#ever since 2015

[hyperrealisticblood]

they would find each other in any universe

and they did :]

[detentiontrack]

Actually I think I want to do the Mabel angst first. 10 year old me wanted to write good angsty Mabel centric fanfics so bad but I didn’t have the skill level. I’m going to make 10 year old Sage happy by writing good gravity falls fanfiction

[samglyph]

They were roommates in college

[jakemorph]

i guess a lot of people are under the impression that fictional characters back in the day avoided mentioning other franchises by name because it was legally sound. like little timmy saying he wanted to watch 'galactic battles 5" instead of straight up "star wars" was to avoid the lawyers somehow. so i guess everyone has forgotten in the intervening years that the reason you don't namedrop "dungeons & dragons" every 5 lines in your tv script is because it's 1) alienating and 2) so, so, so gauche

[statementlou]

[Verse 1: Liam Payne & Harry Styles] I go a little bit too fast I go a little bit too far I go a little bit too late I go a little bit too hard I can't walk away, can't walk away, I can't walk away no, no I get a little bit too close I get a little bit too loud I get a little bit too high I get a little bit too proud Can't walk away, can't walk away, can't walk away, no I can't walk away, I can't walk away, I can't walk away, no

[Chorus: Louis Tomlinson & All] I will never be the one to say that something that you love is wrong You can make the same mistake and I'd still be here no matter what Pick your poison, drink it up and enjoy it Pick your poison, drink it up and enjoy it I will never be the one to say that something that you love is wrong You can make the same mistake and I'd still be here no matter what Pick your poison, drink it up and enjoy it 'Cause you are mine, so all that matters is you and I go down together

[Verse 2: Liam Payne] I get a little bit too brave I get a little bit too wild I get a little bit too crazy I get a little bit too down If you walked away, if you walked away, if you walked away, no So don't walk away, don't walk away, don't walk away, no

[Chorus: Louis Tomlinson & All] I will never be the one to say that something that you love is wrong You can make the same mistake and I'd still be here no matter what Pick your poison, drink it up and enjoy it Pick your poison, drink it up and enjoy it I will never be the one to say that something that you love is wrong You can make the same mistake and I'd still be here no matter what Pick your poison, drink it up and enjoy it 'Cause you are mine, so all that matters is you and I go down together

[Bridge: Niall Horan] Best I've ever known Everything I need You're my highs and lows And everything in between I can't give you up You're the death of me Venom in your veins Brings me to my knees

[Chorus: Louis Tomlinson & All] I will never be the one to say that something that you love is wrong You can make the same mistake and I'd still be here no matter what Pick your poison, drink it up and enjoy it Pick your poison, drink it up and enjoy it I will never be the one to say that something that you love is wrong You can make the same mistake and I'd still be here no matter what Pick your poison, drink it up and enjoy it 'Cause you are mine, so all that matters is you and I go down together

???!!!!!

[peak-dumbass]

I felt like ranting about TFP/RiD2015 starscream’s character since I feel like a lot of people mischaracterize him, but this turned out to be much longer than I thought it would sooooo click if you wanna see my essay about the most disloyal second-in-command ever :]

So when talking about tfp starscream I hear a lot of his fans mention how bad the show was for not addressing megatron’s abuse of him and for not giving him a redemption arc where he recovers from it and becomes a better person or something along those lines

I don’t want to seem rude, but where the fuck did you guys get the impression that the show was ever going to do something like that?? Or even that starscream was ever going to be viewed in a remotely sympathetic light??? Cuz it definitely wasn’t from the show I can tell you that much

Now I’m not denying that starscream was abused, I do agree with that — but did you guys forget the context of why Megatron feels the need to punish him so brutally? Cuz every single time he does so it’s cuz starscream is trying to take his place as leader of the decepticons and, more often than not, trying to kill him in the process — like did yall forget that one of the first things starscream did in the show was plan to leave megatron to die in space after taking the only thing keeping him alive from his chest and the only reason he didn’t was because he was being spied on by soundwave?

