#and there is so much fucking yuri material in that show like-

[dkettchen]

thank you to the stats heads who voted in my poll

I shall feed you sometime over the next few days with the first batch then :)

re ship ranking stats visualisation:

I have finished making diagrams for the overall ships/characters/fandoms (that appear in the 2013-2023 ao3 data sets) data (not rankings/individual years yet, nor extra data I'll add later)!

do y'all wanna see a post about those ones already or prefer to wait until I'm done with all of them (minus extension ones)?

(either way they're available on my github repo if you just wanna look at em for yourself without further explanation)

[moonlightsapphic]

thoughts on xo, kitty:

i had the time of my life getting straightbaited in s1, loved it and very much believed it was set up beautifully for a kittyuri ending

i once again had the time of my life getting straightbaited by the s2 trailer (which had initially dissapointed me), and then once again squealing at kittyuri moments in the actual season lol

god yuri is so hot

god minho is so hot

this show is bisexual propaganda if there ever was any

i have said it before and i will say it again: this is the queer/sapphic teen asian american romcom we want and need! it’s just like the dumb straight shows! WE DESERVE TO GIGGLE AND CRINGE TOO

i was surprised (but not displeased!) to see a setup for another season rather than an ending with this one. manifesting an easy renewal. (thank u, straight taltbilb fandom, for helping feed the netflix marketing beast for our chaotic bisexual show.) that being said, they could totally have ended it here and idk what the fuck they’re even going to have as a plot for s3.

i have a love/hate relationship with new characters being introduced and the silly plotlines and also the somewhat disjointed dialogues sometimes but it’s also all very endearing lol.

i love the family drama in the show! the execution is lighthearted yes but fellow asian viewers know what i mean. <333

i genuinely don’t know who kitty is going to end up with! but that’s jenny han to you. tsitp would feel the same if the source material didn’t already tell us the ending, too.

i was a kittyuri truther after s1 but now i’m leaning mooncovey just because of how the development/excecution went … and i’m not mad either way lol. all i can tell you is that something viscerally bisexual was happening to me everytime i saw kittyuri on screen in s1 and mooncovey on screen in s2 (with some overlap. screams)

i did feel a little dissapointed to see yuri always chasing what she can’t have this season but really it made a lot of sense and i’m excited to see her development next season.

while yuri has commited many crimes which is what makes her iconic, minho is so babygirl and has never done anything wrong in his life. the shoujo manga/kdrama mooncovey moments were just *chef’s kiss* YES MA’AM GIVE THE VIEWERS WHAT THEY WANT

my girlfriend ships mindae and i think she’s crazy but also i see it, dae is the only one other than kitty that minho could satisfactorily end up with. god i was so mad when i thought they were making an ohio rando his endgame lmaoooo and i was GENUINELY concerned that the kittyuri hate train from mooncovey shippers would descend like bloodthirsty sharks if that happened. praying to god they don’t just push minho or yuri with any ole new character at the end of s3 just to have them not be single. that would be lame. mindae is more than fair game though. 😝 they get into so many fights, it has to mean something … brb getting lost in the gay dae theories …

yuri & dae’s friendship will never grow old to me. i love i love i LOVE

also love it when the characters speak korean amongst themselves, which really drives home how multicultural the show really is. (also it’s hilarious how madison, a literal white girl, speaks better korean than kitty lmao.)

a part of the mooncovey fanbase is very biphobic and lesbophobic and we really need to shame them for it because it’s super annoying. like yeah i know you’re coming from tatbilb which taught you queers exist only in the form of the gay guy best friend for the straight girl protagonist but! jenny han has grown! have you not seen tsitp?! have you also not noticed kitty was never like lara jean?! she wore a mf suit to their dad’s wedding for god’s sake sigh. disrespectfully, if your ship can’t exist without lame excuses on why an alternate ship isn’t as “valid”, then your ship probably isn’t that great in the first place. which is sad, because mooncovey is an awesome ship.

overall a slay. jenny han i know we have a fraught relationship but they could never make me hate you. truly one of the few people in mainstream cishet romcom media that said “actually queer people should be included af because they’re FUN and an underappreciated goldmine!” she also never lets the fandom tell her what to do. you keep doing you, queen!!! i mean it! 💖

[anodymalion]

ok I am in fact using this as an excuse to make a long post about this thank you thank you asjksdjfaljdf

---

Interpreting Yuri as asexual is my very very favorite type of headcanon, which is one that 1. is compellingly coded in the source material (even if that wasn't the creator's intent), 2. is thematically relevant to what the piece of media is Trying To Do as a whole, and 3. just means a lot to me, personally, because I said so.

Coded in the source material

Yuri’s short program is “eros”, aka desire (you can interpret what “eros” means in various ways, but YOI itself explicitly refers to sexual love, at least in the English translations). Yuri struggles with this. Hard. He can’t come up with an answer when asked what eros means to him. His big revelatory moment about desire is that it’s how he feels about wanting to eat his favorite food (omg… boy). Even as the season goes on and the way he views the Eros program changes, the program doesn’t ever really embody the idea of eros as sexuality or romance (which was how the other characters expect him to interpret it) but rather as a desire to keep Victor in his life.

Like look. I’m obviously not going to say that the creator intended any kind of ace subtext to be there. I kind of doubt it was her intent. But goddamn is the subtext there.

2. Thematic relevance

The central theme throughout YOI is “love”, and especially loving people in a way that inspires you both to be your best selves: Yuri learning that the people in his life truly love and support him; Victor finding someone who makes him feel joy about skating again.

Like, Yuri’s whole skating theme for the Grand Prix is literally about him exploring what love looks like to him, even when it takes a form that other people don’t totally understand. Viewing all this through a lens of him being ace is really compelling. It adds depth to the idea of learning how to express the way you feel love even when it looks different than what other people expect. I think it’s a really delicious layer that adds even more nuance to what the show is getting at.

Besides, it’s an interesting way of viewing the criticism of the show that occurred for it not being 100% explicit about them being a couple (aka people getting mad because the kiss in ep 7 is blocked by Victor’s arm lmaooo). Like, ok, did you see the ending scene of ep 9? Did you see ep 10??? They definitely, definitely love each other, in whatever way that means for them. Their relationship takes a form that’s pretty different than the other way people in the show are going about romantic relationships, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real for them. That is very much in line with the main themes of the show.

3. Means a lot to me

In the final scene of the penultimate episode, Yuri tells Victor that they should end their coaching relationship after the Grand Prix ends. This is because he thinks he’s holding Victor back, that Victor would be happier being free to go back to skating on his own instead of being Yuri’s coach. When I watched this (and, I’ll be honest, this is completely me projecting here) I REALLY interpreted this as an ace thing. I think it’s pretty easy to internalize the idea when you’re asexual that you just won’t be… enough, for other people. In my case I ended up a strong impulse to self-sabotage relationships because I would rather be the one to end things than to let someone else tell me that who I am as a person is fundamentally lacking. Yuri destroying a connection he desperately wants because he thinks there’s something about him that is holding Victor back from a life he’d be truly happy with? Oh yeah. I can fucking relate to that.

Also: YOI came out in 2016, which was the absolute peak of hostility to ace people I was seeing on this site. It was bad here. At the same time Tumblr was going wild over this show. Everyone was watching it. Seeing a whole site of people absolutely adore a character I very deeply in my heart believed to be ace? Extremely vindicating.

---

In conclusion Yuri is asexual because it is fun and interesting that way, and also because of this:

[jjs-brainrot]

Alright, finally started all of the anime I was planning to pick up for Fall 2024 so time to do my first impressions for the season!

Just as a reminder: This will be my ranking of these shows based purely on how I felt about the first 1-3 episodes. Continuations and anime that I've already read the source material for will be put into a separate rank after the rest.

Overall, I'd say this is looking to be another strong season with a lot of shows I'm feeling extremely excited to keep up with!

