#and you know what this trope of asshole who makes you list 20 facts is probably happening about ten times less than the internet pretends

[turquoiseskye]

It’s funny how obsessed the internet is with hating gatekeeping when the internet is also full of assholes that I don’t want on my side of the gate.

[karalynlovescake]

Best Dreamling Tropes

the other lists I saw for this on discord were just fic tropes that got used in dreamling fics. This list is ones that are SPECIFIC to dreamling and that most of us made up out of whole cloth and agreed upon.

1.) Fishbowl rescue - very important (The tag Hob Gadling Saves Dream of the Endless from Roderick Burgess has its own tag, as it should.)

2.) Let’s rewrite Season 1! (always a classic)

3.) In fact, let’s rewrite the whole fucking arc, solving problems as we go.

4.) Dream sex, either accidental or on purpose. (Who needs prep for dream sex? No one, that's who.)

5.) Hob owns the New Inn and lives in a flat above it

6.) New Inn as a temple to Dream (personal fav)

7.) Dream can just dissolve everyone’s clothes into sand when it’s time for that E rating.

8.) Hob has pets and Dream can talk to them.

9.) Gender is fake, ie The fandom said it’s my turn to have a vulva

10.) Meowrpheus

11.) Desire, stop Interfering in our relationship. (”Stop doing what? I was minding my own business, asshole.”)

12.) Hope of the Endless - he's all ours baby, Neil hands off!

13.) Make Dream Watch Movies (frontrunners are Mary Poppins, Princess Bride and Goncharov.)

14.) Dream’s been making romantic interludes in Hob’s dreams but unfortunately Hob doesn’t remember his dreams. (Morpheus may or may not be aware of this.)

15.) When Dream gets laid it’s EVERYONE’S problem (based in canon, to be fair, but we like this one a lot.)

16.) NGCU (Neil Gaiman Cinematic Universe, ie, Aziraphale and Crowley show up)

17.) Hob coped with the last part of the 20th century by fucking a lot of goth twinks

18.) When dream stormed out of the White Horse in 1989 he left behind his hat, gloves and cloak. Hob took them home and may or may not have used them in his, ahem, personal activities.

19.) When they fight, Hob either refuses to sleep or Morpheus refuses to let him dream. (Or sends him nightmares, but I think that one is less common.)

20.) Flower language and symbolism

21.) “You know I can see daydreams as well, my friend.”

22.) "I hate it when you get big." (Lying)

[tarajenkins]

I can't forgive the whole feeding people sineaters thing.... Like his whole system was neat y'know...without the drugging and murder. And having the poor sell themselves into indentured servitude....

Vauthry has a lot of potential though to be sympathetic but much like Zenos I just enjoy detesting him more. Although Zenos is on the top of my hate list. Gross little stalker man if only we only you stayed dead

Vauthry is the most sympathetic if shb antagonist as he had the least autonomy in his fate.

Least I don't hate Vauthry. I hate Zenos and Elidbus and Emhet -did everything wrong- Selch is just an entertaining asshole for me.

Think my lack of sympathy towards Vauthry mostly came from people simping for him after the innocence transformation. With looked horrifically painful. And like - the man feeds people their sick friends corpses to essentially roofie them into such a docile state they literally do not know how to take care of themselves. Please don't switch your tune because you think the uncomfortably child like monster is hot. Like please at least he was still a person beforehand

New nonnie, yeah? Again, you do you. I’m not here to say you can’t “detest” characters. 乁(ツ゚)ㄏ I’m here to point out some of the reasons people give for “detesting” this particular character don’t line up with what we are told directly in the game, or the game logic doesn’t hold up. Like “the poor selling themselves into indentured servitude". That is directly contradicted by the game dialogues, and our own WoL's experience alongside Alphinaud. I got thoughts on the “drugging and murder” thing too, but first things first: Gate Town.

Poor as in poor decision making? Yes. Poor as in, the poor of the Brume, with absolutely nowhere else to go, nothing to their name, completely at the mercy of the nobility who sit snug in their warm manors with all the Ishgardian muffins? Nnnnnnnnnnnnnno. Nonnie, how is any of the dialogue above Vauthry’s fault? I know the narrative wanted very much to push the “rich terrorizing the poor” trope again, but how does this line up with that? Alphinaud himself said he offered the denizens of Gate Town/The Derelicts alternatives--likely working for the Crystarium, or literally anywhere else instead--and they refused all of it. Even Kai-Shirr, allegedly a "matter of life or death", refused. But keep in mind, The Crystarium also required you work, if you wanted to stay.

Does that make their arrangement "indentured servitude" also?

Eulmore was looking for workers skilled in certain jobs. It wasn't some rando lottery for the amusement of the upper crust. When the jongleurs were sent out, they were looking for particular specialties, like painting, on behalf of a patron. Only the rich were required to give up their wealth and holdings for a place in Eulmore, to maintain everything as free for all living in there. Yep, including free for the workers, who outnumber the formerly rich by a lot. It's implied that in addition to all the freebies, workers were also paid well, and later in the story, they were loudly dissatisfied about Vauthry-- or, at least, his way of running the city--being gone. While Vauthry was still there, it was the city's official stance that they be recognized and respected for all their efforts.

Cruel patrons did exist in those twenty years, to be sure. Amity is full of workers who fled them. But cruelty was clearly not sanctioned nor encouraged by the city proper. Does the fanbase blame any other allied city-state leader for the heinous things their bad eggs do, or as ruthlessly? Not in my experience. (In fact, they often seem very forgiving of far, far worse.)

Also, remember how Amity was afraid that Vauthry would send the Eulmoran Army after them? He never did, in all 20 years of his position as Mayor. Why do you think that is, Nonnie? If his default was tyrant, why this? Why wasn’t he in control of all that was left of Norvrandt, not just serving as Mayor of Eulmore? He apparently offered his leadership to The Crystarium, who declined. He didn’t go raze the city, which he could have, especially considering the WoL was not on The First back then. All he did was clearly hold a dislike for the Exarch, who he calls insincere, and do things like....hire a bouncer for the Beehive, to make sure the patrons kept a hands-off approach with the dancers, a.k.a. the workers. 

Sick burn, your Lordship.  Until the events of ShB--which made it very clear Vauthry was becoming increasingly unstable--even workers who committed crimes were only exiled, not ordered to yeet themselves out a window.

Why did it change? But, TL;DR: "The hopefuls" left a reliable life for a gambler's chance in Vegas, and that in turn left their former neighbors in Wright and Stilltide struggling to maintain the workload that “the hopefuls" left vacant. But Stilltide and Wright were still selling their foodstuffs to Eulmore, so unless gil was more important to them than actual food, they were doing well, aside from the absence of "the hopefuls".

Onwards to “drugging and murder”!  ( ᐛ )b Gonna assume you mean meol when you say “drugging”, Nonnie. They never explain meol--instead, they seem to rely entirely on the shitty implication that this fat character eats people. I don’t know about you, Nonnie, but for me that trope was old long before Austin Powers. Anyhow, what we do know about meol: - It’s “made of sin eater”, even though sin eaters have no bones, blood, or meat--they explode into sparklies upon death. The narrative actually really emphasized the sparklies thing, sparklies are totally dangerous and will turn you. But the writers never even tried to explain how or why sin eater was made into bread. 

- In case you also meant meol when you said “murder”--and you probably did, you said “corpses”--it was never directly confirmed that meol was made out of sin eaters that were once people. 

Nonnie, Vauthry was Mayor of Eulmore for twenty years, and Kholusia as a whole had a small and seemingly stagnant population. If sin eater was people, how could that have been maintained?  Enough people disappearing to feed Eulmore for twenty years? The math doesn’t make any sense. There would be no one left. There would be a panic, rumors, at least whispers, not people circling the city like feral cats. 

But only one unreliable narrator--Thoarich in the Derelicts--implied ~people don’t leave the city, ooooooo~. 

Except people do leave the city. Like, all the time. Lue-Reeq does it to show up on my WoL’s doorstep at ungodly hours; someone in the Derelicts has a sweetie on the inside that comes out every day with delicacies; the guy waiting in Wright was sent out from Eulmore for booze; hunters getting their weekly marks; my WoL was bidden to “be free to roam to my heart’s content” by Dulia, etc.

- Meol was an entirely optional dish. No one was forced to eat it. Not even in  Gate Town/the Derelicts, because a.) Eulmore also gave out produce that was snubbed by fussy free citizens, and b.) there was all the meat and fish and Lemonettes in the field right there for the taking. No, I’m not talking about Bonefish, and their sad little description about how terrible they are to eat. You go twenty yalms to the left and you’re fishing up Kholusian King Crabs. 

Meol couldn’t have been part of some master plan, because there was no guarantee everyone would eat it, or eat it in the quantities needed to do....something. Mind control? Mind control that just makes the person stagger around and mutter incoherently? Makes total sense, very useful, that.

- Meol seemed to be a powerup or something for the Lightwarden, as consuming a lot of it caused the flesh of Vauthry’s back to rip off into tiny little meatwings near the end, leading to the Gulg dungeon and the Crown trial. But it couldn’t have been due to “living aether”, Sin Eaters eat that, they don’t have any of their own. Was it maybe the stagnant Sin Eater light aether completely tilting what was left of Vauthry’s living aether into Warden Time? But wouldn’t just being around all those Sin Eaters all that time have done that, without the middleman of bread?

- Alphinaud directly stated the citizens of Eulmore were in total control of themselves until the “mind control” incident. Nonnie, they weren’t helpless. The workers still knew their work, and most of them left to seek opportunities elsewhere after Vauthry was gone. Dulia was an accountant for Stoneworks. The nobleman who had no idea how to lace his shoes without a manservant was an exception, not the rule, and even that was not because of Vauthry.  Eulmore was the primary line of defense against the Sin Eaters for eighty years. All the loss from fighting that futile war broke their spirits. All the loss is why Ran’jit willingly followed in the lies Vauthry was raised on. They just wanted to live without fear before what they had every reason to believe was the end of their world, in a more lowkey parallel to XIII’s Yusnaan.  Tl;dr, again: Nonnie, meol is bad writing. Maybe you meant Ascension, too. Yes, I know, Alphinaud dramatically declared Eulmore was built on “the bones of the poor”. But since Ascension--a thing that Vauthry legit believed was real, Immaculate was the passion of his Ascension--since Ascension was only guaranteed to the (formerly) rich, if anything it was the bones of the (formerly) rich that built Eulmore. But why put logic in a stale trope, amirite? I doubt that any bones built Eulmore, though, since Ascension was implied to be every bit as optional as meol. Otherwise, why couldn’t the nice old man join the Weeping Warbler in hers, as he said he wished he could? He wouldn’t have been bullshitting us, would he? That’s sarcasm. Of course he probably would. But the fact remains no one was getting Ascended without asking.  And what do you know, as it turns out it was the Ascians who pushed Ascension as a (good) thing, and thanks to Ascians Gaia became an unattended child roaming Eulmore. Then there’s Cylva, who said it was the Ascians who convinced Vauthry to bring about the Virtues. It still boils down blaming the victim instead of, or harsher than, those that brought it all about. Nonnie, you say Vauthry had the least autonomy in his fate? He didn’t have any. 

[giowritess]

— prompt & trope list  —

p r o m p t & trope l i s t  —   m a s t e r l i s t

 — under the cut you have a compilation of prompts and tropes I’ve created and found here on Tumblr and internet. 

— don’t forget to check my fandoms post to see who and what I write for!

TROPES

1. Christmas

2. New Year

3. Valentine’s Day

4. Mother’s Day

5. Father’s Day

6. Wedding

7. Arranged marriage

8. Babysitter

9. Coffee shop

10. Book store

11. Fake dating/marriage

12. Forbidden love

13. Pet store

14. Parent

15. Teacher

16. Flower shop

17. Locked in a room

18. Bed sharing

19. Stranded due to weather

20. Next door neighbors

21. Bakery

FLUFF/GENERAL/ROMANCE

1. You seem like a bad boy/girl/person type. 2. Oh my god, did you just say that out loud? 3. You expecting someone? 4.Do you need a place to stay for tonight? 5. Look at us, we’re basically a couple already. 6. Compliments won’t pay my drinks. 7. Maybe, just maybe, if I get a free drink I might consider talking to you. 8. That won’t work. Try again. 9. You couldn’t handle me even if I came with instructions. 10. Do you trust me? 11. Can I kiss you? 12. It’s lonely here without you. 13. Is that my shirt? 14. You own my heart. 15. We’re more than friends and you know it! 16. I don’t wanna sleep alone tonight. 17. It was you the whole time. 18. I can’t keep kissing strangers and pretending they’re you. 19. I’m not going anywhere. 20. You make me want things I can’t have. 21. Steal the blankets again and I’ll put my cold feet on you. 22. You’re in love with her. 23. I don’t know if I want to kiss you or shove you off a bridge. 24. Are you even listening to me?! 25. I didn’t think you could get any less romantic. 26. You make everyday worth living. 27. You’ve shown me what love feels like. 28. You’ve always felt like home. 29. I can’t imagine a world/life without you. 30. I am home. 31. I’m right where I belong. 32. Can’t you stay a little longer? 33. You’re the only one I wanna wake up next to. 34. You make me want to be better. 35. I think I’m in love with you, and that scares the crap out of me. 36. I think you’re just afraid to be happy. 37. Why haven’t you kissed me already? 38. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. 39. I can’t stay away from you. 40. I’m better when I’m with you. 41. I tried my best not to feel anything for you, but I failed. 42. I don’t want to be alone right now.  43. I don’t trust myself around you. 44. I don’t think anyone’s ever said that to me before. 45. Can we just lie here for a moment? 46. I’ve never hated you. You just... make me feel things I don’t understand. 47. If you don’t tell me to stop, I’m going to kiss you. 48. I could get used to waking up next to you, actually. 49. Please, don’t cry. I can’t stand to see you cry. 50. You’re a terrible liar. 51. You’re the only person I want to be with tonight. 52. You’re not going anywhere. 53. You were always good for me. 54. You’re more than just a one night stand. 55. I’ve been falling in love with you since the first day we met.

ANGST & SAD

1. I can’t stand the thought of you. 2. Don’t fuck this up. 3. How stupid do you think I am? 4. You broke my heart and all you can say is sorry? 5. Don’t you dare to leave me. Not now. 6. I’m dying. There’s nothing you can do about it. 7. I’m not gonna lie. This isn’t how I planned for this to go down. 8. I can’t do the things you do. 9. I might never get another chance to say this. 10. Tell me I’m wrong. 11. How much of that did you hear? 12. I thought I could trust you. 13. Are you just going to leave me here? 14. Don’t. I don’t have to hear your pathetic excuses anymore. 15. You knew about this all along, didn’t you? 16. I still believe there’s a good person in you. 17. It was necessary. 18. I’m sorry this had to go down like this. 19. What the hell is wrong with you?! 20. Is that how little you think of me? 21. I’m too sober for this shit. 22. It’s not that easy. 23. You’re more than that. 24. She’s hot, but she’s evil. 25. Well, behaved women rarely make history, do they? 26. That’s not what I meant and you know it. 27. I have to tell you something. 28. Why am I not surprised? 29. She’s not yours. 30. There’s no us. There never was. 31. I made a mistake. 32. Please, don’t walk out that door. 33. When were you going to tell me? 34. The worst thing is, that even after all of that, I’m still in love with you. 35. Would you just shut up and listen to me for two goddamn seconds? 36. If i asked you to stay, would you? 37. I don’t know who you are anymore. 38. I trusted you. 39. Hang on. You’re gonna be okay. Keep breathing. 40. You crossed a line. 41. There’s no turning back from this. 42. I needed you, and you weren’t there.