I’m not stating that to say “megatron was right to abuse starscream”, hell no, but I’m stating that to say there was a reason for it in-show and it wasn’t to show that starscream deserves sympathy but to show how ruthless megatron is, especially to people that cross him like starscream

The whole “redemption arc” idea that some people like to cling to is what confuses me the most because are we talking about the same character here?? Are we looking at the same guy because so matter how you look at starscream, he was never meant to be redeemed

This is the same character that, throughout the entire show, is the only one to have killed an autobot on screen — and he did this in his first scene in the first episode — and actively brags about it on several occasions afterwards throughout the show

This is the same character that, when the autobots gave him one chance to see if he could be seen as an ally, couldn’t help himself from mentioning his murdering of cliffjumper to arcee — cliffjumper’s partner — and then using her anger and grief as way to escape, effectively making it impossible that the autobots would ever truly trust him again

This is the same character that, even after leaving the decepticons, can’t help himself from trying to murder megatron (to take his place, not as revenge for his abuse) and getting in the autobots way of stopping the decepticons

The fact that starscream’s seemingly favorite pastime in the show is Attempted Murder so he can become a Worse Dictator is something I think his fans gloss over much too easily — especially since they’re typically the same people that hate megatron for abusing him because starscream *checks notes* keeps attempting to murder him

The only reason why megatron keeps starscream around is because he’s more useful to him alive and working under him than either dead or working against him — and considering how many times starscream has attempted to murder him and has actively ruined his plans, I’m surprised he hasn’t killed him already

Even after all of that happens and starscream finally says “fine, I won’t attempt to kill megatron anymore” in season 3, he’s still ruining his plans with his pettiness and jealousy towards others like shockwave —

no matter what happens to starscream, he refuses to grow and change

— which is why I can’t understand where this “I can fix him cuz the writers refused to” mentality came from

He was never meant to be “fix”-able, at best he was meant to be a doomed character, a cautionary tale and/or a tragic villain — because no matter what happens, he keeps ruining things for himself and refuses to accept that, putting the blame for his failures and feelings of inadequacy on others like megatron or optimus when, in reality, it’s always him who is reason why he can’t be happy

And this carries over into Robots In Disguise 2015 as well, when he returns to be the villain of season 3 (or 2.5, it’s complicated)

He returns to earth so he can find all of the 7 weaponizer mini-cons and link them to himself to become all powerful so he can kill megatron and conquer the galaxy

I’ve seen some people say that “the writers had to add on the ‘conquer the galaxy’ part to starscream’s plan because then it would be hard to justify why the heroes would want to stop a victim of abuse from killing his abuser” and just —tell me you don’t understand starscream’s character without telling me you don’t understand starscream’s character

My Sibling in Primus, starscream has been wanting to do that since the beginning of Transformers: Prime, that’s literally his main reason for constantly wanting to kill megatron all the time — so he can take his place as leader of the decepticons, defeat the autobots, and then become the ruler of Cybertron

While I do agree that starscream wanting megatron dead for all of the pain he caused him is definitely part of his motive here, this type of revenge is never going to shown as a good thing, nor should it

Even after its been several years since megatron left the decepticons after being used by unicron, even after all of cybertron seems to have moved on from the war, starscream can’t let his obsession with killing megatron go — and that isn’t a good thing

Bumblebee confirms that starscream has been assumed dead this entire time, meaning nobody was chasing or hunting him down, nobody was trying to turn him over to the new cybertronian government for his crimes — he could’ve used this as a way to escape it all and finally start anew, find other ways to make himself better and happier after having to deal with megatron looming over him for so long

But he didn’t

He stumbled upon an old megatron plan for gaining power and couldn’t help himself, he couldn’t let it go, he refused to break the cycle and he has no one to blame for continuing it but himself