A-Tier (sold on it in 1 episode)

Puniru is a Cute Slime: Transgender slime girl who, as stated by the title, is very cute. Hilarious and adorable first couple of episodes. I'm fully in on backing Puniru for slimegirl of the season. Also: HOLY FUCK THE ED IS A COVER OF "THE SHOW" BY ADO!!!

Acro Trip: PG Gushing Over Magical Girls but not as explicitly gay and dedicating half the screen space to a fuckboy for some reason. Very strong start though my opinion on this series will hinge on how much yuri we get and if the fuckboy gets in the way of it or not.

Magilumiere Co. Ltd.: Super neat concept for a magical girl setting and has a very strong start so far. Kana x Hitomi is already my frontrunner for ship of the season.

The Stories of Girls Who Couldn't Be Magicians: Little Witch Academia but it's about the student in the general education program. Easily some of the prettiest backgrounds and art style this season. No matter what, i need to see more of this very pretty show.

B-Tier (strong start but I need a few more episodes to lock it in)

Dandadan: I was going to give it an A-Tier but the abduction scene takes it a full rank down. I'm told that's the worse it ever gets, buuuut I also don't trust shounen fans that much after trying to get through the slog that was Undead Unluck so we'll see.

C-Tier (rough start but has some promise)

Demon Lord 2099: "We have Shadowrun at home". Really hard to tell how this one will turn based off the first episode. Neat concept but could swing wildly in quality.

D-Tier (I'll stick it out but they're on thin ice)

Nothing

F-Tier (lol, no.)

I’ll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History: That might be the most bland villainess isekai I've ever watched. I felt like I wasted 20 minutes of my life I'll never get back…

Good Bye, Dragon Life: interesting concept wasted on extremely bland writing. Thought about sticking with it for the Lamia girl but it's so devoid of any personality and as far as snake girls go, she's no jashin-chan…

(S)pecial-Tier (I've already read the source material or it's a continuation)

Shangri-La Frontier S2: HELL YEAH, WE'RE BACK BABY! More "Let Me Solo Her" the anime is upon us!

Natsume's Book of Friends S7: The boy with zero self-preservation skills and his chunky hard drinking talking cat are back!

DNF (Could be good, could be bad, but my brainworms stopped me from finishing episode 1)

Nothing

[loveswickedpitch]

see you in hell you stupid fruits: a rambling reflection on revue starlight relive

revue starlight relive has reached end of service, so i guess i might as well share my thoughts? if you just want the tl;dr, my opinion can be summed up as "good fucking riddance", but you know. might as well talk about it a bit more.

first off, things i liked about relive. i liked most of the new characters it introduced, even if they were pretty flat early on. it was clear that they weren't sure what to do with some of them, but they did expand on them and give them more depth over time. some of the events were cute. the battle system was fun. arcana arcadia had some cool stuff, even if i had already stopped actually playing the game by that point (more on that later). and, uh... that's kind of it, i guess.

none of this stuff was ever really able to overcome the game's flaws. the new characters were fun, but it was pretty clear that they didn't always know how to juggle them, and some characters would go months with no new events or cards (i recall Misora often being neglected). events often had cute moments and occasionally an interesting character tidbit, but a lot of the time they just felt like pointless fluff.

while the basic battle system was compelling, the game never did much with it. PvE stuff was mostly just bland grinding and PvP was a mess full of ridiculous power creep where if you wanted to keep up you had to either get super lucky with your pulls or spend hundreds of dollars. Leveling up and unlocking skills for characters was tedious. in fact, most of the gameplay was an exercise in tedium - eventually, i realized i was going to all this effort to raise characters and do dailies and shit for basically no reason! why bother grinding characters so i can beat event bosses over and over to get the many different types of materials when the only thing to do with them is make your characters better so that you can get more materials??? if you just wanted to experience the cutscenes, you didn't need to engage with the actual gameplay much at all, so why bother? that's not even mentioning the complete lack of variety in basic enemies and bosses that got reused over and over.

arcana arcadia was really cool, but i don't think the story was well-served by the format, and also it took years for them to get to it - the first story arc was pretty much nothing and the second mostly felt like a course correction rather than a compelling narrative arc on its own (especially the first half, imo - the Rinmeikan and Frontier stories were probably the best).

but even if all of this was fine, and the game had compelling gameplay and writing, it would still be bad, because it's just a slot machine with anime girls on it! the entire purpose of the game, the whole reason it exists in the first place, is to grab as much money as possible from vulnerable people. and i kind of debated on whether i would talk about this, but i was one of those people. i spent thousands of dollars on this game because it turns out, surprise, i have a gambling addiction! so it was very frustrating for the bulk of writing for this franchise was locked behind an app i could not safely use.

i think that's basically it. it was a bad game stapled to a slot machine that showed you yuri if you won and i'm glad it's dead.

at least junna and nana kissed.

[mekatrio]

im taking back my previous statements of yuri having a black and white morality bc rechecking the source material has suggested another possibility to me... my new opinion takes these lines from yuri into account more seriously

and to continue from my previous yuri analysis/nitpicking/bitching etc.. this line strongly hints/reveals that yuri's murder of ragou was more an impulsive action born from outrage and frustration rather than a calculated act tht aimed to address the underlying corruption of the empire. that when he murdered ragou, he had "lost his senses in the heat of the moment", and that his words and actions after that are indicative of him struggling to come to terms with what hes done. basically, yuri's first murder was an impulsive act, not a determined act of vigilantism, but he pretends otherwise and instead insists to both himself and others that he isnt conflicted over what hes done, when in reality hes very much conflicted and lacks the conviction to be the vigilante-esque figure hes making himself out to be..

this would explain why hes so different from judith, who i previously compared him to. judith is fully confident in the beliefs that guides her vigilantism, and takes precautions to not get caught so she can continue to destroy harmful blastia. yuri on the other hand is careless, not doing a thing to cover up his involvement in ragou's and cumore's murder, and was even ready to give himself up for arrest (at mantaic, during his conversation with flynn). not to mention that he constantly labels his actions as crimes, as compared to judith, who never does such things.

this also explains why despite making a whole show of saying this;

he immediately refutes these ideas when it concerns someone he cares about:

bc despite his bravado, hes not actually resolute in these beliefs. he only made it seem like so in order to justify his own actions, to affirm to himself that he doesnt have any doubts over taking lives, when those lives in question endangers the lives of others. but he does very much have doubts, bc this line of thinking that he applied to ragou and cumore, that hes just "cutting off a part to save the whole", then ends up extending to flynn, when he starts acting tyrannically,

and then to judith, when destroying a hermes blastia leaves them stranded in the sea,

and of course, to estelle, who is revealed to be born with a power that harms the planet itself:

^yuri having doubts.png

it also doesnt help that he has a whole inferiority complex w flynn being a knight.. his spat with flynn in capua torim shows that hes definitely frustrated with the helplessness he faces as a commoner, yet despite his vigilantism beginning to threaten his friendships, its also one of the only ways that he can effectively challenge the empire's corruption. its one source of conflict after another </3 tho he isnt going to show that of course... although a real vigilante like clay (from the dark enforcer sidequest) will be able to clock him

but yeah, essentially, i think that deep down yuri doesnt actually believe tht he was justified in taking ragous and cumores lives. but if he takes a proper look at what hes done, he'd be horrified at the realization that hes capable of killing someone when he loses composure. which of course is so very similar to another character... sodia!

sodia is horrified by whats she done, by what shes capable of in a fit of rage. but unlike sodia, yuri is fucked in the head, so rather than dealing with the discomfort of analyzing his inner turmoil, he instead sweeps those feelings under the rug, and wears a facade of Im Justified In What Im Doing, im ok with what im doing, and "this is the path ive chosen for myself". so no, i no longer think that yuri possesses a black & white morality, but instead insisted that he had one just so he wouldnt have to deal with his justifiably conflicting and complicated feelings... LOL! its honestly pretty incredible character writing all things considered. yuri is a very tricky character to analyze, bc he lies Alllll the time, to others, to himself, to the player, and even repede! so its difficult to figure out where his values lie and what hes actually feeling, since you cant just take his words at face value. its really neat!!

also BONUS YAOI ROUND cuz im a fujo at heart <3 basically in spite of yuri wearing this facade of "Yup Im Totally Ok With Being A Vigilante", this mask crumbles when faced with flynn

^yuri giving himself up for arrest.gif

and likewise, although flynn aims to be a pillar of lawful good, he finds himself making exceptions when hes faced with yuri

^sodia being fed up w this shit.png

both of their convictions waver when faced with each other.... #ILoveYaoi

[yuribracket]

MALIGNED YURI BRACKET: Round three

How is Mako Mankanshoku/Ryuko Matoi (Kill la Kill) maligned?

