#im making art that i actually enjoy and dont think is complete shit because of my inability to conquer traditional media the way i want to

[shitpostdevil]

watching this blog come together is kind of wild

like I would actually perish at this point if it disappeared bc I've put so much work into it

[cowboy-robooty]

something that i think is sooooo stupid is this obsession people have with being "good for their age" at art. i know a million people say this and talk about this sentiment being harmful already but i really do think it is a terrible way to think about things. Art is a skill just like being good at math or playing basketball and I think its stupid when people put the worth of their skillset in tandem with their age because also it completely disregards the notion of how everybody lives in different ways. Michaelangelo was so good at art not only because he was a genius but also because bro literally woke up every mf day and only drew since he was a little baby so no shit he could make amazing sculptures in his early 20s. Everyone lives with so many different responsibilities and different amounts of freetime, so really i think its quite stupid to say someone is "good for their age" because that doesnt say anything about their ability to budget their time or naturally progress or commit to the grind despite everything or really anything at all since you dont have any idea about what kind of life they live. There are crazy artists out there who go to cram school for 11 hours a day on top of extracirriculars + volunteer work and still manage to create with the same skill level as someone who is the president of going home club. You dont know the resource of time that is ACTUALLY avaliable to one person compared to others using their age, so its stupid to act as though that its such a big deal. I personally dont think ive ever been good at drawing for my age and thats fine because I dont care about that. I could be good at drawing for my age if i committed more freetime to practicing it, but i dont because i dont want to. just like how i could be a super scholar whiz at chemistry or something but im not because I dont want to spend all my freetime doing problems and reading textbooks. I dont think the progress id make in those kinds of skills are worth missing watching a movie with my friends or learning how to bake a cake or enjoying a walk on a trail. I think anybody can be a genius at anything if they put their mind to it, but it also comes at great suffering most of the time because a lot of sacrifices have to be made and being able to embrace the choices you make with the limited time you have is important to being happy with what you have. Like yknow celebrating the stuff you were able to collect instead of mourning all the things you wish you had. I think only very few people are actually good at art for their age, like how einstein is one of the few people who was for real smart for his age and that is okay because what matters is having something you feel passion in doing. For a lot of people if they actually forced themselves to sacrifice what they needed to in order to be "good for their age" they would probably lose the passion in their craft during that process; which is probably one of the only ways to make the skill of drawing useless.

[angellic-critique]

Honestly my biggest fear is to end up writing my characters the same way vivzie does, I feel like she doesn't even try on certain characters(female characters and literally any other that isn't her "uwu baby boi must be protected at all costs" characters like stolas, angel dust). Like imagine completely missing the point of your own character/srs

to everyone pre-release worries and anxieties just as much as I have-- Please take this time to read or explore different interests of books or authors of subjects and genres you like ! In the era of internet where the golden age of information is rusting into brainrot, the less time online anymore the better. I've been taking javascript/python tutorials for myself attempting to make a dating simulator for literal years at this point and its bounced around to the point of where I branched off to develop my own murder mystery 2-d sidescroller !

I wish for this to be a farewell letter to the crushed hopes and dreams I had for the original hazbin pilot and crew has moved on to other things whereas viv attempted to spitefully keep a story she clearly doesn't have any passion over- it is very evident over her lack of care for her own characters purely for the monetary gains of attempting and sadly wriggling her way into industry the way she did is so abhorrent to the world of genuine art and animation I grew up with.

Has Vivzie ever read a Felix the Cat comic strip or Dilbert even Hägar The Horrible? Does she even know about the history and strive of depth that animation has been at for hundreds of years? Does she even like comics, clearly not if she doesn't even have the patience to write her own and horribly rush whichever story she's interested in that day. I've never seen a careless writer be this selfishly unashamed to write literal garbage and surface level 'intrigue' of design and then falling flat face first at EVERY step. Hope she becomes as unbearable of a director as John K. is because honestly even though I'm cringing making that comparison, it's pretty fair in my book considering the outright ABUSE she has always trying to talk or hoard artists into her 'pet project' I recommend above anything else to watch Dan Stamanolous' 'Moral Orel' if you want an actually funny dark comedy or Christy Karacas' fast paced dark horror comic-come-to-life Superjail! for good animattion that doesn't belittle its audience... *[Trigger Warnings for Adult Swim-esque outdated 2007 humor and light transphobia, read for your own triggers if you dont want to though, please!]

The fact that Stollitz is written so flimsily like a wattpad fanficiton of tropes rolled into one is astounding to me, I used to like the dynamic pre-season 2 as I've mentioned on here and @tired-hellowl so I really don't want to get a headache going into how I USED to like it-Realizing the problematic consent issues all of STOLASS is, I physically cannot watch another Helluva or Hazbin promo anymore without rolling my eyes into the back of my head.

To the anons and people who used to also enjoy vivs work, there are other artists and there are other stories to tell. If you wish to be inspired from Dante's Inferno/Hell or WESTERN CHRISTIAN BASED RELIGION keep in mind what source material you're doing because I don't even think vivzie has picked up the bible once in her life.... And I say this as a drifter in the world who believes in reincarnation I don't really vibe with the athiest stereotypes however, I don't believe in most religion but more power to people that do get hope and love from their teachings and cultures.

She entirely missed the mark for several years, nearly a decade. Viv has had time and time again chance and opportunity to give a chance of storytelling with demons and what does she do? Adult Cartoon that has the demons scream 'FUCK SHIT DAMNIT DAMNIT LOOK IM SO HORNY AND SILLY AND WACKY WOAHH THE SCREEN IS CONSTANTLY MOVING YOU CAN NEVER HAVE A SECOND TO BREATH IN ANY AMOUNT OF WORLBUILDING OR SETTING BECAUSE FUCK. YOU.'--

I have said this time and time again- there is no substance or worth about Helluva Bosses or Hazbins writing, even without the show not being released because Amazon seems ashamed about it, I know it'll be a shitshow.

Honestly at this point I agree with the redesign community, take any character you used to like and rewrite them until it's unrecognizable from the original source material, let those fuckers in space fight alien pirates or hell take them out of the heaven and hell trope and just flip it on it's head entirely out of earth or wherever you want to set your story! I'm personally redesigning angel to be a slight aid to my addiction help via rewriting him into my murder mystery heheh while keeping the sexual abuse and recovery in mind because woah that shit happened to me too man !!!

I wish the best to any future writers, animators, programmers, lovers of animation or art, you can do what you put your mind and hands to! Spread more positivity and love then hate in this world please guys, this'll be the last time I pop in I promise I'm trying to get a better job and hopefully get accepted in a community college that i've been on the fence over trying to do more online coding ! The sky is the limit!<3

[kosmicdream]

Ode to Togashi

Stream of conscientious incoherent rant about manga/hxh below, read at your own discretion as i AM NOT EDITING IT: 

While I’m still in the mood to talk about art and what i love about manga, i feel like i wanted to share (some) of my thoughts on why HXH continues to be one of my favorite stories. Togashi’s writing method continues to be probably like, the closest one that i aspire to replicate in my own work, partly because i love to see how much it builds and learns from itself, reinvents itself, ect. But i DONT think Hxh is perfect, even if i wouldn’t change anything about it or togashi’s writing style. 

When I first got into HXH, it was actually through the old anime. I watched that all the way thru before reading the manga, and when i was watching the anime it was during a period of time when i hated all shonen. I still kinda hate “the shonen” model, despite loving many shonen series, but something abt HXH pulled me in to give it a try and i was quickly hooked. I of course, already had experience with YYH growing up as a teen but i somehow missed HXH completely until my early 20s. I had already started trying comics by then, but it was EGGSHELLS and i had not started FFAK at that point.