When he finds the Dark Star Saber and uses it, the sword resists him, with him saying that it’s because the sword doesn’t find him worthy enough to weld it since it can tell he isn’t megatron, but he tries to weld it anyways

I’ve seen one person try to interpret this as a way to say that “this means he isn’t evil since the sword that was made for evil is rejecting him” which is the dumbest take ever, but here’s my interpretation of what the Dark Star Saber’s rejection means

Ever since his first appearance on screen, starscream has been trying to be the leader of the decepticons, the most powerful, the most feared, the most respected — he wants to be megatron so bad it’s painful — and everything that happens to him is telling him that he isn’t

But he refuses to accept that — of course he doesn’t, he’s starscream, megatron’s most disloyal second-in-command — and that’s all he’ll ever amount to as long as he walks his road of selfishness, anger, and revenge

And that’s what he does until he’s defeated again by Bumblebee and his team, because if there’s one thing that remains constant for starscream that isn’t his favorite hobby of Attempted Murder it’s his refusal to grow and change as a person

[rehide]

been getting back into tokyo ghoul lately bc i've been feeling nostalgic and am still hopeful (lying to myself) that one day we'll get a reboot. looking for tg mutuals who've stayed despite the tumbleweeds around here :)

[dragondawdles]

happy 13 of mar to a character I have had shrimp emotions about for almost 8 years now

[wolvertooth]

i started reposting my stuff to twitter(cuz im bored) and the whole being able to see views thing is so funny like

only 16 Likes implies that 282 other people saw this and. didnt like it. but were forced to see it against their will anyway.

[bei-credo]

"I wish that i could say that theres no better place than home,

but home's a place that i have never known"

"that's why we're on the run"

2015 version

[batsplat]

you might have already talked abt this but I’m interested if you have any thoughts on the similarities & differences in Casey & Valentino’s early childhoods and families……I don’t know much abt Casey’s upbringing & the little I know about Valentino’s all makes me go “huh ok I kinda get it now” lol. Idk like I found out Jorge’s whole deal w his dad and I was like “OH OK you make perfect sense to me now” but I’m not there yet w the other two, yk?

so okay,, I do have an ask from forever back about marc and valentino's childhoods that I got extremely stuck at answering, and also an ask about jorge's father that I haven't even touched because like. sometimes you just do not feel up for that lol. and well it's just an area where I do generally try and be quite careful in how I discuss it... BUT this is casey stoner hot take round™ so I will give a reasonably succinct answer to this and not overthink it too much. basically: yeah, I do have thoughts, because casey's childhood does undeniably do a lot of the work in the 'oh okay that makes sense now' department. a lot of his career narrative, his struggles, his disillusionment with the sport... and yes, the way the valentino rivalry unfolded - a lot of it can be traced back quite a long way, to grievances he's been carrying around with him for years and years. I talked in this post about that podcast interview casey did this year, which included... well, a bit of a reckoning. talking as openly as he ever has about how being a rider wasn't ever really his dream - it's something that was decided for him. and that's our starting point... casey's eternally ambivalent relationship with being a rider, one that feels so violently different from valentino's

the big, big contrast between casey and valentino's respective journeys is pretty simple to sum up: it's the joy. valentino was having fun. casey wasn't. now, look - valentino as a child very obviously did not have perfect autonomy in making the choice to be a rider. it's always going to be more complicated than that; his father did obviously push him in that direction. but at the end of the day, it's not too controversial to say that valentino always enjoyed riding and always had fun racing. it's a joy he carried with him on his way to becoming a rider, one that remained a part of his competitive dna throughout his professional career. it's a joy that kept him racing for as long as he did. a childlike joy, in a way - valentino's lack of 'adult' seriousness, how it's been remarked upon that this brutal sport has never quite managed to wear him down. his peter pan persona, how he's the boy who won't ever grow up. and, y'know... valentino had the chance to actually be a kid. he got to have something vaguely resembling a proper childhood. makes sense, right - if you want to be a kid forever, it helps to have been one in the first place