SMUT — 18+

1. Don’t make me take you home and punish you. 2. I’ve never wanted anyone to fuck me this badly. 3. You’re more than just a one night stand. 4. Like what you see? 5. Try to stay quiet, understand? 6. We’re in public, you know. 7. I really don’t care. You still look hot and i’m trying not to kiss/fuck you senseless right now. 8. Are you sure? Once we start, i might not be able to stop. 9. Make me. 10. Stop teasing me so much. 11. You’re in trouble now. 12. First one to make a noise loses. 13. Mine. 14. Behave. 15. What did you just say? 16. Come here. 17. Watch me. 18. If you interrupt me one more time, so help me god. 19. If you insist. 20. Could he make you feel as good as i do? 21. You make a sound and its game over. 22. If i have to stop what i’m doing, you wont be able to walk for the next week. 23. I haven’t even touched you and you’re already this wet. 24. C’mere, you can sit on my lap until i’m done working. 25. What? Does that feel good? 26. If we get caught i’m blaming you. 27. We have to be quiet. 28. Tell me again. 29. Say it. 30. If you don’t like my teasing, then why are you moaning? 31. I’m gonna fuck you so hard that you forget you ever even met that asshole. 32. You better shut that pretty little mouth before i put it to work, doll. 33. I really want to kiss you right now. 34. Then do it. 35. You’re not taking me to bed. Ever. 36. Who said it had to be on the bed? 37. She may seem like lollipops and rainbows but i bet behind closed doors she’s latex and whips. 38. Ah, he’s playing hard-to-get. Thats cute. 39. Don’t fucking touch what is not yours. 40. I’m not sure if its a sexual thing or not. 41. There’s people here. 42. I don’t care what you do,  just fuck me. 43. Fuck you. 44. I’m not going to touch you unless you beg. 45. You can’t tease me like that and expect not to be punished. 46. I’m gonna strangle you. 47. Is that a promise? 48. You look a bit tied up, want me to come back later? 49. Stop distracting me. 50. I know for a fact that you can be a hell of a lot louder than that. 51. Saddle up doll. 52. What are you doing in my bed?! 53. If you're going to act like a little brat then I'm going to treat you like a little brat. 54. You'd better be quiet or everyone's going to know what a naughty little slut you are. 55. Look at you, I've only started using my fingers and you're already shaking. 56. I can't wait to be on my knees for you later. 57. Oh honey, you know, you really shouldn't tease me. 58. If you keep making those sounds I'm not going to be able to stop myself. 59. Such a needy little thing, aren't you? 60. You better watch your fucking mouth. 61. I love the way you look with my fingers inside you. 62. Wanna see what I'm wearing underneath all this? 63. I wonder what your girlfriend/boyfriend would do if they knew what you were doing right now. 64. Do you know how beautiful you are? It's truly distracting. 65. If you leave the house wearing that then the second you get back home I'm going to bend you over that bed. 66. I'm gonna fuck you in front of the mirror, I want you to see how pretty you look when you're spreading your legs for me. 67. Let me show you what happens to little brats who don't follow the rules. 68. You know, there wasn't a single thing to eat in the kitchen until you walked in.

[blockgamepirate]

Hello! Not sure if you’ve had any asks about this but you’re really good at explaining anarchist theory and such. I was wondering what your response is for Jack’s criticism to Niki in his stream? (He visited about 20 min in) Basically it boiled down to “if there is no government or law here, what’s to stop someone from just taking everything?” This is a criticism a lot of people seem to share, that without structure the only people with power are the ones with pvp skill. What’s the solution in that case?

Thanks for the ask! (and thanks for the compliments haha) Okay, first off I wanna link an earlier post I made kind of relating to this subject because otherwise I’d have to get a bit repetitive. But I’m gonna elaborate on this a bit here:

Oh yeah also disclaimer: I’m obviously not an authority (hah!) on anarchism, I’m just one random anarchist. I haven’t even read that much theory tbh, I get bored really easily. Point is, other anarchists might disagree what I have to say, these are just my thoughts and ideas.

1: So to me it kinda seems like Jack is confusing “no rulers“ with “no rules“. He’s thinking of 2b2t when he could be thinking of Hermitcraft (well, Hermitcraft is kinda mixed, sometimes they have a police and a penal system, sometimes they have a mayor, idk, but like... thinking of season 6 for example, which I still keep saying was effectively a mutualist society). Yes, anarchy CAN be “no rules“, but it doesn’t HAVE to be, and as a societal system it usually isn’t. The important part is that if there are rules they must be decided by the consensus of the community. That is, everybody has to agree to them mutually.

2: “No police“ doesn’t mean “no community self-defence allowed“. The difference is that the role doesn’t come with authority; the idea is to intervene to stop an immediate threat, that’s all. The conflict resolution is handled between the people involved and possibly some mediators and with input from the community as a whole if it’s a bigger issue. Honestly, the details aren’t even that important, the point is just that you don’t have a specific group enforcing rules on others

Living alone in her city Niki is definitely vulnerable, there’s no denying that. The best protection would be to have other people there to outnumber possible troublemakers. (Okay I know some people on the server can fight even massively outnumbered, but I mean even someone like Techno tends to think twice before fighting more than three people unless he’s prepared.) If the other people aren’t available, they can go visit the offender afterwards to make it clear that such behaviour is not appreciated and amends must be made.

(I realise that while Niki can’t tell Jack, she actually has some VERY powerful allies now. But yeah, having more people there in general would help to prevent problems in the first place.)

3: This is less about Dream SMP (which actually is probably doomed to be kind of a chaotic mess due to the fact that conflict creates content) and more about the general trope because I can’t help responding to it every time:

The media in general tends to overestimate how prone to violence and destruction people would be without leadership. The example I like to give is natural disasters: in a major natural disaster, law and order tends to break down, often it takes a while for authorities to show up, there’s limited resources, there are immediate threats everywhere.... and usually what happens is that people help each other. Including complete strangers. Usually the first and most important rescue efforts are organised by the people who are right there, being hit by the disaster. The official rescue personnel would otherwise be too late for a LOT of people.

But people’s concept of what a world without laws and authority would look like is more like what happens as a reaction to authoritarian rule. For example the drug wars in Central America are directly linked to the War on Drugs in the USA. Extreme anti-drug policing enables organised crime. The Syrian Civil War was a response to Assad, made even worse by US intervention in Iraq which had already created ISIS which in turn was able to expand to Syria. And we’d be here all day if I tried to list all the wars and breakdowns of society caused by colonialism and its legacy.

4: Governments on the server really don’t have a great track record of stopping the kind of problems Jack brought up from happening. And in fact a lot of the time it’s the governments that do the stealing and griefing themselves. This tends to happen in real life too. Police brutality is a huge problem, because as it turns out, sometimes the asshole who comes and steals your stuff and kills your chicken decides to go into law enforcement first. And then you definitely can’t do anything about it, because who are you gonna call then? The police? (Sidenote: who do you call if the president is stealing your shit and calling it “taxes” lmao (Yes I’m talking about Tubbo in case it wasn’t clear))

Governments also start wars for resources, for territory, for straight up just reinforcing their own power. They usually allow some level of dissent, just to seem reasonable, but if the dissent gets loud and strong enough, they’re very quick to start persecuting activists, even if they have to come up with lies and excuses to do so.

Governments also prop up capitalism, which itself is exploitative and harmful in a systemic way. It might not reward physical power, but it rewards financial power. (I won’t go into it here because it’s a whole other tangent but capitalism pretty much requires some form of government and law enforcement to function, which is why “anarcho-capitalists” aren’t valid. Mutualists are though, mutualists are alright.)

And speaking of systemic power, it creates situations where even otherwise good people end up doing horrible things, because they’re just going along with the existing system. For example, denying disability benefits because someone doesn’t quite fit the requirements, deporting asylum seekers because they weren’t able to prove their lives were in danger, foreclosing on someone’s home because they weren’t able to make their payments...

Or more relevant to the Dream SMP: locking up a visitor in a max security cell for over a week, WITH the prisoner, because it’s what the prison protocol demands (Sam). (Not to even mention everyone who’s been drafted to carry out state violence against their will, like Tubbo, Ranboo and Techno at least, probably more.)

... Okay I’m kinda veering off topic here. But you get the idea. Governments and authority figures regularly fail to protect their people, in fact they’re often the CAUSE of the harm in the first place.

[purrincess-chat]

Cat’s Not-All-Encompassing Character Ranking

Okay, so I have to admit that I omitted a lot of characters I don't have strong opinions on. Most of them were one-off akumas, so don't get your panties in a twist, your faves are probably still on here (and ranked lower than you think).

As a preface again, these are just my personal opinions. They can't hurt you. You can still like characters more or less than me. And I don't care how you feel about them. This list is for me. And the person that asked for it. So shut up. Go make your own rank list if you’re so butthurt. 

We're going in reverse order this time, starting from the bottom:

84. Gabriel Agreste- I mean, is anyone surprised? I am not private about how I think Gabriel should go to jail. Or fall off a cliff. Or be erased from existence. Rip to those that like him, but I’m different.

83. Thomas Astruc- Honestly, he’s down here on principle. Self-inserts are generally a no-no, and I just laugh every time I see him on screen because he really put himself in this show and said boohoo no one appreciates me XD

82. Bob Roth- I feel like this one should also be obvious. He’s just a dick. Terrible human. I give him 0 stars.

81. Tomoe Tsurugi- We all collectively hate her, right? It’s not just me?

80. Su Han- This mans has small peepee energy. And he bad mouthed Fu, so get FUCKED, my dude.

79. Rolland Dupain- Listen, I get it, he liked Marinette in the end, but I could do without the racism.

78. Nathalie Sancoeur- My opinion of Nathalie took a nosedive after the s2 finale. I just do not care that she is in love with her boss. Don’t care that she’s dying. Just do not have it in me.

77. XY- Justin Bieber ass wannabe.

76. Nora Cesiare- I didn’t care for Nora. I know Thomas loves her, but the overbearing sibling trope is tired.

75. Anarka Couffaine- I underestimated how much I don’t really like her. Like, it’s not full-on hate, but I just do not care for her.

74. Otis Cesaire- Got akumatized because a kid said he could outrun a panther. I’m still not over it, Otis.

73. Andre Bourgeois- No love for the crooked mayor. I hope your wife divorces you. 

72. Alec Cataldi- The real villain of Stormy Weather. Like fr why is he such an asshole?

71. Roger Raincomprix- Is Officer Roger just doing his best? Sometimes. But like sometimes this mans just needs to take a chill pill.

70. M. D'Argencourt- Please get out of the 1600s

69. Ella/Etta- These two are basically the same character, and I am indifferent to both of them.

68. KnightOwl/Barbara- Listen, I would have liked you more if you were less controlling.

67. Majestia- Same as above, but like I guess I like you more

66. Theo- *Mean Girls principal voice* Stay away from underaged girls!

65. Andre the ice cream man- I just want a scoop of chocolate, Andre. Is that too much to ask??

64. Amelie Graham de Vanily- We haven’t seen much of her, but she seems like a snake bitch.

63. M. Kubdel- I mean, if my son wanted to resurrect an ancient mummy and believed in aliens, I’d give the family heirloom to my daughter too.

62. Jalil Kubdel- Lolol, buddy, pal, dude, my guy. Chill.

61. Vincent (Adrien's photographer)- Head empty. Mom’s spaghetti. Idk he’s alright.

60. Manon- I don’t hate Manon. She just gets on my nerves every time she talks.

59. M. Ramier- This mans got akumatized a billion times because he gets emotional about pigeons. I mean, honestly mood.

58. Mme. Mendeleiev- She doesn’t put up with Chloe’s shit, and we respect her for this.

57. Baby August- Someone just give this mans some food. He’s a growing boy.

56. Santa Claus- If I were Santa, I too would list Ladybug as the best kid in the world.

55. Art Teacher- He doesn’t even have a name, but I vibe with him. He seems like he likes to paint scenes of nature with his pet squirrels.

54. Prince Ali- Lil mans just wanted to have a good time. I can respect that.

53. Duusu- Duusu, I get that your Miraculous was broken, but get with the program, girl. You is a hostage.

52. Other Kwamis- Idk, all the ones we haven’t seen as much. I don’t have real opinions on them yet. Just neutral.

51. Sass- He gives me dad vibes.

50. M. Damocles- You go, you funky owl man

49. Jean (Chloe's Butler)- He deserves a raise. What is your name, sir? We may never know.

48. Mireille Caquet- She’s pretty cute. No complaints.

47. Aurore Beaureal- Baby’s first akuma. I love her design. She’s a cutie.

46. Claudie Kante (Max’s mom)- This womans just wanted to go to space and live her dream. We stan a hardworking queen.

45. Hot Dog Dan- I like him more than Andre the ice cream fraud. Sure, my hotdog might turn me purple, but if I ask for chili on it, I bet he’d oblige.

44. Nadja Chamack- I mean, she’s doing her best.

43. Audrey Bourgeois- So, as I said in the episode ranking, I have a love-hate relationship with Audrey. She’s the worst, but that’s why I love her. I love her ironically. Like, yeah she’s atrocious, but I just want to watch her burn the world.

42. Luka Couffaine- Directly in the middle, like he’s always been.

41. Nathaniel Kurtzberg- My opinion of Nath improved after Reverser surprisingly. I ship it.

40. Chris Lahiffe- I like Chris better than Ella/Etta. He’s just a little mans out here living life wanting to grow up. Don’t believe it, Chris. Stay little forever. Being an adult suuuuucks.

39. Fang the Crocodile- The goodest boy.

38. Nooroo- I just want to give him a hug.

37. Mlle. Bustier- She’s doing her best, but I mean, when ya whole class keeps getting turned into supervillains, I’m surprised she’s not an alcoholic.

36. Penny Rolling- I just like her. I think she’s neat.

35. Ondine- Mermaid queen! She’s so sweet, and I love her with Kim. I hope we see more of her in the future.

34. Marc Anciel- Marc is a little cutie bean. Idc if he’s based off one of Thomas’s irl friends. He can stay.

33. Wayzz- He loves Master Fu so much I cry.

32. Felix Graham de Vanily- I know everyone hates canon Felix, but tbh he exudes massive chaotic neutral gremlin energy, and I actually kinda vibe with that. And he pisses with his uncle which is a whole ass mood.

31. Tikki- Tikki is very cute, but bby please work on the preaching. You don’t always know what’s right, babe.

30. Sabrina Raincomprix- Sabrina deserves better. I hope we see good things happen for her.

29. Lila Rossi- Surprised? I actually like Lila. The first fic I ever wrote for this fandom was a Lila redemption. I think she is a good antagonist and foil to Marinette. I absolutely want to see her get dunked on in canon, but that doesn’t mean I hate her.

28. Wayhem- I don’t know why, but Wayhem makes me laugh. I love him XD

27. Uncle Cheng- He’s just a good mans with a birb who wants to make you tasty food. What’s not to like?

26. Trixx- Trixx shot up after GoS. Chaotic bean make Eiffel Tower go bendy

25. Jess- She’s pretty cool. She’s a vibe.

24. Aeon- The cutest bean!!! She saw Adrien and Marinette and said yep. Those two are meant to be together. Jess, we gotta make it happen.

23. Ivan Bruel- Ivan is such a gentle bean. We love him.

22. Mylene Haprele- Smol

21. Fei Wu- I still have not watched the Shanghai special with subs, but I liked her.

20. Gina Dupain- The grandma I aspire to be.

19. Marianne Lenoir- I love her. She is good. She and Fu are so cute. And she seems like she would have kicked le ass back in the day. (and even now)

18. Rose Lavillant- I am so excited for Pigella!! Rose is too cute. We love her. 

17. Gorilla- aka Adrien’s real dad. If the series doesn’t end with Gabriel getting yeeted into the stratosphere and Gorilla adopting Adrien, I don’t want it.

16. Clara Nightingale- She’s in love with Marinette. You can’t change my mind. 16 is also how old I hc her to be, so don’t nobody come for me.

15. Tom Dupain- Most. Supportive. Dad. Soft bean. Just wants to make you fresh bread.

14. Sabine Cheng- Good mom vibes. We love to see her.

13. Juleka Couffaine- Shy goth bean. Just wants to have her picture taken. Definitely a lesbian. We stan.

12. Nino Lahiffe- The goodest boy. He’s just out here doing his best, loving his friends.

11. Chloe Bourgeois- Chloe is another one I have a love-hate relationship with. Her brattiness is funny to me. We had high hopes for her. Honestly, she ranks this high because I like to play with her in fic.

10. Max Kante- He smol and smort. And I adore his friendship with Kim and the fact that he made an AI himself at 14. What a legend.

9. Alya Cesaire- Rip to Alya salters, but I’m different. Outside of Chameleon, Alya is fine. She’s a supportive bff. All yall people that are mad she doesn’t kiss Marinette’s ass all the time need to go out and make real friends. I said what I said.