HXH almost lost me at greed island my first round, ngl. I appreciate it now, andi still think the set up for Greed island was amazing but the arc itself.. I was not into it, mostly cause i think the villain for it was kinda lackluster and i didn’t really think the world of greed island had a strong design sense. There was interesting aspects, i enjoyed Bisque as a new character and she helped carry a LOT of the weight of that arc for me, but it was kind of a drag. IDK if it was also partly the adaptation for that arc, but i didn’t enjoy it much more in manga form either. It just went a bit faster. However, the end of that arc and the final fight was surprisingly brutal and enjoyable, which made me optimistic and helped me to continue. And then the chimera ant arc was the first arc i read ONLY manga first and i truly fell in love with it, obsessed even. That arc, as many readers already know, is probably like the closest thing to FFAK’s “Parent” for inspiration. Obviously, FFAK draws from a lot of things (Trigun is probably the 2nd strongest influence on FFAK) but it isn’t quite the same as HXH. As MUCH as i adore hunter x hunter part of me does cringe and laugh that like, in the end, a battle shonen manga still excited me that much but like.. As MUCH as i clearly love battle manga.. I am so over them. You know? Who cares. IMO. No matter how great it looks, i probably am never going to be more impressed (visually) with an action scene than the ones Yukito Kishiro drew. He did it, He won the action manga game to me. I have no idea what’s actually happening in Gunnm most of the time but as far as the visual spectacle of it all, it literally doesn't even make sense how good his action scenes look. (I could talk a lot about Gunnm too, but i’ll save that for another time IG) Like how the fuck does someone draw that good and it just made everything else by comparison just like, not.. Matter too much to me anymore. Which is great, because I can then look at other aspects for a work rather than just being drawn in by the visuals. And stuff. 

Where i’m at now.. I dont want to read another, even if its drawn well and .. the powers are SO powering or whatever. And i love to draw action scenes, they’re really hard and i still have so much more to go to learn about them. At best, I think im okay at them. But even when i work, i just get tired now so i cut them down a lot. Thats partly because i jsut dont have the time to draw fighting scenes. So i kind of feel embarrassed by a lot of them that ive made, i know I was lazy. Lazy in a way I’m not proud of the result, but im proud of the compromises to get the shit done. Which is the most important think in the end, to juggle your own expectations and limitations with the timeframe you have to get somewhere you need to go. I will still read more action/battle manga in the future.. But im in no rush. And im certain, for the most part, they arent going to teach me anything I don’t already know. They might entertain me and i might be like “..huh!” at a few things, but my expectation for them to do more than that is pretty low. I’m delighted when im wrong, but i cannot deny the apathy towards them is super deep. Togashi to me, is one those authors, that makes me really wake up and realize there’s still a lot of unexpected territory out there. 

He writes like an enthusiastic newbie, not a seasoned old timer that he is, who basically helped popularize the “tournament arc” and “dark edgy shonen” stuff with YYH. All his characters in HXH are geniuses, which is kind of a valid critique and can be annoying as hell too… Id say most readers dont really get how the hell nen works, yet somehow the story still functions so well in its character motivations/conflicts that it kinda doesn’t matter too much that.. It doesnt really make sense? We have to relearn what nen is basically every arc. Its not gonna stick. And yet im just so excited every time it updates and i really want to know what he wants to do with his new arc, if he is going to be able to do it. Nen to me is like a fake fantasy science that is tangible and real yet also you’re in a dream and you try to read the letters on a page, and you can read it but if you stare hard at it. The words are just blurs, or it doesn’t really connect. I like that there’s this malleable illusion that it functions in a way, that is concrete, but it isn’t really. But its enough that i can believe that for the characters, who are also not real, it is real for them. 

The fact that i can talk about “”””NeN””” like this to me is essentially why it becomes the perfect shonen to me because it takes itself so seriously, so genuinely, yet it also is nonsense but not in the way where its like.. Irony poisoned, “gotcha” twists? Im sick of all these subverting shonens that arent subverting anything. Or even just the attitude that is what makes a good shonen these days is to subvert, diminish, laugh, ect at shonen while completely stepping inside the same footprints again and again. So much manga just wants to be dragon ball, but dragon ball was good cuz it was just a fun, well drawn action manga that wasn’t trying to BE dragonball. It was just dragon ball. (maybe now its trying to be dragon ball, which is why i dont care about whatever sequel attempt we’re at now, but that’s another story.) Its fun to me that i dont know if Gon is gonna come back in Hxh. like, maybe he will and his powers will be restored ect.. But at the time of writing this, and for YEARS we just.. Have the main pals of the manga separated. Their friendship has changed. There’s a great shift in it. Gon met his dad, who sucks, but that kind of was his main quest. Sure, we have kurapika’s arc, and many other routes to go - but in a weird way HXH is done and it isn’t done at the same time. I’m just like, what are we going to do now. TOGASHI said flat earth real and was like, the other half of it is UNEXPLORED AND SO DARN DANGEROUS and theres SOM BIGGGGG DINOSAURS THERE and it just feels so gleefully like.. You’re on the swingset and some kid just keeps having to up the stakes but in the most kid-like way possible. For serious. But Togashi’s 58. But he’s right too, the dark continent IS so cool.. I just imagine leorio going there and getting so sick and shitting mutant diahrea and dying the SECOND he sets foot there and its awesome. That’s NOT what’s going to happen but im delighted at the opportunity.

This is the point where I’m writing something when i take a pause and wonder how the hell i got here. I have skimmed the above written text. Whatever point i think i was going to make, wasn’t made, but i expressed.. good feelings here. This is how i write. I typed all of that in about 15 minutes with no idea where it was gonna go. Part of the process now would be to go back, organize, edit, ect. To *TRY* to make it a little more comprehensible, as with all writing. Believe it or not i have gotten better at editing my own work. But the true nature of it all is still the same. And its the same in the way that i dont want, no matter how much i improve at my craft, i dont want to lose that enthusiasm i feel when i reach 58. I think that would be such a triumph, id be so lucky to be able to muster that energy. When I think of togashi, i think he has that. He has that real artistic spark that no amount of time/experience has ever diminished and that’s why i think he’s truly my personal favorite mangaka.  (maybe tezuka too)

[theoddest1]

i fear viv is like j*k*r -

there is evidence, proof, so so much of it. and even then, just her behavior alone, without the really bad stuff, is questionable to say the least. i dont know how to put it, but she and her fans act like 12 year olds on wattpad (i used to be one of those kids to some extent ik what im talking about here lmfao). it is a FACT she's horrible and disgusting (i could list a thousand other things here but the critical community already knows all this) and still people defend and dickride her. it is no lie that her fanbase is like a cult. i wonder if these people are actually completely oblivious or are just as horrid because the fact she's a horrible person is as clear as day. the fetish shit, her weird ass transphobia, her blatant disgregard to actual victims that aren't her fans, her drawing... that , her racism, her- should i go on? and i fear there is no consequences for BOTH these people- they will go on until they die without ever facing their actions and stuff. its disturbing.

its like j*k*r all over again. i sense a pattern here. not sure what kind, but its so fucking baffling how both are horrid and insufferable AS CLEAR AS DAY as people and HARM OTHERS and still get so much support. both need to be studied because what the fuck have they going on that protects them meanwhile some people on social media get cancelled for one sentence they said 17 years ago (not that that's not "valid" it's just baffling how some people get cancelled over the smallest shit meanwhile....) and these people get to enjoy their life without consequences while there's MOUNTAINS of proven evidence.

i feel like i discovered a goddamn alien baby the way im so fucking flabbergasted at all this.

anyways, sorry for the rant.

i hope you have a nice day/evening/morning/night!

Hey, no worries! Rant away! It's a very strange enigma for sure, and the fandon does indeed act like a cult! My guess for how Viv keeps getting away with all this stuff is that she has a parasocial relationship with her fanbase. The idea of landing a job or getting close with a creator with such a large following overrides any sense of reason or care for her actions, so people keep gassing her up because it could likely lead her to like or comment on their stuff. There's also the pseudo kind act she puts on, so people think she's the sweetest person ever when she has showcased the opposite. There's also a loooot of fandom bullying. Lots of the big dogs in the fandom bully people into silence or make em think they're in the wrong.