"maligned due to their source material, a lot of people dont care for or outright loathe klk...but their relationship is possibly the most wholesome component of the whole show...theyre literally canon. ive been fighting in the trenches for them since 2014 when ppl were saying 'oh but in japan a date between two girls just means hanging out as friends!!!1!' WHEN THEY LITERALLY KISS and oh my god the SUBTEXT of some of their scenes??? anyway. it hurts so much seeing them lose or get left out of polls..." "#the rampant denial and homophobia that happened when they became canon was batshit insane. they literally kissed each other on the mouth" "#I HAVE SPENT TOO LONG ROTATING THEIR CANONCITIY AND THE PENIS RIDICULOUS RYUMAKO DENIERS TO NOT BE LOUD ABOUT THIS"

How is Shanoa/Laura (Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia) maligned?

"well already the cv games get ignored because of the Netflix show and order of Ecclesia is even less talked about and shalaura is only known to like. My friends. Pretty much all content that exists for them is by one of my pals. come on Shanoa is a yuri icon. every female villager flirts with her. every female enemy flirts with her. she’s canonically not interested in men. please." "CV fans we have to pull through, I've never seen a poll account acknowledge the games." "#pitting shalaura against twewy and tales characters is fucking sick in the head. they ARE the most maligned for this"

[howtotrainyouragents]

Agent H’s TV Reactions

Spy x Family Season 1 

A spy is tasked with creating a fake family to infiltrate the enemy country, only to unwittingly marry an assassin and adopt a child telepath

-MY EMOTIONAL SUPPORT FAKE FAMILY

-I love that this a story about survivors of war. About how they fight for peace. About how they heal through love and relationships with each other. I love that it’s an action story, a drama, a comedy, a slice of life

-You can tell that this is an anime that really loves the story and source material. It is truly done with such love and care and attention to detail 

-I really wish that the opening/closing scenes were canon/shown because I want to see them going on vacations and dance around their home TT. I also want that scene of Loid at the train looking up at Yor on the balcony. I also love the scene in the second opening scene of Yor hugging Anya by the window

-The teacups theme song is my new comfort song

-I have such a crush on Loid. The tousled “at home” hair will be the death of me. 

-HE’S SUCH A DAD. Have him make a corny dad jokes and HE’S THERE

-I love that Loid’s complaint of Anya is that she’s unpredictable. Like, yes, the best spy in the world, the man who can predict and prepare for any situation in the world, is having his ass handed to him by a four year old

-Meanwhile it take Anya about 48 hours to learn that no matter how cool your parents are, all parents are lame

-I know it was for the interview, but I think Loid genuinely meant it when he said he found a kindred spirit in Yor. The moment at the party I think is when Yor starts to fall for him, but also when Loid recognizes that they are alot alike, that she “may be the only person who can accept him for who he is right now.”

-Also, Loid absolutely fell in love with Yor when she first knocked out that bad guy

-Yor being the emotional support and rock of the family. The way she supports and cares for Anya and plays with her and gives her advice (however helpful it is XD). And the way that she supports Loid, breaking him out of his anxiety. Like in the restaurant in the third episode, he’s totally spiraling about the interview, and she doesn’t know what’s going on in his head, but she knows to take them to the park for fresh air and perspective and it’s just what he needed

-The scene of Loid and Yor comforting each other as parents is one of the most foundational scenes of the story

-I saw some people a while back being like “Twilight is going to get too soft and eventually do something emotionally and jeopardize Operation Strix” You mean, the interview???

-Anya punching Damian is one of the greatest scenes of all time

-The dodgeball episode is one of the greatest episodes ever made XD

-The penguin park episode may be my favorite. Whole family working together without knowing what the others are doing. Yor kicking a guy into the ceiling. Loid winning the penguin for his girl. Loid wanting a vacation then STOPPING and deciding to just work harder because he loves his girls so much

-BOND IS THE BEST BOY

-My heart broke with Sylvia’s simple “I had a daughter once like her.” 

-The Loid reflection while they’re at the dog park broke me

-Loid being proud of his daughter jumping two boxes and jumping rope five times

-In any other show Nightfall would be the most iconic, fan-favorite character ever made, and (we love her too!) the only reason she’s not here is because she’s competing with the fucking Forgers

-Yes, Loid, you should switch to decaf

-I love the episode of Yuri tutoring Anya because for how intense Yuri is about work and his sister, he really is just a 20 year old kid. And I just love seeing this big kid get so exasperated with this little kid, and I hope they get more bonding in the future lol

-Shinybluebirdwizard pointed it out that Becky Blackbell is pretty much the only character remotely living as her authentic self and that is fucking hilarious

-Damian always being ready to fight when it comes to Anya

-I would be very curious to learn about Japan’s role and viewpoint in the Cold War because it’s interesting how this is Cold War Germany inspired 

-I had a separate post about the tennis arc. Let's see if I ever write it up...

-Loid going out of his way to reassure and support Yor just because he wants her to be happy. I am ride or die for this couple

-Loid ep 6: Yor is sad, I should reassure her!

Loid ep 15: Yor is sad, I should take her out on a date!

Loid ep 24: Yor is sad, I should take her on a date and ask her to marry me! Like, bud, the reaction does not equal the situation. With all of Loid overthinking I’m genuinely trying to understand how he thought honey-trapping Yor would be beneficial for the musssion. Like I know why he does it but Loid, what was your reasoning there

-The last episode was so good!! The hat tip mirroring the first episode. The importance of love and care and communication and trying to be there for each other. The final words summarizes the whole story, and the teacups song playing through Loid's words. Anya’s at bliss even when he has no idea what’s going on in her head: They don't understand each other but they love each other and want to do their best for each other. That's it. That's the whole story.

-Extremely important question: Is Loid licensed to be working as a psychiatrist. Because on one hand, obviously it’s just a cover story. On the other hand, Loid has never half assed anything in his life and cramming years of worth of medical school and passing a licensing exam just to make his story airtight is exactly the kind of thing he would do. Endo, respectfully are you listening. Endo, please, I need to know this

[screechingcheesecakecheesecake]

Diego del Lobo discussion

HEAVY SPOILER ALERT FOR MYSTERIES OF THE PAST

also old man (im not an old man) ramblings

ALRIGHT I FINALLY FINISHED THE SEASON TODAY AND I'M HAVING A LOT OF EMOTIONS.

Diego is such a fucking well-written character (this season was really well done honestly albeit I did get super pissed off several times but also the tension it gave was really great!).

Diego was such a nice foil character in the story. His growth, downfalls, and everything was so well-placed to the point that's its really heartbreaking.

First, we are introduced to him as a suspect (great start!) in the Alastor arc. He's a smart and suspicious person, committing plagiarism, making fake copies of paintings—all that good stuff.

(Note that I played S4 before S3 and I actually dropped S3 because the cast in that series felt like a dysfunctional family and it was just unpleasantly annoying)

We get help from him from time to time in the World Exhibit arc, even when he whines about it. Even with his suave persona, we see that he is also quite the nerd and got attached to especially Evie and Charles! In the end, he joins the squad, where he considers himself feeling like he had a family within.

