#in some ways post-crisis and that era specifically was okay but in a lot of ways it was an outlier for lex luthor's characterisation

[cryingalexanders]

I've read that arc, and it ended with Superman bringing Lena back to Lex and telling him that he needed to not let her go again. So to an extent I think Williamson is picking up with that, after the same writers who laid it down ignored Lena for the rest of the run!

(This is a sidenote but after looking for discussion of this arc on this site I have some opinions.)

Lena II's original personality was "baby" and then "brainwashed evil, tortured girl" when she came back in Our Worlds at War. I can see why some people like the dynamic between her and Lex in this version, what we saw of it was sorta compelling. But I don't agree that she had much of an actual character or that her original writers gave her a lot of focus.

IMO, whatever characterisation Williamson gives her is basically establishing her personality rather than contradicting anything that came before.

Do you think lex actually cares about lena (his daughter) bc reading the current comics shes in lex does seem concerned about her...but I've seen snippets of the 00's comics where lex trades her for tech. That story is apparently still canon so it's hard to believe lex was fine with handing lena over to brainiac when she was a baby and is now devoted to her when she's a teen. I'm wondering if lena knows something that lex doesn't want brainiac to find out hence the amount of concern lex shows about her being around but idk. Also I'm surprised lena isnt more pissed off at her dad, like the guy sold her out, literally.

the short answer: i think williamson thinks that lex cares about her and is writing lex as such. i also think lena’s earliest appearances, when she was an infant, seem to suggest that he genuinely loved her as well, and handing her over to brainiac always felt a little jarring to me compared to his characterization with her earlier.

the early 2000s were also a different era for lex’s characterization, and they were kind of pushing a very unsympathetic version of him at the time. i specifically remember bruce in jeph loeb’s batman/superman title saying lex was worse than the joker, which in any other era would be a pretty insane thing to say.

i’m curious if williamson will delve any deeper into it, but his take on lex is pretty sympathetic, and i suspect lena’s presence is there in part to humanize him. i would suspect his concern for lena is specifically because he doesn’t want to lose her again.

[simplydnp]

be honest with me. what are the chances of a hard launch in june

anon this question goes back years. and the thing is. we have been right once before.

you ask me this this time last year? fuck no. i might even quip that dapg would come back before dnp would hard launch. well. look at us now.

and even then, you look back on the content they started with in the revival--it honestly kind of felt exactly like where we left off, only a lot more explicitly queer (we stan). and then... trying to see without my glasses 2. and bang, spooky week happened. and that shifted the balance. we suddenly got slo-mo replays of handholds. day, after day, after day, finishing with the absolute masterpiece of halloween baking cinnamon rolls. in all honesty it was so much more than i'd've ever expected from them. truly another post-baking universe.

and it never really slowed down. suddenly we had cat prom photos, catboy butlers, catboy dan w/ phil photography credit, theyre 'wrestling' --running us full throttle into gamingmas, the first since 2017. and every day we had a new thing to freak out over: standing close. golf jokes. and then... pinof reacts. i don't know what compelled them to do it but i do have speculations. genuinely, i think they wanted to defang a lot of their history. we treated pinof 1, especially, with this... reverance. and it wasn't talked about too publicly--and dnp didnt do it either. so if they really wanted to move on, to bring down the walls, open the floodgates, define this new era: they had to throw the first stone. and they did. quite heartily too. suddenly this almost taboo part of their history--almost too intimate to be perceived--was on the table. and we were talking about it. joking about it. giving clear signals of 'we see it, it's okay.' and suddenly we existed in a post-pinof reacts world. of anything, i would've never predicted they would've done that. absolutely wild. follow that with it takes two being so chill and fond. incohearant being so blatant and heartfelt. trombone champ being unhinged and chaotic. the genuine and sweet complimenting of each other in the red carpet video. devan wedding... happilyphoreverafter... we crashed forward in time. never knowing what would be next. where is the line? how far will they go.

they teased us with japhan honeymoon and we knew 2024 would be wild. but we didn't know how much. from wdapteo 2023, to specific reminiscing about japan w/ devan, WAD happening, and phil playing a huge role in it all--from the orange carpet hosting, to 'ive been in *sex noises* with phil from the start!', to 'remote crisis manager phil lester', to dan saying he can stay during the thank you.

one of the biggest videos so far this year was the tiktok likes one. i will be forever haunted by the dog eating cheeseburger and willy wonka tiktoks--theres some things i was never meant to know. and yet. they tell us. explicitly.

every single video on amazingphil since the return of dapg has mentioned or featured dan. there's been a palpable shift in the way they interact. have you seen the way phil has been glowing in videos lately? this guy is on cloud nine all the time. it's really not hard to see why.

the energy of keep or yeet w/ dan... the absolute Lack of pretense of it all. phan twitter... watch your step baby girl...

dan and phil fucking crafts. talk about an unexpected return. legacy defining, one might even say. we're still in this tailspin of what everything means and they drop this insanely iconic video on us. from the storytelling to the production to the aesthetic--and its all capped off by explicit handholding. yes, it was part of the sacrifice. but hand in hand, the heart dan ripped from phils chest in one, and the knife that did it in the other... oh boy. we're really in it now. and then they put it on fucking merch. genius. truly no one does it like them.

and the foot has been on the accelerator since. dan and phil connections, shuffleboard & mocktails, getting deep slumber party, acknowledgement & approval of fics (yes previously given but never like this)--hell, even the sims today was wild for 'is their love language horrible banter 👀'.

you didn't ask for an essay but i gave you one. all of this to say, they've been moving the line. quite intentionally so. they intentionally revived their joint branding. they are 'dan and phil' again, and seem happier than ever about it, and i think that means something. they're saying things they never would have before--out of the closet or not.

as for june... 5 years since coming out is a big deal. so is this year being 15 years of dnp. hell, so is this year for being the first out pride month where they're explicitly a duo and regularly making content together. they're sentimental, there will be something.

my craziest idea is reacting to their coming out videos ✌️😔 --but i don't think it'll actually happen. as for more realistic, i could see pride merch. and however that goes will be significant, in my opinion. i'm excited and curious.

i don't know if they'll hard launch. it's hard to put all of the implications, complications, and speculations back into the box once it's opened. dan's talked about it before--wanting to be able to fuck up and not be publically executed, instead, being able to learn and grow and work it out. i think that's a very understandable stance to have. very grounded. we'd have to ask him if tour/dapg has changed that now. i do think he's had some sort of life epiphany--whether it's about that specifically, only he can say. but i think it's there.

even if i portray a lot of level-headedness, i wear my clown nose with pride. sometimes the only option is to go with whatever is funniest at the time. they're both jokesters, so they could commit to a bit like that. but it's also like, it can be too serious for them to want to joke about. i don't know. i think we're in this almost beautiful state right now--the we know you know of it all. there's no expectations, no demands to be met, no obligations of types of content. they're happy. we're happy. it depends on if they feel ready. if they want to. we'll be here, always.

[ariseur]

sephiroth w/ a little sister!reader !? I don't see many headcanons / fic / anything of Sephiroth with this type of scenario although I consider it something cute & fun x'D, specifically Seph discovering that his little and beloved (?) sister has several guys with a love interest behind her. How would Seph be in the situation, would he be a protective older brother, would he be the type that scares them away with just a deadly look? My, many possibilities! (⁠☆⁠▽⁠☆⁠)

sephiroth’s little sister hcs 𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪

sephiroth (ffvii) x reader (platonic!!)

┊ ˚➶ notes ｡˚ 🎼

THIS REQUEST WAS SOO CUTE I NEVER SEE LITTLE SISTER HCS LIKE THIS EITHERR. thank you for the request anon, hope i did it justice !! 💗

┊ ˚➶ warnings ｡˚ 🎼

intended lowercase, mentions of pre and post nibelheim, mentions of hojo (he’s a warning within itself), possessiveness but like not in a weird way.. seph’s just crazy, lmk if i missed anything!!

. ˚◞♡ ⃗ *ೃ༄ . ˚◞♡ ⃗ *ೃ༄ . ˚◞♡ ⃗ *ೃ༄ . ˚◞♡ ⃗ *ೃ༄

❥ soooo.. starting off!!

❥ i think that sephiroth with a little sister would definitely be interesting; the war hero now being seen with an ultimately younger girl, it’d be amusing seeing such a difference between the two especially if you’re shorter.

❥ i’m not sure how being sephiroth’s sister would necessarily work considering he was an “experiment” of jenova, and from my knowledge after lucrecia gave birth to him she was crystallized in the crystal caves? but if we’re ignoring that and maybe that didn’t happen or something like that idk, i think it’d be pretty hectic, especially if you were also an experiment of jenova’s cells.

❥ both pre and post sephiroth would love you dearly. pre sephiroth would make it a mission to visit you as much as possible and would try to fit some time in his schedule to go and hang out with you. usually, he’d go take walks with you or if you like food then he’d be insistent on making a trip of trying a bunch of new places.

❥ he is honestly your biggest defender— although i don’t expect a lot of people to disrespect you while a close-to-six-foot first class SOLDIER is looming right behind you. i dont know if he’d let you out of his sight all that often when you’re around him, his instincts just kinda kick in so he’s following you around like a dog.

❥ if you were known by genesis and angeal crisis-core era, and genesis hits on you or even tries to flirt??? ooh sephiroth is right behind you in an instant. he is NOT letting genesis get with you at all, i’m sorry in advance to the self insert x genesis readers that had this idea in mind but i def don’t think that seph would be okay with you dating his friends. even angeal, whom he trusts very dearly and knows that he wouldn’t try anything with you, would have sephiroth feeling iffy.

❥ if you had “suitors” or if you were popular with the boys ( and maybe the ladies too if you’re just THAT suave ), ooh sephiroth would have a heart attack. he’d want you to choose who you want, of course, but be prepared for sephiroth lurking around every corner like a cat. if you bring your partner to meet him? he’s gonna look like the scariest mf regardless if he’s trying to be or not.

❥ he especially doesn’t want you to do anything with his job. if you have jenova cells or if extraordinary strength then he might feel a little better if you were to be involved with the SOLDIER program or shinra, but if you’re a civilian then he’d rather not get you involved with his duties. there’s too much on the line and he can’t risk you getting hurt, also another reason why he prefers to keep you on the down low or for him to only visit you.