There's a WHOLE lot of control going on here, and thanks to her ass kissers logic is thrown out the window. Finally, there were the overblown posts highlighting things that, while weird or gross, aren't "cancelable" enough or downright exaggerations of the truth or lies. These threads on Twitter, especially back in 2019, did more harm than good and led many into believing there was a mob that simply wanted to cancel her for being popular. The threads consisted of her old cringe art (some are very questionable don't get me wrong) rather than the ones where she encouraged fandom bullying and made fun of a 15 year old fan for simply being critical of her work and called them nasty for it. No one did any research on her behavior or how she was an absolute bully to people like Starvader. Callouts need to consist of hard evidence so stuff like this doesn't happen, where your callout does more harm than good.

These factors led to many straight up turning off their brains and blatantly ignoring hard evidence. It's very, very stupid.

Also, who is the other person you mentioned? The only one that comes to mind is the guy who plays League of Legends and is famous for winning many championships.

[gorseflowers]

feel like i really should make a post about primitivism in yellowjackets given how much of my dissertation was about primitivism in art, which is a different area but its the same principal like its the creation of a romantic ideal of the primitive usually from the misinterpreted imagery/beliefs of a marginalised culture and the idealisation of that ideal as better/purer than the present state

much like how primitivist painters lifted imagery from cultures they were interested in without caring about the context/meaning/importance of the imagery to those cultures, it feels like yellowjackets is doing the same with the wilderness ritual stuff like the animal mask parade symbolic burial nat walked in on in the present, the ash anointing smoke smudging thing lottie was doing before nat and travis went out hunting in the 90s, it seems like theyve taken generically recognisable “wicca shit” as nat put it, that the audience will immediately understand as “primitive” and therefore associate with a level of mystery and power that’s accentuated by the lack of context or tangible link to anything explicable.

and i get that, at least in the 90s plotline, it kind of has to be generic wicca shit because the girls are literally making it up and assigning meanings to the materials they have available like ash and blood, but to have this ~mysterious primal power~ coming from the only character with indigenous heritage is like. really transparently primitivist in the most original sense. its the idea that there’s gotta be something ~cool/mysterious/spooky/powerful~ about this culture thats ~soooo connected to nature/primal states of self~ that always leads to white europeans (like myself full disclosure, im white/scottish) strip mining that culture for this sense of the primitive. its not about that actual culture or those actual people, its about what a white audience reads into it and what they want to see it as.

obviously the second season has only just started so they could well be setting up to subvert what theyve been doing so far, but two things are making me think thats not gonna be the case -- the way the mysterious ambiguous and supernatural elements of the plot are directly linked to the two main characters of colour (which has been discussed in more depth by other ppl), and the way that the wilderness itself is framed as a category of place that diametrically opposes “civilisation” without considering the concrete reality of the location in Real Life Canada which has a Real Life Indigenous Population who go completely unmentioned so far. its definitely indicative of how the writers want to frame “the wilderness” as some kind of other-place devoid of humanity that they have pointedly ignored the people who originally inhabited/still do inhabit other areas of that landscape. potentially also because the realities of modern (or 90s-modern) indigenous people dont fit the primitivist romantic ideal.

once again i am white/european so despite having studied like the art context of this im really not Qualified and i’d be greatly obliged for anyone else’s input. also this isnt totally slagging off the show i do enjoy it i just feel like they could be really doing better here. anyway!

[nanjokei]

i know ive said it before a few months ago but even though i dont go there i feel like people are pretty meanspirited towards genshin fans. obviously one of the biggest games around is gonna attract people who are new to geek ish shit like video games and anime. which means its likely their opinions are likely to be unseasoned. i think theres an entire world that exists for teenagers and normies with smartphones that we arent seeing, maybe its a generational gap idk

like the people who are super into webtoons and genshin and god knows what else, younger people and normies, lack the etiquette that was basically beaten into our brains through years of frequenting forums and microblogging social sites (livejournal, tumblr) (this is a lie because most people lack etiquette to begin with) so they act unbecoming, get into fights, make claims about skinny twinks being daddy or whatever. mostly cuz they know nothing else. is it annoying? yeah, but it feels meanspirited to write all of them off, and all of genshin off. i dont play it, i tried it close to launch and found myself completely disinterested so after not even completing the tutorial i ended up dropping it, but i have a lot of friends who are normal and find themselves enjoying it unironically and theyre surprised that they do due to the overly exaggerated reputation it has. im just speaking in general, of course they have the same issues a lot of people have with genshin, in fact i think most people who Actually Play Games would...

in general i dont get the catastrophization of genshin. i feel like so many people attribute things to it that dont make sense, like how suddenly all anime character design, especially fantasy, has gotten worse. my own feelings on the designs is pretty neutral. but at the same time its like, a fucking anime game, idk, i dont have feelings on it to begin with because it just looks like most other anime games but hoyoverse flare is hoyoverse flare.

to begin with i don't think hoyoverse is to blame for fantasy designs sucking. i think that is completely dishonest to suggest. as a fantasy fan, i think that its an issue of decay and lack of interest in the genre. i wrote about my feelings in isekai before (hint: mostly positive) but its a fact that most people have no interest in fantasy anymore. its seeing a slight genuine revival recently, but i feel like most of people's exposure is from isekai that take a very minimalist and "modern" sensibility to the designs so as not to be cringe and over the top. here is a google search i did in november 2022 with the search term "anime elf"

i mostly use this cap to show that 1) this is an issue ive been concerned about consistently and 2) if you search "anime" anything these days you get a lot of ai art and that is just noise to me in this context. by the way, in nov 2022 if you searched "90s anime elf", the results are entirely deedlit lol. she's very pretty, and every anime aesthetic page on social media is eager to reshare her and erroneously go "80s anime is the best 😍😍😍" you know, the ova series and tv anime that came out in 1990 and 1998 respectively. its just a complete and utter lack of disinterest in the fantasy genre all around that leads to fantasy anime being swallowed up into nothingness and not being present in any zeitgeist. even tales of, a series that seemed inseperable from the conventions of the genre, has forsaken it. the super tropey anime fantasy jrpg doesn't exist anymore. even fire emblem keeps hiring artists that have no business designing characters in a medieval setting (kozaki, kurahana, pikazo). granblue FANTASY has entirely shed its final fantasy tactics inspo aesthetic and is increasingly releasing more characters distant from those sensibilities.

anyway, my point is that for over a decade now fantasy as us nerdy 20 somethings grew up with has been considered owakon and blasé. nu anime fantasy is either informed by wanting to smooth out the fantasy element as much as possible (see: rezero's character design sense. i have no comment on the story itself) or inspiration from anime MMOs that usually had more simple armor and clothing designs for most players who didn't pay up. its a whole issue from top to bottom, and frankly genshin has nothing to do with it. there are modern series clearly made by people who love the fantasy we grew up with. even those that have a different world view, like tensura, lampshades the protagonist's view of fantasy to the world he actually ended up in.

if anything genshin at least feels like its calling to SOMETHING. im not sure what, to be honest i dont really get the design thoroughline of it, and a lot of the designs are overdesigned, but i think some designs do feel reminiscent of a more familiar fantasy aesthetic (venti comes to mind).

of course its true that a lot of young artists take inspiration from genshin, you know, its one of the most popular games in the world, its like mind boggling hearing how big its install base is, but also i keep hearing that it had some kind of ripple effect on all character design in every game and anime ever. can anyone actually show me like even 3 examples of this? like, be honest with me. is that not peak catastrophizing? game has barely been out for 3 years, its not really enough for its ripple effect to suddenly change the world.

