#didn't know it had a tumblr fandom! thought it was a reddit thing only

[memen18-m5r3]

hello surviving centricide fandom...I bring you some wacky food

(i'm also animating a small portion of Centricide 3.5 but since I can't tell how much more time it's gonna take I'll show you some sneak peeks! :3)

((since I'm a certified yapper, I added some additional info + translations to all the images descriptions! not sure if it qualifies as ID so feel free to add upon it if necessary))

[tarathoughts13]

FIXING BIT CITY - PART 1

okay this is a very long post and i apologise - i didn't mean to have this many thoughts on bit city but i do so i would really appreciate if you read through this whole thing and hear me out completely:

so, i think we can all agree that the smosh main channel right now isn't doing so well, this time last year, most of their videos on main had a good 1 million+ views, especially after food battle. but nowadays, most of the bit city sketches get from 400k - 900k on average views, 2024 youtube sucks is the only bit city sketch to get above 1 million views.

i think a big reason for this drop in numbers is for 2 reasons, 1. the fact that smosh put hold on all their other sketches that they were doing on the main channel for bit city, and took a whole 2 month break for it, for the end result being, well, average. and the 2nd reason being is that, well, bit city as a whole isn't the best show and while it has it's strong points, it's not a good enough show on it's own that will make your average viewer want to tune in and it's also just, not, that good. now im a big smosh fan and i only want the best for the channel, which is why im gonna try and break down the reasons why bit city isn't really working and how to fix it, hopefully if we spread this around a little bit in the smosh fandom here on tumblr, we'll be able to spread some news (ill post this on reddit as well).

okay now the breakdown. let's start with the concept of bit city, from what i've gathered, bit city is basically trying to be the 'snl'/late night with jimmy show of smosh, the all in all sketch show that has a bit of everything (like a variety show). now i don't watch snl much but from what i know of it, snl episodes have a typical format that they fall into, they start with a cold open, followed by a monologue, then 2-3 sketches, then commercial break which is where a lot of commericial parodies happen, then a musical performance, then weekend update, and sometimes an addtional performance by a musical guest, and then credits. and you can see smosh borrowing some of those segments for bit city, now this as an idea is great. i think that smosh could pull it off if they wanted to, they have a whole multiverse (literally) of characters to choose from for sketches, they have multiple cast members who are great at hosting and who are able to carry segments on their own, and they have a good enough budget to pull different parts of these segments off.

however, where smosh breaks away from the snl format is the fact that they have structured their show more like a late night show would, having a host and a guest, now this is where smosh starts to lose me a little bit. not because i hate the idea, but because, late night humour is very different from sketch comedy, late night tv's comedy typically relies on topicality (meaning the current things going on in today's society like politics, pop culture, etc.), interviews with guests and recurring segments (think mean tweets on jimmy kimmel), yes they do have sketches, but the format of the sketches is very different. that being said, i think waht smosh was going for in the end, which was a 'late night' esque show where the 'guests' are characters or impressions by the cast, is a geneuienly great idea.

where bit city starts to fail or let me down is the execution, now they cast chanse and angela as the hosts, which i do actually really like since i think they both have a lot of personality, they both are entertaining to watch, and they have a good dynamic which viewers can watch and be entertained by. so i think it was a good choice to have them be the hosts. where i think bit city starts to really lose me is, well, the bits, the sketches.

so far, there have been 6 episodes of bit city, and so far, the bits and characters that have stayed in my head and that i think are truly memorable include the one direction reunion, the "straight eye" cast, the kardashians bit and the ianthony bit (although i personally was let down by that it was very popular in the fandom so im including it), that is it. every other bit has been either average or forgettable, in fact, the only episode of bit city which i think lands on every level is the straight vs gay episode.

why? let's break it down.

bit city as a show follows a general structure, the show opens with a 'cold open' of sort where angela says something like 'XX PERSON DID WHAT?' and chanse replies with something along the lines of 'yeah bitch' or some one liner response, after that they have a bit of bantering between chanse and angela which goes on either too long or too short, before cutting to their first set of commercials, after that they return with their first sketch or bit which is typically an interview or a reunion with the 'guest' being either an impression or character by the cast, in the middle of the interview they cut to the commericals again before returning to the bit again, after the bit hits it's "climax" of sorts, then they cut to a third set of commercials, before returning for either an improvised segment with members of the cast as themselves playing games ie. straight vs gay trivia. or the 'hot goss' section where they have tommy read off a teleprompter some jokes about modern day pop culture before interviewing another guest (sometimes they cut to commercials here as well but not always), before having the show come to an end with chanse jumping over a car.

now, let's go bit by bit (pun not intended) on every part of this show and break it down bit by bit (okay this time intended).

the cold opens - imo this is one of the weaker parts of the show, i get what they're going for with it, but it just feels so dry and bland, i get that they can't do a full opening monologue and they need something to open the show in that way, but eveyr joke in the cold open section has since fallen flat for me, so really, my only advice here is get better writers or write better jokes.

the banter/improvised section - this is one of the better parts of the show which i do like (althooguh i do think that it does in some cases go on for way too long) but it's mainl because chanse and angela are such likable people that it works, recently they've started adding in some bits to this section like the rib cam and the erewhon taste testing, so i think if i have any real advice for this section of the show, it would be to a. shorten it and not make it drag on as long or b. if you're not gonna shorten it, then at least add more improvised or bits like the rib cam to this part of the show, this would be also be part of the show to bring back segments like smoffice or let's do this on a smaller scale (although ill add more about let's do this later) to have somehting entertaining for this part of the show

commercials - the commercials are one of the most disappointing part of the show to me not because they're bad, but because they could be so much more. like the concept of parody commercials in a sketch show is SOO good, for one, it can help point out flaws in advertising and commercial industry in general, but they can also just be the perfect ground space for character building ro for expanding the smosh universe, but every bit city commercial, the the humour jsut feels so, generic? and it falls so flat every time. and this falls into one of my main critiques of the show, which is, so much of the show feels like such average level humour, like this is smosh, the channel which literally thrives off of characters and over the top bits, so why aren't they utilising that? i can't think of 1 commercial which has stayed in my head or which i would call memorable in this show so far, besides maybe the straight vs gay 'straight boyfriend os' commercial (but even that cuold have been better imo). my real advice for the commercials in the show is a. cut it down, don't have 3-4 commercials in every bit city episode (especially if they're gonna be so average), but b. if you're gonna have this many, use them to expand the smosh universe. have commercials like idk, Mr. Pervert's coffee shop, now hiring, or Fred Dart's new single just launched, anything that will actually add value to the smosh universe and not just be some one off. but if they want to do one off commercials, they could also return to their 'apple product commercial' esque skecthes, like the apple vision pro sketch they did? yeah, do that and split it up into 4 parts instead of all at once, and you have 4 commercials for a bit city episode.

interviews - the interview segments have been okay so far. i liked the one direction reunion, i liked the kardashians one, i somehwat enjoyed the old smosh reunion (but im not that much of an og smosh fan so i didn't enjoy it as much as others) and i really liked the 'straight eye' cast one. i think my main critique for the interview sections of bit city is the same for the commercials in that, it could jsut be SO MUCH more. i for one would love for them to maybe do stuff like a 'smosh the sitcom reunion' with all the characters like kevin, krungle, young sebastian, chosen, etc. or a 'chosen special' where chosen gives us a deep dive into being a chosen, waht it takes to be a chosen, who is or isn't chosen, etc. these sketches in my opinion would be a. more funny than just random pop culture references, and b. interesting deep dive into the pre-existing characters of smosh. and that's not me saying that i think they need to completely erase the pop culture elements of the show, im jsut saying, lean into more of the smosh specific character work of the cast instead of focusing more on the pop culture elements, you can still have reunions like the hsm or the teletubbies reunions (which btw i think were top tier smosh sketches) but just don't make that the focus of the show. also i do think at one point having actual guest features for this section of the show could be interesintg, but seeing how things are going right now, i don't think that will be happening in the near future.

improvised 'games'/recurring segments of the show: so far, what i think they're trying to do in the second half of bit city episodes is try to have one of those 'recurring segment' bits like they have on late night tv with the smosh cast, basically where the cast and host s play improvised games, now this isn't a bad idea but imo it is kinda pointless. liek i don't hate it as a segment, but i think it takes up a lot of run time which could instead be used for stuff like, idk, actual sketches? but if they are trying to do bits like this, i think what would be better is to bring back the 'google search history/watch history' sketches they used to do for this part of the show, since it actually fits quite perfectly. also, my advice for this segment of the show to elevate it a bti more is to really lean into the audience participation part of the show, i think they're trying to do that with the 'crew stories' part but so far they're kinda falling flat/hit or miss, so i think what would be better is to do stuff like have audiecne shots liek they do in real late night tv, play games which involve the audience, or if you wanna involve the crew stories,maybe do it in the format of like in the live show for under the mistletoe (or maybe it was UTI i dont remember) where they have one crew memeber or audience memebr on stage interacting with the cast in characters (like in UTI they had lisa's exes) or just have the crew member tell a story from their life and show them in the audience. that would be better imo.

hot goss - now for every episode where they don't do an improvised game or recurring segment, they do hot goss, which i think you can tell is trying to act as like the 'weekend update' of this show btu more leaning into pop culture elements, which, im sorry, i love you tommy, but this segment is very hit or miss. i don't hate tommy as a host, i think he has a lot of personaltiy which makes him likable and entertaing to watch at times, but this segment is just, very glass half full for me. i liked the stephen king's son episode i think that was well done, but i think my real advice for this segment is the same for the rest of bit city which truly is lean more into the character element of smosh, do stuff like 'deep dive into krungle's dating life' or 'GERALD CAKES TELLS ALL' stuff like that. or if you really want a segment to be about pop culture, then i think a better way to do that would be to maybe bring back the teleprompter bits that they used to do in smosh pit weekly back in like 2016 or so, OR, just get better writers (also cut it down - we do not need like 10 mins+ of amanda being chappell roan and sabrina carpenter's agent - which btw is SUCH a good idea for a character, but as all bit city bits, it fell flat).