there's a quote of his from 2009 I posted recently:

which, in the context of that interview - this question refers back to an earlier exchange about how casey wasn't a 'romantic' rider (still think that's an objectively pretty funny thing to say about your rival but that's neither here nor there). and, well, valentino's correct! sports has become considerably more professionalised over time. children are less and less likely to be able to afford any sort of life outside of it. which isn't just about reducing passion, right - it's also about not really giving these kids the chance to properly grow up, to become more rounded human beings who don't have to be the perfect little athlete 100% of the time. it's also a correct diagnosis of casey specifically, who certainly could never afford to see racing as a game. I'd recommend reading this autobiography excerpt, where casey tells you exactly that: racing wasn't about having fun for casey. he'd moved to the uk with his parents at fourteen years of age, at which point he essentially became his family's sole provider. his family depended on him not failing - and every opportunity threatened to be his last, his racing future and financial situation always desperately precarious. he was constantly fearful all of his family's sacrifices might have been for nothing. it's immense pressure to put any teenager under, regardless of how much you want to convince them that it's their dream rather than your own. if casey wasn't already an overly self-critical perfectionist before those years, he certainly was by the time he made it to motogp. he couldn't afford to be anything less than perfect. remember: the shape his anxiety took was by making him curl up in his motorhome, terrified of letting everyone down. wonder where that came from

is it any surprise, then, that while valentino feels like kids today take racing too seriously, casey thinks they don't take it seriously enough?

The system has changed: when you put too much pressure on a 20-year-old, he can react by closing up and becoming serious and sad. // Nowadays I see too many kids coming through behaving too relaxed, and too happy with what they have achieved already. I don’t want them to be miserable but they have to understand what’s at stake.

doesn't this make you want to scream. a little

and, look, there are similarities between valentino and casey in ways that will be true of many child prodigy athletes. valentino has spoken about how his father would not do anything with him that didn't involve motorcycle racing, casey likewise has more recently in that podcast said he doesn't think he was allowed to pursue any other interest. we can talk plenty about how the parents of athletes like to use their children to fulfil their own dreams - how their child's athletic performance seems to become the only aspect of their child they have any interest in. how so much of that parental relationship becomes distorted by the ceaseless quest to achieve results. it's there in both of their stories... and obviously they are hardly unique in that respect. there's perhaps a little bit of a divide - to what extent kids are aware of this dynamic and are uncomfortable with it, especially publicly. both casey and valentino are united in being somewhat openly critical of their parents without being completely estranged from them. casey got his parents to move back to australia when he was arguing with his father too frequently as a young rider; valentino has seemingly kept his father at a bit of a distance for years. they've never cut themselves off entirely - but there's a certain undeniable wariness there. a lack of conviction that their parents acted as parents should that they've been willing to hint at publicly, here and there

Our communication is mostly about motorbikes. He wasn't a good father, I mean... When I was with him, playing always meant riding motorbikes for him. // To be honest, I don’t know if I was allowed to have any other attraction to be honest. I think it was, you know, you’re going to be a bike rider from when I was a very very young age - and I’m not the only one to think that.

