#and yes disney sucks etc BUT

[fuckmywholeactuallife]

the thing every single tsa across the country needs is a disney imagineer whose whole job is to make the lines better.

[seilon]

god I wish I could rip Instagram apart with my teeth I hate it I hate it I hate it

[ceasarslegion]

Whenever people criticize exploitative companies I notice that they tend to target consumers as if everybody using those services always have a choice in the matter, but im willing to bet that a massive chunk of the population that shops at walmart, orders from amazon, subscribe to disney+, etc, are poor/rural people who cant afford any of the alternatives. And what exactly do you expect them to do?

Disney+ is the cheapest option for reliable entertainment for poor parents with kids. Netflix is the cheapest option for that for most others. They still deserve to watch TV when they cant afford a cable package (and yes, pirating still has barriers attached to it. For one, you need to be able to afford the computer, just for starters). Not everyone who has a streaming service subscription is a bootlicker or supports the disney corporation or thinks netflix has the most correct working conditions.

Amazon is the cheapest option for shipping, well... almost anything. And in a lot of places, its the only thing that can reliably get there at all within the month. And when a prime subscription comes with free shipping and a streaming service? That cuts out one major expense AND the expense from the first point, too. Folks still deserve to be able to order things when they cant afford to pay for shipping fees or when they can only afford the cheapest possible option for the item they need. Not everybody with a prime subscription or who orders the occasional thing off amazon wants to personally suck jeff bezos's dick or thinks warehouse workers deserve to be worked to death.

Walmart remains the cheapest possible option for most people in north america, especially in the cost of living crisis right now where groceries cost more than your rent. Not everybody who shops at walmart thinks the workers deserve to be exploited or that unions are bad or that driving out small businesses is a good thing

And im gonna be honest, every single "alternative" ive seen from people acting these ways is WAYYY more expensive and unreliable to poor and rural people than the things theyre telling us to stop using. You absolutely should support small businesses when you can but i usually dont have small business money. I can either buy a few little things to eat that will last me maybe a week or i can get enough for the month for the same amount at walmart, and thats not MY fault.

What exactly do you want us to do here

[wisteria-lodge]

And now for a HP fandom question - do you have any thoughts on queercoding in the series and if JKR ever actually intended it, and then backtracked, or if it was always completely unintentional? I'm thinking specifically about Lupin and Tonks (as individuals, not as a ship) Inspired by your post about the intention vs how fans perceived Draco Malfoy. Thanks!

So the first thing I want to do is make a distinction between femme-coding and queer-coding. They're tropes with very similar histories, and a lot of works treat them as the same thing. But Harry Potter doesn’t, and I think we can chalk this one up to JK Rowling’s habit of grabbing aesthetics and visuals without really thinking through the history behind them. 

(Like - the goblins. She says she didn’t mean to write an antisemitic thing, and I actually do believe her. But did she use a lot of tropes and images with a long history of being tied to antisemitism? yes.)

So when I say “femme” I mean giving a male character traits stereotypically associated with femininity. Heightened sensitivity/emotionality, an interest in hair, clothes and being attractive, a love of lace/pink/frills, a dislike of violence and physical confrontation, and a preference for the soft power of manipulation, character assassination and poison - versus the hard power of direct confrontation and physical prowess. Are these things super stereotypical? Yes. But they’re ALSO traits you see all the time on male villains, especially ones that you don’t want to seem that threatening. Femme-coded villains show up a lot in children’s media, or as the Big Bad’s #2. They’re not meant to be heroic or sympathetic (since all these feminine traits are not desirable, especially for guys.) But they also aren’t scary, and you can pretty much always play them for comedy. 

For example: see almost every male Disney villain. And JKR was writing children’s literature in the 90s, so of course she’s pulling from the same zeitgeist as the Disney Renaissance. 

JKR loves herself a femme villain. The absolute gold standard is of course Lockhart - who wears pink, wants to start his own line of hair care products, is self-centered, vain, obsessed with popularity… but he sucks in a fight. His entire MO involves manipulating people into thinking he has these traditional masculine qualities when he just doesn’t. But there’s also fussy, prissy Percy wearing his prefect badge on his pajamas. Bitchy, emotional mean-girl poisoners Draco and Snape (especially early book Snape - which is Snape at his most villainous.) Draco, Percy and Snape are also unusual for being male characters who we see crying for reasons other than grief. 

Lucius Malfoy is an interesting case because he starts off quite masc. He’s threatening to curse people, the governors are scared of him, etc. But, as the books go on… and he gets less powerful… he also gets more femme. When we meet him in Book 5 he’s no longer threatening people, but bribing them, spreading rumors, and giving interviews to the Prophet casting Arthur Weasley in a negative light. He's also getting really into peacocks. In Book 2 he was a major threat, but as he gets recast as Voldemort’s #2 he becomes a more femme, soft-power villain. When he leads the attack on the Department of Mysteries, he absolutely bungles it, which defines his character (and relationship with Voldemort) for the rest of the series. And it makes sense that Lucius is given this kind of treatment! It’s a way of communicating that there's a new villain in town, a real villain. 

So, are any of these femme-coded villains additionally queer-coded? I’m actually going to say no. Queer-coding is (like it says on the tin) finding ways to imply that your character is specifically gay. Like maybe giving them a same-sex relationship that is written romantically, but not explicitly called out by the text. Or pairing up all of the characters except them. Maybe have other characters joke about them being gay, and use that as a way to talk about the subject with some plausible deniability. Or they could just play suggestively with a cigar, or a walking stick. There are different strategies.  

But Lockhart doesn't get any of that. Honestly, I think that if JKR actually thought of him as gay, she would have been a lot more wary about a scene where he keeps Harry alone with him in his office for way longer than he’s supposed to. And she might have skipped this joke: 

“Harry was hauled to the front of the class during their very next Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, this time acting a werewolf (...) “Nice loud howl, Harry — exactly — and then, if you’ll believe it, I pounced — like this — slammed him to the floor — thus — with one hand, I managed to hold him down — with my other, I put my wand to his throat (...) he let out a piteous moan — go on, Harry — higher than that — good —” 

Like. At least she would have picked a different word than “moan,” right? Which unfortunately has slightly sexual connotations. Especially if she wanted to keep Lockhart a buffoon, to properly set up the twist at the end. 

Slughorn also gets femme-coded in a similar way: he loves his candy, his parties, his smoking jackets, his lilac silk pajamas, his web of connections he can use to get stuff (Lucius style.) We are introduced to him squatting in specifically a “fussy old lady’s” house. He’s also unusually emotional, getting weepy at Aragog‘s funeral. But I don’t think we’re meant to read him as actually gay, or else his relationship with Tom Riddle might’ve read a little too close to Tom seducing/trying to seduce him. Which is a beat JKR does subtly play out with Hepzibah Smith, but idk. by that point at least Tom is a legal adult.

(As a side note - the Harry Potter series got so lucky that all of its adult characters are played by absolutely top-shelf actors who are aware of the connotations and history behind various symbols, and do consider these things in their performances. Kenneth Brannagh and Jim Broadbent are good enough to make sure there’s not even a hint of iffy subtext when they play Lockhart and Slughorn. Also, Emma Thompson took the potentially very problematic character of Trelawney and made her cute and sympathetic… and not Romani in the slightest.) 

Draco, Snape, and Percy all have a case of the not-gays. Percy has a girlfriend (we don’t really see her or anything, but we’re told she’s there.) Snape of course gets his whole thing with Lily, and Draco… after one too many beats where it’s clear that Pansy is into him, but he’s not into Pansy…  gets a scene where he’s talking to his buddies with his head in her lap. (JKR uses “no one‘s good enough for me” beats with Blaise, Draco and Sirius, and the idea there seems to be more that they have undeservedly high opinions of themselves, and less that they don’t like girls.)

But, I do agree that a lot of JKR's characters do come across as a little more queer than intended. It boils down, I think, to the general lack of any kind of romance in the Harry Potter books and JKR being generally bad at/uncomfortable with writing male attraction directed at women, BUT being perfectly happy writing attraction directed at pretty guys. And because of that… yeah, it can sometimes feel like maybe Harry has a thing for Cedric. Especially when Dudley goes on to tease him about Cedric being his boyfriend, which I believe is the only actual mention of gay people in the entire series.  

So is there any intentional queer-coding in the book? It’s really subtle, but yes. I think Dumbledore is queer-coded. He is unusually emotional/cries unusually often for a Rowling guy. He is also given a scene which emphasizes his “flamboyantly” cut plum-velvet suit, and his relationship with Grindelwald is implied to be romantic for one book and two movies before being actually confirmed in Fantastic Beasts 3. (With the line of dialogue “I was in love with you.” Big step up from “We were closer than brothers.” which is an odd thing to say about someone you are interested in romantically.) 

