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absolutepokemontrash · 3 years ago

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You don't need to write this if you dont want too because it's up to you but this is something wholsome

WHAT IF L!MC M!M & BBY A!MC BECOME BABIES AND THERE EVEONES HAS TO CARE FOR THEM,

I apologize for having such horrible writing and grammer. I never payed attention in school, nor could I afford to pay attention 👉😎👉

Bro I feel you on the not paying attention in school thing. Fear not, dearest asker, ask for demon babies, and since I am a merciful writer, you shall receive.

Oh Shit, Half-Demon Babies are Running Amok Send Diapers and Help-

Mini summary for the casual reader, L!MC is Lucifer’s half demon child who got summoned into the Devildom to be one of the human exchange students, M!MC is Mammon’s half demon kid, and A!MC is Asmo’s. Let’s get to the fic!

Ah, what a relaxing day... Lucifer was sitting back in his desk chair, enjoying a nice glass of Demonus and listening to one of his favourite cursed vinyls. He had done a damn good job on his work earlier and Diavolo had insisted there was no more work to be done and he could have the weekend all to himself.

Of course, his brothers were still a factor that could have ruined his me-time... on any other weekend! Satan had just gotten a new encyclopedia to read, so he wouldn’t be causing any trouble, Beel and Belphie were going to take that Devildom food tour, Mammon and M!MC were planning on spending the entire weekend shopping, Asmo and A!MC were going up to the human world on Saturday and staying until Sunday, and Levi... He got a sudden burst of inspiration for his Animal Crossing Island and most likely wouldn’t be leaving his room for the next month. Lastly, L!MC wouldn’t be causing any problems, his child would probably spend their time with him rambling about musicals or anime they had seen, and Lucifer found their intense interest very adorable.

Ah... peace and quiet...

...

...why did Lucifer hear crying?

There, standing in the entrance hall of the House of Lamentation, was Solomon, holding three screaming babies.

What, and I cannot stress this enough, THE HELL?!

“Ah, Lucifer,” Solomon attempted to wave hello, but needing to continue to bounce one of the babies on his hip kind of hindered the gesture, not that Lucifer wanted a wave at that moment. “I’m sure you have questions.”

After everyone had gathered into the living room, Solomon explained how a spell gone awry had hit L!MC, M!MC, and A!MC with the effect of turning the three into the screaming infants that stood (or... awkwardly sprawled out) in front of them.

On the bright side, the spell only had a timespan of roughly two days, so they wouldn’t be stuck like that forever.

Everyone sat in silence for a few minutes (save for the babies, who were still either crying or incoherently babbling) as they processed that information. Lucifer, ever the flawless older brother and leader, stood up and clapped his hands together once.

“Alright then, everyone cancel your weekend plans, we need to deal with this.”

Lucifer’s dearest little brothers all whined in protest, Satan in particular. “They’re not our kids, why do Belphie, Beel, Levi, and I need to cancel our plans?!”

“Satan,” Lucifer said sternly. “You don’t remember this, but it took six people to take care of one of you. The kids may only be half demons but there are three of them. We need all hands on deck. Besides, if you all want someone to blame, blame Solomon.”

Everyone turned and levelled their practically murderous glared at the sorcerer, who suddenly pulled baby A!MC into his lap and began to rock them back and forth.

“I have never felt more unsafe.” Solomon laughed nervously. “But you wouldn’t kill me while I’m holding my not-child would you?”

Asmo stomped over and snatched A!MC away from Solomon. “I can’t believe you- ACK! A!MC! Stop drooling!”

A!MC had a long trail of drool coming out of their mouth which caused Asmo to shriek and hold A!MC at arms length away. “Stop that! That’s gross, A!MC, you know better.”

The adorable baby continued to babble and drool.

Mammon picked up M!MC, who almost immediately stopped crying upon seeing Mammon’s watch, they began making grab hands at it. “Ah, ya want the watch?”

M!MC squealed in delight as Mammon dangled the watch above them, Mammon was delighted that his little brat still had their expensive taste, even as a baby. “Hey, look at me! I’m doin’ pretty good! Suck it, Asmo!”

As Asmo and Mammon bickered, Lucifer took the time to look at L!MC, they pulled at Lucifer’s tie and hummed to themselves. They were mind numbingly cute despite the screeching they were doing earlier. The sight tugged at the cold spot where Lucifer’s heart should have been, he had missed this part of his child’s life... maybe just that weekend he’d get a chance to-

“Solomon where do you think you’re going?” Lucifer was pulled from his thoughts when he noticed the shifty bastard trying to make his escape. “You’re staying to help manage this nonsense.”

—————

A!MC may have been an absolute ray of sunshine normally, but as a baby, they definitely lived up to the term demon-spawn.

A!MC would scream, cry and pitch a fit if they didn’t get what they wanted immediately, not that they had any way of articulating what they wanted because they were a god damn baby! Asmo and Solomon were at the point where they were just holding stuff out to A!MC to see if it would make them stop crying.

“Come on butterfly, don’t you like this... antique perfume bottle?” Asmo asked, A!MC took one look at it, then burst into flames and started wailing again. “For the love of my father WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!”

Now there were two sobbing messes in the room, and one was on fire. Solomon quickly magically took care of A!MC’s little fire problem (the baby was fiiiiiiine, demon babies light themselves on fire all the time!), picked A!MC up, sat down on Asmo’s bed, and snapped his fingers. Tiny balls of light gently floated into the air around the three, Asmo looked up from his pity party upon hearing A!MC stop their crying.

“See, you still like my magic, even as a baby, right A!MC?” Solomon asked, A!MC looked around in silent wonder, trying to reach up and touch the lights.

“Oh Solomon, this almost makes me forgive you for screwing up my weekend plans...” Asmo sighed in relief, he sat next to Solomon and pulled A!MC into his lap. “Not very colourful though, is it? Let me fix that.”

Asmo smiled as his own magic added streaks of colour, it was like their very own private showing of the northern lights. A!MC had on one of those goofy baby smiles that can make even the grumpiest person smile back.

Solomon and Asmo shaped some of the lights into shapes and animals, Asmo let a pink butterfly land on A!MC’s nose, much to their adorable delight.

“And that one’s a bird, and that one’s a giraffe,”

“That’s an alpaca.”

“Sorry, an alpaca with a weirdly long neck, oh! And a sheep!” Asmo looked down at his lap where A!MC sat and tickled their sides. “Everyone likes sheep!”

He then quickly shaped a ball of light into a scorpion and made it scuttle into A!MC’s lap. “But I have to say, scorpions are the best.”

The fifth born sighed in contentment as their sweet little hellspawn continued to watch the magic show. Never in his life did Asmodeus ever think he’d be this happy holding a baby, usually babies were things he thought should be handled with hazmat suits, but not at that moment. His little butterfly truly did have him wrapped around their finger.

“Asmo, hey, Asmo,” Asmo looked over at Solomon, who had a glowing triangle over one of his eyes. “Would you like to join my secret society?”

“Solomon, you are ruining the moment.”

——————

“C’mon kiddo! Eat your damn food!” Mammon once again tried to shove the spoon into his kid’s mouth with the same result as the 50 previous attempts.

“YUCKY!” M!MC shouted and slapped the spoon away.

“Here,” Beel took the spoon from Mammon. “Maybe it’s yucky like they said.”

Beel ate what was on the spoon, then smiled brightly. “You can really taste the mango!”

“See bud..? Beel likes it.” Mammon gestured at Beel, who was eating the entire jar of baby food as Belphie watched in amusement. He was such an asset to the team. “Beel! They need to eat!”

“Fine, let me try.” Belphie grabbed another spoon, and waved it in M!MC’s face. “Here comes the airplane... whoosh... whoosh...”

M!MC didn’t budge, Belphie knitted his eyebrows and rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine, be that way.”

Levi pushed open the door to the kitchen, and upon seeing the scene before him, immediately turned and tried to leave. “Nope! Food isn’t worth getting spit up all over me-”

Mammon lunged forward, grabbed the back of Levi’s jacket and practically yanked him into the kitchen, he slapped a spoon into his hand and smiled. “C’mon, do a favour for your super great big brother!”

The third born looked at M!MC, who defiantly stared back at him, the baby had the upper hand and the little brat knew it. Babies were so much cuter in anime...

Levi nervously stepped forward and held out the spoon like a weapon. “O-okay M-M-M!MC... you need to eat your food... pls... pls eat.”

M!MC said nothing, they only did what most babies did.

...

They spun their head 90 degrees until the back of their head was all Levi could see.

Everyone in the kitchen stood in complete silence, until Mammon jumped a foot in the air and started screaming bloody murder. “MY BABY!”

He dove forward and scooped M!MC up in his arms, the baby, obviously freaked out by the sudden loud noise, had begun to cry.

“It’s okay! It’s okay! Uh... uh...” Mammon looked around frantically. “Hush little baby don’t say a word... papas gonna buy you a mockingbird. And if that mockingbird don’t sing, papa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring... and if that diamond ring is brass, butitwon’tbebecauseyouroldmanwouldn’tgetcheatedlikethat-”

M!MC spun their head back to its correct position, but their crying sounds were now several octaves lower... It sounded like if someone put a baby in the Darth Vader mask but without the weird breathing sounds...

Mammon looked to Belphie. “I’m blankin’ on nursery rhymes! Ya hafta know some kid songs!”

Belphie, after being put on the spot, suddenly forgot every single nursery rhyme and lullaby any of his brothers had ever sung to him. Oh! A song popped into his head! He could sing that!

“Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks, when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty one-”

“Not that one!” Mammon squeaked, holding M!MC closer to him. M!MC’s voice had returned to normal, the next problem is that they were only speaking in infernal. “Somethin’ else!”

“There was an old lady who swallowed a fly,” Beel began to sing. “I don’t know why she swallowed that fly... I forgot the rest of the song...”

“Dammit... Leviiiiii!” Mammon wheezed, desperately trying to calm the angrily growling M!MC. “Sing! Sing anything!”

“A-anything?” Only one song came to mind. “Uh um... With the doors of heaven and Hell barred, there is no other but the guard, Master of the Hellish Yard...”

Mammon lit up and nodded like Levi had just offered him a million Grimm. “Aw hell yeah! This song!”

He handed M!MC to Beel and began to dance and sing next to Levi, who had really gotten into the song as well!

“With those sins that you've committed, If you pay you'll be acquitted, and your crimes all permitted,” the two paused for dramatic effect before both belting out the best line in the song.

“ONLY ONES WITH CASH DO WELL, WELL AT LEAST IN HELL!”

As Levi and Mammon continued to sing, M!MC became so entranced by the dance, that they stopped their demonic babbling and just watched the second and third born dance and sing the English cover of an old vocaloid song. Belphie and Beel made brief confused eye contact to make sure the other twin was seeing the same thing.

The duo finished the song and took a bow, Beel lightly tapped M!MC’s chubby baby hands together to make it look like they were clapping. It was enough for Mammon and Levi.

“Thank you, thank you,” Mammon said. “We’ll be here forever, next show ain’t free.”

“We should sing The Tailor on Enbizaka next!”

“Levi! No! That song is like... seven minutes long!”

“Hey, morons,” Belphie stuck his thumb at M!MC. “They still haven’t eaten.”

Mammon’s triumphant expression dropped right to the floor. “Ah fuck...”

——————

“Satan, where’s L!MC-” Lucifer looked up at the ceiling of Satan’s room and his jaw dropped. “WHAT ARE THEY DOING UP THERE?!”

“I can’t get them down!” Satan hissed back.

L!MC. L!MC the BABY. They were on the ceiling. They were sitting upside down on the ceiling like it was an average Friday. Lucifer was too old for this shit...

“L!MC.” Lucifer held out his arms, L!MC squinted at him, that’s when Lucifer remembered L!MC was practically blind without their glasses. “L!MC, it’s your father, come here.”

“Don’t you think I’ve tried calling them down like that?!” Satan spat as he quickly ran a hand through his hair.

Lucifer shot a glare at Satan, then Lucifer heard something that nearly made his (lack of) heart stop. Oh no- L!MC was yawning-

L!MC yawned and suddenly detached from the ceiling. Lucifer and Satan both dove forward to catch L!MC, which culminated in one of Satan’s piles of books falling down, but with L!MC safe and sound.

“Damn it.” Satan grumbled as Lucifer shifted to properly hold L!MC. “This is going to take forever to clean...”

“That was clean?” Lucifer raised an eyebrow as L!MC began to fuss slightly.

Satan growled and rolled his eyes. “Yes, it was clean thank you very much. I knew exactly where everything was.”

The cat that unofficially ruled the House of Lamentation pranced into Satan’s room like it didn’t have a care in the world, it began to bat at one of the loose papers that had been scattered around the floor. Detective Toe Beans, you’re an esteemed detective, and technically RAD’s mascot, stop that!

Satan scooped up the cat and began to put the books back in the pile, when Lucifer noticed a familiar, beat-up old book lying near the bottom of the pile.

“Ah, I remember this book,” Lucifer leaned down and picked it up, showing the cover to L!MC, who didn’t seem very interested and continued petting the fur part of Lucifer’s jacket. “It’s good for a bedtime story, right L!MC?”

Lucifer tucked the book under his arm and turned to leave when Satan practically shot upwards. “If you think you can just take that out of my room, you’re completely delusional.”

“Are you seriously going to whine about getting a bedtime story for L!MC?”

“CAT!” L!MC looked over Lucifer’s shoulder and reached for Detective Toe Beans. “CAT!”

“Yes L!MC, cat.” Lucifer whispered to them, then turned back to Satan. “And if I’m remembering correctly, I used to read this to you. Do you really want to deprive poor L!MC of bedtime stories from me?”

“Pff... deprive...” Satan rolled his eyes and huffed. “I’d be saving them. You were the only one who never did any voices for the characters, I was bored to sleep.”

Satan walked forward and swiped the book from Lucifer. “If anyone’s reading L!MC a bedtime story, it should be me. I’m twice the storyteller you’ll ever be.”

Lucifer scoffed. “Ridiculous. We’ll both read L!MC a story and they can tell us who did best when they get back to normal.”

“Fine by me.”

The three (four if you count Bean) were soon seated on the couch in Lucifer’s room. Lucifer took the first story.

Satan listened along and absentmindedly pet Bean, hearing a story he had heard over and over again had managed to bring back memories of a time where he had significantly less control over his wrath. Every night he’d demand a bedtime story or he’d throw a tantrum unlike anything the Devildom had ever seen.

The eldest was always there to swoop in and read Satan a story whenever the little ball of seething rage looked ready to kill the unfortunate brother who told him it was bedtime.

It had gotten to the point that Satan could recite most of the stories in the book completely by heart. He chuckled under his breath as he remembered the time he matter of factly told Lucifer that he’d be reading him the bedtime story that night and proceeded to pretend to read the story of The Hydra and the Pufferfish. He hadn’t actually learned to read, much to Lucifer’s dismay, Satan just memorized what to say and when to turn the pages.

Though, it was apparently impressive enough at the time to warrant a head pat from Lucifer.

The fourth born leaned closer to Lucifer to get a better look at the book’s illustrations. They were always slightly off and strange looking, much like the pictures in the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark book that L!MC had given Satan for his birthday.

Lucifer abruptly stopped reading.

“Why’d you stop?” Satan looked up at Lucifer, then over at L!MC. Aw... Satan didn’t even get a chance to read...

“Our audience has fallen asleep.” Lucifer stifled a yawn and prepared to close the book, Satan quickly shoved his hand on the page to stop him.

“You started reading,” Satan looked away and grumbled. “So at least finish the story...”

Lucifer smirked and opened the book back up. “If you insist, Satan.”

————————

Yayyyyy! Babies! I’m sure the three get back to normal by Monday... hopefully...

Here’s a link to the song Levi and Mammon are singing!

I hope you all enjoyed! As of the time I’m posting this, the next set of Lessons 1-5 Headcanons will be out tomorrow at 8:30 pm EST.