Diego was such an antithesis to Justin Lawson, someone who we didn't trust in the start, with intentions not completely pure, until he falls into one of the most critical roles at the last arc.

Quick JL analysis (I'm glad he's dead)

Lawson lost himself in his pursuit of "justice", becoming deaf to the cries who were supposed to be helped by it. It's not like he was completely evil at the start! He didn't want to sentence a teenager who had killed his best friend out of panic from the gang wars! In the end, when he had the power to change, Lawson became the very villain, the corrupt official that the Flying Squad were initally tasked to get rid of in the first arc! (A really fun foreshadowing!)

Meanwhile for Diego, things became more difficult for him. His loyalty was really intense and at times, I felt like the extremeness of his actions was a way to prove himself to the Squad that he really changed. Like, he was even upset when he became a suspect in another case to the point of drinking. He continuously put his own life on the line in order to help us. Aiding Isaac and Charles with their love troubles, supporting Evie's with hers. Being concerned with Arthur being scammed. Heck, he considers Evie a little sister and the way they treated each other like family was so sweet. He was doing so much. That itself, showed how much he loved the Flying Squad.

(I like to think that Evie never hated him for killing Charles, only that she was heartbroken over it, but she knew Diego well enough that she would know how it must've destroyed him in the inside. Tis why I think she still visits him until he finished his sentence.)

I love how his past criminal life played in the story. He never changed his ways, only doing it for the good of people this time. His connections and wittiness saved our asses a lot. However, it wasn't completely pardoned as it was what eventually forced him to leave the Squad, his family.

ALSO HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH CHARLES (in a way, it too, was yuri). We know he has a thing with Maddie and he did express some heartbreak over her dating Charles. BUT he really does love Charles! Charles in opposite of him, he wears his heart on his sleeve that it gets his ass into tricky situations. A bit clumsy and nerdy, very sweet. Honestly, with how open Charles is as a person, I think it's really sweet to how Diego, a person used to wearing masks, got so along with him. He helped Charles from the scam, aided him with his wedding and even told Charles that he was husband material! We do know that some members in the squad were on the fence with Diego, but Charles also really loved him! They trusted each other in a very risky mission, where they even kept it a secret from Maddie.

I think that's what makes Diego being forced to kill Charles so heartbreaking. When he said Charles was husband material? Charles gave up his life in order to protect his wife and child. Diego not only lost the Flying Squad—his family, but also tore another family apart in the process. And as heartbreaking that was, their sacrifices weren't in vain. It paved the way of the Flying Squad rescuing Concordia.

I like to think that in the meantime while he was in prison, he was helping other prisoners change their ways—in the way that the Flying Squad changed him too. I want to believe that he reconnects with the Flying Squad again so bad. But it's not like prison was full of cold criminals in this series, we've had those with accidental murders. I want to believe Diego found another family with them as well.

(and also maybe meddle with some intense mommy issues that will happen in the prison (intense Guilietta and Fransisca staring)

[tomyo]

Hbomberguy has unfortunately taught me that if I find myself really not gelling with someone it's probably because they're a shitty person.

Like I'm no Cassandra but all this time I remember I would just watch his videos and think "hmmm yeah, I can place my finger on it but I don't like the way he talks about these things." And then I ignored it because I thought I was just going out of my comfort zone.

I can't remember everything I beefed on him with but I definitely hated when he started to take on anime or Asian media. Overall I just think a lot of times westerners tend to assume their values and ways issues are dealt with are universal and he was just another lukewarm dive into the medium. Like its personal to me but I still stand by that Yuri on Ice isn't gay in the sense it isn't made for gay people, it's voyeuristic and pairing stories of incestuous feelings within it's short run time was a horrible choice they could have skipped. It comes to mind because I think he brought it up in one of his recent videos (I've been bedridden all week so my watch later queque has been playing on in the bg between lucidity) and it ticked me off. I hate the way he was dismissive of Heart Stopper for being twee and the whole rant about how it's not just him but other gay men too who think this! Honestly! For real guys! And for minutes I was just there like Alice Oseman is aroace! When he finally gets there it became infuriating how he diminished it's importance. Authors are allowed to let their experience effect their writing! She's not responsible to cater to you. The beauty of Heartstopper is it's release has lived through a rapid change in lgbtq acceptance and is the perfect opportunity to show that romantic and sexual inclination also exist on a sliding scale because that's something we are now widely teaching!! To write modern teen characters, you have to empathize with modern teens. They're not you!! Which is mostly good given the history of our community. It's good to get to see queer teen boys take it maybe infuriatingly slow because they don't have to be pressured for more.

James to me was always just a bit pessimistic and not really good at empathizing which given how much he stole makes sense why what he said and how he acted just felt off. It makes sense when everyone else in "breadtube" started promoting each other's works how it never seemed to happen with him. I don't remember him saying he was the only person really doing this but that's fucking bizarre to hear when the list of people who does what he pretended to was endless. Before I even watched the whole video I already brought up Matt Baume who like Hbomberguy said feels the exact opposite to James. Matt talks forward about progress, genuinely made me realize how we were always here, and the path lead forward to us getting there. Maybe it's not great to admit but there's YouTubers I watch that I know I have to psych myself up to watch, sometimes I don't like their running joke, sometimes they talk too fast multitasking, sometimes they have a habit that gets to me and I just need mental prep. James was like, "sigh here we go" that you'd feel before you were about to talk with that one friend who makes every convo abrasive and combative, I'm coming out a little annoyed and tired by the end of it. With Matt I remember it being a case of getting ready to sit down to hear a part of obscure history knowledge from that one friend who reads a book every two days. Possibly the biggest difference between the two is how much you believe Matt is committed to the material he's making because 1. It also focuses on sitcoms and old Hollywood queerness hence an well carved niche 2. It isn't as easy to churn out material. I've heard a million videos on owl house's queerness or Sherlock queer baiting but fuck all did I ever know how Tab Hunter was. There were so many "weird little funny guy" actors that I could make assumptions were gay but Matt actually gave me their stories and has made my heart cry for how hard they had it even thought I always could have figured that. And maybe that's what sucked, James as a queer man just never seemed to emotionally resonate.

Fuck, man I'm just rambling with all of this but the sheer validation of feeling off all these years paying of is wonderful. I don't really want to celebrate his downfall to much, not worth the energy, and I don't want to put another YouTuber on a pedestal because we have a bad habit of doing that only to have things turn out wrong. The thing is I watched illuminauti and Internet historian too but in the same way where I knew I was getting junk food. I wasn't looking for anything fancy and their sections did not surprise me and if anything maybe just make me feel embarrassed how comfortable I am eating badly made media. But god maybe worse is how happy I am to have someone tell me that it's alright that I don't like one gay dudes well produced videos.

[goddevouringserpent]

tagged by @dujour13, thank you!!! these are always a lot of fun hehe

Last song: death follows by she who mauls, found through my Release Radar playlist. was not even aware of this artist until now but I'll be keeping an eye out for any other songs she releases

Currently watching: nothing! in-between shows—we're pondering whether to start Severance, Scavenger's Reign or maaaaybe Voyager

Three ships: UHH okay I'm gonna cheat and pull from the ones I have works in progress for lol. let's sayyyy... Kaija/Woljif, Nelvari/Julan, Yunia/Ranni (yes I've already mentioned them in a past tag game but time is fake and yuri is forever). I'll probably think of like 50 more right after I post this but fuck it we ball

Favourite colour: ourple 💜

Currently reading: been having a very hectic time, so unfortunately I haven't really been able to read anything not work-related... still trying to finish Buddha's Little Finger and Tesis sobre una domesticación—both of which I am thoroughly enjoying, so trust me, it's not for lack of wanting that I haven't made much progress. also, technically, the books I am editing for work

Currently consuming: as in eating/drinking? nothing too exciting, I'm afraid, just sipping on water cause I've gotta stay hydrated 😌 but I will say the last thing I ate (dessert) was grapes & some salt and caramel flavoured chocolate. which is really really really good

First ship: UUUUUUH. I might be wrong, but I think it was Lyra/Will, from His Dark Materials? it's the earliest ship I can remember, anyway

Place of birth: real ones know Argentina. no further details given :3

Current location: my bedroom

Relationship status: romantically? single

Last movie: uuuhhhhh it's been so long since I watched a movie, I legitimately cannot remember... come to think of it, I think it might've been Argentina, 1985, back when it first came out?? so uhh. two years ago give or take😭

Currently working on: work + like ten drawings at once + character page + RP stuff + lots of OC stuff honestly. I'm feeling the urge to write fic but I'm not sure what about yet, we'll see 🤔

open-tagging because I'm too lazy to actually tag people, lol. feel free to just yoink this or mention me/say I tagged you~!