8. Alix Kubdel- I love Alix. I love how she is always so done with all the lovey-dovey bullshit. She is tiny queen, and Bunnix, while OP af, is still super cool. We love to see her.

7. Kagami Tsurugi- I will fight anyone who shits on Kagami. She has done nothing wrong, you guys are just haters. All she did was exist, and yall said, wow what a toxic bitch?? Disgraceful.

6. Jagged Stone- We are going to ignore the deadbeat dad trope that canon thrust upon him. He is a Marinette stan, and we love that.

5. Kim Le Chien- I really love Kim, you guys. Does that surprise you? Listen, my favorite male character types are sweet beans and himbos. Kim is both of these.

4. Master Fu- If you didn’t pick up on how much I love Fu from the episodes ranking, then idk what to tell you. I want him to be my grandpa. I would trust this mans with my life. He did his best. You paint those pictures, you funky little man. I love you.

3. Plagg- My galaxy trash man. Love him. 10/10 chefs kisses all around.

2. Adrien Agreste- The biggest Marinette stan there is. I just want him to kiss her on the face. And marry her. Idk, I just think that would be neat if he could do that. I just want good things for them.

1. Marinette Dupain-Cheng- Honestly, are you surprised? I have always been and always will be a Marinette stan. If you expected anyone else to be in this spot, then clown suit rentals are off to the left.

[god-save-the-keen]

Could you do a au + trope + prompt for Adrian please au #1 trope #1 prompt #20 thank you

Confession

AU: Roommates + Trope: Friends to lovers + prompt: "It's just so hard not to fall in love with you." From this list!

Note: in this piece they are younger, poorer and mortals because... Reasons 👀

Words: 1485

Warning: A little bit of angst but mostly fluff.

Permanent tagg list: @gardeningourmet @eileendannie @desireepow-1986 @dawn-1994 @darley1101 @blackcatkita @flyawayboo @drakewalker04 @luckyferrero @choicesficwriterscreations

Adrian Raines x MC tagg list: @senator-adrian-raines-wifey @alesana45 @choicesfannatalie @mattrodriguezmylife @bigmemesplz @perriewinklenerdie @x-kyne-x @livingpurpose @adriansbiss @badgoodfishes @amyraineshessa @queencordonia @bloodboundismylife @bloodboundhoe @choices-addict-25 @lexilooloolovessenatorraines @bloodboundstuff @a-raines  

"Yes, it can be done… Ok… Yeah…" Adrian headed from his bedroom towards the kitchen, his cellphone against his ear as Amy waved to him from the counter eating cereal directly from the box. She was his best friend and, for almost two years now, his roommate. She was funny, sweet, gorgeous, caring, smart and he had never had a bond like this with anyone before, everytime he started to date a new girl, he just couldn't avoid comparing them to Amy. It took him time to figure out why he did that but, after a while he realized the motive. She was the person he loved the most.

"Mr. Clean?" She silently mouthed, referring to his bald boss. Adrian nodded, smiling as she rolled her eyes, almost exasperated.

"Okay… See you in the office… Yes, I'll be there as soon as possible… Bye." He hung up and grabbed a clean mug.

"Why do you keep working for jerks? You are way smarter than that." She passed him the coffee pot.

"I don't know. Why do you keep dating them?" He mocked and she rolled her eyes again.

"Ass." She grinned. "Henrik is not a jerk." She grumbled, lifting one of her feet in the stall as Adrian forced himself to not stare at her long legs or the fact that she was only wearing a crop top and the tiniest shorts he had ever seen. Instead, he thought about Henrik. That asshole. Who could even like that name? He hated him. Not because of how disrespectful he was with everyone or his constant "mistakes" with other women, certainly that doesn't help, but no. He hated him because he was dating Amy and she deserved a lot better than him. "You should give him a chance." 

"Sure!" He took the cereal box beside her, brushing her arm unintentionally with his, ignoring the goosebumps on his skin. "I truly enjoy when people call me Alan."

"Oh, come on! That was one time!" 

"It was five times." He playfully pinched her side and she giggled. "In one dinner." He sat in front of her, smiling at her bed hair. "Speaking of dinner, you want Chinese tonight?" 

"I can't… Date night." She smile apologetically. 

Hours later, when the street lights were on and his boss had finally come to his senses, Adrian opened the door of the small two bedroom apartment. His first impulse was to drop his suitcase, tie and jacket on the couch and pass out on his bed until the alarm clock woke him up tomorrow to go to a job he hated with a boss he couldn't stand. But she would be mad at him if he did that. Especially with all those things on the couch.

He went towards his bedroom and threw everything on the tiny desk, put on a pair of joggers and a simple white t-shirt noticing, once more, how quiet the place was without her. He always missed Amy when she wasn't around and since she wasn't home yet, he supposed that her date with Henrik was going awfully well.

Adrian flopped on the bed, covering his face and sighing heavily through his hands, thinking once more if it would be a good idea to move out, find a new place and roommate, and have a fresh start. But the thought of not being able to see her everyday hurt him more than anything. At least, even if he couldn't be with her, he could be around her, just be there for her whenever she needed him. A knock on his bedroom door cut his trail of thoughts.

"Adrian? Are you awake?" He smiled.

"Yes Ames." She went inside and, in just a blink of an eye, she laid on the bed beside him, curling against his side as his arm sneaked around her shoulders. "How was your date?" He asked, ignoring the familiar little pain pang in his chest. She opened her mouth to talk but the only sound coming out was a sob. "Amy, what happened? Why are you crying?" He enfolded her in his arms, hugging her tightly as she pressed her head against his chest, trembling just a bit, and his heart jumped inside his chest.

"H-he dump me."

"What?!" His blood boiled inside him like hot lava, more anger than ever. He was sure that if he had super strength, he would be ripping off Henrik's throat right now.

"He… He told me that he got bored of me."

"I'm so sorry, Ames." His palm caressing her head, the most gentle touch, her body clutching even closer, the proximity making his breath catch in his throat. "He's just a bastard who doesn’t deserve your love or tears. You deserve so much better."

"I should have listened to you." Her head moved to his shoulder, observing him through the tears. "You tried to warn me so many times." 

"Don't think about that right now."

"But it's true!" Her browns knitted together with anger. "There I was, thinking like an idiot that he might propose to me or something like that and he was bored of me! He even had the balls to tell me he never loved me!" 

Adrian stood in silence for a moment. "You wanted him to propose?" His voice was a rasped whisper and his chest hurt as he tried to make the words sound normal.

"...No" She muttered, thoughtful. "I'm not even sure if I really cared about him… I just feel frustrated and used, like some broken toy that no one wants to love." She nibbled the right corner of her bottom lip, like she did every time she was stressed or anxious.

"Hey, those are nonsenses! You are the most lovable person I know." Her cheeks darkened a bit and a little smile lifted her lips. "It’s just so hard not to fall in love with you." His hand slipped from her hair towards her cheekbone, allowing himself to lovingly stroke her beautiful face for just a moment.

"If that was the case, you should be over your head by now!" She giggled, smiling. Adrian didn't answer, debating what he should do next, confess and risk losing her or keep his mouth shut and continue to be her friend, maybe losing the chance to finally be with her. "Adrian?" He turned to watch at her, a profound look in his eyes.

"Who said I'm not?" He murmured, so soft and yet so intense.

"What?" She sat up, observing him, a wave of emotions going through her face as she studied him. He sat up too. "Are you kidding?"

"No." His hand extended for a moment, as if to take hers, but finally fell to his side again. "I--"

"But…" She interrupted him, astonished. "But you never said anything! Why have you never said anything?" She started to walk to the living room as Adrian followed her.

"Amy--"

"How long have you been feeling this way?" Adrian had never seen her this agitated. 'At least she's not thinking about Henrik anymore.' He thought to himself bitterly. 

"Does it really matter?"

"It does! Of course it fucking does!" She said almost yelling.

"Why?!"

"Because I have had a crush on you since senior year in college and I thought you would never see me as more than a friend!" She crossed her arms avoiding his eyes. "Or roommate in this context." She muttered.

They stood there, watching each other silently until Adrian cut out the distance between them in a second, sweetly hold her cheeks and took her mouth with his, his lips almost moving on their own, desperate to feel her, to let her know how much she means to him, to know how she liked to be kissed, to be held, to actually know how it feels to touch her soft lips as his whole body melted against hers. Her mouth moved firmly and rich alongside his with equal desire, his hand lowering to her waist, flushing her against his chest, as hers grabbed his nape, pulling him even closer, encouraging him. He softly bit her lip and she let out a small moan, the most precious sound he had ever heard and that he was hoping to hear more often and louder. When they needed to breathe, he touched her forehead with his, gently caressing a small part of skin under her top.

"Ames?" She didn't answer. Her eyes were shut, her cheeks were flush and her lips together as her chest came up and down rapidly. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have--" She opened her eyes and placed her fingers on his mouth, her eyes fixed on his as her thumb delicately touched his lips until she sweetly held his chin and softly lowered his head down. Her face a breath away from his with the most brilliant and sweetest smile he had ever seen.

"Just kiss me." 

❣️

[spaceskam]

For the tropes mash up, 12+42 for malex

this is so old omg (and not even the oldest request in my inbox whoops) the only reason I know what this is from is I took a screenshot of the prompt list lol12. roommate au + 42. The Big Damn Kiss 

Alex didn’t even try to look away as his roommate stripped in the middle of the room.

The first handful of times, Alex had looked away. He’d get flustered and wonder why the hell his roommate was changing where he could see when he knew Alex was gay. Most guys hid from him like he was the plague. But then he realized that Michael was simply too drunk or high or both to give a shit. On top of that, he’d fallen over four too many times for Alex to feel comfortable not watching him like a baby. There was, sadly, nothing sexual about it.

“You are an absolute travesty, Michael Guerin,” Alex mused, shaking his head as the man tripped over his own jeans and caught himself an inch before slamming his face into his desk.

“Shh, my head hurts,” Michael whispered, letting himself sit on his ass to pull his jeans off his feet like a child. Alex couldn’t help but be amazed, honestly, how someone as smart as Michael could be reduced to this level of helplessness.

They lived in an honor hall in their dorm, which meant it was a 24-hour quiet hall with no parties allowed and every single student who lived in the dorm was apart of at least one honor society. Michael, in particular, was here on a full-ride and got the best grades Alex had ever seen despite the fact that he was taking nearly 20 hours of engineering classes so he could be a mechanical engineer. When he graduated, he’d be nearly debt-free and getting paid upwards of $70k a year at an entry-level status. 

And yet he couldn’t even take his pants off.

“You have a test in less than 45 minutes, you should thank me for making sure you’re awake rather than shush me,” Alex insisted. Michael sighed and looked up at him, his hair droopy from lack of being washed and his cheeks scruffy in a patchy I’m-Only-19-So-My-Beard-Isn’t-Full-Yet way. 

“Thank you, Alex, you are my one and only savior, the reason I’m still alive, the reason I wake up in the morning, the reason I-”

“Alright, I get it,” Alex laughed, waving him off. Still drunk from the night before, Michael grinned at him and winked.

As per usual, Alex helped Michael to his feet and started shoving him towards the bathroom so he could at least freshen up a little bit. He didn’t know why he was so willing to put up with his bullshit. Or, at least, that’s what he told himself. In the most embarrassing way, he knew that he was just helplessly attracted to this trainwreck of a boy who would never give him the time of day. 

Michael exited the bathroom with an impressively clean-shaven face in such a short amount of time, flashing his freshly brushed teeth and flicking his wet hair. Alex had decided to stop questioning why he kept his toothbrush and razor in the shower a few days after he met him. Whatever worked.

“Dry off,” Alex laughed, staring at him like he’d lost it by standing there in nothing but a towel. Because he had lost it by doing that. He had no idea what that did to him. Which was, again, embarrassing. Why was he attracted to this mess?

Still, he made sure Michael had the right notebooks for the day in his backpack and enough pencils to last him. Then he grabbed him a pair of sweats and a t-shirt from his drawers, mindlessly acting like his mother. Maria had asked him why he did that and Alex couldn’t give her an answer. He figured if Michael was less thankful, then he wouldn’t do it. But he liked the way Michael liked being taken care of by him. Sometimes he questioned if Michael got extra fucked up just so Alex would take care of him more.

“Thank you,” Michael said, getting dressed a little more organized than he’d gotten undressed. 

“Mmm,” Alex hummed, leaning against the dresser as he watched Michael pull the baggy sweats over his ass that had already been covered in tight black briefs. He could hear Maria shaming him in his head for even being interested in his hardly-there, white boy ass. But he couldn’t help himself, sadly.

“No, seriously,” Michael said, tilting his head back a little as he gave Alex his full attention, “You don’t need to take care of me, but I appreciate it more than you know. Honestly. I promise I’ll make it up to you one day.”

Alex tried not to take that to heart if only to protect himself from being hurt. There were only so many ways this could go and all of them ended with him getting crushed by Michael’s ineptitude.

“Dry your hair and then go ace your test, bitch,” Alex told him. Michael snorted and looked at him with fond eyes that were the reason for him getting up two hours before his first class. 

“Do it for me?”

Alex thought about denying him, thought about telling him to do it himself and then push him out the door. But, well, he was feeling a little too lovesick from his grateful attitude, so he motioned him over. Alex pushed himself to sit on the dresser so he had somewhat of a height advantage and grabbed the towel, letting Michael step in between his legs.

He dried his hair that was stretched down to his shoulders at this point, focusing extra hard on that so he didn’t think about their close proximity. Why did he have to like him? Why couldn’t he be normal and hate his stupid, messy roommate like everyone else? Maria bitched about her roommate all the time for being just as much of an asshole as Michael and she wasn’t in love with her. It wasn’t fair.

“There, that’s about as dry as it’s gonna get by just a towel,” Alex decided, dropped his hands and leaning back just a little. Michael was still standing between his legs. “You have a test in like fifteen minutes, you need to go.” Michael didn’t really move, just smiling all sweetly and biting down on his lip. It got so awkward that Alex had to laugh. “Why the hell are you staring at me, you fucking weirdo?”

“I’m gonna go take my test,” Michael said, slowly backing away. Alex rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, go take your test.”

“And you’ll be here after I take my test, right?”

“Uh,” Alex said, his eyebrows meeting and he tilted his head, “Depends. I have class at 9:15, so if you’re not back by 9, then no.”

“So I’ll rush,” Michael decided with a shrug. Alex scoffed, kicking his way slightly. Michael caught his foot with that same charming smile.

“Don’t you dare rush, I’ll see you when you get home from whatever place you go to get plastered tonight,” Alex said. Michael scrunched up his nose and tugged on his leg a little. Alex quickly grabbed the edge of the dresser and looked at him with wide, amused eyes. “Dude!”

“What if I wanna see you before then?” Michael wondered.

“And why would you want to? I’m your roommate, you see me every day,” Alex pointed out. Michael again tugged on his leg which efficiently pulled him off the dresser, but he caught him before he could hit his head and pulled him close. Alex couldn’t manage a laugh or a smile, frozen as he stayed pressed against him. “What are you doing?”

Strong hands pressed against Alex’s back, holding him close while Michael just stared down at him with half-lidded eyes. It felt like some weird glitch in the universe where, instead of him doing this to some pretty girl, he was doing it to Alex.

“What are you doing?” Alex repeated, “A-are you fucking with me? Because that’d be an asshole move if you’re just—“

Alex was silenced as lips pressed to his, soft at first before he pulled away. Michael looked at him, checking if this was okay and god it was, so he smiled and closed the space again. Michael’s lips parted and his tongue slid over Alex’s in a slow, deliberate way. Suddenly, Alex was the one who was struggling to stand.

It didn’t make sense as he backed Alex gently into the dresser, kissing him like he meant something more than just the guy who put up with him. It made his head spin in ways that would be hard to untangle. 

Michael pulled away and peppered a couple pecks to his lips to finish the job, slowly peeling off of him. Alex stared at him like he couldn’t make sense of it at all and that was because he couldn’t. He kept staring at Michael as he brought his fingertips to his lips.

“I have a test to go ace,” Michael said softly.

“Yeah,” Alex agreed.

Then Michael was gone and Alex couldn’t pull out his phone fast enough to tell Maria about it.

