#its not really the fault of the character so much as the fact she's pretty much pure plot. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

heesdreamer · 2 years ago

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SUNSHINE

PAIRING ➩ basketball player heeseung x cheerleader reader

WARNINGS ➩ um its super rough smut lol

WC ➩ 5k

AUTHORS NOTE ➩ i hate both short works and straight smut but i guess that vlog got to me so here you go NOT PROOFREAD also i don’t like writing the boys completely out of character and i do not think hs would say or do half of these things lol but for the sake of the story

“You might just be the least positive cheerleader of all time.”

You were turning your head to the side to glare at the voice suddenly appearing from your left, sighing and rolling your eyes when you spotted who it was and going back to your position with your arms crossed on the side of the court as the game continued on.

“Aren’t you guys supposed to be all smiley and ‘go team’?” Heeseung was continuing on even though you were clearly ignoring him, something you did every time he attempted to bug you during the games and rile you up enough to get a reaction.

“Aren’t you supposed to be on the court and not sat next to me on the bench?” You were snapping back at him and you quickly glanced at him before looking away when you saw the familiar smirk creeping up on his face.

Heeseung was definitely not a bench warmer, far from it considering he was practically the star of your schools basketball team and he knew you were aware of this. That still didn’t stop him from occasionally allowing the coach to switch him out so he could come and sit near the cheerleaders, seemingly finding a lot of mid game entertainment in you and your cold reactions.

You’d gone to school with him for most of your life but you never really noticed him until high school started and you joined the cheerleading team under the pressuring words of your mom.

She’d been one when she was your age and she claimed it to be the sole reason she loved high school, the place where she met all of her friends and eventually your father when he transferred their junior year. You’d pretty much expected to be forced into it since you were a child and now on your fourth and final year, you were more so just going through the motions.

Your stoic, and borderline aggressive, personality mixed with the image of you in a small glittery skirt and your hair sporting a giant obnoxious bow in your schools representative colors, seemed to catch the attention of the star player and he hadn’t left you alone since.

“When would I get to talk to you if I wasn’t on the bench?” He was leaning sideways towards you and you frowned softly, trying to ignore him and the stupid smirk sticking to his face now. “It’s not like you stop for me in the hallways.”

“Have you tried taking a hint?” You were once again harshly spitting the words at him and you felt a bit frustrated with yourself for not being able to keep your composure like normal, already stressed from an intense workload and the building pressure of graduation as it approached. “Why can’t you go bother your fan club, I’m sure they’d be more than willing.”

Heeseung definitely didn’t have the same concerns as you and you didn’t necessarily blame him. It isn’t his fault he was immediately offered full ride sport scholarships to multiple different schools and as much as you hated to admit it, he worked hard for his success and he deserved it.

That fact still didn’t make it any less annoying that he was constantly bugging you with his quick comments about your attitude or his countless attempts to flirt with you, asking for your number or sending you Valentine’s Day singing grams every year since you’d met, even though you’d stormed into the cafeteria freshman year and dumped his soda on his head for humiliating you.

He hadn’t gotten upset and started to dislike you like you had hoped for, instead he smiled and moved his wet hair out of his face before asking if you liked the flowers he’d left at your locker.

“Why would I do that? You know you’re my favorite, sunshine.” His tone was lower now and the nickname fell from his lips casually, routine by now considering how much he said it despite the fact you told him to knock it off every single time he used it.

You were sparing him once last glare before turning back towards the game and ignoring the fact he was a lot closer to you now, one small sideways scoot away from being off the bench and on the same bleacher seat you were on.

He was persistent to a point that you could almost admire and you’d never be foolish enough to deny that he was almost stupidly attractive but that didn’t change anything for you. You had too many differences for you to be truly interested and it didn’t help that he smelt like sweat almost every single time you saw him.

Plus, you weren’t lying about his fan club and you already had to deal with numerous sharp glares and mean whispers throughout the years and that was without you reciprocating the interest.

You’d long associated the boy with negative things so it was pretty common for you to greet his smiley face with an eye roll or a straight up sneer, trying your hardest to ignore him but typically falling into a small session of half bickering half flirting before he was giving up again and leaving you to sit and seethe. You couldn’t even escape him at home either, something you were especially aware of right now.

It was two hours into trying to get some homework done and your patience was wearing thin the longer the sound of the basketball outside continued on.

You just so happened to be in the universes shit list and you lived directly across from a park in the neighborhood. You’d been excited when you first moved in, being able to play constantly when you were younger and eventually developing it into a nice place to sit and relax after school. You would have solo picnics under one of the big trees or just go and listen to music laying in the grass.

That is until Lee Heeseung also moved into the neighborhood, starting off your sophomore year with a big obnoxious moving truck on the other side of the park and what followed nearly drove you insane.

He was outside nearly every single day after school and practice, no matter if it was cold or hot, rain or snow. What once had been a calming spot for you to unwind was quickly overtaken by the sound of rubber against cement and you stopped going the day he started.

Sometimes he’d wave at you from the court, catching sight of you glaring down at him from your open bedroom window, but he never made any attempts to talk to you or invite you to join him unlike he did in school and neither of you ever mentioned the fact you were neighbors during your little moments of heated conversation. You learned to ignore him over time but you were particularly stressed recently and before you knew it you were letting out an annoyed yell before marching out of your room.

You’d barely processed the fact you were moving as you tugged a hoodie over your head and slipped on your boots, heading out the door and slamming it as you passed through.

Some of your fire had disappeared by the time you were actually pushing out into the cold night air and crossing the empty street, your steps becoming more hesitant as you entered the park and approached the basketball court, realizing you were going to have to actually speak to him. He didn’t look over as you got closer and your frown appeared again at the sweat gleaming from his skin, his neck red and agitated like he was pushing himself past his limit.

“Do you ever go home?” You were asking before you had decided it was a good idea and you were almost as surprised as he was to hear your voice, jumping slightly at the same time he did as he whipped around to look at you.

He looked confused for a second when he saw you standing there on the court with your hands stuffed in your pockets but when he seemingly processed it was you, he was breaking into a small smile.

You watched him as he continued to pant and try and catch his breath to be able to respond to you, sighing in the meantime and taking a few step backwards so you could sit on one of the benches and stare up at him in the middle of the court.

“Almost didn’t recognize you without your pretty little skirt, sunshine.” His response was eventually coming and it immediately pulled an eye roll from you despite the fact your stomach flipped as he took a few steps in your direction, tucking his basketball under his arm routinely and watching you with amusement and interest.

“Yeah well…” You couldn’t think of a good comeback as he continued to get closer and you inwardly blamed it on the cold.

“Did you come to cheer me on?” He was asking in a soft voice but it had a mocking hint to it, not necessarily mean but potentially bitter and you stared up at him as his eyebrow cocked. “My own personal cheerleader?”

You were trying to get a good read on his expression but it wasn’t making any sense to you, his face lacking it’s usual lightheartedness and almost looking conflicted as he watched you and seemingly waited for you to finally think of a witty response. You didn’t have one, thrown off by both his strange demeanor and having a conversation in an unfamiliar place and you couldn’t tell if he was pleased or disappointed at your sudden loss for words.

He wasn’t saying anything further and you would’ve sighed in relief if it wasn’t for the fact he was watching you so intensely, eventually sitting beside you on the bench and you tensed up when you felt his thigh pressing against yours.

“You didn’t have to stop playing.” You were eventually muttering and you would’ve been more self conscious about your out of character behavior if he wasn’t already being so strange.

“Yeah I did.” He was sighing and you turned your head to look at him, being met with his side profile as he stared straight ahead towards the court and ignored the fact you were staring at him. “You’re a distraction.”

A laugh was bursting from your lips accidentally, almost a scoff and you cut it off short by covering your mouth and giggling out an apology when he shot you a sideways glare. You were shaking your head and trying to gather yourself before clearing your throat softly. “You see me every time you play, never been a distraction then.”

“Are you kidding me?” Now it was his turn to laugh but it was a lot more dry than yours and almost sarcastic sounding, like he couldn’t believe you’d actually said that. “You don’t think seeing you in that outfit every game is a distraction?”

He was finally looking at you now and your face flushed at how close that made you, nearly touching noses if either of you leaned forward slightly but you stayed perfectly still and scanned over his face as you tried to take in his words. You would’ve thought he was joking around and doing his usual rounds of mindless flirting but his tone was flat and his face remained serious, even as you watched him curiously.

You weren’t exactly sure how to respond and your words felt caught in your dry throat, letting down your guard for just a second too long and being struck with nerves.

“A good distraction?” You were eventually pushing out and your voice lifted in a curious tilt, his serious face breaking into a small smile again at the sound of your soft question and hesitant tone, two things he rarely heard from you.

“Yeah sunshine, it’s good.”

——

You spent the next two days avoiding Heeseung as much as you can, having ended the night in some more whispered small talk before he was resuming practice and you were eventually slipping off back to your house once the cold became too much for your hands and nose.

It was weirdly nice to watch him play in a place where he wasn’t obviously trying to show off and under the pressures of competition, watching the skillful way he moved and the sweat that continued to reflect off his deep tanned skin despite the bitter cold touching on yours.

You still felt awkward for having interrupted him and it didn’t help that you had finally played into his flirting for once, mistakenly letting your guard down once you saw him in a more neutral environment and you felt extremely embarrassed about the whole entire encounter. You were telling yourself it had nothing to do with the fact he made your face flush every time he leaned closer or the way your stomach flipped as he talked about your skirt distracting him.

Sadly, you couldn’t stay away from him for long considering a school year quarter pep rally was approaching and everybody involved needed to come to the gymnasium to practice together, including both the cheerleaders and the basketball team.

You frequented the gym a lot more regularly than other students and were pretty used to being in front of a crowd or performing routines to all of your peers but you could tell some of the clubs who would be involved were feeling nervous, striking up conversation with one of the boys from the dance club to try and ease his nerves.

The conversation was entirely friendly and even a little bit awkward considering you barely knew him and he was a lot younger than you but little did you know, Heeseung was watching you from across the gym and making his own assumptions about the interaction.

You completely missed the way his jaw was clenching as he watched the two of you laugh, you instinctively leaning forward and touching the boys arm as a comforting gesture and giving further reason for the hard glare being sent your way from the other side of the room. It didn’t help that you hadn’t been speaking to him and had went right back to actively avoiding him, he’d been overthinking it and looking forward to talking to you about his worries today since you had to be in close proximity.

So it was driving him crazy that you still hadn’t approached him and even worse, you were too caught up in a conversation with some kid he didn’t bother to place a name to.

Eventually the first round of practice was going to start soon and Heeseung watched as your coach said something to you briefly, stared as you nodded in acceptance and then wandered off to go and gather whatever it was that she had asked for.

He was following behind you without even thinking about it, completely ignoring the calls from his teammates asking where he was going and urging him to hurry up before the run through started. You were heading back towards the storage lockers where there was plenty of extra balls and uniforms, anything that might be needed during a game or an event.

You were barely thinking about the basketball player during this whole time, too distracted with the busyness of the day, but he immediately came to mind when you felt something pressing up against you from behind after entering the storage room that was tucked behind the large indoor bleachers.

“What are you doing?” You were grumbling out to him in your usual annoyed tone even though your stomach was flipping at the fact he was actually touching you for once, something he rarely did despite his constant advances.

He wasn’t fully pressed against you but just enough so that you could feel his clothing near yours, you could sense his large frame looming over you and practically caging you in near the wall you’d been passing when he arrived. You shifted slightly so you could turn your head to look over your shoulder and glare up at him when he didn’t respond.

“Who’s the kid?” He was responding and his voice was lower than usual, lacking it’s typical lightness and humor that came along whenever he felt like teasing you.

“Don’t be jealous of a freshman, it’s not a good look on you.” You were shaking your head and sighing, turning back to look at the shelf and try your best to ignore him despite your alarming awareness to how close the two of you were.

It was only increasing when his hand was finally touching you, snaking forward and resting against your hip in a way that caused your breath to catch in your throat, making you lose your nonchalant demeanor for just a split second before you were attempting to compose yourself again. He was just holding onto your hip, his hand large enough that his fingertips were pressing into your stomach.

You didn’t say anything as he touched you and you still didn’t when he was tugging you backwards softly, pulling your bottom half against his instead of fully pressing against you. Your eyes fluttered shut for a second at the feeling of him but you didn’t want him to see the obvious effect he had over you.

You were wearing a hoodie over your cheerleading uniform and half of his hand was underneath it so he could feel the hem of your skirt properly, bunching up the thick fabric around his arm slightly. He’d only pulled your lower half backwards so you were partially bent over now, barely enough to be noticiable but the implication made your cheeks burn.

“Why would I be jealous?” He was finally asking and his voice didn’t cut the tension at all, if anything worsening it. “Wasn’t him you were thinking about when you put this on.”

A scoff was falling from your lips at his sudden claim, despite how true it was considering you’d stared in the mirror particularly long this morning thinking about Heeseung calling you a distraction. Your careless attitude wasn’t holding too strong especially since he was squeezing your hip bone softly, your body instinctively pushing back further against him and causing your breath to stutter.

You felt slightly dizzy from the feeling of him against you so intimately, mixed with the fact that he had obviously been jealous over something as simple as you having a conversation. It should’ve annoyed you like it normally did but your heart raced slightly instead and you placed your hands against the wall subconsciously.

He took that as a cue to bend you over more, bringing his other hand up to your empty hip and using both of them to tug you fully backwards by the waist so you were flushed against him.

“Why are you wearing this?” He was suddenly asking and you were confused for a second before you felt him tugging on your large hoodie, childish annoyance in his tone at the fact most of your uniform was covered up.

You laughed softly at his whining, your voice embarrassingly affected and breathless. “Didn’t want to be a distraction.”

“That’s bullshit, you like knowing I’m watching you.” He was mumbling again now and it almost sounded like he was talking to himself, not really caring if you heard him. He was taking another step forward now and you could feel him more now, your head falling forward at the realization he was hard against you. “You’d let me take you right here, wouldn’t you?”

You considered not answering for a second and lowering his ego but he was slightly shifting backwards and releasing the pressure and a wave of panic ran through you.

“Yes yes I would.” You were rushing out and moving backwards to try and feel him again, ignoring the soft chuckle he gave and the way he squeezed your desperate hips in amusement. “You know I would.”

“Always so mean to me sunshine.” His voice was mocking again like it was the other night at the park and you were slightly thrown off by his change of demeanor, not expecting the roughness from the boy who was always big smiles and loud laughter everytime you’d seen him. He was bordering mean at times with his rough touches and provoking voice but you didn’t mind it at all, knowing you’d be dripping down your thighs if you were less clothed.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry for being mean Hee.” Your voice was high and whiny but you were too turned on to be embarrassed, knowing how pathetic you must look.

“Show me how sorry you are.” He was instructing and you paused for a second, not exactly sure what he meant until he was lessening his hold on your hips. “Fuck yourself against me.”

Your breath was catching in your throat again and you let out a soft whine, one of your hands on the wall sliding down it slightly as you almost lost your balance.

He wasn’t exactly radiating patience and you were beyond desperate so you wasted no time in giving him what he wanted, pushing yourself back against him harder and crying out when you felt that he wanted it as much as you did, almost painfully hard now. His hips instinctively moved forward to meet yours but he immediately froze and stopped, letting you do all the work as you continued to roll your hips against him and try to get some sort of relief.

