#i think it just came out of fucking nowhere because they were all ''we're queer friendly!! we talk about mental health!!!''

[pa-pa-plasma]

look i know it's probably just really petty (it isn't, the whole message of this episode, even ignoring the twitch namedrop, was disgusting tbh) but i don't think i'll ever get over how one day at a time decided to alienate an entire chunk of their audience because of an assumption/stereotype they decided to not look into at all before making a whole ass episode about it. "oh just get over it" THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT A SUBSCRIPTION IS. OR AN EMOTE. I DON'T EVEN THINK THEY KNOW WHAT STREAMING IS LIKE GENERALLY. TWITCH IS FREE. THERE IS NO PAYWALL TO USING THE SITE OR APP. THEY COULD'VE JUST LOOKED THIS SHIT UP OR ASKED SOMEONE WHO USES IT. DO YOU SEE HOW STUPID & FUCKED UP THIS WHOLE EPISODE IS COMPARED TO EVERYTHING THAT CAME BEFORE IT. I CAN'T GET OVER IT.

[ofmdsalt]

i do think it’s funny that the gentlebeardies who proclaim their love for the revenge crew don’t actually talk that much about or create content for the revenge crew. they don’t give a shit about the “boatful of queer poc that Izzy sold out” (LMFAO) unless they can use the crew’s diversity as some kind of moral gotcha. they care about GB because that’s the only thing that matters about the show in their eyes. and it’s so fucking unoriginal!!! just endless regurgitated post about “omg they’re soooo in love~~ and isn’t it great that love conquered all their problems~~!” it’s unoriginal derivative dreck unless they have to invent new ways to lie about how izzy deserves the death penalty.

oh anon you get me

you have no idea how much i hate the diversity of the crew being used as a literal weapon in this fandom when it comes to demonizing izzy and washing Ed and Stede of any of their wrong doings.

im frustrated by the use of the crew in season 2 only because it was so painfully obvious to me that the budget cuts really affected the ensemble. the way the Swede and Buttons were written out of the show felt rushed and like it came out of nowhere, especially as those two characters, felt the 'least' developed out of the rest of them. so giving them both this long winded set up to be written out was too clunky for me.

i miss when Frenchie was singing and strumming along on his lute. i miss when Jim was Jim, because lbr that was Vico in s2. it just felt like Jim wasn't there anymore. i can't say what happened in the writer's room at that time or what sort of material Vico was given or if it skewed more to improve, but a lot of what was established for the characters in s1 was missing for me.

the rhetoric of this being the Ed&Stede show i think did more harm than good. the assertion that the other characters are only here in service of Ed and Stede's development reduces the sense of scale and scope and also agency these characters have.

a lot of the foundational aspects of GB as a ship i think falls a bit too much into fan service. people talk about how revolutionary and groundbreaking the ship is as a cis gay couple on screen. as if it hasn't been seen before. like i didn't get the wow moment of Stede in the mermaid costume as other fans did. Stede's dream at the beginning of season 2 with him killing Izzy and then colliding with Ed in this romantic gesture of love and passion on the beach is straight up fantasy for Stede, but i think fans took the idea of Stede literally killing Izzy a bit too seriously because that is Stede's fantasy. he wanted his reunion with Ed to be simple and understandable. that it was all Izzy's fault when the reality of the situation was so much messier and complicated. like David and the writers were literally telling us that Izzy is not the enemy here because this moment on the beach was pure fantasy. and fantasies can be dangerous

and then the fans said that Izzy deserved it, should have had his second leg shot and amputated, that he deserved to die, that he's still a nuisance even in death despite the fact that he's dead. that is both a master manipulator but also a cringe fail loser incapable of doing anything right. and it's like. okay. you don't seem to understand this character either.

like a lot of the problems in this fandom have existed before and will continue to exist in other iterations. every fandom has its ship wars. every fandom has long ass call out posts about characters they don't like. but let's not pretend this is anything revolutionary

what i've noticed is that this fandom will reach a burnout period and it's probably already upon us. the constant need to be like 'we're trending!!' when all algorithms are dog shit and glitchy as hell doesn't mean anything. plus the fact that there are only two seasons, less BTS content to go around, it's all coming from the same overdrawn well and eventually it will come up empty.

it's okay to step back. it's okay to leave a fandom for a bit and come back to it years down the road. it's okay. but all of this is exhausting

[bewareofthenewphannie]

Now that you’ve had some more time to become a phannie I’m curious about how your journey is going and I have some questions I’d love for you to answer if you have the time.