But you brought up Tonks and Lupin, two characters very commonly interpreted as queer. So let’s get into that. JKR has said that she considers Lupin’s lycanthropy to be a metaphor for stigmatized diseases like AIDS. And… as incredible as it is to say… I actually do not think that she made the jump from there to thinking that maybe the character suffering from AIDS should be gay.

Because the narrative places so much weight on Lupin being bitten young and then on maybe not being allowed to attend school, I’m pretty sure that he’s not intended to be queer so much as he’s meant to be Ryan White, the literal poster child for AIDS activism who got infected via blood transfusion when he was two. Tragic, absolutely. But not gay. Honestly, I hope JKR was thinking of ‘lycanthropy’ as a metaphor for stigmatized illness in the abstract and not as a comment on gay people specifically. Because otherwise, Greyback’s thing about biting children becomes a mash-up of two of the biggest homophobic boogeymen from the 80s: gay men infecting people with AIDS on purpose because… idk, they hate the world or something. And the influence of gay men somehow “turning” children gay. Both absolutely real, if ridiculous, moral panics.

On top of that, Remus and Sirius do get a pretty clear case of the not-gays early on (“He embraced Black like a brother.”) Buuuut Alfonso Cuarón did think through those implications for Movie 3, absolutely saw Lupin as gay, and directed David Thewlis to play him accordingly. No reports confirming or denying whether Alfonso Cuarón ships Wolfstar, but I think that if I’m an actor trying to make sense of Lupin’s motivations… and I know he didn’t show Dumbledore the Marauders’ Map and didn’t tell anyone Sirius was an animagus… and then I’m told my character is gay… well. Anyway, I think there are absolutely hints of Wolfstar in that performance. 

And there's Tonks. Tonks is introduced during a very spooky segment in Book 5: Harry has been going through it, been left alone at the Dursleys while having what sounds like a depressive episode. It’s dark, he hears intruders. It's a really good piece of writing. But JKR knows that it’s the good guys who are coming and thinks, okay. Let’s make that as clear as possible from the word go. And so the first thing Harry sees is Tonks' pink hair. And what kind of person has pink hair? A young adult. A punky young adult. And what power would a teenager think was cool? Well, the ability to change the color of their hair at will. That, by itself, would have worked perfectly fine for this character.

But then (for reasons best known to herself) JKR goes further. Even though Tonk’s hair changing color is easily 90% of the transformations we see and there is no plot reason her appearance needs to change more than that, we see her drastically change her age and body type. When you think about this power for more than five seconds, it becomes kind of OP. For worldbuilding reasons alone, my instinct would’ve been to tone it down a bit. 

But no, we have this counterculture character who seems interested in her career and not in a relationship, who can easily change anything about her body, and (if her ability works anything like Polyjuice) that means she should definitely be able to change her gender. Cool.

Then, in everyone’s least favorite romance, Tonks and Lupin are paired up. I have heard the argument that this was meant to walk back queer-coding, or to punish people who thought they were queer... but I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think JKR expected these two to be fan favorites, and then was kind of surprised when everyone wanted to hear about their continuing adventures. 

(There are a handful of characters who JKR clearly really enjoys - and really enjoys writing - that fandom honestly could not care less about. Mundungus Fletcher and Ludo Bagman spring to mind. But the reverse is also true. She had one story for Lupin and people wanted to see more. Tonks is probably supposed to be her comment on immature young adults: she is loud, in your face, causes mild destruction and is “a little annoying at times.” But the fans fell in love with her.) 

So JKR has these two fan favorite characters and nothing for them to do. A romance is something for them to do. JKR also has a kind of weird pattern where good people need to either have kids or take care of kids. It’s not good to be a woman who isn’t involved with taking care of children in some fashion: see Rita Skeeter, Dolores Umbridge, Bellatrix Lestrange. This is also (I think) why Harry names his kids specifically after Severus, Sirius, and Albus. Since they’re good men, JKR had to find a way to give them kids after the fact. 

So yeah. I think we were meant to read Tonks and Lupin having a kid as kind of a reward, or at least as proof of their intrinsic goodness. There also just isn’t another guy in the right age range to ship Tonks with. The only other option is Sirius. 

(Harry in the books and Lupin on Pottermore both suspect that Tonks/Sirius is a thing. Completely forgetting, I guess, that they're cousins.)

[loeyonline]

be quiet and drive

Hello again, this fic is in case you didn't have your nu metal romance from 2003, but with hendery.

based on some experiences with my ex, mtv series, imaginary scenarios that I created while I was high, etc.

Contains: a bit of sexual content, drug use, friends with benefits, too many references to nu metal and other musical genres (I don't know man, it all sounds the same to me) and a bit of toxicity

please enjoy :D

ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁

It wasn't a bad idea, you were single and bored, he was single and handsome.

The idea of ​​fucking hendery without any commitment was a great idea.

You had met in high school, the history teacher had put you with him in a project where they had to prepare an exhibition about Mesopotamia.

But do you remember that the afternoon I arrived at your house instead of preparing the exhibition I simply shouted "FUCK, YOU LIKE RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE?" like a little child

"and linkin park, and korn, and deftones" you replied, that afternoon they spent it talking about music.

It had been too nice to spend time with him, as the days went by they had become friends.

They spent all the time together, whether it was secretly smoking in their backyard, watching vinyl, discussing music, or at concerts.

Their first concert had been slipknot which had been weird.

Because in the middle of the loud music, the people shouting and shaking their heads, Hendery grabbed you by the waist and brought you to his lips.

For some strange reason they were kissing while Cut, cut, cut me up, and fuck, fuck, was playing and maybe it wasn't the most romantic setting worthy of a Disney movie but… It was nice.

Another strange thing was that he forgot that, that is, if they were drugged, but after the concert he didn't say anything about it, not even days later, he just continued acting as if nothing had happened.

Intrusive thoughts?

"and it was so great, I can't believe I was breathing the same air as Joey Jordison, it was such a dream"

"Do you only remember that?"

"Well yes, remember that that day I smoked an entire weed plantation, I would have liked to remember the last songs they played"

You just responded with an okay and forgot the topic.

But years later someone comes to you and says something like "hey you know, I don't want to ruin our friendship but I imagined you having sex with me."

"Yes, of course, stop joking, I have to study for the next exams" you responded, knowing the strange humor that Hendery had since high school, it is not the first time he made a joke like that.

"I'm serious, last night I dreamed about you and I think it's a sign" he said, leaning back on the couch in your room. "I think it's time to give up the acids, you know" you laughed as you continued arranging papers, avoiding seeing him because it really was a very strange conversation.

"And I want you to stop being a bitch to others and give it all to me" He got up from the couch and walked towards the door of your room, you had been impressed with what he said because Did he call you a bitch? "Please think about my offer" he said and left the room.

That night you thought about it, you came to that conclusion, it wasn't a bad idea.

In other words, they trusted each other, he wasn't ugly, he was actually handsome, hot.

Anyway, you wrote him a message saying "it's okay, I'll fuck you" and not even two seconds passed before he was already calling you without any shame.

"heeeeeeey, so, do you accept it?" "Why do I feel like you've been waiting for my message all day?" "I'm coming for you, let's go for a trip" "Wait the hell…" And I cut off the call, he… He would be here in a few minutes.

ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁

That "trip" had too many things, possibly it was your canonical event because so many things had happened.

"I hope you don't tell this to anyone" you threatened while he just laughed looking at the road.

"Baby, you know I'm a 21-year-old loser who skateboards, you know I don't talk to anyone else."

"It needs to be mentioned"

"Whatever, Are you going to suck me?"

"Right now?" Nervousness entered your body because you didn't think they would do it right away, you thought it would just be a quiet trip like the ones they usually took.

"Emm yes, I would invite you to my house but I don't think I'll get there, I'm very desperate" and that's when you looked down and saw his erection.

Ok, it wasn't the first time you thought about Hendery's penis, hell he trusted you so much that he told you his dirty shit.

Like the first time he fucked a random girl he met at his first college party. Or when I tell you about the time he spent a whole week masturbating because he heard his neighbor masturbating too.

It was too dirty but to think that now he gets hot for you is weird.

"What I do?" You looked very stupid, it wasn't the first time you did it, but it was the first time you sucked him off.

He unzipped his pants and turned to look at you "come closer" and you did, you approached him.

Before burying your head in his pants, he kissed you on the lips, it was like that time at the concert only, you could see a little more passion.

Even though it was emotionless it felt so good, damn why was your best friend such a good kisser?

He grabbed your hand and put it on his crotch so you could feel his desperation.

While they were kissing you massaged his cock over his clothes to provoke him more.

"fuck, you're so hot" he said between the kiss, while you acted automatically because you didn't understand what was happening and you just let yourself go.

"stop, if we continue we are going to crash" he says pushing you away from him a little "I need you to get off" he says pointing to his cock.

So you did, you got out and sucked his cock while he kept driving.

It was so risky, so hot.

As you sucked him you could hear his desperate moans, as if he had been waiting his whole life, he had been waiting for a blowjob from you his whole life.

ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁

In the end he ended up parking in a remote place so that no one would see them.

They fucked like Jack and Rose in the back seats of their car, they were so exhausted by all the things they did that in the end he sat down to smoke another cigarette and then fell asleep on your chest.

There was no more conversation all night.

Around 4 am they woke up and got dressed to return.

"You can sleep at my house if you want," he offers, but sleeping with him felt too intimate to do so.

I mean, they fucked, he was inside you, you saw his cock, you kissed, but sleeping together?

"Thank you, but tomorrow I will hand in a university paper" you respond.

He was a little disappointed but he understood, you were busy, so he nodded and started the car to go drop you off at your house.

And they continued with the little game for a long time, of getting lost from society to go fuck.

The second time they fucked was at Hendery's house, having more space and comfort, they were able to practice new things.

You could tell that he wanted you so much by the way he fucked you, as if he unloaded all his hatred on you.

You noticed another personality in him, a serious one that didn't happen talking stupid anime or trying to sing like Jonathan Davis.

But now he was dirty and very aggressive, you weren't complaining about him fucking you hard because it felt great but seeing him so serious, so focused was something you never thought you would see.

You really liked fucking hendery, reinforcing your friendship was a good idea, for you.

But from his point of view it was risky, because he was starting to have feelings for you.

He liked something about you too much and it wasn't because of the way you ride him, or the way you sit on his face. He felt so good spending time with you but he would never admit it, he is aware of what happened at the concert but he didn't have the courage to talk about it.

Although, he was also afraid of confessing his feelings for you and ruining their friendship, because he knew he didn't like you.

The only way I could be with you and feel you was by fucking you.

And after several escapades to fuck he got fed up with it, he couldn't take it anymore.

You arrived at his house and noticed that he was a little more groomed than normal, he always wore baggy pants with dirty Adidas and a black shirt with the logo of some band he liked, but today he had put on some not so big pants, some clean sneakers and a black button-down shirt, and another detail HE WASHED HIS HAIR

"Hey are you going on a date baby?" you joked to which he smiled and responded.

"If I have a date, with your ass" he said and took your hand to bring you closer to his body and start kissing you.

ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁

This time when you were riding him you noticed something in his eyes, instead of the perverted look that he always had today, they were eyes of love.

Like he was in love and it was… strange.

This time instead of hitting your butt and scratching you, he just kissed your body and bit it.

"I love you" What the fuck did he say?

"wait what?" you said slowing down your pace.

"I love you so much baby" he responded a little tiredly, he was about to come.

You were surprised and got off him "wait, this is not part of the deal"

The atmosphere became heavy and he got up "I don't care, I want to confess that I love you, too much, I'm not on drugs" he said, getting serious.

"I just want to fuck you and that's it"

"damn but we've spent a lot of time together" he responds, getting instantly annoyed.

"I better go" you get up from his bed and start to get dressed.

"Have I never been important to you?"

"It's not that hendery, it's just…" and he interrupts you.

"It's just what? We get along very well, not just in sex, you know I love spending time with you, I love being with you and it bothers me that you don't see that."

"Hendery, damn, I can't feel like that, I'm sorry," you tell him and you notice how he gets more upset. "But you do have feelings for idiots who only seek you out because you're a bitch in need of attention." And now it was you who was upset.

It took him a while to realize what he said and he started to apologize, but it was too late.

"Fuck you, you idiot," you tell him and leave his house.

ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁

N/A: hiiii I'm sorry if it ends like this, I promise to go out with my ex again so I have content to write, lie, I'm just kidding.

[jokobub]

The Great Thing About HNKNA Being An Otome Game

I had an epiphany a few months ago. I’ve talked before about how many pitfalls HNKNA experiences by nature of it being a dating simulator, and how a lot of the cooler parts of the story and lore are overshadowed by the core romance mechanic and how I’m not a big fan of it, blah blah. But I’ve also seen way too many modern Alice in Wonderland adaptations as a result of my ridiculously long-term Kuni no Alice hyperfixation, and allow me to say that there is one thing that it nails that nothing else can even come close to touching— Alice herself!

The Kuni no Alice series brings about what I think is the best modern interpretation of Alice I’ve yet to see in any media I’ve consumed. She’s quick-witted and brings the attitude, but she cares. Her reactions are realistically absurd and there are few moments throughout everything where she feels out of character or unrelatable. And I think the otome genre is crucial to why that is.

By nature, dating simulators don’t have strong protagonists. They’re supposed to be a blank canvas for the player to project onto to achieve their goals. Am I calling Alice flat? No, quite the opposite. Her story is set in a Victorian-inspired fantasy land with lots of guns and danger and a strict social structure, but it’s intended for a modern audience, and when connection with your protagonist is the key to connection with your story, a modern audience means a modern Alice.

The modern Alice is one of the hardest characters to write.

In most instances of an adapted, cool, edgy Alice in Wonderland, the most insufferable character on screen is, in fact, Alice. This is true of the Disney films, SyFy’s Alice special, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, etc. More often than not, Alice Kingsleigh, Hamilton, whatever you want to call her, is a young adult frustrated by life in an oppressive society who will only accept her if she acts in a hyper-specific way, usually at the risk of being institutionalized should she fail to comply. She argues with her parents, who want her to get married, and all of this turns her into a spiteful girl who is always on the defensive.

It’s insufferable to watch.

The character of Alice is too often portrayed as relentlessly mean, but under the guise of empowerment. The audience is tired of weak-willed women, so the director hunches Alice’s dress up passed her ankles and gives her a sword, an attitude, and an ugly man to kiss without her parents’ involvement. Biologically engineered to shatter every well-known gender role established in Victorian England and basically nothing else, movies and TV deliver their “strong female protagonists” in the form of a curt, unchangingly rude version of Alice whose words and actions are supposed to be justified by her circumstances. And god, does it fucking suck!

You can't connect to this Alice, this armed and ready, sharp-tongued, "curiouser and curiouser" Alice who lives in a world that practically clears a narratively untouchable path to every foot she plans to step on. Personally, it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. The misunderstood to confused, to disgruntled, to aggressive pipeline is overplayed to the point where the Alice of any and all modern interpretations has become, essentially, the same character, forced to loop the same 6 emotional plot points from now into eternity, no matter how many coats of science fiction you put over it.

(Yes, there is a part of me that understands this comes from the fact that Alice is most often written by money-hungry, corporate studios, led primarily by men, who do not understand feminine audiences, or how they want to see themselves represented in media. I get that. And Alice Liddell is not safe from that. But consider: she's my babygirl.)

Am I saying the character of Alice can't be mean, can't say fuck, can't have a sword? Of course not!!!! Give women swords!!! But I am saying that every time a director phones it in with that "Oh, I know that book" budget and gives a British blondie trust issues, a prophecy, and a quirked up, top hat-wearing sidekick to have unfulfilling sexual tension with, i lose my wings AND my marbles.

Enter: our Alice Liddell.

What do we have with her, really? Well, the protagonist of a mid-shelf otome game, which has sequels out the wazoo, a movie and 2 stage play runs, but still somehow only enough translated media to fill a single Barnes and Noble shopping basket about halfway. Thanks QuinRose.

But for real.

Alice Liddell is written, from the ground up, as an otome protagonist. As such, there are narrative must-haves that she can't shake. She needs to be relatable to the modern young adult, even if she's supposed to reflect the Victorian female experience. This would usually be the Achilles Heel of an adapted protagonist: you, the player, get to watch in horror as your favorite whimsical Main Girl is watered down into a bowl of nothing soup for the sake of projection and selling more copies of a game with eye candy catboys and toxicity glorification.

HOWEVER,

(stay seated girlies don't go yet)

This necessary mundanity that is baked into Alice's character, inseparable from her very being as the taste of weed in a brownie, is what singlehandedly saves this adaptation and makes her objectively the best. Unlike in a lot of cinematic adaptations, she's not meant to be the (failed) vehicle of a "deeper narrative" about the strength and roles of women in society. She doesn't exist for any higher purpose, she isn't the chosen one who will declare "Damn The Man" and force the world to listen.

Alice is a girl doing everything she can. She's experienced profound loss. She's self-deprecating. Snarky. She's been through break ups, gotten even with bullies, cuddled with her cat on a Sunday, everything that doesn't matter. The crux of her character is that she's been burned by life and love, yet she can't truly give up on them. Hers is a story of healing, of adaptation and getting back up when life kicks the shit out of you. No matter how sharply she speaks, Kuni no Alice's Alice almost always acts from a place of concern and love for others. She crucially never wields a weapon, reacting to the violence of Wonderland with that extremely jaded "holy fucking shit, what the fuck?" energy that I think any of us would bring to the table, given the circumstances. She's not her community's """lunatic,""" she's not sailing the high seas sideways, she's not on drugs, or destiny's favorite, or anything like that. She's new in town! She's sick of these people! She just wants to go home and read!