It wasn’t nearly enough for you, barely enough pressure for you to feel him and imagine how deep he would feel inside you but not enough to actually help you out in your building desperation, overwhelmed with longing for him as your hand fell off the wall and reach back to grab into his wrist.

“Please, I need you to touch me please.” You were begging him and a soft cry sunk into your voice, your head spinning with how bad you wanted to feel him anywhere.

“Fuck look at you.” He was grunting out before caving into your request, pulling you up softly and walking forward so now your entire body was pressed against the wall.

The cement was cold on your cheek and it would’ve been too uncomfortable if it wasn’t for the immediate distraction he was providing, his large hand slipping under your hoodie and aggressively groping your chest. His knuckles must’ve been rubbing against the wall but he didn’t show any signs of caring about the pain, twisting your hard nipple in his fingers and humping himself against you.

Your head was falling backwards to land on his shoulder, panting and letting out streams of high pitched whines as he roughly played with your mounds and thrusted against your skirt covered core.

He was using his free hand to reach over and grip your chin, holding it tightly between his fingers and turning your face so he could sloppily kiss you from where you laid on his shoulder. You were happily humming into his mouth despite the amateurish way you were moving against each other, more combined teeth and swapped spit than an actual kiss.

You could feel it dripping down your chin as he licked into your mouth, completely filthy and dirtier than you ever imagined him being. It was driving you absolutely insane and you’d completely forgotten about where you were or the fact people were expecting you back, the door not locked and accesible to anyone who came looking for you.

“Want you inside me Hee, please.” You were crying out into the kiss and he was only pulling back enough so you could speak, watching you with hooded eyes and parted lips and he tried to catch his breath and process what you were begging for. “I need you so bad, I can’t breathe.”

“Want me to fuck you sunshine?” His mocking tone was back and he squeezed your chest aggressively to emphasize his words, rutting against you in a sharp thrust that sent you harder into the wall again. He ignored your shocked cry and did it again before laying another wet kiss against your mouth. “Tell me baby, go on and beg for me.”

“I’ll do anything please, anything.” You were nearly sobbing now as you desperately tried to appeal to him, rocking yourself backwards into his hard cock to try and get him riled up enough to snap. “Need your cock in me so bad, do anything.”

Your words were slurred and mainly gibberish by now but it seemed to be enough for him, he cursed under his breath as he watched you desperately beg for him and you barely had time to process the fact he was moving before he was tugging down his basketball shorts and pressing your face against the wall again.

You moaned sharply into the cold cement and you were grateful it muffled it slightly considering you only got louder once he was roughly pulling up your skirt, ripping down your panties in one go and not bothering to warn or prep you before he was pressing the head of his hard cock against your entrance.

“Next time I’ll take my time with you, make you fall apart for me slow.” He was muttering in your ear as he lined himself up, pressing forward slightly and covering your mouth with his head when you let out a loud cry. “Can’t wait anymore though, gonna fuck you like the slut you are.”

You were nodding enthusiastically at his demeaning words, the more coherent part of you fluttering with butterflies at the fact he was already thinking about a next time that wasn’t so rushed. You had no issue with him simply fucking you now, feeling like you’d die if he spent another second teasing you or building up to it.

He was finally pushing himself fully inside you and your legs would’ve gave out if it wasn’t for his arm that was snaking around your stomach and his heavy weight pressing you against the wall, practically suffocating you as you lost your breath from the feeling of his complete length inside of you.

“Fuck, you’re so tight.” He was hissing out between gritted teeth and you instinctively clenched around him at the comment, satisfaction rolling through you when he groaned at the feeling. “No idea how long I thought about this.”

“Then show me.” You were snapping out, immediately hearing him laugh as your usual attitude resurfaced for a second, quickly growing impatient the longer he stayed still inside of you.

You were quickly taking back any anger you had when he was pulling out of you, almost all the way, before slamming his entire length back in. You could feel him so deep that you almost couldn’t catch a breath, bucking forward and your mouth parting in a silent cry that was immediately interrupted when he started to fuck into you at a fast pace.

He gave you no time to adjust to his thick size and you were grateful for it, the rough burn of him stretching you being exactly what you needed after years of bickering and teasing with him. It was beyond what you could’ve imagined, all that tension finally bursting into relief as he fucked you so rough you’d surely be coated in bruised by the time the pep rally actually rolled around.

You’d gone completely dumb and you knew he had too, holding his composure just enough to continue his aggressive thrust but losing all ability to tease you or make more comments towards your behavior.

He was holding you tightly against him and you almost wished you were somewhere more private so you could see him undressed, suddenly overcome with the need to feel his skin against yours and be completely covered in his warmth. You tried to ignore the unusually soft thought towards him and focus on how good he was making you feel, the familiar tight coil building in your stomach as he continued to fuck into you deep and rough.

“Please please.” You were begging again but you weren’t even sure what for at this point, your mouth just moving on instinctively so he didn’t stop under any circumstances.

“I know baby I know.” His voice was more gentle than it had been before but still just as tight and overwhelmed, definitely reaching the end rapidly himself like you were and trying his hardest to prolong it considering how good you felt as you kept getting tighter and tighter around him. “Squeezing my cock so good sunshine, you’re so perfect for me.”

“For you, just for you.” You were quickly responding to the casual possessiveness he had showed and this seemed to affect him more than anything, his hips faltering for a second in their assault before he was fucking into you even harder than you thought was possible. He clearly liked hearing you claim yourself as his own and you felt overwhelming dizzy at the realization.

It was a complete blur now as he fucked into you, coming undone faster than you ever had before and blacking out for a few seconds from the pleasure of him doing the same inside of you. You were too out of your head to care about the fact he had came inside of you and you didn’t even think about it.

You were immediately worried it would be awkward once you were coming back to your senses but then you processed the fact that Heeseung was placing soft kisses against your neck, turning you around gently so you were finally facing him and you felt a bit emotional from how kind he was being now after he’d just taken you so aggressively.

You were definitely in some sort of dropped space after the intensity you’d just been through because you were kissing him suddenly, happy you’d had him in that way but now feeling like you’d missed out on seeing him from this point of view.

He was grateful accepting the kiss and tugging you forward by your lower back, the same place he’d been holding but very different context now as he softly moved his mouth against yours and brushed your hair out of your face.

“Are you going to let me take you on a date now?” He was asking into the kiss and you pulled back to laugh softly, laying your head down on his shoulder and feeling the way they lifted as he chuckled at your reaction.

“Yeah hotshot… I’m sure we can work that out.”

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victimsofyaoipoll · 1 year ago

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Finals

Propaganda Under Cut

Sakura Haruno

Her husband is gay and her author doesn't know how to write women. So many people say she's the worst but she. DESERVES. BETTER!!! Save her from this franchise.

My baby girl my bestie my best friend. She committed the crime of um being written by kishimoto who both doesn’t know how to write women and somehow writes men in the gayest way possible specifically naruto and sasuke. Like the thing is naruto and sasuke ARE gay and also she gets so much hate for the crime of kishimoto writing her one dimensionally in love with sasuke. I know her personally she is a butch lesbian to me just trust me she’s in love with Ino and has a lesbian thing going on with Karin okay just trust me. My everything. She needs to divorce the loveless lavender marriage she’s in

What is there to say, even? The OG Threat to my 90s anime brain, the only woman I've ever hated with such a passion she made me turn away from the color pink. I used to write fics with my friend where she got left behind on purpose so our OCs could join the Naruto and Sasuke team instead. I loathed this bitch until I was 16 and realized the author simply couldnt write women and decided it was time to make peace with Sakura. It is not her fault she's vaguely written and obsessive over Sasuke. She deserves better. Sasuke and Naruto still should be together and Sakura shouldnt be with Sasuke but I no longer believe this because I hate Sakura, it is because I love her. She deserves a spouse who will actually put in the time to treat her like the hero she is.

Misa Amane

she gets treated in-canon the way fandoms treat female characters that Threaten an m/m ship. it's like, "oh why don't you go sit in the corner and be pretty, misa, while the Men have intelligent conversation and pretend they aren't ten seconds from fucking each other, doesn't that sound nice?" it's infuriating. and MAYBE it's better now but i remember her getting treated the same way in fanfiction too, like we all need to do just as badly by our female secondary characters as fucking tsugumi ohba, but with the added insult of making her be alternately oblivious of the relationship between light and L or actively trying to sabotage it—incompetently, of course, because god forbid misa be allowed dignity or moments of cleverness.

she's one of the first characters I think of when I consider old school fandom misogyny. The annoying bitch and clingy crazy gf allegations were AFTER HER ASS. She's also a lot more intelligent than people gave her credit for, but most seem inclined to take the Very Biased word of our unreliable, narcissistic narrator and his homoerotic arch nemesis and claim that just because she's bubbly and into romance that she's also a complete moron. Which is blatantly untrue. Everyone was afraid of Misa girlbossing too hard. Killing people and devoting yourself to the deranged twink of your dreams even though you know he'll never love you back??? Having a hardcore goth aesthetic and being so Hot even literal Death Gods are into you?? God forbid women do ANYTHING!

Not only is she the victim of yaoi culture, she is the victim of early 2000s misogyny by an author that wanted to introduce a girl character because he knew his male rivals were getting too homoerotic. She is a goth bimbo icon who portrays what I think is one of the few callouts for stan culture and what parasocial relationships can do to both the stan and the idol. The fact that she is a toxic fan of Kira and also hot, funny, sociable is tragic in its own way, which I think the author did try to touch on but was too misogynistic too really get through. Of course, she was reduced to villain status by the fandom and anime alike because she got in the way of the supposed romance in their psychological horror anime

#poll #finals #sakura haruno #naruto #misa amane #misa misa #death note

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absolutebl · 4 months ago

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Hi P’abl!!

Basically, I died back in early July and have missed all things BL, GL, and all the works. I tried to figure out on my own, but I just keep running into spoilers of things I didn’t know had even aired!

Could you just give me a rundown of what’s been going on/happened? I honestly trust you with my life now~

In the last 3 months? Sure:

(I feel like this should be sung to We Didn't Start the Fire)

Wandee Goodday 9/10

Such a FUN show. A charming quintessentially modern Thai BL about a doctor and a boxer who start as a one night stand and then fall in love. Great rep for everything from Muay Thai, to safe sex, to FUN sex, to ace, to bisexuality, to smiley kisses, to the first legal gay wedding in a Thai BL. It’s a delight and I enjoyed (almost) every single moment of it.

Century of Love 9/10

This is a great little show about a young man who fell in love with a pretty girl 100 years ago, and when she died in his arms, he was cursed to live until he could meet her reborn self. Only this time around, she’s reborn into the body of a man. I love it when Thailand gets all up in its own historical business and reincarnation and shizz.

I like this pair. (It’s not DaouOffroad’s fault I didn’t enjoy most of their first series.) Daou’s wushu is pretty snazzy and we got a fun meet cute. (Erm… Remeet cute? Meet cute 2.0?) Plus this is a very PRETTY show. Despite some ham handed comedy moments, this ultimately has more in common with something like I Feel You Linger in the Air meets First Love Again, then (as one might expect) Until We Meet Again or The Director Who Buys Me Dinner.

The leads turned in great performances, although Daou outclassed everybody else on that screen. It’s a good story and a great BL. I’m not sure this is going in my rewatch rotation, but I can’t find any major faults with it beyond a certain level of camp that is sadly endemic to lackorns. Also I’m going to give it credit as the kind of BL that one could safely recommend to lovers of melodrama and historical romance, without having to qualify it as “good for a BL.” It was, to put it succinctly, simply a VERY ENJOYABLE show.

We Are 9/10

We Are was slow to find its stride (I didn’t get into it until ep 7) but I’m very glad I gave it a chance. It’s a soft ensemble piece with multiple couples and very little plot, but I didn’t care because it’s not trying to be anything more substantial. Essentially this was a series of vignettes covering one year of uni for a queer friendship group finding love, new friends, and laughter. It’s not being harsh with us or it’s characters the way some offerings of this ilk have been (side eyes Friend Zone and Only Friends) nor did it tumble into Gen Y chaos.

In fact, this reminded me more than anything of a refined and elevated Love Sick - just with older characters and occurring within a genre that has matured too. It has that close queer friendship group meets earnest gentleness that made me adore Love Sick so much. In other words, this was Thai BL at its finest, finding it roots again 10 years on, but also stretching upwards and showing us what it could do with that original seed. So? I loved it. Did it blow my mind? No. But it left me smiling and made me belly laugh quite a bit.

Cosmetic Playlover 9/10

I loved this little show. It was a classic office BL about the older workaholic who loves his job and the younger upstart who unexpectedly loves his boss. It’s a hyung romance where everybody is extremely earnest and sweet and pretty about everything. Except our seme, who is slightly unhinged and a little obsessed in all the ways one likes best from Japan. Plus the kisses were good! I can’t ask for anything more, utterly charming unexpected gem. What a great time!

The Rebound 9/10

This was a sports romance Thai BL pulp with everything I could have asked for given this sub genre. More, actually, since MeenPing are both great basketball players and the team component really did form part of the connective tissue of the show (vital in a sports romance). Meen has his shirt off within the first two minutes which is all I needed but he's still pretty great as the sullen secret keeper against Ping's cheerful survivor - childhood sweethearts torn asunder and now reunited. Then Frank sweeps in to give everyone a bad case of second lead syndrome.

I always try to judge BL for what it is AS BL, and what it’s trying to do within its own territory and purview. This did exactly what it claimed on the tin: gay boys play b-ball and fall in love. That was all I wanted from it. Sure there was random kidnapping and a light bought of mass murder, but what’s a BL in 2024 without a touch of the mafia? You do you little pulp, I’m disposed to be pleased.

My Love Mix-Up (Thai Remake) 8/10

It was fine and it was charming, but it was also a little meh. Thailand managed to take one of Japan's softest cutest most bonkers BLs in recent memory and make it softer and cuter and… dull. They did this by watering it down. JBLs almost always have an edge to them, even the rom-coms, by dulling the edge, MLMU lost a great deal of the sparkle and tension as well. What an office setting managed to mostly maintain in the consummate hands of TayNew felt somewhat lackluster when handed off to the next generation and a high school setting. Cherry Magic was a lovely reinterpretation, Mix Up was an amateur's watercolor rendition of a colorful oil painting.

Am I being harsh? G4 tried their best, and Fourth turned in some outrageously good acting in the latter half. But the show? It was fine. If you like water colors and you haven't seen (and loved) Kieta Hatsukoi.

This Love Doesn't Have Long Beans 8/10

A story about a kid who infiltrates a cooking competition under false pretenses and then has to deal with the consequences when he falls in love with the head chef. The side couple is a poor little rich boy meets physical therapist (morality chain). The core friendships are excellent and the chemistry cannot be faulted across the (charcuterie) board. What this show lacks in substance it makes up for in health code violations. It was all chili all the time.

Considering that the plot centered on betrayal but the romantic relationship never sweetened enough to balance that bitterness; one could be forgiven for throwing this one in the compost. But I got over all its weaknesses in flavor balancing for an ultimately satisfying meal, with a great dessert course. I've always loved spicy food. Plus the blooper reels were fantastic.

My Stand-In 8/10

Adaptation of Chinese novel "Professional Body Double" by Shui Qiang Cheng. Stars Up (Lovely Writer) and Poom (Bake Me Please) directed by the same team as KinnPorsche.

Stuntman Joe dies on the job and wakes up in the body of another Joe with an entirely different life. But Joe just starts repeating the mistakes of his previous self - love, work, play.

I enjoyed the experience of watching this show, I looked forward to it every week. I thought everybody did a great job with it and in it, and I liked that is was something substantially different for Thai BL.

