or shaved off is proof positive that he’s comfortable with it and is embracing it. He doesn’t see it as a flaw, and nobody else should, either. Yay, Josh!

But at this point, Colin’s gray hairs are a bit like Nessie. We all know they’re probably there, but they’re very rarely (if ever) SEEN. Maybe he doesn’t have any due to a scandalous deal with a leprechaun. Maybe he’s plucking them. Maybe he’s dyeing them away. We don’t know, but he’s not visibly going gray. And that means he is NOT embracing it - either because there’s nothing to embrace or because he doesn’t want to embrace it. And that is 100% HIS right. It’s his body, his hair, his choices. And we should respect them.

THAT is the point I was trying to make before, and the point I still stand by. Until we see evidence that Colin IS embracing going gray, any gray hairs we do (or don’t?) see should be treated as something that Colin himself may consider a flaw. Broadcasting a gray hair that went undyed or escaped detection is really no different than broadcasting a big ol’ zit on the guy’s forehead. THAT is the point.

And no, this doesn’t mean we can’t talk about how hot Colin will be whenever he DOES become a Silver Fox. It doesn’t mean we can’t privately drool over every gray we think we see. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with @spartanguard‘s Silver Fox Colin Shrine in her basement (I’m sorry, was that... was I not supposed to mention that? ;)) or with her being the Patron Saint of Silver Foxes. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with making Silver Fox fanart or edits of Colin and sending them to her to make her day (please do). It just means we should be mindful of Colin’s feelings on the subject and maybe hold off on the “Colin’s Going Gray!!!” skywriting plane.

And yes, I know we’re all just a bunch of silly fans with silly little blogs and Colin’s unlikely to see anything any of us say, but I am a firm believer in not posting anything anywhere about anyone that you wouldn’t say to their face - because things always have a way of getting back to people, no matter how unlikely it might seem for them to. And celebrities DO look themselves up on social media, they DO look at what their fans are saying - and so do casting directors, journalists and other people in the industry.

Anyway, I hope that clears up where I stand on the issue. And I’m okay with people standing elsewhere. We can agree to disagree, of course. You all can say, do and carry on however you like. I just got a bit persnickety the other day and addressed the issue more harshly than I meant to, and have apologized for doing so. Everything’s smoothed over and fine, there’s no active drama, and hopefully this post clears up my personal thoughts on the issue.

So let’s just let it go now, okay? :)

[teampandawang]

Teach Me How To Love | Part I

By: Mow 

Genre: Fluff // Angst // Smut(? 

Pairing: Suga X Reader (with surprises along the way)

Description: Is when your comfort zone is in its closest state that you will see the brightest sunlight on the outside. 

A/N: Soooooooooooo, this has begun. 🥳 I'm happy to be posting this, it’s been a long time since the idea came to my head and I hope you get to enjoy it. Also, If there’s any disclaimer along the way like smut or something I’ll warn you, so don’t worry. 

“That’s all for today.” Said the voice of your professor. The echo of his words set you free for the weekend. Finally, with the last goodbye you gave him, you were able to rest.

“Thank God.” You said right after, in a whisper for just you and your friend to hear.

“Never thought you would say that.” She joked.

“I get tired too, you know?” You joked back. The weight of the courses disappearing from your shoulders.

“It always looks like you don't.”

Everyone was used to believe your life was studying, nothing else. You were the president of the investigation department, so you actually had a lot of work to do. Usually, you had to run after class to some meeting with the rest of the group, and after that, you needed to get back home soon to finish any class paper or to practice a project presentation. It wasn't easy to balance your academic life with your personal life, but it was something you thought necessary to not lose your mind. So despite all the college activity, you also had really good times with your friends, but until today, they still felt amazed by the other side of you.

“Do you want to go shopping with me tomorrow?” You asked your friend as you grabbed your backpack from the floor.

“Actually I was going to invite you to a party. It's been a while since we went to one.” Jessica answered you. Starting to walk beside you, out of the auditorium.