--> ,however, i think a better way to do this type of 'weekend update' type show is bring back a smosh pit weekly esque segment - smosh weekly or bit city weekly - and THAT'S where you bring in the topical element of bit city, it's a much better way to do it imo. and you can still keep hot goss if you want to for as i previously siad the character gossip deep dives or the pop culture characters, but alos have this weekly show drive the 'topical' parts of bit city.

chanse jumping over a car - really have no commenrs on this one, i like it as a bit, i think it'll get old really quickly, but for what it is, i like it

@lilac-hecox @smoshkidtv @guessitrunsinthegenes @wazurenaide

[tame-a-messenger]

Damangela lives rent free on smoshtwt

...but in the most unfortunate way because have they not seen from this fixation of theirs that there's a section of us who will have a field day if Damien surprise us one day as a guest in a Starkid prod? Or another variant at Smosh where both Angela and Damien can showcase their talents and intellect? Their chaotic bickering is like treats because there's also other Smosh duos that have it too. But those fewer times where they truly shine, whether they're in the same video or not, really feels like a reward to witness it unfold.

(I am one of those who like this duo because of their musical inclinations and astounded by their way of thinking)

I simply don't know what they are trying to impose. The perfect person podcast really sealed it to me. That if what they imply is she only tolerates every interaction she had with him is simply off the marks. The pièce de résistance they can't ever refute.

Is it also not a tad reaching to practically put it on blast with their straw picking speculation that it was a Damien thing where they perceived him not being as socially adept in a way he is not in good terms to his coworkers? That's not a good look to give to someone who was masking before.

Smoshtwt can be too much sometimes,

I think I finally figured out why the interactions between here (tumblr) and there (Twitter) are so different - They partake in 'Stan' culture, while over here is a bit more rooted in classic 'Fandom' culture.

If you didn't know, 'Stan' comes from combining 'Stalker' and 'Fan' (I believe originating in the K-pop community) (though if you google it, it says it comes from an Eminem song. Funny, but I don't think that's right) so it's a bit more... intense. (either origin for 'Stan' is pretty extreme though)

That and Twitter in general festers a more hostile community. The more you make someone mad the more they interact with you, so Twitter pushes that content because of that.

(Back to your ask)

I don't know if I could physically watch a Starkid production with Damien in it, PURELY because I'd be TOO DAMN HAPPY. I'd be pausing every second and hyperventilating lol. (fr though, that would be SO FUCKING COOL!!)

It's maybe a little bit of a weird relation but, their dynamic to me is like watching a movie with incredible writing? For example of what I mean by that- Their Reddit Stories Ep really had me thinking totally different about all the situations. Literally every story Shayne would read out I would be thinking about what I thought about it, (I like to see if anyone on the couch is going to have similar opinions to me) and every. single. story. Angela and Damien came up with points I never even thought about, but were SO RIGHT!

He'd bring up something, then she'd dunk it with the most factual thing I've ever heard! (that guy not being able to wear that watch ever in front of his girlfriend !!) That whole episode is so good just for the way they both problem solve and how well they compliment each others opinions! They just have such good dialogue with each other. (Genuinely Oscar worthy writing in that episode of RS)

Every time I come across a post ANYWHERE talking about how they don't get why people even like Damangela because "Angela doesn't even seem to like Damien" it makes my eyes pop out of my skull.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN?? DO WE KNOW THE SAME ANGELA AND DAMIEN???

Like the sheer amount they both have gone on record saying how much they enjoy each others presence and love each other doesn't mean anything to them?! The amount they make each other laugh??

Like it really does come across as these Accounts just really not liking Damien more than anything to actually do with his and Angela's dynamic. (I could talk about reasons why Damien comes across as 'awkward' or 'bad with coworkers' to some people at length, but I'll save that for another day)(<-signed, Another Neurodivergent person with people issues <3)

I'm also totally convinced all the people hating on Damangela haven't seen much content with both of them in it. That's the only reason I would accept as to why they hate Damangela so much lol, they truly just don't know what they're missing out on <3

[bellatrixobsessed1]

The Tragedy of the Trix; Rehabilitation vs Punishment

Saw this post on reddit asking if the Trix are tragic characters and at first I almost said no. And then I thought about it a bit. On the outside they seem to handle things very well and they seem to be delighted and content with being evil for the lols but honestly, that happiness is probably super hollow and fake. And they might not even realize it. It has the same energy as someone super wealthy who has a lot of nice things but very little love. Anyways I decided to share my response on tumblr.

I've got several points here that I might elaborate on later if I get some time because I feel like there are a lot of topics here that the fandom doesn't talk about a lot; like Light Rock and the treatment of witches overall.

Honestly yeah I kind of do think that they are tragic characters. It is mostly self-inflicted and we don't really know what happened to them (unless we're counting Icy's last minute backstory) to make them the way that they are. So I can absolutely see them having grown up in rough environments.

The thing that I think makes it a real tragedy as that no one really ever tired to help them. Griffin actively encouraged their mischief and bad behavior until it became a little too evil. In the 4kids dub they didn't even get expelled for the deed itself but because they got caught. And Griffin took little to no responsibility for her hand in all of this; she's the adult, they were still probably teens when they started at Cloud Tower. So in some sense she did have a duty to guide them (and every other student). She praised them for the things that they would eventually be imprisoned for. Which is the next issue; they just kept getting imprisoned and punished with no real attempt at rehabilitation.

I would not call Light Rock rehabilitation. Based on the 4kids dub it had cult vibes more than anything else; not even the guards were allowed to leave and one of them said he felt like a prisoner rather than a guest. The whole scene opened with a debate over the morality of trying to force people to be happy. Light Rock was less about rehabilitation and more about brainwashing. So the Trix never really did get a shot at true rehabilitation and help. It was all punishment. I feel like Light Rock overall was a waste of potential; there were some implications there that really could have made for a cool plot point.

But yeah I feel like not only were the Trix neglected and heavily misguided but they were actively pushed in the wrong direction. The witches in general (not just the Trix) have such a stigma about them that even when they're doing good or minding their own business, they get accused of being evil. And so no one should be surprised when they just embrace the image.

I also feel as though some of the punishments were disproportionate to downright cruel. Like them getting sucked into a void in season 7. Heck, even Light Rock was cruel; it's brainwashing, an attempt at manipulation, and psychological abuse. It's usually passed as a joke but honestly, they have experienced the horrors. Of course they're going to come out more resentful. The comics are almost worse for this. Again it's usually the result of their own schemes but their suffering in the comics is literally played for laughs.

I think that that's why I liked season 8 upon rewatching it; more compassion was given to the Trix. Bloom told Icy that she saw good in her. And, what do you know, Icy was receptive to it. Instead of taking the power for herself, she helped the Winx save the magical dimension. I really would like a follow up on that story line. It was nice to see them humanized a bit more.

Tl;dr: Yeah the Trix brought a lot of their troubles onto themselves but they were actively being praised for doing evil until they did something too evil. And there was no genuine attempt to help them.

[nataliaphantomhivesblog]

What are your current fandoms??

OH MY GOD!!! I WAS WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO ASK ME THIS!! LETS GOOOO🥳🥳🥳

1. Black Butler<3

It would've been incredibly distasteful to not put this beauty on top of my list. I have been a fan of this one since 5th grade, the literal backbone of my insanity.

I may complain monthly over the agnoizingly short chapters, but the narrative and storytelling in this manga is one of my favorites ever.

Although you didn't ask, I have the need to mention: Ciel Phantomhive is my child!!

And yes, I am still awaiting Prince Soma's return.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a sebaciel wierdo and my space doesn't welcome the romanticization of pedophila. "waah waah but it's fiction!" okay?? my account is dedicated on fictional stories and characters and I don't want your wacky shit here. Thank you in advance.

2. Bungou Stray Dogs!!!

What a crime it would've been if I didn't mention the reason my account grew in the first place!!

BSD has such a special place in my heart. Tbh bsd saved me during the downfall that was 2021.

I think people who aren't new to my blog know I'm a sucker for Soukoku. I've made extensive analysis on their relationships for 3 years now. When will this brainrot end!?!?

And oh, of course I am forever greatful to the lovely @ryuuaka713 for collaborating with me on various post, I couldn't have done it without her!! Hope life treats you well! You got a tumblr friend always rooting for ya<3

ALSO: If any of you ever want to ask me anything regarding bsd that isn't Soukoku, please do! I love bsd as a whole and would be happy to answer<3

3. Berserk

Let me make one thing clear!!! I am NOT a berserk reddit fanboy who completely ignores and neglects the narrative of this story in order to fill whatever inner void that needs to be filled.