But I’m not sure I'll rewatch it or if it's bingeable. It left me feeling more sanguine than happy. Is there, objectively, anything wrong with it? No. But am I in love with it? No. I think that rests on the central characters, Ming in particular. I never liked him or warmed to them as a couple. I spent most of this show just very very sorry for poor Joe. Thus I was never rooting for their romance.

I would recommend it, if you enjoy your BL more cerebral, with complicated unlikable love interests, and a downtrodden sympathetic lead. Is it, perhaps, more JBL that ThBL? Am I biased because it's a Thai production and I had expectations? What magical carnage could Japan have done with this IP? I'm left with questions, but I'm ultimately glad I watched this.

SunsetXVibes 8/10

Classic CEO meets ingenue archetypes make for a somewhat banal and simplistic romance. This could’ve come from an 80s Harlequin, except that they’re gay. It's… old fashioned. There was nothing meta about this, there was no subversion or commentary on anything BL, queer, or beyond. It’s just a straight up (okay not straight) romance. I was not wild about these characters for this particular pair, but that’s not the pair's fault, they did a decent job with their parts and I look forward to their next show - here’s hoping it’s a bit more meaty. I preferred the side couple because they were more complex and true to BL archetypes, even if they were also a bit miss-handled.

Ultimately? This is a serviceable show if somewhat lacking in its convictions, but with some beautiful sex scenes, people, and fashion. I was a particular fan of Lin‘s gender bending femme style. It’s groundbreaking to see that aesthetic on one of the leads. There were multiple times they could’ve leaned into well established plot points, paranormal elements, and character tension, and instead just glossed over them. This should probably get a 7/10, but I’m giving it an 8 because of that one oppa line at the beginning, Tenon's tatas, and the call back to Big Dragon with that iconic musical refrain in the final episode. It was a pretty fun ride, emphasis on pretty and ride.

Love Sea 7/10

Same couple as LITA2 (FortPeat) , new characters to the Mameverse. While traveling a writer has a one night stand with a very irritating man (who also breaks into his hotel room, among other red flag agendas). FortPeat are hot and great together, the GL sides are problematic, neglected, and forgotten. Frankly, this is probably a 8/10 show but I’m mad I wasn’t madder at it, and I'm mad I was so bored throughout. So it gets a 7/10 and let us not speak of this again. I’d like to simply forget about it. Trash watch here.

Knock Knock Boys 7/10

A story about 4 boys of differing personalities who end up living together and pair up, falling in love. Slow moving and waffling, with some artificially generated family drama makes this a classic Thai pulp except that in general it's a smiley kiss of a show. It had plenty of good qualities like great communication and sexual rep (including toys, first time, safe sex, and sexual identities). The heat levels were on point and well executed, and the performances were good. It’s just that the script and the directing were lackluster, rendering it ultimately forgettable. Still, fine on a rainy afternoon with some camomile tea or whatever.

For what's currently airing go here.

#bl from the last 3 months #BL reviews #Wandee Goodday #Century of Love #we are the series #thai bl #Cosmetic Playlover #japanese bl #The Rebound the series #My Love Mix-Up #My Love Mix-Up thailand #This Love Doesn't Have Long Beans #My Stand In #SunsetXVibes #Love Sea the series #knock knock boys

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metalwarrior22 · 1 month ago

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Arcane S2 - On how the death of [redacted] brought peace

Probably.

[This is obviously from my perspective, so take it with a grain of salt.]

The alternate world shown on episode 7 differed greatly from the one we know, specifically, Piltover and Zaun coexisted in harmony, their societies mingling with each other with ease. The event that apparently marked the beginning of this big change was the death of one young Vi.

There were some key differences in the robbery of Jayce’s apartment, the one that put all things in motion for the show. When the gemstone blew up, Vi was caught in the blast of the explosion, perhaps protecting Powder, losing her life. What followed was the arrival of officer Marcus, who witnessed firsthand the grief of three kids over the death of a member of their family.

How did this tragic incident bring peace to two antagonistic cities?

In the main timeline (MT), four kids partially destroyed a building, causing Piltover to fear for its own denizens. In the alternate one (AT), a kid from Zaun, a place with less than Piltover, lost her life while trying to steal to survive. Vi’s death, instead of fear, caused sympathy for Zaun and its people.

In the MT, word traveled fast, reaching The Last Drop even before the kids made it home. In the AT the scenario was almost the same, but the focus was not on the explosion, but on the girl who would not leave her dead sister’s side. It was the first thing the enforcers saw when they arrived, and probably the first thing people in the vicinity heard after the explosion: the inconsolable crying of a small girl. (Important to note that the death of any of the other kids would not have caused such a heartbreaking scene.) After a quick investigation, it would be revealed that the explosion, though probably caused by the kids, was the responsibility of Jayce Talis, a student of Piltover’s Academy.

In summary, Vi’s death was Piltover’s fault.

On the Kirammans

Cassandra Kiramman, a member of Piltover’s council, was indirectly involved in the incident for various reasons: she owned the building that was destroyed, she was Jayce’s patron, and her daughter was near the site of the explosion (probably). Would this, coupled with the sympathy for the mourning girl, be enough for her to take action towards the betterment of Zaun? Not really.

Cassandra was a pragmatic woman, the name of her family carried a lot of weight in the city, and it was a currency she wasn’t going to squander. In the MT, she supported Jayce before the other members of the council, but only to demonstrate that she was a good judge of character, that Jayce was misguided but that she hadn’t made a mistake by sponsoring him. The moment the “trial” ended, she turned her back on Jayce because he had turned into a liability.

Back to the AT, Cassandra would have been minimizing the damage to her House’s name and nothing else. Enter, Caitlyn.

Caitlyn’s inquisitive nature would have led her to learn about Zaun and its people, on why its society was so different from Piltover’s despite the cities being next to each other. Four zaunite kids breaking and entering opened up her whole world. Why? Because the kid that passed away was about her age, yet both couldn’t have been more different in their upbringing. And again, it was Piltover’s fault.

Season 2 revealed that the Kirammans built a ventilation system for the underground, one neglected by them and forgotten by everyone else… and yet, the Lanes have clean air in the AT. It’s possible that Caitlyn’s efforts to help and understand Zaun would have led to her mother finally using them for their intended purpose. It’s also possible that I’m way off mark… but the fact remains that Zaun had clean, unpolluted air.

On Piltover

This one is harder to explain, we don’t know much about the council members aside from Mel and Heimerdinger, the former looking to leave her mark on the world, the latter pretty content with the state of things. And of course, Cassandra, who I’ve already talked about.

Vi’s tragic death comes into play again, pushing the council to truly pay attention to Zaun for the first time in ages and how to help it so that nothing like that happened ever again. Maybe one of the steps they took towards this goal was to create a meeting place for both societies, one where they could mingle and truly look at each other, hence, the bridge market was created, offering goods and services from both cities, encouraging people to cross to the other side.

With this point of view in mind, it’s possible that the Kirammans’ ventilation system was used not only to help Zaun, but to ensure Piltover’s people safety. A selfish reason, but one that fits the current narrative.

On Jayce

Jayce is not present at all in the AT, but it’s easy to infer what happened to him, initially. After his tampering with magic and the subsequent demise of Vi, he was swiftly banished from Piltover, his research destroyed. Thus, Hextech was never invented.

(MT Heimerdinger was “transported” to the AT 3 years before Ekko’s arrival, that is roughly 4 years after Vi’s death, so he wouldn’t have been able to interfere in these events.)

On Silco

Chem baron in one universe… savior in another one?

Despite being at odds after their failed rebellion, Silco kept tabs on Vander and his family, and he quickly learned of the death of Felicia’s daughter. Maybe it was a way to respect Felicia’s memory, but it didn’t take long for him to approach Vander and recognize the grief he was experiencing, the same grief that turned to rage and led to the fallout between the two brothers. This time there was no rage, just deep sorrow. And if Silco was not keen on forgiveness yet, he was open to try once more for a better Zaun, because that was his dream: Piltover and Zaun as equals.

Silco could have used Vi’s death as a way to instill rebellion once more in Zaun, but there were no hints that shimmer was ever used in the AT (Singed did invent it); Benzo, being one of its first victims, was alive and well. Plus, the enforcers never flooded Zaun with their numbers, Piltover’s efforts focused on healing instead of punishing.

Putting his plans to become a chem baron on hold, Silco looked for ways that would actually help Zaun. With Vander’s involvement, arguably the most respected person in the Lanes, and the recent show of goodwill from Piltover, there was an opportunity there to lift up Zaun and its denizens.

In the MT, after Vander’s death, Silco was able to control Zaun and its criminal world thanks to careful years of planning. What if in the AT, he took that planning not to become a chem baron, but to undermine them and remove power from them? His objectives were the same, but his approach changed.

Finally, MT Silco became more resentful of Piltover’s progress thanks to the Hexgates, he felt Zaun would never be able to be equal to Piltover with them, but given that those were never invented in the AT, his sense of inadequacy was never exacerbated.

(I don’t know where to shoehorn this, but Silco’s face looks fine in the AT, healthy. Perhaps he received help from Piltover?)

In short, Silco and Vander worked together at some point, like in old times, but this time it wasn’t an uphill battle, tragedy gave way to opportunity, and they seized it to achieve their shared vision of the nation of Zaun.

In summary, Vi’s death alone didn’t bring peace to Piltover and Zaun, but the circumstances around it created a sequence of events that ultimately led to the thriving and prosperity of Zaun, putting it on more equal grounds with Piltover.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading. If you don’t agree with me and want to let me know, be civil about it.

#arcane #arcane s2 #arcane season 2 #arcane meta #arcane season 2 spoilers #arcane s2 spoilers #vi #caitlyn kiramman #jinx #caitlyn arcane #silco #arcane silco #vander #vander arcane #cassandra kiramman #heimerdinger #arcane piltover #piltover and zaun #arcane zaun

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fizzbot · 7 months ago

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APOLOGY TOUR SPOILERS / HELLUVA BOSS CRITICAL POST

(please just dont read if youre a fan/are gonna be annoying in my tags/replies)

i LOVE verosika. i was super excited to see an episode all about her. she has EVERY right to be mad at blitz, and i do enjoy seeing things from the perspective of his victims. BUT.....i was really disappointed in her portrayal in apology tour. MOSTLY just because i was dissapointed in stolas portrayal in apology tour, and think this ep wouldve been better if it was more about BLITZ instead. rant under the cut

im not gonna give the whole rant about how annoying it is that stolas is constantly woobified, because 100 critical blogs have done it much more gracefully than i ever could. but it is just SO dissapointing to watch a man that couldve been SUCH a compelling villain be the ONLY one who is EVER sympathized with in the show. we are supposed to feel bad for him and believe that both sides are wrong in the stolitz situation, when stolas' crimes are SO MUCH WORSE than all of blitzs bad deeds combined. he co-erced blitz into a sex contract as the only means of doing his job, and then made HIM feel guilty for not falling n love with him during it. the 'both sides are in the wrong' comment gets particularly frustrating when the show has, tme and time again, only let stolas be the one with support. blitz is made to look unreasonable, no matter how right he is. and, in this instance, stolas is the one getting invited to this party to celebrate being ""wronged"" by blitz.

back to verosika. especially now that the episode is out, i am even more firmly on her side. the fact that blitz broke up with HER because things were getting too serious is interesting (albiet not as interesting as i think it couldve been but thats a rant for another post). im not saying she should forgive blitz, but i do struggle to fully agree with her because of how she treated stolas in the episode. she is the first to comfort him, the first to try and encourage him to shit-talk blitz, etc etc and i just dont understand.....why?

ive already had problems with her character since the sexual assault ""joke"" from spring broken, but this also really left a bad taste in my mouth. i totally understand her desire to party and sympathize with other people who were harmed by blitz, but its frustrating that stolas was invited to be among them. stolas, the man who is very much NOT THE VICTIM in his relationship with blitz. this is more the fault of the writers than verosika herself, but it is SO FRUSTRATING that she gave him the spotlight and is trying to help him heal from a situation that is ENTIRELY HIS FAULT. stolas didnt just hurt blitzs feelings, he sexually coerced and abused him. of all people, shouldnt verosika understand how terrible that can be? the kind of hurt that can do to a person? im not saying that this terrible relationship FORGIVES blitz's wrongdoings, but you shouldnt be giving his fucking abuser a stage and a microphone to talk shit about his victim. this becomes so much more insidious to me with the conversation she has with blitz on the balcony, later. this was actually a pretty good scene imo but it could certainly be better.

this is much more opinionated and i wouldnt be surprised if even the critical community isnt with me on this one, but i long for an alternate verson of this episode thats focused on verosika being on blitz's side, instead. its been over 5 years since they dated, and even though she is still allowed to be mad, it would be nice to see that shes moved on. maybe give her a new partner like barbie wire and let her throw these parties just so she can look back and laugh and help blitz's other victims heal in the same way that she has. not to bring up an also not-great show, but in rick and morty, we see a relationship between rick and one of his ex-partners named unity. they were really terrible for each other, enabling bad/unhealthy behaviors, generally being awful. their break-up was messy, but in recent seasons, we see unity coming back, upon hearing that rick was doing something self-destructive. they worried about him, because a part of them still cared, as much as they were hurt by his actions. i would have LOVED to see a similar thing with blitz and verosika, where verosika finds out about the relationship blitz is trapped in/just got out of. i think it would be SO MUCH MORE naratively interesting, for her to be supportive of his little apology tour, and maybe even inviting HIM to the "blitzo sucks" party. not everyone (or anyone) needs to forgive him; in fact, i think coming to this party would give him perspective. his relationship with stolas has hurt him so badly, he can finally step back and understand the harm that he did to all these people. the apologies that he gave, as he admits in the episode, were shallow. but i think framing stolas as the toxic one would be better in helping him realize that he has done wrong more than what the show is currently doing. and maybe some people at the party WILL forgive him. maybe he can apologize on the stage, and some people will empathize with his situation and believe that the apology is genuine, because hes finally had to be on the other end of his own hurt. and maybe THAT would be the first step in helping blitz realize that maybe he isnt completely unlovable, because there are people who cared about him enough to be THIS DEVASTATED upon getting their heart broken by him. a conversation with verosika about what he did to her would hit so much harder after this, imo

anyway. im sorry if this is completely incoherent/a bad point. i was just thinking about it and i am so sick of everyone being a stolas apologist </3

#helluva boss critical #helluva boss critique #helluva boss criticism #vivziepop critical #anti-vivziepop #anti-helluva boss #hb #critical #hellaverse critical #anti-stolitz #anti-stolas #stolas critical #stolitz critical #anyway. i have more problems with this episode but i didnt outright hate it in the way i did full moon #it was actually kinda fun to watch!!! i hated the MESSAGE of st*las' song but it was pretty and catchy i suppose #ver*sika was absolutely gorgeous as per usual #ALSO STRIKER MENTION RAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#id love to hear the critical communities thoughts on this but if youre a fan and are just gonna argue i dont wanna hear it. lol #i will simply block you and delete it

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crowtheghost · 5 months ago

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the only problem is the fact that most of the shrimpo ships are GOOD including this one! like, this mf pulling everyone

True true there are a Lot of ships,, I'm a thorough believer in ship whatever you want (as long as it's not problematic), But I never got as invested in other dandy world ships as much. I think in my head it came down to the idea of their interactions.. Excuse me using your ask to rant . _. I'm gonna chatter about Shrimpo and Shelly's personalities and such.

