#i can't believe i wrote an essay for fun

[woojungz]

their love languages! 💭🎀

❝ xikers x gn!reader

𓂃𓈒 finally wrote something for all 10 members(⁠；⁠^⁠ω⁠^)

word count: 1.5k

( likes and reblogs appreciated!♡ )

✧𓂃𓈒MINJAE.

i'm a firm believer that minjae is so huge on words of affirmation. he's already written roadys long messages before, like i’m saying 'essay long' messages, thanking us for keeping up with them and having fun last tour. he loves pouring his all through heartfelt words he tells you at random times of the day, whether it be through text or if you're hanging out together. tells you he loves you everytime he can, the members even cringing whenever he does that in front of everyone else. they don't let him catch a break😭 the other way around, i think he also likes receiving words of affirmation. remember that one fancall where he asked a roady why they love him? as his s/o, let him know how well he's doing as a leader please. he also incredibly cherishes quality time with you because as the group leader, he doesn't get all the time in the world to be with you even if he wanna :(

✧𓂃𓈒JUNMIN.

i'm not sure if this counts as words of affirmation, but i'll just say it is. junmin really loves updating you throughout the day, like i'm saying tons of messages consisting of his selfies, food he's eaten, and places he's been too. dude is gonna blow up your phone at this point😭 but you don't really mind. even though you're not right there beside him, you feel like you are, because it's like he tells you updates of every single move he makes for the day. you literally have a collection of his photos he sent you, in your gallery. you're actually suprised it's a lot more than the pictures you've taken yourself?! he also really loves to do acts of service for you, he's actually one of the members that keeps their dorm mess free. so if there were times you're stressed or too occupied with work that you weren't able to pay attention to other things around you, junmin will do his best to help ease your workload!

✧𓂃𓈒SUMIN.

i like to think sumin is really into gift giving, and the things he gives you are really personal which makes it a lot more special. he really enjoys having you as his subject in his paintings of drawings, and would love to gift it to you once he's finished. also, you can't miss the sweet messages he leaves you behind the paper of the drawings! everyone knows sumin owns a lot of keychains right, literally his keychains weigh more than the bag it's attached to😭 he'd let you take anything from his collection, and would sometimes even buy you new ones! aside from that, even though we see him sometimes reject physical touch with the members, he'd initiate it himself with you. if you guys are living together, you'd maybe wanna marry him already because this guy knows how to maintain a home. this paragraph is gonna get longer if i explain, so i'll have it at just that.

✧𓂃𓈒JINSIK.

he's kinda on the same level of sumin when it comes to gift giving. our jinsik is an artist right? so he'd spent most of his time making drawings for you so you can turn it into your phone wallpaper! or even does short animations for you, like that stuff takes such a long time and jinsik would just spend his whole day making it for you. sometimes you'd catch him drawing something, but he suddenly hides it from you because he says he wants it to be a surprise!! also this guy is a real enjoyer of quality time too. whenever his family would be going somewhere, he'd want you to tag along with them. it makes him so happy to see all his favorite people in one place together :(

✧𓂃𓈒HYUNWOO.

i don't know if this is kinda unexpected but if you look closely, hyunwoo really likes physical touch. this boy always needs to hug you everytime you meet. and those times where you thought he was making kissy faces to you as a joke so you never reciprocate it, yeah... he was being fr that he wants a kiss. you just realize it when he suddenly sulks beside you as if there was a random rain cloud that manifested on top of his head, that suddenly his mood got sad. but once you do kiss him then he's already back to happy! also, he really likes to backhug you. at first he might be kind of cautious with physical touch if the other members could see, because he's often the center of their teasing. but as time went on, he actually didn't care anymore, he's gonna hug you whenever he wanna!!

✧𓂃𓈒JUNGHOON.

our hoonie really loves quality time with you! everytime he's free from schedule, all he really wants to do is spend the time to explore food spots with you (he really enjoys eating). he'd drag you along to places you've never been to before so you guys could try the randomest food ever. oftentimes he doesn't really show much expression right, so you also love it when you get to eat with him because he gets very extra while eating. especially when the food is good, you'll get to witness a bunch of reactions from him! just like hyunwoo, he's suprisingly into physical touch with you. no one of the members expected that at all! he'd like to have his hand somewhere on you, just making sure that there's no one else around to see this side of him. it's like he doesn't even expect himself to act like that, it's just because he's so in love with you he unconsciously wants to touch you all the time😭

✧𓂃𓈒SEEUN.

he's just some guy that has a lot of love to give😔 i like to think he enjoys giving all the love languages to his s/o, he's really sweet overall as a boyfriend. he would wanna devote himself to you. he's really heavily leaning on physical touch though, like randomly kisses you in moments you don't expect (i mean, this dude kisses his members randomly and even kisses the camera itself when it's on him😭). he can't sit still without having his hand on you all the time. also this guy doesn't like being locked up in their dorms whenever they don't have any schedules, so he's quickly ringing your phone up to ask you to spend time with him, hence another quality time enjoyer.

✧𓂃𓈒YUJUN.

physical touch on top when it comes to him!! sometimes the members have expressed that yujun gets so touchy, and he gives the best hugs. such a cute cuddler you know. everywhere you guys are spotted together, yujun always has a hand around your shoulder, waist, or his favorite: entangled with your hand too. if he's standing near you, he's not gonna let a gap between you too happen, your shoulders need to be touching😭 sometimes how question if he can even exist without being beside you all the time. goodluck dealing with him because it seems like yujun has a never ending amount of energy. also!! quality time with him in the form of playing video games together.

✧𓂃𓈒HUNTER.

he actually said it himself when another roady asked him!! hunter really enjoys quality time. even before then, this guy really loves to travel to different countries. he tells you he'd love to take you there some time, doesn't really care if he's been there for the hundredth time, as long as he sees the smile on your face that you're happy to spend time with him. even locally, he enjoys hanging out at parks and aquariums so expect a lot of your dates to be at those places. another is that hunter loves to give you gifts. it's not just ordinary gifts, he loves to give you ones that he could always see you using. mostly it'll be clothes or accessories, and it makes him really happy to see you show up for dates wearing his gifts :(

✧𓂃𓈒YECHAN.

he's kinda new to this relationship thing, very awkward at first. a stark contrast to how you met him, he's really extroverted right. it's honestly kinda cute to see him try his hardest in doing all the couple things he thought he has to do, so let him know that he can breath sometimes and just be himself!! he tries to ask for relationship advice from his hyungs, sometimes it backfires on him because he accidentally understands it a different way. so then he resorted to asking his older sisters instead. he may struggle a bit with words (in the relationship), even though he's normally so talkative. so he likes to express his love through actions. he remembers your favorite things, would love to buy you gifts even though there's no really occasion. and mostly tries to help you any way he could!! please notice how hard he tries to show acts of service!

[intrulogical]

remus isn't dumb; a sanders sides essay

i've been struggling to make a cohesive post about this because i feel like most of what i want to say boils down to the same underlying message which is: remus isn't dumb.

i feel like a good chunk of this fandom understands what i mean, at least to a surface level point. but even then, i think too much of the fandom still misinterprets remus' character in a way that, they seem to understand different traits of his, but the way they execute it is still way off from what we see in canon.

(rest of the essay under the cut!)

for example, the biggest thing i see people get wrong would be the way they write remus "lol random" personality. it's true that remus tends to say whatever he wants at any given moment. but, the problem here is that people tend to think remus as random in function. i have no better way to describe this succinctly, so to expound: while remus tends to make left-field jokes a lot, he is shown to be incredibly deliberate, cunning, committed, and intelligent in very subtle ways.

truth is, remus is very goal-oriented, and when he has a goal, oh he strives for that goal. so far, i'm writing this with the last 5 years episode being the most recent substantial episode, so i can't really 100% say all my assumptions of remus are true. actually, i think the upcoming season finale will be the missing link when it comes to providing us with the whole picture of who remus is.

as for now, i just have to stick with my theory of; remus, as a side of thomas' heavily connected to insecurities and mental health issues, intends to shed light on the "darker" sides of thomas because he believes them to be beneficial. throughout dwit, we see remus continuously bolster the idea that his contributions are useful for thomas. this continues in wtit, but with the extra layer of remus wanting logan as well to be in touch with the darker parts of himself to get thomas in line.

it is also heavily implied that remus is well in on whatever janus' plan is to get thomas to be a.) more aware of his mental health issues, and b.) to get thomas to break out of his catholic black and white thinking. in forbidden fruit, it's janus who’s seen permitting remus to present himself to thomas. bigger evidence though, as i've mentioned in the previous paragraph, is the way remus seems to deliberately want logan to manifest his anger against thomas.

of course, we can always say that remus taunted logan "just for fun", but i feel like too much of what happened in wtit seem to point to remus having deeper reasons. for example, wtit exhibits how bad thomas' mental health is to the point that he gets irrationally angry at nico for not replying to his texts. this proves how thomas has been neglecting his mental health, and with the way patton, virgil, and roman held onto toxic selfless ideologies for the longest time, thomas would still, naturally, be lost on what to do. he would even seem to deny how bad things have gotten, especially with the way he acts like nothing bad is happening when he goes to his date with nico.