I am suuuper passionate about the Golden Age Arc and the Pre Eclipse era of Berserk, it would be impossible to shut me up about it.

I could go on billion rants about Griffith's character and his actual complexities throughout the narrative. (no, he isn't emotionless, that would destory the whole point of the story lol)

Also I want to give a not-so-subtle shoutout to @bthump for validating every single thought I had while reading Berserk and always providing textual evidence. Thank you for being the light in the darkness of this fandom!

4. Death Note

sighs yes I am still in the fandom of an anime that has only one season and ended so poetically that it makes perfect sense that it doesn't have a continuation yet my brain screams for content when obviously it will never happen.

Before anyone asks, I am not team Light or team L, both of them are selfish people and used others lives in order to beat one another.

I am a constant defender of the fact that the Death Note consumed Light. Not only is it textually stated; but it's visually stated

(Light's eyes get wider and more innocent looking for a reason when he forgets the death note guys!!!)

Anyways, this story is absolutely awesome and I think most people can agree with that.

I don't rewatch this anime often, but when I do I get shooked by the big brain plans and big brain confrontations lmao.

5. Moral Orel

"MORAL OREL SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN CANCELLED!! FOOLISH PEOPLE FEARED IT SPOKE TOO MUCH FACTS" I scream into a void, tears fill my eyes as losing my religion by R.E.M plays in the background.

Seriously though, I love this show; a literal masterpiece. I don't think theres any show that made me incredibly concious of how my own family's dynamic worked as this one did.

Has amazing takes of the human condition and contains life long lessons.

I once made a long post about the generational abuse of moral orel if you want to check it out!

Anyways, if you haven't had the glorious chance to watch this masterpiece. PLEASE DO!! I BEG!!! The whole series is out on youtube!

we don't talk about the first 3 episodes!!!

6. Sonic!!!!

I never post anything sonic related on my blog, but I adore Sonic! Not only my childhood, but it continues to pump off amazing content and games.

Fun fact: I have a cute mini sonic keychain my friend gifted me, I take it with me everywhere!!

DID YOU KNOW THAT KELLIN QUINN FROM SLEEPING WITH SIRENS WAS INVOLVED WITH THE SONIC FRONTIERS SOUNDTRACK!?!?!? AAAAAAA I LOVE SONIC GAMES MUSIC AND ITS DIVERSITY

Nobody asked, but my favorie character is Knuckles and Shadow for anyone who wants to know! (No one wants to know but I HAVE THE NEED TO SAY IT.)

anyways yes, I love Sonic, I am at arms-lenght with the fandom since i'm... well... not much into the furry stuff that goes on. But theres lots of fanmade content out there that is super cool!

IN CONCLUSION!?!?!?

I have lots and lots of other fandoms im in but i fear i will go on forever if I keep on talking.

Thank you so much for reading all the way through and please, don't ever hesitate to ask me anything related to any of these fandoms above. Hyper analizing stuff is my speciality after all:D

[allwaswell16]

- 2023 Fic Fest Participation -

Number of fests: 5

Number of fics: 8 out of 13

Favorite fest/fic: @louisrarepairfest because it's mine lol. I get so excited not only to write for it, but of course, to read all the fics that get written for it. It feels like the greatest gift ever! I ended up writing 3 fics for my fest this year. My fav of those is probably: One 

Fests you would love to do again this year (if they come back): Obvs @louisrarepairfest and the newly reformed @1domegaverseficfest

Tagging: @voulezloux @enchantedlandcoffee @letthemusicmoveyou28 @justanothershadeofblue @nouies and anyone who wants to do this, just say I tagged you!

Fics & thoughts under the cut

Do You See What I See for @faithinthefutureficfest

T, 2k, Louis/Harry | vet Louis, humor, stray animals

I don't know what to say for myself here. I had already signed up for another song for this fest, but this one didn't have anyone signed up for it so I said I'd write a second fic for the fest. I apologize to SIBWAWC for writing the silliest fic ever for it. I have so so so enjoyed the comment section for this though hahahahaha! Loved everyone's screaming :)

Bitter Ends Turn Sweet for @faithinthefutureficfest

E, 30k, Louis/Harry | songfic, famous/not famous

Well, this is the fic I actually meant to write for this fest lol. The first time I listened to Chicago I was at an 11 waiting to hear what it sounded like and as I listened this whole story appeared in my head. And I was just like...nah, not gonna write a long kid fic, am I? Turns out I did.

All This Time for Knot in my Name (multi-fandom event)

T, 1k, Louis/Harry | omegaverse, flower shop

So this has a complicated backstory that I won't get into lol, but I noticed this event happening to counteract AI and was like ohhh that's very cool and when I went to the collection I saw @louisthiccsexyglitteryass already had fics there and I was like ooh there are already 1D fics there? So then I felt comfortable joining in, too!

On That Note for a defunct fest that is now @1domegaverseficfest

E, 6k, Louis/Harry | omegaverse, office au, epistolary

Someone suggested a prompt based on a Reddit post that I liked about co-workers who only spoke through random notes on their Dropbox folders. And I saw a post on Tumblr about feral omegas and so I put those things together for this. And I really loved the omega friendships in this one. And it was fun to write the little notes that went back and forth between Harry and Louis.

Ace of Hearts for @sevenseasofharryandlouis

E, 10k, Louis/Harry | pirates, sequel

I had been saying I would write the sequel for Ace of Spades for a YEAR when I saw this fest and asked if I could join way after sign ups closed because 1) it fit the theme and 2) a deadline was the only way it was going to get written lol

Crush for @louisrarepairfest

T, 1k, Niall/Louis | co-workers, office

I decided I wanted to write rare pairs I hadn't ever written before and Nouis just felt right for the prompt. I found the prompt on Tumblr about how some office himbos tried to cheer up their co-worker who had just been dumped by her boyfriend. And they thought maybe mac & cheese would help.

Daydream for @louisrarepairfest

T, 2k, Zayn/Louis | girl direction, coffee shop

Another rare pair I'd never written AND I'd never written girl direction before. I got the prompt from a fic I read in another fandom about two strangers who see each other at the coffee shop everyday and what happens after one of them doesn't show up one day. But then I started writing and it all got chaotic and a bit different than that prompt lol. I think it turned out really fun though!

One for @louisrarepairfest

E, 4k, Louis/Tommy Shelby (Peaky Blinders)

SO. Obviously a v rare rare pair. BUT I had been wanting to write Louis/Cillian Murphy for years and couldn't figure out the right story for it. And finally it occurred to me that what I wanted to write was Louis/Cillian's character on Peaky Blinders lol. And then it all fell into place. I really enjoyed writing this as a historical Peaky Blinders fic and playing around with the structure a bit which is why the title is One. You follow Louis from the start, then one month later, then one week later, then one day later, then one hour later...and it actually really worked!

[suite-dee-reynolds]

Wait, you've been a Sunny fan for 8 years?! You've got to tell us how it's been in that time!!! What's the vibe been like here in that time and how has it changed? What were the big fan theories? Was r/iasip always such a hellhole dumpsterfire? What are the big things from the fandom back in the day that we don't know about but should?

Ooooh lets see what I remember-

Charlie reigned supreme- like really and truly so many blogs and so, so much content was Charlie Charlie Charlie, everyday, all the time and I mean he still is insanely popular but definitely back in the day Charlie in the show and of the cast was easily the most popular, like it felt like 7/10 posts were about him. Glenn was next in line but I do distinctly remember Kaitlin and Rob didn't have as much content about them, at a certain point I kinda was the Kaitlin Olson tag, that's not me being up myself I just used to be in her tag constantly and it'd be a lot of posts in a row of just me- the girls of the series def didnt always get the love they should and I'm not really sure that's changed much ☠ But yeah this was also around the time that everyone was also going gaga about Pacific Rim so that def made Charlie even more popular too.

Macdennis has always, always been a popular pairing but their popularity 100% has skyrocketed the past few years, and I mean SKYROCKETED. Like they're on par with some wildly popular mlm ships nowadays and it's lowkey so funny to see em in the ring with like. destiel 😂 now when I go in the tag it seems half the posts feature mac and dennis, which is notable to me bc Mac especially was kinda... Unloved is not the right way to phrase it bc fans have always loved him but Rob/Mac def didn't get /as/ much love back in the day. Like people often spoke of him as the weakest character but after season 13 I think he's gained more appreciation.

Fans have def gotten much bigger on theories and stuff these days, I'm sure they had em back then too but it wasn't as prevalent and none particularly stand out, it was usually just the "X characters are secretly sleeping together" type beat. I also remember a popular theory that everyone was going to die in the inevitable series finale but then the show never got cancelled and I dont know what that was about?

Reddit has always been messy and there def was a pretty big us vs them type vibe between sunny fans back then- though it was less reddit vs tumblr and more "straight dude bros" vs everyone else like I remember so many posts being like "Ugh straight dude bros don't get the show" I probably made some of those posts 😂 Lots of "Mac isn't actually gay" too which is very, very funny in hindsight- No one ever thought they'd canonize his sexuality.

Ummm... Probably the most notable thing to me tho is seeing how popular the cast has become, like 8 years ago Danny was the only "Big name" Like the media absolutely spoke of the show as these no name people and Danny Devito. I mean that was not totally the case for Charlie, he was becoming more and more popular and gaining traction in the mainstream with pacific rim and the likes but with Glenn, Kaitlin and Rob they were definitely not super well known outside Big always sunny fans so seeing them go from that to Rob being besties with Ryan Reynolds and stuff has honestly been super interesting and funny. Like I remember posting rob and kaitlins wedding pictures and getting so many people going WAIT THEYRE MARRIED?? it was hilarious to see the transition.