“Well, we can go shopping and then to the party. How does that sound?” You proposed. You really needed new clothes, even more, if you were going out to a college party.

“Uh, I love it.” She said excited making a small jump.

“And whose party is this?” You asked.

“Jimin's,” She said through an awkward grin, waiting for your reaction.

“You have to be kidding me. Are we really going to that fraternity?” You asked irritated, remembering how that ended the last time your friend's group went.

The thing was that they weren't all bad guys. You actually had worked a lot with Namjoon in a couple of investigation projects, and Hoseok and you shared plenty of classes. But the rest of the guys were not the kind of people you would like to be involved with.

“C'mon! I have to go, Jin is going to be there.” Jessica had a big, HUGE, crush on Jin, so it didn't matter whose and what event was it, if he was there, then she needed to be there too. But that didn't mean they were close, not even friends. The moment Jin stands in front of her, she gets extremely nervous and runs away. This had happened more times than you wanted to admit.

“We'll go if you promise me to finally talk properly to him.” You played, not wanting to keep the game of following Jin with her any longer.

“I… fine, yes. I promise.” She said biting her lips.

“Then this is gonna be really fun, isn't it?” You let out on a small laugh to tease her.

“Please support me!” Jessica yelled to you, making your laughter grow.

“I will, seriously.” You managed to say, catching your breath again.

You were sure she was going to need your help, but seeing her all red and struggling to keep the conversation with him alive was always funny. You kept teasing her as both of you walked to the building's exit, stopping immediately at the sight of a crowd blocking the way. The students were standing in a circle, probably seeing some argument, according to the screams.

“What’s happening?” Jessica asked you softly.

“I don't know. Wait here, I'll see.”

The curiosity dragged you inside. You searched for someone you knew to ask what was happening but there was no one, so you made your way between the mass of people, all of them yelling. Some screams in approvement and the others against. But against what? You pushed gently a few more bodies out of your way, with lots of excuses, until you reached the center of the crowd, your gaze catching a pretty discouraging image.

Standing in the middle was Jimin with his fist closed on the shirt of another student you didn't recognize. He wasn't saying anything to him, but the look in his eyes expressed clearly his aggressive intentions. You managed to see his other hand moved directly to the poor guy's face, but when you were about to scream, someone grabbed Jimin’s hand and took him away. It was a guy known as Suga, one more of the group you were talking about earlier, but surprisingly, and despite his fame, he wasn't directly an aggressive guy as you could see.

“The show is over, go away!” Shouted Namjoon, which apparently came with Suga to stop their problematic little friend.

You took a few steps away to find Jessica between the people left. You were concerned and shocked, not believing yet what you just saw. You weren't a person of fights, not even small conflicts, so this was the first time you actually saw a fist raised to hit somebody else. Is this how it was going to be tomorrow? You hoped not.

“Y/N!” She yelled and your eyes found her. “What was that?” She asked you as soon as you reached her side again, the worried tone clear in her voice.

“Well, that was our precious little host, being the asshole he is.” You answered her bitterly, taking the image away.

“I won't try to deny it, but you know not all of them are like that.” You knew she was trying to stop you from backing off. Which in fact was what you were about to do. “And is not like you have to talk to him, maybe you won't even see him the whole night.”

“Maybe, but is not just him. I have to avoid 3 of them in order to have peace.” You rolled your eyes, thinking of a plan to keep yourself away from them. But despite that, and the bad mood you were getting right in that moment, you didn't want to let her down on this one, you had already done that a lot of times before. “But relax, I'm still going. You need help with Jin.” You finally agreed, hoping to not regret it later.

“Yay! Thank you, Y/N.” She said jumping and smiling widely. At least she was happy, and that made your heart warmed.

She was like your sister, little sister may I add, not actually by age but with the way she acted sometimes, it felt like that. But you didn't mind. Both of you had plenty of good times together, and you were happy with her in your life.