why am i emphasizing this? well, it's because something i find interesting about remus' character is how deeply cognizant he is of thomas' problems. what i mean by this is, no other side can call out thomas' issues more than remus can. i wrote an essay about this before if you want to check this out, but tldr: remus, as intrusive thoughts, is the most perceptive out of all the sides when it comes to calling out insecurities or problems. we see this come to fruition in wtit when all of the traps he laid out for thomas involved nico in some capacity.

while you can interpret his character as evil for preying on others’ insecurities, i think it's important to acknowledge that, in a sea of people who tend to refuse to talk about their issues, remus is the main guy who constantly brings them to the table. whether remus' intentions are good or not, there's no denying that remus' importance as a side lies in the fact that he serves as a mental health alarm clock for thomas. with the way none of the sides want to communicate with each other, we need someone like remus to cut the bullshit and say things as it is. 

again, we don't really know if he wants to help thomas. but i would like to emphasize that, yes, remus is not dumb. he does not merely make lewd jokes and calls it a day. he has the long-term goal of making everyone talk about more "taboo" topics with each other, and this includes talking about personal grievances the sides tend to suppress or refuse to talk about. lewd jokes are just part of the process.

i think this goal of his is also incredibly visible with the way remus treated logan in wtit. wtit is my favorite sanders sides episode because there's just so much to analyze between remus and logan, but you can check my other essays in regards to that. the main thing i wanted to point out is that what remus says to logan in the end, "woowee logan, now you're speaking my language. but who do you really want to scream that at?", proves he is more deliberate and cunning than he seems.

a lovely bit of analysis my friend orb (@orbmanson7) provided is that remus didn't just pop up in wtit to intervene with thomas' plans. he was there to intervene with logan's. if you've seen my other essays, i've talked about how logan as a side has been dwindling in terms of self-confidence and assertion. this has left a big problem of thomas being more reliant on his emotions, making him ignore the suggestions given by logan that may help with thomas' mental health in the long run. this is not to villainize thomas' mental health crisis, btw. all i want to say is that, remus recognizes how logan's self-restriction is doing no good and deliberately wants to push logan to become more assertive and angry.

that is why he says logan is speaking his language. he wants logan to recognize the merit in the way remus grabs thomas' attention. he wants logan to be like him and cause more havoc. again, we never know how much remus genuinely wants to help thomas, but we know that remus wants everyone to be more exposed to "taboo" things, and this includes logan being more in touch with his angrier side.

besides that, i'd like to mention how, in general, remus tends to be very committed to his goals more than how the fandom typically portrays him? in dwit, remus' main goal was to disturb thomas and the other sides. it's kind of just an introduction to his character. we're not sure if it's part of a bigger plan he and janus devised to get thomas to take care of himself better, but it is a possibility. the only time he gets too random is when logan begins picking apart his arguments. there we see remus only results to super left-field, continuous off-tangent jokes when he's desperate or placed in a lose-lose situation.

another, in wtit, we see how remus understands how to make very long, complicated traps. i think it's a perfect encapsulation of his personality, actually! throughout the episode, we see him make these multilayered traps with a ton of props and preparation just so he can bother thomas with it. it shows that remus is actually less impulsive-oriented as he seems. he even created a schedule he showed to logan detailing everything he wanted to do that day. again, deliberate! he is deliberate and very smart!

other thing i'd like to harken back to is the idea that he's in cahoots with the other dark sides to execute some Big Plan to break thomas out of his black and white thinking. while we don't know how orange acts like yet, we're Very familiar with janus by this point and we can see how long-drawn janus' plan of acceptance is. he's, again, sorry to use the word so many times, very deliberate. i don't even think his plan ends with svs.r, because it does seem like remus is well in on this plan too. in the 5 years video, he also seems to know more than thomas on what else is to come for the future of sanders sides, which implies he has some plans up his sleeve that no one else knows about. like i said, janus has the goal to break thomas out of his black and white thinking. and so far from what we've seen from remus, he also wants the same!

an important factor of remus' character besides his deliberateness is his general need to subvert what "goodness" means. "good and bad are all made up nonsense," he sings in forbidden fruit. throughout dwit he continuously criticizes everything thomas thinks is good or acceptable. in the 5 years video, he argues about how there's no "correct way of sitting". i think this also proves how remus is important as a side because, while not every single one of his beliefs are morally acceptable, he is still able to pick morality apart in a way the other sides are unable to. also, i just think this proves his character as just. generally smart? he's able to pick apart the status quo and moral philosophies, of course he's smart.

just to pick up on a previous point, remus is scarily perceptive. i mentioned this earlier with how remus is able to pick logan apart, but i'd like to add onto it more since i think a lot of people underestimate how crazily perceptive he is. for one, despite not being too close with a bunch of the other sides, he seems to be able to read their insecurities and play them against them really well. we see it in the way he uses virgil's insecurities of being an ex-dark side against him. we see it in the way he picks on patton and thomas' morality crisis against them. we see it in the way roman describes remus as someone being able to show him things he doesn't like about himself. and most importantly, we see it in the way remus constantly reaps the fact that logan isn't listened to to the point that logan snaps. as intrusive thoughts, remus' job is to see what deepest darkest secrets thomas and the sides suppress and use it against them.

at the moment, we don't really know if remus has any weaknesses, although wtit sort of implies that he himself is also quite irritated by the fact that thomas doesn't listen to him. he does a good way of hiding, though, how much of that problem is genuinely affecting him. it makes me think he's also smart in the way he's able to hide his vulnerabilities and true intentions from the other side. he's silly and goofy and lewd and because of that, everyone thinks he's harmless. the sides think he's unserious, and so does the fandom. but deep down, remus really isn't that stupid. 

and LASTLY, when beta reading this essay, orb also mentioned to me about how remus possesses cognitive flexibility in a way roman doesn’t. this isn’t meant to discredit roman of course, but i think it’s important to mention that remus is the side with the least amount of restrictions when it comes to creative liberties. orb mentioned to me how remus is able to connect concepts easily in a way roman doesn’t because remus doesn’t operate under the same self-restrictive mindset. while this obviously would help thomas become more innovative as a creative, i think it’s also important to recognize how much thomas kind of needs it in general. much of the latter half of the series shows thomas dealing with restrictions, especially when it comes to doing good. it would be great benefit for thomas to be able to listen to a side who generally wants to Have a Good Time, and doesn’t abide by rules imposed onto them.

and yes that is my essay on remus 100/10 best character and is not dumb at all. very excited to see him in the finale and i hope y’all’s get your characterizations straight because i need me some good fics 

[notyouraryang0dd3ss]

One lowkey thing that kinda drives me insane about Taylor Swift is discussion about her music. I don't know how to explain this properly but... (sorry for the long ask)

She's not an excellent singer. She's fine, but as a good example from her own discography: look at Florida feat. Florence. Florence singing her verse made me wake up in that album and made me realize how the song could've been delivered! She sings it in a much more interesting way than Taylor did. This isn't even to speak towards other popular artists like Beyonce, Ariana, Lana, Olivia, Billie, etc. who all have their own signature vocal styles and delivery that are impressive and make their songs.

I don't know. It feels bizarre to have one of the biggest pop artists in the world to have such mediocre vocals. TTPD as an album I feel partly got killed because of the way she's so samey about her vocal delivery.

But her fans would say no it's not about the vocals, it's the songwriting. But then TTPD songwriting was meh and just awful at some parts (the 1800s racist line is weird. period. I don't care whatever essay defense they give it). What now? What's the appeal? Why does she get to release something mediocre and get all the attention and praise when some artists have released great albums this year?

Then there's also when she gets the weirdest praise for the mildest things that other musicians have done. Album eras? "Oh, she's so cool and different for that!" No, she didn't invent them, shut up. An album of fictional songs with a story? They act as if concept albums don't exist! The most minor of genre shifts (she's primarily exploring different types of pop) are treated as experimental and groundbreaking. The most milquetoast and shallow political music she ever wrote (YNTCD and The Man) are seen as iconic moments of speaking out. Like what?

It's just frustrating me. I remember when someone told me she screamed in some songs in TTPD (Who's Afraid of Little Old Me and The Black Dog iirc) and I listened to that album and I thought they were joking with me because what do you mean scream??? Why does she get praised for so much mediocrity holy shit!

I think this is why when I hear people say that there's swifties that only mainly listen to Taylor and Taylor-adjacent artists, I believe them. I feel like they're making so many impressed remarks about her work because that's all they know. That's how we get genre takes like someone saying Rep is punk or how they want her to make a rock album. I feel like that's how we get stupid stuff like Gaylors too. Because why listen to actually out queer artists if you can just reimagine your fave artist as queer?

Honestly, I just don't understand the attachment to her music? Every time someone tells me it's because she's relatable, I just shake my head because she's never been relatable to me, even back when I enjoyed her songs. Maybe I'm too un-USAmerican for this, but she was never very universal for me. I enjoyed her because she did fun pop songs. But now I've realized she's so frustratingly shitty as a person, I can't listen to her.