So I think that with most Shrimpo x Toon ships the toon has to have a certain level of tolerance for him, obviously. His personality is aggressive and loud! If the other Toon can't at least look past that They probably would clash. Which is why most ships you see is with nicer toons. Goob, Boxten, Finn, (Those are some examples and there are exceptions to that but you get it) I think that a lot of ships work with Shrimpo because he makes his own problems, the other character has sort of 'I can fix him' (or 'I can match him' or 'I can understand him' etc etc) Which revolves around Shrimpo himself! Its pretty awesome. Then you have Shelly! She is a character with her own struggles, the story has shown how her character has been ignored and she hasn't gotten the spot light as much as she maybe should have. On top of that she is clearly much kinder to others as they sometimes are to her. (Vee for example) And I think this is where my mind realized their potential even just as friends. Shelly and Shrimpo are the most cast out of all the toons. But they also both have their own problems and issues! It becomes less 'one sane character makes the evil character Better' (which I love, don't get me wrong this is NOT a rant on how I dislike the other ships. I love them..) Shelly and Shrimpo can be equally insecure and scared and they can both make each other better. They surprisingly make up for each others faults really well.. Shrimpo can stand up for Shelly, and Shelly can be a side of reason for Shrimpo, as well as being someone kind. Their mutual respect for each other they eventually get allows them both to grow as people and I think that's so cool!! And If I saw them in other ships I'd go insane about them too I think- gjfjdgkh And I'm not gonna go into how Shrimpo never actually states he hates Shelly.. I dunno I'm gooey.. Can't express them how I want to.

#dandy's world #dandys world #shrimpo dandys world #shellfish dandys world #shelly dandys world #shrimpo x shelly #silly artist talks #Yeah #This is just my personal reasons for why I like their ship!#My headcanons go into it a lot too but #yeag

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stargleam-star · 2 months ago

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My thoughts on Star, and A Starless Clan as a whole:

Spoilers ahead for A Starless clan amd a bit of Ivypool's Heart if it wasn't obvious. Time for me to go on a rant! It's gonna feature me mostly gushing about Frostpaw because she's the only character with enough substance to talk in length about. But I've got other things to talk about too I guess. Lets get into it:

As usual, Frostpaw was the best character of the book and honestly the most relatable. She kept Going Through It until basically the very end and I felt so bad for her.

What I am glad about though is that she got the killing blow on Splashtail! Fuck yeah that's my baby girl <3

But he did get a hit in on her before the end and left her basically comatose which was tragic. Reading Frostpaw drift in and out of consciousness and what she saw while knocked out was really cool tho. I especially liked that she got to have deeper conversations with Curlfeather. She wanted so desperately for her mother to admit fault, to show some remose for her actions. Instead Curlfeather kept focusing on how Splashtail ruined her plans, and how he's to blame. All she wanted to do was protect Frostpaw and Riverclan. There wasn't the slightest bit of remorse at all. It was so tragic reading Frostpaw wishing her mother would hold herself accountable. It really hit home with me. In the end, Curlfeather couldn't face the truth and left Frostpaw behind to conclude her mother wasn't a good person and learn to accept that so she could move on. Heartwrenching stuff imo

I got really sad when Frostpaw started taking a turn for the worse and finally got to see Starclan. She got to meet her dad and was so happy, he made her realize that she needs to focus on herself and her happiness instead of worrying about everyone else's needs. Nobody understands how fucking Relatable that is to me. Nobody come near me rn.

Frostpaw wanted so badly to finally give up and be at peace. She wanted to be happy and relax, and to help in other ways. As much as that would have crushed me for her arc to conclude with her death, it really did feel like a good end for her. She would have done so well as a Starclan messenger. She deserves the rest. Sadly the narrative didn't want that to be the end of her, so she got to come back. Hooray /s

I like the medicine cat name she was given! Frostdawn is pretty (although I am lowkey disappointed she wasn't named Frostfeather, and that's not because I wanted her sharing a name with Curlfeather. I've got an oc named Frostfeather and it would have been amazing for a canon POV character to have that name too. Alas).

I'm also going crazy over the fact that her and Whistlepaw (now Whistlebreeze) got named together. I love these two lesbians so much its insane. The speech Frostpaw gave Whistlebreeze about being a good medicine cat and how grateful she was to have been saved by her? I'm planning their wedding as we speak

Frostdawn ended up choosing Icewing as Riverclan's leader, which was the obvious choice from the start imo. Also very predictable but what do I expect from a series written for 6th graders? I'm still salty as hell we got to see her leader ceremony but never Squirrelstar's.

I find it weird that Icewing was against Frostpaw in the beginning of Wind but then came around to "omg you were right" because Splashtail got mean. It was kind ooc for her, but then again she stopped having a bigger role during that book up until the end of Star.

Why tf was Icewing's voice the loudest that Frostpaw heard when cats started singing to bring her back to life? Also how tf were regular warriors able to sing to reach Frostpaw's spirit? I get that Tree was with them, and Icewing had spent a few days with The Sisters in Ivypool's super edition, but it doesn't explain how they were able to get that power. Also it was "all the she-cats that love [Frostpaw]" which included cats such as Duskfur and Mothwing who'd been mean to her throughout a good chunk of the arc... ok. Anyways.

All of A Starless Clan should have been soley in Frostdawn's point of view. Nightheart and Sunbeam barely brought anything to the table

Might as well talk about them. I like how Nightheart's character arc finished. He wasn't a jerk by the end and started being more respectful. His POV felt pointless most of the time, but I liked getting a glimpse of the inside of Riverclan during the height of Splashtail's reign (more on that soon)

Sunbeam's POV was completely unnecessary. While I liked that we got deeper thoughts on Berryheart as a result of Sunbeam, I don't think we really needed it for the story. I don't even think the way things wrapped up between them was good.

I'm gonna talk about Berryheart now because she's more interesting. I've come to the conclusion that the Erins dropped the ball with her as a villan. By the end, she was nothing more than a traitor in every single way. She was untrustworthy and I cheered when she died. She should have died 3 books ago if she wasn't gonna do anything worthwhile. No her trying to get Shadowclan on her side to let her be leader in the end qhike trying to convice them to rise up against Riverclan was not good. It was stupid as hell, almost as stupid as her joining Riverclan and becoming its deputy

I'm gonna talk about Splashtail but there's not a lot to say that I haven't already (but I will repeat myself). It felt like the Erins were trying to remake Tigerclawstar and his villan arc with Splashtail. Think about it. Ambitious, broad shouldered, dark brown tabby tom, who conspired with cats from another clan to kill their leader in order to gain power for themself? Check. A merger of Shadowclan and Riverclan? Check. Evil cat wanting to rule all the clans? Check. A deputy slain for having a different opinion? Check that off too.

As stated before the only differences between Tigerclawstar and Splashtail was that Splashtail was a lazy coward, Tigerstar actually belived in Starclan and its strength, and Splashtail had none of the charm or support that Tigerclawstar had. Also Splashtail had to resort to threatening the life of kits to get cats to do what he wanted, while Tigerclan followed Tigerclawstar's rule because he was formidable and had cats in it who truly believed in him and his vision for the future

Splashtail was written to be so cartoonishly evil and it was a sad thing to read. I'm glad Frostpaw got to kill him, and I loved how he was tormented until the end by Curlfeather's demon spirit.

I didn't like how they implied Splashtail might be the way he was due to mental illness though. I'm probably gonna get hate for saying that, lol. But in the last book they wrote him to seem like s psychopath, as well as implied him to be schizophrenic because he was talking to someone that wasn't visible (even though he was actually seeing a real dead person. But nobody but Splashtail and the audience got to know that). They literally called him crazy throughout the last book, the entire time. And idk it just felt like they were villifying mental illness a bit as a result. Again I'm probably reading into it too much, don't come at me please

The leaders were not as impactful in Star as I'd hoped. But at least they acted and fought together in the end. I loved that the leaders actually participated in the battles to liberated Riverclan instead of only sending warriors to do it. I love seeing leaders fighting for the good of their clan and putting their lives on the line (that's what their 9 lives are for. Looking at you Brambleclaw)

I didn't like that sone of Riverclan's cats were trying to join Thunderclan near the end of Star and I liked how Squirrelstar acknowledged that they had too many warriors as itwas, and how they had to expand the warrior's den in the past because of it. Wish the Erins would do something about all those cats

99% of Thunderclan was not mentioned at all this book, including the elders + Brambleclaw from what I read (I might've skimmed iver smth tho idk) but there was mention of cats like Myrtlebloom and fucking Eagletail for sone reason (is that their name? I can't remember). Tell me why any of these cats are alive if they're not worth mentioning while we have a camp scene? At least I got to see my girl Daisy <3

A Starless Clan had so much potential and the writing and mystery in the beginning were really good. I just wish they'd kept it up throughout.

Star felt like a flat finish and while I liked the way Frostpaw's chapters concluded and the whole main plot of Riverclan without a leader, I hate that the book ended on a Nightheart chapter and that the last like was about how he "could be brave and loyal no matter what his name was." Like that was a really dumb final chapter of the arc, a genuinely novice choice. It ruined the arc conclusion for me. Frostdawn's chapter should have been last

OverallI I will give Star a 3/10, and A Starless Clan 5/10 stars. It could have been great. But then, it wouldn't be Warriors would it?

#warrior cats #a starless clan spoilers #asc spoilers #star spoilers #Ivypool's heart spoilers #a Starless clan

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rivetgoth · 6 months ago

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I’m sure I’ll add more on this later but as I think on House of Leaves (finished it, loved it, listened through all of Poe’s Haunted and loved that too) I think the conclusion I’ve come to (and this isn’t a wildly novel conclusion, but ah well) is that it is at its core fundamentally an exploration of grief, and specifically grief of the loss of a family member. This is especially obvious because… Mark Danielewski has literally said that it was inspired by the death of his father. Poe’s album as well. So like, this is no secret. And I think this is invoked in the very obvious way of the fact that a house that should feel like a home but instead feels unsafe, surreal, and literally larger and emptier on the inside than it naturally should be is a very clear metaphor for grappling with the loss of a parent, right? But I think it goes deeper than that… I think House of Leaves also spends a lot of time dwelling on the weird, impossible to untangle intricacies of trauma, childhood and generational trauma especially, mental illness, and genetics… the things you carry with you and the things that loom over you from your family, especially those deceased who you no longer have direct contact with, left only with this awareness weighing down upon you.

I think Chad and Daisy are pretty clearly functionally author inserts of Mark and Poe, right? And Will Navidson then is their father? Both are even filmmakers. But I also think that Zampanò himself is Mark as well… his middle initial is literally… But complicatedly I’m not saying that Chad is Zampanò, I don’t think HoL is straightforward like that, it’s more like that’s another embodiment of the grief. The child experiencing that, the adult retelling it, grappling with it, imagining and reimagining it, and I think I believe that Tom Navidson is functionally an author insert of Zampanò into The Navidson Record, functioning kind of like a guardian angel to his childhood self, this sort of stand-in hero character who sacrifices himself to protect the innocence and life of the child self. I think the slippage of “me” within that one line, where he refers to Tom in first person, alludes to this, as well as his emotional outburst over his chapter where he tries to write about the relationship between Will and Tom. And in the very back of the book, there’s the fragment of a typed page where Zampanò considers an ending where Chad and Daisy die instead, are killed by the house, with this much more pessimistic tone (similar to when he gets upset about writing about Tom and Will), than what’s shown in the published/Johnny’s version of The Navidson Record.

And would it complicate things too much to say I think Chad, Zampanò, and Johnny represent a sort of trinity of different stages of Mark’s life—the child experiencing it in real time, the young adult trying (and failing) to cope with it all, and the elder now looking back and engaging with it from an aged perspective. I think Johnny represents that crushing weight of this impending, unknown genetic fuckery, constantly feeling the weight of this figure who died long ago but who you know lives within you, and you’re trying to figure out what’s traumagenic, what’s just this completely unavoidable tumbling towards fate—his mother died severely psychotic in an institution, is this unavoidable? Can he escape this future? How much of what he deals with is her, her influence, her fault, and how much is caused by trauma inflicted upon him. I really don’t like the theory that his mother/Pelafina “was” Johnny all along or that Johnny never existed or that he was a stillborn baby like in the story and she’s functionally created a Johnny headmate. I think it’s sort of silly, like I can see some interesting merit in it (there’s clearly a bizarre Oedipal psychosexual complex going on between Pelafina and Johnny and her writing these detailed accounts of her basically stillborn son’s sexcapades is a pretty fascinating idea), but I’m more interested in a sort of backwards-reading of that theory where the end represents Johnny kind of embracing or succumbing to his mother’s identity, for better or worse, and the idea of this baby in critical condition that maybe just maybe had a slim chance for life but dying the moment his mother asks him to revealing instead his relationship to her, the helplessness of those genetics and the control and power she exerts over him even in death. When Shilo Wallace says “You, I've mistaken for destiny / but the truth is my legacy is not up to my genes” at the end of Repo! the Genetic Opera, House of Leaves says… terrifyingly… what if it is? What if your genetics are your destiny? And then you lose that genetic lineage, it becomes just story, infamy, legend, but you’re there and alive and trying to grapple with it?

I kinda like the theory that Johnny rewrote the end of The Navidson Record to have a happy ending, or maybe Zampanò did. I think they both desperately want the story to have a happier ending. And honestly, I love the ending of The Navidson Record as published by Johnny. Though maybe cliché on paper I love the idea that there is a hopeful answer to all that emptiness and fear and a way to silence those endless inexplicable winding hallways and the answer is to replace that emptiness with genuine love. Like, to overcome that fear and embrace the ones you’ve loved for all that they are and that this love can fix all of that… It can make all of the fear and uncertainty of the empty, insurmountable, nightmare house literally dissolve... I think the end of Poe’s album (“If You Were Here”) speaks to that too.

Uh there’s obviously way more to it than that. House of Leaves is a lot of things. Duh. But I do think right now my primary takeaway is just how informed it is by the crushing helpless grief of the death of an immediate family member with which you have an extremely tenuous or strained relationship and the weight of family history.

#sorry for repo reference in a hol dissertation it’s just the best example I could think of for like a thematic counterargument 😭😭😭#oh would also add Yggdrasil = tree = family trees #house of leaves #I was scared to tag this cuz ik people feel strongly abt their theories but here I guess

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snowblack-charcoalwhite · 5 months ago

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It seems that Vhagar is the only living, breathing creature that still cares about Aemond. His sister is apathetic at the prospect of his death, his mother sold him and his brother to Rhae Rhae knowing that it's was death sentence, he probably will never interact with Daeron, and I'm pretty sure that Alys will work against him. As far as I'm concerned, he should just take the granny and give her the best time of her life, inflict as much damage to the blacks as possible and then die, but not before forcing the morally grey™ Rogue prince to do the same.

And it's crazy, but they managed to get me, once a staunch Alicent supporter, to scroll through anti Alicent Hightower tag and just agree with almost everything. Her character assassination was appalling, not only the book Alicent would never, but ep 1-8 Alicent would never. I wish I could erase this horrendous season from my memory. Idk if you've read what Hess said, but according to her, Alicent in the scene at Dragonstone with Rhaenyra realised that she never really sacrificed anything and that's why she agrees to sacrifice her son(s) for "peace". Also, she claims that the writers' intention was to make the audience believe how everything is finally going to be alright because these two women are friends and will work it though, but then *gasp* we see Aegon leaving in the cart and we realize that the war is still going to happen because Rhaenyra will think that Alicent deceived her!!. She must be proud of herself. I can't believe how vile and deranged these writers and showrunners sound (and maybe even are).

