#is like. i dont think its that deep. i think its better in the long run to realise that no matter what you do some people will find you

[umblrspectrum]

do you ever like wanna make something cool but you dont know how so you just sit around like a moron for 5 hours straight pretending you know how

me neither

on a more serious note i know ad astra as a whole isnt over but i still want to thank daybreaker for their fics. what friends are for was the very first md fic i ever stumbled upon when trying out ao3 for the first time, and prior to joining the server i was checking it near daily for uploads. god knows if i'd be as deep in ao3 as i am now if it werent for this story and convenient timing. Thanks for the story.

[mephoj]

nickel and balloon would be so much more interesting if people explored the way nickel became everything awful that balloon used to be but so much worse ironically all in the name of "protecting" everyone from that history repeating. and not softboy tsundere yaoi or whatever is going on in those tags rn

[good-beans]

this is so stupid but i always have fun imagining the milgram characters watching their own/others mvs and seeing their reactions, especially for MeMe

That’s not stupid at all, thank you so much for the ask!! It’s sooo interesting to think about! I planned on just posting this drabble, but the more I thought about it, the more I started jotting down headcanons for everyone 👀 Of course there’s the initial disbelief and shock that Milgram can really do what it claims, but once they accept that, they’d have a lot of interesting reactions…

Es gets to watch the video first, then the prisoners are free to watch their own in the privacy of the courtroom/extraction room/wherever. Other prisoners can watch them only with explicit permission from the video’s singer. No one is allowed to watch Undercover except for Es. At first they spend hours looking at those final frames of themself flinching from the camera, hoping to jog any sort of memories, but eventually they give up on it. While actually watching it, they don’t mind the murder silhouettes. While sleeping, however, it has triggered more than one nightmare.

Haruka: He thinks Weakness is very pretty – he’s amazed seeing himself on the screen and hearing his voice, knowing he’s not that good of a singer. Even before his innocent verdict, it gives him a huge surge of confidence. Once he gets to know the others better, he gives them mv permissions, then stares intently at their faces to see their reactions as they watch it. AKAA scares him a bit, seeing his own intense emotions on screen, and he only gives Muu permission to see it. When he’s alone, Haruka pauses the shots of his mother, just to stare for a while.

Yuno: Laughs at the symbolism her mind used in Umbilical. She’s never shied away from sexual words/thoughts, so it's funny the video was as tame as it was. She thinks the song is fun, and isn’t afraid to show the others and sing snippets of it around the prison. Some days it’s too emotional for her to get into it, but most of the time she tries to display a confident attitude about it. After Tear Drop, she’s satisfied with her anger and more overtly sexual images. If anything, she feels too exposed by the shots of herself looking more vulnerable/sad. 

Fuuta: He experiences a solid mix of embarrassment at the gaming theme in Bring it On and feeling a surge of pride that he looks badass in the knight’s armor. He’s worried the warden won’t take him seriously with the video game obsession, but he absolutely loves the song and thinks it portrays his toughness and ideals well. He’s less thrilled with Backdraft, everything about it unsettles and embarasses him. He’s thrown by the shot of crossing out his own silhouette – he’d had self-harming thoughts, but wasn’t quite ready to confront them so blatantly yet. Like Haruka, he can be caught pausing the arcade shot just for a moment before turning the whole thing off and storming away.

Muu: She has mixed emotions towards After Pain. She hates seeing herself look so weak and pathetic, but it gives her a lot of hope that her story will be understood. She misses her friends, and seeing them again is bittersweet. She closes her eyes at the moment of the stabbing – she’s only gotten the courage to watch it through her fingers once. She watches INMF once, then refuses to look at it again from shame/horror. Despite Haruka’s begging, she doesn’t let him watch it, either. 

Shidou: He asks Es what they saw in Throw Down. Upon finding out his family wasn’t in it, he chooses not to watch it. He believes he already knows all about his emotions and crime, so there’s no need to go through that pain again. He’s tempted to watch it when he’s confused about Es’ verdict, but still holds off. He does watch Triage when informed his family is in it. He spends hours in front of the screen by himself. Only after seeing that one does he watch Throw Down, though he’s still left confused about Es’ decisions.