[centaurianthropology]

The Magnus Archives Season 3 Q&A – What We Learned!

So this isn’t my usual analysis, but I did decide to collate a little bullet-point list of all the things we’ve learned from the Season 3 Q&A for those of you who can’t/don’t want to listen for whatever reason, but still want the delicious information that we got.  I’ll also be including my own thoughts about some of the points, so there will be some tasty meta.  This will just be a bit more of an informational post than most are.

·         The metaplot is known through season 5 (which will be the final season), and is hashed out in more detail at the beginning of each season.  The individual spooky stories are not necessarily known prior to the week before writing.  There is usually a general idea, but no specific details until far closer to the deadline.

·         Martin’s crush on Jon was known from the beginning of the series.  No specifics were given about when and how it came about on Martin’s end.  I imagine we’ll probably get more into this as we go forward (I lean toward it developing while he was living in the Archives, as his attitude toward Jon definitely shifted from “I have to prove myself to my boss who doesn’t believe in me” to getting very emotional when he thought he left Jon and Tim to die in the tunnels). But it was known that the crush would or already had happened from the inception of Martin’s character.

·         Tim’s background was known 2 seasons prior to now (so end of season 1).  It only came about at that point because, prior to that, Tim was going to be the one to be replaced by the Not-Them at the end of season 1 rather than Sasha.  There had to be a last-minute change because Lottie (the woman who played Sasha) had a scheduling conflict that meant she couldn’t commit to the continued large-scale time commitment.  So Sasha got replaced, Tim got a backstory, and the rest is history.  Very interesting to think that the descent into bitterness and potentially even the ties to the circus were originally meant to be Sasha’s. Is that why she was so interested in the calliope in season 1 perhaps?  Having the only main female character also be the first to die was also one of the big reasons why they added a lot of major recurring female characters from then on.

·         Basira and Daisy becoming as significant as they were was a combination of the characters being interesting and the actors being fun to working with.  They also very much fulfilled certain necessary narrative roles.

·         They knew Melanie was going to become an assistant from shortly after Lydia’s recording of her initial episode.  I’m guessing this is partly to do with Lydia being already available, but I also have to imagine it was due to the instant, nasty rapport she had with Jon.  She was certainly the character from season 1 who I most wanted back when I initially heard her.

·         Jonny’s original pitch for the show was the 13 fears, though the Slaughter and the Hunt were initially the same, but as he worked through them he realized that the root fear was very different.  It became especially apparent due to the fact that extremely different (and likely very poorly cooperating) sorts of people were driven to each of those powers.  This is interesting, because it implies that Melanie and Daisy, though we have not seen them interact, would not get on at all. They’re driven by instincts that are too close but too different.  

·         Poor, poor Jonny is haunted by Elias’ surge in popularity during season 3, particularly the large contingent of fans who found him suddenly and definitely attractive.  He blames Ben Meredith for all his woes: “It was only after [episode] 92 when he started to be properly, overtly villainous, and everyone just decided how sexy he was!  When we were planning things out, there was no way for us to foresee how sexy Elias was going to be.  Something I blame entirely on Ben.”  And Alex cackled in the background.

·         Melanie’s clap-marker as her statement beginning was actually improvisation on Lydia’s part (and works wonderfully with her background in video production).  By and large, though, there was little improvisation from the actors. There was a lot of lean-in to certain qualities that actors brought out if they were particularly good at it.

·         Jonny’s favorite power to write is the Flesh because it’s super weird and lets him dig into really odd writing.  His least favorite is the Dark because it’s so easy to fall into tropes and clichés, and he doesn’t actually share that particular fear.  He also finds writing the Desolation particularly challenging, as it treads the closest to his biggest distaste in horror: linking spooky fictional stuff with real-life trauma.  The very nature of the Desolation lends itself to trauma-porn, so when writing it he has to be especially careful not to do that.  Alex’s least favorite from a production standpoint is the Spiral because it’s always a nightmare editing it, but the Vast is his favorite, because he adds high amplitude low frequency noise to induce an on-edge feeling in the listener.

·         Alex really enjoys killing all the characters you love.  Sasha’s replacement might have been his favorite moment in the show, because it was subtle enough a lot of people didn’t catch it.  He also seemed positively gleeful when joking about how very dead Tim is.  Of all the changes in personality from character to actor, Alex is always the one who gives me the most whiplash.  Which, I suppose, is a testament to his acting abilities.

·         Perhaps Jonny’s greatest regret is naming the main character after himself and not thinking that would become … complicated.  Apparently, in the earliest drafts he was just the host of the anthology series, and not a character in his own right, which is why he originally just went with his own name.  Then he didn’t think to change it as they made Jonanthan Sims his own character with only vague similarities to Jonny (he was basically all the bits of Jonny that would make a good horror protagonist, exaggerated for effect, right up until about episode 20, at which point the character began to develop along his own lines and moved farther and farther from Jonny), who would like to believe that his own personal decisions were less “overtly horrific” than his fictional counterpart.  Alex described Jonny vs Jon as “I’d like to think that you’re less of a hot garbage-fire of a person”.  They both agreed that Jon (the character) was the absolute king of terrible decisions, and that it was hysterical to listen to Jonny’s parents eviscerate Jon’s incredibly awful decisions.  I love Jonathan Sims, Head Asshole of the Magnus Institute, but I will agree with their assessment of his character.

·         A similar regret was naming the assistants after Jonny’s then-roommates.  Not only did it cause confusion (as all 3 have now also been in the show at some point), but he brutally killed off his fiancé’s namesake first.  Oops?

·         It sounds at least probable we’ll get the last bit of the Daedalus space station story in season 4.  On that note, I found it interesting that all recurring story themes, etc, are mentioned to recur in season 4.  There was absolutely no mention of season 5 at all.  Which makes me leery.

·         US distribution and ratings for podcasts are … interesting.  Jonny could add in all the violence, explicit gore, and even sex he wanted.  The only thing (literally the only thing) that gets a podcast marked *explicit* is swearing.  Which meant that the podcast, in order to not be marked as explicit, had to scale back the language and nothing else.  Every time a character swears, it has to be well-thought-out, and Jonny has to sell Alex on why it’s important.  On the up-side, the lack of swearing was apparently what convinced Sue Sims to be a part of the cast, so I think getting Gertrude is well worth adherence to a laughably odd rule for US ratings.  Also, on that same note, Alex’s imitation of Jonny’s mother nearly made me snort tea up my nose.  So thanks for that, Alex.

·         Jonny believes that what he writes is ‘escapist horror’.  It’s a way of indulging in fear and spookiness in a controlled, safe way, when it won’t suddenly turn deeply unpleasant and traumatic.  He believes that his audience needs to trust that they can enjoy the horror without worrying that it will unexpectedly cross lines. He separates that from literary horror, which often does dig into very traumatic issues through the mechanisms of horror in very thoughtful ways.  All horror, in his opinion, needs to be respectful when it tackles very traumatic subjects.  The reason that Jonny personally doesn’t write literary horror is that he has no personal experience with those sorts of traumas, and would not feel qualified to dig into them in a genuine and thoughtful way.  He therefore sticks to escapist horror that his audience knows they can enjoy without worrying about it suddenly veering from spooks to trauma.

·         The sound of the Anglerfish is a baby crying, slowed down 100x.  Nikola had record scratches layered under her voice very subtly.

·         Jonny’s favorite thing to record in season 3 was his [MUFFLED FEELINGS], and he revealed that he managed to sound like he had a gag in his mouth by trying to stuff as much of his fist into his mouth as possible before trying to deliver lines. Which produced a really amazing amount of saliva, apparently.  They also had a lot of fun trying to record one of the larger group scenes in which most of the participants shouted at one another, because they used up most of the oxygen in the studio and all got very dizzy.  Alex really enjoyed recording his scenes in episode 100, because it was one of the few times he got to improvise, and he and the actress spent the entire episode trying to make one another laugh.  

·         Also, all statements in episode 100 are confirmed to have been supernatural events, simply told badly.  The actors got a paragraph telling them what really happened, as well as some bullet points detailing how they might get side-tracked or otherwise be terrible statement givers.  The rest was slowly improvised, with frequent checks for canon-compliance.  And, yes, episode 100 was absolutely a funny way of answering the question: “Does the magic power also make them really eloquent storytellers?”  “YES. YES, IT DOES.”

·         Alex misses his old analogue mixer.  There was about 2 minutes of eulogizing.  

·         Tim is 100% dead.  They also specify that they will never resurrect characters or bring them back from the dead (which makes Jon’s current situation particularly worrisome, as he’s not quite dead, but he’s inches from it).  Dead characters may still make appearances via tape (Gertrude’s been dead the whole time, and it hasn’t stopped her from showing up plenty) or speak from beyond the grave (thanks Gerry), but if a character dies, they will not come back to life.  This also means that Michael will not be coming back as the Distortion.  The distortion is now Helen, and the story of the Distortion is about what and who she is.  Michael may return as audio, of course, but not in the form of the Distortion.  Likewise, Gertrude and Leitner in the season finale were not ghosts; they were mostly Nikola, with a little bit of Unknowing reality-bending-weird thrown in.

·         Georgie will be returning, but she will be an occasionally recurring character rather than a regular.  

·         The Usher Foundation is the American sister foundation to the Magnus Institute, which is similar to it but different.  It’s a way to broaden the world and give a nice hook for fanfiction/RPG settings/etc. The same can be said of the other institutions like the Chinese research institution.  It’s a way to expand the world and to give a sense of scope without a locked-down story.  There’s just too much story to fit into two more seasons as is.

·         There is a nexus of timeline discrepancies that is 100% part of the plot, but the rest of timeline issues are probably just mistakes.  Mary Kaey’s dates are almost definitely oversights in writing, but Jonny doesn’t discount that he might do something with the discrepancy to make it an interesting plot point in the future.

·         Gerry’s father is not confirmed to be Eric, the research assistant of Gertrude’s who took the statement in ‘Upon a Stair’, as Jonny refused to answer the question.  He did, however, state that whoever asked had been listening very closely.

·         Any character who believes they understand how the powers work is absolutely wrong. This does include Gerry’s interpretation of Robert Smirke’s cosmology, though Jonny did state that what Gerry said is about as close as we’re likely to get to the truth of the cosmology (no exposition dump is a lie, but it’s only a decent approximation).  However, the powers are going to defy any attempt to nail them down or perfectly sum them up.  Plenty of things will not line up with the way Gerry described them, because the powers work on nightmare logic, not normal logic.

·         The tapes are NOT neutral.  They are not simply objects to record.  There is more to them than that, but we don’t know what.

·         Jonny is a massive history nerd.  He got very into Wolfgang von Kempelin, and his imitation of von Kempelen’s speaking machine was hysterical.  His favorite episode to write was ‘Tale of a Field Hospital’ for similar history nerd reasons.

·         The first trailer for the series (with the chanting) was meant as a mood piece, but has absolutely nothing to do with the meta plot.  It was recorded before half of the meta plot was even established.

·         The Magnus Institute, beyond the Archival staff and Elias, is just a legitimate supernatural academic research institution.  The library does exactly what it says it does (house and catalogue valuable texts on the supernatural).  Artifact Storage really does just store and experiment on supernatural artifacts.  Research is mostly students working on dissertations and theses.  They are even confirmed to run on an academic fiscal year (thanks to whatever fiscal nerd asked that particular question!)

·         All the supernatural things encountered in the show are tied to the powers, but Jonny does not categorically deny that other supernatural stuff exists in the TMA universe. It very simply won’t be addressed in the show, as introducing other supernatural stuff beyond the powers wouldn’t work this late in the story.  The powers play with folklore, but they do not necessarily generate folklore themselves.

·         For purposes of the story, every power only has one ritual we need to be concerned about.

·         BIG ANSWER: no power has completed a ritual to date.  The rituals are now confirmed to so radically change the fabric of reality that there is no one on the planet who wouldn’t notice a successful ritual or be effected by it in a massive way.  We are not living in a world in which the Beholding has already succeeded, or any other power.  Jonny would not answer whether or not it was possible to reverse or somehow mitigate a successful ritual.  And that makes me very suspicious that the season finale of season 4 will be the successful completion of the Watcher’s Crown, and season 5 may be trying to reverse or mitigate it in some way.

·         Leitner is likely to return (one would imagine in one of Gertrude’s tapes).

·         Jonny and Alex have made the deliberate decision not to overly describe any of the major characters beyond their plot-relevant descriptors (Tim is described as attractive, but we will not get any details of that attractiveness).  Jonny doesn’t even have confirmed ages for most of the characters. He thinks Jon is his age (almost 30).  Martin is either a bit older or a bit younger than Jon.  Tim, Sasha, and Melanie are ‘young adults’, which Jonny defines as somewhere between 25 and early thirties.  Elias is middle-aged.  Gertrude and Leitner are old.  Trevor is “old as balls”.

·         Jon is 100% on the asexual spectrum, but may not use that term to describe himself.  He would instead avoid the question, and avoid thinking about it too deeply in general.  He would be very uncomfortable describing his own sexuality. Also, Jonny made it very clear that the way Jon grapples with his inhumanity is neither a parallel to nor a comment on his asexuality.  He approaches them very differently.  He didn’t specify this, but so far as I can tell, he avoids even thinking about his sexuality, but he actively agonizes over his increasing inhumanity.  I wonder if we might end up getting a bit more of how Jon thinks about his own asexuality if he and Martin ever get their shit together enough to discuss things.

·         The statements are 90% Intangible Horror colonizing Jon’s brain, and 10% Jon is a massive drama queen secretly.  They also agreed that, if he did amateur theatre as a younger man, he would have been insufferable.

·         Tim, prior to his revenge kick, was into lots of socialization, adventure vacations (rock climbing, kayaking, scuba, etc), and may have also been a bit of a console gamer.  “Lots of socializing; adventure holidays; dead.”

·         There are no specifics at this point on the characters’ families that haven’t been addressed that Jonny was comfortable discussing, as he wanted to hold those details in reserve for later relevance.  He doesn’t want to be beholden to random answers he might throw out right now.  He would say (potentially joking) that Martin has a spider (or a series of spiders) that live in his closet over the past year, and he calls it/them George.

·         The Admiral is a composite of all the cats in Jonny’s life, which all seem to have odd rank-names (Sir Pouncealot, Ambassador Cat, the Colonel).  The Admiral is a reflection of all Jonny’s favorite things about cats.

·         We are not going to be meeting any other plot-integral characters we haven’t already heard of.  There will be new voices, but they will be names we recognize.  There will be no new archival assistants.  They’ve played that card.

·         The characters with horror-writer last names (Martin, Tim, Sasha, Georgie, and Melanie) all have paranormal research backgrounds.  This is why that convention was used for them specifically.  Given that they were not certain of the direction they were going to take Basira and Daisy when they were first written, their last names did not follow this.

·         Jon cannot compel dogs.  Probably.

·         Why an owl is the crest of the Magnus Institute (officially): “Owls are weird.  They are considered very wise, but actually one of the stupidest animals in the world.  They have a very strong field of vision.  And, some species of owl, if you look in their ear you can see the side of their eyeball.”  

·         To serve ANY of the entity is to bring fear and suffering to others.  That is what your existence is twisted into.  

·         Alex is most frightened by the Vast.  Jonny is most frightened by the Corruption, but worries his lack of tidiness might tempt its attention.

·         My favorite question and answer: if they could fight any writer in hand-to-hand combat, who would it be?  They both agreed on HP Lovecraft, because “I could almost definitely take him, and it would be so satisfying.”  They both agreed that neither of them would feel bad for punching Lovecraft, which, even as someone who does a yearly reading of a lot of his works … yeah.  I’d agree.  He had amazing creativity and really laid out my favorite horror sub-genre (debatably Robert Chambers invented it, but Lovecraft properly expanded it into a genre), but there are few authors as in need of a proper walloping as HP Lovecraft. They agreed that others—for Jonny, DH Lawrence, for Alex, James Joyce—were also in need of some fighting, but had serious doubts whether or not they could beat them in hand-to-hand combat (“We’re not exactly prime physical specimens”).  Maybe just kicking them in the shins.  Jonny admitted to an embarrassing love of a lot of literary ‘classics’ people like to shit on, like “Ulysses” and “Moby Dick”.