❥ also another thought, but i just keep imagining zack flirting with you or meeting you and thinking you’re absolutely GORGEOUS ( because if you’re related to sephiroth.. you gotta be pretty let’s be honest that mans so beautiful ) ( we don’t talk about hojo though, there’s no way he’s related to seph. vincent gotta be the daddy ), but then once he sees that sephiroth is your brother he literally goes WHITE. starts trying to subtly be more friendly and lowkey apologize for his behavior.. spoiler alert; zack is not subtle.

❥ now whatever you do.. don’t imagine sephiroth meeting you the day before heading out to nibelheim. whatever you don’t, think imagine you guys walking at night as he talks about how worried he is for his friends, and how he thinks zack is going to do. and whatever you do, don’t imagine reminiscing after the village burns down, your mind trailing back to the last hug he gave you before he found out what he really was.

❥ if you were to still stay with post nibelheim sephiroth, he wouldn’t let you out of his sight. he can’t lose you at all, not now— not now that he knows you’re the only thing he has left. he’ll go through the motions of being very cold to you sometimes and then being very overprotective

❥ he’d come home one day from only the lord knows where, and wake you up in the middle of the night. and when you finally awake, he wouldn’t let you go. i imagine he’d feel conflicted. sephiroth was dehumanized from birth and ostracized from a normal life as he never met his true mother lucrecia and hojo had no interest in claiming him other than for his own benefit as a scientist. if you were dealt with such things as well, or maybe you were separated because sephiroth was the superior experiment, it wouldn’t matter; sephiroth contained these feelings that he didn’t know how to feel or express himself about.

❥ he wouldn’t understand why he felt this way, especially having no sort of concept of family brought to him within the early years of his life, but all he knows is that he has you

❥ he only has you— and he’s not willing to risk losing you anytime soon.

[cuephrase]

What are some things introduced new52 to current day that you like and think are an overall net positive for batfam continuity? (As in, it's not uncommon for me to see fan things that mainly focus on post crisis/pre flashpoint stuff but still incorporate new comic aspects, such as slightly changed family dynamics/new developments, and it's interesting for me to find out what different people think is and isn't worth keeping from what got added after the reboot)

ooooh this is a fun question!!

i was going to say i haven't read that many n52 and onwards runs, and then i realized i have actually read most of the ones i want to, i just haven't read any batman/'tec/batgirl/or duke's runs yet. (i read like...half of We Are Robin, Joker War, and i've read batman from where zdarsky come in so like have also read Gotham War.) (might read Catwoman?? not the point.)

since we're sticking strictly to net positives, i'll include something that i like, even if i have criticisms of it, but i won't get into those criticisms so we can stay positive!! (future cue, so this is kind of a lie but i swear i didn't go overboard.) i'm going to include stuff as minor as like costumes bc why not. also nothing is going to be in order of like what i like the most to what i like the least, just fyi. also, probs not definitive, knowing me i will forget something lmao

New52 Era-

tim's red robin costume. that suit is *chef's kiss* imo. i love that he has wings. i...i don't know if i necessarily want it back rn bc i am sososososo in love with his current robin costume, but i do adore the n52 red robin suit

i personally like that they went ahead and made jason less villain, more anti-hero. i think him trying to reintegrate with the batfam creates some very compelling crises

dick as Agent 37!! which...okay, no criticisms nvm. michael janin's art tho >>> okay well actually maybe sometimes i wish this was like elseworlds/black label instead of mainline but

might be a bit of a reach, but i really enjoy the first handful of arcs in n52 b&r and the relationship dynamic they established for bruce and dami

i like that tim and jason are somewhat friendly. i think it makes sense. for a lot of reasons. this is a somewhat controversial opinion, which i understand. but this is where i stand

did i like anything else from this era specifically?????????

OH

DUKE!!!!!!! i loooooove him very happy he was added

Rebirth Era-

the outlaws, specifically jason's relationship with bizarro. (i enjoyed artemis a lot too!! tbh, haven't read these guys outside of this run tho so zero clue how accurate these portrayals are, so grain of salt?)

the return of dick's fingerstripes!!!!!!! best part of tom taylor's run /hj

TIM'S ROBIN COSTUME AHHHHHH. i'm sorry i love that suit way too much

love damian's current robin costume, although...does he have combat boots rn still? can't remember. if he doesn't, they should give those back

damian + jon's relationship, ik it gets obliterated by the stupid age up, but super sons is still very special to me

tim being bi!! now do kon dc you cowards

alfred's death. i refuse to elaborate. i could, but i shan't (this is not alfred hate tho i swear)

i'm forgetting something rn i know it

oh yeah, i do like tim being robin again. IK. IKKKK. no, i don't think he should be robin forever. no, i don't think dami is a bad robin/shouldn't be robin.

um...i liked dick getting shot in the head. the ric era is not how i would've wanted the aftermath but

i don't want to comment on anything super recent, but i do think there's stuff going on rn that could end up being net positives

the titans being reassembled. jury's out on their location but, i do like that they're back

i'm not counting yj because they're not doing anything with them rn, but they should ugh

i think...i think that's it? there could honestly be a lot more that i'm forgetting. i hope this was interesting!! if there's anything i didn't mention that you're curious about, or something i did mention that you'd like a more in-depth answer about, please feel free to ask!! i'm curious what you consider net positives anon, you should shareeee

[zahri-melitor]

20 questions to HATE: 6, 7, 8

I've already answered 6, so let's go with 7 and 8.

7. Opinions on the Young Justice cartoon.

Well let's start with the fact I have never seen a single moment of it, given when it came out and the fact I simply don't watch a lot of cartoons, so my opinions are necessarily based on the effect it has had on the fandom, rather than the cartoon's contents itself.

I think it has become the default entry for a lot of DC fans in terms of their mental construction of what DC looks like, much as the DCAU was that for DC fans who grew up during the 90s. This necessarily introduces a lot of overlap and carried over expected characterisation for fans, particularly around characters they don't know as well/read. Which is an issue when those characters were clearly heavily modified for TV.

(Dinah Lance, my darling, the sins that have been committed upon your characterisation by people assuming that whatever was happening in the Young Justice cartoon maps in any way at all to your comics character)

Like for instance, if I am reading fic and the characters and writers are blandly referring to "The Team" I am out of there. Because the concept that there are so few teams in the DC universe that one can get away with being called "The Team" and people understand that lineup instantly? Go away. Define your terms more accurately. DC is full of teams, large and small, some very specific, some of which almost every character has passed through at some point. Which team are you talking about?

8. Who do you consider main batfam.

Oh, interesting question. It varies depending on era. Okay, going with a more minimalist read rather than the maximalist one I sometimes want to play with: the main Batfam are the people I expect to turn up when someone says "Bruce is going off the rails again" and give their decided opinions on the situation.

So by this definition, it's Bruce, Dick, Tim, Barbara, Cass, and Damian. Jason, Steph and Duke may get invited depending on where in the timeline we are (and may be excluded in others). There's then a wider circle around these 6-9 characters who may get called in for assistance, but they're not the core.

My alternate answer is what I think of as the 'holy trinity network': the concept of 'who counts' that Dick, Barbara and Tim would define as 'Batfam' if they were calling in support for something big going down in Gotham. This is hugely more variable depending on era, but is where the lineup of main batfam members is going to include JPV and Helena and Dinah if the situation is happening in post-Crisis prior to 2006. Dick, Barbara and Tim are the three actual networkers of the Bats, who keep a lot of character relationships going in the constellation of characters who orbit around Gotham, so who they'd preference is always an interesting ask. (Tim calling in Kirk Langstrom for assistance during Reborn is a case in point here).

[sporkberries]

Do you have any Huntress/Helena Bertinelli issue or comic run recs? 👉👈 you have infected me with helena brainrot (positive)

So There are a two ways I can answer this question, the way i did previously with just the comics I'd recommend to get started or a full timeline for her- This time ill go with the full timeline. If you just wanna dip your metaphorical toes in the water check out this post, if you want to read her story from start to finish this is the post for you.

FIRST SOME CONTEXT ON HELENA BERTINELLI'S CHARACTER CREATION. Pre Crisis on Infinite Earth's there was a character known as Helena Wayne, she was the daughter of Earth Two's Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle and was The Huntress. She was fairly popular but the whole uhh massive crisis event erased her from continuity. The problem was people still wanted Huntress she was a recognizable name and also just people liked her so Helena Bertinelli was created. Despite sharing a first name and a superhero name Helena B and Helena W are INCREDIBLY different characters in personality and just.. in like every conceivable way. Alrighty now lets get started, Helena Bertinelli makes her first ever appearance in The Huntress(1989) I really like this comic run. It's pretty intense dealing with both CSA as well as SA but i think it does it pretty respectfully and well. Overall I really like this comic, that being said the art is a bit... rough, so i understand not wanting to read it. The Huntress(1989) 'era' of Helena ends with Justice League International Special 2, which btw if anyone has an actual good scan of this please let me know because my scan is ASS Then we got Detective comics #652-653 which has Helena's new costume and a team up with B-Man himself. Now its time for Robin III: Cry Of the Huntress- This is the first Helena and Tim team up!! I love them so much they r so silly so I consider this book required reading, also Helena has an awful mullet it's amazing Helena also has another story with Tim around this time in Benedictions which is a three part story in Dc Showcase 1994 # 5, Robin(1993) #6 , Showcase #6. Azrael is also running around as Batman during this so thats fun and quirky(i like azbat okay)

