#i still wonder why i wrote this

[bixels]

Learning that fans hated Applejack and called her "boring" is crazyyy to me because I genuinely, unironically believe AJ's the most complex character in the main six.

Backstory-wise, she was born into a family of famers/blue collar workers who helped found the town she lives in. She grew up a habitual liar until she had the bad habit traumatized outta her. She lost both her parents and was orphaned at a young age, having to step up as her baby sister's mother figure. She's the only person in the main gang who's experienced this level of loss and grief (A Royal Problem reveals that AJ dreams about memories of being held by her parents as a baby). She moved to Manhattan to live with her wealthy family members, only to realize she'll never fit in or be accepted, even amongst her own family. The earlier seasons imply she and her family had money problems too (In The Ticket Master, AJ wants to go to the gala to earn money to buy new farm equipment and afford hip surgery for her grandma).

Personality-wise, she's a total people-pleaser/steamroller (with an occasional savior complex) who places her self worth on her independence and usefulness for other people, causing her to become a complete workaholic. In Applebuck Season, AJ stops taking care of herself because of her obsessive responsibilities for others and becomes completely dysfunctional. In Apple Family Reunion, AJ has a tearful breakdown because in she thinks she dishonored her family and tarnished her reputation as a potential leader –– an expectation and anxiety that's directly tied to her deceased parents, as shown in the episode's ending scene. In The Last Roundup, AJ abandons her family and friends out of shame because believes she failed them by not earning 1st place in a rodeo competition. She completely spirals emotionally when she isn't able to fulfill her duties toward others. Her need to be the best manifests in intense pride and competitiveness when others challenge her. And when her pride's broken, she cowers and physically hides herself.

Moreover, it's strongly implied that AJ has a deep-seated anger. The comics explore her ranting outbursts more. EQG also obviously has AJ yelling at and insulting Rarity in a jealous fit just to hurt her feelings (with a line that I could write a whole dissection on). And I'm certain I read in a post somewhere that in a Gameloft event, AJ's negative traits are listed as anger.

Subtextually, a lot of these flaws and anxieties can be (retroactively) linked to her parents' death, forcing her to grow up too quickly to become the adult/caregiver of the family (especially after her big brother becomes semiverbal). Notice how throughout the series, she's constantly acting as the "mom friend" of the group (despite everything, she manages to be the most emotionally mature of the bunch). Notice how AJ'll switch to a quieter, calmer tone when her friends are panicking and use soothing prompts and questions to talk them through their emotions/problems; something she'd definitely pick up while raising a child. Same with her stoicism and reluctance at crying or releasing emotions (something Pinkie explicitly points out). She also had a childhood relationship with Rara (which, if you were to give a queer reading, could easy be interpreted as her first 'aha' crush), who eventually left her life. (Interestingly enough, AJ also has an angry outburst with Rara for the same exact reasons as with EQG Rarity; jealous, upset that someone else is using and changing her). It's not hard to imagine an AJ with separation anxiety stemming from her mother and childhood friend/crush leaving. I'm also not above reading into AJ's relationship with her little sister (Y'all ever think about how AB never got to know her parents, even though she shares her father's colors and her mother's curly hair?).

AJ's stubbornness is a symptom of growing up too quickly as well. Who else to play with your baby sister when your brother goes nonverbal (not to discount Big Mac's role in raising AB)? Who else to wake up in the middle of the night to care for your crying baby sister when your grandma needs her rest? When you need to be 100% all the time for your family, you tend to become hard-stuck with a sense of moral superiority. You know what's best because you have to be your best because if you're aren't your best, then everything'll inevitably fall apart and it'll be your fault. And if you don't know what's best –– if you've been wrong the whole time –– that means you haven't been your best, which means you've failed the people who rely on you, which means you can't fulfill your role in the family/society, which makes you worthless . We've seen time and time again how this compulsive need to be right for the sake of others becomes self-destructive (Apple Family Reunion, Sound of Silence, all competitions against RD). We've seen in The Last Roundup how, when no longer at her best, AJ would rather remove herself from her community than confront them because she no longer feels of use to them.

But I guess it is kinda weird that AJ has "masculine" traits and isn't interested in men at all. It's totally justified that an aggressively straight, misogynistic male fandom would characterize her as a "boring background character." /s

At the time of writing this, it's 4:46AM.

[28ms28]

A 28ms28 f1 text post upload in this economy??

[idk-bruh-20]

Irondad fic ideas #134

Fic where everything in the current MCU has happened

...for Peter.

In fact, Mysterio captured Peter right after Endgame. Everything that happened since -- Europe, his identity, May -- has been an illusion.