She's you. She's me. She's a clusterfuck of a damaged girl, trying to sort out what matters, find her passion and move forward without letting her past stray too far from memory. She's someone whose self-importance and perception by others is foreign to her. She wants to matter, wants not to be left alone by the people she loves, but god forbid she ever admit it.

QuinRose gives us Alice Liddell, suffering failgirl, not Alice Liddell, conceptual landmark, and that was the best possible route anyone could have taken with this character. Alice is the main character, but she is not a hero, and that's a fucking genius move.

thanks for coming to my ted talk. i love u alice.

[dawnanddorisqna]

Hey Doris and Dawn! Did you two hear about the leaked Disney lost media pilots today? Apparently some random Disney employee just uploaded them online??? There's an Owl House one, Gravity Falls one, etc. etc.

Yes! And if anyone hasn't, take a look!

It's hard to get shows like this greenlit today...BUT, artists are coming together and still creating pilots and bringing them to the world with the help of viewer funding! Looking at you Digital Circus and Lackadaisy.

Always do you best to support the people making these shows and pilots. The networks don't really treat them so well. Look for their patreon, ko-fi accounts, or if you can't help that way, share their work. repost, retweet (reX? no, that sucks retweet). build a community and get the word out!

[blackswampotter]

Honestly, this is kind of a bummer

My take on this show was always that it was pretty much fine.

Nothing incredible, but average. Average with some legitimately good ideas and plot points sprinkled in.

And, given how many average shows get to move forward, I figured that would be the same here.

But, nope, no more Acolyte and it's weird how disappointed I am by that.

Yes, much of the dialogue was clunky. Yes, the pacing suffered in the way it suffers for many of these streaming shows. Yes, several of the characters were fairly forgettable.

But, in spite of all that, I did find myself curious enough to keep watching. I liked the mystery angle and the different perspectives on the same tragic event.

I liked Sol and wanted to see what he was hiding. I liked the way Mae and Osha swapped roles and I liked the cliffhanger endings they both got.

I wanted to see where those characters were going to go and now we won't get that. And, yeah, that's a little sad.

It also sucks because the action sequences in this show were genuinely great and many of the fights were just straight up better than the prequel duels.

They were more vicious, more intense, and shot with a sense of urgency and dynamism.

And, something I find really funny about that is that this show, in a lot of ways, was trying to give the toxic fanboy types exactly what they claimed they wanted:

Prequel level action, focus on the Jedi Order, something outside of the Skywalker Saga, a darker story with a more villainous perspective, etc...

All of that, and they still loathed it for a bunch of annoying reasons.

End of the day, if the viewership isn't there, it isn't there. I don't want to give the rage merchants too much credit, but I do think they managed to pretty effectively poison the well around the discussion of this show.

They made it miserable to talk about or share any excitement or interest in the show, so fuck it.

Honestly, I feel like this is a prime example of a Disney Plus show that should've just been made as a proper, feature film released in theaters.

Relying on streaming metrics for a show this expensive meant they really couldn't afford low viewership. Plus, it was the ongoing week after week discussion that allowed the aforementioned well poisoning to continue for so long.

I'll be shocked if we don't get a novel or comic book or something that continues the story.

But, I guess we'll see what happens. Might be funny to just never expand on what the fuck Plagueis was doing in that cave lol

[striveattemptfail]

i've decided to liveblog all three deadpool movies every weekend until deadpool and wolverine is released on disney+ in october \o/

sept 21-23: deadpool 1

sept 27-30: deadpool 2

eventually: deadpool and wolverine – first half*

eventually: deadpool and wolverine – second half*

likely watching on the nights between saturday and sunday, anytime between midnight and 5am EST. i'm NOT hosting any stream—just liveblogging my reactions. faq under the cut explains wth i'm doing

blacklist #jercy watches dp or unfollow as always. k cool beans thx frens see yall then ✌️

faq (nobody's asked me a question but idc lol)

why am i announcing a liveblog? you must be new here lmao. bc i think it'd be fun to watch the deadpool movies with other people!

but i'm not going to watch on a shared streaming platform (eg: discord, shareplay, etc)? nope. i am just here to liveblog my reaction while watching these movies for the 19203819th time

why not host on shared streaming? i am technologically inept, disgustingly lazy, and an old fart at heart (plus my wifi cuts out often). if anyone wants to watch something with me and we're not in the same room, we're "3-2-1 PLAY"-ing this shit like it's the 00s and we're on a phonecall after 7pm for free minutes. otherwise, i'm happy to watch by myself as long as i can scream somewhere—and tumblr is that somewhere lmao

why multiple dates/times? bc i can't keep a schedule to save my life. i may have a time listed above, but i cannot guarantee them bc i suck lol. call them educated wishes for when i hope to watch tv ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

am i watching each movie for every date listed? no, i am just remarkably terrible at keeping a schedule. the ranges span when it's generally most convenient for me to watch a movie without disturbance but i can't give a definitive date and time bc, once again, i suck lmao

will any specific time be announced at all? ye! i'm gonna try to announce when i'll be watching at least an hour before i start the movie (eg: dp2 @ sept 28, midnight -> announcement will come 11pm sept 27). if i can queue an announcement before a start time i'll do my best but fr i make no guarantees

which version of the movies am i watching? likely the theatrical releases bc that's what's on d+. if i happen to find extended releases somewhere that won't give me a headache, i'll try watching the extended versions

don't you know that [X is problematic / you shouldn't support Y / you need to kys for doing Z / etc]? yup.

(10/04 ETA:) * why are you splitting up watching deadpool and wolverine? i am a wordy mf and liveblogging deadpool 2 took six (6!!) hours as a result. i know liveblogging dp&w is going to take even longer so i'm splitting up the movie to not end up spending 12+ hours on just liveblogging

* when in the movie are you splitting up dp&w? sometime around the odyssey fight scene LOL. it'll depend on how late i'm running whether i'll watch that bit on the first day or second day—just gonna have to play it by ear ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

why are you like this? fam if i knew that answer i would've fixed myself a loooooooong time ago 🙃🙃🙃

[princescribbler]

Some USEFUL REMINDERS for CG/L Dynamics (Especially Online or LD)

Presented in no particular order or significance, a few useful reminders!

Your Caregiver is more than just that... they're a complicated, whole person with interests outside of CG/L, ABDL, and kink.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, likes to be introduced or harassed online with "Hi wanna be my mommy/ daddy/ little" as an opening line. Like... that's a huge amount of effort, time, and responsibility to take on just cuz somebody you don't know asks... it isn't gonna happen.. if you want that, work for it and build a relationship!

Reminders are great! Send them to your partner, yourself, your friends, whether it's for daily tasks like checking in with a CG or boring work stuff... be the person people appreciate because you check in, give reminders, and generally enable everyone to succeed easier.

There will be extremely tough days where you'll feel bad and want to give up your kinks, your fetishes, etc... and that won't fix a single thing. See, whether you're kinky or not; Jobs suck, renting sucks, everything sucks sometimes! Stop blaming your kink for your problems and accept that you might need to find more complicated answers than just hating or blaming kink.

You and only you are responsible for your fetish activities... you choose how you engage in them, even if it's at someone else's supposed "orders." Don't see yourself as somehow not an active participant!

Consent is key, and informed, enthusiastic consent is key. Whether it's hand holding, keyholding, sex, cuddles, or just sexy messages and texts, consent is key. If you don't get it, don't get kinky with them. And major important note: coerced or manipulated consent is NOT consent.

Pixar and Disney remain excellent at any age, and you don't need to be a little to enjoy! Seriously.

Littles can be toxic! Yes, there's tons of fake caregivers, fake switches, fake and manipulative buttfaces out there, absolutely. But littles can be toxic, too, and if you're seeing those toxic behaviors within yourself, you need to change. Now... it isn't acceptable or fair to damage others with your toxicity just because you're afraid to change and grow!

Consent is needed from all involved, including spectators. Don't bring your kinky stuff in public without the consent of ALL impacted parties. Don't make the whole community look bad, either!

Depression, anxiety, and mental health in general can be a risk when adopting a kinky lifestyle. Don't ignore them or just try to work around them... it won't work. You need to deal with them, and social relationships can help but sometimes you need professionals, not just friends.

When in doubt, assume you should be doing the responsible thing..I know, especially for bratty subs, that it is hard to choose to do the responsible thing... but seriously, being a little isn't an excuse to EXCLUSIVELY do irresponsible or naughty things!

Things like diapees, pacifiers, bottles, most little or ABDL or CG/L gear can be passed off by just saying "Oh, it's for a friend" because everyone assumes there's a friend with a kid. When you accidentally feel exposed... just try to remember most people don't care, or notice, and if they do they probably assume it's a misunderstanding. Stop freaking out!

Your caregiver isn't your therapist. They're not here to fix your emotional trauma from childhood.. they might help you, but they're not meant to fix your whole life just because you let someone be in charge of you.