And that was that!  This is the entirety of the MASSIVE Patreon Q&A.  Apparently the one that went up tonight on the website is a very pared-down version of this Q&A (website version is 43 minutes; Patreon version is 1 hour 48 minutes). Not sure which of these answers didn’t make the cut, but here you go!  All the delicious meta and answers you could want, fresh from the Patreon!

[headlongedmaggiemay]

Guys, I floored! IDK what I’m doing

This is a long rant/story ish thing. It gets weird at the end.

Ok here’s a peak into my life (of which, no one asked for 🤷🏼‍♀️).

Hi, I’m Steph, 28 (turning 29 at the end of this month), artist, barista, beach bum, INFP, 2w1, Hufflepuff. I’ve been a part of the Queen fandom since BoRhap and I’m not planning on leaving any time soon.

Ok, one of the main things that I usually don’t care that much about but has been a source of insecurities and a trigger for my depression, which I’m working on controlling that, is I’m Demisexual. I’m a unicorn, ace of diamonds, part of the asexual range, and a complete hopeless romantic. It was hard growing up not understanding that I wasn’t broken. I didn’t have crushes on people the majority of the time or slept around. A lot of my friends chucked it up to me being raised in Christianity, and in all honesty I thought that was part of it, too. I remember thinking the people I had interest in just didn’t like me because of *queue laundry list of typical insecurities often found in teenagers and young adults* (you get the gist). Through my early mid 20s I decided to acknowledge my feelings and desires to be in a relationship but not let the lack of affection, attraction, or action overwhelm me into a depressed funk. I chose to focus on the fact that I felt relatively normal for wanting those things which the American Society seems to hyper fixate on. This was the period of time I took to focus on me and being confident in my plus sized skin. This was good. I am who I am and no one can make me feel less than who I am. Around the peak of self love and acceptance, I discovered a word, a magical word, that seemed to click with who I am, Demisexual.

For those unaware of the definition of Demisexual it is not experiencing any sexual attraction to another until a greater bond is formed. Basically, there has to be an emotional bond, think friends to lovers trope. We fall under the asexual umbrella. Just because we need a deeper connection with someone to feel sexually attracted to, doesn’t mean we don’t get horny or anything else non-ace feel, it’s just more specific to the individual. From what I’ve read, since I only know of one other demi, who didn’t have a word for what she is until pride month because I was explaining my demi pride name tag I painted for work, a lot of Demi’s still have sexual urges and masterbate. We still have the need to connect with another person. We still want to be kissed in the most romantic way. It’s just with a person we know and trust.

That being said, I’m a demi who rarely has romantic crushes, friend crushes literally happen everyday for me lol, I just think people are amazing and unique! The thing about me is that I’ve had five (5) crushes in my nearly 29 years of life. Of course, 4 out of 5 of those I had a deep connection to, the other I was literally a child, living in my fantasy, but it still counts. Consequently, those four are the only ones I have ever had a sexual attraction towards. So the 4 have all been friends, close friends, best friends, and only one of those was semi acted on. We talked for a few weeks, then he decided to be an ass, (fueling my deep fear of rejection) and I told him he wasn’t allowed to talk to me or even look at me until I gave him the ok, which he respected. I have had a ‘boyfriend’, it lasted 3 weeks, was he one of the 5? No. Why did agree to be his girlfriend? Because one of the five had gotten into a relationship with our friends sister and I was so hurt because I put too much heart into a one sided thing, I accepted the ‘boyfriend’s’ affection and hoped for something to happen. I don’t know I was hoping for, but it didn’t happen. (The guy who got with our friends sister is happily married to her and I’m happy for them)

See, when I have a crush or whatever you want to call it, I go hard. I already know when I get into a *real* relationship, it will be a ride or die situation. I love hard, even on my friends. I’m incredibly loyal and protective of my tribe. I can’t help it, it’s just how I function.

This is a lot of setup for this part of my current flaming cart of shit of a life, right now, July 14, 2019. For the past, nearly year I guess, I’ve been trying to disentangle my feelings I had towards my closest best friend. I’m 99.999999% he’d never hold romantic feelings for me and that’s fine, I can’t force him to reciprocate. The main reason I decided to disentangle my romantic feelings for him was because I don’t want to ruin our friendship. It means more to me than a crush. Like, he’s so important to me and I know that if I didn’t, I’d push him away and lose one of the best things in my life. And for all of you going ‘why not take a chance on him?’, well my dears, he is on the asexual scale as well. And I respect him and our friendship too much to damage that. Queue BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY! In the earlier stages of the disentangling, BoRhap came out. This was my distraction from my feelings and ultimately what helped me work past them. Shout out to all you Queenies out there, y’all helped a lot! Anyways, I realized about a month or so ago I no longer felt those romantic feelings for him and was pleasantly joyful about that because now our friendship has gone back to normal. Around that time, a guy at my work transferred back to our store. I worked with him briefly when I was first hired, six months later he was transferred. We almost never spoke, I was shy and still getting comfortable with the people, so I barely spoke to like 3 of my coworkers. I always tried to say hi to him and a few other coworkers that I felt we could eventually become friends. Fast forward a year and half later, I’m incredibly comfortable in my work space, so much so that I, an introvert, innately shy natured person, am considered one of the bigger personalities we have in our shop. So here we are, he’s (let’s call him Craig) back, and somehow we have become pretty close. Now, I’ve never been good with reading flirty body language, I’ve always said if someone like me, I need a billboard or flashing lights, or complete directness i.e walking up to me and saying, ‘Steph, I like you a lot,’ or ‘I have feelings for you.’ So with Craig I can’t tell if he’s flirting with me or if he is very comfortable with me. He is a relatively normal cis guy, not an asshole, nerdy and cute and yes, a crush is developing for him. We send each other memes literally all day even when we’re at work together. He texted me right before he fell asleep telling me he shaved his face. I can read his emotions fairly well. We joke and laugh all the time. We haven’t hung out outside of work yet, but I really want it to happen. I’m at the point in my life that whatever happens happens with him because to few times I let my heart run away it’s come back mangled. I’m tired of it. Also, Craig got out of a 3 year relationship right before he transferred back. I’m trying not to dive in without looking, but Craig has been constantly running through my head for the past week, at least that I’ve realized. I’ve had a few sex dreams with him, fun fact: I’ve never had sex... bonus: it doesn’t make me weird. He’s definitely popped into my head when I was masterbating (tmi sorry). I just don’t know what to do. I want something to happen between us, I want him to have feelings for me, I want him to hold me at night but we work together so I have all these insecurities with that. My insecurities about my weight like to flare up when I start having feelings for someone. I’m confident in my skin except around crushes, apparently. I shouldn’t let it matter, but I know I don’t fit the standard for beautiful body, or ‘hot’ and hmmmpff. Like anytime someone tinkles that little bell of interest for me, a voice comes crawling from the grave I thought I buried it in, saying ‘no one’s going to love you or want you. how could they? you’re so fat and your boobs aren’t perfect, and look at all these pretty other people around you, how can you hold up them? why would they choose you over that cute thing there?’

Do you realize how hard it is to try to kill that voice, especially since it sounds like my mother?

Do you realize how hard it is not to hate myself for not being semi normal?

Do you realize how hard it is to not run away from my feelings for someone? To not just hide away forever hoping someone will come rescue me from my thoughts? To not just friend zone Craig and leave it at that?

I should just find a therapist.

Sorry.

.

P.S. I’m still figuring out the other part of my sexuality, meaning demi is a precursor to homo, hetero, bi, pan, poly ect.  I think I’m demi-pan-sexual 

[creideamhgradochas]

Thanks to the lovely @youngmoneymilla for taking the time to answer these! Get to know more about lovely Eliza, go give her a follow and then show her some love!

These questions are from this list. You should check it out, there’s 50 questions all together and they’d be great to ask your favorite fic writer!

1) How old were you when you first starting writing fan-fiction?

13

2) Do you prefer writing OC’s or reader inserts? Explain your answer.

I did love writing OC’s because I have a lot of fun with physical description. However, that was when I wasn’t aware of Reader Inserts since I just recently came back into the fanfic world. Reader Inserts are great because I have to work that much harder on giving them a backstory/personality and not focus at all on physical description. Plus, everyone gets to read the work and hopefully find themselves in it. The only thing I hate is being unable to use a name. I can’t write “Y/N” bc it bugs me haha.

3) What is your favorite genre to write for?

Ummm Angst probably? I’m a huge horror fan so, I’m trying to incorporate that into more work.

4) If you had to delete one of your stories and never speak of it again, which would it be and why?

“It Would Have Made it True” just because I didn’t really connect with it that much and the ending was rushed.

5) When is your preferred time to write? 

11 am to 10 pm haha. I’m an asshole and write a lot during my job.

6) Where do you take your inspiration from? 

I have about a million fics bookmarked from over the years, literally fics from when I was in high school to now. They’re so gorgeously written and they inspire me to write. I pretty much only read non-fiction outside of fanfic so, that doesn’t really work.

7) What’s your favorite scene that you’ve written?

Bathtub/Bedroom scene in the second part of “Bungalows and Baths”

8) Have you ever amended a story due to criticisms you’ve received after posting it?

Yep. In one fic, I included a descriptive characteristic for the reader that implied she was white. It hadn’t even occurred to me but, I immediately fixed it when someone pointed it out.

9) Who is your favorite character to write for? Why? 

Tossup between Bucky and Steve. Bucky has the very obvious trauma and grief that’s interesting to write about but, Steve has a lot of buried darkness that’s subtle and extremely intriguing.

10) Who is your least favorite character to write for? Why?

Maybe Bruce? I don’t care that much for his character (despite the fact I love Hulk)

11) How do you come up with the titles for your stories? 

A lot of the time, it’s a line that’s said throughout the narrative. However, I have a word doc filled with random quotes I like and I usually throw something together. I always think up the title at the end and it’s always an afterthought. Titles blow.

12) What do you think is the best idea you’ve had for a story so far?

I am currently writing a Bucky x Reader fic (TRYING TO AT LEAST) that is going to take the team to New Orleans. It’s going to involve vampires since I wrote a novella about vampires back in high school and want to re-explore that mythology. However, there is going to be a lot of twists and it won’t be an AU, it’s just introducing the possibility of vampires in the MC universe. The reader and Bucky will both be struggling with the idea of themselves as monsters and trying to help themselves through that. It’s going to be a lot of voodoo and magic and angsty “will they, won’t they”. I’m going off on a tangent now but, that’s the gist. I have not written an actual series in a long time so, this would be my first one.

13) Do you have any abandoned WIP’s? What made you abandon them?

There are many half-filled one- page word docs on my desktop that are rotting away as we speak. I just get bored or think of something else.

14) Are there any stories that you’ve written that you’d really love to do a sequel to?

I’d love to do more fics with the same reader from Bungalows and Baths.

15) Are there any stories that you wished you’d ended differently?

Lol I’m actually annoyed with how I ended 6 Times right now. Not sure why.

16) Tell me about another writer(s) who you admire? What is it about them that you admire?

Omg I admire so many but, here are a few.

@bitsandbobsandstuff – obviously for her “Safe with Me” piece which is fantastic, emotional and well-paced. Pacing/keeping the reader on their toes is the hardest thing for me in a series and so, I really admire her ability to do that. I also LOVED her “A Million Invisible Threads” piece because it’s such a gorgeous character study on the Winter Soldier

@a-splash-of-stucky  – She’s the Queen of Angst duh and a GORGEOUS writer. I love her stuff. A Messed Up Place left me weak.

@imhereforbvcky – Her “Mirror for the Sun” fic inspired me to start writing from Bucky’s POV actually. She’s just a beautiful writer.

@tilltheendwilliwrite – I love everything she writes. I love all the mythology she brings to her fics while still staying within the Avengers universe. Her smut is on another level, too. I find myself rereading her stuff again and again.

17) Do you have a story that you look back on and cringe when you reread it?

Here and there. There are definitely moments in a fic where I think why did I keep that. It’s usually because I ended it too quickly or just wanted it over.

18) Do you prefer listening to music when you’re writing or do you need silence? 

I love music when I write fics. It’s all movie scores. I have a spotify playlist for it.

19) Have you ever cried whilst writing a story?

I’ve cried (ish) when writing anything that has to do with alcohol/substance abuse. I’ve been in and out of AA for the past two years and have finally started recovery again. I also have depression so, writing about that can leave me raw. Writing truly always helps though.

20) Which part of your fics have been the hardest to write?

SMUT. Jesus Christ. I struggle so hard with making smut sound hot, as well as lyrical so, it can fit with the narrative. I don’t want to reuse anything I’ve used in other fics before or repeat words but, it’s SO hard (pardon the pun). I always forget what position they’re in and where the body parts need to go. It’s legitimately why I have yet to write a Stucky x Reader fic. I can’t introduce another person into my difficult SMUT journey.

21) Do you make a general outline for your stories or do you just go with the flow? 

I usually have a general idea and I’ll have a very vague outline going. I just write everything out like word vomit and go back and edit.

22) What is something you wished you’d known before you started posting fan-fiction? 

That some of the best stories I’ve read aren’t necessarily the ones with the most likes or comments. I stumble upon stuff and wonder “HOW DOES THIS NOT HAVE 2K LIKES”.

23) Do you have a story that you feel doesn’t get as much love as you’d like?

That’s tough. Maybe the stuff I wrote in the beginning where I didn’t have many followers. I loved the concept of “You Don’t Mean for it to Happen” but, sometimes I want to rewrite the whole thing. I put a lot of myself into “I Think of You All the Time” but, I feel like that got some good traction. IDK.  Bungalows and Baths got a crazy amount of love. Did not expect that but, v grateful.

24) In contrast to 23 is there a story which gets lots of love which you kinda eye roll at? 

Nope. I appreciate any love haha.

25) Are any of your characters based on real people?

Well, I think it goes without saying that every reader character has a little bit of the author in there. I think I pull from some of my friends but, not really.

26) What’s the biggest compliment you’ve gotten? 

Someone once said that their soul was marked by “Bungalows and Baths” which was amazing haha.

27) What’s the harshest criticism you’ve gotten?

I haven’t really gotten criticism other than that time I screwed up on including a feature for a white reader. I felt terrible about that.

28) Do you share your story ideas with anyone else or do you keep them close to your chest?

Not really. I don’t have people to share them with haha.

29) Do people know you write fan-fiction?

My best friend knows but, she doesn’t read fanfic. Shockingly, my mom and sister know but, I told them that they could never read them. I just share reviews with them. My mom likes to know that I’m staying creative.

30) What’s you favorite minor character you’ve written? 

Oh jeez idk if I have one. Natasha isn’t considered a minor character but, she usually plays a side character in my stories and she’s fun to write for.

31) What spurs you on during the writing process?

Once I get started, I’m usually good at keeping it going. Music helps.

32) What’s your favorite trope to write?

Probably slow burn romance or one of the lovers is injured/captured. I also am a huge sucker for love triangles because I’m greedy AF.

33) Can you remember the first fic you read? What was it about?

Lawl this might not have been the first one but, I read a Lizzie Mcguire SMUT piece when I was maybe in 6th grade and was severely chilled to the bone. I was trash even at 12.

34) If you could write only angst, fluff or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why?

Angst. I always write better when I’m emotionally distraught and tortured. Although as I get older, I realize this isn’t fabulous for my own mental health.

[philosopherking1887]

I wonder what you mean with "Loki’s Jewish-coding". Loki is a Norse god, of Scandinavian origin, not Jewish/middle-eastern. I hope I just misunderstood your fandom tropes because making him a Jew all of a sudden seems extremely weird. Scandinavians can also have VERY curly hair and straighten it because we don't like it.

Um… I’m sort of confused by the assumption that I’m an idiot that seems to be underlying this question. Pretty clearly, I hope, I was talking about Marvel’s Loki, not the original Loki of Norse myth. In fact, in the post you’re talking about, I referred to it as “[MCU] Loki’s Jewish-coding.” The reason “MCU” is in brackets is that I didn’t want to exclude the Loki of the classic Marvel comics—who, I think I recall @fuckyeahrichardiii​ telling me, is even more intensely and problematically Jewish-coded than MCU Loki. I read and write fanfiction about MCU Loki primarily; writers do draw on the myths that inspired the comics and films, but for the most part the more recent fictional representations are the basis.