After chatting with her at the entrance for a couple of minutes, you went home.

You unlocked the front door with a smile on your face, the familiar scent from your apartment greeting you as soon as the door shot open. It was always comforting to be home after a long day, and the peace of living by yourself was, without a doubt, the best thing you had found in your life. Everything there went at your pace, everything looked the way you liked it, everything was according to your taste, and that was simply beautiful to you.

“Here you are.” You said between giggles at the sight of your cat walking straight to you from the bedroom. Holly always greeted you when you arrived, sometimes it was just asking for food, but the feeling of her waiting for you was still quite nice.

You filled Holly’s plate in the kitchen before going to your bedroom. The sight of your comfortable bed suddenly making you feel how tired you actually were, your eyes felt heavy and they kept refusing to stay open even from where you were standing, so you changed your clothes in a hurry and laid down, the soft sheets making your body relax in an instance as the heavy thoughts of your responsibilities fade away.

You woke up a few hours later, totally lost in reality. Your hand traveled the surface of your bed searching for your phone between the covers, as you asked yourself what hour was. When you felt it, your fingers curled surrounding it, holding it above your face and unlocking it right in front of your still sleepy eyes, burning them. You groaned softly in annoyance and closed them for a second to adjust to the new amount of light.

The screen said it was almost 9 pm, and your stomach agreed with the feeling of emptiness inside of it, so while you collected energy to stand up and go make something to eat, you scrolled down your social media, waiting to feel fully awake. Not too long on it, you found a post that caught your attention, it was from Hoseok.

“These guys, seriously…” You sighed to yourself.

It wasn't a doubt that the party was going to be wild, because not once one of that fraternity’s parties had ended up without a sex scene, without a fight, without a scandal. Those guys didn't really care if someone got hurt or if something dangerous happened, they had just one thing in mind, have fun, which can be translated into sex, lots of alcohol, and who knows what more. But you were determined to go and have a good time as well, a quite different kind of fun, but fun after all. Also, you really wanted to help Jessica. You knew Jin wasn't a bad guy. Actually, at that very moment, you stopped yourself to think if they were as bad as you thought. The incident with that guy Suga caught your attention. You had always heard that he was pretty violent, so why did he stopped his friend? That wasn't something you would expect from him. Maybe, just maybe, you were underestimating them… you'll see tomorrow night.

You closed the app and locked your phone again, leaving the thoughts for later in order to stand on your feet and make your way to the kitchen. The cold floor under your bare feet took the necessity of jumping into the bed back again, but the hunger was stronger.

Finally, you made something easy and fast out of laziness and then headed back to your bedroom with the hot plate in your hands. You turned on the T.V. and put Netflix while you ate. The movie played on the screen until you fell asleep again, with the plate at one side.

"What do you think about this one?" You asked your friend. You've been in the same store for what seemed like forever, and because Jessica needed you to make a decision over a top, you were just starting to try on the things you picked. But the thing was that the moment she got what she wanted, she lost herself taking pictures to upload them probably on every social media. "Jessica!"

"I'm sorry!" She said lifting her head from her phone, after checking the last picture she took. "Wow, Y/N, you look so sexy! That dress is going to catch a lot of attention." She almost yelled through a wide smile.

"Is it too much? Should I try another one?" You asked seeing the dress in the mirror, not feeling sure if it was right for the occasion. ‘Is it too short? Or too elegant?’ You kept asking yourself.

"Don't you dare, you look amazing and it's perfect for tonight. We're taking this one." She said more excited than you while taking a picture of you with her phone. She was always your best supporter in this kind of situations, you trusted her.

You rolled your eyes at the sound of the camera but found her enthusiasm funny, and the dress was beautiful, it was very sexy too, but with a jacket it would look more casual. So you ended up convincing yourself that it was a great decision and finally bought it.

After you got all the things you needed to, you drove home, leaving Jessica at her place in the way, agreeing on meeting her later.