You are still an adult, even in littlespace... so you need to act like it when it comes to serious stuff. Money, sex, responsibilities, these deserve an ADULT view and should involve your ADULT mindset in participating, unless you and your caregiver have a very specific and well negotiated/ understood agreement about power exchange and decision making... and even then, you should still be an active part of the planning.

Everybody fucks up, and it's USUALLY stupid to hold a mistake against someone who means you well. Give your partner the benefit of the doubt, by default... it can be either you alone against your problems, or you WITH a partner...idk, seems like being on a team is just easier and a better way!

Communication isn't everyone's thing. If you're with someone who never learned healthy methods, you can teach and help. You aren't obligated to, I'm not saying you're responsible if your Partner isn't knowledgeable about this stuff... I'm just saying, if you know a healthier and better way, show your partner, don't expect them to just improve because you think you model good behavior.

Diaper and ABDL play isn't ubiquitous... in this community, some people love it (myself included) and others hate it, and that's fine. As long as nobody is shaming or hurting anybody, let them be, whether your kinks match or not.

Very, very few people want unsolicited pics, whether of penises, breasts, butts, chastity, diapers, etc. If you want to send a pic, check that the pic is welcomed.

Just a short, hopefully informative list than jumped into my head today and I figured I'd share!

Sending you all lots of good vibes, good times, and good luck!

As always, stay happy, stay healthy, and stay kinky!

-Scribbler

[deancas-stabfest]

STABFEST 2022 WRAPPED

GREETINGS, STABBERS

Last year was the debut of our precious child, DeanCas StabFest (FUNSIZED), and in the very humble opinion of the mods, it was a smashing success! we promised to bring you guys some stats to explore how the fest went down.

NB: The data is skewed more towards the fic, rather than the art. we know this, and we are sorry. we love love LOVE all the artists, and want to explore all that metadata as well, but we also want to protect copyright. The metadata for the fic is accessible manually from AO3 (the mods have been toiling in the spreadsheet mines for weeks), or was provided to us by the participants via the masterpost form. However, getting more metadata on the art would require us to feed the full images into an analysis program, and we just can't trust that data won't be misused.

The art metadata that is present in this Wrapped was attained either by human eyeball, or by using Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7.02, which was released on March 5, 2001 and does not have online capabilities. It has plenty of other capabilities, okay. Do not underestimate the grampa software. There is a HOT WAX filter. Also it was paid for ONCE. none of that subscription crap. suck our dicks adobe

NB2: STABFEST WRAPPED is not about competition (except for competing to make StabFest 2023 even more unhinged than 2022.) We are not ranking the participants; we are lining everyone up to give them a smooch on the forehead. There will be a few individuals mentioned here and there, but every team has oodles and oodles of data that we've been crunching, and everyone was part of making DeanCas StabFest 2022 into this handsome, virile beast.

Missed the Fest, or want to refresh your memory? Check out the MASTERLIST:

Part One

Part Two

You can also check out the StabFest2022 collection on AO3.

Alright, let's go!

Pitcher, Catcher? Author, Artist?

DeanCas StabFest 2022 (Fun-sized!) had 33 teams: 27 in the regular bang and 6 in the reverse bang. 31 authors and 25 artists participated. Three people participated as both author and artist, leading to a total of 53 participants. One person was on multiple teams as an author and four people were on multiple teams as artists.

Author/Artist switch hitters: KaylieMalinza (teams 4, 10, 12, 27, 200, and 600), Maple (teams 28 and 15) and Swirlycloud (teams 16 and 20.)

Mega Author: MBQ (teams 13, 14, and 15)

Mega Artists: Biscuit_tin (teams 100, 21, and 13), Lauryn T. (teams 22 and 27) and Mortea (teams 19, 25, 500, and 700.)

(yes, the two participants who were on the most teams (5 and 4) are the mods, but this was a pinch hitter/oh god the reverse bang is too smol situation okay don't look at us like that this isn't like the scene in chocolat where the antagonist breaks into the candy shop and gorges on everything this was SACRIFICE for the SAKE OF THE FEST. also it was fun and the mods regret nothing.)

What It Says On The Tin

Of the 33 teams, 22 of them showed STAB in the artwork and 7 of them referenced STAB in the fic title. (this was interpreted fairly loosely--if the STAB was imminent or the aftermath was visible in the art, and if the title held any mention of stab, cut, slice, etc. we counted it as a yes.) Of the 26 fic which did not reference STAB in the title, 3 did reference the stabbing implement.

You Must Be This Tall To Ride

Of AO3's four ratings, the majority of the fic were rated Teen and Up, and the next most common rating was Mature. There was only one brave fic rated General Audiences--but that may have more to do with people rating higher than needed out of caution. No one wants a nastygram from a puriteen who thinks Disney is too risque and scary for children. Anyway--the MPAA doesn't give official ratings to fanfic. We go on vibes, and reader beware.

Yeah, I Figured That Much. What Are You?

Of the artwork, 22 of the entries were digital art, 10 were traditional/physical, and 1 piece appeared to be mixed physical and digital (we were guessing on traditional vs digital art and may have gotten it wrong sometimes! sorry.) A 1:2 ratio of traditional to digital was a very pleasant surprise.

The STICKERS had a pretty good spread, too, with notable outliers being only 1 team receiving the Rebar of Shame and a whopping 18 teams receiving the Cannon of Canon Complicity. In total, 50 stickers were awarded. Special shout out to MBQ, who managed to qualify for every sticker across their three entries. The Rebar of Shame would have been so lonely without you.

Weapon of Choice

Speaking of rebar, there was a tasty variety in the stabbing implements used. 8 teams had multiple implements, leading to a total of 41 implements. Far and away the most used implement was a knife--5 instances of the OG demon knife, and an additional 14 knives of various types--cooking, hunting, ka-bar, etc. , for a total of 19. The runner up was the angel blade, clocking in at 5 instances, with arrow and sword coming in behind at 3 and 2 instances, respectively. The most exciting implements, however, are those which were unique, only one instance each.

Of all the implements, we estimate that 34 of them were used for their intended purpose--needle, syringe, and scalpel, for example--with 8 very special implements being employed "off label."

We can beat those numbers this year, team!

Let's make 2023 StabFest off label AF.

According to the Lore

Of the AO3 tags, it should come as no surprise that there were 33 iterations of STAB, and 30 iterations of Castiel/Dean Winchester (tabulated separately from Castiel & Dean Winchester--some fic were tagged with both.) The Sam Winchester character tag also showed up 19 times (not including variants such as "Injured Sam Winchester," pairing tags, or, a mod favorite, "pray for sammy.") Canon made an appearance in 22 tags--including Canon-Typical Violence as well as Canon Elements, Canon Compliant, etc. Angst and Blood showed up in 11 and 12 tags, respectively.

A few more tags were cherry picked for the chart below; including every tag would be very difficult, since the 33 fic were tagged with a staggering total of 372 unique tags.

The mods would like to give a special shout out to the freeform tags. They were delightful in situ and tantalizing out of context. Here are our top ten favorites, in no particular order:

a frankly concerning number of references to Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah (All That Remains, by DoctorProfessorSong)

author was craving s'mores while writing this (Hunger Pains, by Followsthebees)

copious use of frog analogies?? (apologue of the boiling frog, by howldean)

dean is re-hymenated and as smooth as a baby's bottom (Rescue Burrito, by KaylieMalinza)

But Dean Forgives Him Because He's Smitten (Just Like Knitting, by FriendofCarlotta)

cas has a metaphorical c-section in here and that’s all you need to know (Fill Thyself with the Word of God, by themauvesoul)

Sam and Cas come up with a crazy idea and Dean counts to ten in the background. (The Good Old College Try, by silver_penny)

Cas triggers his own trauma by jerking off to the wrong thing (eros and thanatos, by autisticandroids)

oh well it's Cas what would you expect?! (Dusk When I Met You, by MiracleofWinchester)

There is also taco salad somewhere (Happy Kitty, by MBQ)

The mods also, with glimmering eyes and trembling hands, present a gold star to the tag that Understood The Assignment:

Apologies for attempted murder doubling as intricate rituals also (By your hand, by SlopeSlippers)

Thanks, buddy. StabFest feels Seen.

My True Form is Approximately The Size of Your Chrysler Building

As StabFest is FUN-SIZED, it should come as no surprise that most of the fic had fairly low word counts. With a required minimum of 1,500, 5 fic were between 1,500 and 2,500 words, and 8 were between 2,500 and 3,500. With a grand total word count of 183,643 spread across 33 fic, the average word count is 5,464--but since the median was only 4,397, then clearly the three fic with word counts over 15,400 were outliers adn should not have been counted.

The stab-free zone between 10k and 15k requires further study. 🧐

The art sizes had no measurable minimum--the rules just stated one art piece minimum, with no details about dimensions, resolution, etc. Some curious numbers shook out, though.