Sorry for the rant, but it's been hard to find a space for this without getting attacked by swifties (especially as a poc).

(1/2)

[eerna]

eerna what's going on in s3 bridgerton your posts and answers making me scared to watch on my life lmao

pls don't hate me, Colin lovers, but I was told by a friend who read the series that he's more fun and chill in the books and also i just....find Polin from even s1 is kinda uhhhhh?awkward?? cuz he's kind of unnecessarily serious and so not chill in the previous seasons?? maybe i don't see his appeal because I'm no Penny but i do not see his appeal in the show

so rn i haven't even watched it and seeing your posts is making me moreeeeeee 😶‍🌫️ it's okay give us the cringey details

Nsbysbbsb NO WORRIES!!! I have a weirdly big amount to say about this show bc I am no longer suffering as much as I did in s1 and 2. Prepare for an essay on my feelings on Polin and thank you for enabling me.

Ok so Colin. Not saying your friend is wrong bc I didn't read the book, but p much everyone I saw talking about it said Colin was very angry and aggressive in it, and for NO REASON since he's supposed to be the "calm brother". I'm glad that the show let him get upset, but never the way he was in the books/Anthony was in s2, where I legit worried about Kate's safety sometimes. Colin was my fav Bridgerton brother bc he was totally different from all the other men on the show, calm and silly and romantic.

Thar being said!!! I never ever thought of him as a GOOD love interest, and s3 only made it worse. First off, yeah, s1 and 2 do NOT show him and Pen as friends nearly enough to warrant the speed of their connection in s3. I blocked s2 from my memory bc I hated it So Damn Much so I can't 100% stand behind my words, but I don't really remember many friendly scenes with the two of them that didn't feel like he was just entertaining his sister's bestie? I remember he once danced with her, and he sent her letters from his travels, and that's it. Then in s3 we are supposed to believe Pen knows him soooo well, she sees through his tricks when no one else does, he can't stand losing her friendship when she stops talking to him. How, when the impression I got from their relationship was "oh she is clearly silly in love and he doesn't care about her enough to notice"!!!

And s3... Oh boy. Colin gets his "glowup" and becomes a rake bc Bridgerton writers would probably spontaneously combust if they wrote a virgin male lead. We see him flirt and smash other women and it is always so so so awkward. I've seen people trying to rationalize it as "Oh he is supposed to be pretending, oh we are supposed to find it cringe" but NO, he is objectified the exact same way Simon and Anthony were, and we as the audience are supposes to think it is sexy. To be fair, Pen finds it concerning but I think that has more to do with the amount of silly, vapid women constantly swarming around him. So now we are even FURTHER away from seeing any reasons why the two of them would be friends. And then we get hit with the "Colin teaches Pen how to find a husband" plot, and oh my god it is so bad, IT IS SO BAD, they have like 2 lessons across 1 episode before they are busted and stop and he literally taught her NOTHING she IGNORED HIS ADVICE AND FIGURED IT OUT BY HERSELF but everyone treats him like a war hero for taking one for the team and teaching the poor unlikeable social reject how to act. We also have the stupid scene where she is criyng begging him to kiss her because she is convinced otherwise she would die without being kissed, and he is trying to elegantly avoid it, and oh my god, I hated this, it is framed as cute and romantic but it is so uncomfortable and bad. AAAAAAAA. Anyway. Then there is this hilariously horrible incident where he saves her from a feral balloon, and if you are wondering wtf am I talking about, its because it is really bad and written like a Scary Movie slasher scene. There are exactly 3 moments that I liked, and ALL of them were bc Colin seemed very lost and desperate. First was when Pen told him they should stay away from each other after the scandal of them hanging out came out (which I liked bc if it were any other girl, some unhinged character would force them to marry, but since it was Pen they were like "Well obviously it's true there was nothing untowards happening it is just cringe haha loserrr"), and he looked like he stopped comprehending English. The second was when he was confessing his feelings, he got on his knees and looked like he was about to cry and I thought that was sweet! Well, he did mention torture which is a very ugly word to use in such a speech, but whatever. The third was after the Infamous Carriage Scene when he says something silly and the two giggle together and I was like PLEASE WHERE WAS THIS ENERGY IN S1 AND 2!!

And may I just say!! The actual Bridgerton Glowup one was PEN and NOT COLIN. In s1 and 2 you could tell she was pretty, but in s3 they made her so damn beautiful that my friends and I would go "Oh wow" several times per episode. And it's not only the clothes, they would put her in rooms where she pops out and sparkles and frame her in shots just perfectly. Idk why they only gave her 1 alternate love interest and then shot her Like That, there should have been at LEAST one more guy following in Debling's trail. Now she's the hot one in the relationship so I can't buy her desperation for Colin's approval or society's perception of Colin as a charity in any way.

With all that said. I think this is the best season of Bridgerton proper. It still isn't something I'd enjoy unironically, but at least it is neither a horrible age gap dynamic feat. SA nor a horrible disgusting juggling of sisters feat. murderer vibes. The only thing I'd say is worse than it used to be is the clothes, which are slowly creeping towards The Reign level of ahistorical and bad.

[ctrl-alt-cel]

when i was 13 i wrote an essay explaining the rationale of puppyshipping to some guy in a skype chatroom. found the essay again. wanted to rewrite it. without further ado:

HERE’S HOW PUPPYSHIPPING CAN STILL WIN: THE SEQUEL: 2 PUPPY 2 SHIPPING (4.3k words)

⠀

kaiba and jounouchi’s relationship stands at an awkwardly undefinable place in canon: they're not on good terms, but they're not enemies either. they know each other too well to be called passing acquaintances, but kaiba hardly acknowledges jounouchi as a duelist, let alone a potential rival. at best? they're mutual nuisances.

or, that's how jounouchi and kaiba choose to define it. both of them would love if their dynamic were that simple, nothing more than a back-and-forth of petty insults—but that’s not the truth. and they'll dance around the truth for five whole seasons, purposefully downplaying why they’re so obsessed with provoking each other whenever they’re in the same place.

they're foils.

—but the term "foils" is so dulled within fandom lexicon now that it can mean literally anything from two guys who just disagree with each other sometimes, so i'll sharpen this further. jounouchi and kaiba see their counterpart less as an individual person but more a representation of who they could have become if they had respectively, in their eyes, never learned the lessons they needed to. they project their own ideals onto the other and come away thinking they already know how the other operates, and the fun thing is, even when working from conjecture, their assumptions of one another happen to hit far closer to home than they have any right to.

so really, they can't leave each other alone because they can't stop seeing their failures reflected back at them. the other is a defective version of themselves that they need to correct because they can't stand constantly acknowledging who they used to be, so they try to bend the other to be more like their own image—an "i can fix him (by dragging him down to my level)".

⠀

jounouchi and kaiba’s parallels run down to their origins, both set up against abysmal family situations they have no choice but to make the best of. seto and mokuba are orphaned at a young age until seto gets them adopted, while katsuya is separated from his sister and stuck with a deadbeat father who can't carry his own weight. trapped in an environment where nobody expects anything worthwhile from him, katsuya joins a gang and lives out a self-admittedly miserable existence before befriending yugi, while seto is in a battlefield of his own, faced with protecting mokuba while enduring against the nightmare that is gozaburo kaiba’s parenting.

what they do to survive those conditions determines the outlooks they carry for the rest of their lives: jounouchi learns that losing is inescapable and the best you can do is learn how to cope with it, whereas kaiba learns that losing is something you must protect yourself from because there's only so much you can afford to lose.

jounouchi is positioned as the underdog, fighting tooth-and-nail for every victory he can manage, while kaiba has power in excess and holds to the belief that it’s all he really needs. one would argue that they have the perspective the other lacks—they argue that they have the perspective the other lacks. but in my opinion? it doesn't actually matter. what interests me is how they treat each other as a result.