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lovetenya · 4 years ago

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𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬: 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐧

pairing: tamaki amajiki x gn! reader

warnings: pretty angsty, relationship anxiety, fear of abandonment, descriptions/imaginations of choking (it’s figurative and imaginary, it’s demonstrated with snakes), hurt/comfort, reassurance, worrying, ???, ENDS IN FLUFF I PROMISE!!

word count: 1.7k

author’s note: okay OKAY I’m sorry this took so long, i’m now onto the ones that i’m coming up with completely from scratch, because i’m not writing them from outlines. as always, this is all over the place bc i love inserting 294848 different scenarios into one work. someday, maybe, i will focus on one plot line. today is not that day. ALTHOUGH THIS ISN’T THAT BAD BY MY STANDARDS, I’M SORRY TAMAKI, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH.

being in love with tamaki amajiki is green.

it’s the small, fragile beansprouts he grew from the tips of his fingers at lunch time when you were kids, and he was trying to show you that his quirk was nothing to be afraid of. the other kids didn’t talk to him because they thought his tentacles were scary, but you just thought they were neat.

he knew you before he knew mirio, and you were the reason he even considered talking to the loud, sunshine boy in the first place. you gave him the confidence to try to make new friends, to try to choke down the green of the nausea that comes with uncertainty.

“maybe not everyone is going to be mean to me,” he thought, slightly emboldened at the fact that he had a friend now. ‘y/n,” he thought. “they’re my friend now...”

it all started years ago in primary school when you noticed how he sat alone at his desk, drawing pictures of animals while the other kids played. his crayons never seemed to stop moving, and the green jungles he colored were detailed with a wide variety of wildlife and plants.

he liked to be alone, where it was quiet and safe, and nobody would pick on him or ask too much of him. everyone knew that the tears that formed on his lashes were a common occurrence, so they tried to avoid pressing him too much. his peace usually remained undisturbed, until there was you.

you walked up to show him a drawing you made of a spider. he jumped in fear, both at the drawing of a weirdly-realistic spider, but also the fact that someone was talking to him.

“why don’t they know to just leave me alone?” he thought, already shaking in his seat. his blood ran cold, spit filled his mouth, and a bright green nausea overtook all of his senses. he looked up at your face, wincing and bracing himself for a playground insult. kids were creative, and he knew that all too well.

“hi.. amajiki. i like your drawing. do you like animals too?”

“mm-hm..” he softly replied. this was new.

“what’s your favorite one?” you knew to keep it simple, because he clearly wasn’t comfortable speaking. he never raised his hand, even when his favorite subjects were brought up in class or when everyone was encouraged to participate. this time, however, was different. this time, there was you.

where mirio was his sun, you were his stars.

where mirio loudly encouraged him, you provided your gentle, guiding support, and always proved to be a perfect shoulder to lean a head into.

“i.. i like butterflies a lot.”

and so it began.

—

since you met, there were many periods of closeness and distance between you and tamaki, which is typical of childhood friends. you could go weeks without talking and then come right back together, making each other giggle with your newest ideas about the funniest things tamaki could do with his quirk.

one day, you joked, “what if you ate a clam, manifested the shell, and then just knocked somebody over the head with it??? the guy would fall down like blehhh and that would be so funny!!!”

he laughed a little, before deadpanning. “wait a minute.... i think.. i think you might be onto something.”

—

tamaki remembers that the most nervous he’s ever been was while your relationship was still green. the two of you took a walk through a community garden after grabbing a quick dinner with mirio and nejire, and the two of them mysteriously had to leave at the same time, leaving the two of you alone. (the return of ultimate wingmen, mirio and nejire!)

normally, he’d feel anxious about being in public, but he was okay because you were right there with him. you were here, walking shoulder to shoulder with him, through a garden full of butterflies. what more could he ask for?

he didn’t have to worry about being judged or being teased, because it was you. the leaves surrounding you felt like nothing more than company. as you made your way through the beautiful maze of plants, flowers, and stone statues, it was just you two in the whole wide world, taking it all in and enjoying each other’s company.

although he hadn’t always known what his feelings meant, he now realized that he’s a crush on you for as long as he could remember. while mirio had several different flings, tamaki always had his eyes on you. nobody was as understanding, as considerate, and as perfect as you. he didn’t want to be like this with anyone but you.

his hand twitched toward yours, but he didn’t dare. he couldn’t risk the pain of rejection, he wouldn’t risk it. if it meant he could possibly lose you, it wasn’t worth it. luckily for tamaki, you didn’t share the same fear, and slowly took his hand in yours. he harshly avoided eye contact, desperate to not let you see his crimson red blush. you knew he had a hard time telling people what he really felt, but he wasn’t usually this quiet with you.

“tamaki, is this okay?” you questioned.

“yeah. it’s.. good. i like it.”

—

green is the matcha-flavored boba tea that tamaki sips on while you’re on a date. he asks, “y/n, do you like seafood?” before he balances a boba pearl on the tip of his tongue and laughs. what a dork, you think, and then balance a pearl on yours. this is what tamaki needed sometimes, normal moments of relaxation, and you’re more than happy to provide him with it.

—

however, being in love with tamaki is also loving him through the moments that are hard, and when you can’t lean on each other, because it’s all too much. the moments where the problem is between you, and isn’t easily defined and solved. these are the moments when he’s green with envy, or sick to his stomach with worry, or overrun with anxiety at the most simple things.

these are the moments where you’re tired, or overwhelmed, or you just can’t handle his emotional intensity today, even though you wish you could. you love him, of course you do, there would never be a moment in time where your heart wasn’t bursting for him, but every person has their limits.

these breaking moments are the ones where one of you blurts something you don’t mean in a moment of anger, cracking the meticulously constructed façade, which is in place to spare the other’s feelings.

they’re the moments where your mind goes blank, and all you can think of is, “i’m sorry. i’m sorry. i’m sorry. i’m sorry. i’m sorry. i’m sorry.”

they’re the moments spent frantically comforting, speaking through tears, words spilling out. they’re the moments where his head lays sobbing in your lap, and his arms circle your waist, desperate to hold onto something, anything. desperate to hold onto you, so that you don’t leave him. your words come out shaky, because even they aren’t really sure how to make this all better. how can you fix what was never meant to be broken? it’s uncertain, but you can’t ever finish if you never begin. you reassure him as many times as he needs to hear it.

“god, i’m so sorry, tamaki, i didn’t mean it, i promise i didn’t mean it.”

even though he says he forgives you, that it’s over with, you know he’s replaying every lilt of your voice, where it broke when you were angry.

you know he’s feeling more than he lets on, but doesn’t share those intensities because he doesn’t want to come on too strong. you know better than to trust a simple “i’m fine, y/n. really.”

he’s not lying just to lie, because he’s never felt anything truer than his love for you. he’s doing it because he doesn’t want you to understand the heartbreak that often comes with love. he doesn’t want you to feel suffocated, or like you’re being strangled by thousands of emerald green scaled snakes.

he doesn’t want you to feel their bodies coiled around your throat, like he does.

he doesn’t want you to feel their scales: cool yet burning, smooth yet slicing, glide across your skin gently, intending to strangle.

he doesn’t want you to feel their eyes boring into you, threatening under the ruse of being calculating.

he doesn’t want you to feel what he does, so he hides it. even though he knows he shouldn’t, he can’t help it.

he can’t help how much he loves you, how afraid he is to lose you, how scared he gets whenever mirio and you are paired up together for a class.

he can’t help that he feels like time is running out, your life together is wilting away, and that you’re slipping through his fingers like fine sand.

but you know, truly and wholeheartedly, that his insecurity didn’t deem him invaluable or unworthy of love. his fear and his worries didn’t take away your love, and they never would. every moment spent reminding him that i’m not going anywhere, was worth it. because he’s worth it, and this was something worth fighting for. he’s worth the fighting and the courage it all takes, because he is what makes you whole. he, and everything he is, is worth loving, because there’s value to the things that break us.

being in love with tamaki is grassy green countrysides and wildflower stems, and finding little adventures in every single day. it’s reassurance through the irrational, it’s validation through the pain. it’s not loving despite, it’s loving because.

loving tamaki is green in its youth, in its freshness, in its refreshing reminder that you are loved. you are loved so vividly, so intensely, so naturally.

tamaki loves you, and you know that, because he wouldn’t be able to muster the courage to let those words spill unless he really, truly meant it.

with you, tamaki can let a little loose, a little bit wild. he can let the vines restraining him wilt away into nothing.

because no matter what, it’s all worth it in the end.

—

thanks for reading! love, tj 🪶

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dontletthishappentoyou · 4 years ago

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Me: The time I spend thinking about a thing should probably correspond at least somewhat to how important that thing is. Also Me: I was listening to the ending credits to Hamtaro, and noticed something odd about the harmonies in the first section. For the majority of the song, it’s just in regular old F major. Lots of F major chords, a bunch of B flat and C chords (IV and V) as well, looking like the most standard thing you could find. However, the intro/outro is a little bit odd. First of all, it’s a little bit odd that it’s an intro and outro. The song follows a weirdly symmetrical ABCBA form, where the B theme only has lyrics the second time for some reason. It flows well and sounds natural, but it’s not a common form and I can’t think of any other examples. In the middle section, the C and B, I remember interpreting the lyrics to be hinting at some interesting music-oriented magic system. “Sing this secret spell” and “Let’s make a wish // Make it come true // Singing along with us is all you do” just makes it sound like there’s some sort of incantation that requires a melody to be preperly performed. It felt like the writers had an idea for some much more interesting fantasy series, but then 9/11 happened and they decided to just make a thing about hamsters instead to keep things extra light for a few years, but the lyricist had already written some gold for that other series, so he threw it in the Hamtaro song so it wouldn’t go to waste. I did a bit of research and cannot confirm that that’s not what happened. I did discover that the lyrics to one of the Hamtaro theme songs were adjusted recently in Thailand. They’re protesting their government, and the protestors are singing the Hamtaro intro theme, comparing the government to greedy hamsters, hungry for tax money. So if you hear a familiar melody in Thailand and there are people walking around with violently altered Hamtaro plushies, that’s why. Anyway, the A section. That’s where the music gets interesting. The melody definitely establishes F minor. But! When the phrase is repeated, it’s harmonized, which is a super common thing, but the harmony has a quirk. See here’s the melody, clearly in F minor:

And here is what I would say is the most natural harmony. Since the melody is in F minor, the harmony also stays in F minor. Right? That would make sense; that would sound normal.

But no! We get this weird thing. I realize it’s just off by one note, but that note is the third of the scale, the thing that establishes whether it’s in major or minor, which shows up here going directly against what was just established.

So yea, that bugged me a bit and I couldn’t figure out how to analyze it, or if there’s anything similar that follows the same pattern. You have things like the epic theme from Lord of the Rings. At first I was thinking that it was doing something similar, where the melody is in minor and the harmony is in major and the contrast makes a kind of epic heroic kind of feel that you also find a little bit of in the Zelda main theme.

So I listened loudly with headphones and there’s just not enough harmony for that to be a valid interpretation. It’s literally just those two vocal lines, and the bass is playing a constant F drone in the background with the Latin American percussion that I never thought sounded out of place for some reason. The interpretation I ended up settling on was that it’s a good example of a kind of polytonality uncommon before the 1900s in classical music. By that, I mean the melody is harmonized by an exact copy of the melody, moved upward. So instead of having a harmony that’s also in F minor but higher, we have a harmony that’s just in A minor, sung at the same time. Here’s an example in Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, where the oboes are doing the same thing, playing the same melody transposed a minor third apart.

The reason this works is because of a thing called Tonal Fusion. Every sound has one wave frequency that really stands out, called the fundamental, and then a ton of usually quieter ones above it. The sound of static will just have a ton of random noise at all frequencies, and noisy things like snare drums and the sound of the letter F will be similar, and every sound has a distinct pattern of pitches. A flute will be basically just that one tone with some quiet ones above it, a clarinet will have the fundamental and well known series of overtones that are closer to the same volume, but all pretty well in-tune. The problem shows up when we realize that if the clarinet is playing tons of distinct notes, and someone shouting “Fffffff!!!” makes a ton of distinct notes, why does it sound like exactly two sources of sound, rather than just one weird object, or thousands of individual objects? Our brains do tonal fusion, assuming that things moving in the same way are coming from the same object. If all of the notes above the fundamental frequency of the clarinetty sound are all moving together in perfect unison, we’ll hear it as a single object. So what Bartok is doing up there, is he’s making a new instrument. He’s taking the sound of an oboe, with it’s unique pattern of pitches above its fundamental, and he’s adding another oboe slightly above it, and when they move perfectly together, it messes with our brains and we don’t know whether to hear it as a single object or two. They tonally fuse. That’s kind of what is going on in Hamtaro as well. The melody and the harmony sort of tonally fuse together. The theme was written around the year 2000, and especially if you listen to the intro theme song, they are really playing with music production techniques, because that was what was cool at the time. This is especially noticable if you listen to the French version of the Hamtaro intro. The weird tonal fusion thing that’s happening here creates an effect very similar to things you can do as a music producer, messing with equalizers and vocoding. The fact that the vocals do this naturally is likely a result of the songwriters feeling that this is a natural way for the song to go because of the effects they’ve been experimenting with, since it seems pretty unlikely that they were inspired by Bartok, Ravel, or Holst to use this style of polytonality. I always find it fascinating when an artform is influenced by technology that was used to replace some elements of that artform. Painters practicing photorealism, animators replicating CG motions by hand, and this is definitely a good example. It’s possible that the harmony is another take pitch shifted up a major third, but it doesn’t sound pitch shifted. Instead it sounds like someone’s ear has been trained in a style influenced by developments in music production technology, converging on techniques that composers worked on a hundred years before to try to make new and inventive sounds. When we’re listening casually as kids it’s a completely different experience. I remember my synesthesia being way more intense before I shifted to whatever part of my brain listens analytically. This song was just fun, colors, and way too cheesy to admit that I enjoy as much as I do, and now it’s different. It’s a nerdy kind of fun, which I still really enjoy, and I never would have been able to have epiphanies about it years ago, but I could have learned to. I was capable of both ways of listening. Now I’m only capable of how I listen now, and it makes me feel like doors have closed forever, and I’m left with just the memory of what was behind some doors that I was very fond of. But honestly, I appreciate those memories immensely, and looking into this way more deeply just builds contrast that helps the happy joyful years of hearing that stand out better to me. It’s not a white on black where there was a purely happy experience superimposed against my dark, adult experience; it’s more blue on orange. It’s extremely different, but there aren’t many better ways to really bring out the blue than having the orange to contrast it. I hope that the overanalysis of fond memories can always just help me appreciate the pleasant tiny moments of the past. Anyway, that’s about all I have to say about the A naturals in the Hamtaro outro theme.

#hamtaro #music theory #mormon life

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captaincoffeegirl515 · 4 years ago

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I just saw the live-action Mulan movie, and in short, it sucked.

It’s not worth the money! Not worth the 37 dollars you’ll need to pay so that you can merely rent the movie. Don’t worry, I pirated it. I didn’t give Disney any money, and I’m writing this so you won’t have to as well.

To think, my mom was so excited about this film especially since we are Chinese and the animated Mulan film was one of her favourite Disney films. But throughout the film, we were disappointed again and again.

First of all, the directing, camera work, pacing, and editing was terrible. The pacing of the movie was all over the place. The fight scenes especially, were so erratic and badly put together. Either they’d have the scene move at a normal pace but would cut and change to a new angle or perspective multiple times until you can barely tell if there were any hits or what they were doing. Or they would do slow-mo and do a zoom-in on Mulan’s blank, stiff face.

They had Donnie Yen, a famous martial artist and actor, doing some incredible swordsmanship and martial arts in front of the soldiers but then they ruined it by constantly cutting away from him to some random blank-faced soldier. What wasted potential!

Did I mention the blank faces. Everyone looked so stiff during the movie, barely any proper acting done. This was especially obvious with the Witch, whose face barely seems to move. The most emotional I saw her was when she had teary eyes, but still, the rest of her face stayed smooth.