The sky had already turned dark with the stars shining brightly up there hand in hand with the beautiful lights of the city. The wind was cold and without struggle managed to enter through the window, catching your still bared arms, sending shivers all over your body, but before putting on your jacket you sprayed the last drops of perfume on your neck, that being the only thing left to be ready. After the fabric covered your shoulders, you took one last glance in the mirror.

The view sent you a strong feeling of confidence and your eyes sparkled at the sight. You looked amazing. The dress, without a doubt, fit you perfectly. Not always you felt like this before going out, but tonight you were damn sure you looked great, and the feeling of that was wonderful.

[cap-cavern]

Hey Cap! I’m such a big fan and from what I’ve observed, you seem to be such an influential person in the online Spe community. I’d like to know your thoughts on what makes a good fic. I have a fee but they’re both not very good (doesn’t help that the pairings are unpopular). Any advice you have I’d appreciate.

Hi!!!!

And what? I’m dshfsdjkfhsdfjkshfsk I’m honored!!!! Thank you! :D I’m not sure about the influential one (probably because I never notice it—Am I even a good person? sjfksd) but that means a lot, thank you sdfhdskjfds

And hmmm, this is an excellent question. I hardly read any pokespe fics recently because real life has been taken a toll on me but I’m pretty sure you know the basics of a good fic.

It has to have almost perfect grammar (”almost” because not everyone’s first language is English and it’s okay to make grammatical errors especially if English isn’t your native language), a good story structure, etc. But, let me do a detailed answer before I started rambling out of nowhere or have a brain fart.

This is going to be a long one, probably so I’ll put this under cut.

Disclaimer: This is entirely my opinion! A good fic will always be defined by you and you only. Don’t let other people influence you negatively. If you agree with this then yay, if you don’t then that’s valid!!!

With that out of the way, time to answer what I think is a good fic:

1. The story doesn’t need to be complex or “very dark” for it to be good.

My boyfriend and I always talk about how simple art and fanfics are already enough. My friend always advised me to write something simple first before I complicate things. If you think your idea for a fanfic is simple, don’t ignore it! A simple idea can give you a good story! My first Pokespe fanfic is basically a jealous Ruby. While I despised that fanfic because it’s “too simple”, some of the people who’ve read the fic told me on discord or any social media that they love it. It may be too simple for you but it’s not to the readers!

2. Even if you don’t want to, you need to do your research to make the characters faithful to the source material.

You can read or watch the canon material (or anything related to canon) or just simply read other people’s fanfic to see how they handle the characters. It’s okay if they’re a bit out of character. After all, the only people who can write those characters you’re using in a fanfic are the original writers and creators but don’t go too much with the out of character….ness.

Example:

Some fanfics I’ve read have Ruby despise battling and won’t battle for the rest of his life. While he does not like battling in canon, he still uses his battling skills to protect the ones he loves. Remember that one time in the Emerald chapter where Frontier Brain Spenser started making Sapphire uncomfortable? Ruby was ready to kick his butt at that time.

“Violence? What’s that? I’m ready to beat up anyone who threatens Sapphire!” - Ruby Pokespe, 2020

Did I make sense here? Okay, maybe another example:

Some fanfics state that Sapphire hates wearing dresses and will do anything to not wear them because of her “barbaric nature”. I’ve read RS and ORAS and even the Emerald chapter a bunch of times and it didn’t say that Sapphire hates wearing dresses. She didn’t want to wear a dress because it reminds her of her traumatic past. It reminded her of how weak she was as a kid. And really, who wants to be associated with their traumatic past? Will Sapphire wear a dress, though? Yes, she will. Once she moved on from her traumatic past, she will but it’s up to her if she wants to wear it or not. But really, she doesn’t hate wearing it not because she’s “barbaric”. She didn’t like wearing one because it reminded her of how weak and helpless she was back then.

I hope the examples make sense. If not, well, shoot me a DM so I can give more advice or beta read your fic.

You can also read other people’s analyses or headcanons. They’re good research material!