⠀

side: seto kaiba

kaiba degrades jounouchi a lot. like, to an uncomfortable extent. you know that one post that’s like “why does bullying exist? why are you mad that i’m ugly?” why is kaiba so mad over the fact that jounouchi loses so much?

it’s projection. he’s just holding jounouchi to the same standard he holds himself to. you need to be powerful if you want to play the same games as kaiba, and seeing jounouchi so openly lean on his friends, ask for help, and have the audacity to lose sets kaiba off because he’s not playing the way he’s supposed to. kaiba rubs jounouchi's losses in his face because he believes that's what loss is supposed to look like, and that it’s jounouchi’s fault for not understanding that yet. kaiba is trying to teach him. to kaiba, this degradation might as well be an act of generosity.

while kaiba stayed true to his own ambitions, seizing kaibacorp from gozaburo and turning it into a children's entertainment company, he beat gozaburo at his own game not by inventing new rules but by playing it better than his adoptive father ever could. and as impressive as that is, it’s not sustainable. gozaburo kills himself when faced with his own defeat, and kaiba internalizes this lesson: that all losses are final, and it’s better to die than adapt to the consequences of a defeat. gozaburo’s death was a suicide, but in the context of their game, kaiba might as well have killed him regardless.

he mirrors this when he threatens to kill himself in duelist kingdom, his heightened emotions catastrophizing losing the duel to immediately equal failing mokuba and coming to the conclusion that if he loses mokuba he’d rather be dead. being someone so fervently self-reliant, any alternate solution, a possibility that he can lose here and still find a different way to rescue mokuba never crosses his mind. and, look, this isn’t his fault. this is the only way of living he’s ever been taught. he’s never learned how to cope in the event of failure because he’s never had the luxury to fail to begin with.

he's burned and rebuilt himself over and over again to survive in the world he operates in, and that’s why jounouchi pisses kaiba off so personally. jounouchi loses so much and so messily, and kaiba tries to show him that if he doesn’t start reinventing himself from the broken pieces of his defeats until all that’s left of him are jagged edges the same way he has, he’s never going to win. but jounouchi…does win. and keeps winning. and even when he does lose, it’s as if he creates new victories for himself, like there’s still value to playing a game with someone when you don’t win it—power of friendship bullshit and whatever. jounouchi is still here, a competitor that kaiba can no longer write off as much as he desperately wants to. (and, yeah, it is pretty ironic how jounouchi will jump through a million hoops to get kaiba to look at him, but he doesn't realize that he doesn't need to do anything to keep kaiba’s attention, only continue being himself.)

jounouchi refuses to compromise who he is and still manages to get far when in kaiba’s mind, that shouldn’t be possible; he’s supposed to be punished the way kaiba was. jounouchi is proof that you can take a devastating blow and move on from it, that even when you do fuck up spectacularly, there’s still something worthwhile in starting again tomorrow.

so kaiba constantly needs to prove that he’s better than jounouchi, that jounouchi isn’t even worth his time in order to justify his worldview. because if kaiba isn’t right, then he'll have no choice but to confront the fact that the war is over. that his circumstances aren’t instant life or death anymore and that even though he’s freed himself from gozaburo’s influence, there’s still further growth as a person he could stand to undergo, now divorced from the harsh conditions of his upbringing. jounouchi is a testament to how it’s possible to make peace and move on from the past without constantly bleeding for closure, that maybe, kaiba’s headlong quest to get the last word on his rivalry with yami yugi may not actually be as fulfilling as he thinks.

but admitting that you might need to change the way you live feels like a defeat in and of itself—it’s infuriating to hear that after everything you’ve had to learn, the way you live now isn’t good enough. that surviving insurmountable trauma doesn’t inherently make you better or more worthy than other people—it just traumatizes you, and is something you must heal from. so, instead of reflecting on these revelations, it’s so much easier for kaiba to tell himself that jounouchi is only ever graceful when he’s dead.

⠀

side: katsuya jounouchi

jounouchi is very stuck on this idea that he needs to be useful. his dad is an alcoholic with a gambling addiction and he believes it's not only his duty to pay his father's debts, but to be the household's sole source of income. his sister needs eye surgery and he believes it's his responsibility as an older brother not only to pay for it, but to act as her primary emotional support to get the surgery and throughout her recovery process. haga throws yugi's exodia into the ocean and jounouchi blames himself for not stopping it. jounouchi gets mind-controlled by malik and blames himself for causing his friends anguish from it. mai literally gets jounounchi’s soul stolen and he apologizes to her for messing up and making her sad. it's habitual, jounouchi doesn't know how to stop taking on the burdens of other people.

if you live with the mentality that you’re inevitably going to fail for long enough, you’ll come away with the belief that caring about your own wellbeing isn’t worth the effort. it depends on how pessimistic you want to read it, if it’s just his love language or jounouchi compensating for the damning act of being himself, but jounouchi quantifies his worth by how much he provides for other people. he’s always jumping in the line of fire for the sake of others because if you constantly undervalue your own wellbeing, you always have less to lose. as the underdog, he may not be as overtly powerful as kaiba or yugi, but he can still give himself away, and he’s convinced himself that it’s what he’s supposed to do. jounouchi is still new to this whole friendship thing. after a lifetime of supporting himself by himself, he doesn't know when he's allowed to ask for help yet—he’s supposed to be the help, dammit.

a key distinction between jounouchi and kaiba’s upbringings is that while kaiba’s biological parents died in an accident, jounouchi’s parents are still alive and they choose not to be responsible for him. jounouchi is conditioned to fend for himself by himself because having a parental figure actually present in his life isn’t a luxury he gets to have. to jounouchi, there has to be a reason why his mother only takes shizuka and never goes back for him in the six years he’s left with his father, and he rationalizes this with his notions of masculinity: he’s a strong man who can handle it. jounouchi is not delicate, he can endure it. men are responsible for their own circumstances. kaiba is hyperindependent out of a mixture of spite, paranoia, and self-defense. jounouchi is hyperindependent because he believes he deserves it. it’s the reason why he believes he’ll finally have a good relationship with his father if he just wins enough money to pay off his gambling debts—jounouchi can fix everything if only he were man enough to, and he can get people to stay if he demonstrates himself useful enough.

so death doesn’t carry nearly as much weight to jounouchi as it does to kaiba. in kaiba’s eyes, death is the punishment for failure, but to jounouchi, death is just the natural consequence for the kind of life he leads. he can't stop himself from fighting for the people he loves until he’s spent everything and forced to stop (read: dies), so during the several times jounouchi is confronted with his own death, he meets it with a solemn acceptance. like, yeah, it sucks, but he doesn’t regret the actions he took to end up here—he’d do it all over again, frankly. it’s better to die than not give everything he can, and at least he was able to give his life in service to someone else. it’s not necessarily good to die, but it doesn’t matter as much if he does.

so where kaiba is afraid of losing, jounouchi is afraid of outliving his usefulness (and being abandoned as a result), and kaiba disrupts jounouchi’s worldview specifically because he puts his ideology on the defensive. to jounouchi, kaiba’s presence never demands a question of “what can you do for me?” (nothing, kaiba doesn’t want jounouchi to do anything for him, and frankly, he’d be insulted if jounouchi even tried) but “what makes you worthy of standing on the same level as me?”, and jounouchi can’t sacrificial lamb get set on fire die a billion times into getting kaiba into seeing it his way (rather, that would only prove him right: kaiba would love nothing more than for jounouchi to lose the ability to fight and finally align with his preconceived notions of how the world works), and he can’t argue that his value is in how much he provides for others because that’s a non-answer. kaiba doesn’t care.

kaiba’s presence forces jounouchi into a position of self-reflection: jounouchi works so hard to preserve the friendships he’s created, but who is he—what does he value about himself in the absence of it? jounouchi needs to acknowledge something inherently valuable about himself if he wants to counter kaiba in any meaningful way, and it’s not like he doesn’t have valuable qualities either: he’s tenacious, he’s resourceful, he’s a quick learner—it takes intelligence to rank as high as he does in tournaments, but he undervalues all of it. these traits are all to be expected, they don’t actually count as extraordinary when it’s him. they’re only remarkable when they’re being applied to something greater. jounouchi believes he has the potential to become strong (and valuable by extension), only with the stipulation that he’s never actually there yet. he focuses too much on his inadequacies, constantly pontificating on how he needs to become a “true duelist”, but by the way he speaks about the title, the only way to be a true duelist is be named yugi muto, i guess.

so it’s very jounouchi-esque for him to miss this point with near deliberate precision and try to make himself useful to kaiba anyway. while kaiba is bent on seeing jounouchi fail to prove that his cynicism is superior to jounouchi’s altruism, the inverse is that jounouchi sees his old self in kaiba and he’s dying to teach kaiba a lesson. during battle for bronze, jounouchi states that they used to be the same, people who only relied on themselves and thought they’d be fine living like that. the argument jounouchi makes is that living that way is fucking miserable. he calls kaiba out: you’re supposed to be having fun. why are you playing duel monsters if you’re not having fun? he’s trying to show kaiba that he can be useful and teach kaiba things if kaiba would just let him, but for reasons mentioned in both of their sections, kaiba isn’t interested in being taught anything.

while less malicious in display, it's important to note that jounouchi’s method of trying to teach kaiba doesn't make him the better person here. jounouchi isn’t coming from a place of understanding when he lectures kaiba, he’s coming from a place of misdirected self-flagellation. and from kaiba's perspective, jounouchi is just dispensing unwarranted advice for the sake of his own ego. the most egregious example is when jounouchi picks a fight with kaiba in duelist kingdom, demanding they duel when kaiba is clearly not in the mood, busy with more pressing matters like, i don’t know, trying to rescue his abducted brother? so, okay, maybe a little bit inconsiderate on jounouchi’s part.

they're two ideological extremes: kaiba lashes out at the world while jounouchi gives himself to it, and jounouchi will keep barging in on kaiba with his life lessons because it’s the only way he wants to engage with kaiba’s arguments otherwise. jounouchi interprets kaiba’s rejection of his ideals as the equivalent of the stubbornness jounouchi had before befriending yugi, and he uses it as a reason to keep pushing, not understanding that while he may have found the most honorable path for himself, you can imagine how constantly burning yourself for others isn’t very…appealing. or sustainable. and that maybe it’s something you need to work on, actually.