Because I am not an idiot, I do know that Loki is a Norse god of Scandinavian origin, and it would be absurd to claim that the Loki of myth has Jewish or Middle Eastern characteristics. I have read, in connection with the controversy about the origin of Loki’s name, that he may be a holdover from an earlier, perhaps pre-Indo-European pantheon that was replaced by the Norse one. The Jotnar in Norse myth, like the Titans of Greek myth, do seem to play the role of “old gods” that might represent the gods of the pre-Indo-European populations that were conquered and/or displaced by Indo-European settlers just as the Jotnar/Titans are conquered and displaced by the Aesir/Olympians. Loki is unusual in being a Jotun who is accepted into the community of the Aesir – perhaps an older native god being borrowed into the invaders’ religion? So Loki is already an Other, an outsider relative to the rest of the Norse pantheon.

Despite the fact that Marvel was using Norse gods as the basis for their Asgardian characters, the comics originated in 20th-century America, which was, ineluctably, subject to a number of other cultural influences. Mainstream American culture has been primarily shaped by Christian European culture, and the Other par excellence of Christian Europe has always been the Jew. In European culture, Jewish men have been feminized and, especially around the turn of the 20th century, have been compared to or associated with gay men in light of their shared status as outsiders, as an alien and inscrutable Other, and presumed untrustworthiness. (This is brought out in an especially poignant way by Marcel Proust, a gay man and the son of a Jewish woman, in In Search of Lost Time, particularly in his treatment of the Dreyfus Affair, which was THE political event of the 1890s and left a deep scar on French society that still hadn’t healed when Proust’s books were published 20-30 years later.)

Marvel’s Loki hits many of the points associated with the figure of the Jew in European culture. He is the eternal foreigner in Asgard, his loyalties constantly in question. He is portrayed as sly and manipulative, always pulling strings from behind the scenes, forever plotting to take power from the rightful rulers of Asgard. He does tend to be queer- or feminine-coded, which on its own isn’t necessarily evidence of Jewish-coding, but reinforces the rest of the image. Aside from having dark hair while most Asgardians are blond/golden-haired—a standard trope for emphasizing the “Oriental” origins of European Jews, though many (like myself) are blond or (like my mother and grandmother) red-haired—the Loki of the classic comics also tends to have a hooked nose. (Which is pretty common among cartoon villains, especially sly and conniving ones…)

I first became aware of the implicit Jewish-coding of MCU Loki—which might have been unintentional, or just a consequence of the adaptation from the comics—when I happened across a couple of videos setting footage from Thor and The Avengers to songs from The Prince of Egypt, including “All I Ever Wanted” and “The Plagues.” I realized that Loki’s position as member of a foreign enemy group, rescued from death as a baby and raised, in ignorance of his heritage, as the second prince of the society that conquered the society of his origin, was very similar to that of Moses in The Prince of Egypt. (That movie doesn’t adhere exactly to Moses’s story in Exodus; Moses did actually know where he came from because his sister Miriam volunteered his birth mother as a wet nurse for him. But then, in some versions of the comics, Loki does know that he’s either adopted or Odin’s bastard, so that doesn’t necessarily spoil the parallel.) Then I noticed some of the other characteristics that set Loki apart from Asgardian society at large and his adoptive family in particular… I actually had Loki comment on it in my first Thorki fic, Desert Flowers, which takes place after Loki visits Berlin in the 1920s. (I doubt Antagonistic Anon will care, but some of my other followers might be interested.) It’s easiest for me just to quote that passage. Here Loki is explaining Midgardian racism, including antisemitism, to Thor:

“There are a few characteristic physical traits, though they’re not consistent. Long, arched nose; dark curly hair.” Loki stopped short, his lips pressed tightly together. “In general, they don’t look any more different from other Europeans than I do from you,” he forced himself to say good-humoredly. “In fact, I was given rather shoddy service at a few restaurants—and even turned away from one inn that I was certain still had vacancies—which was very puzzling until I realized that they thought I was Jewish… a member of this group, I mean.”

“Huh,” said Thor disgustedly […]

Loki cleared his throat. “At any rate,” he continued, “the animus toward them centers on their supposed character: greedy, ambitious, deceitful; physically weak, but clever and devious enough to gain power through indirect means.” Me again. Too interested in scholarly pursuits, not enough in manly physical activities; prone to neurosis. All too quickly, the list of antisemitic stereotypes that he had heard tossed around in Berlin had turned into a catalogue of Loki’s own inadequacies. While Thor is the very embodiment of the ‘Aryan ideal.’

Pretty obviously MCU Loki’s hair is naturally curly because Tom Hiddleston’s hair is naturally curly and they can’t always keep it under control. But in combination with its unusual color, the unusual texture and his apparently intense desire to slick it into submission spoke to me. I’ve struggled with the frizzy texture of my own hair, and a lot of other Jews I know try to tame it in various ways, while others go natural and embrace the “Jew-fro.” I’m sure Scandinavian people can have curly hair, and I’m not ruling out an interpretation of Loki’s dislike of his curly hair that has nothing at all to do with his status as Other. But for me it just fits in with everything else that I’ve mentioned.

Jeez, I kind of can’t believe I wrote that much in response to what clearly was not a friendly question. I’m honestly kind of puzzled as to why Anon was so bothered by an offhand comment about Loki being Jewish-coded. (Like, is there a problem with Jews “appropriating” Scandinavian culture…? Don’t worry, folks, Jews have absolutely no interest in replacing you.) Actually, this is the second hostile anonymous “question” I’ve received in the past two weeks, both with decently good grammar (unusual for anon hate) but premised on a wildly uncharitable, deliberately obtuse interpretation of something I wrote (my response to the first is here). If the second didn’t regard a pretty widely shared post of mine, I might suspect a single unfriendly blog-stalker. This is kind of weird, since I never used to get obnoxious anonymous comments; I guess the cost of gradually increasing exposure is assholes.

@darklittlestories, @incredifishface, I thought you might find this whole thing mildly entertaining… Oh, and @andreashwood, because you're a "Prince of Egypt" fan.

[cromulentbookreview]

A Perfectly Cromulent List of the Best Books I’ve Read This Year

Well, the best books I’ve read this year that I haven’t cromulently reviewed on this site. I read a lot of books because it’s what I like to do and I don’t really have a lot of friends to hang out with, or really anything that I do besides work and grad school so...yeah, I read a lot. My Goodreads challenge this year is 100 books, which would be the first and only time I’ve ever read 100 books in a year. I’m at 95 right now - so close! Just gotta get some short books and audiobooks in, and I’ll be good!

Anyway.

Below are some of the books I’ve read this year that I really liked, but didn’t feature here.

The Cromulent Book Review is where I like to post reviews of ARCs so I can ensure that I keep getting them. 

ARC = Free Book! 

Free Book = Me happy. 

Therefore:

Happiness = x(ARC+1) + H^2.

I have no idea if that equation works or even makes sense. Math was never my strong suit. Maybe I should’ve paid attention instead of reading The Hobbit under my desk. 

Anyway! Here, in no particular order, are some of the best books I’ve read this year:

Cucumber Quest by Gigi D.G.

Did you know this is a webcomic? Yeah, it is. I did not when I read the ARC from Netgalley, so I was all sad when I thought I’d have to wait for more books...but you don’t! Hurray! One of the best graphic novels / webcomics I’ve ever come across - snarky, subverts most familiar fantasy tropes, and, best of all: bunnies. And bunny-related puns. It’s fan-fricking-tastic. Read it now. Then go buy the books! Go on, I’ll wait.

Castle in the Stars: The Space Race of 1869 by Alex Alice 

Love it. It has everything I love: German history, Steampunk, gorgeous illustrations, space travel...I desperately need more than just the first volume. Also, at roughly 60 pages, these "books" are way too short! I need the whole story now, please. God, I miss Germany. Nitpicking: Neuschwanstein was only just beginning to be under construction in 1869. Ludwig II never really lived there (well, he did for a bit while it was still under construction) - he never lived to see it completed, though it wasn't like he didn't have eleventy-million other castles. Like Hohenschwangau, which is literally across the way from Neuschwanstein. It's quite nice. There's also Herrenchiemsee, Königshaus am Schachen, and Linderhof which is the only castle Ludwig II lived to see completed. Neuschwanstein was opened to the public immediately after they were done building in 1886. It's been a tourist attraction since then. ...God, I miss Germany. I need to re-up my German and my German history. I've got a book on Ludwig II in German around here somewhere...

Eden West by Pete Hautman

It's rare that I ever finish a book in a day. I am way too easily distracted by the internet, the job I’m supposed to be doing, the graduate work I’m supposed to be doing, the writing I’m supposed to be doing, the chores I really should get to before something catches fire...you know, stuff. This book I think, is the first time I've seen an Amazon Kindle 1.99 deal, gone "sounds interesting, I'll buy it." And then, on the "thank you" page, clicked "read in Kindle Cloud Reader" and started reading immediately. I was over halfway through this book when the receipt email made it to my inbox. I was sucked into this book immediately and dropped everything to read it. My only complaint is that it ended too early - I would have loved to see Jacob adjusting to life in the world outside of the Nobb, interact with society at large, meet Lynna's friends. Also, it would have been nice to see some of the jerks within the Nobb get their comeuppance or see the place be shut down altogether. Also, protip: if you have to keep telling people "it's not a cult", you're probably in a cult. Just sayin'.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Yeah, I went to a rural high school chock full of conservative Christians, Mormons, and, oddly enough, members of the Russian Orthodox church. No way in hell were we ever going to go near The Color Purple. I mean, if Ricochet River was too risque for my school, then The Color Purple would’ve been considered pornographic. God forbid we have any books featuring frank discussions of female pleasure! The Color Purple all about female empowerment, friendships, relationships, sex, love, hate, racism, sexism... So of course my school didn’t teach it. By far the most beautiful book I’ve read this year, and I honestly wish they’d make The Color Purple required reading for not just all high school students, but for all humans. 

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

I don't often describe books as "compulsively" readable - for the most part, if I'm reading something, I can stop, switch to something else or go do something else for a while and I'll be good. But when I started The Hate U Give, I just could not stop. I had to keep reading, keep reading, keep reading. This book hooks you and just does not let go, it's awesome. The 4.5/5 is really only for some scenes which, in retrospect, set up just how normal and loving Starr's family life is, but they dragged a little too long. Some scenes could have been cut. That is my only criticism. This is a fantastic and extremely relevant book - it's another one of those books I'd like to buy multiple copies of and then just hand out to random people and be like "READ THIS NOW." Seriously, read it.

This Monstrous Thing by Mackenzi Lee

Immediately after reading The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, I just had to get my hands on everything Mackenzi Lee had ever written, but this turned out to not be a lot...still, I inhaled This Monstrous Thing, loved it, was disappointed when I learned it wouldn’t be getting the sequel, but then my heart nearly exploded when I learned that Lee herself will be writing a YA Marvel tie-in novel...about Loki.

About. Loki.

The awesome woman who brought us Gentleman’s Guide is going to write a novel about Loki!

Also, Gentleman’s Guide is going to be getting a sequel soon! Hell yes!

That high pitched ringing you heard a couple weeks back was my fangirlish squee - unless you have tinnitus, in which case, it was tinnitus and my fangirlish squee. Mackenzi Lee is probably my favorite writer that I discovered this year, and I can’t wait to see more of her stuff in the future. She’s also very tolerant of my pestering of her via Twitter. (Sorry, Ms. Lee!)

Nimona, the Audiobook by Noelle Stevenson

Loved, loved, loved the audiobook version of Nimona! It was absolutely perfect, and probably as close to a Nimona movie or TV series that we'll ever get (fingers still crossed! Noelle Stevenson writes for TV now - come on, Marvel, make us a Nimona TV series!). It's done in a BBC Radio Play style with a full cast and original music and it's just absolutely delightful. Sir Goldenloin sounds exactly like how you think he would, too :) It's only 2.5 hours long, so it would be perfect for a long car ride or if you need something fun to listen to while cleaning or doing housework. I actually managed to clean my whole room while listening to this - made the task fun rather than torturous. My only complaint was that occasionally the voice actors would ham it up a bit with growls and groans and such, but...eh, it's an audiobook/radio play. I'm mostly just glad now that Nimona has been made accessible to the blind. Nimona is awesome and everyone should get a chance to experience it, whether or not they can see the illustrations.

Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk

This book broke my heart into a million pieces and then put it back together somewhat...but still. Beautiful and sad.          

Bronze and Sunflower by Cao Wenxuan (曹文轩) translated into English by Helen Wang

Beautifully translated book about two young children growing up in rural China during the Cultural Revolution. A very heartwarming tale of a family sticking together no matter what in the face of poverty and diversity. Can't believe I hadn't heard of this book til it was assigned in my MLIS program! Love it love it love it. Stop everything and read it now.         

The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin

This book took my adolescence and distilled it into a middle grade novel about a girl who becomes obsessed with the idea that a jellyfish killed her ex-best friend. The way Suzy sees the world and the way people treated her was all to familiar to me, especially the story of how, around middle school, her elementary school best friend Franny suddenly became a different person, and that person didn’t want to hang around Suzy anymore. Not only that, she started being mean to Suzy. This is one of those awful, painful experiences that I’m pretty sure everyone has had at some point in their lives. I highly recommend this book for anyone who has lost a friend - whether it be because they died or they simply turned into an asshole as a byproduct of puberty.

The Last of August by Brittany Cavallaro

There are two things I love: YA and Sherlock Holmes stories, and most of the time when they're combined the end result isn't all that great, but the Charlotte Holmes books have both been absolutely amazing so far. Brittany Cavallaro became a new favorite of mine with A Study in Charlotte and she managed to top it with Last of August.  I am in desperate need of book three. Right now. I don't want to wait. I need it. Neeeeeed it.

Before the Devil Breaks You by Libba Bray

Oh God, oh God, oh God why did it have to end?!? Libba Bray is perhaps my favorite YA author ever - in fact, A Great and Terrible Beauty was the gateway book to my YA addiction. I remember reading A Great and Terrible Beauty under my desk during my high school chemistry class. Worth it! So what if knowledge of chemistry never really sank in? Anyway: I tore through all those books, endured the long, awful wait for the next one, and then was depressed when they ended with The Sweet Far Thing. And then The Diviners came out in 2012 and I was immediately hooked. Who doesn’t love fiction set in the Roaring 20s? I tore through Diviners, endured the long, awful wait for Lair of Dreams, and then endured the even longer, more awful wait for Before the Devil Breaks You. My only criticism is that I, somehow, had the idea that Before the Devil Breaks You would be the last book in a trilogy - and that this book would provide all our answers and give us an ending for Evie and Sam and Jericho and Mable and Theta and Memphis and Ling...but as I made my way through the book and the number of pages I had left began to dwindle, I rapidly realized this was the final book of a trilogy, but the third book in a series. There’s going to be a book 4. Which, first off: awesome! More, please! But also: NOOO! Agh, no, I want to know all the answers! I want to know whether Evie will end up with Sam or Jericho. I wanna know if Theta will finally find happiness. I WANT TO KNOW, DAMN IT! Ugh! So it was disappointing knowing that I would be taken along for a wild ride through the Roaring 20s but with magic and special powers and a 20s Stranger Things vibe only to be set up for yet another long, awful wait for another book. Ugh! I WANT IT NOW. In fact, I NEED IT NOW!

Also, when are we going to talk about the fact that Diviners and the Gemma Doyle series take place in the same universe?? Don’t believe me? Go reread that Post Office scene from Lair of Dreams. Go on, I’ll wait. I need Gemma and her friends to show up for the final battle, or to act as a mentor to Evie or something!

Aaaagggghh. Series books. They’ll be the death of me, I tells ya!

This is by all means not a complete list. Just a list I threw together to make up for the fact that I’m lazy and not blogging because...eh, busy. And lazy. So...there are some books to read. Go read them? I dunno, you don’t have to listen to me, I’m just some random person who has a Tumblr account. Read these books or not, your choice.

Still, you should read these. They’re great.