My biggest problem lay with the fact that they took the sexism of the animated Mulan movie and managed to crank it up to a thousand. The whole concept of chi/qi was wrong. For starters, real chi lies in everyone, and it does not give you superpowers or suddenly makes you a good fighter. But in the movie, apparently only men can use chi and gain superpowers, and that if a woman somehow had chi then she’s a witch and must be outcast or killed. And it made it seem like the only reason Mulan could keep up with the men or be better than them was because she had these superpowers. I honestly have no words to express my anger and disappointment at this.

I understand they removed Mushu in the live action since it was offensive to Chinese mythology. But replacing it with a phoenix based on Greek mythology?? That made no sense. And not only that, the CGI was terrible. Not only did it look obviously fake, my siblings and I all felt like the phoenix was made of paper. One of them joked that it was a kite. The coloring also reminded me of the bird in Wings of Time that I saw in Sentosa Singapore.

Btw, Chinese don’t have any concept of witches or witch hunts. Lord knows why Disney tried to put more Western concepts when they wanted to make an Asian movie.

Moving on to the characters and their chemistry. In short, there was none. Little to none actually. I don’t understand why Honghui was supposed to be her love interest. No chemistry and barely any meaningful interactions. They met with him insulting her and continuing to insult her throughout most of their scenes. The “love interest” also spent a lot of his time staring at Mulan like one of those creepy perverts that you try your best to ignore. Is this really the kind of lesson you want to teach kids?

And Ling? Yao? Chien-po? What happened to them? Their names were barely mentioned and their characterizations were so one-dimensional. There were not enough scenes building them up as proper characters, which made them easily forgettable. Because of this, we also had trouble telling all of the soldiers apart, and this includes Honghui and Cricket. Cricket was initially mistaken as Chien-po. There was even less time emphasizing their friendship with Mulan. I also didn’t understand why the need to add Cricket in the movie as another soldier. Disney still didn’t give him any proper growth or arc beyond that one shining moment with the arrow. I also didn’t understand why he suddenly decided to play dead at the end of the corridor fight. Another “dramatic moment” that fell flat.

Where do I begin with the Witch? Shan Yu was an incredible bad guy already. Why did they try to make his falcon human and have her as a witch? For the most part, it seemed like she was just there to drive down the movie’s point that women should be subjugated. She had the power to kill Bori Khan easily, but… chose not to because she thought he would help make her not an outcast?? And even when she changed sides, instead of idk killing Bori Khan when he tried to shoot Mulan, she just… flew… in front of… the arrow… and died. Wow.

What was Bori Khan’s revenge supposed to be anyways? For the most part, it looked like he was trying to slow-cook the Emperor. Like what was up with the random forges and the 2 inch pool of lava?? Were forges back then even hot enough to make lava and have it stay red hot the whole time even when it was in that pool?? Also, swords do NOT melt that fast.

Also, the part where Bori Khan was talking to the captured Emperor was so unintentionally funny. Like at the end of every sentence he would just suddenly make sparks with his weapon at the Emperor’s face. If it was a one-time thing, it would have been fine. But he just… kept… doing it. And with every strike I just started laughing more and more.

The Emperor was… something. Of course he was probably one of the men who has chi powers judging by his sleeve attacks. Honestly, that part felt so random, my siblings and I were all laughing and going “what??”. His voice was so clearly dubbed in, and badly done. He also seemed to have been given the clunkiest dialogue in the movie. I also miss the scene in the animated movie where Shan Yu tells the Emperor to bow down to him and the Emperor replies, “No matter how strong the wind blows, the mountain cannot bow down to it.” because that line was awesome.

The sister’s character was also completely unnecessary. According to Disney, she’s to showcase Mulan’s devotion to her family and give her more motivation to do what she does. But?? She took her father's place in the war to protect him?? Wasn’t the whole point of her story is her pretending to be a man to protect her father from certain death?? Is that not already a huge motivational factor and shows her devotion to her family??

Does anyone else also find it weird that when Mulan was in the army, everyone referred to her by her full name? Like everyone had their first names and were called that, but for Mulan it was always Hua Jun? Btw for those not aware, with Chinese names, the surname is at the beginning. Hua is Mulan’s surname. So shouldn’t they be calling her simply as Jun??

Moving on, I have to bring attention to several of the changes in the movie. It’s like they cut out all the scenes that gave the movie an emotional impact and replaced it with bland scenes that didn’t add to the story at all. Her decision to take her father’s place in the war and steal his armor was replaced with some weird thing about her getting lost and the phoenix having to bail her out.

The incredible moment when Mulan gets the arrow from the top of the post was replaced by bringing two buckets to the top of the mountain. Anyone who is strong and determined enough would have been able to do that. With the arrow, she needed to think and strategize, using the weights to help carry her up. With the buckets, she just used her chi superpowers.

The drama and shock as the happily-singing soldiers come upon the destroyed village becomes a drawn-out traveling scene that has the General asking Mulan to marry his daughter, and then cuts to the army at the village.

The scene where it looked like Shang was going to kill Mulan but then he spares her because she saved his life is gone completely since they decided to split Shang into two characters instead. Even Mulan’s line where she says, “You believe Ping, why not Mulan?” was given to Honghui instead, robbing Mulan of her moment.

Honestly, there was no need for the Witch and her fight scene with Mulan, but apparently in the movie, chi is weakened by dishonesty. It’s weird that the Witch is even telling her that since they’re supposedly enemies, and telling her about the dishonesty will make Mulan stronger.

Another thing is Disney’s weirdly intense focus on arranged marriages and matchmaking, with multiple characters mentioning whether or not they are matched or asking others if they are. Even at the end, the sister goes “oh I am matched”. I didn’t see the point of having that in the movie.

I almost forgot about the trebuchet/catapult! The Rourans are supposed to be a Nomadic people. Where are they finding the time and energy to drag that gigantic thing around? I also have to mention that the Rourans had some incredibly good aim when firing at the soldiers but missed by a long shot when they fired at where Mulan was hiding. That was… dumb, to say the least.

How did Mulan even get there anyways? And how did she carry all those helmets with only two hands? I’m even giving her some leeway because there are people who can control a horse with just their legs. The actress for Mulan also has clearly never fired an arrow before and was not given training for it. The way she loaded the arrows and how her fingers sprung open like that screamed CGI arrows

And now I’m remembering the random horse gymnastics the Rourans used to turn around on their horse so that they could fire arrows while riding. It looked cool, yes, but I don’t think that was the most efficient way to turn around.

Back to the fight scene, Mulan managed to go from chasing the Rourans into the mountains and fighting the Witch, to back to where her army was, then somehow teleported to a different mountain behind where the Rourans were. She also somehow outran an avalanche?? She also killed her own men in that avalanche. Not the best plan in my opinion.

Ultimately, Mulan’s growth and arc to become a soldier and hero of China was undermined by the fact that she was already perfect due to her chi powers. There was no need for her to grow and train because her chi made her strong, her chi made her skillful. And because of this, she lost her relatability. I hate to say this, but she became a Marysue.

I don’t know where to put this but Mulan’s makeup and outfit for the matchmaker scene was the ugliest thing I have ever seen. Green eyebrows?? Really?? What happened to her face? What happened to her dress? Everyone’s costumes also felt unrealistically colorful for a poor farming village.

Lastly, I’m sure many of you know that Disney worked with, credited, and gave thanks to the Xinjiang authorities. Those authorities are responsible for imprisoning up to TWO MILLION Uighur Muslims in concentration camps, forcing them to learn and be patriotic about China’s communist doctrine and propoganda, not allowing them to practice their faith, and subjecting them to horrific conditions, torture, sexual abuse, forced sterilization, brainwashing, and other abuses.

To end this overly wordy review, I don’t understand why Disney would willingly get so much wrong. They tried very hard to make changes and appeal to the Chinese audience but refused to have Chinese creators to help with the screenplay, directing, costume and makeup, etc. Now all they’ve done is alienate said audience.

#mulan 2020 #mulan #disney #rant

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silvanoir · 3 years ago

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Summer 2021 Nerdy Reading and Watching:

I don't have as much time for reading and watching fiction as I used to, or to post my thoughts about it, but here's some things I read/saw this summer so far:

Cat Woman: Soulstealer (graphic novel): The art starts out sketchy and improves as it goes. You have to get used to this being a younger Selina, just starting out, who has a fling with Luke Fox (Batwing) instead of Brice Wayne (Batman), but other than that, fairly solid. I think they overdid Selina's backstory and skills, stuff I know that's usually on par with how they overdo male superhero's skills/backstory, but eh. Catwoman really should be simple: woman who grew up poor, is good at stealing shiny things from the rich, dresses like a cat because she likes cats. I prefer the backstory in this for her sister over the one in the main comics, though (anything is preferable to Blackmask torture scenes, really).

Batman: The Adventures Continue "season 1" (comic): A decent Batman vs. robots and Lex Luthor story to start, Slade trying to recruit Robin like in the TT cartoon but BTAS style, followed by What If Jason Todd was part of the BTAS which.... doesn't really work, since BTAS Tim is a combo of Tim and Jason (even slightly refrenced). And they went with Jason wanted to kill criminals and was BAD ALL ALONG angle, and removed a lot of the emotional angle of why he wanted Bats to kill joker so it... fell flat for me (read the main canon comics or watch the redhood movie instead). Ends with a Christmas story that feels like it almost could’ve been a real episode (except that Harley/Ivy are more clearly a couple than would;ve been allowed on 90s kids TV). There was also a story involving Azreal which reminded me its been almost a decade since I read the entire Knightfall arc. So maybe... I'm just getting tried of superhero comics?

Vampire the Masquerade: Winter's Teeth: ah, this is how I like my vamps. A variety of vamps in personality, ability, and social standing, with varying degrees of sympathetic stories to an acknowledgement that all vampires are kind of a-holes (also to varying degrees). Don't read if you're squeamish about blood (don't read any vampire story if you're squeamish about blood?)

Gundam Thunderbolt. There's fantastic detailed animation and Jazz like in Cowboy Bebop (so much so I thought it was made by the same people). But there's also war is terrible for both sides, causes grief and loss, maiming of bodies, and destruction on a mass scale of Gundam. There is literally now way you can miss the driving point of this one for "wow cool robot". Very well made. But kind of intense and depressing. Japanese with English subtitles only, there was no dub made.

I've also rewatched Farscape. It is hornier, sillier, and more morally grey than I remember it being. I mean, I remember it being all of those things, but it is MORE of it. Just like watching back in the late 90s/early 2000s when it originally aired on SyFy, I find myself more distracted by the makeup, costumes and puppetry which most often I'm impressed by (unless they are the aliens of the week instead of reoccurring characters, then they tend to skimp on silly wigs). The things I remember, more than the plot (I don't know how some of you people have near photographic memories for plot, given enough time I forget everything but a few still images from anything I watch), is how Zaan's skin changed in blue hue from season 1 to 2, The movie alien colors not matching the show colors, Chiana's necklace which looked like a bunch of swords stabbing her neck, how impressed I am with the pilot puppet in general (still am). Or, how I didn't really care for either the show or the movie's ending (I think I would have preferred the show's ending minus the very last scene... just stop with the proposal). I notice its inconsistent when it comes to things aliens know and don’t know (makeup exists on many worlds they visit yet Chiana didn’t know what it was until she visited Earth?). Weirdly, the one thing I think it does a good job with is depicting how when people go through repeated trauma and ordeals, it has a long term effect on them. Something I don't think I appreciated as much when I watched it the first time. Poor John never fully recovered after being tortured in the chair (didn’t help that awful things kept happening after that, but it was the point where his character permanently changed).

#comics #tv #silvanoir reviews

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yue-muffin · 4 years ago

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Time Raiders (2016)

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3

In my quest to consume the entirety of the DMBJ franchise available in English, I have decided to start with the non-canon movie because at least this one has an ending, unlike the train wreck that is Reboot/Chongqi’s pacing. I will probably be bitter about that for all eternity, but I digress. I heard good things about the movie from the bird app, and as I am a Pingxie shipper at heart, I decided to finally watch this one.

P A R T O N E

The cut-in animation to the title was gorgeous, I do so love the qilin in every adaptation. It’s particularly striking here with the gold outline and geometric, maze-like lines. It looks like the cards at the very beginning were being arranged in the image of this qilin.

My first reaction upon seeing white people in a dmbj adaptation is: oh no, the English, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear perfect English that matches the actor’s lips! What a miracle, haha. I remember The Lost Tomb 2 being the worst for how many lines had to be in English, sob.

These look so cool. I see we start off with a good old “seeking immortality” antagonist, and an obsessed collector who has dedicated his whole life to this apparently. As usual, he is a scumbag threatening the locals.

The old guy’s accented English is also better than TLT2, ha. The breathy/nasal quality is not at all uncommon. I don’t know what language the locals speak though.

Me, immediately: Zhang Qiling already??

I know he appears in rather early in TLT1, TLT2, and Reboot/Chongqi, but he’s so often mysteriously absent or stuck behind a gate (or in Reboot’s case, put on a bus) that I got excited, ok.

My favorite Zhang Qilings are the cold-looking pretty boy types in terms of my mental image of the character, but this one is also very easy on the eyes and as usual, unfazed in the face of danger coming at him with a knife. This is the only series in which I’m not bothered by the constant cast change between adaptations (unlike Ever Night), I suppose since it’s been this way from the start.

I’m interested in seeing how the backstories differ from canon. It’s actually rather interesting that this is pretty much an official AU, like that’s kind of wild as a concept. I’m used to the late 1990s/early 2000s anime adding new characters and changing plot points and endings everywhere, but Time Raiders takes it a step further.

Zhang Qiling being an ultra-competent badass who doesn’t even need a weapon to take the bad guys down never changes, no matter the universe. He steamrolls everyone, no questions asked.

Did he- he break the blade with his bare hands hahaha. Oh, yup, and a Zhang Qiling with a weapon is even more dangerous. I see those severed fingers. Such a good fight scene and we’re not even 5 minutes into the movie.

I love how he could have simply fired the arrow while he was still on the statue, then jumped down, but he had to be Extra and fire while he was jumping off haha.

It- the divine piece was right there?? By “beneath the statue” I would have thought it would at least be under it, not in a convenient little slot on the side of the altar area haha. So Zhang Qiling’s mission is to destroy the divine piece(s)? To, um, save the world apparently.

WHO ARE YOU? What an excellent question to ask a Zhang Qiling (and that staring into the mirror shot, too.)… I wonder if this one even knows - it’s possible he doesn’t have his signature amnesia here.

Wait- a gate? I think it’s in a cave or something in the novels, but gates have significance in DMBJ. The cinematography is really nice in these mountain shots. I know nothing about film, but I like the shots in the snowy mountains.

This Zhang Qiling knows and practices martial arts on screen! You would think he’d pull some moves normally, but in the drama-adaptations he tends to just beat people up as efficiently as possible. Sometimes with his sword. Other times he just fights ‘em. I have to admit Jing Boran looks excellent going through some forms. He nailed the force and power underlying every movement, then exploding outward with a strike. I do like the impression it leaves.

I, on the other hand, am an absolute noodle and look ridiculous when I do martial arts.

What in the world is happening in this flashback scene with the weird CGI qilin. Ah, it’s when he received his tattoo. That was super dramatic.

Wushanju is looking real edgy with the heavy iron gate on the interior, haha.

He is puzzling (ha!) over those cards so intensely you’d think it was a thousand piece puzzle instead haha. You’re almost there! Just a few more to finish the qilin!

Aw, is this our Wu Xie? Haha his facial hair is- hm. But I love his voice it’s so soft. Really fits that “Mr. Naive” vibe.

Is that. Is that the author of the series. I found out that he makes cameos in almost all (if not all of) the adaptations!

NO. ONLY I CAN FINISH THE PUZZLE. HANDS OFF BUDDY.

Why are there so many pigeons in here. Who let them inside.

A writer, who came to hear his story and turn it into a novel- HA yup it’s the author.

“This should be a story about me and him.”

Ahh I’m loving it already. DMBJ is the ultimate bromance story. Fair warning, I do ship Pingxie so my shipper goggles will be on throughout the movie. But even without shipping, you do have to admit the series is a bromance underneath all the mystery – between the Iron Triangle, between Wu Xie and Xiaoge.