Hello!

I lost count how many times I read these words (or even wrote them myself) in the span of the last week but this show is an absolute mess. And it's not just about the stupidest bias, the quality of the script or the lack of subtlety with which the writers are shoving their views on the characters' relationships down our throats. It's also the fact that every person involved in the creative process has theit own view on what's going on - and sometimes these views are diametrically opposed. Take Olivia saying that in her mind Alicent wanted to spit in Rhaenyra's face when she asked her to give Aegon up but mentioning she doesn't know how the material was edited yet - and the writers going all "Oh, she is liberated now! She is atoning for her sins!" (which sins exactly, by the way?). In what world is this situation okay? The actors are barely hiding their dissatisfaction about the plot - and the writers just keep doing their thing which is talking absolute nonsense. Stellar project, well done, HBO.

I am still in the "don't hate the characters, hate the writers" mindset (and have no plans to change it) - but did the writers do Alicent dirty. They dehumanized Aemond the most - but Alicent drew maximum humiliation card. Self flagellation in front of the woman who is an active threat to her children's (and to her own life)? Selling said children (at least her sons) to said woman? Amazing character development.

And as for Aemond, I have the feeling that Vhagar will be his only friend and ally as well (unless the writers turn their own story on its head and have Alys fall head over hills in love with him or something like that). At least, hopefully, he will have nothing to do with Helaena's death (I am pretty sure they will make it the fault of someone from TG - B&C wasn't made into a joke for nothing after all).

This show has become so draining recently, istg.

#asks #anti hotd #alicent hightower #aemond targaryen #hotd spoilers

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surgepricing · 9 months ago

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RWBY Final Thoughts: Legacy

Very rarely would I ever consider a fandom on its own worth its own section of a Final Thoughts. ... [Basically,] they behave like a cult.

This is a repost of a post I made February 1st, 2024 on another site. At the time, it was the final post of a deep-dive recap of RWBY and the history of the show, its fandom, and its direction under Rooster Teeth.

I felt this out with some of my peers and the feedback I got in relation to posting in on Tumblr was that, well, why not? It was my main haunt to begin with, and I may as well, since Rooster Teeth is closing its doors. I'm posting this mainly as a shot in the dark just to see how it gets received. Only minor edits have been made; I'm sure there's some stuff in here that would make people mad, but that applies to pretty much anything someone could say about RWBY. Click the read more to get a glance at how my time with RWBY ultimately wrapped up.

Nine years ago today, Monty Oum died of an allergic reaction. Today is a day of mourning for fans of his work, including RWBY. There’s no sense in waiting. Let��s finish this and heal.

The Showrunners

Miles and Kerry often received the brunt of the attention when it came to RWBY. As the writers of the show, they bore responsibility for the largest chunk of why it eventually went into the shitter, and fan anger against them was almost certainly not helped by the damn near idolization heaped on them by fervent stans. They are, undoubtedly, the focal point of RWBY fans’ parasocial relationship with the show.

Of course, despite sharing about the same credits space as his partner in crime, Kerry tended to fly under the radar a lot, with it being Miles who received the brunt of the fandom’s fury with each successive volume. It’s not hard to see why; the character Miles voices has been consistently over-exposed and is in many ways an obvious creator’s pet, with denials as to this fact falling on deaf ears as Jaune’s screentime continued to balloon past its merits, whereas the character Kerry voices could just about wrangle an average of ten seconds of screentime every three years. Certainly Miles has been in trouble with fans more often than Kerry for the shit he’s said and done. The Ruby body pillow and the Tifa Lockhart ‘prostitute’ comments come to mind. Oh, and the slurs, that one too.

But perhaps the reason Miles gets so much more flak than Kerry is that Miles just...acts like an asshole a lot of the time. Even aside from above examples, Miles’ flaws come out in his writing: he’s petty, holds grudges, can’t take criticism, and just overall has way more power over the story than someone of his caliber should. He’s very poor at disguising his real feelings and often lets them bleed through, and when he actually decides to voice them on purpose, things get ugly—refer to that Cameo about Ironwood.

But as tempting as it is to treat Miles as an out-of-control cockwaffle on the rampage and Kerry as his sympathetic ineffectual shadow, the reality is that they’re co-writers, have been for ten years, and anything Miles gets away with doing is as much Kerry’s fault as his. If the Gray Haddock situation has taught us anything, it’s that more people tend to harbor blame than the one individual that makes an easy scapegoat.

Since aside from aforementioned n-word business, Miles and Kerry are almost never connected to moral outrage, this makes it easy for the stans to uphold them, since all they really have to defend them from is accusations that they didn’t honor Monty’s “vision” for the series. This is only easy because the stans are fucking insane, but that’s for later on down the page.

“Vision” is in quotes because that’s how fans treat it, we all know they don’t really care. Miles and Kerry’s vision matters, and we know that much because of Calixyn’s interview where she all but begged to be told that RWBY Volume 5 was as bad as it was because the “good bois” had control of the show ripped from them. Nope, turns out all that racism, homophobia, and plain shitty writing is all on them. But at least they’re nice!

(Miles was 26 when he said the n-word. I’m 26 now when writing this. I think it’s pretty fair to call him an asshole.)

But the truth is that it’s objectively stupid to think that the direction of RWBY hasn’t changed since Monty’s passing, it’s impossible for it not to have. There are more writers on board than before, and it’s been a long time since he was alive to contribute his thoughts. The real question is whether they at least tried, and I don’t think they did.

I mean, Shane Newville never names Miles and Kerry in his letter, but he does state several times that the choices made for the show were not only not what Monty wanted, but “straight up just shitting all over what Monty made”. I find it very difficult to believe that that insinuation, and all of the people caught up in the net it casts, wouldn’t include those two. And like it or not, but the person who is able to compile tons of clips and interviews over the years as some sort of seeming immutable proof that “CRWBY” are good-hearted people determined to preserve Monty’s vision, isn’t really looking at any more evidence than the person who’s come to the conclusion, based on what they’ve seen, that that the opposite is true. And they’re certainly looking at less evidence than the people who actually did work there around Monty, Miles, and Kerry. The facts sometimes boil down to ‘if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and is implicated in the walls of text like a duck, it’s probably a duck’, guys.

Even in the best case scenario in which the work of Monty Oum turns out to have been treated with dignity and respect (and was just really shittily written from the beginning), the fact remains that Miles and Kerry did not put a quality product into the world. I will be very surprised if either of them manages to get a lead writing position ever again, because once the popularity of RWBY fades, so too will the goodwill they’ve somehow amassed among its fans. RWBY, much like Twilight, is inevitably going to taint the people who were in charge of writing it.

But Miles and Kerry are just two dudes. What exactly is going to happen to those fervent fans who hung on their every word and insisted they were the embodiment of everything pure and innocent? What, exactly, is going to happen to the RWBY fandom that once seemed to be unavoidably populous on the internet?

F, N, D, M

We already went over “constructive criticism” and “worldbuilding”, so let’s add another eternally-misused word to our roster. You know, something I’ve occasionally thought about in terms of online spaces is that no one knows what a “comfort show” is. It’s one of those terms that became too popular almost as soon as it was introduced, to the point that it became meaningless, much like “hyperfixation” and “anxiety”. I see people refer to RWBY as their comfort show and I’m just like...how? A comfort show is supposed to be the show that always puts you in a good headspace, a show you rest easy with because you’ve always connected with it because the love was always there. A comfort show is a show that you watch in your down moments to feel better, not a show you think is just the greatest thing ever, the bees’ knees if you will.

A comfort show is not a show you force yourself to like, it is not a show you defend at all costs, and it is not a show you only still cling to because enjoying it once coincided with a time when you felt popular and among friends. Which, increasingly, seems to have been the case for RWBY fans.

RWBY’s Fandom

Very rarely would I ever consider a fandom on its own worth its own section of a Final Thoughts. But I’m doing it now because the RWBY fandom, though now it’s a shadow of its former self, is still a sizable chunk of people and took a lot longer to die than most other fandoms.

The RWBY fandom itself was an especially big and very online fandom, and the show produced an abnormally large amount of big name fans who continued to use their own influence to push its success and keep its momentum going. As I’ve said before, the RWBY fandom is something that Rooster Teeth were able to extract an excessive amount of praise out of for minimal effort; it simply seems to be in RWBY fans’ nature to speculate and theorize and over-analyze and fill in blanks, and to perceive good writing and animation where there is none. But you know how fandom operates—the bigger its size, the more infamous it becomes.

Long since famed for being especially toxic, those who are in the know consider RWBY fans a different breed, really. They create and move narratives at high speed and act quickly to correct any perceived dissent in the ranks, casting out anyone that feels disillusionment with the product and insisting everything is peachy even as their world crumbles around them. To RWBY fans, the “CRWBY” are always separate from the “problematic” aspects of Rooster Teeth (which is basically the whole company) and it doesn’t matter how many of its flaws get highlighted; RWBY and the people that make it are always great, innocent of any harm done and fantastic, and anyone that dislikes them is a villain—even if those people were at one point part of the “CRWBY” themselves. Loyalty is everything. In other words, they behave like a cult.Those acronyms themselves have always bothered me, and I’ve grown a strong distaste for them. Originally they were just a quirk of the show; a format for team names that spawned the name of the show and eventually stopped being relevant altogether. But RWBY fans are simply unable to not use them. It’s not “the fandom” it’s “the FNDM”. They’re not “the RWBY team” or “the RWBY crew”, they’re “CRWBY”. Even people that the fans are actively trying to shame, shun, and harass don’t get to simply be people—they’re “RWDE” and, when that became an actual community of sorts unto itself, was switched to “HTDM”, short for “hatedom”. They remind me distinctly of code words that get formed and passed around in cult movements, identifying terms that quickly provide boxes to put people in and make it easier to sort loyals from disloyals. “Hatedom” itself is another one of those terms that spread and got so prolific it really doesn’t carry any meaning anymore. Real hatedoms are surprisingly rare, guys. Every fandom that becomes big enough for its respective product to become criticized eventually comes to believe it has a ‘hatedom’ because how could someone dislike something I like so much? But a hatedom on its own arises out of very specific circumstances and environments, and causes the spread of hate for a product based on broad foundations that are often unfair to the product and which creates perceptions that spread faster than the work, so that the work is often talked about in mocking reference rather than true dissatisfaction.

RWBY doesn’t have a hatedom guys, it never did. The Last of Us doesn’t have a hatedom. Fairy Tail didn’t have a hatedom. Blackpink doesn’t have a hatedom. Even Marvel doesn’t have a hatedom.

Paris Hilton had a hatedom. Nickelback had a hatedom. Hell, the website Tumblr itself had a hatedom. These were examples of people or products whose reputations spread too quickly and eventually swallowed rational perception of them, with people who have never experienced them or their work dismissing them and the fans who enjoy it wholesale.

Using the term “hatedom” is understandably common because (and in spite of the fact that) it allows for easy miscategorization. A hatedom is not composed of people that were actually exposed to the work, found it lacking, and expressed that. A hatedom does not occur in the wake of a product that was so bad it pissed off its fans and caused them to walk. People don’t hate Metroid: Other M because they can’t stand the sight of a woman being vulnerable and don’t understand challenging drama, they hate it because it was poorly written, badly designed, and tarnished a long-running and highly cherished gaming heroine’s reputation. People didn’t hate Fifty Shades of Grey because of some bias against women expressing their sexual freedom, they hated it because it was a wildly misogynistic and badly-written piece of dreck. People didn’t hate The Last of Us Part II because of homophobia and transphobia, they hated it because it was a misery fest with a tired moral theme that posited itself far more deep and compelling than it really was. And just because people with the above disingenuous views also hated these things does not discount the fact that the works got the reputations they did because they were getting back the exact amount of love and respect that was put into them.

Similarly, RWBY doesn’t have a hatedom. It does, in fact, have an ex-fandom. Those are also things you don’t see very often, but when you do, they almost always follow the same pattern, don’t they? A work which got wildly popular very quickly, took really deep nosedives afterward, and became disowned by the people that had formerly propped it up.

But that’s a discussion for later. What exactly makes RWBY’s fandom so toxic and cult-like, and why and how did it get that way? I think it’s a combination of several key factors that were baked in and collided badly.

The first was ease of access. RWBY was sold extremely well early on, and shared enough similarities with both anime and video games that it attracted many curious people from those communities. Combine that with vibrant colors, an attractive visual aesthetic, an air of badassery, and good music, and it gained a lot of loyal fans quickly—fans of anime and video games, specifically, being fans that tend to get more attached than to other mediums and are known for spending a lot on merchandise. These, in turn, morphed into nostalgic elements ripe for misremembering—people often have difficulty acknowledging that something they once liked isn’t good anymore even on its own, and I think RWBY fans in particular put way too much energy into the show to be able to admit that all the time they spent defending it (and harassing people who criticized it) was for nothing.

That skyhigh rocket to fame early on, of course, was attached to the reputation of Monty Oum, and once he died, he quickly became a martyr, which galvanized the loyalty of the show’s most toxic fans even further. To this day, talking about Monty at all, even for the right reasons, is seen as disrespectful or distasteful unless you’re trying to use him to prop up Rooster Teeth, a double standard I’ve unfortunately run into even in seeming safe spaces. I think if we’re comparing RWBY fandom to a cult, then Monty Oum and his memory can be compared to a central mythologized figure, the center around which are formed all of the pretty lies the members of the cult will tell you. Monty’s name is irreplaceably tied to RWBY, and as such, in order to defend Monty, its fans have to defend RWBY...and you can see where this leads. Attempting to talk about the mistreatment Monty and his family went through at Rooster Teeth is seen as using his name as a weapon—nevermind the fact that Rooster Teeth and their fans regularly use his name as a shield.

Of course, what this really reveals is that many such people don’t care about Monty, who he was, or who he went through, but rather his name alone. In fact, I’ve straight up seen RWBY stans say that people shouldn’t “take Monty’s name in vain”, as if Monty were in fact some sacred religious figure. It’s both bizarre and harmful.

A third factor was popularity. For a lot of the same reasons as, say, Supernatural, the perception of RWBY skews much more broadly between fan and ex-fan than that of the typical over-hyped show. The truth of the matter is that when a show gets popular, or really any work gets popular, enjoying it becomes a cliquey sort of thing. People that enjoyed being into something well-respected and widely known and basically the hottest trend are far more prone to become overly attached, put too much of themselves into it, and remain unequipped to deal with the fact of that trend’s eventual passing, especially if it’s a fall into disgrace rather than a quiet entrance into history. You can still find certain especially toxic big names from the RWBY fandom active and posting, pretending not to notice that their audience has become smaller and smaller over the years. Let’s face facts here, a lot of people that enjoy being part of the “in” crowd never manage to figure out how to accept losses and will do anything to try and regain lost popularity, or fool themselves into thinking they’re still on top of the world.

But we can reason and explain all day. Another truth of the matter is that it shouldn’t be other people’s problem that fans can’t accept reality and adjust, and that the RWBY fandom quite honestly deserves its reputation as abysmally toxic. The way terminal fans of the show have treated anyone who dissents, most prominently Shane Newville and other ex-employees, let alone other ex-fans of the show, is quite frankly disgusting. RWBY stans are difficult to look at in all of their bewildering, teeth-gnashing toxicity and forgive...so I’m not going to. People that still insist there’s nothing wrong with this show or the company making it are, as far as I’m concerned, beyond help, and are part of the problem. Many an ex-employee certainly thinks so.