⠀

conclusion: how i WIN

what’s fun about jounouchi and kaiba is how wrong they are. they genuinely can't live the way the other demands them to, their respective environments won’t allow it. if jounouchi chased victory with the same cutthroat relentlessness as kaiba, he probably never would have left his gang. or, at least, he’d lose the selfless devotion and consideration he has for others, traits that helped him build his support system, and he never would have found the friendships he values in his life—his willingness to change and start again was how he was able to befriend yugi to begin with. (and if you wanted to get really extreme with hypotheticals, his self-destructive tendencies could have grown so severe in the absence of a support system that he probably would wind up getting himself killed somewhere. lol.) inversely, if kaiba granted himself the freedom to worry less about the outcome as long as he enjoyed himself, he’d put mokuba’s safety at constant risk. kaiba’s guarded nature isn’t without reason, there are powerful corporate executives who would love to see him fail, and there are very real consequences if kaiba slips up for even a second and gives his opposition any leeway. the way they live works for them because it’s theirs. it’s not so much that either of their lifestyles are in dire need of correction, but that the other represents the possibility that they could be living better.

and this is fantastic because it means that, despite what they think, neither of them are in the “wrong” and must learn to change their idiot ways or that the solution is to strong-arm each other into some kind of compromise. it’s a battle of perceived weakness. they need to, naturally and individually, accept that the traits they’ve always deemed immature and beneath them can be just as vital for survival, even when it’s not necessarily their own.

jounouchi and kaiba are essentially the most extreme example of two people who want what’s best for each other (gone wrong!) and puppyshipping is appealing because them getting together requires that they stop punishing themselves for who they used to be. they expect too much out of themselves and then inflict those demands onto each other, but if they’re not wrong for the ways they’ve overcome the circumstances they were left in, then it’s equally true that the ideals they abandoned to survive weren’t inherently naïve just because they weren’t given the space to utilize them. sometimes life will push you to your limits in the hope that you fail, and there’s no deeper meaning to it. it’s not life’s way of teaching you a necessary lesson to make you stronger or a test to see if you deserve to live, or that it’s your fault when it breaks you. sometimes there’s no great meaning to suffering. things happen, and you will adjust to it in order to live. when kaiba and jounouchi believe they know each other as much as they know themselves, pairing them is the hope that they’ll respect themselves enough to respect each other, that they’ll one day be able to embrace the parts of themselves they’re the most ashamed of.

(or, you know, for the alternative crowd, they most definitely can make each other worse.)

for two men who claim to be so self-assured in their own lifestyles, jounouchi and kaiba are fascinating because there’s so many layers of denial at play: the denial that they see anything in each other, denial that there may be aspects of the other that they’ve come to envy, denial that they even care, and it's so tempting to imagine if all of it was forced open. jounouchi and kaiba choose to maintain this delicate equilibrium where they never actually confront anything because the idea of admitting vulnerability viscerally disgusts them, and it begs what would happen if the balance irrevocably tipped for once. watching them is like watching a pencil teetering on the edge of a desk, always this close to some kind of breakthrough. i won’t even lie to you puppyshipping pisses me off half the time because i just want to shake them around until something metaphorically breaks.

kaiba and jounouchi never let each other become complacent in their pasts: whenever their personal tragedies and childhoods are brought up in the context of one another, it’s never because they are being vindicated for continuing to dwell in them, but because they are being contested on how much the mindsets they’ve carried over from their pasts should be allowed to determine their futures.

returning to canon, kaijou operates through the language of competition. jounouchi tries to prove himself as a competitor so remarkable that kaiba can no longer deny him, while kaiba already knows he’s remarkable, and that is precisely why acknowledging it pisses him off so much. so they’ll play their game: jounouchi will provoke kaiba into fighting him because he enjoys going up against challenging opponents in the hopes of becoming stronger, whereas kaiba keeps trying to set up situations where jounouchi will lose to the point of letting him die because he wants so badly to believe that losing does equal death and jounouchi’s existence is the most inconvenient counterargument of all. and obviously, jounouchi keeps not dying. and it's endlessly infuriating—almost slapstick at this point, that much to kaiba's frustration, no matter what he does, he can never make jounouchi submit for very long.

jounouchi and kaiba spur each other on to a ridiculous extent: kaiba enjoys pushing jounouchi past the breaking point, whereas jounouchi enjoys getting pushed to his limits to test his own capabilities. whether that’s necessarily a good thing though is…well…hmm. anyways. 

their dynamic is the type of messiness only two prideful high schoolers can get up to. maybe it’s just kaiba's repression and jounouchi's recklessness, but there is a fascination with each other that they’re incapable of leaving alone. there’s intimacy in knowing someone so well and fearing that fact, but kaiba and jounouchi never respond to this fear by avoiding it—they’re engaging with it time and time again. they infuriate each other with a passion that never sits still. kaiba and jounouchi seek a validation from their counterpart while simultaneously denying each other from it, and it’s mean, but invigoratingly so.

at some point, it’s not even about wanting validation anymore, but point-blank wanting its keeper by any capacity: wanting a visible reaction to their effort as proof of reciprocation, proof that says “i’ve finally affected you just as much as you affect me.” because kaiba and jounouchi want to leave a mark on each other, they want their counterpart to fully understand how much they’ve affected them, and they want to witness that reaction themselves. it’s no longer this big, nebulous ideological debate with a reflection: the pull between them is made both physical and personal. so, like, not to go the trite route of arguing that two men who can’t stand each other were ~secretly attracted to each other this whole time~, but how else are you supposed to word this?

in some hypothetical universe where they do come together, even the ways they love manage to compliment each other in its own clumsy way. seto kaiba never does anything in moderation: if he hates something he will destroy it, if he loves something he will possess it, and if he is obsessed with something, he will single-mindedly pursue it at the expense of everything else. his repression manifests itself in a passion so pressurized it’s all-consuming against everything it comes to contact with. inversely, katsuya jounouchi loves freely and transparently: showing affection comes as naturally as breathing to him. he embodies the belief that love is not only about the grand gestures, but the day-to-day acts of warmth and casual acknowledgments that it's there. a man who wants to be wanted by someone so badly it aches paired with someone who makes no reservations as to what he's committed to, capable of a love so overwhelmingly insatiable that it is neither fickle nor delicate, and a man who finds the act of trusting others with his affection so unthinkably humiliating that he’s convinced himself it’s something beneath him paired with someone who makes it look infuriatingly easy. they are going to invent a new language to love each other with. i believe in them. i would not write two separate essays titled “here’s how puppyshipping can still win” if i did not believe in them. 

ultimately, it feels cheap to build kaiba and jounouchi’s relationship off what life lessons they could "teach" each other reformation-style when they already have a legitimate dynamic in play. they can be good for each other, or they can tear into each other in ways they’d never expect to be capable of. there’s something exhilarating in knowing there’s someone who has that kind of power and wanting to keep them within your reach, a buzzing excitement in knowing someone who can not only withstand you at your worst, but fight back at you with twice as much vigor. sure, there’s potential for growth here, but that’s because there’s potential for literally anything.

kaiba and jounouchi inspire reinvention and self-determination from each other at the best of times and enable each other’s most self-destructive tendencies at their worst. so i think. puppyshipping is the most fun. when you ship them the same way you leave a fork in the microwave to watch it explode. the end.

TL;DR: me x the guy who keeps breaking my worldview and forces me to reevaluate myself every time i see him which i hate so much that i just want him to DIE

[spacedadkronos]

Ooo, lol, looks like someone got their knickers twisted so hard they wrote a whole essay about how they're categorically correct about an ultimately subjective matter. That's always a winning approach.

Please do not try to "educate" me the difference between writers and executive producers in animation. I have an animation degree. I'm not a child.

 I follow both Brent and Alan on Twitter and have been for like 3 years now. I have been watching their updates since the announcement of the show 2 years ago. I have pics of them celebrating finishing up the writing. Here's proof that they wrote it, including screenshots of the IMDb Brent had linked on his Twitter. 

I said this is not what they consider THE sequel. Obviously it is *a* sequel. I'm saying people should not be treating it like Megamind 2 when it is a pilot for the TV show. They want a real theatrical sequel.

This is a random screenshot I felt was important

I think this person better put what I meant about not as many people would care this much if it wasn't on streaming:

Megamind was an arrogant little egomaniac for the entirety of the first movie. Not sure how you missed that. Roxanne appears dissatisfied with her place in life from her recording at the Metro Man Museum with Hal onward, and does her level best to become the hero her city needs because no one else is going to stand up and do it - not sure how you missed that, either, but her whole character arc is about stepping up to the plate to do good. Well done reducing her to a single career point and then discarding her. I wasn't surprised to see her frustrations with going right back to reporting. That was a headspace that made a ton of sense for her. It was set up incredibly well.