This Wu Xie is a photographer and that is sort of adorable. Already there’s a theme emerging of needing to record events and telling stories. Interesting that he wants to turn his memories into a novel to record his experiences, because otherwise he’s afraid those memories might turn into a mere story in his own head. Wu Xie, that’s a worrying mindset.

Those ancient mask things always make me crack up, I don’t know why.

Ooh, background about Wu Xie’s birth into the Wu family. I’ve never read up to the part in the books where they go into his place in the family in detail. To be fair, his grandfather had three sons and only one of them had any kids – and Wu Xie is his parents’ only child. So, he becomes the only one who can really carry on the family legacy. Aw, I really like seeing his extended family present though! In the dramas we only ever get either his Second or Third Uncle, and he rarely ever mentions his parents even though they’re alive.

And there’s his namesake! The origin of his nickname, and the irony once the story gets into the Sha Hai timeline.

Wu Xie was a bit of a rascal as a kid, haha. To be fair he has a pretty sharp tongue in the novels and is mostly a pure cinnamon roll in the early dramas.

Little Wu Xie in a suit is so adorable. Nooo kid don’t go into locked up abandoned places. He’s already so adventurous haha. Seems that it’s not actually abandoned judging by all the lights on, but.

UH. MASKED MAN BEHIND YOU. I think he wants that item back. This is why you don’t go into abandoned places, kid. He definitely does not learn his lesson though. Also why are you still holding onto that thing, just drop it, I think he wants it back.

Haha he kept one of the coins.

WOAH. Every month someone in your family dies?? That’s uh- sort of traumatic. Also that would be a really good first line for a novel…Just saying. I do love the singing though.

Oh, the Nine Families exist in this universe too! They even give a quick explanation about the ranking system.

Oh yeah, I love how Wu Xie is such a nerd for all this knowledge of ancient texts and tombs. And YES HE FINALLY DOCUMENTS STUFF FOR ONCE.

Uncle Three looked dead for a moment there, scared the shit out of me too.

VAMPIRE MOTHS? Oh I hate bugs I would not be okay lol. WHOOPS. You guys are really good at reading ancient texts on the fly lol.

That’s the mask he has in the beginning of the film, isn’t it. NO DON’T TOUCH THINGS IN TOMBS. AHHH. So you just put it on your face?? Well that was a stupidly simple way to open the door. I’m guessing the creator didn’t care if anyone opened it.

This guy just severed his own arm, ok…and how many years later is his hand still clinging to it? UH. THIS IS WHY YOU DON’T TOUCH THINGS IN TOMBS. Then he proceeds to steal the box thing.

Ah the white dude again. I am so happy there is GOOD ENGLISH though haha.

Oh, hi Zhang Qiling. Just hanging out on a rooftop I see.

He looks so melancholy. Someone give him a hug! This adaptation makes him more human, less stoic robotic superhuman, I noticed. You rarely see him eat or drink anything in the other adaptations, but here he’s just chilling on a rooftop having some drinks haha. It’s ok. I love all the Zhang Qilings.

WHAT THE HELL, LIGHTNING? What the hell is this high tech machinery haha. Eight days? Coincidentally eight days after sitting in a tomb for how many years.

That is a very Extra bookcase to hold a book that apparently has ALL the secrets.

WOW that is a fancy notebook. It looks so beat up in the other versions haha. In this one, it even gets its own hidden shelf in a giant portable bookshelf!

The props for this franchise are so cool and detailed. I always wish they would show more of the creative process in the BTS, I’m such a nerd for that stuff. The Longest Day in Chang’an was pretty good at that, which is half of my enjoyment of that show haha!

I’m also still pleasantly surprised they bothered to incorporate other languages. I’m not sure what the Snake Lady and the old man in the beginning were speaking, but at least the English is good.

I can’t believe they worked in a steampunk chastity belt this movie went all out, huh. Also with these weirdly high tech structures and lightning and moving tomb structures.

And all the pieces start coming together! So that’s why it’s believed they hold the secret to immortality. What a steampunk-looking key.

Is that a writing desk??

Oh, they’re getting a team together to go tomb raiding! Ha, forget money! You may or may not end up dying on this adventure, so who cares about money, right.

He’s so cute standing there with his camera. Look at the little smile as he watches everything going on!

It’s a desk and a storage container?? Oh, there are ~qualifications~ to going on tomb raiding. Makes sense. That is the oddest looking sword.

Must appreciate Zhang Qiling’s fingers in every adaptation. They look very strong and steady here. Let’s not talk about the slooow trailing across the handle.

Wow did you really just throw sand in his face. Have we not learned not to mess with Zhang Qiling after he trounced that first guy who attacked him. I love the fight scenes so much after the bore-fest that was Reboot/Chongqi’s second half of Season 1.

Super pretty, but why did it cause him to stop and stare in the middle of the fight?

This is like a Final Fantasy sword haha. Also I think you should stop while you’re ahead, why did you think a table would stop this dude. (Hey, it’s Da Kui! He was in the novel but not TLT1.).

It’s HERE. Their first meeting. How did he know the coin was on that cord? It wasn’t visible, I don’t think. But uh. That was a hilarious move on his part, he is so Extra?? He just casually flicks the necklace off with his big-ass sword and it drops into his hand. Then casually goes “oh, here, you dropped this” as if he wasn’t the one responsible for it coming off in the first place!!

HERE IT COMES. The unnecessarily long eye contact. Pingxie in every adaptation needs a Staring Into Your Eyes scene.

Real smooth.

Ahh this Wu Xie is such a cutie. He’s like a puppy.

WHAT. Third Uncle, I can’t believe you let him tag along so easily haha. In the beginning he was scolding Wu Xie to never get involved in tomb business, then what happens? They’re going tomb raiding!!

Next Up: to the tomb we go! This can’t end badly or anything what are you talking about.

#daomubiji #time raiders #dmbj #盗墓笔记 #image heavy post #perhaps don't view on mobile #in which i lose my mind for 2 hours #the muffin's liveblogging adventures

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riverboundao3ff · 4 years ago

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Riverbound, Chapter 20

Your name is MICAH, and ten nights have come and gone in what felt like a few hours.

It’s still early enough that even Lynera is still asleep in the next room over, which is really saying something because that girl is up at the asscrack of dusk no matter what night it is. You’re curled up on the sofa in the study, staring at a fungus-shaped nightlight that does a poor job of actually illuminating the surrounding area, and wondering what the hell you were going to tell your friends in the future.

Hey, guys! Sorry I kind of dropped off the grid for a while there. I fought this fucked-up version of one of my human friends, vanished into the literal void to take a nap because I was super tired from splitting a whole universe apart, and then traveled back to the past to help fight in a literal revolution… because I want to save my other friends, I guess? You don’t have to worry about that changing the future or whatever, I promise! I’m literally a god now, so I have total control over time and space.

Geez. You hope Vriska is ready to stop the others from kicking your ass.

Should you just go? You could easily spend the night on future Alternia and be back by breakfast. Teleporting still makes you a little nervous; the fear of messing up still lingers in the back of your head, but nothing bad has happened yet, so…

Yeah, you’re definitely not getting any more sleep. Might as well be productive.

You roll off the couch with a grunt, stagger a bit as all the blood rushes down to your legs, and then stumble over to the bathroom to brush your teeth and wash your face. Maybe you were about to pull up to the future to get yelled at by a bunch of teenagers, maybe not, but that doesn’t mean you have to look like crap.

The person looking back at you in the mirror startles you more than you’d like to admit. Their eyes are tired but wild, like a feral animal that’s been hunted to the point of exhaustion. Too-pale skin reflects the ceiling lights with an intensity that hurts your head if you look for too long. The dark shadows underneath both eyes are so dark they look like smudged mascara. You’ve always been very fair, even for a white kid, but you know that looking like this can’t be healthy.

Then there’s the fact that you’re still pretty underweight. You’ve been doing your best to eat on a somewhat regular basis, but you just don’t feel hungry anymore. It’s like your body already decided to give up.

And to be honest, the rest of you isn’t too far behind.

“Look at you. Sans Undertale looking-ass,” you tell the shadow in the mirror.

The shadow blinks in agreement at the same time you do.

You can’t look at yourself anymore. Moving as quickly as you can, you brush your teeth and do your best to assemble yourself into what could maybe pass for a functional human being and leave to go get dressed.

You’re rifling through your backpack for your water bottle when the lights come on in Lynera’s room. The bedroom door cracks open, and a messy head of pair pokes out, bits of sopor slime still clinging to black curls.

“Micah? What are you doing up so early?” she yawns.

“I, ah, I gotta go visit some friends a ways out of town. I’ll be back in a bit,” you promise. “Sorry if I woke you up.”

“You didn’t! A new cluster of eggs is due to hatch tonight and I want to be there!” she practically sings as she gets ready.

You feel the sadness leave your body as Lynera practically prances around as she gets ready for her shift. It’s not often she lets down her walls, but when she does, you can’t help but take a step back to enjoy the show.

“Give those babies some love for me,” you tell her as you hoist your backpack over your shoulders.

“I will!”

Alright. Here we go. You close your eyes and visualize Vriska’s living room. That’s a good place to start, right? You’ll have a quick talk with Vriska, you’ll go visit your other friends one at a time to explain what’s going on, and then you can talk to those who are interested about helping the rebellion from the future.

Time and space part easily as you zap out of Lynera’s study and--

“-- worry about OH MY FUCKING GOD.”

You yelp in surprise as somebody shrieks at a deafening volume right next to your ear. Instincts take over, and you spring backward into something big and hard. That ‘something’ turns out to be a bookshelf, as you soon find out as a couple of novels fall from the top shelves and hit you right on the head.

“Ow! Shit!”

And that’s when you realize you have twelve young teenagers sitting around Vriska’s living room, all staring at you in various degrees of shock. Nepeta, Equius, Kanaya, and Sollux are all on the sofa, with Sollux perched on the backrest like he’s ready to take flight. Terezi and Vriska are standing on the coffee table together for some reason. Eridan’s curled up on the loveseat with one hand on his rifle. All of the others are sprawled out on the carpet.

All of the others except for Karkat, that is, who seems to have been returning from the kitchen with a pile of chips on his plate.

“Oh, hi!” Aradia says cheerfully. “Wow, I can see your bones--”

“THEY’RE BAAAAAAAACK!” Vriska hollers, launching herself off the coffee table and slamming into you at full speed.

The air is smooshed out of your lungs before you can brace yourself for impact. Thankfully, Vriska catches you before you can eat shit, otherwise you would have probably just teleported back to past Alternia and tried this whole thing again some other time.

“Hey, Vris,” you wheeze, patting her back. “Happy to see you too.”

“Fucking HELL, don’t do that,” Karkat yells, stomping over to the sofa and plopping down next to Kanaya. Kanaya purses her lips in mild amusement and delicately plucks a chip from his plate to eat.

Vriska just scoffs. “Don’t be a baby, Vantas, you know full well Micah can teleport--”

“Eat my full ass, Serket.”

“Hi, Micah!” Nepeta trills. A general murmur of greetings follows that, some more enthusiastic than others. Sollux, Equius, and Tavros all seem to be very on-edge tonight.

Feferi actually hops up to give you a hug as well, thankfully with a lot more care than Vriska had. It’s becoming weirdly normal to know that this big-ass six-sweep old girl could crush your skull like an eggshell.

“Don’t worry, nobody’s mad at you, I promise,” she whispers in your ear.

“Huh?”

Vriska grins and clasps your shoulder. “Oh, I already told them everything.”

“... Oh, boy.”

You turn back to the others and try your best winning smile.

“Yeah, what the fuck, dude?” Sollux demands.

“How are we even gonna exist with this kind of thing?” Karkat splutters, throwing his hands up in the air.

Tavros winces. “We get that you can do crazy space-time stuff, but--”

“You’re in way over your pan, retard!”

Ah, fuck. “Listen, guys, I know what I’m doing sounds pretty insane. And I’m sorry that I can’t tell you how exactly I’m going to pull all of this off because… you know, time shenanigans. But I need you guys to trust in me, at least for now. Also, Karkat, let’s not use that word. It’s extremely disrespectful.”

“Who are you, my lusus?” he challenges.

“No. Should I zap over and get him myself?”

“NO!”

“That’s what I thought.”

Vriska snickers under her breath. Karkat gives her a look that just screams murder.

Everybody else still looks a little queasy. Guilt rears its ugly head for the millionth time in the hour you’ve been awake, fearful and taunting and ashamed all at the same time. If you could just tell them everything, right now, you wouldn’t have to feel like this anymore.

Tell them.

You don’t, because you’re a coward, but you do try and calm everybody’s nerves again. “To elaborate on what Tavros just tried to say, yes, I can do crazy space-time stuff. Which means I can do stuff in one point in time and it won’t completely fuck up all the other points in time. It’ll change things, sure, but it won’t erase people.”

“What about our memories?” Eridan asks tersely.

“Definitely not,” you tell him. I won’t let that happen. “If everything goes according to plan, things will just start… changing.”

“We’re gonna make a new world that’s better for everybody!” Vriska announces proudly. “That’s why you guys are all here today.”

“By our human friend fighting in a rebellion that was already lost? Setting aside the fact that’s… treason… that also sounds rather dangerous. Micah, you aren’t a great fighter,” Equius says. His voice is quiet, but he’s so stiff you could probably use him to prop open a barn door.

“A rebellion is a lot more than just fighting, dude. So far I’ve just helped teleport people around,” you remind him.

“... Still.”

Nepeta suddenly surges to her feet, eyes blazing. “I don’t care that it’s treason! Don’t you care about what they did to me? My whole neighborhood got burned down in a drone strike!”

“Nepeta--”

“No! I remember everything now. I’m gonna help them win, ‘cause, ‘cause… even though we all had to suffer, the ones who come after us might not have to.”

Nobody speaks for many heartbeats after that. Something about what she said rings inside your head, sticking to your neurons like glue.

“See? Nepeta knows what’s good!” Terezi yells.

“This is insane.”

“Yeah, it’s awesome!”

“I’m in,” Aradia agrees, winking at you as she smooths her skirt down. Your anxiety backs down a little at her blatant support. Aradia Knows Things, right? Surely if she thinks you should keep doing what you’re doing…

“So am I,” Tavros announces, setting his jaw defiantly. Nepeta seems to have set off a chain reaction, because everybody else sits up a little straighter, eyeing each other as if daring anybody else to go first.

“And I,” Kanaya adds.

Karkat groans. “Fuck you guys. Fine! It’s not like we can play SGRUB anymore.”

“You guys are gonna die,” Sollux says, scrubbing his face with the palms of his hands. “We. Are. All. Gonna. Die.”

“So are you in?” you ask, reaching over to poke his arm.

He smacks your hand away. “Get fucked. Sure. Whatever.”

“Yay!”

Eridan huffs quietly and crosses his arms. “Well, you guys are gonna need somebody with power to help. And money. I’m in.”

Equius turns to stare at him with his jaw nearly on the floor, and you’re so full of pride you think you’re going to explode. You should have known your friends would eventually come around. And with not one, but two whole seadwellers on their side, they were truly going to be a force to be reckoned with.

“I knew it! I knew you cared!” Feferi squeals, jabbing a finger at her ex-moirail. Eridan curls up tighter on himself, but that doesn’t stop a small smile from lighting up his face.

“Is that a yes from you, Feferi?”

“It’s a hell yes, Micah!”

Gamzee smiles lazily from underneath the coffee table. “I told you motherfuckers. I told you a miracle was coming, and here it is.”

Poor Equius looks like he’s on the verge of a panic attack. “I-I… you can’t possibly, I mean--”

“If you’ll excuse us!” Nepeta chirps, effortlessly pulling her moirail from the couch and slinging him over her muscular shoulders. The indigoblood yelps indignantly, but Nepeta just prances on upstairs as if she’s carrying a sack of potatoes and not a teenage boy nearly twice her size.

“What’s up with olivebloods and being insanely buff? I mean, my girlfriend’s taken on a jadeblood and a teal at the same time and she won,” you wonder.