[alchemist-who]

I think one big indicator that fanfiction is borne of passion for source material rather than just wanting characters to bone is just how much sports anime shipping fic I’ve read where the characters are in long distance relationships.

Like, it’s not a super romantic or sexy setup! But people work it into their plots so consistently! Obviously not with everything, you don’t see it a lot in Yuri on Ice where Yuuri canonically moves to Russia or in Sk8 where half the characters have canonical day jobs, but in the shows where people pursue professional sports careers? I’ve never seen anyone ignore the part of Haikyuu’s canon where Hinata and Kageyama or Oikawa and Iwaizumi go to different countries. And I’m looking through some Blue Lock fic for the first time and so many pieces that are basically just Bachira and Isagi hooking up have a quick beginning that’s like “Bachira lives in Spain and Isagi lives in Germany, they’re on training breaks from their respective soccer teams.” You don’t have to put that in! You can just make them fuck! I dunno, I feel like it’s really interesting that even when people write fic mostly for romance or sex they still have that respect for the original characterization. I think that’s beautiful

[jihyoruri]

ok hi guys!! sorry for my absence 😞 I’ve had a lot of schoolwork and I’m trying to finish this momo fic but it literally requires me to comb through every single year month and day of twice’s career just to keep an accurate timeline 😭😭ffs. I’m looking up “how far is inkigayo from the Han river” and “luxury korean cigarette” just to get some accurate timeframes and materials like THIS IS NOT FUCKING SERIOUSSS

but in honor of the stardom fic FINALLY DROPPING (I love them all their so funny 😭😭but eunjin and yuri are still my faves) here is my analysis on why “real men” by mitski is richgirlyn’s song (if you couldn’t tell richgirlyn is my favorite yn and has been since her fic dropped. I am THEE FIRST richgirlyn stan do not PLAY)

so uhmmm.. TW FOR ED DISCUSSION! also maybe grammar mistakes idk

Real Men - title, ties into her mothers style of raising children.

“Real men don't need other people”

-start of the song. richgirlyn has been raised to believe she is “better” than other people, and that she can’t rely on others to not appear weak. this perfectly lines up with her mothers way of raising children, in the way she only knows how to parent boys, making richgirlyn believe she has to be a “real man”, in the sense of emotional control.

“And real men suck it in”

-yeah. richgirlyn has anorexia, an eating disorder. this was caused by her mother and her insistence on richgirlyn to LOOK a certain way. im sure she always told her to suck it in, sit up straight, on top of “lose some weight”. i get you so bad richgirlyn I get you so bad. SHES JUST LIKE ME FR😭😭.. but yeah anyway “real men suck it in”, kind of self explanatory. Her mother is forcing her to be a “real man”, telling her to suck it in appearance wise but also “suck it up”. boys don’t feel emotions silly

“Real men don't flinch or bleed in public”

-again, tying into the fact that her mother raised her to believe showing emotions is a sign of weakness. you can not flinch or bleed in front of anyone, you can not be hurt in front of anyone. in the sense that people will rub salt into the open wound no matter how much they tell you they will not. they promise it’s sugar and it never is. a you can never trust another person enough to see you vulnerable because they will turn it against you. the saddest thing is richgirlyn literally opened up a fraction to chaewon and she became ten times more vicious. this probably reinforced to her what her mother always said— trust no one, don’t be weak in front of them. she can’t even trust kazuha. this is the reason richgirlyn does not cry in front of ANYONE

“Oh, I think I'm a real man

Little boys cry and look around for comfort

And always get what they want”

-no because she’s literally the song. little boys (her brothers) probably could get comfort from their mom because she favors them and loves them. any hardship they go through is treated more seriously. they always get what they want— they get to be loved, they get attention, they’re perfect, and most importantly they get her mothers love. all richgirlyn really wants is her mom to accept her, to love her. i know she would immediately accept it if her mom told her “I’m sorry, I love you”. like she would fold immediately. little boys always get comforted, they get to be loved— but she has to be the pinnacle of success, of perfection— she is not allowed to cry, to have comfort at all. she must be strong

“Little boys see toys and say, "I can take that!"

-they the type of brothers to break her dolls and laugh at her I can feel it. this is a subtle nod to how men think they’re entitled to women, ie, how these show hosts treat richgirlyn like she’s stupid and constantly objectify her. they think that she’d some idiot girl, and they can say and do whatever they want to her.

“Oh, you are my little boy

Though honestly sir, all I wanna do

Is get naked in front of you

So you can look me up and down

And tell me, "Well done girl, you're looking good"”

do I even have to go through this.. (yes).

the “little boy” is simultaneously chaewon and her mother.

maybe this is just my experience, but there’s always a sick part of you that wants the person who hates you to suddenly love you or feel guilty for it. if they’re sorry it proves that you didn’t deserve it, they feel bad for hurting you because no one should.

richgirlyn wants approval from both her mother and chaewon. she’s learned to ignore them, she knows she shouldn’t, but it’s this constant hunger she can’t quite bury

the “get naked” isn’t literal, moreso she wants to be vulnerable and explain her true feelings, to be told she’s done well, they’re proud of her— she wants to be understood. she wants chaewon to know her, for her mother to understand her, and be told she is accepted and loved for it, that she is “good”. 

in another sense, it could be taken literal. the eating disorder makes her crave validation for her physical appearance. if her mother saw her and said “you look good” or “you’re pretty” she might not show it but she would feel like it was all worth it. she would feel vindicated, good, proud of herself. it’d motivate her to starve more, to keep doing what she’s doing because her mother finally “loves” her, is proud of her, accepts her. I don’t even wanna THINKK about what this woman would say if she knew every part of her daughter (and if I said she’d be so homophobic..). basically this is saying richgirlyn wants to be understood, and with that understanding, have someone still love her and be proud of who she is.

“Real men keep cool in the face of a fire

Go down with the ship”

-just reinforcing the belief that “real men”, what she has been raised to be, do not panic or show strong emotions. they do not abandon things that hurt them, they stay there to the last second. the ship could be her family. they are hurting her, they are toxic, and yet, she will not leave them. that is who she is, that is a part of her, and she can not leave it.

“And real men don't eat, 'cause they're above that, damn it

Oh, I'm gonna be a real man”

-be serious. she has a whole ed this line is gonna apply to her

i don’t know how much the ed actually effects her way of thinking but when I was deep into the disorder I genuinely felt subhuman if I ate. i felt absolutely disgusting and like I was less than a human being because I ate something. i felt like if I didn’t eat I was “better” than people who did because I had self control and it would make me “prettier” in this end. maybe richgirlyn doesn’t feel like that but there is definitely a (slight or big) superiority complex that comes with having an ed. It makes you hyper-competitive. like if your friend doesn’t eat because they’re not hungry, you can’t eat because they’re not eating and it would make you “worse” than them to eat. and If someone says “omg I’m so hungry” you never actually say it (I’m not tryna get put in a ward) but you have this thought that’s like “I havent eaten in 2 days” or “I haven’t eaten in 24 hours” and you always feel just better than someone else for that. it’s an absolutely sick feeling and makes you feel like a horrible person but with the way she was raised to already believe she was better than everyone this isn’t that much of a stretch. 