In a lot of ways, you could call the fandom one of the driving forces of the show’s failure, mostly because they had an abnormally large amount of influence over the show. Pleasing the fans has always been a major goal of the RWBY team (unless you like characters Miles Luna doesn’t, I guess), but it’s almost disturbing how the Rooster Teeth strategy has been to lead them along and bat their eyelashes at every turn and how the fandom laps it up.

Of course, Rooster Teeth feeds the parasocial engine by engaging with the fans as equals, and I was given a disturbing reminder of how many of the people who worked on the show—the ones who aren’t pissed and digging themselves out of trauma ditches—behave exactly as the fans do, tweeting twenty times a day about their favorite ships and memes. By creating the perception that RWBY’s team is just like the RWBY fanbase and wants the same things they want, they tap that line of excess energy that’s kept this fandom going so long despite how far it’s fallen. It’s that “hey! my friend said my ship is going to be canon and he works on the show” feeling.

Of course, a probable reason as to why so many employees who worked on RWBY behave the way RWBY fans do is because a lot of them started out that way. As in, student hires. This has long been an open secret of Rooster Teeth’s M.O. for a while now, hiring people who look up to them and engage heavily with their content. Many an ex-animator has lambasted this tactic because it’s insidious, and purposely designed to make the incoming staff feel honored and indebted and excited so they won’t notice how they’re being fucked over. Arryn Troche, who made the ‘gays greenlighting volume 10’ tweet, rings up as a particularly eerie example considering they have the same rather-uncommon and unconventionally-spelled name as the voice actor for a ship they’re obviously very attached to. A quick search reveals them to have been a longtime fan and cosplayer for the show before being signed on as a junior animator.

And it is the fandom who ultimately makes the legacy for any given work or body of work. So what is RWBY ultimately going to be remembered for?

Legacy

I thought about it for a little while and found five things that are most likely to be associated with RWBY in the public’s memory after its death. The first should come as no surprise to anyone.

Bumbleby

The only part of RWBY that will likely be carried on by fans who stuck with it until the end is, of course, the only part of it that mattered, to many of them. You’ll know from my earlier recaps that shipping was always a big deal in fandom, but due to key choices (or if you prefer, mistakes) made during Volumes 2 and 3, one ship grew larger and more promoted in fandom circles than any others.

This is a combination of the unique features of the RWBY fandom and their one-track mind. The fans are well-known, as I said, to fill in the blanks in a pattern that best suits their narratives, and this works out with Rooster Teeth because it means that any sudden changes in direction they make will always be excused and praised rather than critically examined. Unsurprisingly, Bumbleby’s fandom, now that their victory has been cemented, have doubled down on their narrative that this was the intended goal from the beginning, despite it being plainly obvious that early RWBY was angling for Sun Wukong as the love interest and threw the occasional bones to Blake/Yang shippers to try and play nice.

This used to be one part of the fandom, of course, but as the show continually bombed with viewers and made more and more decisions that pushed them away, all competitors were slowly filtered out as their fans left, until Bumbleby shippers were the fandom. It’s no coincidence that Blake and Yang suddenly started acting unusually touchy and sentimental in Volume Six, following on the heels of a volume of RWBY so wildly unpopular that it woke up the company execs and forced them to acknowledge that the biggest part of their fanbase was only going to remain loyal in exchange for one thing: their ship.

The sad thing is that you can tell Rooster Teeth wanted to explore other options. Volume Five features a rather sudden shift into Yang and Weiss interactions in what I remain positive to this day was an attempt to sway shippers into a potential second choice while Black Sun was still in the oven, and this really represented one of the major errors of Rooster Teeth, in that they failed to understand the audience they were trying so hard to please.

Bumbleby became what I call a “Big Red Button” ship, and it is only the second of its kind that I’ve seen. The first? Destiel.

Yes, there’s a reason I kept comparing RWBY to Supernatural whenever Blake and Yang’s relationship came up. I admit I wasn’t a part of the Supernatural craze in its heyday and have never really enjoyed the show, but I’ve watched enough of it to connect the dots from what cultural osmosis I had to the eventual downfall we saw in November of 2020.

Both Bumbleby and Destiel were held up as the gay ship that would change everything, the biggest ship in the fandom and the one that would’ve been a major push for LGBT visibility, at least during their heydays. The problem was that its fans were not really that interested in LGBT visibility and were simply obsessed with the ship itself, applying it value as a win for LGBT audiences purely to bolster its perceived importance. Fans like this were not ever going to accept any alternatives regardless of the sexual orientations or gender conventions involved. Hence, the metaphor that is “the big red button”. You have a big red button that says “canon gay ship but not the ship you want” and ask the fans you’re trying to court whether they’d press it or not. Whatever they might say out loud, you know none of them is pressing that fucking button, ever.

Both of these Big Red Button ships became what they were due to showrunners being forced into courting an audience they really didn’t care for, and how could you blame them when both were infamously very, very over-active and annoying in general. Just like with RWBY’s well-intentioned but misguided Freezerburn phase in Volume 5, Supernatural also tried to gently shut down fans who then managed to obliviously ignore any and all hints that their ship was not meant to be endgame, and I can say that because “he’s like a brother to me” in any fandom but Supernatural would’ve been a tactical nuclear strike that sent the shippers packing. Once it failed, the gay bait came out in full force. It’s well known by now that, contrary to what one would imagine, the CW was not pulling a profit off of Supernatural’s minor mainstream success pushed by a cult following, so it’s no wonder they eventually resorted to desperately baiting the one audience that was going to stick it out no matter what, provided they had the right relationship dangled in front of them. RWBY went through the same thing.

The main problem with these two ships is that for all its diehards insisted that it was all about the gay representation, their respective shows teased and baited for so long that the world outside the little bubble these shippers lived in had moved on by the time they came to fruition. Gay visibility in media these days, at least western media, is easily available, to the extent that sometimes people believe homophobia is totally over when it really, really isn’t. If you’re looking for gay representation, you can find it plenty of places, and the first place you look probably isn’t going to be Supernatural or RWBY. So the huge wave of viewers that these shippers expected upon their victories was never going to occur, which might could’ve been avoided if the writers had simply grown a pair and made moves towards canon much sooner than before the shows were on their last legs and due to be scrapped.

Or, you know, just been honest. Diversions and alternatives were never going to work. The only thing that these shippers were ever going to understand was a hard no, a “sorry, this ship isn’t going to happen”. But the execs in charge of these shows were never willing to take a hit like that, so instead they dug their own grave.

And where does that leave the shippers, those people who devoted their whole lives to these fictional characters, only to find the show that bore them into the universe dead in a ditch? Well, nowhere good. Much like Supernatural, RWBY is heavily associated with its booming period, the heavily online portion of these shippers’ lives in the early and mid-2010s when it was all the rage, and yet in modern day, it’s seen as a bad neighborhood to hang in, an abandoned mansion at the corner of the street where awful things happened. These shippers don’t have many friends except each other.

Just like RWBY, Supernatural also exists primarily as an ex-fandom now. Much of its former fanbase remember the good days fondly but make no secret that they stopped following it once the writing tanked, and this left the shippers without many allies to associate with since so many of them had been pissed off with the way their shows ultimately became the Destiel Show and the Bumbleby Show, respectively. Contrary to an unfortunately popular idea, these shows did have actual LGBT fanbases, only a lot of their LGBT fans were not on kool-aid and avoided being sucked into a trap called “if you don’t ship this, you’re homophobic”.

You will find that the Bumbleby fandom are often looked on with disdain by quite a number of viewers of RWBY who have accused them of speaking over minorities, sexual and otherwise. Many fans have noted that, aside from Blake’s bisexuality being a seemingly late addition (Arryn Zech is noted to have cast her as straight when discussing Ilia Amitola’s ill-fated crush on her as late as 2019), Blake was very swiftly removed from all faunus characters who held romantic connotations in favor of Yang, implicitly saying that Blake was better committing to a white human woman than to an ethnic faunus male. There are obvious reasons why this left a bad taste in peoples’ mouths. Not to mention, other LGBT fans that invested in the show were not exactly welcomed with open arms.

Fair Game, or as I tend to call it, Qrowver? Qrow x Clover? Yeah, that was huge in Volume 7’s airing days. It very much experienced a rapid ballooning in fans and fandom love...but we all know how that ended. Many a fan who felt heartbroken and, importantly, betrayed by Clover’s sudden and rather pointless death turned on RWBY and Rooster Teeth and accused them of gaybaiting, which is of course exactly what happened. They received no sympathy from Bumbleby shippers—because of course they wouldn’t. If Rooster Teeth would gaybait with Qrow, a popular male character, that would mean they could potentially be gaybaiting with Blake and Yang, too. That was unacceptable, and so ironically the part of the fandom that had always crowed about the importance of extending a hand to LGBT viewers turned on LGBT viewers, valiantly defending Rooster Teeth as they always had.

And because Bumbleby fans had no room in their hearts for anything about RWBY except Bumbleby, and were hostile to anyone who didn’t ship it, they ended up being their own best friends and everyone else’s bad memories. When RWBY has faded from the public’s memory and is no longer a source of active income at all (so, basically right now), one of the only relics you’ll find of this show will be the two women making out in all the fanart you’ll find on the occasional Tumblr blog.

The Bigotry

You could call this section “the Racism” since that’s the biggest part of it, but we’d be remiss in neglecting the harm done to other minorities as well. We’ll get to them in a minute, but race is the thing that’s going to pop to mind when we talk about one of the other things RWBY left behind in the common memory.

One of the longest-running subplots that RWBY ever went through with was the racism subplot. Its basis is one of the things that so severely dates RWBY: creating an in-universe stand-in for people of color through the existence of people with animal traits was something you would absolutely not get away with after 2020, and even by 2016 was something liable to be seen as tacky. Nonetheless, RWBY openly used the faunus as stand-ins for black Americans and the struggles they faced in a white world.

Except that the company, based in Texas and headed largely by white staff, did not feel the importance of that. What slowly started out as a main character’s attempt to redeem an organization she felt had been driven too far and was no longer her home was slowly transformed into a means by which some incredibly racist people could spout off about what they felt were the real issues to be talked about, which were the condemnation they felt was deserved by activists that turned to violence, labeled, a little too quickly, as terrorists.

The 2010s saw a shift in social values, and much as with gay audiences and gay characters, black audiences and black characters—as well as other racial minorities—were experiencing something of a renaissance, with efforts to put the voices of these people into the public’s feeds. It wasn’t just George Floyd in 2020—the unexpected and frankly traumatic reign of Donald Trump as president of the United States galvanized the divide in America and social awareness became a bigger thing than ever, and since Trump was a flagrantly racist person with racist beliefs who enacted racist policies and was uplifted by racist Americans, people pushed back as they felt their lives and existences being threatened by a racist establishment...an establishment which Rooster Teeth came down on the side of very firmly.

No quarter is given to the fictional stand-ins. Sienna Khan’s policies are never examined in-depth, and the only close looks we get at the sorts of activism the White Fang does are at Adam, who is obviously condemned by the narrative and made into everything but a mustache-twirler, with delusional and frankly baffling beliefs of faunus superiority spelled out at length. No matter what concessions Rooster Teeth might’ve tried to make with Sienna’s beliefs before they stuck a sword in her, the fact of the matter is that their beliefs came through in the voices of Ghira and Blake, who made it very clear that the individual motives and experiences of people like Ilia, Corsac, Fennec, Yuma, and the rest simply don’t matter in the face of what they’d been driven to do by them. The whole ‘blacks can be racist’ tone of the final scenes involved in this subplot are both miles removed from the more cautious and neutral tone of early RWBY, and also just a very alarming red flag overall.

I went over this in my Volume 5 Final Thoughts: the shoddiness of the volume does not lie solely with the animation department. Miles and Kerry are known to have had generally sole control of the show up until Volume 7—but we also know that they didn’t have to, if they were writing anything company execs felt wasn’t to their tastes. The sudden twisting of Adam into a homicidal incel ex-boyfriend, along with his mutation into a faunus supremacist, when he was the face of the faunus movement as a whole, along with Sun’s blatant ill will towards the White Fang when he’d previously been willing to give them a chance on Blake’s word, all imply that Miles and Kerry endorsed the worst possible interpretations of racial activists and felt free to condemn them and place responsibility onto the faunus—and by extension, the real-life minorities they represented—to take a stand against the bad seeds within their causes, and the fact no one stopped them from airing this implies the higher-ups felt the same way.

People didn’t just leave RWBY after Volume 5 because of some really badly animated fights—they left because they’d felt too much of the authors’ racism coming through in the narrative and couldn’t comfortably continue watching. Every member of the faunus that had “bad” views was either killed (Adam, Sienna, Fennec), arrested (Corsac, Yuma), or “redeemed” by choosing to fight the first two (Ilia). All of these combined factors, with no room for charitable interpretations…not a good look.

And once Adam was defeated in Volume 5, and the White Fang reformed, that was the last anyone saw of that subplot, which had taken five years to wrap up and somehow still ended too early. Miles and Kerry had washed their hands of it, and references to Blake’s place in society were sparing from then on. This subplot’s inescapable presence throughout the show, combined with how it was dropped out of existence, left no room for redemption, either. No one was going back and saying “maybe this looks really, really bad”.

And so, that’s what a lot of people carried with them as their final and most relevant memories of RWBY: it’s astounding levels of racism. This is a bitter subject for many an ex-RWBY fan, many of whom aren’t white and, even among those that are, it’s simply inexcusable. Meet someone on social media who talks about RWBY at all, and isn’t one of the Bumbleby stans we’ve already discussed? You will find some mention or other of RWBY’s racist elements somewhere within their sphere. And so, that becomes a part of RWBY’s legacy, as a feature of the show that was simply too big to ignore and too poorly-handled to forgive. People don’t get over this shit, man.

This is of course not to mention the well deserved shitty reputation RWBY has for its other bigoted elements, as well. Bumbleby, as we’ve discussed, encompassed pretty much every RWBY stan left standing by 2020, but that left quite a few ex-fans that were fed up with the company’s obvious ploys when it came to sexuality and gender. Remember when I talked about Qrowver up above? Its ballooning and immediate fall from grace was a much-condensed version of RWBY as a whole, and pretty much featured as Rooster Teeth blowing their last remaining patience from LGBT fans to smithereens. The fact of the matter is that when you get down to it, every RWBY volume after Volume 4 was not a good time to be a minority. If you were gay, the show seemed to either ignore or despise you—between the background gays that warranted mockery, the mixed reception Ilia generated, and the outrage that finally boiled over when Clover bit it, part of RWBY’s legacy is how utterly unpleasant it has been for LGBT fans who expected and deserved better.

And so despite entering the scene in 2013 as a supposedly progressive show all for being led by four women, the show died known as a low-effort half-baked cringefest whose politics were always on display and always several years behind the trend.

The Good Days

Of course, another major part of RWBY’s legacy is the early days when everyone actually liked it. This is, again, something the show creators brought on themselves and something fans assisted with. I did mention the nostalgia for the Good Ol’ Days as a significant part of the RWBY fandom’s more cult-like elements, after all. The fact of the matter is, on some level, everyone knows that RWBY has spent several years going downhill. The ex-fans lament this fact, and the diehard stans insist that it’s all just as good as it used to be, primarily by doing what they do quite a lot, and linking completely coincidental elements back to things characters said or did in previous volumes as some sort of evidence that this has been the plan all along.