Mysterio even altered Peter's memory of the battle against Thanos to torture him. He doesn't remember the rush to get Tony to a hospital. He doesn't remember being kidnapped. He believes Tony died on the battlefield

Which is why, when he's suddenly in a cell and Iron Man bursts in, frantic and alive, Peter has a hard time telling what's real.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

Who tf said in my class if you interact with a telepath you cant get into heaven is that why charles’ halloween costume was the devil 😭😭😭

[gophergal]

*drops this here* take my favorite mk crackship

[bcdrawsandwrites]

Day 6: Conditioning / Mind control / Forced to hurt someone else Characters: The Psychic 7 Warnings: Brief mention of animal death Summary: Everyone was giving their all, and yet Ford could hardly bring himself to move.

His shaking hand was outstretched before him.

Otto had frozen the water; it hadn't given them the advantage they'd hoped for. Somehow L--Mal--she was stronger than they could have ever imagined.

Please, Ford thought. I can't.

She was cackling as she destroyed Cassie's book, striking her in the face with the water that moved through it.

Ford's heart wrenched, distantly. While some small part of him remembered the hours she had poured into that speech, his eyes were still on her.

Don't make me do this, please.

There was Helmut's monologue, which had brought all of them--including Helmut himself--to tears when they'd all first heard it. It nearly brought her back, and Ford's heart had leaped, but then something snapped within her, and she lashed out even harder.

Ford's hands still shook.

Compton's animals were taken out in a flood. He'd spent all his energy rallying them, all for naught. The animals washed out over the frozen lake, some fleeing, some lying still and quiet.

Why did it have to come to this?

"Ford!" Otto cried out over the wind and raging water. "Do something!"

His hands were shaking.

In the absence of his actions, Bob threw his everything into the fight, summoning plants from beneath the depths. He fought hard, but she fought harder, and a giant, angry wave and watery claw swept at him.

Ford stopped breathing.

"BOB!" "NO!" "DO SOMETHING!"

Before he could think, Helmut flung himself in the way of the watery forms, which sent him crashing clear through the ice.

Ford remembered reaching down with telekinesis, and bringing up nothing. The next thing he knew, the air was full of noise that he could not hear--shouting and screaming and wailing all crashing together into a hellish radio static as he stared into the hole in the ice.

But the fighting had stopped.

Slowly Ford looked up, and he met her eyes, and he could see it--that fleeting flash of horror, regret, agony.

It was gone in an instant, like a raindrop in the sea.

And then she was grinning, eyes wide and manic, rushing toward them on an icy wave.

As much as his heart ached, he knew what he had to do.

I'm sorry, Lucretia.

Charging an agonized psi-blast, Ford ran to fight her.

[tankgotstuckinthecircusgate]

i know that when carlo suddenly decided that he needs to marry guy made a whole list in his head n like had a deadlines n shit. like it was some kind of a task he needed to do

[allgoldenelite]

ok, as a kinda sorta quasi continuation of this, i'm gonna dump some more thoughts i've had lately about kenny, don, and everything.

cw for abusive relationships, toxic behavior, manipulation

first of all, i'm gonna give credit where credit is due: the storyline as it stands rn has had some things added to it which i would never have thought a wrestling story dare add, let alone handle well. some of it is more subtext and some of it is more out there, but so far i have found that the elements i examined and interpreted only ever enhanced my reading of the kenny omega character, so i've personally enjoyed them as enrichment of the text.

don callis is a sociopathic abuser (there's some subtext there that could be read to mean the abuse is also sexual). the first part he's said so himself, and the second part...well, there's enough material there now to write a book about, but i just want to make sure we're all on the same page here. all those times when him (and kenny!) during the collector run made sure to remind the audience that callis has been in kenny's life since he was 6 (or 10; neither of them are consistent with it) years old were sickeningly recontextualized when kenny said in his sitdown with JR that don fed him substances and started drilling him for wrestling by cutting him off from outside interests and friends pretty much as soon as he entered his life. and in don's sitdown with JR, he of course proclaims it was all because the golden sheik and kenny's family had told him to take care of kenny, so he was merely acting out of selflessness and philanthropy.

but what don did was essentially create a deeply, deeply traumatized weapon. it's all there in kenny's vtrs, moves and akas (the cleaner, the best bout machine, terminator dive, calling himself an unstoppable android, saying he wants to be a weapon for njpw). a cold, clinical thing that others decide what to do with, controlled and manipulated by others (well, i say others, but basically it always come back to don callis), and which exists without its own agency. that thread even comes back in his collector run during a segment with christian cage, where christian correctly pins down what's been happening all this time ("i don't know what's weirder, don, the fact that you manipulated a 10 year old kenny omega, or that the adult kenny omega is still letting it happen."). and as abuse and trauma go, kenny was (and in some ways still is) continuing the cycle in how he treats people close and important to him like take, bucks, hangman, and so on.