Next is Dixon's Helena with Huntress(1994) ERMM this is a comic that exists. It has some panels I like but i don't think its required reading it's uhh... Dixon!! and WOagh no wayyy another tim team up its almost like they are siblings bffs 5ever this is crazy Detective Comics #685-686 and Robin #17 also sidenote i like Lynx's 90's design a lot sighh Next is a string of complicated and long story lines. With Batman Contagion, Batman Legacy, Batman Catacylsm, and Batman No Man's Land. Also she gets her best outfit here yayyy :). Now parsing through all this stuff I don't really care that much about Batman: Legacy and I'm not gonna lie to you and say I've read Contagion in it's entirety because I haven't. Just know that Gotham gets hit by a mutated ebola virus and it sucks and is bad for everybody sjdkfbasdkg. Also again cool new Helena outfit top ten epic moments. Before all the No Man's Land stuff there is Birds Of Prey: ManHunt and Nightwing/Huntress. I do not like the latter and have no strong opinion on the former other than it's the start of a long line of Babs treating Helena like shit. ManHunt does have Dinah and Helena interactions though so :) yippeee Almost forgot this but Read Detective Comics #703 its a really cute Helena and Tim story read it right now thank you XOXOOXO I consider Cataclysm and No Man's Land, No Man's Land especially, CRITICAL HELENA READING. HELENA IS SO GOOD IN NML OH MY GOD. Cataclysm is kinda the set up to No Man's Land and also has a cool Helena/Steph teamup in Blunt Trauma. But No Man's Land is where the really juicy stuff is. I'm not really gonna say what specific issues Helena shows up in because you should really read all of or most of No Man's Land as its not only an important Helena story but THE MOST IMPORTANT Gotham story(in modern times anyway). I read the 5 trades but I've heard good things about the Omnibus as well. If you need further help with No Mans Land and how to read it just shoot me an ask or smth. READ NO MAN'S LAND Okay now after NML Huntres Joins the Justice Leauge of America in JLA #16. I have not read all of Helena's JLA stuff so i cant really comment on it I'm a failure sorry... NOW FOR THE RUCKA STUFF GREG RUCKA LOVE OF MY LIFE!!!!! So First check out Batman Chronicles #15, it's not all Helena but it does have a Helena story which is her first meeting with The Question so erm go read that !!! Now time for one of my fave huntress stories, Batman/Huntress: Cry For Blood. THIS STORY IS SO FUCKING GOOD. It does retcon Helena's previous backstory which i have mixed opinions on but the new backstory is far from bad and also its just soosososo good i love greg rucka so much go read it right fucking now. Now I have bad news for you gamers. We have the Hush storyline wherein Jim Lee introduced the dreaded Helena Ab Window. Hush is generally pretty good but that outfit is uhhh an outfit!! she starts showing up in Batman #609 Generally speaking I do like this storyline so I would recommend the whole thing. Helena regularly starts appearing as a main character in Birds Of Prey at issue 56. Birds Of Prey IS a mixed bag but most of Helena's appearances from here on are in there so... Be prepared for a healthy dose of sexism though. Outside of BOP check out The Question: Pipelines which is a story in Detective Comics 854-864 written by love of my life Rucka of course. Helena is not in the whole thing but its a good story and her and Renee are a great Duo so I recommend it. While your out it also check out both issues of The Question: Convergence. Also written by Rucka and featuring Helena, its good :). Now I did leave some shit out like Battle for the Cowl but thats because I dont like battle for the cowl and also I don't think Helena is very central in those stories so TA DAA here is my list enjoy anon sorry for any spelling errors Tutorial on how i read comics safely

[paperconsumption]

okay so. so this so mild. but the first thing I thought of when i actually started playing this game in like late september/early october. is there is a very similar mindset amongst the many who I had met at the time that they just, didn't need to read the source material.

this can be found in many many fandoms. this isn't a enstars/dc specific thing. DC has a VERY huge barrier to entry and for enstars it way less so.

so you have to find fan translations of the older enstars stories and the way the timeline works it is kind of hard to parse through. where do you start when you weren't there for the whole thing. with enstars there is a (in my mind) objectively good starting point for the whole franchise. ! main story. not like kisaki or the later stuff. like the revolution to ensemble sections. then it's pretty vague. "follow your favs" is the fandom wiki's advice paraphrased and I remember that exact advice when I tried getting into DC. and the confusion when all these pre established characters came in like whhhaat. with Superman there's this image of him. you can get that pretty well if you follow some american pop culture stuff. but if you start to dive into DC with something like, Young Justice (1998) you meet robin and superboy and impulse. and they have all these people they know. and sure you can keep following young justice but you don't really understand what's going on over with say, Robin, who's apparently the 3rd robin? and the second robin. you don't. im off track.

I haven't gone through a decent amount of any of enstars so im incredibly sorry. but The EP:Link and like. the transition to !! it all reminds a bit about Crisis on infinite earths. and post crisis era. except like can i really say that as an exclhsivelt post crisis reader. hmm.

but yeah I'd say the japanese release of !! is the post crisis on infinite earths. and !! to english is having an effect of nu52 to the incoming fanbase (to an extent) but the content is the same... ish. so no where near asbad as nu52. more like rebirth or something. but these thigns are not equivalent.

enstars fans havetrouble finding translations, and after !''s main story it's a lot of "decide for yourself" what reading order if you wanna try and keep track of things happening. DC fans have a hard time finding copies of a decent amount of the older comics, you can't keep track of things no matter what you do. oh and enstars also has a bit of the same problem that dc has about dofferent writers to a tiny extent because Akira doesn't always write the stories, so they sometimes contradict(? don't remember seeing that butI know some say so.)

also enstars english ads are to enstars as Wayne family adventures is to any actual batman stuff.

have a good morning I am so brain dead 👋 thank you for listening ;w; one thousand high fives brigid, one thousand high fives

this is such a cool connection!! when you get really into media like comics and games you start to expect confusing timelines and such but it really isn’t a problem that many other mediums experience you know? they usually always start at chapter 1/episode 1 so attempting to get someone who’s used to that to adapt to enstars or dc would be pretty rough. i’ve already accepted the strangeness of enstars and kinda (?) understand the timeline now but if you asked me anything about how dc works i would not be able to answer. and just because of the nature of how dc comics and enstars stories are created and released, it’s really hard to fix the confusion without a sort of reset—which both of them did—and even then the problem doesn’t go away.

you can’t really think of a definite solution, and neither can anyone on the creative team so it seems, so everyone just gets used to it. it’d be cool to look at other franchises that have similar issues and compare the way each fandom adapts and finds solutions for the other problems you mentioned (finding translations, getting copies of older material that’s out of print, etc). i wonder if there’s consistent methods everyone follows along with, or everyone just does it in their own weird way🤔

[gorogues]

ohhicas replied to your ask post: James had to ask Hartley directly in the comics why the hell he gave a shit what happened to the others after how they treated him so like 💀 Remake killed a lot of the nuances of "oh they absolutely cared he was gay. Very specific ones did not care, and removing that difference killed a lot of the uniqueness of the group's relationships with each other"

This I agree with, though in the modern era I still think the guys may be due for an overhaul. They can have differing opinions on Hartley's reform and political views, and some might not care but others might have big problems with it. Another source of potential conflict is Hartley dating a cop, which the Rogues undoubtedly have feelings about. I think there's room for real tension between him and them that doesn't involve them being hateful.

belphegor1982 replied to your ask post: And that's why my relationship to DC comics canon (whatever the hell that may be) is basically the kind you have to a somewhat distant relative you used to see fairly regularly once upon a time but now you just kinda check in on sometimes in a "so what are they up to these days" way. The version of the Rogues that lives in my head is both very specific and incredibly vague for that very purpose.

That's fair. For me, the good thing about fiction is that nobody actually got hurt and so it isn't a huge deal when a fictional character does something terrible (I don't necessarily like it and it might make me uncomfortable, but a real person/animal wasn't hurt). But not everyone sees things that way, and that's understandable. Plus, everyone draws the line somewhere at the types of media they immerse themselves into, so for example I generally avoid gore and horror. Comic book supervillains doing their thing might be too much for others.

belphegor1982 replied to your ask post: One “the Rogues are all straight except for Piper” headcanon I do have though is that any and all of them could have fallen under the queer umbrella if 1) they’d grown up/lived in different circumstances and 2) if they’d let themselves be queer. The hyper masculinity they show could be interpreted as performative for fear of being perceived as even more Other than they already were. belphegor1982 replied to your ask post: That doesn’t stop me as seeing James as pan, Mick as ace (or somewhere on the ace spectrum anyway), Len also possibly grey ace and maybe bi (again, if he’d give himself permission), Mark as gender fluid, etc. That’s the beauty of headcanons - it’s all a big sandbox and open to interpretation!

Indeed, well said :)

demonbirdsforever replied to your ask post: I didn’t realize that stuff had happened. I understand you have your view now. We all just have to remember that comic characters change by whose hands they end up in. So I think the homophobia you mentioned is more a writer problem than a character problem. It’s like Trigon, everyone says he’s a demon but he’s not really. He’s is EVIL or as he put it, Celestial Blasphemy. That’s why I’m okay with other opinions on characters, to degree…

Oh for sure, there's no reason any given continuity will stick around forever -- which is both the beauty and the bane of comics. That's why I'm hopeful that DC will update them at some point, but hopefully it won't take ages to happen.

I will say though that this might be a hazard of being a fan of villains: it's pretty unlikely that they'll be unproblematic like, say, Superman might be. That doesn't mean they're all going to be hateful bigots or that we should like it if they are, but a lot of them might do or say things at times that the audience doesn't like. That's something we have to come to terms with, because even the nicest Rogues have done horrible things at some point…you have to take the bad with the good.

it-is-i-zim replied to your text post: Confession: I didn't really read most of Identity Crisis. Most of what I read was issue 5 out of context. And now I feel kinda stupid but in my heart I know him randomly murdering some guy is out of character. And that's what counts it-is-i-zim replied to your text post: Out of context it just looked like he was breaking and entering. And then got shot for breaking and entering.

No, he was hired to kill Jack Drake…it was a whole thing, the story just gets worse the more you hear about it. You're better off not reading it.