what you are complaining about is an issue that has been an issue since the 2010s. maybe you are only noticing it now that you have a new mediore hatesink to invest in. anyway yes this mediocre and halfhearted defense of genshin's fans was an excuse for me to rant about fantasy as a genre being on its death throes and how people are misattributing the tragedy to rant about some mediocre anime gacha game. i hope the recent popularity of series like dungeon meshi and frieren (i mention them bc theyre currently airing right now) makes people remember that fantasy can be good and pure soul. i hope we get a real tales of game soon also.

if you read this far please let me know what you think even on anon. its a topic that greatly interests me (anime fantasy, not genshin, i have nothing to say about genshin)

[13tinysocks]

tbh i dont even think people understand that reading/writing stuff like that is in actuality factually not a healthy coping mechanism. im sure a lot of them are younger people, individuals who have not yet gotten help, or teens who have been misinformed or directed, but therapeutically, rereading or writing traumatic things you underwent does not help you unless said traumatic things are taking place in a controlled and consensual setting that allows you to relive said traumatic events in a safe setting. (ie, impact play for people who went through domestic abuse, cnc/pre-stated consensual dubcon for people who went thru sa, fearplay for people with ptsd, etc). i feel like people use the excuse that they're writing or reading things they underwent personally in a 'romantic' fic bc it 'helps them cope' bc they themselves have not yet gotten to the point in their healing where they're able to accept what was done to them without romanticizing it. and if that is the case, you're only further hurting people by spreading the narrative that it's healthy to romanticize any abuse done to them. either that or they themselves want to write it for nothing besides pure shock horror which even then, doesn't make sense, bc said authors are knowingly pushing the fic towards a demographic that's not meant for horror/shock media, but that's aimed towards "xreader" or self insert romantic fanfics.

Exactly! I really don't wanna harsh on people's coping mechanisms but like. Writing masky raping you and putting other people in that headspace is really unhealthy. I completely understand people who use kink as a device to cope and understand what happened to them. But with fic its different it's not just you and your consenting partner it's random people who will contextualize your work differently and likely harmfully.

This stuff always makes me think of pure forgiveness a fic I've talked about previously. It's genuinely the most upsetting work I've ever read and when I told the author: hey literal teenagers are reading this and commenting on how sexy it is you are hurting people and yourself maybe take this down

They were like I'm copping

I'm sorry writing masky force a violent abortion onto yn is not helping you. Go to therapy. Get offline.

Awhile back an cpp hc blog stole the art of a friend of mine and with that icon was writing Jeff the killer rape porn. That was really fucking upsetting. Then they changed their icon to another jtk fanart also uncredited and went on writing rape porn. What is wrong with you.

Genuinely I do not fuck with most hc blogs because of shit like that. I know a lot of them are fine people but a lot of them are genuinely kinda awful!

When I first started writing in fandom I really wanted to befriend these people they seemed so tight knit and fun. One time I said to one of them hey calling Toby's new design a Nazi Is wierd and I got death threat! So uh! Yeah!

I know I'm throwing stones in glass houses being the wound fingering guy but I don't use my work to cope. I don't want my work to be used to cope. NOTHING is drawn from our irl traumas. That's too much, too personal, and too triggering. We are aware that can hurt people. It's kink for kinky people. It's a fantasy that all parties end up enjoying. I warn people to not consume my work if they are not in a proper headspace. Also I just don't write rape lmfao!

[seerofmike]

mike's media medley--March 2024

yo whats up. so at the end of the year i do a top 7 ranking of my fave movies released that year and a top 7 ranking of video games i played that year (regardless of release date) which is VERY fun and im still gonna do it but!

there are a lot of things that i like that don't make the cut that i would like to talk about...and things that i did not like that i would also like to talk about. so i will be doing a post every month about *all* the movies i watched for the first time, including older movies and new releases, same for games i played for the first time. and occasionally a book if i can manage it. it is taking me one billion years to read The Plague

here are some things i watched and played for the very first time this march:

(thoughts below the cut. minor spoilers)

starting off in alphabetical order with:

Good Time (2017)

i watched Uncut Gems a couple of years ago and I actually didn't remember the directors' name(s) for that movie, so when I watched Good Time i was like damn that made me feel like Uncut Gems. im gonna check out more of these guys' movies. lo and behold

i think overall Uncut Gems made me feel more stressed, but Good Time made me feel more bad for basically everyone involved but Robert Pattinson's character and watching this dude just make awful decisions and treat other people like shit was like. so nasty feeling. i would like to watch more.

i liked the directing of this movie but i liked Uncut Gems's better. not to keep comparing the two but theyre made by the same people with the same like. goals of being a fucking Stress Simulator. i did love robert pattinson's performance which i won't compare to adam sandler's in Uncut Gems because even though they're both the driving forces of their movies they're both pretty different characters and even if i thought pattinson's character was slimy and just like a shite fucking person i think he did a good enough job expressing the desperation of getting the hell outta there with his brother. the emotional hook was There but i wish it was explored slightly more so i could be a bit more invested in seeing how he makes everything worse.

overall decent. i did like it. would maaaaaybe watch again but not like regularly. 70/100. also if you think 70 is a low score it is Not. it is a good score. just putting that out there before someone takes 70/100 to mean i think something is bad (<- damage control for a later score)

next:

Late Night with the Devil (2024)

this movie has like 10 FUCKING COMPANIES CREDITED AT THE BEGINNING when i saw it in theaters by the time it got to like the 7th one everyone in my theater was exasperatedly saying 'oh my god'

but once the movie gets started. oh hell fucking yeah

i didn't watch any trailers for this or love lies bleeding (i dont rly watch trailers in gen tbh) so idk if the trailer conveyed that this would be set up as like...a lost TV episode, complete with bumpers and brief sponsor mentions, 'behind the scenes footage' etc, but regardless i did not know that going in and you can imagine my utter fucking delight when the movie started playing and after a minute or two i realized the gimmick

i REALLY liked this movie. i thought it was appropriately cheesy for a talkshow hosted in the 70s and i liked some of the subtle moments you really only catch on rewatch (which i did rewatch it w/ my mom), like how the doctor says abraxas thrives on the attention of an audience and the whole time lily is trying to stare directly into the cameras smiling.

the ending is really fucking cool and the mystery unraveling through the supernatural occurrences was compelling. i thought most of the actors did a pretty good job. im not really a fan of demon possession stuff for very personal reasons but i stuck it out for the concept which i really did enjoy.

that being said i found out shortly after i watched this movie that they used AI art for some of the bumpers and i was legitimately so disappointed. there was clearly a talented production team working on this thing to ensure the 70s night talkshow vibe was maintained and they couldn't get one of them to do bumpers, or hire an artist?

it really sucks. i dont want to rag too harshly on smaller indie filmmakers for doing this when big players in every industry are forcibly trying to incorporate AI into their stuff so i won't be review bombing the movie like ive seen some do in response--which i *get*, and i hope the team takes that as a sign to just hire a fucking artist next time--but it did kind of sour the movie for me despite how much i enjoyed it.

so im docking 5 points for the AI art and im also docking 5 points for the 10 companies credited in the beginning because that just makes the AI art feel more egregious to me.