now, the don abuser backstory is mostly meant to be read when looking at the latter half of kenny's time in njpw and especially his aew career, but imo you could even go as far with the reading as saying that his time in ddt was like an escape from don for kenny, something he did for himself for a change (maybe the first and only time he did something for himself), rather than for don or because he wanted to prove he's the best. and then you look at the way this is all breaking down because of jealousy and feelings of inadequacy and deeply rooted fear, and you go, of course, the poor guy has so built his entire being and sense of self-worth around winning and recognition of superiority that as soon as that doesn't come in a steady stream (or is indeed threatened by different, unknown and scary feelings such as actually wanting to be the no 2, not the no 1) his mental and emotional health just collapses like a house of cards.

either way, all kenny has known his entire life is wrestling. and the largest swath of that wrestling life has been spent trying to prove he's unbeatable and immortal, while repeatedly having difficulties accepting love and help from others and pushing those closest to him away. and don callis takes credit for all of it.

but here's the thing. in a way, he's right, about taking credit for the winning. of course, from don's twisted perspective, he is right; he spent nearly every waking hour "preparing" kenny for wrestling and pulling strings behind the scenes (seriously, the guy claims to have connections to the european parliament, for crying out loud) to pave his path of destruction through multiple promotions. but the cut runs deeper than that. because ever since don turned on kenny, kenny's been losing, a lot, and commentary and other characters have been picking up on that fact. the fact that, as it seems for right now, without don callis, kenny isn't the winner he so desires to be. he's not just lost singles but random tags or multimans as well, and if he does win, he's getting crucifixed to the ropes and getting his head smashed in with a chair. kenny had the bucks back at his side but that didn't fix it. the elite welcomed hangman back into their midst, but that didn't fix it. ibushi came back to reform the golden elite but that didn't fix it. kenny kept falling down.

so now what?

i don't have an answer. i've seen some discussion lately about kenny's questionable or lackluster performance in this story. as in, not his in-ring kayfabe performance, but the actor's performance. some people say they noticed him having less energy than usual or looking like he's not all there at times, like his head isn't fully in the game, and that translating to how the character is perceived (or not perceived; he's been notably absent from a lot of recent btes, but that could also be due to how little actual story there is on bte these days) and backstage segments when viewers were expecting him to have a comment or a role in response to something that happened in the story).

the thing is...normally i don't really care too much? i'll get angry at this and that in front of the tv and say my peace on it, and then maybe a week later it'll flare back up if the wound's getting picked, but aside from that i don't care about wrestling, and especially not shoot stuff, enough to give a shit. dude could have a million reasons why he's not having the time of his life right now and by no means is he obligated to be in every little thing that happens. he's done enough.

but if you caught him on the street fighter stream he did for crown, it was night and day. it's like he was a different person. which is to say, it leads me to believe that this unmotivated, somewhat muted version of kenny we're seeing on our screens right now is part of the story. that don had his hooks so deep in kenny and yanked them out with such force that all that's left there now is mangled flesh. it reminded me of how kenny reacted when don got attacked by bcc and wasn't available to second him for his match vs jeff cobb: when the news were brought to him he seemed immediately crestfallen and made his entrance looking noticeably intimidated and distracted. like the reliance on don had been so strong and so deeply ingrained for so many years that he legitimately didn't know what to do. no manipulator to pull the trigger.

but still the question remains, what's the cure going to be, if none of the things i listed earlier helped? because at the end of the day this is still a story that involves wrestling, and altho the thought has crossed my mind that maybe this is going to be one of the very very few wrestling stories that do not equate a happy ending with a victory in the ring, i think at least somewhere along the road they will want to show kenny's rejuvenation via a win or two. so, what's it going to take to make that happen, when everything is said and done? i've followed people discussing that one way would be for him to go back to the drawing board specifically in japan (ddt, ibushi, you see where this is going), and of course that'd be very exciting and interesting, but somehow it feels to me like that's not the route they're taking. i'd be happy to be wrong, yet so far there haven't been any signs that i could decipher that that's a possibility in the story, and when kenny said at the wrestledream scrum that his primary focus is on aew in the us, it only reinforced that feeling for me.

this is a slightly different topic, but in addition, there's continued criticism about the confusing or meandering way the story flip-flops between seemingly portraying kenny as all alone and distraught and in need of help and not being any of those things the next week. this one i kinda have to agree with.

i'm not tired of the story in a way that some people are; i think there's still stones left to turn and interesting threads to pull on and characters to explore. but i do think it's been dragged out a little bit too much at times and that it has felt sluggish during some of those stretches, just like how the elite stories did after they came back up until they suddenly pressed the turbo button and kenny was best friends with hangman again. as a result, it has felt meandering, altho i do not agree with the criticism that there isn't anything left to do for both parties in the feud. don said he was going to cut out the elite and that he isn't anywhere near being done with that. it just remains to be seen what kenny's and by extension the elite's motivation in this all will be.