3. Too much isn’t always a good thing.

This applies to both angst and fluff. While shippers may argue that there’s no such thing as too much (and I agree), there will be some people who will criticize your work for having too much fluff or angst. Angst is good. Fluff is good. Too much may ruin the story.

It’s a good idea to put a warning if the fic will have too much fluff or angst, though. I will be lying if I didn’t write too much fluff for franticshipping but sometimes, it is okay to write too much fluff or angst just to escape the real world.

4. Have the creative freedom to make any character interactions you want.

This one is self-explanatory and the only limit is your imagination.

5. Make sure the plot works and is connected to each other.

You won’t notice this unless you edited your work for the nth time or have someone beta read it. I’m not really good at explaining this but remember that each event has to be connected and they make sense.

Then again, you probably know this one sdjfkds

6. Don’t be afraid to make things ridiculous in your story!

Your imagination is the only limit and it’s fun to see people interpret it differently. A lot of media has given us weird stuff in their story lately (no, I don’t mean sexual weird or an adult and a minor in a relationship. Get help if you think the latter is cute.) I meant like making things seem nonsensical. Maybe a reader may make an analysis of it if you’re lucky!

7. Be passionate about your work!

It’s amazing to read a fic that the writer had a lot of fun writing and put so much love and passion into it! It’s just ***AGRESSIVE CHEF KISS***

Those are the advice I can give at the top of my head. I do hope these help! Thank you so much for the ask again!

PS: I can’t wait to read your fic if you posted it! I know it’s scary and it can be cringy but you got this!!!!

[cannabisrefugee-esq]

WWNRD?  Or, What Would Nurse Ratched Do?  Ft. Nurse Ratched 

Cannabis Refugee, Esq. Advertising / Media / Cultural Conversation, Alternative Treatment, Capitalistic Patriarchal Medicine, Family / Friends, Marijuana / Cannabis, Other Autoimmune Diseases, Radical Feminism

October 31, 2019

Nurse Ratched was a sadistic, evil bitch at the time and would be that and a dangerously out of touch political dinosaur now.  Please do not do what she would do.  If anything, ask yourself WWNRD and then do the opposite.

Speaking with my mother recently made me sympathize with young smartasses and activists who are just waiting for the elder generation — the out of touch Baby Boomers and the Baby Boomers’ parents and kids by this point — to give up the ghost and die.  A “dinosaur” or political dinosaur is someone whose philosophy and worldview are obsolete and rooted in problematic values and circumstances of the distant past.  For example, as a young activist in my teens and 20s I remember thinking and saying that the world would be a better place once those who grew up with unregulated environmental pollution and legal institutionalized racism, sexism etc. died off because their environmental unconcern, racism and sexism were so entrenched that they either didn’t realize, agree or care what they were doing and being was wrong.

Welp.  After being sick my entire fucking life with an undiagnosed autoimmune disease, and going on 8 years with a diagnosed one, I am having these same thoughts now about the older generation of Western medical practitioners and others who were born, grew up and/or progenated in a low-population, relatively unpolluted pre-nuclear world where lifelong serious, untreatable, incurable and progressive disease existed only in very small numbers and therefore where older people seem to believe and act as if chronic illness did not and does not exist at all.

To be clear, chronic illness obviously did exist in our recent and distant past, for example, natural uranium deposits are known to cause acute and chronic radiation sickness to those who spend time around it. And humans have likely always been struck down with genetic and congenital maladies that might not have outright killed them.  But old/er people seem to have lived their entire lives without chronic illness, including autoimmune and immune-mediated disease, front and center in their consciousness or as a part of their lived experience and this does make sense: before, say, the 1940s and 50s the worst industrial (man-made ionizing nuclear) pollutants had yet to be widely dispersed and contemporary Western medicine did not, because it could not, routinely pluck seriously ill and/or nonviable neonates, infants and others from the brink of merciful, natural deaths.  Today, seriously ill children and others are rather forced to live for years, decades and lifetimes with serious illnesses that do not outright kill them, because Western medicine will not allow it, but which Western medicine has yet to figure out how to treat, relieve, or cure.