I’ve run polls on this matter before; even though I’ve recapped Volumes 1-3 thoroughly and shone lights on some pretty significant flaws, you ask anyone what they think the best volume of RWBY was and they’re gonna tell you Volume 3. Yes, even with all of the stalking incel Adam and the deaths of Penny and Pyrrha. It’s the last time RWBY felt cohesive and even though some obvious derailing was in effect, and Shane Newville has openly said that the behind-the-scenes matters were pretty ugly, it’s still the golden child. Shane’s only one person, and it’d be a while before RWBY scandals would become consistent and begin to overshadow the show as a whole.

The RWBY team themselves have certainly nurtured that very much on purpose. That tactic started with them, of course. Many elements that were either unpopular or predicted to ruffle feathers were stated to have originated in earlier volumes, even in situations where this wouldn’t have made sense or where it’s an obvious lie—such as Maria Calavera. They know full well their seasons post-Volume 3 were unpopular and receiving blowback, and tried to minimize it by linking them to more well-respected seasons. Suffice to say that this simply didn’t work. But it does make people remember those earlier volumes. Because so many ex-fans lost their energy for RWBY after its most active period, much of the hype from the hype era is all that you’ll see when you encounter one. Nostalgia wins out in the end, and at least RWBY can say that, as a show, it had enough of a headstart to leave an impression that lasted in a positive way. Although that’s only one side of the coin...

The Scandals

Let’s face facts here, the biggest part of RWBY’s legacy, period, is that it fucking died. It didn’t die instantly, but rather took hit after hit, blow after blow, and slowly had its image tarnished alongside that of the company, which failed to contain repeated scandals as ex-employee after ex-employee after ex-employee spoke out about the abysmal ways they’d been treated.

RWBY is Rooster Teeth’s biggest IP by far and, really, their only one worth talking about. Every other show was either eclipsed by it or unofficially canceled after bad reception. So when Rooster Teeth suffered the consequences of their actions, so did RWBY. It really can’t be overstated how the last few years of RWBY’s existence have been absolutely bombarded by a barrage of terrible Glassdoor reviews and bombshell exposure letters. Fans managed to stay strong through the first few rumblings of ill will, but after Volume 5 shook the fandom loose, discontent entered enough of the fandom sphere to be normalized, and once that happened, it was all downhill. Once people were actually allowed to talk about not liking Rooster Teeth’s content, they sure as hell weren’t going to be dissuaded from talking about not liking Rooster Teeth as a company or its practices.

Separating the art from the artist is a very difficult thing to do and only really appropriate in certain situations. Don’t fall for any kool-aid, guys, it doesn’t make you more mature or ‘above all the drama’ to actively ignore the damage done to real people in the process of getting fictional content out into the world.

If you’re still able to enjoy the Harry Potter books and look back on the good times they gave you in fondness, then fine. If you actually purchased and played the Hogwarts Legacy game programmed by antisemites and which puts money in the pocket of the transphobic owner of the franchise, then yeah, people will be right to give you shit for it. There’s a difference between quietly enjoying a product in a manner that doesn’t hurt anybody, and actively ignoring the people hurt to make that product while feigning concern. The gap in the fandom widened as the repeated leaks and scandals continuously ate away at the protective bubble around Rooster Teeth and it became clear that whatever fans might bleat, Rooster Teeth wasn’t going to ‘learn their lesson and do better’. The habitual cycle of using whatever recent scandal had occurred to cast disappointment and anger on a particular figure and uplift the rest of “CRWBY” (see also: the Gray Haddock issue) gave diminishing returns as the bombs kept dropping. This is part of why RWBY has such an ex-fandom, because if they aren’t enjoying the product and people were hurt to make it, why stay?

Crunching employees so hard they struggle to sleep and suffer debilitating health issues? Writing the n-word on a white board knowing a black employee will see it? Goading someone into trying to kill themselves? Calling an LGBT employee a slur and then making up a public-friendly nickname in place of that slur just to get away with continuing to call her that? Laying off people without warning or a means of letting them stay afloat until another job is found? Not paying or crediting employees and cultivating an environment where those in charge do what they want and those in the public eye reap all the benefit while those without a consistent spotlight get treated like dirt?

Just some of the things I thought up off the top of my head. There’s plenty more in the details. And you can’t blame Fullscreen, you can’t blame Warner, you can’t just write it off as something that happens at animation studios, because it isn’t. Yeah, the work environment in general for animation studios in America is lacking because, ya know, late-stage capitalism hellscape, but that’s dismissive of the point. Rooster Teeth are a bad company and hurt their employees and lie when called on it. It’s impossible to separate RWBY from Rooster Teeth (despite stubborn stans’ best attempts, which themselves have been called out by these same ex-employees) and because of that, RWBY’s legacy is one of corporate abuse and utterly vile behavior towards people that just wanted to make something cool.

People have refused to associate with the show over these things and honestly, they’re right to. RWBY’s ultimate legacy, if we’re honest, is the show that became a shadow of its former self, still trying to dazzle with reminders of its former glory and promises of gay relationships, all while trying to squeeze money out of both the employees who made it and the fans who upheld it. It’s the show that cost hundreds of people their physical and mental health and didn’t even have anything to show for it at the end of the day. It will live on in history as the most bitter of pills to swallow, that something you once liked and wanted to succeed can and will be ruthlessly twisted for profit margins and might actively hate you on the side. And speaking of…

Monty Oum

The biggest travesty of RWBY’s legacy is that Monty Oum is ultimately only the smallest part of it. He’s there, but barely—he’s a name in the credits that quite frankly is only there to keep up the facade of loyalty, when the show had stopped being Monty’s show before he even died and by now can be safely said to resemble nothing he would’ve made.

It’s a shame that for all that Monty was held up as a genius of his craft and a genuinely good man who inspired so many people, all he’s going to be remembered for is...this. A show people only attach his name to in an effort to insist it’s actually worth sticking by. Yes, Monty did other things, had other works, but none of them ever achieved even a fraction of the fame and respect that RWBY had from its first baby steps in 2013.

Maybe this could’ve been avoided if the real carriers of Monty’s legacy—Sheena, his wife, and Shane, his pupil—hadn’t been cast off as they had.

Shane seems to have found a new life and is working with Dillon Gu on animation, but I think we’ve all noticed his name hasn’t gone mainstream yet. I’ve tried to get in touch with him; from what I’ve gleaned, I frankly just advise leaving him alone. He wants to move on and I don’t think the RWBY fandom, which was so awful to him for telling the truth, is ever going to be a place he can feel welcome.

Sheena has mostly been quiet and done her own thing, cosplaying and watching anime and hopefully enjoying herself, although I notice posts on her Twitter feed from last year calling for a New Deal in the animation sector and castigating corporate abuses.

She also plays Hades, a much better product than RWBY with more love put into it and much better LGBT representation, which means her taste is excellent. She has a site now that you can go to, and the about section doesn’t mention Monty, her late husband, at all, for obvious reasons: Sheena doesn’t want to be connected to RWBY. Though, there is something there that’s noteworthy, in the last paragraph:

Still desiring a social element to her career, the animator turned professional cosplayer also has a history in the live stream world. Past broadcasts have included creating costume pieces, playing games with community members and subscribers, RPGs and more. No matter the project, peers or problem, Sheena strives to keep moving forward.

That powerful phrase we all associate with Monty.

It’s a shame that this show had to be Monty’s legacy, and that years off from now, his name isn’t going to mean anything to the public because the project he was passionate about and died making outlived him and his passion. It feels like his legacy was stolen, and his own part in the show’s legacy is held up purely as a pedestal on which the show should rightfully shine.

Every time I think about Monty, I think about how much I don’t want that to be me. For all the years I’ve spent here, with my graphics certifications being wasted since I earned them while I slave away in retail, I wonder if I’m the lucky one. If I were to enter the workforce and do what I loved, would it be worth it in the end? Would what happened to Monty and Sheena and Shane happen to me? Not sure I wanna know.

Snipped here.

#rwde #rwby

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a-court-of-moonlight-and-ire · 1 year ago

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Okay, second post, this ones mostly about Feyre because honestly, as of chapter 3 I havent really noticed Tamlin being out of character and from what Ive heard his character assassination was supposed to happen very quickly. Idk, right now he just seems like the same guy but traumatized although I'll fully admit that I didnt care that much for him outside of the Feylin romance (which was pretty sweet but too boring for me) so maybe I just didnt pay enough attention to him to fully grasp his character

Feyre is frustrating to me right now because I dont think shes out of character either, right now shes also just the same woman but traumatized, but like, I already know the extent to which her character will be bent for the sake of Rhysand. In these first three chapters she literally thinks something along the lines of "What's there for me to do but sit at home and spend Tamlin's money" Tell me, what does she end up doing in the night court huh????

Another thing thats frustrating is that Feyre clearly has issues communicating her feelings and wants, I know because I also had issues with that, and instead of learning that very valuable skill of telling others about your inner world and trying to work on her relationships (with both Tamlin and with her sisters), shes just gonna end up with a guy who can read her mind so theres no need for her to challenge herself and grow in any way. Yay. One thing especially stuck out to me in this regard was her attituide towards wearing dresses. Feyre does not like wearing dresses, its not like she never got to wear them back at home even though she wanted to, she just doesnt like wearing them in her day-to-day life, but she feels like she has to because she thinks its what Tamlin wants and because she thinks that if she wears pants its gonna somehow signal to the citizens of the spring court that something is incredibly wrong. But again, she doesnt tell anyone this, she doesnt ask Tamlin if he can just explain to everyone that everything is fine and that Feyre just has an unconventional way of dressing, which he would probably be fine with if its still the same guy from the first book. And it doesnt even seem like Tamlin directly made any kind of comment to her about the dresses she wears, she just saw that he was happy when he saw her wear them, which couldve well been him being happy to see her in general but she doesnt even consider that

Theres also the fact that its very unclear what she wants/what her problem is. Now, this actually isnt something that bothers me that much on its own, Feyre is traumatized and lost, obviously she doesnt know exactly what she wants at this point beyond "the situation Im in sucks and makes me feels bad, I want to get out", I think what bothers me is mostly the knowledge that Tamlin is gonna get blamed for a lot of this stuff when its really not his fault.

And I do want to make it clear that I dont think hes doing a great job handling this situation, I know a lot of people in the acotar critical sphere find his actions understandable and justifiable from his perspective and thats true, but hes still doing a bad job handling Feyre's emotional state. Like, one of your beloved's main issues is that she feels horrible because she feels trapped at home, for the love of god just let her go outside on her own. Maybe send her to village thats far inland or close to the border to the mortal realm, surely those monsters are not gonna manage to come that far if youre all going on patrols to kill them as soon as possible. And even if they do, the people of any village are gonna bend over backwards in order to protect their capital c Cursebreaker, shes gonna be fine

But, to get back to my original point, even if Tamlin was a daemati or whatever like Rhys and could read her mind the way she needs it to be read, he would still not be able to figure out what exactly Feyre needs right now because she doesnt know it herself! I literally read all of her thoughts and I dont know! Does she want to help others and be responsible for a whole bunch of people because its what shes always known to do? Does she want to avoid resonsibility for now because she wants to recover from her traumatic childhood of having the responsibility of keeping her family alive on top of all the new UTM-trauma? Its hard to say and that makes sense for Feyre at this point in her life, but she cant just blame people for not understanding her when she doesnt properly understand herself and refuses tl verbalize her feelings

Anyway, thats it for today, hope you enjoyed this

#anti acomaf #anti sjm #anti feysand #feyre critical #tamlin critical #flames and darkness liveblog

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c-e-d-dreamer · 1 month ago

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You've Got Me Thinking She's So Cool

A/N: Happy @emerieweekofficial! :) Ending strong with this fun little fic for Free Day. This fic is inspired by this viral post

Read on AO3

Emerie looks toward the cat-tree tucked into the corner of the living room, tufts of orange fur still clinging to the gray fabric. The emptiness of it has a hollow ache clawing its way through her chest, sinking right into her heart. There should be paws hanging over the edge, should be ears twitching in time with her steps across the hardwood, should be a pair of yellow eyes that perk up in excitement when she heads into the kitchen.

But there is none of those things.

She grabs a mug from the cabinet, hoping a cup of tea might help calm her frayed nerves, but that lingering sadness still twines like thorns between her ribs. It twists and burns until it morphs into rage again. Rage that burns bright and scorches through her veins, that has her wanting to punch something.

Has her wanting to punching someone.

It’s unfair. Unfair that this is happening to her. Unfair that he’s getting away with it. Unfair that he thinks I insulted his dick game is apparently not an appropriate response when the police ask why someone would go through the trouble to kidnap a cat.

Huffing quietly to herself, Emerie digs her phone out, opening back up the text chain she has with Kallon. Her last message to him, pleading with him to just return Mr Knightley and promising that she would pretend this never happened, has still gone unanswered. She can’t believe she unblocked him, just for him to ignore her.

Honestly, shouldn’t he be happy that she figured things out? That she didn’t try to force things or string him along? It was just as much a surprise to her, the realization. Sure, looking back, maybe it shouldn’t have been. There were certainly signs, even going all the way back to her favorite childhood characters and shows. Was it really her fault she just thought everyone found other women beautiful?

This is beneath you and you know it, Emerie types out a new text message. Just bring Mr Knightley back and I’ll be willing to look past the fact you refuse to give back the spare key you're pretending you don't have

She supposes she shouldn’t be surprised when there’s crickets from Kallon. With another annoyed huff, she decides to open Facebook next, finding the Are We Dating the Same Guy? group for Velaris with ease. It’s easy enough to type out a post warning everyone of what a toxic asshole Kallon is, even including the fact that she’s pretty sure he used his spare key to break into her apartment and steal her cat, even if she can't prove it. It takes longer to dig up a photo of Kallon that she can include, but then she’s pressing post.

Emerie tosses her phone aside and finishes preparing her cup of tea, deciding she’s going to spend the rest of the day curled up under her blankets with her latest romance novel until she starts to feel better. She’s made it three chapters when her phone dings. She rushes to grab it, hoping that Kallon has finally decided to stop being a dick, but all she finds is a Facebook notification. A comment on the post she made from a woman named Cresseida.

Omg! I actually know him! He was always trying to hit me up after we hooked up when we were in college. I still have his number. If you want, I’ll hit him up and get him to invite me back to his place and see if your cat’s there

Emerie blinks a few times, re-reading the comment just to make sure she’s not imagining things. Just to make sure she really is understanding what this Cresseida is offering. This woman would really proposition Kallon just to confirm that Mr Knightley is at his place? It’s absurd, and yet…

I would be eternally grateful if you did that

~ * * * ~

The sound of her phone alarm is annoyingly loud in the quiet, early morning light of her bedroom. With a groan, Emerie rolls over, quickly cutting the sound and the alarm off. She rubs at her eyes, pushing up into a seated position as she scrolls through her notifications, but one in particular catches her eye. It has her perking up instantly, her heart practically skipping over itself in excitement.

It’s a direct message from Cresseida.

Hey, girl! I have your cat. Are you free today to meet up?

Emerie’s jaw practically drops in surprise. Cresseida actually did it? Even more than that, she has Mr Knightley? Emerie had been expecting that maybe Cresseida could confirm Mr Knightley was at Kallon’s apartment or not, that it might finally be enough for her to go back to the police with Cresseida as a credible witness, but this? This is most definitely a turn of events.