Mahiru: Absolutely loves TIHTBILWY. She thinks it perfectly describes her situation, and that the song is very cute. She lets others watch it, and unlike Yuno, feels like singing it 24/7. It reminds her of her bf, and she thinks that’s very romantic. Similar to Shidou, she spends a lot of time watching I Love You just to look at her boyfriend. She shows it to everyone, just to show him off and talk about him, even if she does skip over the beginning and end each time.

Kazui: He is very similar to Shidou; he refuses to watch his videos until T2, assuming it would be too painful to watch something he already knows and wishes to avoid. Unlike Shidou, seeing Hinako is far too painful, and he regrets watching it and seeing her so happy on their wedding day. Though maybe he’s still waiting, and hasn’t seen any of the videos yet…

Amane: Magic makes her worry more than anything. She fears she’s poisoned by unnecessary vainness since so much of her video involves cute things, colors, outfits, animals, and is set up like a tv show. She’s also worried that Es and the others will really see her as a child because of how cute the whole thing is. She prevents herself from watching it too many times, but buried under all her fears, it gives her a surge of pride seeing herself so talented and pretty and the star of the show. Purge March only reaffirms her confidence in her crime – the video brings up some awful memories, but it shows her as a leader, a warrior, a hero! It brings her comfort and confidence more than anything.

Mikoto/John: The videos are distressing to both of them, and they spend all their time studying the others’ screentime. Mikoto watches in horror as John does things that line up with his spotty memories, and John panics seeing that his actions distress Mikoto more than they’ve reassured/saved him. John does end up watching his own scenes a few times – it feels incredibly good to appear in a way that Mikoto may finally notice him. He feels seen. Now, logically I think that MeMe would be the final tipping point in which Mikoto finally accepts the situation and his DID, but if I must stick to his canon denial, then I’d say he goes on a whole rant about movie magic andt the crazy things you can do with editing nowadays. He doesn’t have a good explanation on how Milgram found his home and knew so much about him, but he explains everything away as cgi or camera effects. Double manages to sway him a bit more, as he hears John speak so plainly to him. Just as the audience had some debate on who was apologizing at the end of Double, Mikoto and John wonder who is apologizing to whom. Though they both come to the conclusion it’s their own apology, they decide that if it was the others’, they’d accept it and forgive them.

Kotoko: She’s very pleased with Harrow, and is unashamed to show it to the others. Though she’d been able to watch a few of the previous prisoners’ videos, it still shakes her a bit when she realizes that Milgram really does have the tech to look deep inside her. She watches it just a few times – not obsessing over it, but not afraid either. Deep Cover, however, is a once-and-done sort of deal. She claims she’s not letting the others watch it because “they couldn’t handle such harsh but true criticisms about themselves,” but she doesn’t end up watching it anymore herself, either.

[theflopwonder]

Me, naively: Omg haha what if I wrote a fic abt the party at the fortress of solitude in superman/batman 26 as an excuse to do some Tim & Kon character study?

Me, after reading 4 separate comic runs from 4 different editorial teams who were OBVIOUSLY not talking to each other AT ALL to try and figure out the timeline & other logistics of this party: WHO THE FUCK FUCKED UP THIS HOUSE LIKE THIS GOOD GOD??????????

[destielgaysex]

im the second of four children and im the most loser of them all. is this anyone else's experience or just me.

loser defined by: no friends or social life, no relationship experience, dropped out of undergrad 5 years in, living at home at 24, 0 platonic physical touch ever experience in entire life outside of family, etc.