[shygunfire]

//Hella rant cause I have such feelings about these two it’s not even funny, WARNING THIS RANT HAS HUGE SPOILERS EVERYWHERE FOR TAL

So firstly, let’s look at MuYoung, we can build things from there. He’s an angry person, and who can blame him? He’s not human but GREW UP feeling wrong and knowing he wasn’t like other people. We’re not shown anything of his childhood except for /everything before he was separated from his twin/. But it can be inferred that it was rough, especially if it’s possible MuYoung /didn’t know/ what he actually was.

MuYoung grew up in a way I feel a lot of human fans relate to; he grew up feeling /wrong/, and he couldn’t shake that, especially with his physical state as a child. He was not doubt poked at and probably teased or even bullied about his looks or his arm or any number of things. He’s always very quick to jump into angry mode, he’s defensive and isn’t above threats to get out of or win a situation, and he holds a GRUDGE /blowing up the city for a blind man sound familiar?/ like we only wish we had the energy to maintain. But he didn’t grow up to actually be an asshole like the TALs say he is in story.

Again, he IS defensive. He IS quick to jump to violent means for an end in situations he doesn’t like. But he is also protective af, not just over Yu Jin and Maru, but even the TALs /as he does rescue Baek-Jung from that unfair fight while protecting Mirine and he stands up to Yangban when he makes everyone in the house uncomfortable/ as well as very caring towards situations /when Maru tells him about the girl he rescued needing safety/.

MuYoung is a man who looked Hell in the face and remained a bad-ass angel.

Now let’s look at Kang Maru. We’re initially shown a goofball who jokes about girls a lot, but MuYoung suddenly pulls us out of ‘oh he’s the goofy pervert trope’ because Maru is actually AFRAID of women. He’s a young man, said to be ‘between 18-20′ and at that age most regular characters would be regarded as carefree and adventurous and lusty for girls, especially a male like he is. 

But we’re then shown that immediately after being asked a favor, Maru is spying on people he had assumed were the kind that would be related to the info MuYoung needed. Not only that, but when confronted, he asks, somewhat begs, to not fight as he ‘doesn’t like fighting’. Maru is a healthy young male character who is self-confirming that he has no interest in violence, and we’re shown a lot of examples from the older Chachaoongs that if you’re born a Chachaoong? You better pick up on how to fight if you wanna live.

We have no idea what Maru’s past was. I have many theories, not just the one I use for this blog’s Maru, but many MANY others. All that’s set in stone is that Maru met MuYoung when the former tried to pickpocket the latter.

MuYoung was possibly bullied as a child. In the normal circumstances, a normal man with PTSD like MuYoung no doubt has would’ve most likely bodychecked Maru or broken his arm/wrist/hand before walking off. But he /didn’t/. He looked at this tiny male, who was likely squirming and dirty and likely tired af /who would sanely think to approach a man like MuYoung for theft otherwise?/ and he didn’t see an enemy. MuYoung looked at tiny-ass Maru and saw a child, just like he’d been, a child who had no one looking after him or caring about his wellbeing, and I will never be moved from the thought that looking at Maru gave MuYoung a feeling of kinship.

Because MuYoung /knew/. He didn’t know how, but he could /feel/ that this was a child just like he’d been, and by God, he was not letting someone who didn’t deserve it turn into what he might’ve.

I don’t know how things went from there, but unless word-of-God disputes it, somehow MuYoung took care of Maru and built him a life. He got Maru an education, an apartment to live /possibly housing Maru with himself until that was accomplished?/ and Maru has a steady income that lets him buys things like groceries, probably laundry stuff, he even has his own computer.

MuYoung set up this cushy lifestyle for a kid off the streets. And how is Maru from all that?

He sure as shit isn’t spoiled at all.

He cares for other people as much as MuYoung, possibly even more since he was in a Chachaoong life before the ‘human’ one MuYoung gave him. He is always concerned with other people’s wellbeing, rescuing the unnamed girl and offering to see if she can be given the same things he was, but he’s very aware of MuYoung’s likes and dislikes lists as he adds on that he knows MuYoung won’t be happy with ‘strays’. Maru is aware of MuYoung’s comforts and is completely hesitant to overstep a boundary like that even if he’s trying to do the right thing.

But he does step on that line when he feels it’s safe. Joking about girlfriends when he knows their collective situation and even when he’s suspicious of a person he asks MuYoung to help him observe, he steps back immediately when MuYoung makes his discomfort known. And yet, to have the gall to step on that line to begin with, it takes a LOT of trust. MuYoung himself said ‘you can know someone for years and not trust them, and you can know someone for a short time and still feel the same way’. He was saying this about Jin, in defense to Baek-Jung’s question, but it rings true about Maru.

We’re shown how conservative MuYoung is. He makes Ella wear his coat and flips out when she kisses him. Take that factor into account when you look a his and Maru’s interactions, then; how comfortable could he possibly be to only scold Maru or make an angry face to make Maru stop, and how comfortable could Maru be to have the balls to make those jokes even after he’s been scolded for it?

Maru /knows/ MuYoung. MuYoung /knows/ Maru.

Maru has SEEN the absolute WORST of MuYoung. He has seen true hysteria, true anger, and possibly, true depression with MuYoung. But Maru will /STILL/ talk to MuYoung, he still does as he’s asked and he still makes incredibly stupid jokes.

Because MuYoung has seen his true self as well.

We are told it’s rough for young Chachaoongs, on the streets, alone, no one looking after them. A lot of the background characters give us this information. They are rude, they are bullies, they swell themselves and use weapons as lethal and intimidating as they can be made. They are what MuYoung could’ve become. They look out only for themselves, rarely each other, and those who do open their arms die early deaths because compassion is apparently as rare in them as it is most humans /YEAH I’M THROWING SHADE ON OUR SPECIES WE FUCKING DESERVE GETTING DRAGGED ABOUT THAT/.

But Maru? He says he hates fighting. He prefers it’s his last resort, and even when fighting Luka, he traps Luka in an effort to PLEAD for them to /talk things over peacefully/.

In their first fight, what are we shown? Maru begging for them not to fight, before using a goddamn FLAMETHROWER. Observe his face. That’s not the look of someone who secretly actually really loves fighting. That eye close-up shows us a person who has disconnected from his fucking body, his emotions, his being, so he doesn’t make the connection that he just fired, well, a fucking FIREBALL at another living being. His grimace immediately after is cringing regret and the very clear message that he hopes that didn’t actually incinerate Luka because he just wanted to leave the fight.

Even after being attacked again, Maru expresses to Luka he just wants to be friends with the other.

Maru might not be as bad as Ignatio, but I’m willing to bet that he has some pretty similar Issues. He never wants to fight, he wants to resolve things. He doesn’t want enemies or antagonists, he wants friends or at the very least, nonviolent acquaintances. These go against what he would’ve lived as on the streets, and I’d bet he’d be having just fits as scary as MuYoung’s. Crying, possibly hallucinating things he’d caused or done directly, probably triggered by hearing something.

But MuYoung would be there. He would be there bringing Maru back to the present, grounding him. ‘You are Kang Maru. You are a student in college. You are my responsibility. You are kind. You are gentle. You joke. You smile. This is you.’

Just like Maru would in turn ground MuYoung. ‘You are kind. You are gentle. You are generous. You are loved. You aren’t a monster. You do good things. This is you.’

Their relationship is so fucking important to me. Maru reminds MuYoung to keep caring about people even when he’s angry, MuYoung reminds Maru that he can accomplish things because he is more than he thinks. Maru makes MuYoung remember that life isn’t always serious, but MuYoung reminds Maru that there are times and places for behavior. They remind each other that other people can care about them. They remind each other that yeah the world can be Hell, but there are other people who know that, and you aren’t alone. They remind each other that you always have something to keep being kind and soft and that to someone else you’re possibly their safety.

Even without shipping them, I will defend that they have an incredible bond and that they deserve to have that. They have gone through Hell, they GO through Hell over the course of the story. But they are there for each other.

When Maru gets away from Luka, he calls MuYoung, terrified about having failed and plays off being attacked as a side effect. MuYoung does the opposite; he latches onto ‘what?! you were ATTACKED?!’ and instead, brushes aside the fact that Maru didn’t get full info. Maru’s safety when he was out of MuYoung’s sight was more important to MuYoung than the info /PERTAINING TO JIN HIS SUPPOSED SON/ was.

When MuYoung is attacked, Maru calls Sora because she’s a doctor and has access to shit they don’t have at Jin’s house and really need. Sora and Sae Ha are both doctors, and thus the only ones who can do a goddamn thing. Maru doesn’t leave the house even after Sae Ha and Sora start treating MuYoung, even when he becomes exhausted from worry. The only time he leaves is after MuYoung wakes up, after MuYoung has moved around a bit, AFTER he knows MuYoung is /actually/ okay.

Maru’s main concern during the finale arc isn’t about the mess of the city, the fight they’ve suddenly been yanked into, nor even his own wellbeing. His thought is ‘I hope MuYoung is okay’. He is in the company of someone who’s attacked him twice, and a hoards of fucking ZOMBIES, but he feels concerned only about MuYoung.

These aren’t small things. When a storyteller gives you details, it’s for a reason.

TL;DR: Maru and MuYoung have a bond so powerful I weep in awe of it and I will fucking fight anybody who so much as implies they aren’t important to each other. Just let them make each other happy okay, they deserve being happy.

[theheavymetalmama]

Top Ten Characters Who Could Kick Saitama’s Ass

Ooh boy. Not going to make any friends with this post.

Full disclosure, I hardly ever watch anime anymore. Seems like everything new these days is either an ecchi, a harem, or both. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with ecchis or harems, but when that’s all anybody wants to produce these days it gets old fast. And all the newest stuff that everyone says I should watch I just can’t get into. Attack on Titan feels like something that was never proof-read before production began, I find Kill la Kill obnoxious, and Monster Musume would actually be enjoyable if it didn’t milk tired roommate and girlfriend tropes for everything they were worth and if the male lead wasn’t such a terminally unlikable dumbass. Seriously, if Kimihito is supposed to represent the typical Japanese every-man then it’s no wonder Japan’s birth rate has dropped like a brick.

Having said all that, I fucking LOVE One Punch Man. It’s funny, action packed, and you can tell that everyone making it is just having the time of their lives. It has good animation, memorable characters, and the majority of the jokes land which is always a plus. The best way I can describe OPM would be if the people behind the Cornetto Trilogy made a superhero thing, and it’s every bit as enjoyable as it sounds. Seriously, check it out if you haven’t already.

What am I building up to? Well, when something gets popular it gains a fanbase, and that fanbase always gets more than its’ share of loudmouth assholes that not only make the rest of the fanbase look bad but also deter new fans from ever wanting to check it out. One Punch Man is no exception, and loudest and most vocal of these fans have decided to constantly get up in other people’s faces about how Saitama beats everyone because...one punch. Others say that Saitama is a parody and ergo typical rules about “Who would win in a fight?” type of discussions don’t apply to him. All the while stating again, again, and again that he’s completely unbeatable and nobody can even scratch him because he’s not meant to lose and one punch. But the most annoying of these fans are those who wave the banner that Saitama’s creator said that his power trumps the Big Bang and would win against characters like Goku or Superman easily.

No. Sorry, but no on all of those points. First of all, Saitama is awesome and a great and fun character, but he’s not unbeatable and he certainly isn’t invincible. In fact, both the anime and the web-comic repeatably make points that Saitama is still only human, and that despite his power he still needs to eat food, drink water, and breathe oxygen in order to survive. Sure, he has no specific weaknesses (other than the fact that he’s not the brightest guy around) but he’s still mortal.

Second, One Punch Man isn’t a parody. No, it really isn’t. Sure, it has plenty of funny bits and there’s plenty of superhero deconstruction to be found, but it’s not a parody. Freakazoid is a parody. Squirrel Girl is a parody. Captain Hero from Drawn Together is a parody. Duck Dodgers is a parody. One Punch Man is not. See, I compared it to the “Blood and Ice Cream” trilogy for a reason. Like those movies OPM is a comedy up-front, sure, but it takes the genre seriously. There are real stakes and risks taken, people do get hurt, and if somebody dies then they stay dead. It doesn’t rely on cartoon physics and real-world physics do still apply, hence there being no shortage of collateral damage.

Third, “The creator said Saitama is stronger than the big bang and can beat *insert powerful character here* so ha!” Yeah, the creator never said such a thing. For a while it was believed that it was a producer of the anime who said that, but while I could be wrong as far as I can tell nobody said such a thing and was something the fanbase made up and said it enough times that people started believing it. But here’s the thing. Even if the creator said so live on every major news outlet that Saitama can beat anyone ever, it doesn’t matter. Why? Because talk is cheap. “Because X said so” is not a valid argument and it damn sure doesn’t hold any water. What does hold water are documented feats of strength and power. Saitama has an impressive record to be sure...but he’s not number one. Hell, he’s probably not even in the top 20.

Now let me be crystal clear here. I’m not making this post as a disparaging or discrediting of Saitama or the anime One Punch Man. I think Saitama’s a great character and the show’s a ton of fun, and I’m not trying to make him look dumb or incompetent or whatever. This also isn’t a list of ‘fights to the death’ or anything like that, hence the title being “Kick his ass” and not “Kill him.” I’m making this post as both a form of catharsis AND a big middle finger from me to all misinformed fanboys about their caped bald godchild.

So, without further adieu, here are the top ten characters who could kick Saitama’s ass.

Sorry baldy. =P

10.) Doomsday

Doomsday is a character that’s every bit as iconic as he is one-note and boring, but while his usefulness never ventures beyond a plot device when the Justice League need a big scary monster to fight nobody can deny his sheer, raw power. The fact that he can go toe-to-toe with the likes of powerhouses like Superman, Wonder Woman, and even Darkseid is nothing to sneeze at, and short of destroying every single cell in his body there’s really no permanent way to keep him down. While I have no doubt in my mind that Saitama would ultimately win the fight, this is a case where it’s going to take WAY more than just one punch. Looking for a challenge? The monster that killed Superman will certainly provide it.

9.) Spawn

Icon or relic? Legend or has-been? The jury is still out on whether or not Spawn earned his popularity and cultural omnipresence in the early to mid 90′s or if the writers and artists at Image simply got lucky, but as far as power goes he’s still a god damned beast. Fueled by sin and Hell itself, Spawn’s powers go from crazy all the way to absurd. I don’t exaggerate in the slightest when I say that Spawn can use his hellish to do pretty much whatever the hell he wants. Slow down time to a crawl while he can move about freely? He can do that. Increase Saitama’s molecular density to such an extent that he becomes so heavy he plummets straight into the center of the Earth or so light he rockets into orbit? He can do that. Alter Saitama’s mind so that he believes he’s a sea urchin? He can do that. Look, the guy defeated both Satan AND God and reshaped the universe in his own image (heh heh...) so there’s really very little Saitama can actually do to hurt him. At best he can punch Spawn’s head off, but doing that would just Spawn back to Hell where he can recharge his batteries and come back with a vengeance. Seriously, Spawn’s literally walked out of Hell so many times it’s comical. Facing off against Spawn would be one hell of a fight for Saitama.

8.) The Juggernaut

Nothing can stop the Juggernaut. He’s completely and utterly invulnerable to all forms of both might and magic. Curses? Forget about it. Spells? They bounce right off him. Weapons? Please! You could drop a hundred nukes right on his head and he’d just laugh it off. He’s bested the Hulk multiple times, trashed Thor, manhandled the Sentry AND Hyperion, and let’s not get into the kind of grief and misery he’s brought upon the X-Men over the years. The only thing ol’ Juggy is weak to is telekinetic attacks, which is not only something that Saitama doesn’t possess but even then they can only hinder him, not kill him. The one thing you can do against the Juggernaut is find a way to use his own momentum against him and send him running the other way...but Saitama likes a challenge, so we know he won’t do that even if he does figure it out.

7.) The Flash

Saitama’s speed clocks out at supersonic, right on par with the world’s fastest fighter jets. The Flash’s speed puts the world’s fastest fighter jets to sad shame, capable of moving over a million times faster than the speed of light and can vibrate his molecules to phase through attacks and even turn invisible. Not only does the Flash have the speed advantage, saying nothing of the Speed Force, he can hit plenty hard as well. By vibrating his molecular structure to just under light speed, the Flash can use the Infinite Mass Punch, an attack with the same destructive force as a 100 megaton nuclear bomb. In the time it would take for Saitama to charge and unleash a Special or Serious Punch, the Flash can hit him in the face (and all over the rest of his body) with a thousand Infinite Mass Punches. Defeating someone in one punch is less impressive when you can’t hit your opponent.