Yeah those are probably the biggest changes I can think of- it's gotten more popular which explains most of it, shipping has def become a much bigger thing as well, ships were pretty chill back then, there wasn't too much fic or art so thats different now :)

OH BUT ART! There's always been wonderful fan artists but nowadays wowee!! some amazing art for the series, like much more abundant! That's the gist of it :)

[ladymorghul]

Idk if you are on Reddit, but I used to be often and I actually liked the green sub (well, mostly) because it was great to have an opportunity to freely express pro green opinions without being downvoted into oblivion or insulted. When the show was more actual, the main sub was mostly a hellish experience for pro green fans, so it was nice to have our own safe space. However, my experience has started to change recently. There are too many divisions among the green fandom which isn't great, but that wouldn't be such a big problem if some fans were more tolerant toward other greens who don't completely agree with them in every single detail.

I've noticed (and this is not only on Reddit, but also on Tumblr, Twitter etc. ) that there is a certain narrative that apparently every green has to accept and follow or else will be accused of being a secret black, false green, show pleb (lol)...God forbid if you are not a book purist (because F&B is such a masterpiece lmao), or if you are pro Helaemond or anti Al*smond. Our hot milf witch rules (god, I hate the big titty girlfriend and milf hunter jokes), Helaemonds are primarily self inserts because Helaena is a blank canvas and Helaemonds don't actually like her as she is (according to one of the most recent threads) ... Also, you mustn't criticize Aegon at all. There are literally people who are trying to convince others that he was so great in the book and he would never force himself on a servant. Now, I agree that groping maids is not the same as being a clueless rapist like in the show and the showrunners did unfairly take things too far with him. I understand the frustration, but still, they had some basis for the rape decision (even if I dislike the way they executed it) in the same book these purists worship. They also claim he was as good warrior as the Conqueror himself and if you try to say that he was quite brave but that he was actually severely injured at the beginning of the war and had only one more fight at the end you will certainly be booed. Oh, and Daeron is one of the best Targaryens ever and Alicent's favourite (again, we obviously didn't read the same book) and the evil Sapochnik wanted to erase him only to prop up Aemond to whom he gave Daeron's best traits (again, complete bullshit). Furthermore, book!Alicent is an amazing and apparently more likeable?? character while in the show they totally ruined her. I agree only partially, I preferred her show version because in the book I didn't like her at all while in the show she is one of my favourites, however, her characterization in episodes 8 and 9 seriously annoyed me because of inconsistencies and Rhae fangirling. Still, they heavily exaggerate while criticising her show version. These are only some of the sacred rules apparently every green has to follow or else will be accused of not being the true green. Like, who gets to decide this? Idk, it really disappoints me because I thought that the sub doesn't need to be an eco chamber nor the green fans have to be monolithic hiveminds like black stans they like to criticize, even if they are on the same team. It's been a while since I commented or participated at all there because of these things and will probably do the same on other SM. I think I really need a break of this fandom.

Anyway, sorry for the rant, yours is one of the rare blogs I still like and follow and it seemed like a good place to vent😅. I know you've had some interesting experiences on SM so I believe you know at least partially what I'm talking about.

i get it.

and when i say i get it, i mean the part about there being made up rules of what a 'green' is and how if you're not following them, you will be accused of some bs stuff.

i guess it's partly why i call my self a greens enjoyer and not a green. i've seen plenty of opinions from 'greens' that i didn't like, from straight up unnecessary misogynistic comments (some of them by men who think that this fandom just gives them the pass to say anything) to really weird hypocritical opinions over ships. it's been... exhausting.

for anyone who's reading this going "but what about team black?": everyone knows my takes on tb stans. we're talking about greens right now because this is where we mostly hang out and it sucks that there's many people who fully believe they dictate who gets to enjoy the greens and how.

with me it started with anti targaryen sentiment. when i first started the show, i thought the story was gonna be rhaenyra fighting against her uncle for the throne. i didnt know anything about the dance of the dragons. of course, i started reading on the story very soon and watching the show and seeing the dynamic between rhaenyra and alicent, i easily attached myself to alicent because it seemed like genuinely no one was in her corner, even the people who were supposed to be.

but i still watched the show because of the idea that i'm watching targaryens fight each other and be unhinged and have dragons.

so you can imagine my surprise when i realized that maybe half the people who call themselves greens are staunchly anti targaryen. they don't like targaryens and they don't like dragons. it was a bit of a head scratcher for me. i knew why that was the case, because many of them were coming from game of thrones with an anti dany mindset and saw rhaenyra's side as the more targaryen side (even though in the beginning they were arguing with tb stans over it) and alicent's side is cooler because she and otto are hightowers and not targaryens.

that wasn't the case for me? i mean sure was i critical of dany many times? yes. but i still loved watching daenerys as a character. and i loved the idea of watching a new show that focuses on house targaryen and their dragons.

and then the whole targtower kids debate.... when the argument needed it, greenies were like "yes they're also targaryens" but then they'd hate on their targaryen side and then suddenly they legit started saying yes they're only hightowers because they're better than the other targaryens. to me it's such clownery.... i wanted to knock their heads together w the tb stans who were saying the targtowers kids are not targaryens.

then there's the greens, or more specifically, the aemond stans who babify aemond to such a degree that they speak about how alicent parentified him. those are usually super welcome in green spaces, even though their interest lies almost solely in aemond and whether or not he gets to meet al*s and how aemond is more special than the rest and he'll have his misunderstood storyline together w the only person who gets him al*s. weird that these people are far more welcome in green spaces than helaemonds. but i won't comment further.

and then the helaemond stuff happened. people dk this but i clocked helaemond immediately. i did not come after the show ended and were like omg wow this ship that i didn't notice. no. i immediately picked up on it. i didn't want to tweet about it because i knew it would start a fuss but others were shyly posting and i saw green moots call them all the possible names because of it. and then something weird happened... the same green moots who had been horrible to other people over helaemond started talking about helaeg*n. helaeg*n was interesting to me so i thought hey maybe they losened up a bit? no. no way, they were rabidly against any form of helaemond. i ended up losing 80% of my green moots. i was basically just in my own sphere doing my own thing because these people couldn't get over a difference of ship preference. they were shipping helaeg*n and aeg*nd and alysm*nd, all of them problematic in their own ways, but helaemond was somehow the devil. and i know people who have had the same experience. they were mostly leaning green, but when they started to ship helaemond, other greens jumped them.

about character opinions... i don't get it. i mean, i get it and i don't. i get team green's utter frustration with the writers because i feel that frustration myself and certain sections of the fandom do a lot to mock and poke at that frustration which causes even more frustration. that being said i believe it's impossible for there to be identical opinions on one side or the other, and this includes both tb and tg. imo if you're tg you should be mainly interested in the green characters and mainly invested in their story. i'm not saying you can't like other characters outside of them, but just that they're your main focus.

there's plenty of opinions, popular an unpopular, in green spaces that i disagree with. section of fandoms aren't, or at least they usually aren't, hiveminds. i mean i could be disagreeing even with you but that doesn't mean you're not also a fellow green enjoyer.

i don't really spend my time on that subreddit, but i've heard some stuff about it. i think sections of fandoms should be more tolerant of each other, especially on reddit that has a forum format.

and one last thing: i hate the secretly team black allegations. i've seen plenty of those, some addressed to me as well. it's funny because i've said it before but my blog changed some people's minds on alicent and did a lot to foster symopathetic alicent discussion when the fandom was going completely nuts. so it feels a bit moronic to watch someone raging bc of a ships accuse me of being secretly team black.

my only advice is.... take it all with a grain of salt. fandoms with sides like this one tend to be very cannibalistic and i have a feeling that the greens subreddit isn't the best place to post your opinions unless you're ready for aggressive replies. if you feel like you have opinions that you want to share in a safer space where everything isn't a battle, you could try making a house of the dragon sideblog. that wat, you can post your thoughts and even if you get nasty anons, you have the power to publish them or not, or to even turn off anons completely.

i would avoid twitter as well. it's chaotic and aggressive and when the fandom gets going, it can fry your brain.

[gakriele-lvs-blog]

To say TOH changed my life would be an understatement, okay maybe not to that extent but it definitely changed something in me. It was a show I started watching out of pure curiosity and no expectations, the poster alone was intriguing enough, and at the time my only thought was to kill time and go with the flow.

Episodes pass, and I just keep watching, making sure to keep up with the news episodes. First season rolled in and I was invested, I wanted more so that was when I finally formerly got into the fandom, with Reddit (of all things) being my first contact. Things just went up from there. First was all the fanart, and shortly after came my first introduction to fanfiction, which I barely understood cuz I knew little to no English at the time.

A couple months (a year?) later an S2 rollout and my attachment to the show skyrocketed, can only compare this interest to when I was invested in Steven Universe. I finally got fully into fanfiction and a Tumblr account, a wise decision if you asked me, and...

Well, then I discovered the whole deal about the shortening, and yeah, at first I didn't think much of it, but as S3 was coming closer the realization hit hard, very hard. So painful to think the story and every character within were coming to a close, It was not the first time I had experienced this sort of thing, but knowing the circumstances behind this imminent ending, it was infuriatingly depressing. But something I knew I better just accept at the time.