still, it does come back to the joy of it all. casey justifies his belief that racing isn't fun by talking about how he'd always known how high the stakes were... whereas for valentino, fun is an integral part of the experience. it's what he's there for. and beyond the racing itself, valentino always found his life as a rider considerably more joyous than casey did. which leads us to the other difference between the pair of them: casey's loneliness. valentino has spoken frequently about the importance of his childhood friend group, about having them travel with him and ground him and be there with him throughout - people who knew him before he became the valentino rossi, people he feels that he can fully rely on. he grew up as part of a community and has a strong sense of identification with not just his country but also his town... he's got deep ties to his place of origin and the people who live there, built up over a lot of time, and he draws a lot of strength from that. by contrast, casey grew up moving around a fair bit, unhappy at school and the victim of bullying - his only real friends, he says, were from the dirt track, since they were the only people he 'had anything in common with'. even those friendships don't feel particularly substantial, especially given how often he frames his childhood racing experiences around the hostility of his competitors (and especially their parents) in response to his peerless talent. his parents eventually home schooled him, inevitably further isolating him. then, as a teenager, he moved to the uk where he knew nobody, before moving to spain where he didn't even speak the language. he continued to have a strong sense of connection to australia, fuelled at least in part by homesickness - but it's also a connection to a country he hadn't lived in since age fourteen, a sense of belonging that's fundamentally less stable, less comforting. one that exists primarily in contrasting himself to all the europeans he surrounds with, as a way of making sense of his feelings of cultural alienation - which in truth are sometimes just plain alienation. the paddock cannot function as a home for casey either, and he is unwilling or unable to form substantial connections in that environment. in 2009, ten odd years after moving away from australia, he said his only friend in the paddock was his wife

and yes, it plays into that rivalry - inevitably so. casey and valentino are both somewhat alien to each other, fundamentally unknowable... and it does come back to how at odds they were in their approaches, in how they motivated themselves. casey finds the europeans and their flamboyant celebrations baffling. valentino cannot relate to casey's lack of romantic affection for the sport. casey is there to do a job. valentino is there to put on a show. casey does not think racing should be about having fun. valentino believe the fun is non-negotiable. casey loves almost nothing about being a rider, whereas valentino loves almost all of it

another thing. when I was writing this post about the similarities between casey and valentino, one aspect I talked about was how they can both be.... uh. suspicious characters, shall we say. paranoid, some might call them. conspiratorial, even. now, again, to some extent they do share this with a lot of other athletes, it's kind of part of the game. but, y'know, they do take it quite far - and there's quite a pleasing parallel between the pair of them where they've both come up with a conspiracy theory about one of valentino's lost titles. which leads us to quite a nice distinction between these two theories. not to brag, but I kinda feel I nailed one of the most important elements of their dynamic:

now, look. I deliberately did not do this,, but obviously if you really wanted to, you can do some pop psychology on valentino's approach to interpersonal attachment and relate that back to his relationship with his parents. I am not interested in doing that for various reasons, most of which the cia would not get out of me, but I'm aware it's an approach you can take. in any case, I do still think you can make quite a straightforward case for this distinction: one of them believes the world is fundamentally out to get them, one of them doesn't. one of them is waiting for the system to fuck them over, the other is wary of individuals who have gotten a little too close. both of them at times are exceedingly ready to read malice into the words and actions of those around them - and both of them can react rather dramatically to such a provocation. the shape their suspicion takes is a little bit different and a little bit the same... but it's central to understanding both of them, in a way that does set them apart from their competitors. they're the two aliens who are the most likely to read an agenda into anything and everything. they're the ones who are most likely to take note of slights, to accumulate grievances. the most likely to not forget when they have been wronged - and to take great pleasure in getting back at whoever has done them ill

in the end, it all comes back to just what an excellent foil for casey you have in valentino. in all the ways casey defines himself against valentino, in all the ways valentino challenges casey, in all the ways casey's issues with the sport are inextricably interwoven with the character of valentino rossi. casey hates so much of the sport in ways that are tied so closely to valentino; he hates a system that invariably would like nothing more than to see valentino succeed. but valentino also represents what casey cannot be - not just an entertainer, but someone completely at ease with their life as a rider. someone who finds joy in that life, who did not step away from it until he absolutely had to. valentino is there long before casey arrives and he is there long after casey leaves. valentino is an idol, an enemy, a mystery. more so than any other rider, valentino embodies an emotion that casey believed he simply could not afford to feel. valentino is the sport's joy - and casey was never there to have fun

[lambergeier]