[actualbird]

I got distracted reading 4-04 and 4-05 i totally forgot the actual thing i was supposed to ask you today, what are your thoughts on the kinds of shows the nxx team wouldve watched as kids growing up. MC and Luke have apparently watched animes and even dressed up as characters but i have this need to know the finer details. LIKE. WHAT DID YOU WATCH SPECIFICALLY?? And i remembered you said luke was the one who probably understood most of the terms zangr was saying so like?? Luke do you like these kinds of things?? -Marsh

MARSH, thank you so much for this ask and for the SPECIFIC WORDING "watched as kids growing up." because that makes me have to go back in time and thusly uncovering by far my favorite yet most under-utilized and never-brought-up detail of tears of themis:

the story of this game takes place in the year 2030

DO U HAVE ANY IDEA HOW FUNNIER THIS MAKES SHIT???? AND ALSO HOW MUCH MORE SENSE STUFF MAKES??? let me explain myself by going thru all the boys one by one

luke pearce

YEAH HE SAID HE AND MC WERE RLLY INTO ANIME AS KIDS. luke pearce who is 24 years old in 2030 means that from the Important Media Ages (12-15) it was 2018-2021. this period of time, anime started getting more and more accessible, most notably getting on netflix and stuff like this. so like all the anime on netflix rn? yeah luke's watched them.

though because i kin luke, imma say that his fave is fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood. ive got no characterization proof for this, i just want to give him this honor

additionally, luke is a HUUUUGE fan of the original Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle novels (ACD Sherlock) and i think this would have pushed him to watch like, just every popular sherlock media adaptation there is. he personally liked Elementary better than BBC Sherlock. he generally just gravitates to the adaptations that dont forget about the heart of all of the characters.

also also also, luke likes action movies ranging from "hey this is "good" to critics" to "this is a shit movie but MY GOD IS IT FUN!!!"

artem wing

artem wing who is 29 years old in 2030 means that from the Important Media Ages (12-15) it was 2013-2016. but also artem is a MOVIE SNOB LMAOOO, hes That Guy with the Opinions On Film and you bet that his analytical ass was into just the most extra shit to watch those days because no teenager is chill, every teenager has some kind of ego, i dont know what movies he would have watched at that point to be the Smartest Teenager About Movies, but he sure did watch them

though artem also is very into sci-fi literature and 2013-2016 had a BUUUNCH of huge sci-fi movies. Pacific Rim, Gravity, Interstellar, Arrival. Arrival is deffo artem's fave, dont fight me on this, i can explain further but not in this answer bc it will get LOOONG LOL

artem also is into "classics" which uh. wait artem what do you Mean by that, what is a "classic" for somebody born in 2001??? i dont really know exactly what he means by "classics" so i just take it to mean he's a slut for period dramas which leads me to my closing point

"Once upon a time, when [Artem] was younger, around 17 years old, he pondered identifying as asexual or as one of the subsets under that term, but he put that aside after he first watched Pride and Prejudice (2005). He had then acquired a recurring fantasy in which he would be sensually accosted by Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy in a secluded study after months of furtive, charged glances, lingering, split second touches, double entendres classily and subtly masked but still implying a repressed yet voracious—Moving on." -an excerpt from my comedy smut fic where artem goes thru a crisis. yeah. yeah. Pride and Prejudice dir. Joe Wright was his bisexual awakening.

MOVING ON!!

vyn richter

vyn richter who is 27 years old in 2030 means that from the Important Media Ages (12-15) it was 2015-2018 but honestly that doesnt help me AT ALL LOL BECAUSE VYN IS A TOUGH NUT TO CRACK.....

like honest to god i cant even imagine vyn as anything other than an adult KJBSJKFS (which is depressing, if i think about it more... but also what vyn would want, i assume he would hate for people to have known him as a child, imperfect and shunned.....which is ALSO DEPRESSING. VYN, U GOOD???)

okay yknow what im not studied enough in Vyn Richter Studies so i will come back to this once ive gotten more of his story and know more of his (what im theorizing to be a SHITASS TERRIBLE) childhood history. so vyn, i guess ur safe from me....ur safe FOR NOW, THAT IS....

marius von hagen

marius von hagen who is 21 years old in 2030 means that from the Important Media Ages (12-15) it was 2021-2024. good fucking lord, marius was born in 2009 and that makes him so young that his Important Media Ages arent even DONE HAPPENING IN OUR CURRENT TIMELINE, JESUS....

2021 is an interesting era of entertainment because it is getting steadily more and more apparent that corporate greed is trying to swallow up good storytelling; movies and shows are made as fast food products to be consumed immediately and thrown away just as fast. there are smarter posts and articles talking about this, but my point here is that marius "believes SO MUCH in art and art's capability to make a difference" von hagen would HATE THIS SO MUCH and, through spite, get into a lot of indie medias that dont necessarily sell. smaller movies, tv shows that got cancelled way before they should have.

oh, hey, MARIUS WAS 12 YEARS OLD IN 2021, yeah he could have watched The Owl House and threw a fucking FIT when disne/y nerfed the show's third season. he has not forgiven and he has not forgotten.

regardless of his age, marius, at some point in his teens watches Vincent and the Doctor (s5 e10 from Doctor Who). for those who dont know this episode, it involves Vincent Van Gogh and a bunch of sci-fi stuff but, at the end, a scene where Van Gogh is taken to the future and shown the impact his art has made on people. please watch it, if you havent it, it's very good and no words can do the experience justice.

anyway yeah marius watches it and it makes him FUCKING SOB

yeah so these are my takes kdjbfdsjfs

[bigskydreaming]

I know some people just aren’t comfortable engaging with parts of canon where Bruce is abusive, because that’s just not the version of the character they’re here for, and I get that.

But the second a fic shows a willingness to address or even center itself around something like RHATO #25 or the Batman issue from King’s run where Bruce hits Tim......but DOESN’T acknowledge any of the many, MANY times that Bruce has been abusive to Dick on both sides of the Reboot, from post-Forever Evil to after Jason’s death post-Crisis and times in between?

Yeah, that’s when I see red.

Cuz that’s when it starts to look an awful lot like people are viewing abuse as some kind of narrative spice that they can selectively dole out only to those characters they like, while ignoring the times its applied to characters they don’t like because it might make them too sympathetic or interesting or what the fuck ever.

And I know people aren’t viewing abuse that way, right? Like surely there’s got to be some other explanation for why fics that heavily reference every single time Bruce has done something bad to Jason or Tim seem to act like Dick was just passively at Bruce’s side through all this, backing him up or else just being too naive to think Bruce could ever be like that, instead of like....actively a victim of their father’s abuse as well.

Look, its one thing for a certain character to not be your focal point or someone you’re particularly interested in, but you GOTTA look at the way this looks when you treat a character who has had instances of being a victim of Bruce’s abuse going back over thirty years, as like, being enabling, uncaring of or even party to Bruce’s abuse to the others in more recent years. Like, I focus a lot on the times he’s done it with Dick like in NW #30 or NTT #55 and just talk about Bruce and Dick in reference to those, because I’m trying to keep the focus limited to just Bruce and Dick for the purposes of whatever point I’m making, but the thing about that is.....I’m not CLAIMING that Bruce has never been abusive with any of the others, they’re just literally not even coming into the post because it isn’t about them. 

But the second you open things up to a full fic where things from all points of canon are being referenced in characters’ issues with Bruce, and you have a full cast list assembled.....it doesn’t work the same way because now you’re not just not talking about Dick’s experiences there because he’s not the focal point, now you’re actively writing over his experiences with a veneer of oh Dick and Bruce are fine, nothing like this has ever or would ever happen with them. That’s when you’re making for whatever reason a conscious CHOICE to depict certain kids of Bruce’s as victims at his hands, but NOT depicting the one who inarguably has been written that way the LONGEST and going back the furthest....because you simply don’t WANT him to be as sympathetic or the others or someone who can relate to them on this front, you want him to be an OBSTACLE to all that.

That’s shitty. I don’t know how else to tell you that that’s shitty. Please stop reserving abuse as some kind of ‘prize’ that’s only awarded to your personal faves’ backstories, because oh my god is that an offensive fucking take both coming and going. Not only are you unintentionally framing abuse as something ‘that can be quite good, actually, cuz it makes characters (people) interesting,’ you’re also again, as I said, seeing absolutely zero problem with taking a canon abuse survivor and making him part of the issue instead of someone similarly affected by it, simply because you don’t like him or find him interesting and you don’t want him to be the same as Jason or the others in this regard.

Frankly, this applies to the way this fandom treats a LOT of specific kinds of traumas. Like catch me side-eyeing the massive trend of Jason-as-Robin era fics that have Jason view Dick as spoiled, pampered, and harder to relate to or understand even than Bruce because god forbid one of those fics go with the juvie origin for Dick. I’ve more than once heard people say “I just don’t like that origin for Dick because I find it too angsty” and I gotta say, its a good thing that Cass and Damian’s origins aren’t too angsty to avoid and that nobody has ever extrapolated from what we do know about Jason and Tim’s childhoods to go into extremely elaborate and angsty detail about every possible facet of abuse or neglect they might have endured. 

I mean nah, this isn’t yet another way in which people deliberately depict Dick as just ‘not getting it’ because he hasn’t been through the kinds of stuff the others have, and its like. Okay but see thing is, he actually HAS, and you not acknowledging any of those instances is a CHOICE that you’re making as a writer, and as readers, we’re allowed to question those choices. We can look at what you’re presenting in the way that you’re presenting it, and think okay, but one of these things is not like the others, and the way you treat various characters as extremely sympathetic because of various aspects of their canon stories or their backstories while acting like the same could never ever be true of a character it absolutely has been true of on many different occasions....its super uncomfortable. And it kinda casts a shadow over everything you write into your story about abuse or specific other traumas because now there’s actually this implicit undertone where its like, okay but we actually only care about these things when they’re affecting someone or some character we LIKE, and that’s.....yeah. Not awesome.

I’ve ranted many a time before about the abuse apologism that runs rampant in this fandom, particularly in the vein of people refusing to acknowledge Bruce’s abusive actions (which again, I understand and am fine with up UNTIL...) but being perfectly comfortable sticking with any and all of Dick’s REACTIONS to literal abuse, but now deliberately separated from the inciting actions which makes it look like he’s just instigating shit or upset for no reason whatsoever. That’s literal abuse apologism, no matter what your intentions are, because hate to break it to people, but “Avoid Acknowledging An Abuser’s Actions And Flip The Focus To What The Abuse Victim Is Doing Wrong Instead” is literally chapter one of Abuse Apologism 101. But this shit? Abuse only happens to people I care about or find sympathetic already, because weirdly I seem to be able to make excuses for or overlook any instances of abuse that happen to someone I DON’T like?

That’s literally chapter two of the same damn book.

And good god but am I tired of people harping endlessly on about how much they care about these topics while blithely doing nothing BUT reinforce abuse apologism tropes and narratives in the process of shining a spotlight on the abuse that happens to personal faves and personal faves only.

And this definitely falls into the same pattern of people who happily talk about taking a match to canon and watching it burn at the exact same time they make the deliberate choices to depict Dick as the one Batkid who just doesn’t truly get the others and never will, or is unrelatable or all these other things.....