The width of the pieces ranged from 500 to 2048 pixels, with a median of 1280. The height ranged from 386 to 4716, with a median of 1280. (NB: some artists did multiple pieces for a single team, such as a main art piece and a banner, or multiple main art pieces. E.g., that 4,716 comes from three pieces of 1572 pixel height being combined.) In total, the StabFest art from all 33 teams is 36,433 pixels wide by 41,378 pixels tall. Perhaps some enterprising soul can convert that to football fields.

File size, as reported by Windows Explorer, ranged from 49.1kB to 4670kB with a median of 638.5kB. Bear in mind that some of these pieces would have been resized by tumblr or another hosting service, and of course, multiple pieces for the same team are added together. The total size, based on the files currently available, is 25630.08kB, or 25.63MB.

Certain People, Special People, Can Perceive My True Visage

What's most fun is the little option is Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7.02 to show the number of unique colors. These ranged from a minimum of 11,323 (The art for Forest Fever) to a maximum of 894,465 (the art for Light Me Up With Your Ardent Sword--hi res versions available on AO3), with a median of 95,293. You'd think the sum of the unique colors would be HUGE--and yes, if you add up all the numbers you get a whopping 4,616,209--but of course there's going to be a lot of overlap.

After combining all the StabFest art into a single MEGAZORD, like the Power Rangers, we see that the number of unique colors is much smaller: 2,272,549. That means there are 2,343,660 colors which are shared by at least two entries. Isn't that sweet? It's like the art is holding hands.

Because The Mods Commanded It. Because We Have Work for You.

Well, that wraps up StabFest2022 Wrapped. If you had fun last year and want to see what StabFest Wrapped2023 will look like, please check out the new features (femslash!! new stickers! A DISCORD) and mosey on over to the sign up form. And please take a gander at our promo post tag and see if something catches your fancy for a signal boost.

[s0r3wach1gauy0]

The Goddamn Copacabana Essay

Ok so does anyone remember when Copacabana randomly got popular this year? Well for me that's when this mess started. I saw on instagram this one edit. It's not important, but it's how I became curious bc Barry can sing man, and tell a good story. Also it showed up really high on my wrapped so I think now is a funny time to talk about it.

Song History

So while people were treating it like a meme, I decided to study this song. Obviously, it released in 1977 and it was at a good time with disco music, etc. etc. What the average zoomer like me might not know is that there was a made for TV movie released in 1985.

This is cool and a good thing for a few reasons. Firstly, Barry Manilow, y'know, the guy who made this song, plays the protagonist, the Tony if you will. There are numerous versions of Copacabana, there's an 80's mix that I especially like that shows up in the movie. The plot is like, that song but extended, like it shows how Tony and Lola meet and fall in love, how Rico gets tangled in there, etc. I will say as the only spoiler, they do cut away from the uh shooting which kinda sucks bc I was really curious if Barry would answer that question. The only issue is that this movie is close to lost media, like I watched it once on a very sketchy website that probably got my data or something. It sucks because I genuinely liked it and I missed my chance in August to personally ask Mr. Manilow to get it on streaming for everyone. I got this gif as a consolation prize tho of Lola.

It also got turned into a musical in 1992 that follows the story of the TV movie, which I still want to find a bootleg of because that sounds like a good watch. Yes I listened to Manilow sing it now, and I'm not adding it to my Every Single Version of Copacabana playlist for peace and mankind reasons. So yeah aside from tikton picking it up, I think I covered everything---

Location History

Oh you thought Copacabana was fake? A place dreamed up by a disco artist in the '70's? Absolutely not. While the whole murder thing from what I could glean is not based on a real event, there was a real Copacabana, and for a time showgirls did perform there.

It's been closed and reopened several times, but it first opened on November 10th, 1940. When it first opened, it was run by Monte Proser, but it was also in partnership with Frank Costello, a mob boss. Monte Proser was well connected though, as he was a press agent for the likes of Walt Disney, and a bunch of people I personally don't recognize. Anyways, Frank put one of his guys to be there to protect mob interests, Jules Podell. Jules had a police record though, and the club got investigated for racketeering and tax evasion in 1944. By 1948 though, the pressure went down, and it was basically mob controlled with Jules being the sole owner.

I did have a couple things I wanted to shoehorn in, so lemme talk about them quickly. First off, the vibes were kinda wack because it's y'know Brazilian decor and Latin American music, costume, and dance, so someone might guess Tex-Mex because white people run the place. Nope, Chinese food. Secondly, the place was racially segregated until the '50's. I'm not surprised by given it's pre-segregation, but I am a little disappointed. However, many black performers did really well there, like Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis Jr., Sam Cooke, and The Supremes debuted there.

Like I said, it moved a few times and closed and reopened a few more times than that. You can visit the club now, and it seems like the original salsa theme is still going. But that's less fun. I've been saving the best for last.

Showgirl History

I should start by being honest in that, this part isn't finished yet. Well, not in the way I consider finished. I want to interview show girls from the 50's specifically so I can truly hear thier experiences from the club at the time. Or if you're a descendant of one and you remember her talking about that time in her life, that also is good. If you have any contact info you are okay with sharing, please message me.

From what I can glean, all girls were hand selected by Jack Entratter, the show producer for the Copacabana and basically the guy who invented the Vegas showgirl later on. He also knew Frank Sinatra from this time period, which is a fun sidenote. The girls he chose also had, and I will say, I do think this is a little creepy, a formula. The formula is simple, "5’4” in height; 116 lbs. Bust 32-34, waist 24, hips 34. Face: small features, the American girl look, oval rather than round face." He didn't care if the girl could dance at all, simply if she was beautiful similar to Ziegfield's French shows of the '20's. The Copa Show didn't necessarily have hard steps, as the focus was on the beauty of the showgirl and her costume.

The costumes of course, were often very elaborate and told the story. I have heard good things, the pay was good, and from what little online prescence the NYC Copa Girls have, it seems happy, if a little nerve wracked. The pictures I've found are very pretty, so I bet it was fun.

I'm honestly not sure how to end this except to say this was a journey, and I hope if you take anything away it's that real people worked and laughed there, and sometimes art imitates life, not perfectly, but it does imitate it. Oh and if this ever leaves Tumblr and reaches Barry, I'm begging you to put the made for TV movie on streaming or something I beg of you.

[your-ne1ghbor]

Hey! Here I come with ✨asks✨

There’s a lot here sorry 😭 And if you’ve already answered some of these, just pass them

Why did you choose to remove Amaya’s eye? Does she wear an eyepatch?

Why is Mag specifically afraid of fire?

Are they going to get villain transformations?

Are we going to learn more about the royal couple’s backstories in the actual story?

How are you going to show your story? (Writing, blurbs, comic, animatic, etc.)

How many songs are you planning to show?

Star’s backstory?

Design dump on the main four! Symbolism?

What are you going to do with Valentino? Is he important in the story?

Who gave Val to Asha?

How does Valentino act with the royal cat?

What deleted scenes specifically inspired your story?

How would Asha react knowing you created her backstory?

Asha meeting canon!Asha. Would she die again

Is cursing allowed in your AU?

What are the seven teens’ roles?

What about Sabino?

If Mag had the chance to get rid of Asha, would he? Without Amaya getting mad at him? (Since she was the one that brought Asha in)

Do the royal couple have similar goals in the story? (Like how @annymation’s royal couple are both in love and villainous, versus @oh-shtars’ royal couple is literally titled Grand Despair)

Will “A Kingdom of Thorns and Roses” name ever be mentioned in the story?

Draw Mag dressed as Megamind >:3 (or meeting him or treating to him, idrc)

Canon!Amaya reacting to TkoRaT!Amaya

What dementor-like monster is shown in your past drawings? Will we see other ones?

Where did they spawn from?

Will there be other realms in your story? Like a Star realm or a cursed realm

Would you consider this a “Disney movie” or more of an AU? Like, could it be made by Disney? (minus a few things like queer representation or cursing)

How can stars die? Can their physical bodies die but their “spirits” remain? (I know you cut this aspect but will it reappear?)

Are there any aspects of other rewrites you want to incorporate in yours?

Why did Maggy and Amaya name the kingdom “Rosas”?

Who discovered wish magic?

Who taught Asha how to make flower crowns?

Are you scrapping any songs?

Adding any new ones?

Adding any new characters? (Like how I’m adding Evangeline)

Are Asha’s parents important to the story?

A little self-indulgent, but some TFS doodles? :3

I hope you enjoy these questions! <3

yoo I finally got internet now let's get to these questions

Ooo you really cooked with these questions @wings-of-sapphire✨️✨️

The eye originally was a way to explore how I can make her more scary, but then it kinda stuck with the overall design so yeah lol. And no, she doesn't wear an eyepatch. I mean, an eyepatch is cool and all, but just an empty eye socket is more terrifying and disturbing to look at for me and works with the overall tragedy of her character.

Mag is more afraid of Star's than fire. But...

He couldn't do anything except watch as a star destroyed his home in flames.

When it comes to fire though, he is more nervous or afraid when it is used to destroy things. If it is used to light up a room or cook food, he doesn't really mind since the intentions aren't bad.