What is it about dnp that has made you love them so quickly?

Do you have a favorite video? Or videos?

Have you been able to catch up on some of their older content? What’s your favorite older video?

And do you enjoy their solo content? Do you have favorite solo videos for each of them?

And, finally, what has been your favorite moment as a phannie so far?

Hello there, thank you so much for the ask! But be warned, this is going to be a long one (I fully blame it on you because you asked some great questions).

What is it about dnp that has made you love them so quickly?

If we're talking about what made me love them so quickly it honestly boils down to one very simple thing: their chemistry. Because Dan is right, it is fucking unmatched.

One thing you need to know about me is that I've always been very drawn to duos with dynamics adjacent to DnP's.

(One could argue I always wanted those previous duos to have the kind of chemistry DnP have but they never were quite there. I think that's a conversation for another time though.)

Okay, but what is it about their chemistry that's so captivating?

For me it's the familiarity between them. The teasing, the fondness, them bringing out the best and worst in each other (let's be honest, it's mostly the worst), their stupid jokes and humor. The way they know and trust each other. Human connection is always something beautiful to witness and to see two people who have so clearly found each other just makes my heart sing (out pure but loving jealousy) (yes, they're making my aroace ass crave having a connection like theirs with someone).

Some other factors that made me fall so quickly were that I had been missing the excitement of being in an active fandom with new content and also, I just really needed a distraction from life (don't worry, I'm fine, just regular first semester uni things (first exam in a week, pray for me)).

So when they came waltzing along with their stupid hijinks and their pure, infectious queer joy they quite simply made me happy. And so I stayed.

Do you have a favorite video? Or videos?

I wouldn't say I have one favourite but there are some videos I keep coming back to again and again for the vibes.

In this line up we have this year's halloween baking, the mukbang, giving the people what they want...

Actually, pretty much all of their "collabs" (this word doesn't seem right for them but you know what I mean) during the hiatus are very dear to me. There's something so special about them, probably because they were setteling into their new uncensored dynamic? Or because these videos mostly felt so chill and domestic, like they were just kind of hanging out? (parasocialness warning activated!) (Is this the right place to mention how much I love the stereo shows?)

The gamingmas videos are still too fresh and too much for me to pass judgement, but I think my current favourites are the pinof reaction vid (purely for the chaos) and it takes two (because it was so damn good).

Oh, and then there's big. But we'll get to that later.

Have you been able to catch up on some of their older content? What’s your favorite older video?

I have been watching their older content quite regularly but it still feels like I've barely scratched the surface honestly.

Sure, I've covered a good chunk of the most iconic and important ones but I'm nowhere near a point where I would say I am genuinely caught up. Which definitely has its upsides because I can allow myself to be picky about what to watch.

Generally speaking I do feel myself gravitating much more towards the "newer" old content, starting in like 2017-ish. There are obviously some very good videos before that as well but so often it just feels something is off...or missing.

Some of my favourites I can think of right now are keep talking, dream daddy, honestly all of the baking vids and the impossible quiz. And the pinofs, obviously.

And do you enjoy their solo content? Do you have favorite solo videos for each of them?

Yes, i do! However I do have a very different relationship to each of their solo contents.

Phil's (newer) videos just feels like a nice warm hug. I really enjoy watching it more casually. They're so very Phil every single time and I love this man, so it's a perfect deal honestly. I'm almost guaranteed to leave them with a smile on my face.

My favourite kind of his videos are probably the ones where he tells stories because he is amazingly (badum tss) good at it. Whether it's draw my life or some random anecdotes of whatever Weird Thing happened to him this time, Phil will find a way to make it interesting and entertaining.

Also, probably a quite random and niche video I really liked was the stereo one with Seth (whom I've known for quite a while). Phil brought out such a cool side of Seth, it was so nice to watch??

Okay, now on to Dan. I fear I'm about to out myself as a dannie because Jesus fucking Christ, he made this personal.

He makes me cry. No, literally, i have cried (ugly) on multiple occasions when watching his videos.