And its like hey guys? 90% of the stuff you hold against Dick Grayson or cite as your reasons for not liking him? When we say those aren’t canon its not because we’re trying to be the canon police always showing up to bust up your fun and be like no no no you naughty people, that never happened so you’re not allowed to write that. No. That’s not a thing. That’s not what that is. What it ACTUALLY is, is us pointing out all the times and ways where when Dick comes across as a giant asshole in fics, and we’re like why tho, we’re just literally trying to understand where your interpretation of his character is coming from, and you guys are like bitch its canon, and we’re like okay no but thing is, its really actually not. Its us just being like hey, the vast majority of the stuff you say you dont like about the guy or the times you leave out all the stuff that you cite as what you DO like about other characters, its like....

But anyway....

[katara0524]

Impromptu Ramblings about the NEO:TWEWY Demo

In case y'all weren't aware, I've been a pretty big fan of TWEWY for a couple years now, and with the sequel coming out next month, the excitement I feel for this game is greater than ever :) I played the Demo for the first time yesterday, and following a couple views of some livestreams of others playing it, I felt like sharing my (very ramble-y) thoughts prior to the release of the full game. This post WILL contain spoilers for both TWEWY and NEO:TWEWY, so if you want to avoid those from now on, please block the tags: #twewy spoilers, #ntwewy spoilers, #neo twewy spoilers, #ntwewy, and #neo twewy ^_^ Oh, and if you wanna keep up with any other posts I make about my experience with this game, please refer to the tag "kat plays neo twewy" :)

-First things first: I have not watched the Final Trailer and I don't plan on doing so to avoid spoilers, especially after the pre-release era of KH3 where a lot of the later trailers spoiled a lot of the endgame content. That being said, I've seen some minor screenshots from the final trailer including what many believe to be characters from the original TWEWY, namely Shiki and Joshua. That is all I know about the Final Trailer and I would very much like to remain as blind as possible going into NEO :)

-The very first cutscene was quite ominous in the sense that this game is likely going to be about "changing fate" (a recently common theme in Squeenix games, which I do appreciate), perhaps leading off from the end of A New Day in the OG and trying to stop an Inversion of Shibuya. Also worth noting that A New Day had similar aspects in which the main character experienced "future visions" of tragic events, although in A New Day these events were not able to be changed, while in NEO it seems like one of the main "powers" our protagonist has is specifically to rewrite these events and avoid a "bad ending." Very interesting indeed!

-I really like the revamped comic book style dialogue scenes, it's much more fluid and modern, which is an excellent direction for the series to take!

-I would love to have an actual PokemonGO knockoff of Final Fantasy creatures, please Squeenix that would be incredibleeeeee

-Also the LINE stickers??? Are so cute???

-I would just like to point out that Fret is an absolute treasure throughout this entire demo, he's hilarious and I will protect him with my life

-UHHHH don't like that Fret picked up some Reaper Pins just out of nowhere.....or the fact that they're apparently popular all over Shibuya.............did y'all not learn anything from the OG game or what lmao

-Okay so when I first got the "curry or ramen" scene and heard NPCs talking about the new curry place replacing the old ramen place I became IMMENSELY distressed that Ramen Don was totally cut from the game because....well, Ramen Don is a King okay?? But I'm glad to learn that no, he didn't fall off the face of the earth, he's still in business and he's the one opening the curry restaurant lolol. PHEW, crisis averted!

-.....I don't like the sudden appearance of a Wall Reaper and being able to read NPC thoughts. Wtf happened when they left the ramen place??? Are they playing the Game alive somehow?

-Okay so I have my own theories about this "Swallow" character and what they're up to but considering this is only the Demo and I still Have No Idea What's Happening, I'm just gonna say that I think Swallow intentionally led Rindo and Fret to the Crossing so they could join the Game. I mean, add in the fact that Swallow still communicates with Rindo during the Game and you've got yourself a suspicious character right there lol

-"Hey they're shooting off fireworks!" Fret honey that's not fireworks oof (see also: "*laughs* I'm in danger")

-WOOOOOO way to traumatize Rindo right off the bat like that LMAOO

-The visuals for the intro are VERY GOOD, the song is pretty decent until it gets all "screamo" (which I absolutely cannot stand sorry lol)

-Shoka is every Customer Service employee ever and I respect that

-Susukichi went from being "meh" to "WOW THIS GUY IS FUN" in the span of 10 seconds and I also respect that (he is also built like an Absolute Unit which is hilarious)

-The Wall Reapers (and just Reapers in general) seem.....way nicer and more helpful this time around?? Like in the OG the Wall Reapers were SO RUDE gfhjgjdfkhn and yeah I'm sure we'll get some like that but the juxtaposition of the first Wall Reaper in the OG compared to the first one in NEO is insane.

-The puzzles are quite a bit more entertaining this time around even if it's generally the same "fetch quest" formula lol

-"Rindo's Group" way to go Fret HFKJDGHSDFKJ mans really left the default name in there lmao

-OKAYOKAYOKAY so to those who aren't aware I am a MASSIVE SIMP for Sho Minamimoto, he's my absolute favorite and I think about him daily. HIS INTRODUCTION IS. INCREDIBLE. I LOVE IT SM.

-GOD hearing him actually SPEAK FULL SENTENCES is just SO SURREAL I love this sm

-Also the remix of his theme???? NEO TRANSFORMATION????? IT'S SO GOOD????????? It's like gone from a Boss Theme to a more triumphant sounding theme and I am HERE for it (every version of Transformation is just INCREDIBLE and getting a new one is even better)

-I Love Him, Your Honor

-Also idk how exactly but it's kinda weird seeing Sho in the OG vs NEO, cuz while he's mostly the same Insane Math-Obsessed Catboy, he's.....calmed down quite a bit?? Like OG made a whole point of how poorly he cooperates with others (not to mention just being completely unhinged and trying to kill everyone), whereas here in NEO he's......actually kinda working with others??? HELLO???? Sir what happened to you and Neku during those 3 years I would love to know all about it

-I guarantee you Sho is still probably scheming shite and will likely pull some total insane BS later down the road, and I am very much looking forward to that. Also, is he looking for a certain Pin or something??? Cuz he keeps talking about different Pins and even mentions "this is just another Psych Pin" like he's actively looking for a Pin to do something with. Maybe it also has to do with the "latent powers of Players" thing he mentioned as well??? What is this dude UP TO oml (also is he in contact with Neku at all?? they're both technically fugitives at this point right?? WHAT HAPPENED AFTER A NEW DAY I AM BEGGING YOU)

-I seems like Sho ALSO has an idea of what's going on in this specific game (even if he won't admit it straightforward). Per his quote "The game's 142,857. Factor it out," he's essentially saying, "This game is a neverending cyle, figure out how to get out of it" (or at least that's what I got from his "cyclic number" nonsense lolol)

-I do like how Sho mostly stays out of sight until he's needed for a battle or assisting with a mission, that's kind of on par with his whole "uncooperative" quirk from the OG, plus he might literally have to stay out of sight of other Reapers and Players considering he's likely breaking the rules of the Game (not surprising considering him and Neku broke practically every rule in the book during OG)

-The nicknames for Sho- I can't- They're so FUNNYYYY GFHJSDFKJ

-He goes from being called "Pi-Face" and "Tabooty" in OG to "Mr. Minami" and "M-Teezy" in NEO LMAOO

-(Wowee I just realized I've been mostly talking about Sho oopsies sorry y'all, this is what I meant by thinking about him almost daily he is THAT much of a fav of mine ghfkjsd)

-Okay RIP Fret and Rindo for not getting literally ANY explanation as to how the Game works OOF, that is kinda cringe that whoever gets the Pin earns points, not whoever erases the Noise (which like I understand but also URRRGGHHH I WANNA SEE THE SQUAD SUCCEED)

-"I should be going home now it's getting late" Oh you sweet summer child-

-Also love the mention of parents in this game???? KH you could learn a thing or two from TWEWY (poor Rindo's mom fhgjkdh)

-KUBO IS HILARIOUS I SUPPORT HIM AND HIS GROSS FACE (also thank you Final Trailer thumbnail for spoiling my suspicions about him very cool smh)

-Kaie is a LAD I also support him, go King type those funky texts I believe in you

-FRET PLS STOP SCANNING FHGJKSDHKJFGHFKJ he's like me when I scan in OG during Weeks 2 and 3 and see Taboo Noise coming after me ghfjdshfj

-Also Rindo can you stay off your phone for TWO SECONDS ik you're trying to figure things out but Fret is a jelly boi and I don't want him to be upset with you my guy

-Sho being an actual sorta mentor to the kiddos?? Who are you sir this is so unlike you ghfgskj what happened to the guy who tried shooting children in the face 8 times over LMAO (granted he's probably just using them but it's still nice to see him actually cooperating and sharing knowledge with the kiddos aaaaa)

-EYO EIJI OJI THE TIKTOK INFLUENCER IS BACK LMAO

-hgjkfshgkjf "we aren't glorifying capitalism on my watch" THATS SO FUNNY TO ME GFHJFSDGHJKS (also an all-orange ensemble is disgusting you deserve jail for one thousand years fkn Cheddar Goldfish Cheezit ass woman)

-WICKED TWISTERS NAME DROP EYOOO we love to see it

-gfhsgjf Poor Rindo embarassing himself for the sake of the Game that's incredible

-R e t u r n t o M O N K E. That is all.

-Dialogue during boss battles is HELLA cool i love that

-HHHHH THE KANON SCENE MADE ME A N G E R Y FRET STOP SIMPING MY GUY says the girl with a Literal Simp Encyclopedia and simps for pixels on a screen daily

-Can't wait to see the other Reapers :eyes emoji:

-CAN'T WAIT TO SEE NAGI MY BELOVED YEAHHHH WOOOOOO AAAAND that's about it for the demo lolol, I absolutely CANNOT wait for next month, this game is gonna be INCREDIBLE holy hell Prepare for more simping, more screaming, and more vibing from Yours Truly :) I fully intend on sharing more general thoughts like this on both Tumblr and Twitter so it's not just reblog-retweet-reblog-retweet with the occasional comment fhgskjd

If you wanna witness my insanity up close and personal I have a Square Enix Discord server called Sea Side Dreamers! You can look it up on Disboard, or you can add me on Discord @Katara0524#9244 for a direct link :) We have topics about Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, NieR, and ofc TWEWY (as well as other topics!), so if you want some good ol' chaos and chitchat, you're more than welcome to join!