Karkat immediately focuses on you with the intensity of a laser. “A girlfriend? You’re in a relationship?”

“Micah’s got a girlfriend!” Feferi yells, picking you up and twirling you around.

“What quadrant?”

“Is she cute?”

“An oliveblood, right-?”

“We wanna meet her!”

“Guys! Can we please focus on taking down the Empire? We can gossip about Micah’s love life later!” Vriska yells, clapping her hands for order.

You rest an elbow on Feferi’s shoulder, enjoying being tall for the moment as she’s carrying you. “Ooh! You got a mission plan, Vriska?”

“You bet your skinny alien ass I do!” She pauses for emphasis and puffs out her chest. “We’re gonna go beat up a bitch for using lowbloods as FLARP bait!”

“Didn’t you do the exact same thing not too long ago?” Karkat scoffs.

Vriska scowls down at him. “Yes! Yes, I did! But now I’m gonna turn things around and help them instead, okay? ‘Cause I’m changing my…. my toxic behavior.”

She looks to you for support, and you give her the thumbs-up.

The others actually look a little impressed, which gives her the courage to keep going. “In half an hour Terezi and I are going to meet this violetblood dude who’s been responsible for a lot of rust and bronze deaths in the area. It’s a FLARP session at sea, so he’ll have his team-- I mean hostages-- on board with him.”

“You need a team?” you ask.

“You offering?”

“Of course.”

“Yes! But no passing out on me! Our goal is to neutralize the threat, secure the hostages, and deliver them back to shore so they can go home. Any questions?”

“I’m coming too,” Eridan says. He hops to his feet, dusting off some invisible debris on his pants. “That’s not a question, though.”

“Can I come? It sounds exciting,” Aradia begs.

“Sure! Anybody else?” Vriska scans the crowd with a smirk, as if saying You are all too pussy for this kind of adventure.

Unfortunately, it works. Karkat and Feferi step forward as well, which brings the team total up to six. Everybody else gets ready to go home before the sun comes up. Out on the horizon, heat lightning crackles in the sky like a strobe ball. You end up leaving your jacket with your backpack on the couch, because even for somebody who has trouble retaining heat, Alternian summers are brutal.

Surprisingly, the team figures out their FLARP-ing shit quickly enough, as they all played at one point or the other. You still have no idea what to make out of all the numbers and stats and scores that come with each move, even though Vriska makes it all look like child’s play. Karkat keeps grumbling about “games for girls” which has your hackles up until you remember that female trolls tend to be more violent than the males. That makes sense to you, especially when you remember Remele beating the shit out of that purpleblood and all of Lynera’s knives.

In almost no time at all the six of you are sailing out to sea, the wind in your hair and the smell of salt water filling your nose. If you close your eyes and pretended, you could almost imagine you’re back on Earth, taking a boat ride with your mom’s boyfriend and your stepsister at the lakehouse--

A particularly large wave knocks you back on your ass, and the memory cuts off as quickly as it began.

“Fuck!” you hiss, trying to get your bearings. You try as hard as you can to visualize what you just remembered, but all you can recall is sunlight sparkling off water, the rumble of an engine, a man laughing and nearly choking on his beer as your tiny preteen self got knocked around by the rocking of the motorboat.

A strong hand picks you up by the arm and sets you on your feet. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Fef.” You pat her elbow. “Sometimes it’s rough being a little guy.”

Her eyes are round with sympathy. “Looks like it. That reminds me, I wanna ask your opinion on something really important.”

“Oh, okay!” Wow, the Heiress of Alternia is asking my opinion on something? Talk about friends in high places.

… Wait, what was I trying to remember?

“What do you think of the hemospectrum?”

You purse your lips. “Well, if that ain’t a loaded question I dunno what is.”

“I mean, you don’t have to answer, but…”

“You know what I think? I think that the hemospectrum could have been a really good thing. Those who live for quite some time, paving the way for those who won’t be here as long? Sounds great. But then it became about power and control. And-And I think that if-- that once we win, we can’t go back to that system. There’s just too much trauma that’s been birthed from it that’s affected literally every troll to have ever existed,” you explain.

Feferi considers that, and then she nods in agreement. “That makes sense.”

“Oh, shit, is it big brain hour?” Terezi calls from the wheel.

“It is!” Then you do a double-take. “Why is the blind girl driving?”

“Vriska’s getting dressed.”

“Do you even know where we’re going?”

“Forward.”

“Bruh.”

Karkat throws up for the fifth time over the side of the ship. You groan and stumble over to him to pat his back.

“You’ll get your sea legs soon,” you promise.

“I hate the ocean. Why does there need to be oceans. I never would have thought I would ever say this but by infant Troll Jegus do I miss Texas. It’s hot, it’s human-racist, but there is hardly any damn water and for that it’s easily one of the best places I’ve ever been,” he rasps.

You smile. “Wanna see Dave after this is over?”

“Yes, please. Strider’s bullshit is the only thing that can numb me to the pain of occupying the realm of mortals.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Eridan smirk. You turn to look at him in confusion, and he makes the quadrant symbol for flushcrush: two thumbs pressed together over the center of his chest, where a troll’s heart would be.

Really? you mouth at him, delighted by this unexpected turn of events. He nods eagerly, clearly just as enthusiastic about Karkat getting a boyfriend as you are, but before you can sneak off with him to get the tea his gaze fixates on something past you.

You turn to see the small speck of what is undoubtedly another ship coming your way. A ship that is much bigger and fancier than the 8rigantine, at full sail and most likely armed to the teeth.

“He’s coming on our eleven!” Feferi calls up to Terezi.

“Go get Vriska,” the tealblood orders. Her perfectly white fangs flash in the light of the moons as she grins like a shark. “Time to kick this bitchboy’s ass!”

#riverbound #hiveswap friendsim trolls #hiveswap #mspa reader #c20 #the guardian #beta trolls #pesterquest #homestuck

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untitledtallgeesepodcast · 4 years ago

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[TRANSCRIPT] Episode 0: The Anime They Once Saw (Or Didn’t See)

Kat 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Untitled Tallgeese Podcast, a podcast where four of us will watch Gundam Wing and then tell you all about Gundam Wing. My name is Kat, I write about comics on the internet, and I will be your episode moderator for today.

Mallory 0:17

And I'm Mallory, and I also write about comics.

Cathy 0:20

I'm Cathy, I don't write about comics. I am actually a lawyer, which sucks.

All 0:26

[laughter]

Caitlin 0:28

I am Caitlin. I'm a PhD researcher in Tokyo right now working on Japanese film. Yeah.

Kat 0:33

Extremely legit.

Caitlin 0:35

Are we?

Cathy 0:36

and we're all here to talk about the Gundam Wing.

Kat 0:38

[crosstalk] I mean we might be.

Kat 0:41

We are here to talk about Gundam Wing, the maybe not critically acclaimed, but fandom, okay, audience favorite anime that was released in 1995 in Japan and then made its way to the US in March 2000 on Toonami. So, we're going to talk about our fandom history and our history with the show Gundam Wing and I guess I will kick that off. So I-- I grew up watching anime because my dad is a huge nerd. So we were obviously watching Toonami. And the promos blew my mind. My friends and I all got really into it in middle school. Then we discovered fanfiction and we started with Heero/Relena fan fiction. [Caitlin: Ugh.] And then then we realized people could be gay.

Caitlin 1:29

Uugh, thank god.

Kat 1:30

That opened up like, I know it was like the clouds parted. rainbows fell from the sky. We were like, Oh, wow.

Mallory 1:39

[singing] "A whole new world"

Kat 1:40

[laughter] And then I don't know. I wrote a lot of fanfiction posted it on FF dotnet, got into fandom and then stayed in fandom. So, Mallory?

Mallory 1:53

I didn't have cable growing up. So whatever anime exposure I got was like, whatever was on Saturday morning cartoons. So Digimon was my first fandom and I was really into that.

Kat 2:08

Hell yeah

Mallory 2:09

And that sort of like bled into Gundam Wing somehow, I don't really remember how. But I found my way to Gundam Wing, read a lot of fanfic, hadn't ever really watched the show. And then in high school, my friend had some like random episodes from the first season question mark. I have no idea. So I watched those, and really enjoyed that? But I have no idea what their context was, so I'm coming at this pretty, pretty new.

Cathy 2:44

So you have never watched it from beginning to end?

Mallory 2:47

No.

Cathy 2:47

Got it. This will be fun.

Mallory 2:50

I'm expecting to be really disapproving of all the adults in the room. I find that like, now that I'm watching anime about kids, I'm really protective of these kids like, "Hey, this is really unethical!"

Cathy 3:02

So I'm like Kat, I started watching anime when I was I think around Middle School. I had a friend who got me into Sailor Moon, then I think it was Dragon Ball that was on Toonami at the time? I can't really remember the chronology.

Kat 3:16

Yeah.

Cathy 3:17

But then they did the promos for Gundam Wing, so then I started watching that on Toonami. And it was my first mecha series. And my first Gundam series, I think it's a lot of people's first Gundam series in the United States.

Cathy 3:31

I have attempted to do similar projects to this multiple times where I go back and I rewatch, and I haven't really had the opportunity to actually finish those rewatches. But my memory of it is still kind of stuck of when I was in middle school slash high school. I did get into fandom, so I expect to remember a lot of inaccuracies about what happened. [laughter] Because a lot of what my facts have with this series are have now mutated and changed. But I was a huge Gundam Wing fan, I think it still remains my favorite of the Gundam series just because I have so many memories of it? But I really excited to talk to Mallory, about what you feel and your experiences because it's been so long since I've talked to somebody who actually has never seen the series and doesn't know the story. So I'm super excited about this.

Caitlin 4:24

Yeah!

Cathy 4:25

All right, Cait, tell us about your family history.

Caitlin 4:27

Yeah, so similar to all of us, I guess, I watched anime growing up. I got into Sailor Moon sort of through an accident of just happening to see a very specific episode on Toonami in like 1999, 1998 maybe. So after that, I got really into anime and really into the internet. I think I was very depressed as a child. [laughter] So I spend a lot of time online. I believe that like my my first memories of Gundam Wing are when it was on Toonami: Sailor Moon was on first and then Dragon Ball Dragon Ball Z, and then Gundam Wing. And then they also were showing like the quote unquote unedited versions late

Cathy 5:09

Yes!

Kat 5:09

Yes, the midnight run

Cathy 5:11

The midnight run Right.

Cathy 5:12

Yeah. So very specific memories of like, I think I was mainly attracted to the, like, team format of Gundam if that makes sense? [Cathy: Yeah yeah yeah!] where it was used to sailor Sailor Moon where you have a team of color coded characters. And I'd, at a younger age been really into Power Rangers, where you had a team of color coded characters. So the marketing of Gundam Wing really appealed. You know, cuz I was just a kid watching on TV, I never really, I don't know if I watched the whole thing as a kid, but I got really into the fandom. And by 2000, 2001, I already knew about gay stuff online.

Kat 5:48

Wow. Look at you early bloomer.

Caitlin 5:50

Yeah. So So I got really into the various Gundam Wing pairings, I think it was mainly, I was mainly a 3x4, I think as a child. I went through some, 1x2, and then 2x5 phases. [laughter]

Caitlin 6:09

I still am a big advocate for 2x5, I think it's underrated.

Kat 6:12

I'm a big 2x5.

Cathy 6:13

2x5 is a good pairing, it definitely is.

Kat 6:16

Yeah.

Cathy 6:16

It's a better pairing as an adult.

Kat 6:17

So okay, I think that's actually a pretty good bounce off. So these are the things we remember about Gundam Wing. It was marketed, like, I remember the Toonami marketing 'cause I was really hype for this show. They had like these really extreme commercials.

Caitlin 6:34

Yeah.

Kat 6:35

Um, and I thought the voice acting was good. I don't know, maybe we'll revisit that during this watch, to see if it still is,

Caitlin 6:43

[crosstalk] Was it dubbed?,

Cathy 6:44

[crosstalk] It was dubbed, yes.

Kat 6:44

But I was ready for it. It was dubbed.

Caitlin 6:46

It was dubbed. One thing with the with the Japanese voice acting though, is that it's every single famous voice actor from the 90s. And so you can, you can use Gundam Wing is like a six degrees of every single voice actor from the 1990s.

Caitlin 6:59

Oh, that's cool.

Mallory 7:00

I mean, there are a lot of big American or like, dub dub names on the dub side, too.

Cathy 7:06

One of the things that I remember very strongly about Toonami is that they had what I think we would now call anime music videos, AMVs.

Kat 7:16

Yeah

Cathy 7:17

But they would play

Caitlin 7:18

Yeah,

Cathy 7:18

These montage trailers, where they'd stich together all their different series. And as they accumulated more anime series, these became really, I think, cinematic and gripping tales, where they would kind of try to tell a story to be about, like bravery or honor or like,

Kat 7:36

It's like, plugged directly into my little 11 year old brain like, Whoa,

Cathy 7:40

Yes. And one of them was, I remember was called, like, "technological development" or something like that, that featured a lot of the Gundam Wing clips.

Kat 7:47

Oh, yeah, cuz you only download them from like, KaZaa, or whatever horrible thing I was putting into my computer.

Caitlin 7:52

Yeah. We gotta see if we can find those. [crosstalk] They must be online somewhere.

Cathy 7:56

They are online. And I think they actually came out with like, I think somebody had either like hand by hand remastered them.

Kat 8:03

[crosstalk] Oh sick.

Cathy 8:02

Or they created a remastered version of it. They're wonderful. But that's I think one of the things about Toonami that I remember really strongly was Gundam Wing kind of is one of their, like epitome of like, Cool Anime that I feel like Toonami did and what it did was like they stiched together all these different things Outlaw Star and Tenchi Muyo and all these other stories to create a story about teenage growth, which is kind of strange and also weirdly fitting at the end of the day about like where Gundam is in the whole universe.

Kat 8:07

I think that's one of the reasons it blew up so much here because the marketing was really intense. Like Toonami, like it sort of right at the beginning, like people were into Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z was getting big. And like the manga boom was sort of happening in bookstores. So contextually, I think, Cartoon Network knew what the hell they were doing. They were like, "We can market the hell out of this."

Caitlin 8:55

And also objectively speaking, Gundam Wing was one of their cooler series. Like, Sailor Moon is cool. Tenchi Muyo is not cool.

All 9:04

[laughter]

Kat 9:06

Yeah.

Caitlin 9:07

Even even if you love it, it's not really cool. Dragon Ball. Love it. I don't know if it's really cool. Gundam Wing had like a very strong -

Kat 9:14

[crosstalk] like the chad of animes

Caitlin 9:16

- adult aesthetic to it, even though it was like, relatively, well, relatively appropriate for like 12 year olds.

Kat 9:23

And they swore during the midnight show.

Caitlin 9:25

Oh yeah,

Kat 9:26

They swore and there was blood.

Caitlin 9:27

So it was very cool. And so I felt very adult watching it even though I didn't really understand what was going on because it's all this fake politics crap.

Kat 9:35

Yeah, I was gonna say I did do a rewatch in like, like, right after college, so it was probably around 2010 ish, maybe? And I don't think we finished the series, but it was like, wow, I used to think this was very deep. [laughter] And I thought all the people in it who are the adults like Mallory, you were mentioning earlier, like they're actually like 17 and 19

Cathy 10:01

Yes!

Kat 10:01

in this show. So watching it at the age of 21, I was like, "Ooh no, don't give these people anything."

Cathy 10:09

I was actually thinking about that. Because when you said Mallory, "oh, well, I become very protective of the children. I disapprove the adults," in my head of thinking "what adults?" [crosstalk, Caitlin: yeah what adults?] because actually, in Gundam Wing, there's a funny thing where people are either 15, 25 or like 70. And there's no in between and nobody really makes adult decisions. So it, That was one thing that really shocked me because as I go back to revisit it, I think, "Oh my god, I'm actually older than almost everybody in this series."

Caitlin 10:39

How old, how old is Treize supposed to be?

Cathy 10:41

He's like 23, or 24.