He makes me care. Yes, about him and his happiness, whatever.

He makes me relate a bit too much. You know, something about being queer and existential fear.

He also makes me feel like maybe, maybe it will be okay.

Look, I like his less serious content that he still puts so much thought into. I thoroughly enjoyed what he did with dystopia daily because apparently I am susceptible to whatever this kind of humor he has going on is. But none of that compares to big. And I think at some point that warrants a whole sappy post on its own because I really need to slow myself down here and it's almost 2 am.

And, finally, what has been your favorite moment as a phannie so far?

For some reason the first thing that comes to mind is the goddamn catboy thing. Starting with nora predicting the merch, the merch itself, the email, and finally the pictures...it's hysterical and surreal and I hate that I can't think of anything better right now. It's probably the pure shock and disbelief of opening the notif and seeing those pictures that has overwritten everything else. Also, the discourse here on that day was amazingly unhinged (let's just forget about the Twitter aftermath).

Catboy incident aside, gamingmas as a whole has been intense but also genuinely so much fun. I just love being able to come here every single day and scream with everyone about the most pointless little things that mean the world (to us). We really do have a nice thing going on here, in our little, not-so-obscure corner of tumblr.

And gods, we're not even halfway through. I am soso excited for what they have planned because it sure as fuck won't be any more tame than what they had going on so far.

THE END

(finally. if you came this far, have a cookie 🍪)

[astronicht]

ϟ for Leon making Matthew a sandwich in mosquito

★ and/or ▵ for die verwandlung

(I've just reread both and GAH, I love them so, great combo of unhinged and tenderhorny!)

(for this fic ask game)

ϟ tell me what moment/scene in [Mosquito] made you sicko in the window.jpg to read and i’ll tell you which scene made me feel that way to write

Oh man thank you!! that sandwich was not planned at all, that just suddenly needed to happen in the narrative and then came out of nowhere. I enjoyed writing it a lot! For me the sicko moments were in many ways endless -- I've rarely written something that was just one after another like that, haha, that fic was the best kind of indulgence. But, absolutely one billion percent the thing I wrote that was most feral were the half-asleep scenes. (nsfw + omegaverse under cut)

Starting with the fleshlight scene, not only for the sex but for that feeling of the middle of the night, awake in bed next to someone who needs something. The deep-night scenes are a lot of what I was trying to say in the fic, and a lot of what I was trying to say was Sicko Moment. I love the intimacy; I personally attach a lot of feelings about queerness to those moments. Also they were where I let myself let them just get weird. "It's the middle of the night and we're exhausted who cares anymore" meets "it's the middle of the night and it is imperative that we, two soft animals, help each other out until the sun comes up". Again I just liked writing the sex. And the exhaustion. And the joke about Leon's phone password being his dog's name.

So about from this:

"Matthew’s little gasp is as relieved as it is horny, Leon things blurrily. Twenty floors down he can hear the faintest traffic noise, maybe. The slightest sound of wind between tall buildings. Matthew moans, strung out and wanting in the dark, but with that tinge of relief. Leon is giving him that relief, even if it’s just holding a sex toy steady for him to fuck into.

Leon nudges until Matthew’s thighs give up the battle and he falls on his side facing Leon, quads shaking faintly, fucking up into the fleshlight now held between them. The slick noises are louder. It’s fine. It’s just Matthew in rut, fucking because he needs to fuck at 2:47 in the morning. The scent of him rises, not as sharp as it was when they started, still bitter but filling out with something warmer. Cooking sherry hot in the pan.

A need being met is not something Leon associates with intimacy, but here he is holding a sex toy steady for a person he barely knows, really, and a need being met feels like something important, more important than he realized. They’re breathing on each other’s faces. It is such an ungodly hour. Leon doesn’t tip his head away. He breathes in Matthew’s air, and lets Matthew breathe in his."

To about this:

"Leon wakes once more needing water. He can’t find the glass with his hand and turns on the bedside lamp. Matthew Tkachuk blinks at him like a night creature in a flashlight beam, wide-pupiled, nestled in a tangle of pillow, sex towel, comforter. Leon spies the condom wrapper they lost and Matthew patted around for for five full minutes crushed between the pillows. Leon gets his water and shivers. He doesn’t mind winter-cold rooms. Matthew’s eyes remain kitten-slits in the light. He’s finally taken his shirt off. Leon drinks again. Winter feels like an animal crouched around them, not malicious, just big. The bed feels like a den.