[aphel1on]

the most autistic thing i've done in the past year is when i typed out a transcript of the text from the entire main storyline in Pokemon Legends: Arceus into a wordpad document, complete with basic image descriptions, and then i didn't even write the fanfic which was supposedly the reason i started that whole project in the first place

[knightzp]

i had my first meeting with my work Boss and at the end he finished saying the project they made me write last month was to test my writing skills and made me wonder. does he remember when i told him in the job interview abt my fics

[melverie]

Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh today I've been constantly experiencing the urge to un-private today-in-the-devildom & start writing for it again

[happywitchesofnewdi]

I've finally started reading a few era !! Switch stories and I'm really enjoying them. The writing style for this era feels a bit lighter. Maybe because there seem to be a lot less monologues about God?? 😂

I did notice one thing that I am both enjoying and yet...at the same time..

So ever since my second read through of Wonder Game, I'd been wondering "is this story a reveal of the true nature of Tsumugi and Natsume's relationship, or is it a retcon?"

I chose to be positive and look at it as a reveal because it makes all the past stories that much sweeter. But once I started reading era !!, it's started to feel more and more like a retcon of not just Natsume and Tsumugi, but of their relationship with Sora as well.

The first few stories of era !! have Natsume and Tsumugi acting closer than we've ever seen them. Even with implications that they get together and watch full series just the two of them. Meanwhile, the current main storyline implies that not only have they been fully neglecting Sora, but that they have spent a lot of time getting to know each other and NOT SORA. Natsume specifically says this. And this is where I started to feel a little frustrated with the writing.

Although I do feel that whatever is happening seems to be for the purpose of eventually putting more attention on Sora and hopefully moving his character forward, they've completely destroyed his relationship with Natsume. We can argue that his relationship with Tsumugi was never TOO deep. They had only started becoming close as era ! came to an end. But Natsume spent the entire last year of school attached to Sora at the hip. Obsessed with him, even.

Natsume saw Sora across a room and thought "that child is me, I must know him" and spent every single day after school with him in game research club. He got lonely for the couple of days Sora didn't come to club because he was learning to swim in Splash Pool. They ran numerous schemes and pranks together. They experimented late into the night. They held each other right while playing videogames. If he thought Sora was mad at him , Natsume felt like his world would end. And now, all of a sudden, he doesn't want to include Sora in his schemes? Now all of a sudden, "we never spent time getting to know Sora"??

Last year, Switch's relationship dynamic was Natsume/Sora + Tsumugi. Most stories included Natsume and Sora together, whether Tsumugi was around or not. And Tsumugi appeared in many stories without the other two. Natsume was constantly angry (lonely) about the fact that Tsumugi was never around.)

This year it's Natsume/Tsumugi + Sora. Natsume and Tsumugi are around each other every second, despite the fact that Tsumugi is a company president/idol and Natsume is working separate jobs and is still in high school (with Sora!)

It would be one thing if this was a new dynamic established because Natsume and Tsumugi had grown so close after Wonder Game. Which, I do believe they did! And it's wonderful to see and I'm loving every second of their new dynamic.

But the implication seems to be that "Natsume and Tsumugi were always a lot closer than Natsume and Sora, who were never very close at all." And I just don't think that change was necessary in order to move Sora's character forward.

[loregoddess]

oooooh, okay, AO3's posting system is NOT as scary as the weird anxiety critters in my brain were making me think it would be

[theshadowsingersraven]

I happened upon a pro e/riel response to an "anti" post in which the OP was giving their view on all the ships of the series and which ones they liked/didn't like, e/riel being one of them. The pro e/riel's response pretty much just supported their interpretation of e/riel, and while I personally didn't see what they saw for e/riel in every instance, I did see it for the Azriel ship in my fanfic.

So, instead of just dismissing their stance/dismantling it in my own post, I decided to go through the moments of my fic in which I felt their interpretation applied to my ship and let the moments shine for a hot second. I figured my fellow Azriel girlies would enjoy seeing him loved and appreciated, too. And of course, I did cute graphics because playing around in Adobe Express is fun.

There was more after that, but it was less highlighting the actual relationship aspects and more them just saying they find it titillating, so I didn't really bother. This was fun and my debate-y, argument brain got to sit back for this, which was very nice.

[shikai-the-storyteller]

There is truly nothing more exhilarating than rereading old fic notes and going "DAMN this is good."

(That, and also laughing out loud at your own jokes.)

[froggyrights-archive]

So high energy tonight I need to start exercising again I'm driving myself insane