6.) Yang Xiao Long

What happens when you pit a guy who can defeat anyone in one punch against a gal who can absorb attacks and kinetic energy and send them back to her opponent tenfold as if she were composed of living vibranium? You get a caped bald guy skipping across the Pacific Ocean like a stone and getting stuck up George Washington’s nose on Mt. Rushmore with a wavy-haired blonde laughing her tits off from the sight.

5.) Lobo

They don’t call him “The Main Man” for nothing. This fucking guy could very well be the most vicious character in comic book history, which is saying something in a medium where characters like Wolverine and Vegeta exist. Not only is Lobo meaner than a horny rattlesnake, he’s strong enough to match blows with Superman and has beaten him twice, he escaped the pull of a black hole, he shrugged off Darkseid’s Omega Beam, he can survive in space, and his healing factor is nothing short of completely absurd. Lobo can regenerate, I shit you not, from a single drop of blood. Basically nothing short of throwing him into the sun is going to stop Lobo for good, and he’s every bit as stubborn as he is ferocious. Remember; he single handedly wiped out his entire race except for himself when he was an infant. More to the point, of all the characters on this list so far, he’s the one who makes the most sense for WHY he’d fight Saitama. You don’t think someone would want Saitama dead and wouldn’t hire Lobo to do it?

4.) The Silver Surfer.

Power. Cosmic. ‘Nuff said.

3.) The Incredible Hulk

Contrary to what Death Battle claimed, if you tore off the Hulk’s head he’d just grow a new body in a matter of minutes with the off-chance of his headless body being taken over by one of Banner’s many, many different Hulks that inhabit his psyche.......comic books are weird, okay? Point is the Hulk is one of the strongest beings in all of fiction. He’s picked up a 150 billion ton mountain, held two tectonic plates together, destroyed a planet while fighting another world breaker, and while his healing factor can be overtaxed what everyone always leaves out is that anybody who does manage to punch the Hulk back into Banner always leaves Banner alone. Why? Well, remember that scene in the Avengers?

That wasn’t just a cool quote, stuff like that actually happened in the comics. You could walk up to an unconscious Bruce Banner and drop a thermite bomb right on his head, and before your brain can register that’s shit’s on fire the Hulk will be standing with his hand around your throat and scotched purple pants. Not only that, but with Banner no longer in the back seat, it’s a Hulk that’s completely unhinged and unrelenting, not to mention no longer vulnerable to puny human factors like fatigue. Loki once employed the Enchantress (no, not that one) to use her magic to separate Banner and the Hulk into two different beings in a petty plan to kill Thor, and in doing so the Hulk not only effortlessly plowed through Asgard and all of its’ armies and defenders, including Thor, he then did the same thing when he was sent to Hell. Yeah, you read that right. Not even Hela, who like Mephisto is basically Satan, could tame the Hulk, and in the end only putting Hulk and Banner back together was what calmed the Hulk down and stopped his rampage.

That’s not even the craziest part. Given enough time, the Hulk can recover from just about anything. One day the Maestro, a possible future version of the Hulk, was sent back in time and vaporized by the very gamma bomb that created the Hulk......and he fully recovered! Yes, the Hulk can fully recover after being turned into fucking ashes! Seriously, look it up! ...did I mention comic books are weird?

2.) Son Goku

I’ve made it no secret over the years that I don’t care for DragonBall anything. Look, I’m 31. I’m a 90′s kid, I was there when DragonBall really blew up in the US and became such a cultural phenomenon that you couldn’t get away from it, and I was sick to death of it long before shows like GT were even a thing. Still, franchise fatigue aside, I can’t deny Goku’s incredible skills and power, especially recently with DragonBall Super. Oh, I still don’t watch it, but this being the Internet you can’t get away from DragonBall anymore than you can get away from cat videos. Lists, paragraphs, and videos of Goku’s feats are easier to find than white bread so me listing them here would be all but redundant.

What I will talk about is that if Saitama wants a challenge then Goku is right up his alley. Who is and isn’t more powerful is a crapshoot because we don’t have a definitive measure of what either of them are fully capable of as far as raw power goes, but we do know that Goku is faster and his skills and finesse outweigh Saitama’s by a wide margin. While Saitama can track people moving at supersonic speeds, Goku can move much faster and the whole “lol, takes forever to charge his power” thing has been vastly improved on. Now it only takes a few seconds to charge up instead of three and a half episodes, spirit bomb not withstanding. Even if we do buy into the narrative of “Saitama beats everyone and anyone in one punch because ONE PUNCH”...well, death never stopped Goku before. He’s bested cosmic entities and gods that make the biggest, baddest villains in One Punch Man look like puny peons and is so tenacious that he always keeps fighting even if the odds are hopelessly against him; that’s kind of his whole thing. He goes up against people he’s clearly no match for, gets the Super Saiyan-snot beaten out of him, yet he still manages to come out on top. And given that Saitama is always seeking a challenge, a clash between these two titans would be inevitable. Maybe Goku will emerge the winner, maybe he won’t. What’s certain is that it’s going to take a lot more than one punch to put down the Super Saiyan.

But as strong, fast, skilled, and tenacious as Goku is, neither he nor Saitama can hold a candle to...

1.) Superman

While the whole “Goku vs Superman” thing is still going strong despite overwhelming evidence the odds are hopelessly against Goku, a new fanboy/fangirl and geek-culture kerfuffle riding shotgun to that is Saitama vs Superman and it’s every been as asinine. Not helped by the fact Superman has been in a bit of a rut on a cultural level whereas OPM is at the height of its’ popularity, meaning that the latter is going to win pretty much every popularity contest by default and thus fuel the fanboy fire on both sides. For whatever reason, anime fans seem to have a big hate-boner for Superman that they just can’t rub off.

So, to each and everyone reading this who think Saitama can beat Superman.

No. No he can’t. Oh sure, Caped Baldy is going to make the Man of Steel work for his victory, but fact of the matter is that anything Saitama can do, Superman can do better. Has done better, in fact. Again, I’m not knocking Saitama or trying to discredit his feats. We’ve seen Saitama destroy a meteor as big as a mountain, crush kaiju-sized monsters and machines, survive being punched to the Moon, and parted a mass of clouds as big as a continent with one punch. All very impressive feats that nobody in his league is going to top any time soon.

And that’s just it. Superman isn’t in Saitama’s league; he’s up, up, and a WAY above it. His feats of strength, speed, and durability put those of Saitama to shame. Seriously, the differences between Saitama and Superman is like the difference between a high school track star and Usain Bolt. Superman has held a black hole, spent a week straight bench-pressing the weight of the planet and only broke a single sweat while out of direct sunlight, cleared 20 light years worth of distance (each single light year consisting of trillions of miles) in a matter of minutes, can survive in space, survived being tossed from orbit to Earth with such force that his impact devastated the planet and caused nuclear winter, flew through a red sun, survived multiple supernovas including one that made Kepler’s Supernova (the only supernova that could be seen from Earth by the naked human eye despite being 25 THOUSAND light years away) look like a sparkler, tanked a Source Wall explosion (basically the Big Bang,) split a moon in half, atomized a planet in a single punch, vaporized another with his heat vision, fought demons in Valhalla alongside Wonder Woman and Thor for a thousand years (yes, I know, this is starting to sound like a story the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past From the Future would tell, but bear with me,) lifted both eternity personified and a book of infinite pages, was sandwitched between two colliding planets, and bested the likes of Samson, Atlas, Hercules, and even Zeus himself in strength and power. Superman has a genius-level intellect with a super brain that can process information thousands of times faster than normal humans, having read the entire contents of the Library of Congress within an hour. He’s only just SLIGHTLY slower than the Flash in terms of speed and agility.

And that’s not even the craziest thing.

One day, the forces of nature themselves, Earth, Water, Fire, and Wind personified, decided that they didn’t like humans anymore and sought to exterminate them and every other living thing with hurricanes, tidal waves, earthquakes, and erupting every volcano on the planet, taunting the Man of Steel that not even he could save the human race from such a calamity. Superman threatened that if they did that, he’d vaporize the ocean, burn every plant, freeze the Earth’s core, and finally destroy the Earth utterly and completely so that there wouldn’t be an Earth for nature to rule...and Earth, Water, Fire, and Wind folded.

No, I’m not making that up. Nature was going to destroy the human race and Superman told them to fuck off...and Nature fucked off! Look it up, I’m not kidding! And all that stuff I described? None of it was pre-Crisis. Pre-Crisis/Silver Age Superman would beat Saitama even faster. Not only was he strong enough to effortlessly carry a bunch of planets daisy-chained together, wipe out whole galaxies with a sneeze, blow out the sun like you and me would blow out a candle, travel through time by flying backwards (fucking really) and could make up brand new super powers right on the fly.

A battle between Saitama and Superman would be an epic spectacle without question, but in the end Superman would come out on top. Not only do his feats and accomplishments fly circles around that of Saitama, but even if the “Saitama beats everyone because he’s unbeatable” thing did apply and he truly was impossible to defeat...well, that’s what Superman is all about. He makes the impossible possible. He’s as strong as he needs to be. Superman isn’t meant to lose. Why? Because his story isn’t about being the best, being a hero for fun or profit, or even about whether or not he’ll win or lose a fight. Superman’s story is that he’ll always do the right thing, even when the right thing isn’t the easy thing, the smart thing, or the popular thing. If doing the right thing means taking on a caped bald guy looking for kicks causing untold amounts property damage because of his reckless if well-intended behavior and then putting him in his place, then Superman will do just that.

One more thing. To all of you arguing “Well Saitama is a parody, so he wins because of that!” Again, he’s not a parody, but even if he was the whole “Well he’s a parody” is exactly why Superman would win. Think about it. Who do you think would win in a fight?

The walking punchline...

...or the real deal?

So that’s my list. Again, not taking anything away from Saitama, I love OPM to pieces, but this whole “He beats everyone ever” is like telling a Chuck Norris joke without even the barest hint of irony. It does nobody any favors, it pisses people off, and it makes the entire OPM fandom look like assholes. Other than that, what did you think of my list? Anyone else you think can take on Caped Baldy? Let me know.

[allhailkingp-a]

⭐ 💟

Send in a symbol to find out what my muse’s results were and whether I think it’s accurate or not. ( still accepting??? maybe??? fuck I dunno )

Send in 💟to find out what kind of ‘dere’ my muse is

( That’s nice, but it’s super wrong.  Keep in mind I actually got tsundere the first time I took the quiz.

I honestly don’t care enough to think about what he’d actually be LMAO.  I looked up a list and fuck dude there’s like 20 types and no one’s got time for that.

I guess we’ll never knooooooow.  Or we’ll go with the first thing I got a few days ago.  That’s closer, to be honest. )

Send in ⭐to see my muse’s Homestuck ‘True Sign’

( Here’s what we got to work with.

That’s right… Gemlo… apparently.

Let’s break down what this means.  Join me under the cut for some really in-depth analysis of what I think of this result.

For one, Porky got one of the Gemini signs… because he’s a Gemini.  Wow.  who would have thought.  I’d copy and paste what the site says about yellowbloods, but holy fuck, it is a text wall.  So I’ll summarize best I can to my understanding.

Yellowbloods or the Gemini whatever the fucks are the smart sign™ of the set.  Kind of intellectuals, but like, assholes.  They tend to be a jack-of-all-trades.  They have high energy.  They can, quote, “talk circles around people”.  They’re good at making money.  They’re impulsive.

Yellowbloods strike me as being the Ravenclaw-esque type of character trope.  Porky is really smart, I feel strongly about that, but he’s not an intellectual type.  He’s just a dumbass who kind of isn’t that stupid sometimes.  I think the general gist of the yellowbloods make sense, but… it’s a sort of… I don’t know.

I was trying to place the Minches on the hemospectrum and I was thinking mid-to-upper class, but this actually does kind of make sense to me.  But upon reading about the blueblood signs/Scorpio (which is what I am… fuck…), that makes more sense overall.  Here’s the highlights of the blueblood description.

“Of all the sign classes, they have the potential to do the most good, but also cause the worse harm. They can be incredibly effective, and also incredibly destructive. Tell a Blue Sign this and chances are they would agree with you. They are magnetic and adaptive, able to adjust how they present themselves in any situation. They have a mask for every occasion […] They are powerful and successful, but they also tend toward jealousy. They often resent those they see as more well-positioned than they are.”

The quiz does encourage you to pick either your sign based on birthday or what you’d feel connected to so we can just pretend he got blueblood and move on.  What I find funny, though, if he were a yellowblood, is how psionic abilities are heavily connected to yellowbloods and Porky just… isn’t psychic.

Anyhow, that’s that.  Onto lunar sway.

My mans got Prospit.  I also have Prospit sway, coincidentally.  Here’s the fun thing about Porky getting Prospit sway.  Half of it makes sense to me, the other half doesn’t.  But, not to spoil things for you, I still agree with the selection because there’s no way in hell he’s a Derse dreamer based on the description provided.  It’s not him.  But what does Prospit sway mean for our bravest little chubster???

Prospit dreamers are more about being in the moment and much choices based on gut feeling.  They don’t think things through and their wants and decisions can change on a dime.  They’re also more okay with authority and attempt to coexist with it.  They’re trusting and poor at hiding their true selves.

All right, so.  That’s pretty accurate.  Hell, even upon summarizing it, I realized I agreed with it more than I initially thought.  So, as we may or may not all be aware, Porky is very prone to changing his mind.  He moves the goalposts for people constantly because he does not know what he wants.  Ever.  He doesn’t think things through pretty much ever, though he definitely did more as time went on.  I disagreed with him coexisting with authority until I realized… Giygas.  He found a way to coexist with Giygas to protect himself.

He’s not trusting, certainly, but let’s be real… he’s so shitty at pretending he’s not evil or that he’s not doing whatever it is he’s planning to do.  The Prospit description just takes a more optimistic look at Porky’s personality, let’s be real here.

And now to move on to Aspect.  I’ll also be talking about Class because I genuinely don’t know why they didn’t include that to begin with.

As we can see, Porky got the Heart aspect.  What does the Heart aspect say about Porky?

Here’s the first line of Heart’s description: “Those bound to the aspect of Heart are very concerned with their favorite subject: themselves.”  It goes on to explain that players who have the Heart aspect are mainly concerned about identity.  Who are they?  What does it mean to be who they are?  It’s not inherently selfish, but it can be, obviously.

Okay.  So.  Aspect is harder to pin but here’s the thing.  I don’t inherently disagree with this choice.  There actually is a lot of connection between Porky and his identity.  He has a massive problem with not knowing who he was for a long time, and you can see him forge an identity as Earthbound goes on, but after that, it becomes more difficult to define because he is out of the bounds of the “rules” that he was playing by previously.

Let me say a thing on Class real quick, because if they’re gonna give us Aspect, let us just take the whole Classpect passage, y’know?  Porky got a canon classpect, actually.  I’d pin him as a Prince of Heart, specifically.  This is important because it actually does change how he interacts with the Heart aspect as a whole.

Look, there isn’t much canon to go on about the exact roles Prince of Heart plays and what that even means.  But I’m gonna nab an analysis from someone who was really popular for their classpect analyses back in the day, because I generally agree with the ideas presented.  Here’s some highlights.

“So they ruthlessly cut down passion and instinct for the things they feel strongly about, not letting themselves be controlled by the whim of emotion either to enjoy things or suffer through them […] A Prince of Heart has a strange mix of violent stubbornness and total apathy, perhaps making them virulently apathetic to something they absolutely refuse to care about one way or another, or being stubborn about the fact that they actually for real totally don’t care about the thing at all, nope, uh-uh […] this might also be expressed in an extreme desire to the point of obsessive craving for a thing or person, not so much just love as an over extreme very needy and jealous form of love.”

However, do note that I don’t 100% agree with the Porky fitting into the Prince of Heart classpect so easily.  It really emphasizes a lack of emotion in the context of a Heart player, and to be fair, Porky tries to be above it all, but not in the way say, like, Dirk is as our canon Prince of Heart.  But this is just a fan interpretation.  It’s a really good start, though. )