And when the final episode air?

It was around midnight, staring into my phone waiting for the Disney channel to post the episode. The waiting was excruciating, and even more painful than that was to see the final scene and realize... it was over. Done, Finito. Se acabo. Eventually, people would move on to other fandoms, perfectly understandable, sooner or later I would do the same, but The Owl House will forever have a permanent place in my brain.

...Still, the impression that show left on me remains even to this day, it sparked a genuine curiosity for fanfiction in general, which led me down a rabbit hole of... Storytelling, and oh boy did it change me. I've been using every single free time since the end of S2 to search and learn more about it.

The Owl House will never stop being an inspiration to me, but at the same time, I do wish to expand my horizons and give this blog a greater purpose than just reblogging the occasional fanart and stuff. So, with that I bid you all farewell and a wonderful evening/morning to you all!

[mindmeltonabun-blog]

Another Day, Another Plagiarist and Leaker On Reddit

I thought by now people would know I have eyes and ears everywhere. So here I am yet again having to deal with yet another plagiarist. And this one is even worst....they're also a leaker! Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, this dumbass decided to play dumb and pretend they didn't know about my blog until someone else on Reddit told them about it.

Following that, this person tried to make it seem like they didn't take and leak stuff from my blog by including a link to my blog in their post after the fact because they didn't want to get downvoted...HAHAHA HILARIOUS!!!!

I AM FREAKING LIVID!! Let's take a look at plagiarism and leaking at its finest!

Exhibit #1

No one and I mean absolutely no one besides me had came up with the Naksu=Jin Bu Yeon theory. Another dead giveaway this person has been following on Twitter as well as on Tumblr is their usage of "JBY". Most people refer to Jin Bu Yeon as either Jin Bu Yeon, Bu Yeon, or Buyeon. I, on the other hand, sometimes refer to her as JBY.

Exhibit #2

"Mama Jin" is also a nickname I frequently use both here on my Tumblr account as well as Twitter. Word of advice, if you want to get away with plagiarizing someone's work...YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO USE THE NAME NICKNAMES AS THEY DO...JUST SAYING.

Then let's look at this lovely statement of theirs:

"I feel like once her memories returns (both the body and the soul's) the face will also return but here is where it will get tricky because I dont see JSM going back to AOS2 because of how they are promoting LJWxGYJ like crazy."

Riddle me this, if you came up with your own theory.....why the hell are you disagreeing with yourself?! A person who comes up with their own theory would not be disagreeing with themselves. Why? BECAUSE THEY FUCKING SPENT TIME RESEARCHING AND THINKING AND THEREFORE HAVE THE CONFIDENCE TO DEFEND THEIR THEORY. Jesus Christ.

Without revealing the rest of my post, I will only show you the portion that this idiot decided to freaking plagiarize and leak:

Its amazing....how freaking SIMILAR MY SHIT IS TO WHAT THEY SAID.

Continuing on with this idiot, they also decided to end their post with something that sounds so similar to what I write in my T&A post. They said:

"This is will be for today's theory and analysis. If you have any questions too or counter arguments I would love to see those"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA WHO IN THE AOS FANDOM USES "THEORIES AND ANALYSIS"....MEEEEEEEE!!! Below is what I included in my AOS2 blog posts.

Again, what they said is nearly identical to what I originally said!

Exhibit #3

And if you think it stops there.....you're in for a treat everyone!!! This person also decided to take my diagram and used it in their header on Reddit...HAHA.

For those who don't know, this diagram was from my TA post for Eps 7-8. You can see it below.

Exhibit #4

In my original post for Eps 23-24, I had said 200 years ago and then in a more recent post on my Twitter, I corrected myself and said 203 years later. See below.

This person also decided to say 203 years ago in a response to another comment. If I hadn't corrected myself when I posted on Twitter...this idiot wouldn't have caught it either.

You can go and see for yourself on Reddit how this person pretended they didn't know about my blog and then took stuff from it. It's quite hilarious to read their comments and responses since they have no clue what they are talking about. There are many things I did not explicitly state in my blog posts because quite frankly I was too lazy to type more than I already had. I'm glad I didn't because it leaves people like this dumbasses unable to fully explain stuff when asked.

Whelp I'm done with my venting and ousting this disgusting human being! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

[protokirby]

A little story for yall. Ingo and Emmet stuff at the end.

I'm going to confess here. I had a twitter account before I had a tumblr account. And though I just coincidentally decided to make an account during the time a bunch of people were migrating from twitter, I would say I'm not a twitter migrant. I would more say this situation is more akin to being switched at birth and now I just recently found my real family after being in a bad place by mistake.

Let me explain. I've been aware that tumblr exists through my life, just- never made an account for some reason. I always felt like I matched the vibe of this place regardless. I do not know why I didn't think to make an account here before. Maybe because I mostly don't care much for a lot of social media. I use Discord a lot considering it's my primary source of talking to people with how far away from people I live and people are scary offline. Aside from that, I go on youtube some and most of what I put on twitter nowadays is videos from my switch.

I feel safe here. Like I'm at home here. I can post things here and feel good about posting stuff.

Twitter on the other hand, I had only made a twitter account because of a game I played as a kid (cough cough Hungry Shark Evolution cough cough) where I could get free stuff or could keep my game progress or something like that if I connected to a twitter account. But eventually when I decided to actually make tweets on there, I felt like an outcast and nothing I ever tweeted felt "twittery" and more like very undercooked tumblr posts.

I had a reddit account for a little while years ago too but I never felt safe there. Dunno why I had even made the account. One day I posted a meme to a pokemon reddit. The meme had Ingo and Emmet on it and people kept asking what it had to do with pokemon. This was WAYYY before legends arceus back when Ingo and Emmet were.... obscure for some reason?? I really like both of them and I always have and I was aware they had obscurity I just didn't know they were obscure enough for an entire reddit page(?) to come after me for putting a meme "that had nothing to do with pokemon" on there. I'm very glad legends arceus brought more people to the submas fandom. I also made a little reddit page(?) thingy because I thought at the time that's just what you do on reddit and then forgot it existed for weeks until I went back to discover people were putting digimon porn all over it and I panic-deleted my reddit account. That was the end of that problem. Don't get me wrong, I love digimon, maybe even more than I love pokemon but there's this one meme I've seen going around tumblr. What was it? Something like the gnome saw a ding-dong and started to cry(?) I don't remember the exact wording but that was the emotion there.

I want to make friends with some people in the submas fandom on here. My favorite pokemon games may be sword and shield, but that doesn't mean I neglect other generations. I know I talk about Ryuki from sun and moon a lot on here and have mentioned Ingo and Emmet in posts before and the submas posts might have the most notes of anything I have posted.

I'm not tagging this post with them though because this post isn't entirely about them, though I am about to talk about them a lot in this post. I just feel like it wouldn't be morally ok to tag submas and all that when there's all this other stuff. Or my morals are being way too sensitive but idk

So anyhoo...

I keep wanting to reveal some au versions of Ingo and Emmet to tumblr but haven't gotten around to it among other things. Specifically from an au I have that I call the beast au. A lot of what I have is edits of official art of characters because I'm not comfortable enough with my art level just yet. I've been drawing my whole life, except I've always just tried to mimic the artstyle of whatever I was hyperfixated on and I don't actually have an artstyle of my own. I of course, still draw pics of the aus sometimes just that I like to have my art references in the official style.

Something about the beast au is that like all my aus, nobody uses the bathroom and children are had in alternative ways so they don't have all those things I don't like. Folks could go out naked if they absolutely wanted to because there's nothing to hide. In the beast au, some beasts look more beastly than others or even wear less or no clothes. They have fur though. The ones with more fur tend to be less likely to wear clothing. The beast au is not specific to Ingo and Emmet by the way. I have Grusha from scarlet and violet. I feel confident in my art skills when I look at it. This au, like many other aus of mine is very complex and even has some non pokemon characters in it. I have beast au versions of three characters from Megaman Battle Network.

I just can't show the beast au Ingo or Emmet because- their beast au versions have been in heavy need of a redesign for a long time. Also I kind of want there to be drawings of them rather than showing edited official art to tumblr. For anyone curious, they look like this right now but whenever I look at that edit, I always think something like "I can do better. I can do way better." If you saw checked out the embedded like when I mentioned the beast au Grusha, anyone could tell I can indeed do better. I intend to have drawings of them before I show improved versions to tumblr though.

The problem is that I need to wait until I have a specific kind of drawing motivation and I'm still waiting for that motivation to appear to get better images of my beast au versions of Hop and Leon. The Leon is... acceptable. And an edit of an anime screenshot. But if you couldn't tell why I embedded a link to that and not the Hop, it's because the Hop is completely unacceptable. I just have to wait for the right kind of drawing motivation.