Matthew at first seemed to be totally still but his hand is moving— around his dick, Leon realizes with a sympathetic sigh. He thinks about giving a hand, having Matthew up against his own chest, taking his cock in his grip. He wants it, but he can’t muster the energy to even sit up. Instead Leon leans in and kisses him once to get his attention— and he has it right away, along with a tired nibble, somehow still oddly sweet. Leon scoots down the bed and lays his head on Matthew’s thigh. His hair flops awkwardly across Matthew’s hip. He closes his own eyes and mouths at Matthew’s balls, the base of Matthew’s dick, the stray knuckle of Matthew’s hand on a downstroke.

Matthew watches him for a long moment before he reaches over and turns off the light.

The after-image of him sits in Leon for just a minute or so. An unflattering view, chin and chest, balls, the fine hair on his thighs, the softness of his belly and the awful way Leon wants to bite him there. Leon wonders briefly, a strange thing: what would he look like in summer, somewhere, sweating and mosquito-bitten."

★ what was the scene you most wanted to write in [die verwandlung]? what was the hardest scene to write?

I have never, ever written something faster or more easily than this fic. It was a miracle and I knew it even as it happened. If I remember correctly I really wanted rat!matthew to eat boba. I spent hours on r/rats trying to figure out if boba would be poisonous to rats.

I think the hard part was when Leon IS feeding a rat boba and the emotional plot started getting stuck-- like ok how do you end this! and then Leon is actually angry and upset and worried! Why! I didn't start writing it thinking that they had a history. But when Leon finally was like "I've seen you naked, calm down" re: rat stuff, it all came together. Hookup exes who Care, all along!

▵ pick a fic (die verwandlung again!) and I’ll tell you my favorite line

The title. I thought I was so fucking funny. Within six months I was having to shittily learn German for work and regretting all my choices. rereading this i can see two German-related errors. I suffer.

That, or

The rat manages to type ☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️ and hit send.

[therealv1ultrakill]

yo chat we enterin the dream journal era

I normally wouldn't share this especially about certain gaming communities / fandoms I'm in, and as much as I love ULTRAKILL it has that ugly underbelly of weird dudebros and/or bigots (like any major game does though, especially in FPS games). Granted ULTRAKILL is also queer as fuck and probably one of the largest openly queer fandoms I've seen out there (winner) but still

Anyway I say all that as a warning or whatever for the nonsense I'm about to post because some people might decide to be jackasses about it, but personally I found it hysterical

On with the insanity!

I had other dreams, but the ULTRAKILL one was the main one. I was going upstairs—a sort of red room; I think it was akin to one of the starter levels. I had been flying around and shooting drones and/or punching virtues, dunno. Pretty sure the only hostiles here were like flying enemies.

I get to the top and immediately notice these weird statues of the Cerberus enemies. They both break off, and they're like—my brain mentally supplied information about them as the idea of the previous existences' of Minos and Sisyphus—more statuesque and had designs on them (at least Sisyphus did as far as I can recall). Purple-y at the top?? Weird flower-esque things or vines. It was almost vase-like, but there weren't many of those on his body, and I only noted them on his head because, when he died, it just… opened up and showed nothing but a void, so it reminded me of a vase in that regard, too.

I killed Sisyphus—that or he was already dead / just died out of nowhere. I think it was the latter. Minos was sad but did something weird to Sisyphus' body, and I remember being on call with my sibling (K) suddenly or just immediately ripped out of that scene for a second, and it was like "YOOOOO" and I was like "YOOOOO" and I apologized for some reason?? As if it weren't my dream sequence but instead a livestream 😭    After Minos and Sisyphus's statue death weirdness, I just began chasing Minos. I think?? It was almost comedic or more meme-adjacent because he was doing this weird movement. It almost looked like a GIF or 2D thing compared to the surroundings, which were more based on reality. Since you know. Dream vagueness. Anyhow, I wouldn't even call it normal scurrying; he was almost dancing away from me. It was not exactly a griddy, but it looked a lot like that stupid fucking movement. It makes it so much worse that he was going at Mach 1 speed at minimum. This little freak of prime soul nature was going at the speed of light as if we were drifting and the Initial D soundtrack was playing or something (not that that actually happened here, but you get the idea).