Emerie quickly types out a response, messaging back and forth with Cresseida for a few minutes before they both agree to meet at the local bakery and coffee shop downtown. With that, Emerie all but tosses the blankets off and jumps out of bed, a decided skip in her step as she gets ready.

Deja Brew isn’t busy when Emerie pushes through the door, the little bell above it jingling brightly. It’s easy enough to spot Cresseida at the small table she’s claimed, the cat carrier at her feet a dead giveaway. She looks up at the sound of the bell, meeting Emerie’s gaze and offering her a friendly smile and wave in greeting. But Emerie can’t quite get her feet to move, her breath catching hard in her throat.

She’s gorgeous.

Sure, Emerie had seen what Cresseida looked like in her profile photo on Facebook, but seeing her in person is another thing altogether. Her white hair hangs in braids down past her shoulders, perfectly framing her face, and her eyes are such a bright shade of blue that it reminds Emerie of the ocean. She’d certainly be willing to drown in those waves.

She has a pretty shade of pink lipgloss across her full lips, the color only adding further emphasis to her beautiful smile. Emerie doesn’t even know the woman, but already her mind is reeling, the desire to keep Cresseida smiling gripping her hard enough to leave her gasping.

The desire to keep Cresseida smiling at her.

How might that smile change with her different emotions? Would it widen, would her lips part in a bright, melodic laugh if Emerie told a joke? Would it grow soft and fond if she accidentally embarrassed herself? Would it turn sultry and sensual if they–

Shaking her head of her quickly spiraling thoughts, Emerie clears her throat awkwardly, finally stepping over to Cresseida. She can feel heat beginning to creep up her neck and threaten to spill across her cheeks, so she crouches down, focusing on the cat carrier to avoid Cresseida noticing. Mr Knightley lets out a meow in greeting, pressing his face against the walls of the carrier and Emerie’s fingers.

“I can’t believe you just… took him,” Emerie comments, smiling softly at the way Mr Knightley tries to lick her fingers through the carrier.

“Well, it was incredibly easy,” Cresseida explains with an easy shrug of her shoulders. “And besides, what kind of dick kidnaps a cat?”

“How did you do it anyway?” Emerie asks, pushing back to her feet and settling into the seat across from Cresseida.

“All it took was one text. It seems he’s just as desperate as he was back in college. Once we went back to his place, I blew him, and of course, he fell asleep right after that, so I nabbed the cat and got out of there.”

Emerie can’t help but laugh, and she just prays her voice doesn’t sound as breathless as she feels. “You’re amazing.”

She’s not sure if she imagines it or not, but she swears that the blue of Cresseida’s eyes seem to spark in response to the words, swears the corners of her lips lift up that little bit higher.

“What can I say? Women should support women.”

“Amen to that.”

“But I have to ask…” Cresseida begins, leaning closer across the table until Emerie can smell what must be her perfume, the scent light and reminiscent of a sea breeze. “Why were you dating him in the first place?”

“I thought you were going to ask me why we broke up.”

Cresseida laughs at that, the sound just as lovely as Emerie imagined it would be. “I think we both already know the answer to that.”

“You’d be surprised,” Emerie mutters before she can think better and catch herself.

The comment certainly draws Cresseida’s attention, and she tilts her head, raising an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“I um…” Emerie ducks her head, suddenly feeling embarrassed. “I sort of realized that I actually don’t like men? But… I don’t know. Kallon wasn’t that bad when we first met.”

“Isn’t that how it always is.”

Mr Knightley gives a pitiful yowl from their feet, and Emerie realizes belatedly that she should probably get him back home soon. He’s always hated being trapped in a carrier, much preferring running laps around the apartment. She can let him free and give him lots of treats after the horrible ordeal of being cat-napped.

“But seriously. Thank you again for this,” Emerie tells her, raising her eyes to meet Cresseida’s gaze again. “You have to let me Venmo you to thank you properly.”

“I am absolutely not accepting your money,” Cresseida laughs again. “I already told you, women supporting women.”

“At least let me offer to buy you a drink sometime. I owe you. Let me repay it somehow.”

Cresseida hums softly, and Emerie is sure this time about that spark that flares through the other woman’s eyes. Cresseida dares to stretch her hand across the table between them, her fingertips brushing against the back of Emerie’s hand and sending sparks ricocheting up her arm, goosebumps cascading and radiating from that simple touch.

Emerie can feel her heart skipping between her ribs, feel heat curling around her spine, and she can’t look away from the woman sitting in front of her. Can’t look away from those bright blue eyes and that pretty pretty smile. Can’t look away from Cresseida’s lips and the tongue that darts out to wet them.

“Alright, fine. I’ll agree to drinks, but on one condition. It’s not repayment. It’s a date.”

#emerieweek2024 #emerie of illyria #pro emerie #cresserie #cresseida #acotar #acosf #my fic

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okthatsgreat · 29 days ago

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can i ask what your beef is with the dear evan hansen text?? like i agree with you i just wanna know lol

ohhhhh anon you are getting an essay from me LMFAOOO. for a bit of context: im a HUGE musical theatre fan and i was a massive fan during the 2016-2017 period of broadway where a HUGE influx of younger fans were getting drawn in so of course i listened to the soundtrack a ton. but after a bit i looked back at it and sort of understood a lot of its flaws in the base script/lyrics, and upon watching the australian dear evan hansen it became superrrr clear again imo!

ill put my long winding essay down below just because its pretty negative :) and, of course, long and winding

so there are some veryyyyyy distinct issues with the text of dear evan hansen, which i will TRY to pull apart into seperate categories just to make this a bit easier LMFAO.

TONE: tonally, this show is a MESS. it wants to both be a comedy musical while also having very heartfelt discussions around topics of mental health and suicide. in my opinion, while TRICKY, this CAN be done successfully, but was not handled well here. the switch between tone is far too jarring-- in one scene you'll have cynthia mourning her son who just committed suicide, desperate for any information that could connect her to her late child, reaching out to cling onto evan once she sees the cast that connor had signed before his passing. and then it IMMEDIATELY cuts to jared making a sex joke like im not kidding. these moments of grief and seriousness dont get time to breathe before they bring jared in or make connors ghost sing a funny song about not being gay

i know that an argument can be made that this show is supposed to be a "dark comedy"-- even if it was it wasnt done well, but as a whole it's actually not supposed to be a dark comedy. the suicide of connor murphy, evan hansens debilitating anxiety, and the mental wellbeing of these characters are placed in the centre of this show as its primary message. this is a show that marketed itself as being THE mental health show, that brought these issues to light and brings a powerful message about "not being alone". the writers of this show want you to take it very seriously. there are some very well written moments within this text (in my opinion a lot of the arguments the murphys have are well paced, good dialogue, especially towards the end before words fail) but it loses so much of its impact because its shoved in between these scenes of forced levity. so so much of that is the fault of jared as a character but thats a whole other essay

it's an extremely indecisive show over all, and you are going to see that throughout this essay: this show doesnt want to fully commit to one thing, but rather dabble in tinier, vague concepts and never truly go all the way.

MENTAL HEALTH: i am not going to deny that in 2016-2017 when this show was immensely popular, it DID start some sort of discussion. this show did have a very positive impact, specifically on a young demographic, because it did open up avenues for them to discuss issues such as this. at the time there were hardly any musicals targeted towards that demographic, and hardly any musicals that discussed mental health at all (besides shows like next to normal, but they were never that huge with the younger generation). for a young person, or anybody really, to resonate with a show concerning topics of anxiety and suicide is a great thing, and i am not trying to diminish the impact of this show at the time.

but the message of mental health is a very shallow one upon rewatch, unfortunately. as mentioned before, they are SO CLOSE to delving into interesting topics but never want to fully commit to anything. zoe and her opinion of her late brother is a FASCINATING topic that gets swept up in evans lie. we hardly hear much discussion about connors anger issues or mental health topics that are deemed less "palatable"-- in fact, very rarely does this show discuss the elements of mental health that can be seen as less palatable to a wider audience. it NEARLY does, it VERGES on those specific discussions, but never wants to linger too much. or it is fully treated as a joke (connor smokes pot, which can very easily be read as a form of self-medication as the murphys were struggling to stick to a single form of help for him. him smoking is ALWAYS a joke however. this is NOT explicit in the text).

not to mention, its clear that some topics were not well researched or even well examined within the text. i really really loved how the australian alana (carmel rodrigues) portrayed her (i very personally think she played alana as being autistic or at least neurodivergent) however she has a single throwaway line about how she felt invisible and then never mentions this again. this needed to be built up to a LOT better. evan STOPS TAKING HIS MEDICATION during act 2, claiming he "doesnt need them", and it is NEVER mentioned whether or not he starts taking them again. and while medication is a varied topic from person to person, and not everybody has or even wants to take them, the show has framed evan not taking his meds as a personal triumph, in which his life has finally "gotten better" to the point he doesnt need to take them anymore. for many many people this is not the case, especially with anxiety.

the core message of the show, "you are not alone", is also rather hollow. it's a good marketing point and its a great hashtag for the dear evan hansen team to spread on social media but it isn't extremely nuanced. dont get me wrong, sometimes a show doesnt HAVE to be extremely nuanced in a way a show like next to normal is, but to frame your show as THE mental health show with the aim to discuss these topics of suicide and depression seriously (rather than unseriously, like heathers), then it needs to be treated wayyy more carefully. saying "oh if youre sad then just reach out for help", while an okay message for a young audience, isnt very groundbreaking and in fact can come off as a little corny upon rewatch ("you will be found" felt verrrry very cheesy when i watched it live)

THE ANTI-HERO: evan is a teenager who severely fucks up. TREMENDOUSLY. and even though the marketing of this show i think has actually let evan down a little bit in regards to his personality, it isnt JUST due to the fact he has social anxiety. sure, this greatly impacts him and his decisions, but there are many moments within the show where he explicitly states his motives for why he did what he did. he is an awkward, LONELY teenager. while his anxiety not to speak up may have landed him in his situation in the first place, ultimately it is evans desperate need for human connection and family that compels him to keep this lie going.

and in a rather traditional narrative, his schemes would be framed as properly sinister. while he doesnt necessarily have MALICIOUS intentions, he still acts very selfishly and with little foresight. the lies keep piling on and piling on and he feels as though he can not reveal himself, but also he doesnt WANT to. he doesnt want to let everything go, even if he is very VERY in the wrong. this is selfish. and a character can BE selfish!

but while the narrative clearly paints evan as being in the wrong, he is NEVER supposed to be the "villain". nothing he does is truly conveyed as sinisterly as it actually is, and it gets SINISTER. ultimately we are supposed to be ROOTING for evan, as he is meant to represent the core themes of this show: mental health. even if he gets found out we are NEVER shown "true" consequences besides the murphy family getting kind of upset at him and asking him to leave during his song "words fail" where he tells them he used to be so sad and lonely before all of this and thats why he did what he did. it then cuts to him and his mom, where the discussion mostly revolves around HIS mental health and his suicide attempt rather than what he had just done to the murphys. finally after that scene we go to the finale many months later, where the consequences are hardly implied, and its even stated that evan got off LIGHTLY for what he did as the murphys never revealed who wrote connors note. yknow, the note that the entire internet was using as means to harass and dox that grieving family not too long ago

he is never treated as if he is completely in the wrong, and always given that core theme of mental health to hide behind. and because they dont want to discuss the more "unappealing" elements of mental health, or theyre too scared to imply that his anxiety is "making him the villain", evans actions ultimately are forgiven by the narrative.

evan and his family friend dance around the room, creating fake emails for a kid who killed himself in order to fool his mourning parents into believing the two of them were friends. evan stands in front of the school and gives a speech about how much him and connor were friends (even when they werent), and then spearheads a mental health campaign in connors name, all under the pretense that he KNEW and CARED for connor. he, a STRANGER, frequently goes over to the murphys house and allows them to treat him like a pseudo-son, nearly to the point where he accepts a college trust fund from them, which was meant for connor. he LIES to connors sister-- who was having very complicated opinions about connor due to his abuse towards her-- and convinces her that connor actually cared about her the entire time, practically forcing her to view her abusive brother as a better person than he was. and then evan DATES HER.

which brings me to my next and final point--

ZOE: god zoe. she makes me so unbelievably sad. WHY did evan have to have a love interest.

zoe could have been such a fascinating and intriguing character if she was handled with far more care than she had been. connor murphy was very explicitly stated to have been verbally abusive to her and likely physical as well, and at the beginning of the show she is rightly upset with him. she doesnt mourn him for his good parts because to her she doesnt KNOW any good parts. she tells evan that "the last time she can remember connor being nice to her was in his suicide note", which EVAN wrote. zoe was by no means obligated to mourn her brother, but was frequently encouraged (especially by cynthia) to do so, to find the good parts of him to remember. this complicated relationship with grief is fascinating

but evan has a crush on her, and thats when everything starts going downhill. he starts lying to her about what connor had told her ("if i could tell her" is a very creepy song coming from a brother but thats yet again a whole other post HGJKF) and plants false memories of him inside her head. that is FUCKED UP!! he is giving this poor girl, who is battling with her conflicted feelings towards her late abusive brother, false reasons to think fondly of him and invalidating every reason she had to feel anger towards him. because this show wants so desperately for the message to be that "nobody deserves to be forgotten", without any sort of nuance whatsoever, even if the person that died had been terrible to you.

and then they start dating. they start dating, all based on the lies evan had told zoe. before they kiss zoe says "you gave me my brother back", which is a HEARTBREAKING thing to hear from her given what we as the audience know, but this is NOT conveyed NEARLY as sinister as it is actually is. we witness evan be extremely, EXTREMELY selfish, and for the first time this can not be blamed on his anxiety like most other events in act 1 could. this was evan wanting to get with zoe, and it seemingly fell into his lap after he conned this family into believing he knew their estranged, late son. that is horrifying! zoe does not get NEARLY mad enough at him once he tells the murphys the truth! zoe doesnt get any time at all to shine in act 2!!

how absolutely mortifying would it be to realise that the person you were dating is a complete and utter stranger to you! he had been impersonating somebody and staying in your house, sleeping over, DATING you, all under entirely false pretences. and how absolutely mortifying would it be to realise that everything you thought you had finally learned about your brother was a lie? you had finally come to terms with accepting your late brother for his good parts only to realise that all of those alleged "good parts" werent actually true at all?? zoe would practically have to grieve ALL OVER AGAIN. the murphys would have to grieve their son TWICE. this is NEVER touched on. evan does not experience the consequences for this nearly as much as he should, and zoe is not given this resolution or nuance.

if this was done with a little more care this could have been GOOD. this was a terrible, terrible thing evan did. their romance should have always been framed as such. "only us" should not have been written as this charming cute romantic love song. given what the audience knows it is impossible to view this relationship as pure, which is what the writers had intended, and we are all sitting in our seats waiting for the ball to finally drop and this poor girl to finally realise who she is dating. its horrifying! and it doesnt get treated as such!

because ultimately evan is the hero and evan is the person you are supposed to be rooting for, regardless of his actions. ive seen a few arguments saying that this is intentional, that songs like "you will be found" are SUPPOSED to be sinister and hollow because evan is "tricking all of them", but the truth is that was never the writers intention. they wouldnt have made that song their entire marketing campaign if it was supposed to be seen as malicious. the writers were never willing to fully commit to anything, making this show as a whole underbaked and tonally inconsistent.

TLDR; the show has a hollow message and wants to be many different things at once but ultimately succeeds in none of it

#jesus christ. some seething creature just emerged from deep within my chest #im not proof reading any of that congratulations or sorry it happened #ask lee #anonymous

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