“Though honestly sir, all I wanna do

Is get naked in front of you

So you can look me up and down

And give me your love for being so good”

-this is, again, saying that she wants to be loved for being “good”. not much to say here that I didn’t say before, but showing how she wants to be accepted and praised because her mami definitely didn’t give her that..

“But little boys hold me, color me

Praise me, make me feel lovely

For a little while”

-she literally pretends to like guys to feel something LMFAOO

she needs a distraction. the two (kinda just one) people/person she wants to truly love her are her mom and chaewon. they do not give her that, so she looks for validation in other people

If you have someone literally drooling over you and falling to your feet you’re GOING to like it because it makes you feel better about yourself. she likes when people are obsessed with her (like.. not stalker I mean she likes when people are in awe of her) because it proves to her that, yeah, I’m worth something, I’m great, I don’t need my moms approval

but that only lasts for so long because she will always want it. that’s her mom. you want her to love you. you want to be good enough so she can love you.

“So little boy, say you want me

'Cause, well, I can't take it, go ahead

Do it, do it”

-this is more about chaewon. she wants chaewon to want her, even if she “can’t take it”. richgirlyn is willing to hurt herself, bend over backwards, “lower” herself just so this group of girls can like her. she wants to be loved and accepted and liked so bad, she truly just wants someone to not leave and to love her no matter what. she doesn’t want chaewon to hurt her, but she lets her because she sometimes convinces herself she deserves it. 

THATS MY ANALYSIS ON RICHGIRLYN BEING REAL MEN - MITSKI.. I hope it made sense

now moving on to why I’m praying that sakura will be the one to change her mind

while I know in my heart it’ll be yunjin this is my plea to you, lia, to make it sakura because that’s MOTHER

no like literally she’s the oldest and takes care of everyone.. if richgirlyn got another mother figure it would Impact her psyche in a crazy way like

can you imagine if she started getting that maternal validation every day instead of just through tiffany.. it would be over for her

sakura is very mellow and calm and is literally an older sister like it would be so good for richgirlyn if it was her

It actually kills me whenever sakura is mean to her or says something mean because that’s LITERALLY A POTENTIAL MOTHER FIGURE I WILL KMS SO BADD LIKE can you imagine having mommy issues and the oldest older sister esque girl is bashing you I would break down

I feel like with all the experience sakura has idol-wise and the fact that (new interview just revealed) she’s very philosophical and likes to think about things like.. I feel like it would help richgirlyn so much and just put life in perspective.

sakura has definitely been dangerously underweight (5’4 and 92.6 lb, bmi 15.9 (16) if you’re wondering. the “healthiest” lowest bmi is 18.5. bmi is inaccurate but I think everyone knows that’s not a normal nor healthy weight) and mentioned how in iz*one (I think.. she never said like specifically but it was implied) like eating was rough and let me tell you watching those videos of them “eat” and only take like one bite of food and look terrified actually make me so sick like they’re so unbelievably sickening to me they actually make me gag I’m so serious

she would literally help richgirlyn so much and I think after seeing what she goes through with her mom she would definitely be sympathetic like.. sakura is definitely good with emotions and has been an idol for like 10+ years im very much sure having a mother figure or atleast an older girl would fix her 😭😭hear me out on this bc everyone listens to her and I know she would start looking at chaewon differently.. no way eunbi would let this slide like PLEASEEE LET IT BE SAKURA IT WOULD FIX HER

sakura would gentle parent her and be like “hey you haven’t eaten in 3 days please eat an apple or something” LIKE PLEASEPLEPALSEPLEASE YUNJIN IS NOT DOINF SHIT 😭😭(JOKE)

anyway sakura would fix her I’m begging you I know in my bones it’s yunjin but HEAR ME OUTTR SAKURA IS SUCH A GIOD OPTION LIKE it makes sense guys. it makes so much sense like LISTENNN

anyway the stardom work was so good and richgirlyn new work killed me.. like I was writhing around in pain and suffering and clawing at walls.

also so true I would be in eclipse (I mostly listen to mitski and they r a punk band I don’t even know what punk music consists of. or maybe I do I have ultra specific playlists for everything actually pls tell me some punk music so I can understand their sound)

also do you happen to know any cigarette brands that rich people use in korea because I’m going to go fucking crazy looking online I CANT FIND SHIT!! I don’t expect you to know but I’m so desperate

I’ll try to do an analysis on the new chapter but I have so much shit to due 😞sorry if I disappear again guys but just know I do read everything and ur works r getting me through these godforsaken classes lia..

I KNOW THIS ASK HAD A LOT OF QUESTIONS AND INFO SORRY 😭😭ILL TRY NOT TO TALK SM NEXT TIME

-🎏

DAMNNNNNNNNN THIS IS A LOT LMAOOOOOOOO

richgirl!yn’s ed isn’t as bad as it was when she was younger because she’s away from her mom, but as soon as she has a phone call or an actual meet up with her family is when she goes back into that cycle. tbh most of her problems do not root of her ed, her problems root from the mentality that she was raised with.

now with sakura… sorry to break it to you but it would take a lot for yn to see sakura as a mother figure even if sakura gets sympathetic after seeing what happened. sakura was still mean to yn even if you want to ignore it or not that will never go away yk whose also mean to yn? her mom and she doesn’t see her mom as her mom at alllllll, like yn would be completely weirded out if her mom started acting all nice out of nowhere and that would kind of be the reaction yn would get if it was sakura, she would be like “this is weird leave me alone.”

I also alr have plans for sakura so…

I don’t think yn could ever see sakura as a mother figure when she has tiffany in her life someone who has been nice to her since the very beginning maybe a big sister but never mother

[yumeirochaser]

finished all of steven universe (show/movie/shippuden)

okay so stewing on it. this show as a whole is very good. great, even!! i feel like a lot of the criticisms thrown at it online are kinda bullshit, and it is way more nuanced than i remember. it is VERY flawed, but ultimately good.

i'll start with the pros of the whole project:

-really impeccable art direction and music. this show is a feast for the eyes, esp since it's a 2010s project

-very nuanced discussions of complex emotional topics (outside of one big case)

-REALLY good cast, there's only like 3 bad charas, but everyone else is really really good and compelling

-actually really good diverse and lgbt rep. i love yuri fam. we got so much yuri here.

-really good drama and jokes. it's actually very good at balancing both tones

-brisk and nice to watch

-REALLY good complex characters. rose/pink is unironically one of the tragic toxic woman all timers

-the songs rule. lotta bangers here

-i love the character designs a lot!!!!

so yeah it is VERY good!! but also really flawed. here's the cons:

-really bizarre show pacing and episode placing, which tbh i can't blame too much on them bc it WAS CN's fault for making the insane idea of stevenbombs

-the fuck it we ball planning is REALLY apparent at times

-the wide majority of the cast is very underfocused, despite the show constantly setting them up to have bigger roles. i would say the quartet of jasper/bismuth/lapis/peridot were the most prominent victims of this, but it's in general since it is the result of...