[youareinlovees]

Hello! long ass rambling incoming, but bear w/ me I just need to let this out. To start, I was a big fan in early 2015 up until mid-2017 then I stopped (sorry tay, I'm not your strongest soldier 🥲). It wasn't until she starts doing promo again that I saw her in my timeline, and I thought oh wow, this is going to blow at any moment (2015-6 made us swiffers built different ik💀). But anyway, she returned with folklore evermore and subsequently reach a new level of success. For real, it's just so amazing to witness this arc. Seeing how ambitious she is--like you could make a tv series based on after Red losing that grammy to Folklore winning aoty, and you'll see the rollercoaster that is the 7 years of Taylor Swift life, it's just so crazy.

There's so many things I want to touch on, but mainly 1989 era. In the light of what we know she went through, I felt sick to my stomach. I struggle w/ ED too and we pretty much had the worst years of our lives together lmaoo. So, I feel her. I mean idk about her, but I always go out of my way to avoid looking at pics of myself from that period. I had mini ptsd flashback every time I was reminded of memories from my worst time. Let alone her having to sing songs she wrote and perform during that time for re-records 😰 it's really sad when you think about how she was the one that orchestrated the whole thing. I mean let's not kid ourselves--candids for like two years straight with your bffs + power couple publicity + striving for #1s and Grammies + her biggest tour yet + not eating + every single industry bitch tryna take you down? boy, I would have a mental breakdown every night.

Looking back, I almost felt complicit. I'm not gon lie, she did sold me first with her PR than she did with her music, so at least the overexposure worked. But man... it tells you everything you need to know how a perfectionist like Taylor works tbh. Obviously, she knows better now. But looking back, I wonder if she views that era as a necessity for her to reach where is now, or just simply as one of her messy mid-20s schticks (not saying it's trivial, but like "I know everything when i was young" yk?). Because how one of pop culture most well-executed era ended up in flames should be studied by sociologist moving forward 😩 like we know she was chasing 1989 commercial high with Lover. How it resulted in ME! should be a case for the fbi 💀 my theory is that she was surrounded by too many yes man (while big machine put her on a leash, they know what's up). Seeing her doc, while it’s cool seeing her sitting in the head table, not one of them dare or has the musical experience to tell her “Taylor wyd” Maybe her mom, but Taylor herself is her biggest hater, and her mom trusts her.

So, seeing that it took her a literal world-changing event to make folklore; in that she needs to make one pop album longer w/ Lover to arrive in Folklore—I was going through your tag; you said she was on a 'crisis' during Lover. Care to shed a light on what happened in season 7? I saw that one toe-curling tumblr post where she passive-aggressively drops a "💗" to that cupcake post about ME! being a disney song... it was bad that for ha? 💀

Okay so the masters situation was much more than just a business deal and having to rerecord. The issue wasn't Scott selling her masters, it was that he sold them to Scooter who managed Kanye in 2016 and helped orchestrate everything that happened, and that was the catalyst to a lot of dark stuff that she's alluded to in music + interviews. Like Scott was there from the very beginning and that would've been beyond painful, and the situation took her back to 2016 because of Scooter's involvement, and on top of that, there was also the Karlie betrayal.

Based on some of the decisions she made that era, I think she was also stressing about turning 30 and how her career would be affected. And if you read her interviews from back then, you can tell she was pretty anxious about doing press too.

Plus, we know her mom's cancer relapsed around that time (and I don't feel comfortable talking about it but her 2020 Variety interview mentioned specifics that were quickly taken out). Those are the main things I can think of, but she said in Nov 2019 that she had a difficult year and not all those things were made public, so there might be more.

[mechanicalinertia]

STMPD Anti-Recommends Bubblegum Crisis Fanfiction: Neo No Armor Against Fate

Okay. Round 2. Alternating between the ones I like and the ones I don't like should be - fun. I think. I hope.

Actually, before we start I'm going to link you, dear reader, to a little something called the Bubblegum Crisis Fanfiction Guide. All its links go up to the year 2000, with most of them linking to what used to be Usenet - rec.arts.anime.creative.bgc was its old sub-sub-sub-heading. And although Usenet is now Google Groups, an ancient, dead thing I suspect will go the way of Yahoo Groups soon enough, as sure as Geocities was stomped out by that foolish little company, and although the updated links from 2009 now make you download gunzip files, which are not exactly in common use anymore, you can just find a better mirror here. It won't work on mobile, though. If one browser forces you to download the gunzips, try another one.

Also, what you're about to bear witness to is a remake of 'No Armor Against Fate' - Hagen wrote that from '94-'97 then rewrote it in 2000, saying he always felt the first version was a first draft. Called it a 'short novel' - Neo clocks in at 440K words, an epic if there ever was one. Said it ignores Crash's developments, which a lot of fanfiction gladly did. It's - well. It is not very good.

Reader, do you think it's weird that I'm doing this? Linking you to a fanfiction that I despise deeply and then gesturing wildly about as to why it's bad? While also refusing to highlight specific passages, instead relying on memory because I feel so strongly about not wanting to read this thing in earnest? I must come off as so tsundere.

But that isn't going to stop me. This is a fic much beloved by the old guard of BGC fanfic writers, and even if the fandom is deader than my late granddad, I still would like to take the opportunity to rip some bandages off and say no, it is not good.

While Neo appears to be about the Knight Sabers in 2034 at first blush, it is not. A great many fanfics from this era are the same - Original Character arrives, fucks shit up, either joins the Knight Sabers or fights them. And like I said in my last post (and in my mini-review of Grand Mal), this creates more misses than hits because it's so hard to swim out from under the Mary Sue impulse, there. And although Hagen may not appear to be walking that path at first, that's only because he's using the trope of the Villain Sue, the Admiral Thrawns of this world, folks who are aggressively competent at committing cold-hearted evil and can send the heroes on the run even if they themselves are technically underlings of the Big Bad.

So: Domino Odette is arguably our protagonist, then. A Sexaroid with the upload of Brian J. Mason's consciousness that Largo was built from, revived by one of Mason's Boomer-Woman bodyguards from OVAs 2 & 3. Only, Largo was crazy and megalomanaical, but Odette has had all those parts sheared off. She's cold, beautiful, 'a mind for business and a body for sin' Hagen says, and patient enough to gain power and to serve GENOM as effectively as possible. She kills the real Domino Odette offscreen, takes her place as an executive - and Quincy finds out immediately, then says 'eh, whatever, we're cool so long as you know who's boss'. And, you know, she does.

So over 440K words and five big story arcs we see Domino subtly dominate just about everyone - Reika Chang comes into town in Arc 2 and Domino makes her feel useless and gets one over on the Chang Group, she gradually wrests power from Kate Madigan, et cetera. Eventually, she uncovers the Sabers' identities effortlessly, brings them in effortlessly, and has them help GENOM deal with some people Largo brainwashed who are attempting to wreck earth via lunar massdriver. The Knight Sabers are destroyed and no one, not even Sylia, seems to bat a fucking eye - actually, she and Domino have a relationship, but then Domino breaks it off and they go their separate ways. Domino continues, as seen in the epilogue, to do evil things to accumulate power for GENOM, and it's all treated as just what happens, what will happen, inevitably.

Look, it doesn't help that Shawn has no idea what exclamation marks are, never uses them, and that his sentences, his paragraph-to-paragraph prose, is dull, dry, exhausting to read in its boringness. Somehow Canada bested the US as North America's superpower -figure that out - and he just mentions that in less than a paragraph and does nothing with it.

It all kind of blurs together, you know? I don't like Domino, but I think Shawn does despite her supposedly being an antihero or grudgingly-respectable villainess, so willingly does he heap capabilities and victories in her court. There's literally a point where the Sabers try to extract someone from GENOM, he appears to be dead, everyone just kind of goes home, and yet Domino and GENOM are somehow able to revive him - not by anything connected to Mason's Largo-oid upload, just, you know, technology. It gets worse when you realize Domino isn't a woman of reasonable age, but looks like this:

Yeah, see the loli on Sylia's back? That's her. She's a fucking loli of the 'ackshually she's an adult so it's okay for me to lewd her' type, decades before anime fans started making fun of themselves for that shit. A body built for sin, too. Jesus Christ, Hagen.

So: Bad Prose. Bad Main Character. What else is up there?

Uh, the Sabers themselves? Nevermind that Hagen packs the world with more original characters in the Sabers' civilian life than strictly necessary, but they all seem to lack, I dunno, loyalty to the cause? As though they're all just waiting to be dunked on - they move on with their lives, move up in the world until the Sabers can't be reliably sustained. Which is annoying enough that the threat of GENOM isn't such a big deal as it would be in other, better fic, but then we get Devon Okami, who is just... ugh.

Devon is a co-founder of GENOM, second only to Quincy in his clout. Linna ends up dating him even though he's like thirty years her senior, and ends up taking her in when GENOM puts out the call (oops, guess you shouldn't have trusted him, eh). Also he's Priss's grandfather or something, so Priss is a lost girl who could be incredibly wealthy and doesn't know it. Which is a contrivance decades-older fiction has used before, and was stupid then, and is stupid now.

Really, the whole story's theme seems to be that megacorporations like GENOM cannot be stopped, not by normal people or by superheroes like the Sabers. In the end, Sylia has to essentially receive the right to make her own Boomer-building company because Quincy feels like it. She moves on with her life - changes the locks to get rid of the other three Sabers, who move on with their lives as well, as if the friendship they had meant nothing to any party.

"GENOM has lead the way, and we will follow, and we will be the better for it," an editorial in the epilogue (not found in this particular instance of Neo), says. And that's the thing. GENOM cannot be destroyed by the Sabers - Sylia literally says 'its time will come' but what will happen in the interim? Domino's power, her endless string of hostile takeovers and assassinations, remains unstopped - is , again, necessary. "GENOM with a purpose is a useful organism," Domino says, and "without a purpose it is cancer", but that's all in the context of Quincy giving it purpose.