Having researched chronic illness, primarily autoimmune and immune-mediated disease for going on 8 years now, it seems to me that, in stark contrast to the life experience and worldview of older people, young people today generally are very aware that incurable and progressive chronic illness exists.  Over and over I see that young people today, at least young Western people, well understand and accept the reality of chronic illness much more freely than older people, and the implications of that are extremely dark.  From what I can discern, this difference in worldview likely exists because young people are increasingly becoming seriously chronically ill themselves.  Young people understand and accept the material reality of chronic illness because experiencing it personally as individuals and in their peer group they have no choice but to accept it.

And over and over I see that older people are generally ignorant about issues of chronic illness and that they have not experienced it either individually or in their peer group.  Frighteningly, instead of recognizing their blessed ignorance and trying to remedy it, older people think that their personal opinion based on outdated and second- and third-hand pseudo-knowledge about chronic illness matters or affects the outcome.  It doesn’t, but unfortunately many medical professionals, healthcare policymakers, paid and unpaid caretakers and the like embrace an outdated worldview that no longer applies in our post-nuclear, Western world, and thus do not or cannot fully believe the self-reports of, or even contemporary peer-reviewed medical research addressing, the experiences and needs of seriously chronically ill.

A few weeks ago, a day and a half into a migraine (I’m getting 4 day migraines now, yay!) I panicked over my migraine-related inability to work on my small business, pursue benefits, or do virtually anything as I was completely and totally incapacitated.  In what I can only describe as a misguided and ultimately futile cry for help, bedridden, I called my mother to update her about the situation, whereupon she made some statements of position that were so ignorant they verily shocked me.  Laying in the dark with a sleep mask over my eyes, and a puke bucket near my bed, what I heard uttered from my mother’s lips was so egregiously out of touch with accepted thinking that it frankly terrified me.

Attempting to explain to her how and why she was wrong exhausted me. Knowing that she was moved not an inch by my description of my plight — instead smugly maintaining her “position” throughout as if she were engaging in a political debate rather than considering an emergency communique — enraged me.

For example, when I told my mom that I had a new diagnosis of High Functioning Autism, or HFA, she seemed unsurprised but said I wasn’t autistic as a child because I was always “bright.”  Okay.   In her mind, my HFA-consistent and completely obvious lifelong deficits in executive function — think literal and figurative “housekeeping” — and social competency (including feminine roleplaying which also includes both literal and figurative housekeeping, fuck me sideways) had nothing to do with autism and instead were just me being a lifelong asshole, lazy, and a bitch.  She always believed that about me and she never hesitated to tell me about it.  But at least I was bright.  But now, because I’m no longer a practicing attorney and a “success” and instead am struggling to maintain any quality of life as a seriously ill person with limitations, and I can’t maintain an illusion of physical health anymore if I ever could, I’m a lifelong lazy asshole bitch and a freshly minted unbright/retard on top of it.  Also, there is apparently such a thing as adult-onset autism. Because she says so. 

Of course, my mother’s opinion about HFA is irrelevant and obsolete where HFA-literate people today know that high-functioning autism — the bright, non-retarded kind —  is a bona fide thing, that particularly HFA females are often not diagnosed until late/r in life, and that “brightness” or intelligence is often a symptom/feature of HFA and not the antithesis of it.       Autistic Tumblr — or any young autism or chronic illness related social media site — would tear that political dinosaur a new egg-hole if she dared say something so ignorant patently false about autistics on that platform.  And so they probably should if they wanted to expend the energy and if they thought it would help.