3. Maggy will 100% get a villain transformation, including Amaya as well. It's kind of like boss stages. So basically, they will have a total of 3 transformations, the last one being something scary (haven't thought about the designs yet for the final transformations)

4. The beginning song or replacement song called Home is the founding of Rosas and the actual downfall would be shown since Star Boy didn't know what happened since the stars didn't tell him why Mag is the way he is basically. So yes, 100%.

5. A mixture of all of them. I do want to write it out, but rn I just don't know how to execute it.

6. I'm not sure. It's debatable since I've been focusing more on the worldbuilding than on the songs. Plus, I am no song writer, I suck at writing songs. Even if I get an idea for one (for the replacement song "Welcome to Rosas" is a good example of that [Its called Home]), it's just execution for me.

7. Heh heh that's for a separate post but here is somewhat a glimpse:

(That's mag btw, I'm just messing with his design again 💀💀)

8. I had finished Asha's design, just need to add some minor details. Plus, the other 3 is still me messing with the designs. However, I can show you some of my ideas:

Maggy's is somewhat gonna look like this:

Ofc with more sharper edges and thorny design.

For Amaya, I'm still not sure outfit wise lol.

9. Valentino will actually serve as a guide through the castle and of Rosas to Star and the 7 friends. Idk I just think a goat helping a star with directions is a funny and fun premise. Plus, Star Boy is terrible with directions 😭

10. Idk he just appeared one day and Asha was like: imma keep you. I probably will add more to both of them, but I'm not sure how they met at the moment.

11. They are silly. Aka, they are close friends. Just that Charo gets a little annoyed by Valentino haha.

12. The scene where Asha and Star escapes from Amaya, and the villain couple deleted scene and the wishing tree deleted scenes.

13. She wouldn't care. She probs be like: No shit? Until she realizes how much I do her dirty and she will collapse emotionally.

14. TKORAT Asha would moreover be nervous around her ad Cannon Asha would probably dislike her

15. Yes lol

16. tbh idk yet, I haven't really put much thought into their characters yet since I wanna focus on the main 4 and worldbuilding before I come to the 7 friends since I personally don't know at the moment. All I know is that Dahlia and Gabo are most likely will be siblings since I loved their semi bickering in the OG film.

17. Dead.

18. Mag will only take that action if she becomes a threat to him or the kingdom.

19. They have similar goals in the story, yes. They both want to make sure that everyone will never dream again. They both lost everything because someone wished on a star, or hense had a goal to pursue, and it caused an entire kingdom to fall. Why should they let a dream go Rouge again? They would at least be doing everyone a service by making sure the problem doesn't become a bigger problem later on.

20. The title is so long that idk how I will incorporate it in the story. But if I do, you guys will probably read it 🧍

21.

Megamind has a point Maggy 🤷

22.

TKORAT Amaya wouldn't like how Cannon Amaya literally didn't do anything or even tried anything to prevent her husband from going down the path he did in wish. So yes, TKORAT Amaya pretty much hates her.

23. I don't necessarily have the drawings with me except for this one:

But moreover, another one I have, that I am still designing for "the River of Lost Souls" is probably the closest thing to it. I have more, I just don't have it on me rn 😭

24. Hell, for the River of Lost Souls. And the pic I showed above is from my Oc, Axe's species. Or basically coming from the ground I guess. Plus another one I wanted to show was an old design I had for Axr hehe

25. The Star realm does exist in my au, so does hell, and I'm debating a monster realm, but rn it is cut for it kind of complicates things heheh.

26. I have thought of this before, and I see it more as it's own thing that can be futher explored in other interpretations like shows, pre-quals, ect. It's more AU than Disney to me at the moment.

27. You have to get them out of their disguise form in order to cause any sort of long lasting injuries. Other than that, dark magic is literally the only way to hurt them. And it has to be in their star form. Their disguise form are like a shell for their true form. That's why it is better to have them in their most vulnerable state in order to do any sort of damage to the Stars.

28. I was inspired by a ton of AUs, and a lot of them did rub off from me, like The Wishing Kingdom, Fallen Star, and Reach for the Stars aus.

29. When they founded the kingdom, the whole place was covered in so many roses and flowers. They also dubed it Rosas not only because of the roses founded on the island, but it has a calming name that isn't threatening to people. It sounds...peaceful.

30.

31. Her parents. No not her adoptive parents, her biological parents taught her :3

32. I am a Star is removed. I fucking hate that song with every fiber in my being. This is the Thanks "We" Get would be rewritten to fit the context of Mag and Amaya.

33. I want a song between Mag and Star. It would be focusing on how much of a monster Star could be and "will" be. Plus the song called Home (that I still dunno how to execute 😭)

34. Quite a bit, but the few would be Maggy's Star, or the Blue Star, the star that destroyed Rosas, Aster, and some creatures that makes the worldbuilding whole.

35. Not sure at the moment. I would imagine it as a lingering effect on most of the people in Rosas.

36.

(I had no refrence for Asha when I drew her when I was camping lol 💀)

Anyways thank you for the questions! I had a lot of fun answering them! Hopefully this gave you guys some more info on my AU!

Gonna go through my inbox, so now I will bid you adue 💕

[floaromaxtowns]

8, 13, 16 for the ask choose violence ask game :)))

🔥 choose violence ask game 🔥 [Accepting]

@mamuzzy

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

// Yes, we can all agree on the fact that the clone army IS in the end of the day an army comprised of slaves. YES, the clones' upbringing & development was indeed, inhumane. It's a FACT that all of this SUCKS.

Then WHY are people unable to recognize and understand that these same clones have also, committed unspeakable things all in the name of serving the Republic? EVEN AMONGST THEMSELVES?

Gestures @ Fox & the Coruscant guard basically being Palpatine's direct line, to HEAVILY control the population within Coruscant. Basically turning the army against civillians.

Gestures @ Bacara's sector (forgot the term rn <3) had amongst the HIGHEST death counts of clones. And it was ALL his doing, because of his leadership style. He LOATHED Mundi for daring to intervene or bring changes, to his strategies. Which was just him trying to minimize a bit, the amount of lives lost in combats.

& there are SO MANY other examples of these fucked up moments, found within the old clone lore. I genuinely have nothing positive to say about any clone lore since Filoni, stepped on the scene tbh LOL.

13. worst blorboficiation

// See above LOL

I really despise the fandom's take on the clones. LIKE Lucasarts post-Disney acquisition HAD to water down and infantilize SO MUCH about its rich lore. Well, the "clone stans" take that and make it 10000x worse and insufferable. Talk about people projecting their white savior issues.

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

// One thing is being jedi critical and not being that invested or interested about them, as part of SW's story. Another one is just going full genocide-denial, like what the fuck.

Not in a: you're sick and fucked up. But in a: Congratulations you failed to grasp EVEN THE MOST BASIC PART, OF THE STORY. HOW DO YOU DO THAT?

[thegeminisage]

as someone who wasn't around in 2014....can you tell me what it was like? (stucky) can you give me a taste of the gardens of babylon etc

what was it like...this is such a fun question i want you to know i gave serious thought to my answer and also discussed it at length with my 2014 friend last night and i know already it's gonna be so long. sorry that i answered your ask at fuck o clock in the morning i am scheduling it to go up later and also at the time you sent the ask in to make sure you see it

ok so like. i mean, you're on the fandom website, right, so i assume youve been in fandoms. idk if youve ever been in a really, REALLY big fandom, at the same time that said fandom was also producing content (even if the source material was not). think d*stiel post nov 5, or undert*le circa late 2015/early 2016, or z*lda after totk came out, or h*rry p*tter as the seventh book was being released. (i'm censoring to avoid a false positive of anybody's blacklist except in the case of the last one, which i am censoring out of <3 disrespect.) like there's something REALLY luxurious about being in ANY large and active fandom and it's mostly the power of crowdsourcing. st*r tr*k 2009's tarsus iv headcanons. the storm trooper lore re: the f*rce awakens before the second two movies came out. everyone just kind of agreeing that dean w*nchester was a teenage hooker. you know?

like, that's "just fanon," sure, but part of the beauty of it is that no one person makes up fanon, we all gather in the biggest writing group in the world and collectively go insane and bat ideas back and forth. there are a hundred THOUSAND fics about bucky barnes on ao3 and that's just the people who were writing, not even counting artists and gifmakers and meta-writers and people who just reblog stuff. i can't possibly begin to put an accurate number to how many people are in any given fandom at any given time, but imagine (on the low end, i'm sure) there are THOUSANDS, perhaps tens of thousands, of people going nuts about stevebucky at all times. tens of THOUSANDS people doing "yes and" with each other on the internet 24 hours a day seven days a week. it's just like being in any fandom, you log on to your dash and see what the mewchies posted while you were gone, but in a fandom so huge and so active you were getting bombarded with idea after idea after idea every single second, so if you don't like one you're spoiled for choice in what you engage with next. it didn't even matter that cap3 was two years away or that it sucked when it finally got here because we collectively wrote cap3 a million times over. like, genuinely, it was a mass creative exercise. it's the biggest writing group in the world. for better or worse, we were shaping our own version of that universe, without any input from or regard to the people who actually created the characters and movie, in a way that compelled most strongly to our own tastes and demographic.