And Megamind himself says, "some days, it felt like it was just me and Minion against the world," so you might think I agree with you there - but in fact I'm going to point out the SOME days, it FELT LIKE. There is no reason to believe that he never had any other professional associates between the time he left the schoolhouse and the time we see him as an established supervillain. In fact, I can and will argue that there's room to interpret *he himself* saying he wasn't always flying solo. It's up to interpretation - but it's there.

And no, Roxanne and Megamind are not and should not be "quasi-dating" unless you want to look past the enormous Bernard lie. Which I can't say I'm surprised you did, since Roxanne doesn't matter as anything other than Reporter Romantic Interest, apparently. The end of the original implies they have *potential.*

But I'm not trying to convince you. At the end of the day, you didn't enjoy something you hoped to enjoy. You missed a few key points about the original, so the pilot of the show didn't line up with some of your expectations and it pissed you off. That's a shame. But instead of offering some grace and recognizing it for what it is - a movie designed for a younger demographic than the original, the first ounce of love Dreamworks has shown this IP since its initial release more than a decade ago, and as much story as could be crammed into 83 minutes because the people making it only had so much time within which to work, which is *honestly a fun ride* if somewhat tonally dissonant compared to what YOU were hoping for - you've decided instead to focus on what it wasn't: What You Personally Wanted. And you've decided to make your disappointment everyone else's problem instead of processing it like an adult and moving on.

I think you're boring, I think you're unkind, I think you're a whiny little bully who came onto MY POST to bitch and complain about how you're the god of what I'M allowed to enjoy. Block me, if I make you so miserable. I'm busy having fun.

[cosmic--dandelion]

So how did we get from this

Dedicated to his Worshippers, George Frederic Watt (1817-1904)

To this?

A brief history of Mammon

Addendum Because We Can't Have Nice Things: this essay is in no way meant to be a "critique", criticism, or personal attack against Helluva Boss/Hazbin Hotel/Vivziepop as I am, in fact, a big fan of all three! I actually loved the newest episode and Mammon as a character. Seeing him in motion, I think he looks damned near perfect as a modern take on the King of Greed. I wrote this ONLY for educational purposes.

Mammon is a Chaldee (the Semantic language of ancient Chaldeans, the people of a small Mesopotamian country who were later absorbed by the Babylonians) or Syriac word meaning "wealth" or "riches".

The Worship of Mammon, Evelyn De Morgan (1909)

He is best remembered from the Sermon on the Mount from Mathew 6: 24 (King James version): “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

Some scholars believe Mammon might have been loosely based on Dīs Pater, originally a Roman God of mineral wealth and fertile lands who was later merged with the chthonic deities of the underworld Pluto and Orcus (because minerals come from underground). Pluto was depicted in the Divine Comedy as "wolflike demon of wealth"; wolves in the medieval times were symbols of greed. Others think he might have been an ancient Syrian god, though no trace of his cult or temples exists.

Mammon transformed over time from an abstract concept to major demon. This is thanks to later philosophers and theologians such as Saint Gregory of Nyssa, a third century Byzantine scholar, Archbishop of Constantinople John Chrysostom, and Peter Lombard, bishop of Paris from 1159 to 1160. His book of Four Books of Sentences (Sententiarum libri IV) was the standard theological text of the Middle Ages.

Mammon was assigned the sin of greed according to the Peter Binsfield classification of demons.

John Milton of Paradise Lost fame imaged him as a fallen angel. He is described as being stooped over (literally the "least erected" of Lucifer's demonic host) because he always has his eyes downward looking for gold and would rather use Hell's resources to finance his lavish lifestyle than wage war against Heaven.

In Edmund Spenser's 16th long poem, The Faerie Queene, Mammon is a “uncouth, salvage, and uncivile wight” who sets up his cave of riches right next to the entrance to the underworld. Subtle, huh? He tries to tempt Sir Guyon, the protagonist of Book II, with all his fabulous wealth, arguing that he could use it for good. (This is a religious-moral-political allegory about temperance, so you can guess how well that went.) He shows up again in Jacques de Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal as Hell's ambassador to England. Yes, really.

Just like in Biblical times, reformists used Mammon as a symbol of exploitation and unfettered capitalism during the industrial age.

Fun fact: Mr. Burns lives at the corner of Croesus and Mammon street.

So how does Vivziepop's version compare to the historical Mammon? I dunno, he hasn't appeared in the show yet. It's not my favorite design, but I like the fact that half the fandom was expecting him to be the Big Bad of Helluva Boss, and he's a just big heckin' chonk who sort of looks like a demented Dr. Suess character crossed with a demonic air freshener. It's a silly design for a silly dude, but he could be more dangerous than he looks...

[starlingflight]

Hiiii!

I just wanted to butt in and say how much I love your hinny fanfics especially the once’s set in hbp. (I’m not going to say how many times I have reread them, it’s too embarrassing 🙈) The way you write them, the banter and chemistry!! Honestly sometimes it feels like I’m eavesdropping on someone else conversation because you make them seem so real. I love the pinning. :)

It’s fun to read about how tortured harry is and how he feels ‘normal’ and not under so much pressure when Ginny is around! I have a suggestion if you don’t mind (ignore this otherwise and accept my apology <3). I would love to read something you about Harry pinning over Ginny while she is with Dean and see his thoughts. The monster in his chest! I love reading about the early stages of their relationship it’s so cute! Or something like that

I hope you have a wonderful day and I hope you know that your writing is spectacular!!

Hi anon!

First of all, thank you so, so, so much for this! It literally made my day! The idea that anyone re-reads my fics makes me so happy, I can't even explain 🥺🥺🥺

And now I fear I must disappoint you 😭 I've tried writing this prompt three different ways, and I can't make it work… I very rarely explore Ginny's relationship with Dean until they're broken up and there's a reason for that (I hope you're ready for some less than complimentary takes about my two faves): Both Harry and Ginny use Dean as a coping mechanism.

Ginny stays with Dean way longer than she should, to an extent it's almost out of character for her. Why? In my opinion, because if she breaks up with Dean, she has to deal with something that's increasingly staring her in the face, the fact that Harry likes her, and despite all the work she's done on herself, she still wants to drop everything to be with him. It's an uncomfortable realisation for someone as independent as Ginny.

The sheer force of her feelings for Harry is a lot for her to accept, and it's easier for her to just stay with Dean who, while nice, inspires no such depth of emotion. It's not fair to Dean, but it's a self-preservation tactic that Ginny appears to be subconsciously committed to throughout HBP.

Now, onto the reason I'm struggling to write your lovely (and appreciated) request. Harry James Potter, number 1 avoider of emotions, actually finds the Dean relationship very convenient tbh. Do you know who doesn't have to deal with their ever-increasing feelings for their best friend's little sister? The guy whose best friend's little sister has a boyfriend.

There's a large section of HBP after Harry sees the Dinny kiss (and the chest monster is born), where Ginny lingers at the back of Harry's mind (and in his dreams) but he never really consciously dwells on his feelings for Ginny. Harry isn't ready to face it, and he doesn't have to because Ginny has a boyfriend.

It's only when Ginny and Dean break up that Harry starts to panic, not that Ginny won't reciprocate his feelings, only that Ron will be mad. It's one of the reasons I love hinny as a couple… on some level they both know. Even when neither of them want to haha.

Harry never views Dean as an obstacle in canon, because really he's not (sorry Dean, I still love you). I think he probably had very fleeting moments of envy (I wrote about Harry not liking Ginny wearing Dean's West Ham jumper 😅), but I don't think Harry believes for a moment that Dean is competition (I did write him having a little crisis of confidence about Dean post sectumsempra incident in FAIY, but that's really just Harry looking for ways to make himself feel bad because of his guilt). Dean is just a convenient reason for Harry not to deal with a messy emotional situation.

Really, is it any wonder Dean smashes that glass?

Anyway, apologies for the essay, I do really appreciate being sent prompts and I wish I could fulfil this one to your satisfaction! I hope someone with a slightly different hinny interpretation than me might be inspired by it ❤️❤️❤️

[esther-dot]

Hi Esther!

Would you have a tag (or tags) that I can follow for asoiaf theories and metas on your blog? I feel like I am far behind in terms of fandom speculation/theories that have come out and would really like to catch up.

Thank you <3

Sadly, I was not good about tagging when I first joined the fandom, and I’m still not consistent. 🫣 But I looked around and have found some stuff you might enjoy.

I like these posts about Dany's relationships with her nephews as being foreshadowed by her interactions with Rhaegal (Jon) and Viserion (Aegon). This post about potential foreshadowing for Dany to kill Aegon. This spec about Dany v Aegon and Jon betraying her. This one, about how killing Aegon will not be the victory she expects, and some parallels between him and Robb .

I have a tag for Dance of Dragons 2.0, but the better one to peruse is prolly sayruq's on that topic. Also, just so you know, the fandom at large seems to think "mummer's dragon" means Aegon is fake, but we tend to believe he's Elia's son and that that's about Jon. I'd recommend reading Aegor's tag for more general Aegon content.