-steven himself being a VERY weak lead, with the insistence of everything being in his POV limiting the show and contriving plots more than anything. he is in fact imo, the show's biggest flaw, severely hurting it by the end of future. they really struggle with making him likeable and interesting, and the way the show insists to focus on him makes a lot of major character beats depend on him being on screen or just. happen completely off screen. certain plots also get REALLY convoluted to have him in places and private situations he really shouldn't be in for us to actually see what happens to other characters at all. he's also very one note and not really allowed to be as complex as the rest of the cast, with him constantly being exonerated of any wrong thing he does, by either being right all along or a woobie. this does get real uncomfortable with plots like the lars body swap ep, the lars/sadie ship eps and the entire second half of future bc. he gets reaaaal weird and possessive with the rest of the cast there and it's more or less glossed over. he also kind of is limited to One personality trait per season, being one walking fat joke in S1, fluctuating between funy permachild and messiah complex guy in the rest of the main show and the movie and becoming just walking whump material in future. it's weird bc he DOES improve and develop in S2, esp with the peridot arc, but then they more or less reverse his development for the rest of the show after the cluster arc ends??? it's a bizarre choice. his presence really looms over this show, like a black hole. like conceptually he's really good and he has moments where he can shine, but his execution in the majority of the show is very poor imo. like i get what they wanted to do with him in future and i agree it's a necessary topic to discuss. but also they should have made him like. an actual character people would like for that to work lmao

related to this we gotta talk about. connie. man. she was hit with the shonen jump love interest stick since very early on and she never recovered. her training arc kinda ends on nothing, she kind of only is there to fuse into stevonnie a bunch of the time (with their uh. weird ass early eps. why fanservice the little kid fusion.) and she more or less is just reduced to being steven's loyal emotional support woman by the end of future. honestly it's weird how nobody talks about the way she is treated bc it's oddly bad for a show that usually treats its diverse charas really well. like damn she really got done dirty.

but yeah i wish we were able to have eps with the rest of the cast leading bc they are really good characters. i think my faves are garnet (she actually got focused on the most out of all gems, which i don't really see fans mention either. she's great), rose (she's so fucked. i love it.), amethyst (more femmes should be allowed to be gross weird assholes in tv.) and peridot (rancid moe...). but i love all the gems they are great. the townies are also really fun!! (outside of ronaldo & kevin). i wish we could have actually seen more of the cast's lives, thoughts and interests outside of steven...i just really like these characters a lot

it's kind of a shame the show kinda goes down the gutter with future's second half bc the majority of it is really good shit with really nuanced handling of themes like chains of abuse, unorthodox families, familial abuse, trauma, abandonment, war and grieving. i legit think this show was something special and bold for its time, and i wish it ended in a better way. i had a really good time with it and i still love the cast a lot, but yeaaah they shouldn't have turned steven into the center of the universe. that really hurt it by the end. it's a good show that left me with a really weird feeling by the end. i will still cherish the time i had with it but yeaaah. it is a shame bc i really dig the concept of future, but the execution was like ehhhhhh hmmm not very good. the rest of the show clears in these topics tho we love screwed up girls. objectively tho there is way more good aspects to this show than good ones. it's just that the one big bad thing it has is the main focus of the whole dealio lmao

i wish future didn't screw up at the end but i am glad this show exists and it did pave the way for other shows! so at least there's that!! i will miss the crystal gems and their funky friends a lot....

[tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons]

APPENDIX A: AUDIENCE CHOICE

Dipper/Mabel is infamous for obvious reasons, but it doesn't really crack the top five most troubling canon ships in Tamsyn Muir's Gravity Falls.

Yudkowsky inspired a whole genre of imitators, fanfic writers set on writing "Boolefic". Some noteworthy examples include Alexander Wales' With Great Power and Iceman's The Amazing Optimized Circus.

In James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces, initially sold as a memoir, he recounts a supposed incident in which, while he was homeless, a kind young woman approached him and handed him a twenty dollar bill. Another man immediately stepped in, assaulted him, stole the money, and shoved it back at the woman, trying to teach her not to give to beggars. Frey describes being forced to perform a humiliating dance in order to shame the stranger into leaving. It is doubtful that any of this ever actually happened; so many key details throughout Frey's "memoirs" have been called into question or outright disproven that they are now considered hoaxes. Random House offered full refunds to any customers who were outraged by this discovery.

APPENDIX B: LISTS AND MISCELLANEA

Philip Pullman's Methods Of Rationality trilogy:

Stargazing (sold in North America as The Man Of Light)

The Three Hallows

The Subtle Thread

Methods Of Rationality has been adapted numerous times, but the most ambitious and notable among these are the 2007 film and the 2020 BBC show. 2007's The Man Of Light was a failed franchise starter; it was a glossy adaptation, but far too cautious in its content. Cutting the film short before the Azkaban heist did something to lighten its tone (a dubious benefit at best), but also left it bereft of a climax. The material was softened considerably, and it's doubtful that the studio ever actually intended to produce subsequent films, which would inevitably have been darker. BBC's show is generally considered a pretty faithful and complete adaptation. Lin-Manuel Miranda plays Professor Quirrell.

Although Peanuts has a hard-won reputation as edgelord bullshit, Lucy van Pelt in particular stands out as an embodiment of this, easily representing all of her creators' worst impulses. Even the other characters can barely stand her. Infamously, in one of the show's darker moments, she gaslit her client Frieda into murdering her entire family, as part of a petty revenge scheme. On a more day-to-day level, she espouses all manner of bigotries, and of course much of the audience loves her for this without irony. The internet is full of uwuified in-name-only art of her, much of it yuri with the other girls on the show. She is canonically nine years old.

Andrew Hussie's MS Paint Adventures:

I Want To Play A Game

Grailquest

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

I Want To Play A Game was hardly a structured narrative at all, just a forum full of people fucking around not really trying very hard to escape from some kind of surreal serial killer barn. However, it did introduce some concepts and visual motifs that Hussie would frequently go back to (like Billy the Puppet, or the jigsaw pieces). Grailquest got unceremoniously dropped early on after Hussie realized that the gimmick he'd chosen - a classic branching choose-your-own-adventure type story - would be too much work. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is generally regarded as the one where Hussie came into his own. And of course Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is the huge sprawling one that everyone's at least heard of.

After years of fans demanding a sequel to Worm Turns Arc 1, HBO announced that they were developing a television series simply titled Worm Turns. In fact, this series, created by David Lindelof, would be an original sequel to Moore's graphic novel, focusing on a therapy group led by Victoria Dallon (the heroine formerly known as Glory Girl). Alan Moore has refused to comment on this. The show was lauded by critics for its socially aware themes, and for a time, discussion of it flooded all Worm Turns fan spaces. Many fans were fans of the HBO show exclusively, and among these, many were unaware that the show was even based on any preexisting material.

Die Hard franchise:

Die Hard

Die Harder

Die Hard 3

Die Hard With A Vengeance

Die Hard Vs. Terminator

Die Hard Vs. Terminator: Reboot

Nakatomi

Die Hard: Protect And Serve

James Cameron was only involved in the second movie, which really abandoned any sense of restraint the original had. Protagonist Jane McClane infamously dies at the end of Die Hard 3, leaving the franchise at something of a dead end. Joss Whedon's poorly-regarded Die Hard With A Vengeance simply proceeds with a new lead on a revenge quest, although it also makes heavy use of flashback as an excuse for the big-name star to still be in the movie. The Die Hard Vs. Terminator films are crossovers set in an alternate timeline in which time-traveling androids from Paul Verhoeven's Terminator franchise intervene in the original Die Hard. They couldn't actually get Sigourney Weaver back, so they settle for a close-enough recast. Nonetheless, these crossovers are weirdly consistently validated as canon to both franchises. Since the crossover period, the Die Hard films have gone full prequel, abandoning the idea of pushing the series' timeline forward.

As of season seven, the title character of Ms. Frizzle is being voiced by Jinkx Monsoon. It's a bit of a jarring change, but she's really knocking it out of the park!

J. K. Rowling's Luz Noceda series:

Luz Noceda and the Lying Witch

Luz Noceda and the Gromethean Sacrifice

Luz Noceda and the Heroine of Stone

Luz Noceda and the Missing Person

Luz Noceda and the Great Unifier

Luz Noceda and the Final Victim

Luz Noceda and the Watcher of Rain

The Luz Noceda books' titles follow a pattern where the second half of the noun phrase can be taken to refer to at least one non-Luz character, but also to Luz herself. For example, Luz Noceda and the Missing Person is the book where Luz worries that she's gone missing on Earth and it must be worrying her mother. However, the title more obviously refers to a vague unnamed character in contact with Luz's mentor Eda; this "missing person" is fading from reality due to a time anomaly. At the book's climax, this ethereal being serves as a deus ex machina, shielding Luz and her allies from harm before vanishing completely. In subsequent books, after a misadventure through time, Luz blames herself for this. The "missing person" is frequently considered another representation win for Luz Noceda, as it's suggested that they were once a romantic partner of Eda's, but their gender remains ambiguous. However, though Rowling has sometimes teased in interviews at the idea that this figure might have been a woman, she has generally held firm that as their identity was erased, everything about them is intended to remain open to interpretation.