Kat 10:42

He's 19.

Cathy 10:43

No, Zechs is 19.

Kat 10:44

Oh, Zechs is 19. Right.

Cathy 10:47

I just the idea of giving people who, you know, would have either been in college or just graduate college in my worldview, huge robots.

Kat 10:58

I think the ages of all the characters gets obscured by the anime art style, you know?

Cathy 11:03

Yeah.

Kat 11:03

In a lot of anime fandoms.

Mallory 11:04

And when you're watching this, when you're a kid, you want to see yourself as the protagonist. So it makes sense that, you know, a 17 year old seems like old and cool, and I want to be that person. And then when you're 30, you're like, the 17 year old should not be at war.

Kat 11:23

Relevant is that we definitely watched Evangelion. That was our last series.

Caitlin 11:29

I don't know, I think, I think Heero Yuy is doing fine in war. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be honest, as a 30 year old, I think these kids are much better at war than I would be.

Cathy 11:39

Well, so that's what I find kind of interesting, is that I think this series actually... I don't, I know this wasn't the point but when I rewatched it recently, or just like the first couple of episodes, it seemed, it made a lot of sense, because they were like 15 or 24. Like the series, actually stitches together...

Caitlin 11:58

Yeah.

Cathy 11:58

...really well, because of how young they are, and kind of like the purity of feeling that they have, which I think is

Kat 12:05

Yeah, it is, like

Cathy 12:06

only maybe

Kat 12:07

like that [indistinguishable?]

Cathy 12:07

which I think is like only really, truly possible because I have to think of them as like 15 or 21 or 19 year olds. that is not at all when I took away when I was watching in high school. Right?

Mallory 12:21

Well, I mean, right.

Caitlin 12:22

Part of the ideology of Gundam in general is like trying to restore a form of hope, and youth to, like, young people growing up in Japan, who are the target audience for this, and this idea that, like, you still have the power to change the world, you still have the power to bring about peace in a way that you want, even though you're being manipulated and oppressed by all these crazy adults who make you pilot giant robots. So I think there's a significant, like part of the series is the fact that they are kids who have been recruited into child warfare, and now have to find some way out of that. And like my memory of the series is that even though most of, most of the decisions made are very bad, the kids in general are not making terrible decisions. They're making pretty good decisions.

Kat 13:12

Yeah, the pilots themselves...

Mallory 13:14

[crosstalk] Yeah

Kat 13:14

...are like doing the best they can be doing in that circumstance.

Cathy 13:17

[crosstalk] Exactly, exactly

Kat 13:19

But I think it's sort of interesting, 'cause it's like, to me Gundam Wing is definitely like a fandom era, because I think a lot of stuff exemplifies like...there's like a lot of tropes cycling through it. But also like, the series itself, is so perfectly...like, I think of it as a series that are so perfectly set up for fandom because there's a lot of like, here's my one episode mission, and we have to be at a safe house, I guess. And it's just like, a long interminable war. So there's like, a big, a lot of world building. Yeah, that creates all these spaces that sort of separate from all the political machinations of the series.

Caitlin 13:58

And that's also I think, a lot of what it was meant to be when it was created within the Gundam franchise like it was it was designed to have sort of a BL appeal to girls writing for comic market and that sort of thing. So it had like the setup of five hot guys who you could combine in various forms. And then also like Gundam itself, in general, it's designed to be and a sort of open universe that you can step into at various points, which also facilitates fandom engagement

Mallory 14:28

[crosstalk] literal fandom bait.

Caitlin 14:29

usually in the form, yeah, usually in the form of model collecting, which is like one of the main Gundam forms of fandom which we probably won't talk about too much on the show. But you, you kind of

Kat 14:41

Uh I've definitely built some Gundam models.

Caitlin 14:43

Yeah. Well, you will be the expert on that because I've never touched a Gundam model in my life. But that is like the big thing where you can you can get the model you can construct it, you can learn a little bit more about the, like, the technology and the different like details of the models and stuff like that. And it just gives you like a slight, like Little bit more of these like tiny narratives and that sort of what the fans are consuming rather than an overall plot that makes sense, which is not what Gundam has really.

Kat 15:11

So Gundam [Wing] has like the cool robots but also these hot boys in them.

Caitlin 15:15

That's what I want.

Mallory 15:16

I mean Well, that's exactly what I want to show right now. So it sounds perfect?

Kat 15:21

Honestly, yeah.

Mallory 15:23

I think Evangelion, sort of, because, Kat, you and I just finished -- or are almost finished with -- Neon Genesis Evangelion [Kat, crosstalk: we haven't done all the movies yet] which was also it was my first time [Cathy, crosstalk: Congratulations, laugh] watching the whole series...wow, grim

Kat 15:40

I also only consumed

Mallory 15:42

[crosstalk] grim

Kat 15:42

[crosstalk] I consumed it like piecemeal too

Mallory 15:44

And depressing

Kat 15:45

It was great.

Mallory 15:46

Very good but um grim.

Kat 15:50

Yeah it's pretty grim.

Cathy 15:52

Yeah, it's interesting to me because I feel like Evangelion doesn't make a lot of sense as a cultural product unless you've consumed a series like Gundam or its ancestors before watching it and yet Evangelion is a lot of people's introduction to giant robot series. So I always find that kind of interesting...

Caitlin 16:13

[crosstalk] It's very weird.

Cathy 16:14

because it, it is subversive, and I think it's subversive even if you don't know the tropes of the giant robot series, of which Gundam is perhaps a prime example. Gundam Wing...

Kat 16:27

So I was gonna ask that and like, would you say, since Evangelion is definitely a like the subversion of this genre, would you say Gundam Wing is like the type of series that it is subverting? Or do you think it's in a different place?

Caitlin 16:41

Gundam Wing and Evangelion came out the same year? Gundam Wing is in some ways a, it's already like a parody form of the original iteration of Gundam.

Kat 16:55

Okay, so it's--is it like, um, like the pure essence of teens-robots.

Caitlin 17:02

It's, it's more like, I feel like by the time of Gundam Wing, the tropes of the original Gundam series are so well set that a lot of things in Gundam Wing to, like the fans who watched the original Gundam or like later Gundams, seemed like a rehash but it was designed to bring in new fans. So something like Zechs Merquis is very clearly like a Char Aznable character. It's just sort of a reiteration of that.

Kat 17:29

So is it like a Star Wars, like a Star Wars sequel?

Caitlin 17:33

Like how the Force Awakens is kind of a rehash of yeah, of A New Hope. And then, but it still brings in a lot of fans and has appealing characters and good aesthetics

Kat 17:43

Right, yeah, I guess I think of them, the two shows, as sort of like, splitting the take on... like, what would you say is like the ur-mecha show?

Cathy 17:52

The original Gundam

Caitlin 17:54

Original Gundam?

Cathy 17:54

Yeah, Mobile Suit Gundam.

Caitlin 17:56

I mean, they're, they're older iterations, there's other robot shows. But I feel like when people think of mecha, the first thing they think of is Mobile Suit Gundam.

Cathy 18:06

So the way like I now think of Gundam Wing after the fact of experiences I have now is that like Gundam Wing is actually a perfect like K-Pop boy band way that they built it and so if you can kind of think of it like that, like it's, you need enough of the tropes and symbols, so that everybody watches it and immediately knows it's a Gundam series.

Cathy 18:30

Like the colors of Wing Gundam are so obviously

Kat 18:34

Yeah.

Cathy 18:34

a Gundam Mecca and you need that you can't get away from it. And same thing with like Zech's having a mask it the reason I think of it as being in in the Kpop industry is like there's a derivative sense. And that's animated by both like Merchandising, and advertising and what audiences want but at the same time, it's like this incredibly pure understanding of what makes us like things? And like when you get that when you really get it, like, it doesn't matter how like, quote, unquote manipulative or exploitative it can seem like you love it. And that's enough, right to make it like a thing that we all want to keep coming back to.

Mallory 19:12

And there's basically like, an archetype right? In all of the different characters like you have the more

Kat 19:18

Yeah, you have the serious one.

Mallory 19:20

That's what I was thinking.

Kat 19:21

Like, the goofy one.

Mallory 19:23

Yeah, the goofy one, the sort of mess

Kat 19:25

the ugly one,

Mallory 19:26

like really cute one.

Kat 19:29

Yeah, that's why I was thinking American boy bands cuz they all have to have like a type of heartthrob. Yeah, I'm a bad boy. I love death.

Caitlin 19:38

One of them's, one of them's a rapper.

Kat 19:40

Okay, so we talked a little bit about how we got into it. We talked a little bit about fandoms. And we touched on pairings, do we want to go into pairings at all? Or like our fave characters, or who we think our fave characters will be Before this rewatch?

Cathy 19:54

You know before we do that--Mallory, can you try to tell us what you think this series is about? I'm actually really curious, like before you do a complete viewing, like what? what is what is your understanding of what happens in Gundam Wing?

Mallory 20:08

Um, there's a long interminable war. These boys are recruited by some shadowy government whatever. And they're piloting these mecha. Uugh, I just remember Duo being really annoying.

Caitlin 20:28

[loud gasp] [laughter] [crosstalk] Oh my god.

Mallory 20:29

I mean, not annoying, like, being sort of...

Kat 20:32

Wow.

Mallory 20:33

...the one the pushy one like, he's the challenging one to Heero's "I'm serious and dour." Literally, I have the most broad strokes impressions of what this show is. I just know it looked really fucking cool every time I saw it in, like, a commercial and couldn't watch it.

Cathy 20:55

Fascinating.

Caitlin 20:57

Honestly, even having seen Gundam Wing, I'm not sure I could explain it much better. I don't remember who recruited them.

Mallory 21:03

Okay. Okay, that does make me feel better. Because I was like, Oh, I don't? Do I actually know what the show is? What am I getting myself into?

Caitlin 21:14

There's there's a lot of weird politics.

Mallory 21:17

Well, I'm really excited for that. And I don't mean that sarcastically. Like, I'm really excited to, to see what this world is like, because I remember, like images or impressions. But everything is like out of context. So it'll be cool to see what that context is. Like deja vu? Oh, I remember that. I've seen that in AMV.

Kat 21:48

I remember this from fics that just rewrite scenes from this show.

Mallory 21:55

Yeah, like, what do I know? What do I know of Gundam that is from fanfic only, or is actual canon? I'm curious to figure out.

Kat 22:10

I think everyone's a lot less obnoxious in canon.

Caitlin 22:14

That's true.

Mallory 22:15

Okay, okay.

Caitlin 22:16

This was a this was a really good fandom for the the fandom phenomenon of, you take a character's most, like, annoying trait, and you emphasize it like times 10 in your fanfic.

Cathy 22:28

Yes.

Kat 22:28

Yeah

Caitlin 22:28

Just so everybody knows you know what that character is like.

Kat 22:31

Heero's gonna threaten to kill everybody all the time, constantly.

Caitlin 22:34

"Omae o korosu."

Cathy 22:36

[laughing crosstalk] And so, it's funny that you guys mentioned safe houses, because actually, there are very few safe houses in the original series. In fact, I think there's like maybe one or two scenes ever, where they are all in a safe house provided by one of their allies. And it's a really fascinating trope, because it like pervades the fanfic? But I remember, that I remember was like a big deal, like, I went back and I was like, actually, these people spend very little downtime with each other in the actual series and I find that fascinating.

Kat 23:12

Right? So you have to fill it all in.

Mallory 23:13

Oh, wait, what?

Caitlin 23:14

They actually barely know each other.

Cathy 23:16

Yeah, they truly barely know each other. [crosstalk]

Mallory 23:18

Wait. Oh no, I thought, I thought this was going to be like..

Kat 23:23

[crosstalk] They actually never interact.

Mallory 23:24

we're going to get together and become like a team

Caitlin 23:26

No, no.

Cathy 23:26

Absolutely not,

Caitlin 23:27

They don't fight together; It's 50 episodes of them not interacting.

Cathy 23:31

They, they literally have like, they like, there's probably one or two scenes in which all five of them are on the same battlefield at the same time. And almost every single one of those scenes involves them fighting with each other because like,

Kat 23:44

[crosstalk]Oh, yeah, they fight each other alone.

Cathy 23:45

What's going on? And this was the thing that I'm sure we'll come back to when I came back to this is when I was rewatching. It in college, I realized that of the two people who spend the most time with each other, it's like Trowa and Heero. Because, yes, it is what arc where they actually go on a road trip, which like,

Kat 24:03

it's great. I wrote a thing

Cathy 24:04

like wiped it from my memory when I was thinking about the series, but it really drives home. You know, again, to your point like what of this series do I did I remember that was just from fanfic, and was just what like the fanfic I read very specifically. And so that was one of the things is like, when you come back as an adult, I was like, all of this stuff is so much more interesting to me because like, I actually, like, I don't get me wrong, I still have shipping opinions. But like, I'm older and I have I I'm famous for this. And Kat knows this. I like don't have OTPs. And I'm like not very good about actually being very loyal to pairings. And so as an adult coming back to this, I was like, Oh, this is actually really interesting because the permutations that fandom came up with also came from, like, non-canon material, because there's a lot of non-canon material, like promotional images that bear no resemblance whatsoever to canon.

Kat 24:54

Okay, I would, I would call those extra canonical, right?

Caitlin 24:58

No, they're, they're extra canonical, they count in some form.

Kat 25:02

Right? 'Cause they're official.

Cathy 25:04

I guess so. I mean, sure, we'll talk about that as time comes but like.

Caitlin 25:08

Listen, a canon is not just the story. It's the entire media mix around it. It's those, it's those things that you can collect. It's the extra manga. It's Frozen Teardrop,

Cathy 25:18

Like, Gundam Wing actually, I think is one of the few franchises I know where like "pair the spares" was a real merchandising tactic.

Kat 25:26

Yes, it was.

Cathy 25:27

And so, so everybody had somebody... gay, I mean, like, not like,

Kat 25:34

Wufei had two!

Cathy 25:35

They had a gay and a straight interest that they were paired up with. And so, um, so it's like, fascinating to me to come back and be like, actually, the canon is a lot more flexible and interesting than I remembered it.

Caitlin 25:49

The canon for me is like, remarkable in its commitment to not officially putting anyone together. Like it was, it's very good at balancing out all of the different pairings that it wants to support.

Mallory 26:01

Mm hmm.

Caitlin 26:02

Um, it's interesting to see which ones got picked up as the main two in fandom, which for me, were always 1x2 and 3x4 dominated the fandom, because they're both like, friendly, maybe talkative, personable guy and like silent, brooding, weirdo,

Kat 26:22

Warrior.

Caitlin 26:22

What fandom loves! Fandom loves that exact dynamic in every form. And so like, what 1, 1 and 3, were never going to work together because they're both silent and brooding. Fandom was never gonna pick that up. It's too It's too boring. It's not dynamic enough, right?

Mallory 26:37

Like, you can't fight. There's no banter,

Cathy 26:39

Which is actually weird, because if you go back and watch the episodes, you'll see it. Heero actually is not that quiet. And Trowa is like a nutcase. And so

Kat 26:48

they're really funny together,

Cathy 26:49

when they are together, they're actually incredibly dynamic in ways that in fact, the canon doesn't establish 1x2, or 3x4 to be. And so it is really fascinating, because I do agree with Caitlin. What came out of this canon is very different from what I think the show gives. And I don't know the show was like, open minded because it wanted to sell as much merch as possible or

Caitlin 27:13

It's that.

Cathy 27:13

Yeah, so I don't know.

Mallory 27:14

Capitalism.

Kat 27:16

I am gonna say I think the show is a 3x4 shipper. Like I think if the show had a pairing, it would be a three, it would be 3x4, like from my recollections of the show

Mallory 27:26

Yeah

Caitlin 27:26

I always thought that was true. But now

Cathy 27:28

I disagree.

Caitlin 27:29

I feel like I'm gonna go into this and and be like, they never

Kat 27:32

Nobody else has a musical interlude.

