#because that's normal.

[doctapuella]

the following is an excessive outline of notes because this morning i was trying to figure out if the mjf vs ethan page match from yesterday's collision was the first title defense that max has won clean (i.e. without cheating or tricking the ref). short version, yeah it was! long version that i compiled after watching every single mjf match since he won the title (defenses in bold):

vs jon moxley, title changes hands: knocks out remsburg (ref1); pulls out the ring but regal stops him using it; paul turner (ref2) gets knocked out; max taps but there's no ref; regal slips max the brass knuckles and he knocks out mox as remsburg gets up, and gets the win

vs ricky starks, first title defense plus winner also gets the diamond ring: max distracts the ref and hits starks w a low blow that directly leads into the pin. prob the simplest one.

vs konosuke takeshita, title-adjacent (victory gets takeshita a title shot): the submission is clean, but max bites takeshita's fingers a few times throughout and uses a ref as shield twice; after the bell, knocks out ref and uses the ring on takeshita and keeps beating him bloody until danielson comes out to stop it.

vs bryan danielson, 1hr iron-man title match: (there's also a several-weeks thread of max paying LFI to interfere and stop danielson from being able to face max for the title) when they go into sudden death, max hits a low blow on danielson; tries to use the belt but remsburg says he'll be disqualified if he does; tries to use the ring but misses the hit, and remsburg takes the ring; danielson gets max in a submission and doesn't see max grab the rope, and max does a loud tap that doesn't count because he has the ropes, but danielson thinks he's won; max bonks him with an oxygen tank then submits him

tag with sammy guevara vs darby allin and jack perry (title-adjacent; determined whether the title match would be mjf vs guevara or a four-way): for weeks prior, mjf attempts frequently to bribe sammy into throwing the title match to him. right before the tag match, max tries to convince jack to betray darby, and darby walks in on him. during the match, max and guevara work together to cheat in various ways (using ropes for leverage, using their scarves to choke darby) and every time either get caught by the ref or are undermined by their opponent reversing it. max tries to steal the pin from sammy and their alliance breaks down and neither of them can manage a solid move thereafter, and the match ends when darby successfully steals the pin from jack, showing their team breakdown.

vs darby allin vs jack perry vs sammy guevara, four-way title match: this was a no-DQ match, so technically none of this is cheating. but! it still isn't clean either, as we shall see. max hits a low blow on sammy. he takes out the ring to use it, but darby gets him with the skateboard before he can do anything. max grabs the belt while remsburg is saying "really? why you gotta do it like this" which establishes that even in a no-DQ match, you can still fight dirty. max rushes at jack with the belt, but jack wrestles it away from him. sammy takes max out of the ring, and we get that moment of jack holding the belt, trying to decide if he should hit a crumpled darby with it. and this is the distinction: using the belt would be totally legal in the match, but there's this whole emphasis on him Not Fighting Like Max. "remember, mjf said that jack lacks that killer instinct." "will he resort to being like mjf? will he do whatever it takes to become aew world champion" then he drops the belt "oh jack perry wants to win it the right way!" and this is what, for me, cements that there is a max-style of dirty fighting even in the context of no-DQ. then of course when darby is prepping the coffin drop, max puts the belt on top of jack so that darby lands fully on it and is too hurt to fight off max's pin.

vs adam cole, title-adjacent (victory gets cole a title shot), ends in a time draw, which is an interesting variable: max kicks out of a pin attempt, shoving cole into remsburg, who is injured and clutching his eye for the entire rest of the match. while remsburg is down, max gets the belt and tosses it for cole to catch, then lies down to frame him. but remsburg is still hurting and doesn't see any of it. as remsburg is about to get up adam slams max with the belt and tosses it away. he pins max, but by the time remsburg pulls himself over, he can only count with agony and max kicks out of the slow count at 2. max distracts him while kicking a low blow on cole. max puts on the diamond ring, but remsburg catches him about to hit cole. cole pins max, but the bell rings for the time limit at the 2 count.

vs hiroshi tanahashi at forbidden door 2: other than max getting caught using the rope for leverage and an eye poke, the match itself was relatively clean, but near the end max gets the belt and it's immediately taken away by the ref, and while the ref is getting rid of it, tanahashi pins max for 7 seconds, though by the time the ref starts counting it's only a 2 count. while tanahashi is arguing with the ref, max puts on his ring, shoves tanahashi into the ref, then hits tanahashi. he puts the ring back away before getting the pin.