75/100. maybe if they release the movie on shudder with the AI art removed they'll get their 5 points back

next:

Love Lies Bleeding (2024)

everybody in this movie is so fucking sweaty and grimy and everything looks kind of dirty and like it smells like sweat and deodorant and tbh i kind of dig it. especially when next to the cleaner 'aesthetic' version of the 70s presented in Late Night with the Devil

but man this movie was really good. i dont want to spoil it too much but PLEASE go watch it. its decently horny so if you dont like that sort of thing Sawi but if you can look past that its so fucking weird and like strangely funny when it shouldnt be (but is definitely trying to be, so its not like unintentional humor, maybe more like morbid humor?) and theres horror and fantastical elements that you simply arent expecting and my theater screamed at the ending. please go watch it. truly the epitome of i support womens rights AND womens wrongs. honestly i could go on about this movie but i will not right now because you WILL go watch it in theaters NEOW

85/100

next:

Spirited Away (2001)

okay im gonna be really blunt and rip the bandaid off with this one. i just thought it was Fine

like obviously the animation is stellar but that was about it for me. maybe i listened to this movie get hyped as one of the best animated films ever and set my expectations absurdly high but i watched it and i enjoyed it but i wasn't like...blown away or struck with Whimsy And Wonder or overcome with emotion.

i do think some of the characters were charming and it was entertaining and i dont want it to sound like i didnt like the movie but i guess i just felt underwhelmed? i might rewatch it another time with my expectations readjusted and see if i enjoy it more but when i watched it and the credits rolled i just went 'oh okay. was that it?'

anyways 70/100

viddy game time

(the) gnorp apologue--

she gnorp on my rock until i shard

funny clicky idle game . it is NOT an idle game where you can just buy all the upgrades and 'win', theres some strategy involved, but its honestly a really funny game. theres breaking bad references in there. in fact there are all kinds of references in there. you should go play it for the low low price of just over 5 dollars

minami lane--

so i will say first i am not like an avid player of 'cozy' games and find a lot of them pretty boring but i did really enjoy this one. it's a short city builder game with a really cute art-style. it has a sandbox mode (which i havent played) but it also has about five challenges to complete with multiple objectives and i had a good time trying to 100% them all. i would love if they added more challenges but tbh! it's not a bad way to spend about 3-4 hours of your time. im sure if you play sandbox mode you'd get even more but honestly i was satisfied with doing the challenges. it's just under 5 bucks there are definitely worse ways to spend your money.

if you've read this whole thing i love u. feel free to use this post as an opportunity to recommend me movies, tv shows, and games you think i should check out.

[2xplusungood]

I feel like something that isn't talked about enough is the fact that the reason why so many youths are drawn into this sort of "everyone sucks" sort of mindset is that when you grow up being taught by conservatives, sure there may be a point when they realize just how horrid the political views of their family members are, but have inadvertedly swallowed the slow poisoning against the left over their formative years.

This can be especially harmful to people who fall outside of cultural norms as for so many years they have been at best constantly criticized for who they are or at worst straight up ostracized by friends and family.

They grow up feeling like shit for who they are while being fed conservative talking points about the left and the seed is planted to make them believe that EVERYONE is like that, right or left. Then they see these fringe cases of extremists on the left who also demonize who they are (usually just for other reasons) and it reinforces that idea that its all just hate from all sides.

They are so used to the conservative playbook that its hard to imagine otherwise. Like of course you're gonna buy and internalize the lie of "Those leftists will demonize you unless you are part of a marginalized group" when you are already so used to being demonized if you aren't the "good Christian boy" your family wants you to be, because to you thats just how life works.

Alone this is already bad but it can also get so much worse as having this mindset is when the radicalization begins to seep in. Hategroups LOVE to downplay the absolute fuck out of how the conservative mindset affects our culture while overplaying the effect of people outside that political ideology.

Heres an example: Early 2010s saw a rise in critique against things like sexism, racism, homophobia and lack of representation of marginalized groups in video games. People began treating video games are more than just a leisure activity you turn your brain off and enjoy and more like a serious art form.

On the other hand, gaming had become just about synonymous with this exact group of people. These critiques to them felt like a coordinated attack on gaming (And these sort of people by extension) from the left, and do you know WHY that is? It is because for DECADES there HAD been a coordinated attack on gaming from the CONSERVATIVES, who believed things like "Games cause violence" and were 100% fully IN SUPPORT of censorship.

These people were already so used to the conservative playbook that "Game developers should be more socially conscious" became "Games are sexist/racist/homophobic and should be banned" because they were so used to dealing with "Games are Violent/Satanic and should be banned" because the very idea of being critical of something out of a place of wanting it to improve vs being critical of something because you hate it and want it gone" was so ALIEN to them. Hence near CONSTANT comparisons of Jack Tompson (A lawyer who repeatedly lobbied congress for the banning and censorship of video games) to Anita Sarkeesian (Someone who made videos and WORKED WITH DEVELOPERS as a consultant to HELP their games be better)

Now here comes the Far-right. "Hey buddy heres some talking points to absolutely DEMOLISH the SJWs! Trust me Im just like you Im ostracized by both the left and right. Dont actually think about it too hard. After all it completely DESTROYS them and reinforces the idea you're being attacked"

Suddenly the Alt-right is born out of the lie "Both the left and right are BAD but the left is SO much worse" being left to fester. After all, if you spend enough time learning to "defend yourself" against the Leftists, your views are probably gonna start to align with the conservatives who were all too happy to join your fight against the "SJWs who are trying to DESTROY your hobby."

I think thats also why there are a surprising number of transpeople who held previously reprehensible views in the past, because they grew up ostracized and demonized while also having a bitter hatred to the very people trying to HELP them because all they know is abuse, but eventually they managed to heal from this mindset and get them help and support they need.

Not a day goes by that I don't feel utter CONTEMPT for the person I used to be, but I suppose the reason Im writing this to more fully understand what had lead me to become that person, so that I can hopefully help people avoid making the same mistakes I did. Maybe its even for the better that I will always hate who I was, and that there is likely people out there who will never forgive me for my past. People change but the damage done cannot be undone and its not the job of the people you've attacked to work on seeing you any differently. They don't owe you forgiveness.

[awesomehoggirl]

Hi uhm I noticed youre like really cool and youre like. Idk youre just cool I dont know how else to phrase it. And I was wondering what are like. Some things that youd recomend someone to do at least once in their life? Like what are some experinces that you really enjoyed yourself/think youd enjoy a lot that youd recomend to other people ? Idk man Im on break soon, all my friends are busy and Im looking for things to do and you just seemed like a chill person who would give good recs 👍

i gotta say im really not as cool as you think i might be social media distorts stuff i spend most of my time doing boring shit 😭 like scrolling mindlessly watching family guy soap cutting tiktoks or washing up or doing uni work. anyway onto the ideas... if youre near any rivers or lakes or the ocean i would recommend doing something on the water i really like rowing and it is something you can do alone in a day which is so peaceful and rewarding and fun. go to your nearest city and cafe-hop with a book youve been meaning to read! GO TO AN ART GALLERY it is one of my fav things ever to do you will never regret going to an art gallery!!! go to a big one or to local exhibitions... go to art fairs and craft markets and support the local artists there, go see student plays! i once did a pottery making class which was fucking hilarious it was so fun and you can find so many similar things locally, you can make soap or do life drawing or learn to weave. and in doing these things you end up meeting so many people of so many different ages and walks and life AND you can learn so many new skills and find new passions and hear new stories and become involved in your community. GO TO PUNK GIGS! check out your local music scene! last week i got two tickets to a random feminist punk show and put 'hey anyone want this other ticket' on my instagram story and went with a complete stranger and ended the night hugging her at the barrier with loads of new friends. see if there are any flea markets/car boot sales in your area and go and find the weirdest objects and haggle with sellers! one thing i think would be really great to do if youre trying to have fun solo (and if youre the right age and have the financial means) is to book a hotel room/inn/b&b in another town or city or hell another country if youre able and stay there for a night or as long as you like. obvs make sure people know where you are and that you are safe (this one actually might be better to do with one other person) but like... be independent for a night it can be really fun and an amazing learning experience i was able to go abroad independently with a friend this year and as a newly turned adult i felt that throwing myself into a random place id never been to helped me to just kinda. mature in a way. anyway yeah just... go to new places and do new things and learn new skills, indulge your senses always, make a joke out of everything, but get out there and be a little spontaneous because even if youre afraid at first soon enough you wont be. if youre not able to do any of these things then READ. read as much as physically possible. read a different book by a different author in a different genre from a different culture every day. read wikipedia pages and go down rabbit holes. watch 5 different movies and read an essay on each one when youve finished. just like youll never regret going to a show or an art gallery you will never regret any time you spend reading. i have no idea if this was the answer you were looking for but i hope it was at least in the right ballpark or a conveniently adjacent one. if you have any followups or whatever my inbox is always open and i am having a very cool and fun night taking notes on a digital lecture about washington irving i was meant to do last week