Ariana Grande played Vriska in the Homestuck movie. This isn't a big deal. Vriska isn't a big deal. She doesn't stand out as any particular discourse magnet. Any discourse that does arise is poorly-veiled discourse about the actress. She looked cool and had a cool fight scene and sung a cool song and that was about it. Historical footnote. End of post.

There is now another appendix here.

Terrible Visions

A scrambled timeline is a timeline that has proceeded much like ours, except that some particular facet has been mixed up all over the place. For example, in the scrambled timeline we will consider today, our world's fictional stories have been told by different people, and in different ways.

Bryan Lee O'Malley, in this alternate timeline, is best known as the cartoonist responsible for Homestuck, a popular comic series about a group of children who become embroiled in a cosmic-scale video game known as Sburb. Although Homestuck is probably most often associated with the cult classic Edgar Wright-directed film adaptation released in 2016, the comics themselves are highly-regarded, and the film brought a new audience to them. Netflix has commissioned an animated continuation, The Homestuck Epilogues, which is due to be released soon.

Andrew Hussie, on the other hand, is a figure you're likelier to know if you're overly online. His "MS Paint Adventures" series - most notably including Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, which is kind of like Homestuck but weirder and hornier - have firmly remained a fixture of obsessive Twitter fandom culture. It doesn't help that the best-known iteration, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, is infamous for stretching thousands of pages of meandering digressions out of a simple and focused narrative starting point. Scott Pilgrim fans have developed something of a toxic reputation, which is not entirely deserved - although of course Knives discourse is interminable, and back in the fandom's heyday there were reportedly incidents of fans assaulting each other "for being evil exes".

Scott Pilgrim fandom was very big back in the day, though, and consequently it was a nexus for other creative figures who would go on to surpass Hussie. Perhaps foremost among these is indie developer Toby Fox. He was literally living in Hussie's basement when he produced ROSEQUARTZ, a universally-beloved retro Goonies-like RPG about a human hybrid boy born to a race of gem-based aliens. He's now developing an episodic spiritual successor, RAZORQUEST, with more overtly dark themes. It revolves around an inheritance dispute among a demon-summoning family.

Other foundational figures in this timeline's internet culture include Alison Bechdel, who helped get the webcomic scene started. Although she's now more seriously acclaimed for her personal memoirs, her gaming webcomic Press Start To Dyke, which premiered in 1998, was once everywhere. It had a broad appeal, and at its height, it was common to see even straight guys sharing pages from it. Time has not been especially kind to it, though, and at this point its main legacy is test.png, a meme spawned by one of the comic's most ill-advised pages.

Then there's John C. McCrae, more often known by his pseudonym Wildbow. A prolific and reclusive author of doorstopping "web serials" - long-form fiction published online - McCrae's best-known serial is still his first, Wind, a noir superhero story set in an alternate history where capes are mostly just a subculture of unpowered vigilantes. Wind landed in a culture already rife with comic book deconstructions, like Alan Moore's 2002 graphic novel Worm Turns, but it nonetheless managed to stand out from the pack with its extensive cast of characters and its themes of coordination problems and the end of the world. Later McCrae web serials include Part (the first "Otherverse" serial; an urban fantasy story about a couple who die in a car accident and find that they have become ghosts), Tear (a "biopunk" story set in a collapsing underwater city), Warn (the controversial Wind sequel), and Play (the second "Otherverse" serial, set in a small Indiana town that helps hide a psychic girl from the CIA).

Last and perhaps least, we should discuss J. K. Rowling. Far and away the most famous of any of these authors, Rowling's name is inseparable from the YA series that she debuted with, the Luz Noceda books, which remain her one successful work. Although it was heavily derivative of older fantasy novels - like Jill Murphy's Academy For Little Witches, or Philip Pullman's Methods Of Rationality trilogy - Luz Noceda was still a monumental and unprecedented success in the publishing industry, and the film adaptations were consistent blockbusters. The final book, Luz Noceda and the Watcher of Rain, contained some allusions to a romantic relationship between Luz and her recently-redeemed associate Amity. Rowling confirmed that this was her intent in subsequent interviews and indicated that she had fought her publishers for it; the film would then go on to escalate matters slightly further.

There have been many lengthy and heated online arguments as to whether the references in the book itself constitute text or mere subtext. Whatever your stance on this discourse, a new complication has been introduced recently: although she has put out no official statement on the matter as of yet, it has become quite apparent from Rowling's shrinking network of contacts and her conspicuous silences that she is certainly TERF-sympathetic, and likely an outright TERF herself. For many, this is leading to a critical reevaluation of the social values inherent in the Luz Noceda series; others, to say the least, are holding off on that kind of reappraisal.

Anyway, Scott Pilgrim just beat Luz Noceda in a Twitter poll for Most Gay Media, and people are piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissed

[notesofarichlycolorednight]

fuck yeah love these writing ask games! tagged by the awesome @seavoice!! thanks so much for tagging me :D

post the names of the last five files in my wip folders —regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous.

full disclosure i've hit a writer's block so bad the likes of which any writer would hate to see and haven't written at all or started anything in like,,,, 2 months. maybe more. oTL i'm dying over here. so i'm gonna cheat and post some ideas that i'd like to write, in the order they're in my personal discord channel for writing ideas. the first one is smth that is a wip tho.

also a lot of these also don't have official titles lol

1 long story short : yes it's named after the thing you think it's named after iykyk. a pet project of mine. oc-centered story, takes place in the pjoverse. third installment of this series, takes place in toa, and it's abt an oc child of apollo who fell in love with luke in the og pjo series and is now just going thru it and facing the consequences of that decision. still going, even tho i update even slower than i did for my last two stories in this series ;; oc is op. read at your own risk lmao.

2 faceblind!yuuri cinderella au : yuri on ice. yuuri being faceblind is canon to me as far as i'm concerned bc he doesn't recognize yuri p. twice and doesn't recognize minami initially, even tho he beat yuuri at nationals that past yr lol. not to mention minami has mc anime hair. the rest of what it's abt is in the title lol

3 what remains of jason grace : a what remains of edith finch au for jason grace from hoo/toa. what remains of edith finch is a beautiful game about edith finch revisiting her old family home after her mother's death. the last finch left alive. came up with this idea when thinking abt one of my favorite white boys jason grace. wanted to write smth similar to the game, smth that's as melancholy and heart-rending. i imagine it smth like jason wrote a journal after hearing the prophecy from herophile in tbm, and this was what was in the journal.

4 nie huaisang v jin guangyao : cql/the untamed/mdzs. would be a character study. would be extremely difficult. it's very hard to explain if you don't know the source material/have not watched the show/donghua or have not read the books/manhua, but these two characters parallel each other in multiple different ways in the narrative, and one of them is unknowingly battling the other in a game of wits, with the other characters in the story as their puppets and suffering the most consequences from the actions of these two, who mostly work behind the scenes until the reveal in the finale. and i think it would be a cool character study to write abt that battle bc it's not focused on enough in the source material imo

5 diary of luke castellan/halcyon green : it's actually fitting seavoice is the one to tag me! bc ever since i read their post abt hal/luke's diary and incorporating it into toa i've wanted to write a story that explores this more, but in a playwright format. bc i think it would have a lot of impact as a stage play, focusing on those quite moments between apollo and meg's travels, when he gets a chance to sit down and read thru the diary. at the very least, i envisioned it in that environment when i first read their post.

tagging the few peeps i know who write on the reg (and are moots). feel free to do this (or not): @spooderham @lucifers-favorite-child @talking0fmichelangel0 @bisexualoftheblade

thanks again for the tag!!