I can't find any specific book meta about how the Starks will defeat the Others at the moment, although I linked to a meta about it happening at Winterfell in this post. If anyone has a post they like or wrote on it, please send it catofoldstone's way!

Let's see...I haven't been doing a good job keeping up with meta for the past year, but I think there's good stuff in the Stark v Tag tag which has foreshadowing for conflict between wolf and dragon and spec about Arya and/or Jon assassinating Dany. Oh, here's the tag talking about foreshadowing for Dany to face-off with Euron which I find interesting spec. I do have a few tags I’ve tried to remember to use more, Book Jonsa, R+L=J, King Bran, The Girl in Grey. This post about the Ashford Tourney Theory has links for meta on that (it's a beloved Jonsa theory), and I have a few additional things tagged for it. I also have this post with some favorite Jonsa metas. The Sansa and Lyanna tag has been fun due to @please-dot's eye for parallels.

theusurpersdog doesn't seem to be active any longer, but their posts on Dark Dany are very good. This one has links to the previous ones in their series on her. I like this one about book Jon as well.

I enjoyed howlandreads writing (also inactive), especially this post, Feminine Rebellion in ASOIAF.

Reading trinuviel's post about Dany being Azor Ahai (but that being a bad thing!) was formative for me, so even though I feel like I link that a lot, I shall again! This is the final post in the series and has links to the previous entries.

Fedonciadale is someone I thought of as our very own ASOIAF expert. She passed away a year ago, but I’d encourage you to look through her masterlist. She was a fan of LOTR and Martin is a huge fan (he said he regularly rereads it), so I was very interested in the parallels she found between the two series.

I’m not sure if you were around for this, but Istumpy did a reread project and you can find links to each of those posts in this master post. You may want to look at the summaries for each book in that post to find where the foreshadowing for a specific topic is and approach it that way.

The one meta by someone beyond our corner of the fandom that I think about often is that famous series of essays on Dany because Martin endorsed them. It was written years and years ago, and after reading Martin's words on it, it's hard to understand how Dark Dany is treated as a fringe theory or rejected as part of shipping wars.

I hope you find something you enjoy somewhere in all of that!

[andreabandrea]

migospel and negative man

this is going to be a bit of a disorganized post, but i was rereading my old "chara did not abuse asriel" post, and I thought of something interesting. none of this is 'new' information or a new theory-- it only supports a point in an essay I wrote years ago. but the ramble will talk about a cool enemy in mother 3, so.

in my original post about Chara, in the section where I made the point that Chara "laughing off" Asgore's poisoning was likely unhappy/nervous laughter as opposed to taking actual joy in his pain, I bring up a theory created by passivechara on tumblr.

the Hard Mode only monster Migospel "loves to laugh" when around other monsters, but becomes sad and talks about hiding their pain when alone. Migospel literally mimes Chara in this way. (the name 'migospel' likely drives from 'mime' and 'gospel', so the 'gospel' part may refer to 'truth'-- aka, Migospel miming the truth about Chara).

if we believe in the narrator Chara theory, then a monster reacting to Chara isn't even unprecedented-- napstablook responds directly to the narrator's comment about their lack of humor.

now, I would need to build this up more in a 'proper' analysis post, but since I'm just rambling on my blog, let's just accept that toby fox was majorly influenced by earthbound and the mother series as a whole. papyrus's starman costume, naming the player, flowey's "cry out into the darkness" line, and more.

bear with me, but I'm going to talk about the mother series and link this back to undertale.

so in mother 3, there's a one-time only enemy you encounter called 'Negative Man'.

negative man is a joke enemy of sorts. he can do a very weak attack, but otherwise, he just says a sad line and wastes his turn. although his stats are miniscule- making him the weakest monster in the game- his HP is enormous, making his fight a bit of a chore.

people sometimes speculate why negative man is in the game. the concept of a drawn-out and irritating battle with no real challenge is definitely a mother series joke, and some people believe he's just there to add another enemy to your checklist of monsters to find and defeat if you want to 100% the game.

I think, though, that there's another purpose to Negative Man. And here we're going to get into Mother 3 spoilers so, uh. if you haven't played a game that's nearly 20 years old, then play it now and come back to this later.

...

okay? moving on.

so anyway, the interesting thing about negative man is that the music that plays when you're fighting him is 'Strong One', the same boss track that's used when you fight the Masked Man. this could just be a joke-- Negative Man is not 'strong' in any way, and the intentional complete lack of rhythm in 'Strong One' makes performing timed attacks to the beat very difficult, dragging the boss battle on more.

however, think about what's happening in the fight. you and your party are beating this creature to death who's crying and miserable, who has no will to fight, who isn't attacking (or can barely hurt you when he tries to attack), and so on. why are you doing it? because you have to. maybe negative man is just in your way, maybe you just want to fight him to 100% the game. regardless, this monster isn't fun to fight. the only reason you would intentionally fight him is because you have to.

you're probably thinking of sans's boss fight, where despite being the "weakest monster in the game" with only 1 attack and 1 defense, he has an extremely difficult and prolonged boss battle. i think that negative man could have potentially influenced toby in this way, too! but this isn't about mr. undertale himself.

now, there's another notable fight in mother 3 like this-- but the roles are reversed.

in the final battle of the game against the Masked Man (with whom the 'Strong One' theme is associated), lucas's party can't be used. lucas has just learned a devastating truth about the Masked Man's identity, and it's rendered him completely unable to fight. Lucas is likely miserable in this scene, and all he can do is pass turns while the Masked Man attacks him relentlessly-- not because he enjoys it, but because- due to his reprogramming- he has to. does that sound familiar?

all this to say-- the Negative Man enemy is a reflective of Lucas, and shows insight into his emotional state. the unwillingness to attack due to a sense of misery and the 'strong one' track associated with the masked man being used support this theory.

it's notable that Negative Man is, again, an enemy you can only encounter once. Negative Man isn't a prominent part of Mother 3.

this is to say-- what does this have to do with Undertale?

if we can accept the theory that the Negative Man, as a random rare enemy, could be a parallel to Lucas and reveal something about his emotional state (his misery in having to fight his own brother, the Masked Man), and if we accept that the Mother series was very influential over Toby Fox-- then it becomes even easier than before to accept the theory that Migospel is reflective of Chara and their emotions.

Migospel is only encountered in the unfinished 'hard mode' of undertale, again-- but Negative Man is only encountered once in mother 3. thus, even though Migospel doesn't have as much 'canonicity' as any other monster in the game, I think that there can be relevance to their inclusion.

this is to say-- as passivechara suggested (checks date) 7 years ago, I really do think that Migospel is more evidence that Chara isn't an evil sadistic monster when you consider the influence that the mother series had on toby.

[so-i-grudgingly-joined-this-site]

When has Dream ever committed war crimes? I swear you dream haters like making up shit as you go along.

"Dream hater"? Me???

Okay, okay, I KNOW you're never supposed to respond to anon hate but this legit made me laugh! For real! Dream is one of my favorite characters ever! That does not mean he is always the nice soft good boy that the fandom likes to pretend he is!

I'm not the OP of that post, but to me it seems clear that they're using "war crimes" in the fandom slang sense of "he's an asshole who did bad things". Which he is for the majority of his existence! There are very few people he is genuinely nice or friendly with! Also, some of the stuff he does arguably could fall afoul of the Geneva Convention if he'd done them as part of an international conflict... which, like. That's not great if you're having to argue on the technicality of "but the wrongful imprisonment and torture wasn't part of a war!"

And him being a terrible person/personified existential concept is an integral part of the plot. The overarching question of the entire series is "can he change?" and its tension with whether or not HE believes he can change! And I felt the actual ending of the books answered those questions in such an unsatisfactory manner that I wrote an entire detailed essay about it... I'd say that's beside the point, but you did say I was a "Dream hater" and well, you don't write academic papers for fun about characters you truly despise.

Everyone in Neil Gaiman's Sandman universe is INCREDIBLY morally grey! That's part of the point! Every single one challenges the reader to think about what they value, how they interpret the character, etc. And even if you think a character is a jerk, or even evil, that doesn't mean you can't enjoy them as a character. That's the magic of fiction! But if you completely ignore half of their actions... do you even like the character at all?

[missys-mansion-of-mistakes]

July 30th, 2024. Tuesday.

🐻 Very successful day today. I submitted 7 scholarship essays and drafted 2 more. In addition, I wrote 5000 words for NaNoWriMo. Lastly, I checked in with the conference group again about our status-- since on Thursday we're going to begin making our presentation. Scary. My accountability partner and I have a "three big goals for the day" structure, so those are the three things I aimed to get done-- and I did them! Which means I didn't have a chance to do some daily goals (read my books or clean my room) unfortunately, but those things can wait a day.

🌲 Feeling very worn out. Today was one of those days I was hyperfocused the whole day. I don't use Forest or other study trackers anymore, but I quite literally was working from the moment I woke up at 3am until... now... at 3pm.

🏊 My boyfriend is INSISTING that I learn to relax so instead of pushing myself to work more, I'm gonna take the next 2 hours to try to figure out what relaxing even... looks like for me?