[petewentzisblack1312]

I just went through the worst manic phase of my life (like I’ve never been actually manic like that i mainly experience hypomania which I’ve enjoyed as a respite from the depressive episodes and the ways to get shit done) but this shit was terrible, like to the point that my coworkers noticed and were concerned and my mom would not get in a car with me driving (and my mom with no psych background at all described me as manic). Like I could not get shit done or focus and I was so irritable and hyperactive and I could not keep still and I could not get my brain to stop moving and I could not sleep without ambien (which idk if it’s making me worse I have to meet with my doctor)

But anyway I never understood MANIA better than now like Pete fucking Did That like that album is a manic episode. Especially young and menace like the “we’ve gone way too fast for way too long” and the “I forgot what I was losing my mind about” and also Stay Frosty with “even at the best of times I’m out of my mind” and sunshine riptide with “I don’t even have my own attention” like this shit was my lifeline this week. I have since dropped down hard into a depressive phase so that’s when I turn to MCR but fuck like Pete really did just put mania into words in a way that not a lot of artists have (only other that comes to mind is Halsey). I think mania is so hard to write about because 1) it’s not something many people experience and 2) it’s really just so hard to describe and make art about that people would want to listen to you know? Even young and menace like it’s purposefully hard to listen to I feel like because a manic phase is hard to be in and like my brain felt like that chopped chorus the entire time I was manic and somehow that felt soothing to listen to at the time lol

I also really like the way you’ve analyzed it how the love songs are love songs to the mania like half the reason I’ve never really talked to my doctor about it is because I don’t want to lose the manic episodes but I’ve felt like I’ve been losing my mind recently cause I keep oscillating back and forth so. It’s time.

But yeah MANIA is so good and I hate how people think it’s about him being happy now. Mania ≠ happiness and I feel like people aren’t really listening to the lyrics 🙃

im really sorry you went/are going through a manic episode. like i know it feels kinda amazing while youre in it sometimes but it also feels like the worst thing ever. its contradictory like that. im glad youre seeking help. even hypomania can be dangerous sometimes, even though it feels good to finally be productive and have energy after a depressive episode. i will say that the thing about being treated for bipolar disorder is that you dont just lose the mania, you lose the depression too. i mean you dont completely lose either, treating mental illnesses is more about management than curing them, but i find that while i dont have the severe high energy i can do anything and everything phases, i also dont have the severe physical inability to feel anything except numbness. it mostly made me more balanced and more in control.

that being said, yeah. MANIA is an album about mania and it shows. like, i still think the phrase sunshine riptide is the best description of a manic episode ive ever heard. i think another part of the reason people dont write about mania more is the very thing you said about how people think its about being happy. like people dont really truly understand what mania is. it doesnt sink in how little control you have. it takes self awareness to recognize that your feeling of euphoria is destroying your life, and i think theres so much emphasis on productivity and moving forward that people dont question how healthy (or unhealthy) mania truly is. part of the reason a lot of people who experience mania cling to it so much is the pressure from people and systems around them to be productive, so its no wonder that people fall in love with their mania, which is why i really like the interpretation of mania as a toxic lover. i cant lie, its intoxicating. when the alternative is frustrating inability, being struck with the desire to do everything you want to do feels fucking good. i think a lot of lyrics on MANIA reflect that (take all your possibilities and take away the limits). then theres lyrics that encapsulate the distractedness, the way "i dont even have my own attention" ("i was about to say something that would solve all our problems but then i got drunk and forgot what i was talking about." kind of marries these two points) and then theres the obsessiveness to your own detriments (ive got dreams of my own but i want to make yours come true). like its just a slideshow of a manic episode, and it does so so. i dont want to say elegantly, because just by the nature of the album and the way it explores its themes, its not at all elegant. but it does so effectively. perfectly.

anyway, im glad you like my analysis! i hope you feel better, and i hope you find the treatment thats best for you.

[haootia]

blender can be really god damn frustrating sometimes(frequently) but i will say that working on 3d modeling gets me "in the zone" more easily than anything else. music or illustration i struggle to work more than like 1 hour at a time but i can do 3d for 3 or 4 straight and still be productive and enjoying it. surely part of this is because im a noob and not very good and every success is totally novel therefore i get Brain Rewards way faster (10000 exp to a level 2 pokemon versus a level 60) but i think also there is something about doing a task that requires a lot of small tweaking that engages me more... a lot of little [tasks] and they all get [accomplished]...! im a very fastidious person except when im not but like for illustration in particular 90% of my workflow is draw a stroke, dont like it, ctrl+z, draw another stroke, dont like it, Ad Infinitum until i finally get the lineart done 1000 years later. and even though 3d modeling absolutely requires a lot of ctrl+z-ing it just feels more productive because im not just staring at a blank space while i effectively reroll the same line over and over again. mathematical precision. i did pixel art for years and years (as a child with scratch 1.4 as my primary image editing tool 🫥) before i ever tried digital illustration first with a mouse and then eventually with a drawing tablet and when i first started i was even worse with the lineart, i would crank the stabilizer/weighting to literally as high as it would go for every stroke. and because i couldnt get pen pressure to work in gimp i would manually erase the corners of lines to make them look tapered. if you have seen & made a careful study of the decade old fantroll art i posted on here ages ago as a then vs now type thing, i think this method is really obvious and bad looking. but anyway the point is : for visual art i just like to be able to adjust things exactly how i want them, which is completely antipodal to how i do music. for music i start from random sounds i got off websdr or raw data conversion and then i layer other stuff over it also basically randomly. i dont like fastidiously tweaking instrument settings and eq and stuff because uhhh i guess im not as sensitive to sound as i am to visuals and mostly i cant actually tell what moving one dial 0.1 degrees to the left is doing to the sound. tradeoff for having really good color vision i guess. anyway yeah i just slap that shit together completely off the cuff with random synths and random effects until i get tired of listening to it and then im done. my eccentric genius..... i forgot why i even started writing this long ass diary post. teehee

[baratiddyslut]

Yall.

Looking back at my history with Sonic... it's so fucking surreal that I got to witness the births of 90% of this fandom's pairings.

I remember when Sonails used to be the absolute norm along side Sonally because most people were on the fence about whether Tails was a boy or not so they just defaulted to making him a girl. I still remember reading fanfics that referred to our little yellow menace as "she". This quickly got shut down though when Sega confirmed Tails as a "he". Sonails fell into obscurity because "GAY BAD" and it hasn't quite recovered from it... I dont think the people of today really want it to... but you can't really blame them. Nowadays it's hard to even imagine that Tails could've been mistaken for anything other than a dude. History is so fun lol.

I remember when Sonadow was invented. With the rising popularity in anime (specifically shounen anime), Shounen-Ai was creeping its way up there. Gay relationships were so goddamn taboo compared to nowadays but goddamnit if the taboo didn't capture your heart in some weird demented way- then I guess people got tired of the soft and fluffy "Shounen-Ai" and just wanted the gay porn, the "YAOI" and by god if Sonadow wasn't the most popular yaoi ship in existence... It still very much is but it's toned down in it's depraved raunchiness over the years. I still remember when it used to have like 5 names because people were so into trying to categorize it in the "Seme/Uke" fashion. Shadic/Shadonic/ShaSoni for Seme!Shadow and Uke!Sonic- which was and still very much is the most popular iteration of the ship, then you had SoniSha/Sonadow for the Seme!Sonic and Uke!Shadow version. Somewhere down the line, Westerners got too lazy to categorize and decided that "Sonadow" sounded the best because it rolls off the tongue nice and has a good mouth feel so it shall be the umbrella term for every iteration of Sonic x Shadow x Sonic. Sonadow has literally withstood the test of time for a whole 20 goddamn years and counting, if ANYTHING, yall HAVE to give this ship mad props for that. Not even Sonally can compare to that and Sonamy is a close second. I say Sonamy is a close second because it was never really enjoyed as Sonic and Amy being cute together (yes, like every ship, there are people who actually genuinely enjoyed it but the climate was the complete opposite). Sonamy was "enjoyed" because it was either better than Sonally or because it wasn't "gross gay yaoi shit" like Sonadow and other upcoming ships.