what made this particular movie/fandom special though was a few things. firstly i still genuinely believe it was ahead of its time...marvel shit pre disney was allowed to be political in ways it is ABSOLUTELY not now. like, cap2 could say "the government is secretly full of nazis and they all need to burn" in 2014 two years before the 2016 election and 7 years before jan 6. like you just couldn't say that now. "war bad" is an oldie but goodie, but "our entire government is corrupt and needs to be torn into flaming pieces and cast into the potomac" is um. pretty radical. so is, by the way, "men as victims" and "men having emotions" etcetc. like, not in fandom, fandom all but invented that shit, but as far as dumb superhero movies go. i can't tell you the number of metas i read AND WROTE discussing steve rogers and masculinity and how all that was portrayed, intentionally or not, in that fucking film. i had entire separate universes built up in my head for steve who was born a cis girl and steve who decided later in life that "nonbinary" or "trans woman" was a better fit and then steve who was born as a cis boy and remained a man his whole life but felt weird and different ways about being queer which clashed with the weird and different ways BARNES felt about being queer. i'm not saying the film (or the fandom! good lord) was perfect, it was a product of its time, but it was also WAY ahead of its time too. it was weird to expect the next film to come out and actually, like, be good. it wasnt, but we fully believed it would be and that wasn't delusional behavior because the last one had been. i would never have that kind of faith in a marvel project now because they've been bought by disney.

oh yeah and that's the other thing too like. speaking of queer people. gay marriage wasn't legal in the US on a federal level until 2015, and you couldn't just flip on your TV and see them whenever you wanted. ten years doesn't seem like that long ago in the grand scheme of things but like, we lived on glee and cw/mtv queerbait (disclaimer that i personally only participated in cw queerbait) and that was it. we had crumbs. and like when people write gay characters theyre Just Gay, but if you decide to be crazy stupid in a slash fandom you can decide these layered characters are gay and that's even better rep than um whatever was going on in other pieces of media. these guys are both so lonely and out of step with time and lack other people with "shared life experiences" (girl what the hell was that) and their connection w each other keeps them afloat in a world that doesn't want them so like of COURSE it seems like it's supposed to be romantic. and like, i could and did make myself and my tumblr buds crrrazy (and got made crazy by them) thinking about:

how steve's size when small and again when big interacted w his gender identity and his sexuality and how that sexuality manifested. barnes's identity As A Man hinging on his ability to go to war for his country bc Thats What Men Did but now he's no longer fit because theres worms in his brain. loss of bodily autonomy which usually happens to women and natasha being later in that journey than steve and bucky are and so close to being at peace with it but not there yet. stigmatization of seeking treatment for mental health issues lessened by the presence of sam who could have been a Macho Tough Guy but actually gives off strong Talk About Our Feelings And Be Soft vibes. don't even get me started on the relationship (predatory) between steve and rumlow and how it parallels the one between barnes and pierce (and if any of you motherfuckers BREATHE a word of that h*dra tr*sh p*rty shit in my direction i will END you) and the stigma that comes from being preyed on when vulnerable As Men. steve's depression and ptsd and him getting triggered by, yes, the fucking ALS ice bucket challenge. the collective belief that he was conscious when he was frozen even though nobody said that so that he and barnes could have that in common too. the headcanon about barnes having roma heritage - shoutout to not easily conquered my beloved, and the 14k smut coda i wrote for it✌ speaking of smut, i would be remiss also not to mention there was a STRONG element of collective lust involved. i'm immune to 99% of it bc im ace but the winter soldier was uh. VERY graceful. you know? i didn't write 14k of porn because i was uncompelled. we were on one. we went fucking crazy. fandom in general but especially big fandoms have a kind of nonstop endless well of creative energy born from obsession that is the absolute envy of people like my mortal enemy grrm. we NEVER quit.

also, HISTORY (and other vaguely educational subjects). we were all so desperate to know how steve and bucky would have lived in the years we couldn't see them it sparked a sitewide interest in 1940s american history. there was a thing about bananas tasting different now because of a plague. m&ms being invented as wartime candy. stuff about how shoebox apartments looked and how rations worked. 1940s recipes and radio shows. the 1940s queer movement and how it interacted with ballroom dancing and private drag get-togethers. how amputations work and how prosthetic limbs work in real life so we could extrapolate it to fantasy. how to hand-draw that fucking arm in photoshop. why soldiers are trained to say their serial numbers when captured. what ww2 was like. what dog tags are for. what did they get in the ration packs. what brand of cigarettes did they smoke. what brand (and i am being so serious, i STILL own a tube) of LIPSTICK did peggy carter use. caloric intake of someone with a 4x speed metabolism and how much famine peanut butter he'd need to eat daily to keep from starving to death. oppression of irish immigrants and their children/grandchildren back in the 1940s. the difference between conservatives and fascists, back when there was a difference. what activities generally took place on these mysterious but ever-present new york city docks. just exactly HOW many terrible movies and tv shows has sebastian stan been in ranked by his resemblance to james buchanan barnes in each one. (i personally went through his entire imdb list at the time and then made a venn diagram.) electroswing! teachers and professors would have killed for their classes to have the kind of enthusiasm a bunch of mentally ill teenagers and 20-somethings on tunglr dot edu were showing about this one very specific set of subjects. this film also sparked my love of fight scenes. if you've read this fic or this fic and liked the Big Fight Scenes in them, you can thank cap2 for leading me down that path.

and then yes there was also discourse. my personal most hated thing was the above mentioned h*dra tr*sh p*rty (DO NOT GOOGLE THAT, i will just tell you it's nazi rape porn🤢 and i hope everyone involved is having a bad day today) and also the fact that SOME FUCKING PEOPLE can't understand "don't be shitheads about a fanfic where the author can see you doing it." but then ofc people were also sexist about nat and racist about sam and minimalizing those guys (and every other character besides tony really but sometimes him too) for the two white male leads was a whole thing. and on the funnier side of things you had (justifiably, i suppose) bitter st*ny fans who HATED what those two got in avengers and got real mad when stucky started outpacing them on ao3. and people complaining about the characters being too uwu soft. and then other people arguing whether or not barnes counted as disabled when he was missing a Whole arm. and THEN discourse about was it ethical to remove the arm and build him a new one ESPECIALLY without his consent (if people don't know they're being ableist in their fanfics hypothetically is it still ok to kill them with hammers?) and why was tony doing it if that guy killed his parents and is it ok that we keep making tony not that mad about his dead parents is it not enough that barnes stole his limelight as the guy who gets shipped with steve but what if all three of them fucked but can you really fuck the guy who offed your folks but ACTUALLY isn't it cringe to like tony anyway since RDJ and gwenyth paltrow are bad people and who says chris evans are sebastian stan are such good people etcetcetc. and let us not even get started on the plausibility of the avengers tower fanon after age of ultron came out and it turns out nobody became friends and they all still hated and mistrusted each other. and whether or not the avengers could be considered found family if the other characters were constantly getting shafted into being barnes's little support animals. and then ofc every once in awhile one of the actors of people involved creatively would say something ranging from mildly controversial to absolutely horrible on the internet and we'd all fight about THAT for awhile like a dog with a bone. i mean. typical infighting of any fandom tbh.

but i was very happy. it was all the most enormous thought experiment and creative endeavor (and semi-educational adventure??) that we all participated in daily for like two-ish years without stopping ever. i loved doing it. AND, when you click with a piece of media like that, you also click with other people who clicked with that same piece of media, so in addition to the sheer level of dopamine going into my brain at all times i also formed decade-long friendships that will certainly last the entirety of my lifetime, and when we're in our 90s in nursing homes i will be able to say, "we are friends because i wrote 14k of smut for your fanfic" or "we are friends because i couldn't get enough of your gifsets" or whatever because you know, we quite literally went to stucky together.

[soyouareandrewdobson]

So... Dobson dreamed of working for Disney, but by the time he was done with college, Disney shut down 2D studios (or something along the line) which sucks, when you get your degree specifically for this, but... If you feel that strongly about art/animation, why wouldn't you try in some other studios, at least to keep your craft fresh or even develop it, so that now, when Disney has 2D TV projects (like DuckTales, Owl House, etc.) you could work for them? Hell, make your own projects!

Yes, he could have done that.

But in reality, he simply didn't. And why? No one realy knows and the only word people can think of, is laziness. Dobson likely didn't want to "just" work as some random background animator for others, he wanted to be a showrunner and content creator from the start. He wanted to be famous and beloved. He did the one major cardinal sin of any failing artist: He put his "career" above his actual product and he got rejected for that attitude by everyone.