Yes, I recently discovered the dark corner of the internet known as Autistic Tumblr: young people creating content, commentary and community from the shared perspective and lived experience that autism and autism spectrum disorders (ASD) including HFA is real and has real, material effects on people’s lives.  Often, those effects have nothing to do with being low-functioning, or unbright.  Which is not to say that I find Autistic or Chronic Illness Tumblr a particularly sane or comforting place to be.  As I recently learned myself, Autistic Tumblr is an upsetting, dystopian place where young autistics put great effort into and emphasis on “normalizing” and “validating” terrible things that rightfully should never exist at all: autistic and chronic illness related things like melting down, stimming and managing chronic fatigue, chronic pain, chronic gut issues and the like, because although most of them are much younger than me, due to their autism and (likely) related physical and mental issues they are extremely ill and can barely get through their day.  

In fact, upon hearing and considering these self-reports, one might even speculate that physical and mental pain is what likely drives autistics’ trademark weird, antisocial and self-absorbed behavior, where they are in fact “bright” enough to communicate online at the very least (and often have work, school and social commitments) but are exhausted from insomnia, chronic pain and ME/CFS; anorexic because they can’t eat anything; are having infantile hand-flapping meltdowns in public or breaking into inopportune episodes of “stimming” behavior to soothe themselves and they can’t deal with people giving them the side-eye at school and work on top of it.  Autistic young people are living in hell, utter hell, judging from their self-reports.  Considering that vast and increasing numbers of young people are autistic, it seems likely that extreme physical and mental distress is normal for many young people now.  Young people much more than old people seem to know this.  People who care to put in a modicum of research know this.

To further illustrate, when I was attempting to describe my current limitations to my mother she completely dismissed me and said that when it comes to disability, one is either totally disabled or not disabled at all.  Lest I misunderstand what she meant by that, she spontaneously clarified her statement to mean that if I have limitations I should be in a “home” and if I don’t need to be in a “home” then there is no reason I can’t act as if I’m not disabled at all.  In other words, despite being demonstrably, seriously ill, I “should” be able to act/function as if I’m perfectly fine.  Because she says so.  

Of course, as I understand it, invalid “homes” are largely a thing of the past, at least in this country, having literally gone the way of the dinosaur.  And many sick and injured people are, in fact, demonstrably partially disabled, where they are able to perform some activities of daily living and perhaps some higher level activities like bookkeeping and such but not all; accessing “services” to help partially and even very disabled people to live as independently as possible — and not institutionalized — is the way it works now.  Partially disabled does not equal totally disabled, you sadistic Nurse Ratched, you decrepit fossil, nor does partially disabled mean not disabled at all.  She then proceeded to disagree with me — and contemporary peer reviewed medical research corroborating thousands of years of human history and shared experience — that cannabis is an effective anti-inflammatory and is particularly useful in inflammatory bowel disease including Crohn’s.  According to her, and based on nothing, pot isn’t an effective or necessary medicine for any condition, and it’s “merely” an effective pain reliever (!) and therefore is not actually medicine at all.  Because she said so.

This ignorant, sadistic ideological fossil maintains her nursing license and continues to “care for” actual patients including sick infants and children.   Whatever “caring” means to her, and people like her: assholes who rely on frighteningly outdated material on which to form and support their opinions on contemporary medical and social issues, including contemporary chronic illness that for whatever reason is increasing in incidence and prevalence.  And particularly in our post-nuclear, radioactively contaminated environment, including the toxic, autoimmune uterine environment in which many of us spend our first 3/4 of a year and which is known to cause autism.  While information on Crohn’s, HFA, medical marijuana etc. is easily Googleable, and appears to be widely known by young people, apparently my 67 year old nurse mother is waiting for the news to break via Teletype or otherwise didn’t get the memo.  

Of course, if I was a partially disabled man and had a wife (or mother) to perform all my executive function tasks (including bookkeeping services for my small business) for me, no one would even notice I was disabled.  If I were male instead of female perhaps my life wouldn’t be falling apart at all, and certainly the prospect of committing me to a nonexistent/extinct 1940s era invalid home because I can’t wait in line or consistently do my business and personal taxes anymore would have never been raised at all.

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