[storywestistrash]

i am actually so tired of the way westerners treat eastern europeans

[mapsofnonexistentplaces]

obviously i think its good to grow out of mocking people relentlessly especially to their face but honestly i think people should also grow a bigger backbone with regards to like. someone saying their interest is lame or sucks. like a lot of people have turned the idea of 'oh we need to kill the idea of cringe culture and public shaming for harmless fun' to 'i have to take every post against my interests personally and people should never complain about anything so that they dont hurt my feelings'

[alyimoss]

yknow what ive seen a lot of "gaster and chara fucking hated each other" headcanons but ive seen very little of the opposite. which to me is kinda sad bc imo its a better, more fun interpretation.

i like to imagine gaster looked at this hurt, traumatized child and saw a bit of himself in them. and so he offered them advice.

yall know the smile theory? that smiling make monsters stronger in a way? that it can stave off death, even if for a short while, etc? that *thats* the significance of it, the reason why its so tied to gaster? that could very well be the reason chara is known for their smile, too.

i nean- theyre a child who was so badly hurt they were practically obsessed with the concept of finality—a state in which they are too powerful to be hurt by anyone. i can see them not smiling almost at all when they first fell (what is there to smile about?) until they hear from gaster that a smile is protection. when you smile, others cant hurt you as bad. a smile is like armor. he smiles to stay safe because he knows all thats out there, all thats capable of harm.

and from then on chara smiles no matter what. they smile and laugh through the wordt moments. because they know now this is their armor. their protection.

i rhink they would admire gaster. his efforts for monsterkind, his advice to them. i think theyd see him as someone trustworthy (in my own personal headcanon, he knew about their and asriels plan. not fully, i mean, but he knew the lengths chara could go to. and the only reason he knew was because he would do the same. chara told him because they saw a kindred spirit)

i like to think gaster is crushed post charas death. i also like to think that, if chara remembers gaster after their "revival", *then* they would have issues. we know nothing about gaster canonically, sure, but in my own headcanon and theory world, the things he does make less and kess sense to chara, align less with their worldview and their beliefs. and only then do they clash with him. because at first he was someone they genuinely loved, someone they admired.

anyway, i think gaster thought of them almost as family. he cared for them deeply, always ready to give advice or comfort or teach them or. really anything. they would sit and talk for hours about the world and their personal philosophies and findings. i want gaster, like the dreemurrs, to be part of the loving world chara never got to experience on the surface rather than yet another enemy. you know?

[thebigqueer]

i dont wanna eat anything or do anything and i just wanna lay around but i also dont wanna do that and i dont wanna watch anything or read anything and idk what i wanna do

[moafleco]

i hate that duality that your mind can be your safe heaven that helps you get through some difficult things, keeps you going and brings you happiness at the worst of times. and at the very same time it could be your worst tormentor that won't let you rest and won't let you breathe, literally for no particular reason at all. and you can't leave or silence it. can't get it to stop when it gets dark in there. can't get the light in when you desperately need to feel a respite instead of suffocation.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[dq1]

thinking again

[dexaroth]

ive already said this before about how ive felt so disconnected from art. its all just lines and poses and specific distances away from the camera, layers of color... something triggered a switch in my brain that is making things just not feel real anymore.

and its like. ok. whatever. its still fun to draw and i get very happy when i manage to draw something good. but i lack the motivation! so.. lemme think.. ah! my characters! perhaps i should try to actually flesh them out as real people, with a past and personalities and relationships..

and the more i read about it the more disconnected i feel. is that all life is about? traits and backstories and being bound to everything that happened to you.. the ways you think and act being somewhat easily traceable to your history..character arcs. stories just being a means to an end(?)

and i also want a world for my ocs to live in that is a bit believable and justifies them, but every bit of advice and apparently common worldbuilding things have all just been done before.

is there any chance of making something that matters when its all been done before or if everything else feels unreal and abstract. is there a point to anything

[sensitivegoblin]

Vent

Tw: sh

[5-htagonist]

the boondocks is so good. i dont know what black american archetypal character is missing from that show other than ahhh favorable portrayals of black queerness but 2005 (presumably) cishet man creation so you know how that goes.

[unforth]

So in light of yesterday, I'm bringing this post from April back, but I especially want to focus on the tag essays people have graciously and informatively shared.

The vast majority of the reblogs on this post have come from Chinese and Chinese diaspora people and many of them have written about their experiences in the tags.