(Some people who follow me may remember another au Hop I have shown off a lot. He isn't from the beast au, though he visits the beast world a lot because he's a universe traveler in a complex system of universes. Some universes he goes to significantly more often than others. He's friends with several beasts including beast Hop so yeah he'd go there a lot. I have an entire alternate multiverse basically. The beast world is just one of many. Would that be called "am" instead of "au"? The au he's from takes an entire google doc to explain. If you read it, feel free to scroll down past the blank pages heheh)

Though fret not, my friends. I have a drawing of normal Emmet. Putting it under a keep reading because I'm sky about showing drawings just there and I don't want to just embed the link to it in the post like the other things. I don't know why "Image Options" has been inaccessible for months when I used to be able to cover things in a sensitive content warning (I'm sensitive to showing stuff so I did that a lot)

It's kind of a rushed thing I did years ago about a dream where Emmet won a horse race and was flocked to by many women. I vividly remember this scene and Emmet saying this in the dream. It was rushed because I worried I would forget but I never forgot

[departed-pronouns]

Scrolling through my timeline now is letting me look and see a wide arrange of thoughts and reactions. But something I notice from almost everyone right now that has something to say about 911 and it's lackluster last season and season final. Is that they never expected Buck and Eddie to get together. I don't just mean the people who say they never saw the romance, that's a given, but they are saying it as if it was a forgone conclusion and they're saying that it's because we shouldn't expect to see characters presented as queer.

And then on the other side there are people who really wanted it and believed it was possible. There are people who wanted it but kept their expectations low because there's always a chance that your ship wont sail. There were people that just wanted canon confirmed Bi buck or canon confirmed queer Eddie in any form the show gave.

But in their posts on tumblr, on twitter, reddit or discord. They always have to add after saying they saw the possibility of it, but that they wouldn't be surprised if it didn't happen. After 911's last episode people who posted about Buddie were saying they were disappointed but they weren't surprised. There are people posting that they expected to be disappointed and people posting that you should have seen it coming and just accept that it was never going to happen.

And honestly, why not? Tell me why. Things have to change some time for the better. Why not see that change now? Why not be disappointed about this? When really by now we should be to a point where one fan pairing that's queer doesn't go canon should be just as meh as if a fan hetero couple does. Why just accept it's never going to happen.

I mean maybe I wont get to see something like this in my life time. But I'd like to think one day we could do something as simple as watch tv and see people on it being all different shades of queer. See two guys who were only written as straight suddenly show queerness because like, in real life that's something that happens, people realize things late in life. People present a certain image and when you get to know them more you find out hidden depth. Characters aren't even real and this annoying rule that fiction has to be held in this chock hold because people in real life are homophobic/transphobic/just terrible in general and can't seem to handle, well, differences.

Maybe that day when I can log online and say two fictional characters would be cute together and not end up in some online discourse over it will also be the same day me or any other person that's different won't have to live in fear in real life. Can be unique but not considered 'other' and 'wrong' Because yes for a lot of people this may just be 'oh no the pretty people I want to see together on tv didn't get together'. But to some it's another way of pointing out how what a lot of us are is wrong and gross. And to people like me it's another reminder that I don't live in a world where what I am is normal enough to just be on tv. To just be out there and not given a second thought.

In this specific fandom, for this show, lots of people point out there's already Hen and Karen, and there had been David and Michael. As if that fills some quota the queers have that doesn't apply to straight couples. We didn't see anyone saying Buck or Eddie shouldn't have girl friends because there were already too many straight couples on the show. Hell, with this fandom I've had someone tell me if I want to see a gay couple, go watch a completely different show. Cause Lone star has Carlos and TK. It's like a backwards slide, enough queerness on this, move along to something else.

Frankly I think seeing people say 'I know this could never happen' is more depressing than the ship not sailing. And I wish when I or other people brought up our disappointment about this sort of stuff. It wasn't boiled down to us being silly about ship. Right now one of the very real ways I can fight against prejudice is by finding and supporting queer media and trying to support the general medium embracing and celebrating and representing queer people in real ways.

Sure it might not be on the same level as when I protest legislation that is being passed that strips away peoples rights. Which is still happening because we can't change people's misinformed views on real life issues, and we can't do that if we can't even get past token rep in shows.

[thewickedbohemian]

Two of the things that make my neurodivergent ass most vulnerable to manipulation (and make me afraid those I consider "bad guys" will take advantage of that and, no, any reading this this is not an instruction guide) other than the typical sort of innocents-in-danger stuff that'd get to most people are when it feels like my special interests are threatened and when it feels like doing a given thing would add "genre" (used in the sense of umbrella term for fantasy and sci-fi) to the world. An example of both is that post I just reblogged about "The most unbelievable part about the US election for me is that the Swifties didn’t manage to make Harris win. I was halfway convinced that they have the power to move mountains and bend reality, what do you mean they couldn’t keep the crazy orange man from winning" because that got a certain intrusive-thought-in-the-colloquial-sense part of my brain wanting to find some way for the Swifties to either still keep him (in the sense of his whole succession-line) from being inaugurated somehow or use paradox-free time-travel to have kept him from winning (if time-travel-to-stop-him wouldn't legitimize him too much as a villain in ways that'd compare him to villains it'd be insulting to them to compare him to) because it felt like "if we don't do this we're not a true fandom and have no real power but if we can pull this off we gain literal reality-bending mountain-moving power [and it's taking all my willpower not to make an Agatha All Along reference as it feels like there's demographic overlap]"

But I didn't just make this post to vent about that post. Some other examples of the special-interest-under-threat thing are me getting so panicked about someone's cynical joke on the Brilliant Minds Tumblr tag that it'd get cancelled after two seasons if not one because it's actually good and has diverse writers and characters that I made a petition to help get it a S2 after it had only aired three episodes of S1 that managed to get a bunch of people on Reddit worried that it had gotten cancelled and how personally (even for a 3x OWkin) I take anything bad that happens with Blizzard/Overwatch or any criticism of them (in part of a comment on a post on r/fictionkin I framed the kin-related reasons why I feel the way I do about the controversy in terms of (though not to say writer(s) of source = literal god) "Imagine if you discovered that all the weirdness (derogatory) in the world was because God was a money-grubbing dick you had to take down but he put some magic rules in place to make it seemingly impossible for people to and there's a non-zero chance you don't know the size of that killing-or-at-least-overthrowing God might end your world anyway" (the impossible rules are a parallel to that one TOS update which meant players couldn't sue, however as someone who doesn't have OW2 I could, I'm just worried I can't class-action).

Some other examples of the wanting the world to be more "genre" thing include this weird feeling of uncomfortability I get when history (albeit not commonly-known-history) has the potential to contradict some historical-y fantasy fiction (not in the sense of actual period pieces but stuff like The Librarians or The Da Vinci Code, y'know, that genre) I love and really want to be some kind of Wormhole-X-Treme-esque cover for real events and whenever I see that one picture of that one cyber-y-solarpunk-y city that always vaguely reminds me of Numbani for some reason despite not really looking African as part of that meme template of "The world if [bad thing hadn't happened or good missed opportunity happened]" and always get some immense pang in my heart of unless there's some monkey's paw subtext I'm missing I want that kind of world so how can I make that outcome have happened

[droewyn]

[image ID: A screenshot of tumblr tags reading as follows:

#i still dont fully understand the proship vs antiship bullshit

#ive heard people saying that proship is another one of those labels pedophiles hide behind

End ID]

Okay, before anyone digs this person out of the tags to give them a hard time, they said a LOT more than this, and all of it is very sane and reasonable. But I wanted to address this particular point, so I grabbed just this.

I'm a regular on the AO3 subreddit. About once a week, we get some smug anti coming in to complain about the "LiTeRaL cHiLd PoRn" on AO3. They're usually expecting to find an echo chamber, and to be fair, on this topic we are one. We're just not echoing the position that they're expecting. Like AO3 itself, the subreddit is unapologetically pro-ship, down to the mods, some of whom are OTW volunteers themselves.

So antis show up, they get roundly mocked, and either vanish without a trace, or say something bad enough to get banned, either from the sub or from reddit itself. Honestly, the only reason to even click into these threads is to watch the drama; it happens so often.

Last night, I thought I was clicking into just another anti-post. It had a post title of "Is this something I can report?" Typical anti stuff. But when I clicked in, what came up was this:

[image ID: a screenshot of an AO3 story summary. The fic title is "The Eyes that Watch the Cradle", the author name has been redacted, and it is listed as an original work, meaning no fandom. It contains the archive warnings Rape/Noncon and Underage, and the freeform tags include the following:

Father/Daughter Relationship, Original Male Character(s) / Original Female Character(s), Older Man / Young Girl - Relationship, Omorashi, Grooming, Lolicon, Gymnastics, leotard, Urination, Piss Play, Voyeurism, Rape, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Teen Pregnancy, Inverted Nipples, gym clothes, Flexibility, Puberty, pee desperation, Pee, Childhood Trauma, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Sexual Abuse, Daddy issues, Daddy Kink, Foot Fetish, Sweat, Tickling, Non-Consensual Tickling, Flashing, Non-Consensual Groping, Dry Humping, Coming In Pants, Molestation, Loss of Innocence, Vibrators, Orgasm Denial, Dubious Consent, Religious Guilt, Religion, Catholic School, Catholic Guilt, Hand Jobs, Forced Masturbation, First Time.

The summary reads: Tom and the perverse grooming of an 11-year-old girl gymnast he becomes infatuated with, through the years, she marries him and has his children, he grooms them too.

WITH PICTURES!

Transcriber Note: I need a shower now. End ID]

The thread has since been deleted by moderators, but fortunately the reddit mobile app is broken AF, so I was able to get the above screenshot.

The whole thing is really icky, but I want to highlight this:

[image ID: a screencap of just the phrase "WITH PICTURES!" taken from the previous image. End ID.]