vs kip morst, title-adjacent in that it led to the open challenge for the title that immediately followed. max had no time or reason to play dirty in this one.

vs ethan page, surprise title match! i can't find any of max's usual tricks: no noticeable low blows, no use of the belt or ring, no other foreign objects at all. this match definitely served as a strong spark for ethan's face turn, but i'm curious if i'ts also going to end up being meaningful for max. he won without cheating, but he also won by using one of tanahashi's moves before securing the pin with his own. i have no real ideas, just a loose murderboard of thoughts that i'm trying to pull together. it just feels to me like it has to mean something that max defended in a clean match for the first time, with a move he learned from a previous opponent. idk what though.

[mariorsomething]

moments right before daisuke saves the day and gets all the love and praise he deserves and rescue comes just in time and everyone lives forever the end

[staruie]

where my fellow monster fuckers at 👅👅👅👅👅👅

[symphonyofsilence]

Let the poor man rest.

[toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account]

being a student during peak pandemic was so fucking surreal like. "it's not an excuse to fall behind" I cannot stress enough to you how much A Worldwide Plague Upending Life As We Know It is literally one of The Top Three Reasons to fall behind

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

WAIT GENUINE QUESTION FOR ARTISTS, DO YOU GUYS NOT USE THE SAME CANVAS FOR MULTIPLE DRAWINGS???? YOU JUST MAKE A NEW ONE EVERYTIME??

[incohorace]

(consumed with lust voice) omg what a fucking weirdo

[liquidstar]

Yes, Greece still exists, we didn't all die 2000 years ago. Yes, people speak Greek. You people are so fucking stupid for real. So many of you claim to love ancient shit but can't even acknowledge the actual living culture of the people whose mythology and classics you romanticize. You keep leaving annoying comments about how you just forget Greek people still exist, thinking you're being quirky because you love ancient stuff soooo much that you forgot about the people it came from. You think about it so little you don't even realize that an actual Greek person has to read this shit, making it clear how little you actually care about the culture beyond the romanticized (and westernized) mythology. Don't claim you love Greece, don't use our mythology anymore if you can't acknowledge that we're still around without making it about how little you think about us. It's mind boggling that you'd think a Greek person would read this and think you're anything but obnoxious. Explode.

[catmask]

the 'all marriage is gay as far as im concerned' except its me watching a man and woman character in a show i like and accidentally saying 'theyre so gay' because i literally forget thats not the word for romance because to me all romance is gay

[secondbeatsongs]

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal

before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"

and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"

[tariah23]

The manga industry, especially JUMP, needs to hurry up and do away with weekly scheduling for mangaka. There needs to better regulations put into place for their health and safety because this is pitiful. Two weeks - monthly updates should’ve already been the standard for the manga industry at this point. These money grabbers will only continue to put the lives of these artists at stake for the sake of capitalism unless some serious changes are implemented.

[buggachat]

something so fucked up about Chat Noir’s whole deal is that he is in a lot of ways Adrien playing a character. Like Adrien picked up his miraculous and was told he’d be a superhero so he was like “ok, time to act like a superhero!” and he lets himself have fun w it and play up the role and let loose and kind of just allow himself to be silly and goofy and have fun and for once in his life not care about performing Perfection™.

But. But none of the other characters KNOW THAT. So everyone just sees Chat Noir and is like “look at this guy’s ego. He’s so full of himself. Surely it’d be fair to knock him down a few pegs” without being aware of how few pegs he actually HAS. He’s like the “insecure character who overcompensates in ego” trope except he’s really not doing it unironically, he’s just having a fun LARP pretending to have self worth in his off-hours but nobody else is on the same page about it being a game and he refuses to tell them. He just dramatically pouts about it and lets them laugh and pretends like he’s not internalizing it and it is almost 3 am and my brain forced me to write this instead of sleeping I’m gonna take a melatonin

[zealouswitchwerewolf]

Has anyone seen/written any fics where Danny is so used to being an overpowered menace that danger doesn't even register the same for him anymore. Like he's gone against the likes of undergrowth and vortex, he's obviously not going to be intimidated by a middle aged man with sweaty hands pointing a gun at him.