Cathy 27:34

But the but the thing is, here's Okay, so not to, like, make this too much about the pairing... But I also think 1x2 and 3x4 become established. I put that in quotes early in the series. And so it becomes entrenched and people assume that that's the pairing. But actually, I just remember so strongly when I went back and rewatched that I was like, there really is not that much evidence for Trowa and Quatre's like instantaneous connection because Quatre has that with almost every other pilot, and Trowa's relationship with Heero is like so much more interesting when I come back to it, even though I definitely think they would never work. They would like killing each other and instead as an adult.

Kat 28:12

And I mean, I love that pairing. And like the one thing that came out of my rewatch a million years ago was I wrote a 1x3 fic cuz I really love those episodes, and fandom didn't do anything with it. But I feel like, I feel like Quatre and Trowa are framed slightly differently than all the other potential pairings so that they could be together.

Cathy 28:33

Even up until Endless Waltz like, I really just feel like that that was an early series thing. And then as you go on into the series, that relationship while still important, was not really emphasized any more or less.

Kat 28:47

But I mean, if it, if it comes out of the gate strong, [laughter] like

Caitlin 28:51

That's all that matters

Kat 28:52

I still think that the show was pushing that one if it pitched. Like if it was giving the most evidence to any one of them, I think the early stuff was really like, ~look at this beautiful pairing.~

Caitlin 29:04

So wait do we all want to, maybe to end this episode, we should all go through and predict what are OTP or pseudo OTP for Cathy will be by the end of this rewatch.

Kat 29:16

But also tell me your fave character because that's what I asked like, 15 minutes ago.

Cathy 29:21

Okay, Kat you first.

Kat 29:23

Oh, well, my favorite character has always been Duo Maxwell. And I'm predicting that he's still going to be my fave character. And I am going to stake my flag on Duo/Wufei, 2x5.

Cathy 29:36

Mallory?

Mallory 29:37

I think from what I remember, I really liked Trowa, I thought Heero was too dour, but I also think that I might relate to him a lot more this time around. So I'm going to say that Heero is going to be my favorite character. And I've always liked...see, I don't know about fandom pairings. I want to say it'll be...well it was Duo/Heero before? No, but I've-- I really like Duo/Wufei so, like, I think that's just always gonna be my Gundam Wing ship.

Cathy 30:20

So when I was a kid watching it my favorite was Duo Maxwell, but I know from my prior rewatching, or attempts to rewatch the series, that as an older person coming into the series, I actually like the girls a lot more, like Relena and Dorothy and Noin became my favorite characters and I did not give them the credit they deserved when I was watching it as a younger person.

Cathy 30:41

I also was 1x2 shipper but again, I know that what I came out of the series really shipping was disastrous Heero/Trowa, and then Duo/Wufei.

Caitlin 30:56

Okay, I see we are all Duo/Wufei fans now.

Kat 30:59

[crosstalk] That's why this is going to be the superior Gundam Wing podcast.

Caitlin 31:02

Yeah. I feel like so, my favorite character when I was originally watching as a kid was Quatre. I think probably because like I always liked like, the friendly blondes in boy bands?

Kat 31:13

That go apeshit?

Caitlin 31:15

When I got older, I was more into Duo and Duo is was probably still my favorite character. I was into Duo/Wufei for a long time. I just think that they are funny together and terrible. And I actually really like Wufei a lot. I sort of admire that fake honor sort of thing. But I, since everybody said Duo/Wufei, I feel like I should say something else, which is that I think that I will get more into 3x4 again after this rewatch, because it's a comforting pairing, in some ways. It's a return. And we're all very full of anxiety right now. [laughter] And so we just need Quatre and stupid, crazy Trowa, you know, having their pure love connection that fandom imagined for them from the beginning.

Kat 32:02

It's real.

Mallory 32:03

I look forward to it.

Cathy 32:04

I do too. I also look forward to hating Treize because that's what happened the last time I rewatched this. He's such a fuck boy.

Kat 32:12

I'm excited to love Dorothy and Relena.

Cathy 32:14

My god, they're so good. Yeah, they're so good. That's what I should have said is my favorite pairing.

Kat 32:20

Fandom definitely ruined me for a little bit, like, "urgh, Relena!"

Caitlin 32:24

When I was a kid, part of the appeal of Gundam Wing fandom was in some ways that it was so sexist, and so I could like act out my own internalized misogyny at the time. And so like, I like I was definitely participating in that of like a group breaking up the boys, whatever. And then in later iterations, I like love Relena. So.

Kat 32:45

Yeah, she was just such an easy reason for them to get together, right? For 1x2, but in the show, she's way more than a plot device. So that was kind of frustrating.

Caitlin 32:56

In the show, she's easily the most one of the most interesting and active characters for sure.

Kat 33:02

As podcast Daddy, I declare Episode Zero officially over. Thank you everyone for your time and catch us in two weeks with Episode One: The boy whose wings killed adolescence.

Caitlin 33:16

Byeeee [laughter]

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

#gundam wing #untitled tallgeese podcast #transcripts #mobile suit gundam wing #gundam #episode 00

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astharoshebarvon · 6 years ago

Text

vampire knight

Will this be a rant? Of sorts, maybe.

It seems now there is another discourse in VK fandom, this time about whether Ren and Ai will be a romantic couple or not. Firstly, Hino is drawing them in a suggestive way, that’s true.

Do I care if they end up together or not? Not really. She has drawn Kaname and Zero in a suggestive way many times, hell, even in recent covers Zero is literally all over Kaname. Not to mention Zero/Kaname has way more fanfictions and incredible fanarts than either of the canon straight couples. It’s true, just check it.

Think what you want, above illustration is pure Zero/Kaname and Yume.

And, in the below one, Zero’s hand...Sorry, two rivals and enemies just don’t do that.

Look at the above illustration, that’s not how two guys stand if they are enemies, they just don’t.

Secondly, both Ai and Ren have an intense need of another’s blood. Now, many people say their relationship is creepy…

Sorry, but many shoujo mangas and mainstream novels have the same crap. The girl is obsessed with the boy and also ends up with him. Yikes. Gross.

And, those stories are celebrated. So, why be against these two? Oh, wait, it’s because they are not hetero.

Hino is not doing anything great even if they do come out as a couple, Clamp has done it many times and Clamp works are way more popular than Hino’s can ever be.

X, a shoujo genre manga has Kamui and Fuuma.

They loved each other, don’t even try to argue with me about it.

Seishirou and Subaru, the most tragic couple of manga and anime are also in it. CCS has Yue with Clow Reed, Yukito/Yue and Touya, Sakura and Tomoyo, some of these feelings are one sided, but none of them are hated.

These couples are way more popular than whole VK manga. Rg Veda, another shoujo has Amaterasu and Souma, Taishakuten and Ashura-ou, Yasha and Ashura can also be interpreted as an M/M couple. Oh, wait. That’s canon. They are together in Tsubasa.

And, don’t get me started on Fai and Kurogane. There you go people, these are shonen and shoujo mangas which have same sex couples.

And, the readers know there was something going on between Fai and Kurogane even if it’s not stated explicitly.

Clamp literally said,”do not call Fuuma and Kamui brothers”. They are soulmates. They don’t even mention the obsessed fangirl, kotori.

Arina Tanemura, whose stories are a perfect example of a fangirl ending with the guy they were after, also has a single M/M couple in one of her works. Mostly in her stories, the main girl likes one guy, but in the end, that guy never ends up with her. He ends up with one of the obsessed fangirls.

Am I still bitter about how dirty the mangaka did Itsuki Otomiya? Yes. The sweetheart doesn’t even know Haine was his daughter, and the whole bloody cast had coloured illustrations, a freaking artbook is there for the series, but not a single illustration for him. Yikes.

I hope she redeems herself and makes Tokita and Chikage a couple in 31 Ai dreams. The only series of hers which didn’t have this cliché was Sakurahime Kaden and Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne.

And, let’s be honest, Eiichi would have have ended up with another fangirl if he wasn’t dead in Full moon. Thank god he was spared that bullshit. But, then again, he dies. That’s not good either.

Gentleman’s alliance cross, Nekota are just bad. Yes, the art is beautiful, but that doesn’t mean the males of her series deserved to end up with obsessive fangirls.

The one with underage relationship, Nekota or whatever [thank god that was never picked up by Viz.] In this, the blue haired dude, Serizawa, who the main girl liked from the beginning didn’t end up with her, he ended up with a fangirl. Ugh.

And, it is incestuous, the girl has feelings for her underage cousin. Right.

Her art is beautiful, but damn it, her stories are so annoying.

For her only M/M couple in shinshi doumei cross, she had to make one half of the MM couple a cross dresser.

The guy, Maora was wearing woman’s clothing every time he and Maguri were shown together. He was never once shown as his real, tall self with Maguri.

And, she has said she isn’t comfortable with yaoi, but is okay with shonen ai.

Right.

But the point is, it’s been done many times.

In Hana Kimi, one of the protagonist’s elder brother is gay. He was the school’s physician if I am not wrong. So, Hino is not doing anything new.

Kyou Kara Maou is a shoujo manga, but it has Wulfrum and Yuri, two guys as a main couple. Granted, nothing happens, but they are engaged.

The manga was published in Asuka, a shoujo magazine.

Same goes for uraboku, Luka loves Yuki, regardless of the fact whether he is a female or a male. Senshirou and Kuroto were together, Hotsuma and Shusei were married in previous lives and they were very much together in the present as well.

Do I think Ren and Ai will end up together, I dunno. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But I don’t think she will show them as a couple. If she will, fine. If she doesn’t, then also fine. They have an intense desire to be with each other, and their relationship is not parallel to Kaname and Yuuki’s or Haruka and Juri’s.

One can say they are like Rido, Yuuki’s uncle, not like the above two couples.

There are many differences between them and the two couples.

And, let’s not forget the harem Sara created, in fact she even kissed one of the girls.

Do I care about Ren and Ai ? No.

My sole reason for reading this manga is: Yume. Just bring Yuuki back and show Yume happily ever after. I really don’t care who ends up with whom.

But some reasons regarding Renai are hypocritical. This manga has incest, why are you being bothered by it now? Hell, she drew Ichiru and Zero in suggestive way too, and Zero’s care for Ichiru could also be questioned in that case.

I am not sure if the above is Zero and Ichiru or Zero with another personality of his, I don’t want to see my artbook right now, but it can be seen as Zero and Ichiru.

We don’t like yuri and yaoi.

Well, in that case I really hope it happens so it’ll tick off the people who make this statement. Yes, it’s a derogatory statement.

If the mangaka wants to do it, she can, it’s her choice. Hate her for it, plenty do. Zekis and yumes do for their reasons. I dislike the way she does things too, I hate many things she has done. But, hey she still did them.

Read Yona of the dawn in that case, that’s the only series which isn’t “problematic”

But, Kija and Jaeha can be shipped in that too. I do ship them. And, the author has drawn shonen ai doujinshi’s.

And, Yona was in love with Su-won in the beginning, who is her cousin. Incest is incest, whether it’s between siblings or cousins, they are family.

I really don’t think Hino will show Ren and Ai as a couple. Siblings who are weirdly close, yes. Romantic couple, I don’t think so. If I am wrong, fine.

Just give me my Yume happy ending, and Takuma and Seiren scenes. I literally don’t care about the kids relationship. I just don’t. First, I had to suffer through that traitor’s crap with the stupid bint, Sayori, now this.

Edit : Finally I read this chapter…

I don’t understand how anyone can even compare whatever crap that is going on between Ai and Ren to Yume and Haruka / Juri. The Kuran couples never looked so fucking weird with each other.

I was absolutely right in thinking their feelings for each other are reminiscent of what Rido felt. Just because Ai is Yume’s daughter doesn’t mean she’s a perfect character. Give me a break. Then again she had a crush on Zero as well.

And, she was raised among people like Ruka and Aidou, traitors and obsessed idiots. It’s no wonder she turned out idiotic.

She looks weird when she says, “she had her sister with her” to Youko.

I am not going to post the image cause its just bad.

Yume and Haruka/Juri were never so fucking creepy. Never.

Ren is just so bland and sad in everything that I don’t know what to think. Youko was the only one who wasn’t weird in this Ch.

The author should just wrap this up, it’s neither interesting nor is evoking any feelings in readers. It’s as bad Sayori/Aidou crap. Just stop with the useless story arcs, show Kaname and Yuuki together and end this shit.

I really don’t think the two girls will end up together. Their scenes aren’t sweet, and if she wants to show them, just do it and move on. They are both boring and least interesting. They are so bad it will not matter whether are together or apart.

They are as bad as other creepily obsessed M/F couples in novels and shoujo manga where the obsessed fangirl ends with the boy. This trope itself is gross. Who even cares about them?

They are only being hyped because they are two girls. When people thought Ren was a boy there wasn’t much reaction. I know there wasn’t. But now that they are two girls…

Hate them because they are stupid, no point in saying we don’t like them because its FF relationship. That’s just bigotry. Or maybe the author should be honest and say I wanted Zero and Kaname to fuck but Yuuki kept on getting in the way. So, I decided to pair their daughters together. because according to the author incest is fine in VK. Just drop this crap already Hino.

I mean what the hell is up with this boring arc ?

I don’t even understand why stupid shit like this is overlooked in MF couples but if same happens in same sex, everyone is like, looks its unhealthy.�� Incest, age difference, obsessed idiots/ fangirls, they are all bad.

I love Clamp, but that Rika and Terada thing was just plain gross. Same goes for Rin and Sesshoumaru.

I kept on telling myself about the latter one, no they are a parent child relationship. But at one point, I had to accept it was anything but family love. I love Sesshoumaru and always will. But I can’t get behind Rin/Sessh or whatever nonsense it was. Sessrin is celebrated, it’s a fact. It’s creepy, don’t deny it.

I know some of their artists and Sesskag [yuck] kept on leaving rude comments on SessKik fanworks, my favourite ship.

And Terada/Rika thing is overlooked because, let’s be honest CCS is fucking awesome. I overlook it and concentrate on yue yukito/ touya, syaoran/sakura.

I just want this RenAi thing to go away. I can’t stand either of them. Just show Kaname and Yuuki together and end this series. Hino should wrap it up and start a new one. VK will not gain the popularity it had at one point no matter what. The author is just coming off as desperate.

#Vampire Knight #vampire knight memories #shoujo #manga

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bean-buns · 5 years ago

Note

🐸🦌🌫💚

frog 🐸 - name 3+ things you like about yourself

this is so wholesome... 1) I like that I’m creative and have lots of interests, 2) despite my many failings I have a generally kind nature and never do harm on purpose, 3) I have good taste in books (my 4th grade teacher told me I was like “exceptionally well-read” when I was 10 and it’s been going to my head ever since)

antlers 🦌 - if you could change anything about your appearance without worrying about judgement, what would you change?

I had to think a lot about this. probably my skin! I was gonna be like “lol throw the whole body away, get a new one” but I’m trying to like my body more just the way it is, rather than breaking myself down into parts and analyzing each one separately like I’m grading cuts of steak. I’d love to be able to never give a second thought to my skin again, though. I hate compulsively picking at my skin and how painful and uncomfortable acne gets, I hate having to consider dryness/breakouts when doing my makeup when I’m just trying to relax and Create A Look, I’m too lazy to put sunscreen on every single day. also I feel like changing my body drastically would make me look less “me” if that makes sense, but clearing up my skin would make me feel more like myself, like I’m going back to my normal state.

if my skin ever clears up on its own, my answer-- and I know this is a weirdly specific one but it’s 11pm so it’s overshare o’clock, feel free to stop reading here, everyone -- would be to somehow... change the molecules in my hair so that it’s less dense? I’ve grown to like my natural hair colour and texture, but it’s so intensely dark that it’s crazy expensive and difficult to bleach without damaging it and I’ve been desperate since age 14 or 15 to be one of those cool girls who dye their hair unnatural colours every few years and go through a ton of different styles. I try to style my hair with curling wands, straighteners, rags, plastic rollers, and it’s so heavy that it just sort of smooths itself out in a matter of hours. my hair has zero porosity and the strands are completely smooth so it doesn’t “hold” oil and will look greasy if I so much as breathe the wrong way, it’s impossible to pin into place so elaborate styles are impossible, I have so much of it that my scalp hurts from the weight of it tugging on my skin if I put it in a bun for too long, and hairspray does absolutely nothing for neatness and just makes me look kind of... crunchy. this is an incredibly minor problem and doesn’t really require a “solution” but I also can’t see any non-magical way to change it, so this is worth spending a hypothetical wish on. I’d do it for grade 9 loren who wanted pink hair

mist 🌫 - what’s your favorite kind of weather?

my favourite kind of weather is actually mist!! I adore foggy weather. I love walking in it and watching everything fade like you’re dreaming, I love it when you when you look at it from a distance and see it rolling across the fields, touching the water, spilling over everything. sunny weather is a close second bc I thrive in sunlight + love being warm but mist has been my favourite since I was a little kid

moss 💚 - how would you describe yourself?