Can you provide any narumitsu fic recs? whether they are fandom classics or underrated gems, I'm curious to know what stories you enjoyed (I'm sure you have great taste!!) Thank youuuuuu

it would be my PLEASURE. i mean have not regularly read aa fic since uhhhhh. 2014. which is literally ten years ago. so i assume everything i liked then now qualifies as a "fandom classic." but here are those classics!

turnabout toast by ideny - classic post-aa4, pre-aa5 fic. larry makes phoenix and edgeworth a bet that they have to get their fucking lives together, maybe? eccentric emphasis scheme. classic sort of ffn-era rambling longfic structure. absolutely Delightful characterization. still my all-time fave classic aa longfic, legal partners get outta here. rec also for all the rest of ideny's stuff, yes including the klapollo strangers on a train au, yes it is worth digging through the old phoenix wright kink meme entries to read it

everything by withpractice - king of complicated relationships. phoenix punches miles in the face <3

everything by jibrailis - cute. funny. romantic. what else do you need

everything by my wife - who said that

this list is really funny because it is totally unchanged since 2014. i have been giving these same recs for ten years. i read my last new AA fic in 2015 and that was Fucking It. i will never improve i will never change this is a promise

[bassboosted-moon-chao]

saw the whole "the new Magic Schoolbus show sucks" thread for the third time today and decided to come say something tangentially related about Inspector Gadget 2015 too. something about the enshittification of reboots in general irks me and I wanted to talk about it.

not to beat a thoroughly dead horse but just look at what they did to Gadget alone.

The "real" Gadget is meant to be large and imposing, but at the same time, warm and friendly. he's a big cyborg and could easily kick your ass, but he's much more interested in being loving. he has thick, dark curly hair, unusual eyes (that are often depicted with "ring" pupils), and his facial profile is quite strong but soft. his facial expressions are deeply varied, from simple to childlike wonder to stone cold, and he's more than just a clumsy, arrogant enforcer. he has his moments of dumbass arrogance, yes, but it's not his whole personality. he's got a lot more going on there, he's naturally a gentle soul who just wants to help people. he can even get his act together in the moments it's needed, and proves why he can be called a hero even on his own. hell, even in a few select scenes, Gadget is shown having his own fears and traumas and responding to them as such.

And then 2015!Gadget is almost exact antonym to this. in modernizing him, they made him small and slim with a very different silhouette. they flattened his facial profile down so far he doesn't look like the same man. they took the curls out his hair and straightened it, they made his eyes blank, glassy (to sell that he's a cyborg?? it looks weird) and expressionless, and his facial expressions aren't very varied. plus, he's kind of unlikeable. he has none of his prior charm or warmth, and most of what he does is either being an annoying prick, being a destructive prick, or being a whiny prick. Not to say his original counterpart couldn't be annoying, destructive or whiny of course, but definitely not in such parts. they tout him as being fearless, but then make him a coward who doesn't even try half the time.

they took everything that made Gadget more than just a baseline trope, and took it away. I'm not even saying the 80s show was perfect, it was FAR from perfect. but it at least had something built up, and the 2015 show came and pulled it all down again. kind of says something when your original show still reigns supreme over two modernized reboots, several failed projects, two films and any and all attempts at adding onto the lore.

And the animation is godawful so that's just more salt in the wound lol

Add on more if you want, I'm happy to hear your takes on things. but be reasonable in the comments/reblogs lads, yeah?

[myjunkisyuzuruhanyu]

Thinking a lot about Yuzu and Shoma the last days...

Mentally I am still somewhere shortly after Pyeongchang 2018 where everything was fine 😌 I will probably never be as happy as a fan back when Yuzu and Shoma won the Olympics. This still means everything to me.

So here are again some favorite moments ❤️❤️❤️❤️🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰:

[nuyastone]

(The Order of the Gays Stone)

MCSM character designs by me

I am hyperfixated sooo badly

[tyrramint]

~Have courage and be kind…~

Best viewed on a bright screen because apparently I can’t draw bright things well, loll

(Closeup under cut :)