Here's some ideas:

Find more video games to try? (easy, but doesn't feel actually relaxing. Kind've the "I can't believe it's not butter" of relaxing)

Write more bullet journal entries? (fun, but a little tedious sometimes)

Write, like, creatively? (feels a little bit like work :/)

Read? (also feels a bit like work, nothing I WANT to read currently)

Find some more penpals to write to? (I already have a lot, and they tend to peter out)

Paint-by-numbers? (Fun! Good to pair with a movie or show)

Do something whimsical like tarot or deep cleaning? (Kind've a one-off but nice)

Do my nails? (Should probably wait until we're closer to the conference)

???

I'll figure something out.

What do you do to relax? Leave me some ideas!

[Photos: New sticker on my water bottle "Take the risk or lose the chance!", bullet journal entry from today.]

[angevinyaoiz]

hiiiii i know this may come across as a bizzarre request but ... do you have any rec ( book, essay, movies other than tliw ) that follows the Oedipical interpretation of Eleanor & Richard I relationship on the wave of tliw ? i'm curious to know if it's a tliw-only interpretation or it can be found in other texts too!

not a bizarre request at all for this blog XD

This is the part where I have to shill The Devil's Crown again, which probably is the series that really leans on that sort of oedipal weirdly affectionate/resentful/close relationship a lot when it comes to Richard and Eleanor, even moreso because it shows their relationship and interesting attachment to each other over time (one of those cases too where when you cast the motherson actors around the same age they tend to develop a certain chemistry...) You can DM if you're interested in that.

Also if you like crumbs, the Dan Jones documentary about Henry II's dramas is very cheesy but there are some *hm emoji* moments by the reenactors that I of course find very amusing

Honestly it also is fun to just read the historical writings as well with The Goggles bc even though there's not a lot of records of course of people's internal individual thoughts and feelings kind of the Professional Structure of people's relationships are always very fascinating. For me, I'm always drawn to stories where Maternal inheritance plays a big role and that's a theme that comes up in all the stories I feel when talking about Eleanor and Richard, they're connected not just bc of familial affection etc but with very material and practical connections of land, wealth, and ancestral title (being invested with the symbols of the rule of Poitou and Aquitaine early on as extension of her authority as well, Henry bringing her out of jail to manipulate Richard into giving her his claims, etc). It becomes an interesting basis and skeleton, I guess, to project emotion upon...TLIW takes a lot of advantage of this where a lot of the story is about the characters who have human emotions towards each other but it's channeled through desperately demanding and wanting to control each others lands.

The oedipal kind of interpretation of seems to be kind of almost taken for granted in some of the earlier writings from the 1970s and before such as in the writings of James Brundage in his Richard Lion Heart (1974). I also can't find it now but I also remember coming across some amusing blogs that wrote about the two of them in very hmmm Romantic-ish ways that on one hand was interesting to me but also clearly felt like it was doing a lot of projecting on these people's emotions and motivations XD in general.

I believe those kinds of assumptions of the era are the ones that John gillingham and Jean Flori were criticizing and pushing back on in their scholarship since it relies on some pretty wild assumption making about Richard and Eleanor's personalities and internal motivations that are impossible to know, as well as very dated and prejudiced ideas about "aberrant sexuality" (obviously, if u hate ur dad and love ur mom this is clearly GAY HOMOSEXUAL behavior according to these ppl...) . Overall the psychoanalyst fanfictions are not great for an objective historical analysis but they ARE fun for the literary freak goggles definitely

[pup-pee]

OOHHH do you think they're opposites?? I'm trying to think about their personalities rn... I can't decide. I do think their voice/sense of humour is the same tho:0 and it does depend what version of batman we're talking about

tldr; i have no idea if u meant techno or c!techno bc i meant c!techno anyways c!techno can b batman, i dont think batman can b c!techno

theres a lot kf rambling below

SO IN FAIRNESS!! again have not seen a lore stream in YRS & ALSO most of the batman im reading is from the 90s so like thats a time an era

so similarly!!! they do have like similar actions? theyre both way more violent than the rest bc they believe its the only way 2 get through ALTHOUGH they try 2 only use it when necessary

like brrr but uhh they also have vry different ideals? c!techno SRRY IM TALKING ABOUT CANON I DIDNT LIKE DIFFERENTIATE @ ALL c!techno has a vry different view of how 2 igg “make peace” than batman does

like batman wants 2 established a higher authority 2 control but hes trying rlly hard 4 them not 2 b corrupt like so hard god hes trying & techno,,,,is like the opposite of that

while i said they both dont kill if necessary, techno still WILL kill & yk thats like kinda hehhhhhhhhhh like mayb a big moral line but also EVERY1 IN DSMP was ready 2 kill so i dont think this point means anyyythingg

THE THE HUMOR THO? i can see it. kinda? i feel like this is embarrassing 2 say but i dont think batman would b the 2nd worse thing 2 ha

MAYBE IM LOOKING @ THIS WRONG BC techno as batman fits way more???? 4 some reason???? like jesus im rambling okHHHHHH

c!techno as batman makes sense

batman as c!techno does not,,,,4 some reason

i literally wrote all this 2 explain that i feel stupid ok welp whatever

i rlly dont read batman LIKE I RLLY DONT KNFACT I TRY 2 AVOID BATMAN AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE like out of personal preference of???? idk

like im lretty sure the last thing i read was him running away 2 go think & brood alone while his sons worried back home lol

shit if ur talking about like movie batman or any more modern take then i think ur right

im just stuck jn this time whefe hes still HEAVILY grieving & its not a rlly good look skjfkskgkkgk

this is y i dont do essay/analysis type stuff i usualky regret what i write bc im thinking but dont go back bc i think the thought process is fun,,,but its long skjfks

my dumbasbrain bing like hava yes if im talking about techno its gonna b the c!techno w/out specifying wooooooo like wth

listen i havnt had 2 Differentiate  in SOO LONG AAHHH yeah im not fixing thag word brrr

[thebrood1979]

sports is fun you're like god i can't BELIEVE anyone could possibly like this player on another team holy shit....... that player on my team? well i'm glad you asked. here's the essay i wrote on why everyone who hates him is wrong

[lussterpurge]

BOOM I figured I'll send the next one when I have a ton of songs... and now I have a ton of songs. So 1) Whatever it takes - imaginedragons M brain hardcore projects this on STEVEN of all people. I'm pretty sure if I tried I'll be able to get the vibes to qord, but as we've established I do not try. I specifically want to point out the bridge of the song. Alain and Ash also fit the song very well, but my brain refuses to consider anything other than Steven https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=cnRB2CgUpSw 2) Alive k-391 SPEAKING OF ASH, he would definitely sing this song if he sang songs. The chorus is literally just his entire worldview. He's singing this to Serena, Clemont, Alain, whoever you want. He owns this song https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=MiAYpRxXgH0 3) Question from Assassination Classroom ALAIN. It's literally just Alain. The english translation for one of the parts goes Yeah i get knocked down like this, everytime but what else can I do? /Your scathing serious voice cuts me like no one else ever could/ Thousands, tens of thousands of times, I've made my feelings clear/driven them in thrown them in but all you do is run Like. Look at me. Tell me this isn't him (you can't) https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=9oz-NhZOc0E 4) Unravel from Tokyo Ghoul Two anime songs? Sure, why not. I haven't listened to it in a bit but again, Alain vibes https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NMinvWBxmGs (I know its not yt music but I couldn't find a proper english ver on it) 5) Shelter - Porter Robinson Clemont time! Its kinda like Whatever it takes up above where we're not actually sure why, but like, its Clemont to me. Something about his relationship with Clembot and Meyer I think. https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=5UZ4V16d8eU

This was an entire essay and I kept thinking of more songs as I wrote this so, I should probably make a playlist. But I don't enjoy doing that also being able to rant about the songs is fun. My brain has assigned you as the music person. At the very least, I hope you can vibe to these

OKAY. I had to write these as I listened to the songs cause I have like short term memory loss but as a quick summary YEAH. These are very accurate and gut wrenching as a matter of fact. So.

1- I’d already listened to this song, and tbh revisiting it was awesome af. For Steven the lyrics that caught my eye were “Never be enough, I’m the prodigal son. I was born to run, I was born for this.” So YES. Very Steven-core.

2- Considering Ash is VERY selfless, yes! The lyrics do talk a lot about taking chances even if you don’t know what might happen, and knowing Ash this fits him well. He’s all about taking chances and going crazy with it. So yes !

3- I really can’t tell you it isn’t about him because it is. Alain is also, very selfless, but all because in my head he needs the constant approval from those around him. (Especially Lysandre, during his Team Flare days). So YES.

4- (eye twitch eye twitch/pos) this is awesome. This is VERY ALAIN CODED. The particular line that talks about being unbreakable gives me a LOTT of Alain vibes ‘cause he really does want to believe that!

5- this one made me ill but like in a good way. VERY ACCURATE. The lyrics r super gut wrenching too (at least for me) but this is rlly messed up but in a good way. YES!

TY FOR THESE 🫶