I'm putting these out in screen caps because I really REALLY need all my fellow white people who didn't feel this was worth reblogging to see how prevalent this is. It's not about the one post from yesterday, though that was an egregious example (which, as far as I can tell, has now been deleted). This is about EVERY SINGLE DAY in these fandoms, all the little things the white-majority US-majority fandom as it is on Tumblr constantly say with zero self awareness and a "teehee well I'm not a racist so clearly what I said can't have been racist" attitude. Please, PLEASE, my fellow white people, read all these tags and see how much genuine harm is being done to other people by this casual disregard and also the flagrant disinterest that means that instead of my tags being full of white people going, "oh, I didn't realize, I'll try to do better!" they're instead full of this:

I don't know what I can say or do to get more of white Western danmei fandom to take this seriously but I guarantee I'm not going to shut up about it until I force people to listen. I actually had MORE screen caps but tumblr mobile capped me at 10. Read these outpourings of pain, of grievance, of grieving, of exhaustion, of regret, of frustration, of anger.

Listen to the voices of Chinese and Chinese diaspora fans!

Do better, white danmei fandoms.

I've debated multiple times doing something like cataloging racist microaggressions I see in the danmei tags and making a post about it. I generally see at least one a day, and I block the worst offenders. But in the end I'm a white USAdian and it's really not my place. I'm sure I don't even catch them all.

It's a real issue and I've seen a lot of anecdotal evidence that it drives Chinese and Chinese diaspora fans out of participating in Westernized Tumblr danmei fandom, and that's utterly unacceptable.

One of the most common ones I see is how people talk about the character names. For example:

[Image ID: screen cap of a text post. It reads: "This all came about when I was looking at SVSSS memes on Ao3 and went like "My friends nor coworkers would get heads or tails of what in the world these alphabet smash assortment mean let alone know that they're referencing Soecific individuals or novels." End ID]

THIS IS A MICROAGGRESSION. For fuck's sake, people, acting like the names are ridiculous, incomprehensible, outside of what "friends and colleagues" could comprehend, is RACIST AS FUCK. And I see people say stuff like this constantly.

"But I only meant I was struggling--" THEN WHY DID YOU ASSUME OTHER PEOPLE WOULD STRUGGLE THE SAME WAY? STILL RACIST

"But I could say that about the abbreviations in any--" BUT YOU SAID IT ABOUT THIS FANDOM SPECIFICALLY AND CONTEXT FUCKING MATTERS AND IN THIS CONTEXT IT'S RACIST.

"But it was on my personal blo--" LOOK IF YOU WANT TO BE RACIST ON YOUR PERSONAL BLOG I CAN'T STOP YOU BUT IF YOU TAG ORIGINAL POSTS INTO MAIN FANDOM TAGS THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WILL SEE YOU AND KNOW YOU ARE RACIST.

The person who posted the above, when I said it was a microaggression, demanded to know how. So, for them and everyone else in this fucking fandoms, I present what any of them could have learned by googling the term. The definition of microaggression:

(Source)

[Image ID: a dictionary entry for the term "microaggression." It reads: "noun. A comment or action that subtle and often unconsciously or unintentionally expresses a prejudiced attitude toward a member if a marginalized group (such as a racial minority)." End ID]

What that screen cap says about names is literally the textbook definition of a microaggression.

Chinese names are just names. The way Chinese sounds is just the way a language sounds. Cultivation is inherently based in Eastern culture and cannot be completely divorced from that context even for a cute AU. I'm so tired of seeing posts saying things like "MXTX just stole the plot of (insert Western myth/folktale/fable here)". Do yall realize how fucking racist you're being? Do yall realize how fucking racist even I've probably been by accident because I'm also a dumb white USAdian?

I've been holding this post in for like a year, but the person who posted that screen cap, who doubled-down by posting a non-apology to all the MXTX main tags, and who acted like I'd said something insane when I told them it was a microaggression...they're apparently my last fucking straw.

DO BETTER, WHITE WESTERN DANMEI FANDOM. We all need to learn and listen and knock it the fuck off already. Me included.

Please, please listen when people say "check yourself." Seeing this stuff everyday is exhausting even for ME and I'm not even in the marginalized group. Chinese people (including diaspora) who stay in the fandom here despite the constant deluge are strong as fuck and they do not deserve this and, as a white person, I'm so so sorry white people are like this.