I answered this already (very badly) and I’ve talked way too much about hair in this post, so here is a short list of things that other people have used recently to describe my general vibe:

- those calico critter figurines wearing little jackets and little dresses

- that one picture of the round cat looking ambiguously ashamed of itself but mostly round

- a mobile game about running a cafe where all the clients are forest animals

- half a dozen memes about beans

- the netflix show rilakkuma and kaoru

- “librarian-looking cardigan headass”

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depizan · 5 years ago

Text

I wonder if there’s some particular time in one’s growing up that sets one’s aesthetics. What is an attractive person? What does a hero look like? What does a villain look like?

It’s easy for me to point to my childhood reading material (and the books, movies, and TV shows I consumed as a teen, and continue to consume) and say “yep, that’s why I like friendshippy stuff.” It’s the natural result of growing up on stories where friendships were central to the story. I mean, sure, I’m Ace, but I have very little interest in lone hero stories. I want stories about friends, dang it.

What I couldn’t have told you - until possibly tonight - is why my brain’s default male hero is slim and, if not necessarily short, certainly not tall. Because that’s kind of not the Standard American Hero. (There isn’t exactly a Standard American Villain, so my default image of villains as tall and physically imposing is one reasonably common villain type.)

But here’s the thing. I was a sensitive child for whom lots of movies were upsetting. Weirdly, I was okay with historical movies, even if they were depressing and dramatic, but comedies upset me (because second hand embarrassment or because of not being sure things would work out okay) and adventure movies upset me (because of not being sure horrible things wouldn’t happen) and that kind of left animated movies. (Which didn’t bother me even when they would have had they been live action.*)

I was born during Disney’s “dark age.” The first three movies kid!me loved were Disney’s Robin Hood, The Secret of NIMH (not Disney), and Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective. I had fannish thoughts about them looong before I knew what fandom even was.

I’m going to set aside The Secret of NIMH, which is both a more realistic (set in the real world and featuring very much adult fears) and less realistic (sudden!magic) story, and has a female hero. (Though the villains are still physically imposing and the ending has some similarity to something I just noticed about the other two. Before the sudden!magic part.)

For our two more purely adventure movies, the title heroes are slim and shorter than many of the people around them (in Robin’s case) or at least shorter than the villain (in Basil’s case). In fact, The Great Mouse Detective probably cemented my brain’s “hero small and slim; villain tall and beefy” default. There’s also something else weird about those movies - the heroes lose their physical confrontations with the villains and survive largely due to luck. (Hell, the climax of TGMD is kind of a more intense and drawn out version of the same kind of climax as RH. Both take place at the top of tall buildings and involve the villain losing it and deciding to slaughter the hero.)

(Interestingly, in The Secret of NIMH, the villain is winning the climactic showdown before being killed by his own henchman. In none of these movies does a heroic character actually physically win against a villain.)

And I think all of that imprinted on kid!me’s mind. My mind continues to want to shrink heroes, grow villains, and to have some ambivalence about how climactic showdowns should work. (Because a part of me sees physical might as more of a villainous thing.)

Be careful what you watch at 12 (or 8)?

*One more reason I’m incredibly meh on the concept of live action/”live action” remakes of animated movies?

#Mac vs fiction #Mac's odd late night thoughts

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parkernotes · 5 years ago

Text

better together

also available on ao3

post-endgame / fix-it / family bonding / irondad

word count: 2541

It's something out of need, at first; after a few weeks of insistence, Pepper finally convinces him it will be a good idea to send Morgan to an actual kindergarten - where she can make friends and play with people less than ten years older than her for a change - instead of keeping her at home to be homeschooled by her overprotective dad. After a few more weeks of intense research and debate, they decide on a local kindergarten where Pepper will be able to drop Morgan off when heading to the city for work, and that Tony can easily drive to in the mornings she can't - it's the perfect choice. However, they only realize Morgan will need proper school supplies a few days before the start of her first official school year.

“Instead of ordering everything online, you could go on a little trip downtown,” Pepper suggests on Thursday. “You know she loves the city. It could be fun.”

Shopping in New York can be a real struggle sometimes, especially when people tend to recognize Tony and make sure he's aware of that, but as soon as the idea of going to the city pops into his mind, a certain sixteen-year-old superhero does too, and that's basically enough to convince him it wouldn't be that bad.

“Hey, Mo,” he calls, looking down at the little girl who's playing with her action figures on the living room’s rug. “You wanna see Petey this weekend?”

Morgan’s head shots up and she nods excitingly. “Yes!”

Pepper rolls her eyes, but she's smiling. “You act like he doesn’t sleep over practically every weekend.”

Tony shrugs. “Kid probably needs a new backpack, anyways.”

“True,” Pepper laughs, then hums thoughtfully. “You know, you could take them for a little trip around the city after shopping, too. Pete’s been stressed about his midterms, it’d be good for him to distract himself a little bit, don’t you think?”

Tony ponders on it for a few seconds, while simultaneously trying - but failing - to avoid thinking of how Peter truly managed to occupy a special space in their domestic life, to the point that even Pepper Potts knows about his exam calendar. He holds back a smile, then nods. “I guess so. If the kid has the time, I don’t see why not.”

“Daddy, can we go to the zoo?” Morgan asks sweetly from the floor, having heard the entirety of the conversation until that point. “Please?”

Tony’s perfect idea of a day out with the kids didn’t include the zoo, but he finds he can't say no to Morgan’s hopeful little face. He smiles in response, fishing his phone from his pocket while leaning forwards to brush her hair from her face at the same time.

“Let’s see what Petey thinks,” he says.

Me [19:46]

Hey kiddo, Morgan and I are going downtown for some shopping this Saturday, wanna join? We’ll turn it into a little trip afterwards too, if you have time. Might do your head some good.

The answers come a few minutes later, when Tony’s transferred himself to the floor, back against the couch as Morgan explains him the rules of her make-believe world with the action figures. He's trying to understand its politics and why the Thor figurine became enemies with the Captain America one when his phone buzzes.

Pete [19:58]

ofc mr. stark i’d love to!! where are we going?

Me [20:00]

First we’re buying some school supplies, but the rest of the day is still undecided.

Pete [20:01]

have you thought of visiting the zoo??

Tony sighs down at his phone. He then turns to Morgan, “You’re too much like him.”

The little girl looks a bit confused by the statement, but she smiles sweetly at him nonetheless.

“Look!”

Tony turns around to watch Morgan sprint all the way down the aisle where a few kids' backpacks are on display. Peter reaches her first and laughs, and Tony only gets what’s so funny when he actually has a look at the products.

“You want a Spider-Man backpack?” he deadpans. “The Iron Man ones are down there, you know. In case you missed them.”

Peter sniggers. “I think they’re cool.”

“Me too,” Morgan agrees solemnly. She turns around and looks up at Tony, pointing a chubby finger at one of them. “Can I have this one? Pretty please?”

Tony sighs, grabbing the backpack she’s pointing at. "If you insist," he says, forcing a grumpy tone because he doesn't really want to admit that the thought of Morgan going to school with a Spider-Man backpack is actually extremely adorable. He then reaches to grasp her hand in his, “No more running, ‘kay? Stay close to me and Peter.”

Morgan nods, but she already looks rather distracted, glancing around at the colorful products as they start walking down the aisle – at a civil pace, thank you very much – again. Tony nudges Peter, gesturing with the hand holding the backpack to the section of normal-sized bags with neutral colors.

“Grab one for you, I know you’ve ripped the last one."

Peter has the decency to look a bit embarrassed. Tony doesn't mind buying him stuff at all, but it's the third one in the last two months - one would expect that a smart kid like him would've already found a proper hiding place for his belongings when he goes to patrol right after school, but no luck so far.

"Come on, or I'll buy you a Hello Kitty one."

They make it to the cashier - Peter hands him a navy blue backpack, and Tony has a look at all of Morgan's supplies before turning to the boy, "Don't you need anything else, kiddo? You always need new pens. Go grab some, we can wait."

"It's okay, Mr. Stark," Peter reassures him with a grin, patting Morgan on the back when she throws herself against his legs dramatically because it's taking too long, I want to go to the zoo. "I went on a stationary haul with May last month, so I'm fully stocked on pens!"

Tony hums, but he grabs a pack of ballpoint black pens hanging near the cashier and throws in with their stuff about to be rung up, just to make sure.

Happy's still waiting outside with the car once that's done, and soon enough the kids are on the backseat, with a over-excited Morgan securely strapped in, and Tony's sitting on the passenger seat while Happy pulls off to drop them at the zoo.

Due to traffic, after what seems to be like the forty longest minutes of Tony's life, during which he endured Peter practicing random animal sounds with Morgan on the backseat (he's pretty sure they don't have whales at the Central Park's Zoo, so their practice wasn't making a whole lot of sense) while trying to estimate how long they will take so that Happy can be there to pick them up on time, they finally arrive.

"See you in three hours, Boss," Happy tells him through the window as they disembark. He takes a look at Tony and the kids, who have already started making their way towards the entrance without him. "Good luck."

He pays for the tickets and soon enough they're inside; it's a Saturday but still early, right before lunchtime, so it isn't crowded as Tony feared. Still, he makes sure to buy himself a cheap cap together with lion-shaped balloon Morgan begs for right at the entrance, and together with his shades that's enough to keep his identity just a slightly bit more intact.

The first stop is the Tropic Zone, and Tony has to pick Morgan up so she can have a look above the railings at the colorful birds and other animals Tony can't really name, but Peter fills in and does it for him. With his free hand, Tony keeps said boy from toppling over into the fake rainforest with a hand clenched on the material of the back of his jacket, heart skipping a beat every time Peter points a finger excitingly at something and leans forwards even more.

They have a walk around the Temperate Territory and spend a ridiculous amount of time looking at the snow leopards. As any other five-year-old, Morgan is just excited to wave at the animals and see if they react in any way - even if said reaction is the slight turn of their heads the other way - but Tony can sometimes see something flash in Peter's still youthful but more mature eyes, like a little bit of pity for the ones in the other side of the cages. Still, Tony smiles to himself when the boy forgets about it for a while, eyes sparkling and his jaw dropping as he observes the animals move around. It feels nice to see him act his age, for once.

It is a really nice day. He never would've thought that spending time with two children - his kids - would be this fun, and he can't wait to go back home and tell Pepper how the day went by smoothly despite her worries.

However, it seems like good things never last indeed, for his hopeful thinking quickly changes when they arrive at the place where they kept the sea lions, right when the animals' feeding and training session is about to begin. Looking down, he sees that Morgan is holding hands with Peter, so he doesn't bother to uncross his arms and he gets distracted with the little show going on in front of them - it's not his fault, it's actually quite impressive what those little guys can do.

Right when the audience explodes in a round of applause after a particular impressive trick, he smiles down at Morgan only to realize she's gone. No, actually, both kids are gone, and Tony immediately makes a complete turn to inspect the place around him but they're nowhere to be seen.

He doesn't want to attract attention to himself, so he escapes to the back of the crowd, looking around worriedly all around him as he does so. When there's still no sight of Peter's green hoodie or Morgan's obnoxious bright yellow rompers, Tony curses quietly to himself, clenching and unclenching his fists anxiously. He knows nothing bad could happen to them - especially since his little girl is with Spider-Man, not a regular teen - but losing sight of them when the only thing he's supposed to do all day is look after them makes him feel weirdly concerned.

After a few more moments inspecting his surroundings, he approaches a guy standing a little bit further away from the crowd wearing the zoo's guide uniform - he looks up puzzledly as soon as he notices someone is approaching him in quick strides.

"Listen, I'm looking for my kids," Tony blurts out right away, just as the guy's eyes start to widen. "It's a boy about this tall," he says, raising his hand up to the height of his shoulder. "And a tiny girl wearing ugly yellow rompers? Have you seen them?"

"U-Um, I," the guy stutters, squints at Tony a little bit. "Are- are you by any chance-"

"Nope, not who you think I am," he dismisses briskly, chancing a quick look around just in case the kids decide to sprout out of nowhere and end his suffering. "But I need you to focus, have you seen them?"

The guy reluctantly look away from him to point to his right. "I think I, um, saw some kids that match your description heading that-"

"Thanks!"

Tony makes a beeline to the direction pointed, and he makes a turn into a more isolated area of the zoo, where he can spot a gift shop and the doors leading to the restrooms. He mumbles a curse, looking around frantically until a tiny little yellow spot catches his eye a few feet ahead.

"Mo!" he calls, letting out a sigh of relief.

"Daddy!" Morgan answers, pointing at something above her. "You hav'ta help Petey!"

"What-" he begins, but doesn't need to finish the sentence once he shifts his gaze up.

There, balancing himself on top of a thick tree branch is Peter; he's using one of his arms to support himself by hugging the trunk, but the other one is reaching up to something Tony recognizes as Morgan's lion-shaped balloon stuck among some thinner branches and leaves.

"What the- Peter!" he hisses, loud enough for the boy to hear. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Mo lost her balloon!" Peter answers matter-of-factly, not bothering to look down at them. He grunts, repositioning himself to try and get closer to said object, feet shifting dangerously against the wood beneath him. "I'm just trying to-"

"Get down, now," Tony hisses again, looking both ways to see if there's anyone coming. Thankfully the area remains deserted, the visitors being distracted by the show which is still going on, just like they were supposed to.

"But I just need to-"

"Right now, Peter!" he raises his voice, heart racing when Peter almost slips. "I'll buy another balloon, just get down!"

Peter grunts and then sighs in defeat. "Fine," he says, starting to climb down the tree, but still not as carefully as Tony would've wanted.

"You," he starts once the boy is standing right in front of him, not even a drop of sweat on his skin as if that whole stunt didn't tire him at all - and it probably didn't. Tony points an accusatory finger at him. "You are going to drive me crazy."

Peter frowns, "But it was going to be easy, I just had to-"

"No, I know you didn't think this through-"

"I did think this through, Mo just asked me-"

"I know you felt inspired by the monkey exhibit back there but you can't just go around climbing trees without wearing your-"

"You're over exaggerating! It's just a tree, not the Empire State Building-"

"You-"

"Daddy," Morgan interrupts, tugging at the hem of his jacket. "Can I get a bear this time?"

Tony sighs, running a hand up and down his face once before smiling. "'Course, baby," he says. He's about to lead them forwards towards the gift shop but as a second thought he stops, looking down at her, mockingly serious. "Promise me you'll never follow your brother's example. Repeat after me: climbing trees is dangerous."

"C-Climb- Climing trees is dangerous," she repeats dutifully, but already has an eye on her desired balloon being displayed just outside the gift shop.

Tony looks up when he hears Peter choke on a laugh, and the smile the boy shoots him is enough to make him forget about the whole ordeal.

"Just kidding, Mo, you can climb how many trees you want," he says, picking her up to place a smooch on her cheek. "Just let me know first, okay?" he says, then nods with satisfaction when Morgan hums in agreement. He then glares at Peter. "The same goes for you, monkey wannabe, or else I'll make Karen tattletale on everything you-"

"Yes, I get it," the boy rolls his eyes, but he's still smiling. Like always, he accepts the arm Tony places around his shoulders easily, and soon enough they fall into step again.

#avengers endgame spoilers #endgame fix it #irondad #tony stark #peter parker #fic #fanfic #mine #ao3 #morgan stark

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