I was running after him in the too-bright daylight area, but we were in a grassier section instead of the city part, which comes later. I was chasing him through small hills and slight inclines, moving past trees, flying over sh*t, etc. Like, bro, I was desperate to catch up, BUT HE WAS SO FAST. HE WAS LIKE SKITTERING ROACH TYPE FAST. HE JUST KEPT DANCING AWAY IN THAT WEIRD HUNCHED POSITION. 😭😭😭😭

Oh! And I forgot to say before—fucking GABRIEL was chasing me in the sky overhead throughout all of this nonsense. I don't think he was inherently trying to kill me, but if we're still in the business of using bug analogies, he was trying to pin me down like a butterfly. He had his swords, sort of—except they looked more like harpoons but still had the same colors, and so on. And they came out of these cylinders on the side that my brain mentally processed as "rocket launchers.". So do with that what you will, because they straight up weren't rockets. Idk

They didn't come back to him like a regular harpoon would, so he was literally manifesting more and more, and he kept missing me, but I could tell he was agitated—and also fast! But not fast enough to catch up to the zooming Minos. Again, I only remember weaving and some in-between time, and eventually, I was at the top of the huge road. It wasn't train tracks, but it was similar as far as lines and such on the road. However, it had no railway system or anything like that. The only thing present above the road were these thin lines that looked more like power cord stuff just above the middle of the road, intersecting multiple of them, almost like party streamers. It was looking like some serial experiments lain shit, ignoring how urban it looked in parts. It was unnervingly quiet at points as well.

I had hooked onto something—one of the lines or one of the poles—just something like that, but I can't remember if it was the normal whiplash usage or me just Spiderman-ing this shit up and doing so rope stuff. I swear it felt more like the second option. Gabriel chased me but eventually disappeared. I evaded him in some way. I don't recall much, as the setting was just a foggy concept of a weird city. Too bright. The day was so painfully sunny; there were no clouds, as far as I'm aware. It was urbanized, but not New York-level. The taller buildings weren't even that tall either. To expound upon the road mentioned before, it was really long. I don't know how to convey how long this road was, but if it's of any use, it was long enough to be the length of a small bridge. No one was walking outside around this time. I'm not sure if I even saw any cars. There were vague ideas of houses, but I couldn't really see them; they were further away on the side.

I later realized everyone wasn't dead nor was the city fully unpopulated because I saw an old guy on the street at the bottom of the big road—or somewhere—and went into this empty square building, and when I looked out, he was gone. Next, a lady and her boyfriend were walking, and the boyfriend saw me briefly and was like, There's something in there!! And she went up all three floors (3-story building but small. Not huge rooms either, and windows—I don't know if they even had glass. The straight-up typical square you put in your elementary school house drawings. I had to will myself out of existence because my mind kept fighting me, even though I knew I could go invisible for a bit or just let her not find me by merging into the wall or air around me. However, I think this led to an issue because, as I merged with the wall, air, or whatever thing around me that gave me that interesting cloak of invisibility, I started becoming less V1 (or less me if you want to think of it like that since I started the dream as V1) and more of a wrong idea of a human being.

And the dream eventually let me, and she got up and spoke from one of the two windows at the top, saying, "What the fuck, dude, there's nothing here." And then, I think, they started an argument, but eventually just. Vanished like the old dude.

I probably am being hypocritical here as I included a chunk of the extra part in the last paragraphs there, but this next part was towards the end of my dream(s), so I decided to omit them because they weren't ULTRAKILL related (and that was the main subject of this post), but if anyone somehow sees this and is curious, let me know lol I have some insane dreams on the reg (the My Little Pony coal mines dream has got to be one of my favorites personally).

After the chef part or the mom part, I was trying to romance Gabriel on Discord on this private server I had archived a while ago with some strange people I didn't know. Like acquaintance-level people who were also inactive. He wasn't fully offline but was just sort of absent. He was pretty chill, from what little I recall of him in the Discord era. I still cannot fucking believe I tried to romance him up on DISCORD. 💀💀💀 Horrible horrible horrible part of my dream. That right there is the true nightmare of it all. I'm going to go touch more grass today and take a longer walk.