I didn't track down the fic or click into it for obvious reasons (the FBI doesn't make a distinction between people consuming illegal content and people who just clicked in out of morbid curiosity), but others did, and reported that while there is no actual CSEM, there were photographs of very young children wearing leotards.

The implication is that these photos of kids are meant to be the ones being groomed and abused in the author's story.

Here is a representative sample of the comments on the thread:

[image ID: two screenshots from Reddit, displaying user comments.

User creampiebuni (with user flair "annoying shotacon") writes, "Pretty sure if it's linking to real photos of children, it can be reported. That crosses a big line."

They responded to themselves with, "Edit: I looked it up, yep, report, report, holy shit, this is not lolicon, this is just pedophilia."

User NataZing (the reddit thread's OP) replies, "I know, I only skimmed it, real nasty. Tried reporting it but it already had been so hopefully they get taken down

User parsious (with user flair "Definitely not an agent of the Fanfiction Deep State") replies, "If it had real pedo I would also be reporting to the police so they could talk to ao3 about user data... This sounds like the kind of person that needs to have a chat with the police."

User Connect-Sign5739 comments, "Yes, I'd report this. Including real pictures of children, even though non-pornographic, definitely crosses a line. Those real children shouldn't be associated with this story!"

User CatterMater (with user flair "Totally Not Boeing Mangement") writes, "Report, report, report."

User foreigner says, "WTF. [crying emoji]"

User andthennini writes, "Aside from how nauseating it sounds by the tags alone, if it actually has real people then I think it's reportable."

User ChaosieHyena says, "I gagged. Am pro fiction, but that's it FICTION. Any rpf (with images, no less) makes me genuinely queasy."

End Image ID]

There is not a SINGLE comment in support of this author. Every single person, except for one dipshit who made a really tasteless joke and got downvoted into oblivion, expressed shock, disgust, and horror.

See for yourself. OP's screencap is gone on desktop (again, it still shows up on mobile, at least for now), but the thread is still there and comments are intact: https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1czd7aw/is_this_something_i_can_report/

This is what it means to be proship.

HJELP MEEEEEE LMAOOOO

[balillee]

tommy's character gets far too much shit.

hi tumblr. i'm gonna need a few bitches to spread this post everywhere, essentially because i want someone, or just tommy really, to see it. so if you really want, you can screenshot it and post it on twitter, reddit, link it everywhere - go absolutely buck wild. i know he reads the VODS comments a lot, but they're chock full of people just insulting him, his character, his writing and everything about his story in the dream smp simply because they don't understand it and because they refuse to acknowledge his character's perspective (mainly because they only care about the pig). reading that many critical comments on something you've created can only make you feel worse about it eventually, and in light of all the awful techno apologist takes on his character, i wanted to basically just word vomit about how wonderfully crafted c!tommy is, as well as compile some other tumblr posts about his character.

there is a massive fuckin community of people who enjoy the character of tommy, because the character is incredible. i myself have made post after post after post commenting on and analysing tommy's character because i find that there's so much to pick apart. but that enthusiasm for his character only seems to be found on tumblr. reddit and twitter seem to hate his character, the VODS seem to be filled with comments from people who only care about techno's perspective (and treat techno as a reliable narrator, which, is the furthest thing from the truth - that guy lies through his teeth all the time), and the smp wiki is a hellscape of godawful takes and mistruths, not even on just tommy's character.

c!tommy is brilliantly acted and brilliantly written, and almost everything he does is either justifiable or has been rectified or admitted as a mistake. you can clearly make connections as to where he got his conclusions from. you feel what his character experiences, as a member of the audience, vividly.

if you look in the more objective sense, c!tommy, and this is especially in the context of him being the youngest character, is a scapegoat. people claim he's awful and destructive when in reality he's a lot less destructive than most characters on the server. a moment that comes to mind is where he diverts schlatt and quackity's attention from pogtopia by breaking part of the flag in manberg, and then replacing it so as to buy tubbo some time - he literally monologues after it about how he doesn't want to destroy but instead rebuild, and how he feels as if nobody else seems to understand that.

his arc in season two was incredible. it was very character driven, and it gave a spotlight to his motivations. at the start we see him in new l'manberg, and he's enjoying his time there, he's skeptical of his friend's presidency, but his main goal is to get back the discs so that he can stop dream and eliminate that threat. he made one screw up that didn't even matter to george, and he paid for it tenfold, even after dream had spent a while with puffy griefing the server and framing it on tommy - what tommy and ranboo did was convinient. then, in exile, we see c!tommy straight up get abused. he's gaslit and conditioned into being c!dream's friend, and in his brain he teaches himself that those acts of abuse are moments of bonding, and it eventually brings him to the point of wanting to end his own life - he's been torn away from his friends and his support system, and nobody will visit him consistently anymore because they only showed him pity, and all he had left was dream, who had hurt him.

but he doesn't die there, because while he didn't understand the full gravity of it back then like he does now, he recognises that dying isn't an escape, and he can beat dream, even if he doesn't know how. so this is where he goes to techno's place, and here's where the fandom starts to misinterpret the situation wildly.

it's the problem similar to when your parents tell you that they're owed something back because you put a roof over their head, despite that being Not How It Works. techno took tommy in and severely mistreated him emotionally. sure, and i understand this, c!techno is a bad communicator who isn't really that empathetic to anyone who isn't phil or wilbur, but that doesn't excuse the blatant lying to c!tommy's face, the guilt tripping, the friendship buying and the degrading. the day before the festival, tommy finally does something violent in his interrogation of fundy, and only then does techno tell him,,,,

that tommy's not equal to him, that techno doesn't respect him all that much, and that they're not friends.

from techno's perspective, and at the time, this was viewed as a positive development in their relationship. oh, he's starting to warm up to tommy! this friendship could really blossom!

no. from a more objective standpoint, what techno has just said to tommy is : 'i respect you only a little bit more now, because while you're starting to act more like me, you're still annoying and a burden.'

and i haven't even touched on the whole 'erasing the words 'Destroy L'manberg' from techno's to-do list' thing, because that instantly refutes the point of 'techno was upfront with his intentions the whole time' - because he wasn't! he may have said it the first time, but you also know what else he did? he repeatedly told tommy that they'd 'air the details out later' whenever the discs were brought up, and from a tommy viewer's perspective at the time, it was framed as if techno was no longer going to do that.

and i also haven't dared touch the 'i would have fought them all for you', because that's major guilt tripping if ever i've seen it.

so, the day of the festival comes, and here's where c!techno and his apologists completely misread c!tommy's thought process, and why he makes the decision he does.

tommy instantly regrets valuing the discs over tubbo, and it's framed as the culmination of tommy having become all the people he said he would never want to be like. and what does he immediately do? he tells tubbo to give up the disc, and he sides with tubbo. he puts his value in his friends, and, by proxy, l'manberg. and when he betrays techno, he tells him 'i'm sorry'.

from a more objective standpoint, tommy's time with techno is him valuing the discs over almost anything else. so, in leaving techno to be with tubbo again, he is valuing people above the discs. so when, on doomsday, techno says his 'discs aren't people' line, what he doesn't realise is that he himself fueled tommy's valuing of discs above people when attempting to fuel tommy's vengeance against tubbo and l'manberg. techno doesn't realise that he was an unhealthy presence for tommy, and an even worse influence.

what techno also doesn't seem to understand is that tommy never hated tubbo or l'manberg - tommy recognises, now at least, that his exile wasn't a product of tubbo, but a product of dream's manipulation, likely in part because at the time, especially with dream lying about tommy blowing up the community house, tommy was the only one who could see it because he had experienced it firsthand. so when techno sides with dream, it's like kicking tommy in the teeth.

and i want to mention that betraying someone doesn't necessarily make the person who was betrayed good, or in the right, or even justified, because tommy was entirely justified to leave techno. you know who else was betrayed? schlatt. but i don't see many schlatt apologists around angry at quackity for joining the rebellion.

tommy stole the axe of peace? good. it was a moment of tommy defining his self-worth, instead of having it defined by others. gone is the age of c!techno belittling him and deciding how much c!tommy should be respected. NEXT!

here's a moment i wanted to talk about that will forever be funny to me.

'i am a person.'

techno's very famous line from doomsday. techno says to tommy that discs aren't people, and that tommy should value people, despite not understanding that by leaving techno, he did just that. and what does tommy say in return, which has been omitted from every c!tommy-critical analysis, and every animatic?

'yes you are, but so are we.'

an acknowledgement of techno's hurt, to which tommy has already apologised for. a statement that says 'your hurt does not excuse, nor justify, the hurt you have inflicted onto us.' an acknowledgement that tommy has already learnt the lesson techno seems to be trying to 'teach' him. but you can't teach him anything by destroying.

c!tommy has had almost everything he has ever owned or built either taken from him or destroyed. ranboo even points out that the only two things of tommy's left standing are his house and his hotel, and if i'm honest, his house is dissheveled. it's a labyrinth of terror due only to how many times it's been torn apart. l'manberg being blown up didn't teach anyone anything about anarchy, or about valuing people over possessions. logstedshire being blown up didn't teach tommy to be obedient.

i could honestly ramble for ages about how nuanced tommy's character is and how much depth and complexity there is to his character's process and his relationship with others, but more than that, c!tommy is forgiving. he invites almost everyone who hates him to the grand opening of his hotel - if that isn't an indicator that he just wants friends, and not to be treated like the embodiment of evil, then i don't know what is. he holds grudges, but he doesn't really actively hate anyone, other than c!dream. but, we'll let him. c!dream deserves nothing but to be pummeled into the floor.

tommy doesn't spoonfeed his character nuance, and he doesn't really spell it out for his audience. he'll mention things like trauma and triggers in passing, but a lot of analysis on his motivations has to be picked up from what is said in passing or from what can be seen in between the lines.

i'd be here for hours if i were to talk about everything i love about c!tommy, because honestly he's one of my favourite characters, and there are so many angles you can look at his character from in terms of his age, his relationships with others, his motivations, his personality, his character arcs etc etc. so instead of doing that, i'm going to compile some much more specific analysis posts below to skim through because they highlight so many good aspects of his character.