It's... it's really based off of that one monologue by Sylia in OVA 8, isn't it? Where GENOM can't be destroyed because it does occasionally do good for the world? It's a very 90's 'neoliberal' ethos, this. The corporations have won, they'll develop new hopefully-beneficial technology, all we have to do is ride the rainbow and accept they'll do evil things, too, and live with that. It's the End Of History, forty years in the future. Worse still is that it makes Sylia say that her crusade against GENOM was all revenge and therefore was bad because 'revenge bad' is the message of a lot of core BGC. That any attempt to fight the system is inevitably personal and therefore childish is - an opinion I cannot agree with.

Boy. God. Damn. Maybe if you read Neo not knowing that it would build to this political bootlicking sort of stance you might enjoy it. But I can't, not anymore. I'm too far gone, folks. I've read my David Graeber and I tell you that megacorps hold back technology being used for liberating purposes by simply crimping all of technological devlopment in the first place. I will not let an evil loli tell me that some of us may die, but that is a sacrifice she is willing to make.

[mallowstep]

when all the leaves change in the fall — research masterpost

so i’m writing a human au set somewhere in the 1910s in ireland (really, around 1905-1914ish), and i just needed to throw all of my links and such into one place.

it’s…not a heatherlion fic, but it’s not not a heatherlion fic

anyway, well, you’ll see. if you want to read this.

census data (introduction)

so i was able to find the census data for 1911 in ireland. those of you who are up to date on your irish history (pun intended) may be aware that in the nineteenth century, england “unionized” with ireland.

i can’t believe i’m saying this on a fucking warrior cats blog, but we’re not doing irish history discourse. it’s a complex issue. i come from a family of irish catholics. draw your own conclusions.

anyway.

there’s a lot of important and relevant history that i’m skipping over because this post is supposed to be for me, and you’re not here to read irish history, but basically: there’s a 1851 census and a 1901 census, and nothing in between.

in short, it’s quite lucky i have the census data for the time i need.

since i was able to find this (and i gotta say, it wasn’t easy, like, usually i’m like, “research is just a thing i do” but it was surprisingly difficult to find), and like most national archives it’s…not to be rude, but the site is ugly.

but here’s the home page for the data, with helpful other links including a tram timetable. (and yes, that is very exciting. if you’ve ever written historical fiction, you know how exciting that is. if not, welcome to my descent.)

i was originally focusing on individual names, but i have to name the whole family, and i have all the data, so let us begin.

irish history (short version)

jk you do need a bit of knowledge to understand my decisions.

if you don’t know, the 1850s is approximately the great potato famine. if you don’t know anything about it: it’s worse than you imagine. extra credits did a good series a while back.

england’s rule over ireland will lead into the troubles, a religious conflict that wasn’t…well, okay! let’s just say, it’s like, a joke that you don’t want to talk about it because people feel strongly about it. hopefully, most of you don’t. i do, but i’m being not biased, okay?

anyway, feature history did a two part series if you want to get caught up.

finally, you may ask, matthew, why the heck are you writing about such a weirdly specific time in history? to which i say: well, i wanted to have a religious conflict between heather and lion’s families, in such a way that it would make sense for them to grow up and realize they couldn’t be friends.

my mother’s family is irish and my dad spent a lot of time in northern ireland when i was a toddler, so naturally, it was just a thing i knew about. to the point where it had an impact over my name. it’s a long story that i’m not telling here.

anyway, when i think religious conflict that spirals into a real, violent conflict, i think: catholics and protestants in ireland. it’s far from the only example, but it’s one i know a lot about.

so why, then, am i starting in the 1910s? well…i need heather and lion to be friends growing up, and there’s a particular crisis leading up to world war one that makes 1914 a good date for this fic to cover.

also, i like this era of historical fashion.

alright, now that we’re all on the same page, i can get into what i actually want to talk about.

lion’s family

so now that i have my census data, i was able to actually look through specific families to name people after. that’s right, i’m…at the point in my life where i researched specific families and counties to name my human au warriors after.

this is why? i never talk about the…i think now 3? human aus in the work. like, i can’t say, “okay, there’s holly in this one” because like, her name might be holly in one and minnie in another, you don’t know!

anyway, i searched by head of family, under the following criteria:

church of england

can read and write

married

english (language)

3 living children

and then paged through every result to get just those with (at least) 2 sons and 1 daughter.

that gave me fourteen families. i saved all of them to a one tab list in case my first choice didn’t work out.

my first choice being the harris family.

i had a lot of good choices (one family with a daughter named violet was particularly tempting), and another with a son william and a daughter annie mary, but i liked the harris family just…in my gut.

that gives us:

bramble: joseph henry

squirrel: henrietta

jay: joseph henry

holly: henrietta lillian

lion: ian roy

which, well, i hope you can see why i chose them, even though this is a lionblaze centric fic and they don’t have an l in there.

great! am i going to backfill past this? not unless i need to, which is the point of me making this well documented research. i’m going to go through some of the other families at the end to find a leafpool name, because we do need her.

heather’s family

next up! we need a family of catholics in the same general area as the harris family.

so, back to the search.

i was able to narrow it down to the same street as lion, which is great.

honestly, the weirdness of this does not escape me. sue me, it’s warriors fanfic, i like researching. i could do this and just stitch together several families, or something, i don’t know. there’s something appealing to me in knowing that i have done my due diligence.

anyway, we’re again searching by head of household, and:

roman catholic

married

irish and english (language)

1 living child

cork (county)

fermoy urban (ded)

king street (townland/street)

and i again went through and kept only families with at least one daughter. or really, a wife, husband, and other female person in the house.

you can view that list here.

the flanagans were the clear winner here, with their singular daughter named hannah. (parents: john and mary.)

breezepelt’s family

and after that we’re still not done because i need crow, night, and breeze.

i’m searching with the same criteria, this time, though, i’m only keeping families with at least one son.

while i’m doing this, shout out to paddy patrick for being a real person.

here’s my full choice list. this time, i want to match crow’s name more than breezepelt’s, because there aren’t a lot (if any) b names. nightcloud would be nice, too.

i had a tough choice to make here, because there was a norah & john, and a cornelius & catherine. (couldn’t i just combine them? you’re missing the point. this is fun, i’m having fun.)

i ended up going with the cotters, because i preferred james for breezepelt.

this gives us

crow: john

night: norah

breeze: james

are you having fun with two johns? i sure am.

also worth pointing out is that people aren’t actually on the same street. i’m not searching with exact match on. they are all still in the same county, and that’s good enough.

extraneous

i have more than enough names to name any character i need, but some character names i may need.

leaf: looking for single, church of england, women. we’ll be using irene may key

fire & sand: just to fill in where leaf left off, thomas james & alice elizabeth, respectively.

cinder: had to remove the church of england restriction to find her, and then i had too many choices (i’m not paging through like 100 people, okay?), so i decided to search under injury “other,” just to narrow down the options. i chose sarah hanan, who also lives with her brother (nice touch).

and at this point i decided i had more than enough names and the ability to hunt down more whenever i needed them if they came up.

other stuff

i was going to do more than names but then i got tired whoops. it’s like, almost 1 am i’ve been doing this for like an hour.

anyway, that’s fine bc i know a lot about the other stuff i was going to talk about and now you know! i’ve done a bunch of families because that’s how much i care about accuracy.

[pochapal]

rank every year of the 2010s from best to worst i want some pochapal lore

[warning for discussion of my fucked up mental health and my myriad traumas. we’re really opening the pandora’s box here gang]

ok time for me to overshare on the internet again! super long post because i can’t shut up and you asked for it. anyway, by objective ranking: 

#1: 2012 - halcyon era, my personal peak. spent the whole year writing hunger games oc fics with my deviantart fanfiction besties whom i still think about all the time and always hope are having the best possible day. if you were here for this era understand i still hold you so closely and dearly in my heart <3. 

#2: 2013 - god i was such a good example of a human being back then. was the year my writing like actually took off and i had a healthy balance between creative stuff and a social life (said social life consisting of spending lunchtimes at school breaking into classrooms and discussing fandom shit with five other people. reading homestuck updates in the music room on one person’s really shaky mobile data...legendary). highlight of the year and maybe my life was in the april of 2013 when i got out of failing to submit a hard deadline essay by telling my english teacher i wrote a whole novel over the two week break and then producing said novel. god i wish i had that level of like. fucking confidence back me back then knew what i wanted and how to get it. 

#3: 2010 - the last year of childhood. i was 12 and played pokemon all the time with my friends and went places and had a moderately successful youtube channel and it didn’t matter that i was bullied so badly at school because i was basically high off life. summer of 2010 was so good specifically. i’d used to get the bus with a friend and go see movies and break into historical sites and get into normal childhood mayhem and maxed out my pokewalkers twice a month and i was buzzed because i had two (2) whole friendship groups to choose from and that was such a huge deal to me the terminal social outcast. it was so simple and carefree and even though everything and everyone involved in this era grew up to suck except for one specific person i kinda really miss it.

#4: 2018 - this was the first year i wasn’t depressed to the point of nonfunctioning. it was 20gayteen, i was on antidepressants, i was as close to thriving as i got at uni (going into town with people once a week, attending art and culture events, getting good grades across the board), i started to write for fun again, i got my cat whom i love dearly, i was exhibited in my uni’s city’s literature festival, GOD i actually nearly attended a pride event that year can you imagine. this year was basically my life’s second peak. miss getting the 8am train and daintily sipping on a cherry coke to keep me from passing out. wish this time could have lasted longer.

#5: 2019 - kinda absolute middle of the road year not for lack of anything happening but because the overwhelming amount of good and bad things cancelled each other out. so like there’s the fact that i was at the top of my uni game this year, was basically making the first steps into a professional writing career (covid i will never forgive you for killing all that dead </3), finally saved up enough to buy myself a gaming pc, and the summer after the homestuck epilogues, but equally 2019 was the start of the Pochapal Gender Fiasco which is by far the most horrible thing i am still currently undergoing and i burnt myself out mentally about halfway through the year (being stuck overnight in a hospital for a panic attack absolutely horrible horrible irredeemable) and then got like super death plague flu that i was sick with for three months (literally recovered less than a month before rona hit. god’s cruel karma.). so like...it kind of averaged out? the good shit was good but not as great as other years and the bad shit was awful but nowhere near as terrible as it could have been. gotta give a shoutout to 90% of my current mutual cohort for following me in 2019...omelette route gang make some noise !!