NEXT IS SONKNUX. It's always been an understated ship but it definitely became a little more popular when Sonadow got big because "MORE YAOI". I remember not having very strong feelings for the ship. I didn't hate it but I didn't care for it either, it was more like "yeah ok that makes sense if you're going to make it gay". It was never "OMG SO POPULAR" but it did have a following you had to acknowledge, like even the most delusional people couldn't deny this ship lol. There was also Knuxadow but at the time it was barely even a thing, it was an obscure rarepair but not so much anymore.

Now the go to for Knuckles ships was and still definitely is Knuxouge. God I remember all of the misogynistic flavored fan art and fan fics for this pairing- like, I get it. Rouge got nice curves, big ass, and fat tiddies while Knuckles got that big dick (which I'm going to say he doesn't because there's literally nothing there... there's nothing there except for smooth red fur... nothing-) and hypermasculinity. I get it. I loved this ship tho, there was more porn of it than genuine fan art and fan fics, but I mean yall get the picture. Im pretty sure yall can grasp the climate that surrounded this ship back in the day.

Knuxpio is also a ship but it was super obscure, like only deep divers got into it. I guess that still kinda rings true today because although there are definitely more people to appreciate it, it's still not on the public stage like alot of other ships. Same goes for Knuxighty and most other Knuckles ships.

CRAILS... TAILREAM... TAILS X CREAM. I am almost positive we still don't have a definitive ship name for these two but boy do I remember when these two little demons blew up. I used to like this ship because I thought it was super super adorable- like, here you have Sonic with all of these love interests but what about Tails? Tails should have a little someone of his own. In walks Cream in all of her adorable little bunny glory..... and Charmy too- BUT EVERYTHING WENT SO BAD SO FUCKING FAST. IT WAS NO LONGER CUTE. Welcome to the big popularity boom of shotacon and lolicon outside of Japan.

This post is already miles long so look out for a second one... probably... it's just so fun recalling the fruition of all of these ships and comparing some of them to how they're received today. Much nostalgia very punch to the gut~

[actualbird]

can the nxx boys dance?

wc: 1.4k

notes: pls open the links, i will die for u, dance is so beautiful

vyn richter

yes, REALLY FRIGGING WELL, the stuff of FAIRYTALES.

his first birthday ssr told us that hes classically trained in MANY forms of ballroom dance. "many"???? i'd like to think this means ALL actually.

hes most adept with waltzes but he really enjoys a fast paced swing, he can do one HELL of a saucy tango. hes got a wonderful ear for music, just a few seconds of listening and hes clocked in the type of dance and the beat and just what kind of performance people are expecting from it, and he'll lead the way, the picture perfect image of elegance and beauty

perhaps it's not that vyn is good at dancing, it's that hes good at PERFORMING. and at roping you into the performance as well. he's a DAMN GOOD lead, he can do it perfectly, telegraphing the exact movements you need to do to complete the dance alongside with him

but thats the thing, vyn can only ever dance with a partner

(which, sidenote, of all the boys i would put into an ice dance figure skating AU in, itd be vyn richter. and he'd dance like this. REALLY FUCKIN GOOD.)

he doesnt dance without a partner. never has. hes been taught forms of dance ONLY as a part of a pair, ONLY as the one in control. so hes out of his element when hes alone (dont expect him to dance with just himself, theres nobody to direct, what does he do????) or when the other person is leading.

this would make for some cute scenarios. vyn richter may be the ballroom dance genius, but perhaps you know how to dance at a club. he'd gasp in surprise as you move his body for him. when you (or anybody else he trusts) teach him, hes in your care.

all in all, dancing for vyn has a history of being a performance for other people Only. not for him or his happiness. when dance becomes something a bit more "selfish" so to speak, hes surprised and is willing to see where this surprise will take him

artem wing

yes but he is SO SO SO STIFF (note: i know nothing about the artem dance card where mc is in red dress, these are ALL just hcs, pls dont flame me)

guys, this is artem wing we're talking about here. he's stiff at work, he's stiff when hes supposed to be relaxing, im sure on his first date he needs to be TOLD to like, fuckin exhale. this is the most clenched man ive seen in his life, and it's to his detriment.

so much of what makes art FUN is letting a bit of yourself go and artem is like "BUT WHAT IF THAT MEANS I'LL FAIL." before he tries any dance (and maybe it's for the company uhhh...party or some shit? ur not getting this dude to dance because he initiated it, u'll have to finagle a situation where he HAS TO), he watches all the videos and reads up on the history and he has a perfect theoretical understanding of all the moving parts----

and then when he sees u (or insert whatever ship u like, mc, nxx boy, maybe forgo the nxx polycule tho bc 5 people dancing is hard to coordinate so artem will just lie on the floor and die) all that information goes OUT THE WINDOW. he is clenched once more, reblog if u cry every time

see, the REASON he gets so stiff is because of the pressure from the situation (must be perfect), the pressure from you/other (must not let you down), and the pressure from himself (obviously if he fails at dancing he is a horrible terrible no good man who deserves nothing in life [artem wing depression spiral])

he'll only calm down after he makes a mistake, actually. he stumbles and steps on your foot and hes SO SO SO SORRY but you laugh it off, pull him closer, and tell him it's alright. youre both learning together, yeah? mistakes and successes, you'd like to share them both with him

marius von hagen

yes and you WANT HIM TO STOP (...u dont actually, it's HOT)

ive written several past posts where i am CONVINCED marius has no personal grasp of musical elements whatsoever, so hes got no beat, he cant dance in time to any song, not even ba ba black sheep.

tho his lack of beat doesnt bother or stop him though from dancing like a SLUT (affectionate)

i think marius learned how to dance at smarmy rich kids parties he was invited to as a kid and he hated those because everybody sucked but the alcohol was good and the inhibitions were loosened. desperate to have SOME KIND OF FUN at this hellish gathering, he starts dancing

marius is a shameless person, he doesnt do dance moves so much as just let his body move in whatever way it wants to. the result is a dance thats electric. full of energy yet flowing at the same time, completely spur of the moment, and really, really...alluring. like, it's not slut from the get-go, marius only MAKES IT slut when he wants to. but his dancing is wholly something you cant take your eyes off of, despite the fact hes dancing to a song that only he can hear in his head.

because marius doesnt dance to music. he dances to the tune of himself.

(art has always been the one avenue where he can be who he is no matter what, yeah? no roles, no expectations. just him, for once, letting go and being him.)