^^ A thread about the 'yes you are, but so are we' line.

^^ About how shit the VODS comments are.

^^ A comment on how c!Tommy is actually pretty peaceful, and is actually less destructive than most characters on the server.

^^ Possibly the best c!Tommy analysis thread I've ever seen in relation to his trauma, which gives multiple perspectives.

^^ About how c!Tommy is treated as a scapegoat, and how, from an objective standpoint, he is no more violent than any other character, it's just that the little violence that is committed is blown far out of proportion.

^^ Tumblr user flypaw being a bad bitch, as per usual.

^^ c!Tommy being incredibly intelligent, and talking about wanting to rebuild and not destroy. A very underrated monologue of his.

^^ Something short about c!Tommy and c!Wilbur's relationship in Pogtopia.

^^ Less about c!Tommy, more a meta on L'Manberg. Really interesting to think about.

^^ A take on Doomsday.

I'll add some more posts in a reblog in the notes, but if anyone's post(s) is on this and they want me to take it off, let me know and I'll do that for you! Feel free to add your own banger c!Tommy takes or ones that you've found.

[theminecraftbee]

Re: your winged!Grian origin post

I joined the HC fandom circa early s7, and I just want to say that I think we as a fandom are sort of retroactively putting importance onto the whole bird symbolism. Yes, it's important and does make some sense, but back then it definitely felt like probably 80% of winged Grians were Watcher Grian (inspired by ATUS) and parrot or chicken or any other wing was the outlier. I understand not wanting to place too much importance on any one particular fic, but it's hard to overstate just how much ATUS was THE watcher fic. No one except the most niche fans had watched Evo, but suddenly this was The One Thing About Grian (the most popular hermit) so everyone in the fandom had to read that to understand any fanworks, basically. And a huge amount of Watcher knowledge that became fanon, especially back then, was extrapolated from ATUS, full stop.

TLDR. yes it's good not to raise one fic on a pedestal but I also think we shouldn't be trying to erase ATUS influence after the fact. Feels like a weird attempt to change history

(Also I swear this isn't ATUS propaganda I only read it the once. I just legitimately think it's an important part of hermit history and am trying to help, so sorry if this comes off mean or anything!)

so, disclaimer, i wasn't there in the fandom at the time, but my own like, editorialized thoughts on this, as opposed to informative (which means my own opinions are in here and you may not agree with them, this isn't meant to be a factual accounting of fandom history anymore):

i don't think you're entirely wrong, which is why i went out of my way to include it; at least on tumblr, i think that fic probably had an outsized influence on how people write watchers and the winged grian stuff. as someone who wasn't around, the main way i know that is "people still discourse about it", "specific design elements that weren't super present in canon (or present at all in hermitcraft canon) are really present in fanworks", and "i know full well that, while people claim cleo said she read atus, she only said that she read a fic where grian had wings and something about how he was sad a lot if i remember right, and the fact that people extrapolated that to mean atus says some pretty strong things to me". like, all of these things together is why i think atus clearly had a lot of influence here.

that being said, i do have people in my comments like "oh yeah i realized he liked flying so i drew him with an elytra a lot, and then i saw people adding feathers so i started doing that". that seems especially common with people who were, say, on the reddit at the time - they didn't have the fandom context that was causing it on tumblr, so they either A) originated giving him wings on their own or B) picked it up from other artists and made assumptions about where it came from.

the thing is that while atus clearly had a huge influence on the older fandom... i bet, show of hands, most of the newer fandom members who joined late season 7 and beyond? have not actually read atus. or, if they have, that isn't their main influence for the winged grian art - other winged grian art is. that's how stuff like this ends up spreading in the fandom. hell, that's what we're seeing with things like xb's fish properties - one or two people who were big in the fandom liked it, and other artists picked it up from them, and it wouldn't surprise me if it really does become a ubiquitous character trait of his that people are baffled by at this rate. the hermitcraft fandom does that a lot.

that newer grian artists don't have that fandom context so they are drawing him with wings because they know he is meant to have them, and are making up the reason they think he should have them. atus has, at this point, been mostly removed from the wings equation. the watcher thing hasn't - he's never losing that association - but specifically atus's influence isn't really a major factor so much anymore. besides, as i said: i see him with parrot wings far more often than i see him with purple ones these days, and it's a little silly to say that that's not because of season 7, when it absolutely is.

all of this is to say that when it comes to the wing stuff atus is absolutely important which is why i included it but i sort of get the sense grian would have ended up with wings even without atus, if only because of the parrot stuff in season 7 when combined with the fandom's specific love of non-humaning people.

as for the watcher stuff... so here's the thing. i think fanon watcher stuff is absolutely heavily influenced by atus and it wouldn't be an inescapable part of grian's character without it, if only because evo just is not that popular compared to hermitcraft and people wouldn't be dragging all the evo stuff up in the specific way hermitcraft fans do if atus hadn't happened. so many of the watcher tropes people use originate clearly from that fic.

and like. okay. i agree with people when they say a lot of those tropes would have cropped up around watchers anyway. i know the "the watchers are evil" thing is a massively debated plot point but it's such low-hanging fruit people would have grabbed it. i have seen the watcher statues, people would have grabbed the angel imagery. people would have grabbed the purple. it's more the specific confluence of ideas that seems to have originated with atus, and more specifically, the popularity of doing watcher stuff in the first place.

once again, to be clear: the watcher stuff has undergone a LOT of fandom mutation. i think most new fans hear about it and don't know about atus, and even maybe watch evo themselves, which is neat. but evo... is not as big as hermitcraft! evo is an old series! and like. yhs or even vault hunters don't get as integrated into the characters as evo does, and that's almost certainly because it blew up at one point. and while i think most current watcher people do their own thing, i think it would be disingenuous to say that atus didn't have an influence on the fact that the fandom does not let go of the watcher thing for grian, just like trying to claim that the superhero fic trend in dsmp didn't come from tommy's unbeatable method. like, yes, the people doing it now aren't necessarily doing it because of that fic, or using the tropes because of that fic; they've picked them up themselves. at the same time, it's hard to say the popularity didn't start there.

i also know it sucks to say that, since a lot of people have some shitty memories related to atus, which i won't comment on because i was really not there for that discourse and i don't want to put words in people's mouths. it also sucks because people hear that and think people are saying they aren't being original/they're making things up, or that it's bad that they do the watcher things, and they want to defend it. i get that. like i said, a lot of the tropes that we attribute to atus probably would have been associated with watcher stuff anyway. its just that watcher!grian would have been a lot more niche without it, i think.

(with the possible exception of if martyn had still done his thing at the end of last life; we have no way to know how much he was influenced by fanon or not on that, given that he and grian were the actual writers for evo lore and all that. that's a different can of worms though we're talking about hermitcraft here.)

this also comes from me as an outsider, someone who really only entered the hermitcraft fandom early season 8, and only started watching mid season 7 (after the turf war, even). this is my observation of the trends as i've seen them. it probably feels different when you're an insider, as well, and were there at the time this stuff came about. and i admit some of this comes from being someone who joined the fandom late and has had trouble picking up the why for the watcher stuff. i get it with the "grian has wings", that's constantly reaffirmed as a headcanon, but a lot of the weird specifics of watcher tropes continue to baffle me as someone who isn't really interested in watching evo and mostly just wants to do hermitcraft stuff. (i use the watcher stuff sometimes as it suits me, as i do with basically all the fanon. i'm mostly neutral to it i actually have stronger opinions about hels stuff than i do watcher stuff when it comes to 'things that are largely fanon', lol.)

anyway atus is also fascinating to me because it's like. reading it now it's like, okay? it isn't bad, i'm not saying that, but it's also not a masterpiece, and it very heavily reads to me as "this fic got lucky to be in the right place at the right time to have the influence it had, by being the first to do a trope other people would latch onto later", and i think that kind of way fics work is interesting as someone who writes fics myself. (for the record, that's kind of how i consider black box too - it's fine, it does what i wanted it to do, but also it is as popular as it is because it happened to be in the right place at the right time and was the first decently-written thing to do a trope other people would latch onto later.) i can see why people would be annoyed to have the stuff they do that they consider unrelated to it constantly attributed to it, especially given the amount that it's just become established fanon by now that people don't have to know any of the original context to be able to use.

uhhh that was long the tl;dr is that the wing stuff almost certainly would have happened eventually anyway from what i can tell and a lot of the tropes we use for watchers probably would have also shown up anyway, but it's also silly to pretend that atus isn't a huge part of why it's as popular of a set of tropes as it is, because it is a part of that. that doesn't make any of the tropes bad or unoriginal though and i think people should keep doing them they're cool