#6: 2014 - oof. this year essentially marked the start of a four year long downward mental health spiral because everything fell into awful alignment. i’d just turned 16, finished secondary school, had all my friends up and ditch me at once, was home alone for a whole summer, and was hit with Sudden Intense Body Image Issues that i couldn’t explain until uh. after very recent developments lmao. this one goes out to the me of july 2014 who did nothing but lay in bed and listen to the same two marina albums on a loop because fuck i’m attracted to men and also my facial and body hair are really starting to come in and if i think about this for too long i will literally kill myself because oh god i can’t handle getting older which is clearly and definitely the issue going on here. my brain fucking broke super hardcore and it’s a miracle that an overeating disorder was like the worst thing i walked away with. 

#7: 2015 - downward spiral year two!! i was so volatile this year it was such a mess. i was totally socially isolated after a brief stint of falling in with a group of people at the start of my first year of sixth form until january where in quick succession a) it turned out every single one of these people was friends with the person who sexually assaulted me whom i obviously had a lot of complicated feelings towards and b) baby’s first crush came out as bisexual but in the “women and also trans women” kind of way which tore me up so terribly in ways i couldn’t begin to understand. no words for the experience of seeing a girl kiss a boy and crying so hard at night you threw up because you could never be her no matter how much you wanted it. actually kinda get the sense what was going on there was bigger than just some crush lmao. then after that i was so mentally ill i basically attended school less than half the time and it was the only year in my life i failed my exams. i ended up having to resit my entire set of first year a level exams because jesus christ was i in such a bad way it was a miracle i even showed up to them. all i did was either have anxiety attacks or enter bedbound depressive slumps for weeks at a time. but it’s okay because it gets worse.

#8: 2016 - downward spiral act iii: the spiralling. prefacing this by saying that i actually had two whole good months (april - may) in that i was functioning enough to do my exams and finish school with decent grades. the rest was super extra mega terrible. my school attendance for year 13 dipped below 65% and literally the only thing that kept me from being kicked out was the fact that i was naturally smart at the subjects i took and also because the school would have a lot to answer for after letting me get to that state despite having a hefty file on how damaged i was. keep in mind every single part of this was fully untreated btw - i was just floundering around and letting it all fester. i spent three solid weeks going to school but locking myself in the bathroom all day every day and having mental health episodes then going home like nothing else happened only to continue the breakdown that night. then things got kicked into fucked up overdrive when i moved out to uni and was cut off from what little support structures i did have. it was so bad all i did was cry all the time and never went anywhere to the point where three separate sources recommended me to the wellbeing and crisis counselling service that i stopped going to after two sessions because i was fucked up in ways cbt techniques could not even touch. at least i tried to make an effort for the first two months of uni which like. good for me?

#9: 2017 - what lieth at the base of the spiral. helltrench year. i was at literal rock bottom. i stopped going to class, i didn’t hand in a single piece of work. i lied to my parents and would book trains each day only to go back to my student flat and sit there and contemplate suicide. like i would just slump on the floor in a catatonic state and vividly contemplate one of four or so ways i could end my own life. i only didn’t because i wanted to wait until the summer to collect my last student loan and transfer it to my parents as an apology for my death which obviously didn’t end up happening. honestly i can’t remember much of the first half of 2017 that’s how bad it was. i remember taking a gender studies class and the teacher made it Weird that i was the Only Male Student in the room and then she sent me a scolding email after i walked out halfway through a class and never returned. apparently i got into a lot of online discourse in this year but i don’t remember anything other than being put on a blocklist by the milkfic author over ace discourse which is funny if you have the context. mostly i just baited terfs and weirdo freaks to get them to say horrible things to me as what i guess amounts to some kind of digital self harm. anyway breaking point came in late august when i got kicked out of university and then nobody could ignore it any more so there was no choice left but for me to seek out help and recover enough to function which luckily i did. i really Do Not remember 2017. you could tell me anything about that year and i’d probably believe you.

#10: 2011 - extra circle of hell for this little fucked up gem of a year. on the surface it wasn’t actually that terrible, until the Summer 2011 Domino Effect Of Bad Shit. up until like may/june it was a pretty all right year! i was 13 and had a surprisingly successful youtube channel uploading pokemon soundfont remixes to an audience of i think ~350-400 subscribers at my peak? anyway then i got hit with the early summer triple combo of childhood friends moving away, cute and quirky sexual assault at the hands of a person in my friend group, and then having some Really Great and Super Appropriate interactions with adults on deviantart. like obviously there’s the actual ptsd-inducing event which totally disrupted and killed the person i was right up until that moment and reshaped every facet of my life for better or worse (there’s an alternate timeline where that didn’t happen and i got into electronic music and/or coding instead) but really it’s the events that followed in its wake which were kind of more fucked up. so like all of a sudden i was super aware of my body and me growing my hair out and being mistaken for a girl in class suddenly became this Less Innocent thing and i ended up spending hours overnight going to transgender questioning forums and looking up hrt timeline videos and having the wikipedia article on tracheal shaving saved because it was a life raft to me whose voice was imminently gonna deepen and i was simultaneously reeling with constant trauma flashbacks and the whole thing was so so fucked up. then i was on deviantart and i don’t remember exactly how but a small group of furry guys ten to fifteen years older than me started messaging me and encouraging and requesting me to produce nonsexual fetish stuff for them and talking to me about stuff like if i’d ever thought about growing up to be gay and i didn’t think anything of it for a long while because they called me a very talented writer and it felt so good to have someone be nice to me after being so alone and isolated for months on end. anyway the only reason i got out of that before it got bad was because they invited me to one of the big furry sites and i was weirded out because i thought it was a porn site and thinking about sexual stuff was a huge trauma trigger so i just ended up blocking them all and pretending like it didn’t happen. at the time half this shit didn’t bother me but in retrospect holy fuck 2011 was such a damaging year. to think if like three events didn’t happen i wouldn’t be the fucked up mess you see before you today.

god fuck this turned out super long but i’m not apologising because this was a therapeutic exercise for me and also constitutes as one of the biggest pochapal lore dumps of all time. come get your food or whatever.

[hshouse]

heyyy, how are you? im sorry for the rant and hope u don't mind, i really need to talk about this, just get it out of my chest, yk? so, i started to follow you yesterday, i think so? so, i've been here in the fandom for a couple years, since 2013 to be specific but just went really into larry in 2015 (what a blessed year to became a larrie, innit?)

then, i stayed here until early 2017 when i took a break, lost hs1 era and all that came with it, even lost harry coming to my country, that's how much i was far from the fandom lol.

i came back in september/october 2019, and then, as you can see, i lost a lot of drama on the fandom and got so so confused to get into everything again but okay, i searched and saw everything happened during these years. im kinda ashamed to assume but lol i even had a weak crisis because of hamille, thought they broke up and stuff. (like cmon girl, i went through babygate and was weak for that? 😭) in my defense, i wasn't on tumblr so much so my source was twitter when i came back and there is a hell as everybody knows, but yeah. nowadays i'm okay about everything but i'm feeling a litte bad today. (if u can like, idk, hide this part if u post the ask, i don't want some people to know who i am lol). my friend received some asks about harry×rob stringer and okay, i went to reply it for her because she was busy and stuff. i full well know they have a professional relationship and harry's one of the biggest artists sony has nowadays, so i said this, explained that he isn't the evil that rads try to make him look like and i really believe that. that probably will seems contradictory since i defended him and now i'm like 🤯 about some things. anyways, idk, it just makes me uncomfortable, yk? i know he works under sony and they are independent artists, that harry is making a lot of money for sony/rob know and that's why rob will move the world to promote harry if needed but like, idk, i completley agree that louis would never ask harry to give up his dreams and work, and that he knows how to separate things but it's just weird to me that harry doesn't seems uh? idk the right word to say but like, he's not bothered at all about this while rob is putting so much for him and louis was being sabotaged by the same person, yk? i get now we don't even know if he still under sony since syco is dead but yeah, it's just weird to me... i think part of this feeling i have rn is just because of some gross comments i saw from antis today on twitter and that makes me feel bad, normally i really don't care and imlike bulletproof about them but today it's hitting me (as if it isn't enough, im also brazilian and i think you saw about this guy named fiuk, don't care about this at all lol, but the antis comments started bc of what he said 😂 honestly...)

i choose to send it for you bc i saw you are more on harry's lane although you are also a larrie, and im kinda identify with you because of that so i would like to know how you think about this whole situation and if that maybe can help me to organize my thoughts... im really sorry about this lonnnng text, hope u have a nice day.

hi bby,

I’m good and yes 2015 was iconique. (gonna try to address everything you said)

I personally found Hamille harder to deal than other stunts, I feel you.

Let’s get our ducks in a row first. 

Rob Stringer is not involved in Harry, or anyone’s, promo. That is not his job at all. He is the CEO of a huge company, he is most likely in meetings making sure Sony has money and the shareholders are happy. What I said, and I absolutely fucking maintain, is that Stringer knows Harry is one of the biggest artists on his catalogue and is going to make sure he is treated well and receives what he wants (within reason). 

Harry and Louis are completely different artists and there is a very limited way they can interact business-wise in the way people want it. A label will not, and an ethical artist would never ask, please one artist by giving help to an artist they personally are not working with. They are not even on the same label so it would be like “hey can you give my boyfriend a multi-million dollar deal? can you fit that in the budget?”. He is not asking for a signed vinyl from Miley for his cousin, this is a big deal. I don’t really understand what soap opera moment people expect to happen in the background? Any couple that has millions on the line in their job works to make sure their finances and opportunities and everything is separate. This is not weird? A husband lawyer will not quit because his wife was fired from the firm? That’s not like spicy. 

I’m fairly confident Louis is still under Sony, since changing majors is a huge thing and I doubt Sony would be willing to just give him away and not negotiate further. He probably got a better deal in another Sony label. 

I will say this. Out of all the reasons to not believe in Larry this is a dumb fucking one. It’s business AND we have no idea about what is actually happening. At all. So like to again make all these jumps just to say Larry isn’t real? There way less messy ways if that is your end goal yk. 

Also I want to say that I understand, feel and agree with the frustration over Louis’ career. I don’t think anyone doesn’t? Just because I don’t subscribe to this one narrative it does NOT mean I am suddenly thinking he has the best team and promo and everything is rosy and perfect. I just don’t think this is the story and I think it is way more complicated than we even think.