(he will absolutely dance on his own, especially at his studio. if anybody sees him, he'll smirk all smug and transform his dancing into whatever is going to get that person to blush and stutter the MOST. among all the boys, marius von hagen is most likely to give you a lap dance, if you wanted one.)

luke pearce

no. he cant. and when he does, hes a HUGE AWKWARD DORK

see, luke just has so much trouble moving his body in situations where hes not fighting/sports-ing. he can do mid air spins with a gun, can scale a rock climbing wall in record time (never getting over it), can show off SO MUCH how hes SO STRONG OOOHHH, but ask him to dance and he'll wiggle. it's excruciating for everybody involved

the NSB TRIED to train him in dance (it would be useful for undercover missions) but the dance instructor nearly cried because luke's body is SO BEAUTIFUL AND YET LUKE IS INCAPABLE OF MOVING IT. after a few hours luke is on the floor, panting, whining, "can i please just kill some people?" so the NSB just lets him go kill some people

but luke isnt immune to the magic of music. when he hears a banger he taps his foot along to the beat, he bops his head, and NSB CCTV camera footage has recorded many instances where hes dancing alone in the elevator. and hes ADORABLE, he mindlessly dances in a way that exudes joy and happiness. no actual "dance moves" from a certain dance style, just luke bopping and vibing like a huge dork. it's the kind of dancing that makes everybody smile and actually heres a visual peg for how i think luke dances

but he stops the moment somebody else is there. bc his issue is that he gets bashful when he knows hes being watched. thats when the shame trickles in because how DARE he let himself have fun

(the good news is that once he trusts somebody else and once that other person bonks him on the head like "I LIKE IT WHEN UR HAPPY, PLS LET URSELF BE HAPPY" he'll come out of his shell and dance in the little moments. when hes cooking, when hes feeding peanut. maybe it's okay to have fun, especially since it gives you joy)

(additional visual peg: this is just a very good luke/mc dance, case closed)

last sidenote: given everybodys HUGELY DIFFERENT styles, motivations, and overall vibes of dancing, please expect that the nxx investigation team new year's eve party---where everybody gets drunk on like 3 bottles of wine vyn made---is an absolute disaster, in terms of people drunkenly dancing.

nobody meshes with one another AT ALL.

thats not stopping them tho.

(mc's got videos of the night. the law is the only thing stopping her from using marluke_dance.mp4 as blackmail material)

[carry-on-my-wayward-butt]

He did? Umm.. what happened exactly?

(referring to this post)

my 11th grade chemistry teacher had an associates degree in liberal arts.

you know how in virtually every class you’ve ever had since middle school, your teachers made a big stink about the syllabus? she didn’t have one. this was her first teaching job, which she got because of her length experience as a substitute, not by her licensing qualifications. we were, at first, excited to have her, because she was a “fun sub” and we were 17 years old and stupid as all shit. we were the “normal chem” class in a system where the only other options were “honors chem” which was filled with children who actually know how to study (or cheat) and have an air of proper student activity, and “AP Chem”, which is clear enough if you’ve been an american student in the last 15 years.

she followed the mcgraw hill chemistry book in order of chapters, despite the fact that our state standardized tests did several of the chapters out of order. ever notice how you’ll suddenly be looking at chapter 11 when just last week you were on chapter 5, then the next week you’re on chapter 8? standardized testing is the reason. anyways by asking my friends in other classes who had chemistry teachers of relative competence, i was able to discern which chapters i should focus on, and while she was distracted with literally watching youtube videos all period, I was turning around in my seat and walking across the classroom helping my friends and enemies with the packets. (she was a two-packets-a-week kinda teacher.)

yes i said enemies too. the people i hated, i hated because they were sons of bitches i wouldnt piss on to put out a fire. i hated them so dearly i used to pray to god that they would bump into me so i could throw myself into the concrete and split my forehead open and get them expelled due to the blood-clause of our “zero-tolerance policy”. two of the kids in my class had, only the previous year, attempted to set my hair on fire.

i hated the teacher more. 

it gave me extreme pleasure to see her fume and clench her fists when a student would say “i need help” across the classroom and she would move to get up and they would say “oh not you miss, im waiting for vicky.” jesus christ the only time ive ever felt a comparable high was when i was at a halloween party in college where i was literally so zooted i couldn’t move.

it got worse over time, her getting more and more angry, my ego growing larger and larger. i was a huge bitch in high school, i really thought i was the smartest bitch in the room at any given moment. severe main character syndrome. imagine that kind of person actually being right for 45 minutes out of every day. can you even comprehend the kind of frustration that would create? in a room full of little sociopaths who dont give a shit about anything but getting this joke of a class over with so they can graduate? your first real teaching job and they look right past you, the teacher, to this annoying little shit whose grades are completely abysmal? how are they managing to learn anything from a child who can barely speak in front of more than 10 people? who turns cherry red in the face of literally every authority figure in the building except you? who can’t concentrate and stay still in one spot for more than five minutes? all of your other classes behave! they listen! they sit down and shut up and do the packets! so what fucking gives!!!

so you say “fine, since you all HATE ME so much i just won’t teach then!!!” on literally week fucking ten of teaching. and instead of prostrating themselves before you, begging you to like... point at transparencies and read directly from powerpoints i guess.

and they all collectively say “okay” and let the chipmunk child flutter between desks and help them memorize formulas and mnemonic devices and shit. surely her grades will suffer if she’s constantly dealing with other people and you’ll have justification that her horseshit is “distracting” and “a detriment to her studies”. she got bored gave up on that after two days after nothing changed.

then we did the midterm.

except at the end of the exam packet was something we never learned because again, she was going through the book chronologically. because i actually enjoyed the chem book (so much that i stole it when the year was up lmao), i knew the material.

it was about lewis dots/structures. i couldn’t tell you a damn thing about it today but in december 2010 i absolutely knew that shit. i didnt have too much of a problem with it in the exam, but the students who had gotten to that point were complaining and at first she pulled that “you should have been studying independently uwu” shit but the class was about to get loud during exam period so she shushed us and said that when we get to that point, just stop, and she’ll mark it correct during grading, no harm no foul just keep it quiet. one of the more confrontational students called horseshit and said theres no way we’re trusting that and there’s definitely no way anyone will keep an entire classroom cheating at the instruction of the teacher quiet.

i offered to teach it.

she scoffed, rolled eyes, said “sure fine but you can’t get your exam back” and i said “okay.” so when everyone was to the point in the exam, we piled them all on her desk and i used the whiteboard to briefly and quietly explain lewis dots, used the book examples and problems, and helped the other kids understand. there were a couple exam questions that were lifted straight from the book problems so i skipped those. while teaching i realized i had gotten a couple wrong which sucked :( it was an incredibly stupid experience overall, and no teacher worth the paper their certification is printed on would have allowed that to happen. and fucking yet.

anyways everyone but me got their exams back and finished it and many of us passed, only a few of them did particularly well.

discussing the chem exam with friends who also took the chem exam, many students found their anecdote about the lewis dots to be confounding, for you see, the exam we took was not, in fact, the midterm, but the god damned final.

she had us taking the fucking final because she didnt read the fucking folders which read “midterm” and “final exam” on them

she was reprimanded severely and we all had to take the exam on different days, in different classrooms, sitting very far apart. after that she hated me even more. like girl it was your fault lmao i am literally a teenager grow up lol. anyways you can imagine how much more fucking insufferable i became, knowing how miserable she was.

it all came to a head in february when some students were giggling quietly following a minor fuck up on her part regarding bellwork. they were making fun of her like “are you sure thats not tomorrows bellwork lol” and a friend next to me did the “hey i need help wait no miss not you sorry” thing and when i answered him, she solidly snapped. blah blah YOURE SOOOO DISTRACTING blah blah YOU THINK YOURE SOOOO SMART DONT YOU blah blah blah and she was like demanding i leave the room and shouting at the top of her lungs at me “ YOU POISON THE MINDS OF EVERY OTHER STUDENT HERE. YOU’RE POISONOUS VICTORIA, YOU’RE A VIRUS IN THIS CLASSROOM.”

i will never forget that line as long as i live. it was like crack to me. i moved to open the door to leave and the vp opened it first. he escorted me to the office and asked me what happened, then told me to keep my head down in class from now on, and that if i wanted to help my friends i should give them my number and help them out on our own time. i was like “bro thats really stupid” and he was like “thats all we can do right now but i promise we’re working on it”

i lasted the rest of the year giving smug smiles as we did packet after fucking packet for the rest of the year. they were all take-home work. i wasnt comfy giving my number to my enemies. the class camaraderie ended.

the final was altered. my class took a different final than the rest of the normal chem classes.

i started 12th grade and got a solid case of senioritis. i told that story to anyone who would listen. while it was happening, i obviously told my favorite teacher everything as it happened. when i mentioned it senior year he was like “oh yeah i forgot about her,

she was fired over the summer.”