It's all fine until he leaves Amity and starts being put in mildly dangerous situations that don't bother him at all but everyone around him looks super freaked out? And it can range from like being mugged or one of the DC superheroes facing one of their supervillains while all the civilians run away and Danny just keeps going full on ignoring cause not his circus, not his monkeys, but still.

And then he realizes that his reaction is abnormal and people are starting to stare and he doesn't need the extra attention on him but knows he can't act for shit so he just goes for the most deadpan sarcasm he can muster and goes all "oh, nooooo. This is so bad. I am SO scared." And it just makes the stares worse but by then he's committed to the bit and will throw gradually more concerning stuff about his past in conversations with the most dead expression just to see how far he can take it until someone confronts him about it.

[hamsternamedmarinette]

Don't ask how it got into his room

[bunnieswithknives]

As much as I love angst I think it would be funny if he just didnt give af

[inkskinned]

the thing is that they're so fascinated by sex, they love sex, they can't imagine a world without sex - they need sex to sell things, they need sex to be part of their personality, they need sex to prove their power - but they hate sex. they are disgusted by it.

sex is the only thing that holds their attention, and it is also the thing that can never be discussed directly.

you can't tell a child the normal names for parts of their body, that's sexual in nature, because the body isn't a body, it's a vessel of sex. it doesn't matter that it's been proven in studies (over and over) that kids need to know the names of their genitals; that they internalize sexual shame at a very young age and know it's 'dirty' to have a body; that it overwhelmingly protects children for them to have the correct words to communicate with. what matters is that they're sexual organs. what matters is that it freaks them out to think about kids having body parts - which only exist in the context of sex.

it's gross to talk about a period or how to check for cancer in a testicle or breast. that is nasty, illicit. there will be no pain meds for harsh medical procedures, just because they feature a cervix.

but they will put out an ad of you scantily-clad. you will sell their cars for them, because you have abs, a body. you will drip sex. you will ooze it, like a goo. like you were put on this planet to secrete wealth into their open palms.

they will hit you with that same palm. it will be disgusting that you like leather or leashes, but they will put their movie characters in leather and latex. it will be wrong of you to want sexual freedom, but they will mark their success in the number of people they bed.

they will crow that it's inappropriate for children so there will be no lessons on how to properly apply a condom, even to teens. it's teaching them the wrong things. no lessons on the diversity of sexual organ growth, none on how to obtain consent properly, none on how to recognize when you feel unsafe in your body. if you are a teenager, you have probably already been sexualized at some point in your life. you will have seen someone also-your-age who is splashed across a tv screen or a magazine or married to someone three times your age. you will watch people pull their hair into pigtails so they look like you. so that they can be sexy because of youth. one of the most common pornography searches involves newly-18 young women. girls. the words "barely legal," a hiss of glass sand over your skin.

barely legal. there are bills in place that will not allow people to feel safe in their own bodies. there are people working so hard to punish any person for having sex in a way that isn't god-fearing and submissive. heteronormative. the sex has to be at their feet, on your knees, your eyes wet. when was the first time you saw another person crying in pornography and thought - okay but for real. she looks super unhappy. later, when you are unhappy, you will close your eyes and ignore the feeling and act the role you have been taught to keep playing. they will punish the sex workers, remove the places they can practice their trade safely. they will then make casual jokes about how they sexually harass their nanny.

and they love sex but they hate that you're having sex. you need to have their ornamental, perfunctory, dispassionate sex. so you can't kiss your girlfriend in the bible belt because it is gross to have sex with someone of the same gender. so you can't get your tubes tied in new england because you might change your mind. so you can't admit you were sexually assaulted because real men don't get hurt, you should be grateful. you cannot handle your own body, you cannot handle the risks involved, let other people decide that for you. you aren't ready yet.

but they need you to have sex because you need to have kids. at 15, you are old enough to parent. you are not old enough to hear the word fuck too many times on television.

they are horrified by sex and they never stop talking about it, thinking about it, making everything unnecessarily preverted. the saying - a thief thinks everyone steals. they stand up at their podiums and they look out at the crowd and they sign a bill into place that makes sexwork even more unsafe and they stand up and smile and sign a bill that makes gender-affirming care illegal and they get up and they shrug their shoulders and write don't say gay and they get up, and they make the world about sex, but this horrible, plastic vision of it that they have. this wretched, emotionless thing that holds so much weight it's staggering. they put their whole spine behind it and they push and they say it's normal!

this horrible world they live in. disgusted and also obsessed.