#just because he grew up in a different generation!!! and had different trending styles and stuff!!!

[littlecrittereli]

Where'd all the time go?

I'm not much of an animator but I had this little interaction in my head and a comic wouldn't do it justice...

[pruneunfair]

Oc's for my Au.

Malori Hemsley, Age:20

one of the many maids working at the palace of the Fahlgren empire (I renamed the eastern empire). Former slave of Nian and her husband, her job doubles as security since she knows how to use a sword but isn't allowed to join the military due to her past. Photo on the left is when she's at work and photo on the right is when she crossdresses to crash balls/banquets

Evalie Claude, Age:16

Duke Ergis wife and Maloris lost younger sister. The duchess who pushed a trend of regency styled dresses for women

Disclaimer: just gotta clear a few things up first. For anyone concerned for the age difference between Evalie and Ergi, he does not do anything to her, Ergi is a monster but he has standards and I will explain below why they got married to begin with. Also she has nothing to do with the Evalie from the original story, I just really like the name and I thought it would still fit since several historical figures shared a name at the same time period, still to avoid confusion I will call her Eva.

LORE DUMP: Malori and Eva's father, Sandro was a fallen Baron who was stripped of his title after going bankrupt from the consequences of schemes, scams and general white collar crime,though many think he just got sloppy it was actually because his partner at the time (Ergi) had screwed him over in trial by delivering the evidence. He and his wife changed their surnames in order not to be recognized and had 3 daughters, M+E being the older sisters to the baby Claire. The Hemsleys had little money to spare considering most of it went to the girls so Malori already had work experience as the oldest by wandering the streets to look for jobs such as chimney sweep or apprenticeships. As the years went on, Sandro grew to see all his daughters as burdens since it was harder for Malori and Eva to work as girls and Claire was too young and sickly and while he would rather not get rid of the daughter that did the most work, Malori would be more desired since she already has a track record of being able to perform most simple jobs. On Christmas eve, Sandro gave Malori extra food and let her stay home instead of working as a sort of compensation for what he was about to do. He doesn't tell Malori about what he's and her mother are going to do and shortly after, he sells Malori to a slave trader when she's 13 for enough money to last 3 years if spent wisely.

She winds up in the Tuania estate and becomes a slave. As a result, Malori starts to despise the noble class the older she gets but she also knows survival comes first and even after she escapes by burning the place down she still appealed to the higher class in order to manipulate some of them for her own gain such as becoming a rich man's mistress so she can take advantage of his eagarness by convincing him to let her get swordsmanship lessons. Once she abandons him Malori goes on a 2 month long journey of going out under a different name drinking at taverns, engaging in duels and even writting a few poems. After those months of utter depravity, she is inevitably caught and sent to be judged by Sovieshu himself after she attacks a nobleman, but instead of imprisoning Malori, Sovieshu was impressed that someone like her could defeat some of the imperial knights and even another noble, he decides to give her an ultimatum: live here as extra security while also doing maid work or be sent to prison for 30 years. Naturally she chooses the former.

As for Eva, she and her remaining family lived off the money Sandro got for selling her older sister for the time being, she and Clarie was told that Malori had died during the blizzard in a carriage accident and as the new oldest, Eva had to pick up the slack and go out for work. This time however Sandro had a new scheme to rise back in the ranks by looking to marry Eva off to a wealthy/powerful man starting as soon as possible. By now Clarie was dying of tuberculosis and the desperation for Eva to get married was not just for status reasons but also so Sandro wouldn't have to raise anymore children. What was not expected however was Duke Ergi to show himself after all this time much to Sandros fury. He offers to marry Eva with the promise letting the parents live in their own little home with fertile land to live off of. There wasn't much choice left and they might as well let Claire have a little happiness before she dies so Eva gets married off when she's 14.

On their wedding night, Ergi makes it clear to Eva that he is not a good man and does not plan to be loyal to her and that she shouldn't see him as some sort of savior who rescued her from poverty. While he doesn't sexually abuse Eva that doesn't mean he's nice to her either. The real reason he married at all was because it was the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the situation and have a perfect tool to sacrifice in the future. I wouldn't say he's full on toxic to her either.. it's a weird relationship where they mostly ignore each other but on occasion can have a decent conversation. She's not totally alone either since she has other friends thanks to her popularity in the fashion area.

Eva also suffers from endometriosis, due to the time period set, no one really knows what's happening to her and some even accuse her of faking it for attention, to ease this pain, Eva is given potions made up of opium and the nerves of certain monsters as a painkiller everyday during her times of the month, the side affects cause her to become disoriented and exhausted which keep her docile and obedient. Effectively killing 2 birds with one stone not just for Ergi but also the house of Lazlo in the future.

[bodies-needs-a-fandom]

Some headcanons abt the detectives bc I'm bored.

(disclaimer: i have not read the comic and don't intend to so if there are any OG bodies stans that know canon facts which dispute any of these headcanons, I want to note that I am only talking about the show here, not the book)

Karl:

Definitely a bi disaster. He has a preference for women, but he's very aware of his attraction to men as well and doesn't see anything wrong with it.

Secretly has a massive sweet tooth, but it doesn't fit his cool-guy vibe so nobody knows about it

If he could wear fishnets and multiple piercings, he would.

He has never liked reading. It isn't his thing, at all - he's always been a very modern person and movies are just so much better. He avoids paperwork like the plague and every time a case requires a lot of reading he considers giving up and cold-casing it just so he can skip the boring research.

If he was ever transported to 2023, he would despise most of it. Mostly the no-smoking rules. But one thing he would like is the rom-coms and the reality tv shows - specifically the awful ones. He likes laughing at people.

Shahara:

Judging by the colorful middle-school-art-teacher outfit vibes, she was very into art - specifically floral impressionistic styles - but had to drop it when she became a mother and a cop. Just didn't have the time

Has been to every pride parade she ever had time for. Probably unlabeled and no gender preference

Was a massive rebel as a teenager. Snuck out to house parties, drank underage, probably faked an ID once or twice. Or three times.

Hates crime mystery novels - not because they're bad, just because she's good enough at her job to be able to easily nitpick the plotholes and immediately guess the killer.

If bodies was a show in her world, she would be a stan. Like she'd have made a whole fan acc and everything.

Alfred:

If he could wear piercings, he definitely would. Not many. He's not that extravagant. But he'd probably have a couple earlobe piercings and he'd usually wear studs or very small hoops, mostly in silver or bronze.

stole his mum's dress as a kid once when she wasn't home. He liked it, but when she found out she was furious and he never did it again.

I think he had a decent relationship with his father at first, but as he grew older and continued to suck at lying his parents Figured Things Out the relationship sort of dwindled. They don't speak now. There was no dramatic moment, but eventually the periods of silence grew longer until they never stopped.

He's very interested in fashion. Goes out of his way to keep up with trends and so on.

Work comes first for him because even though he loves Charlotte and Polly with all his heart, it becomes difficult to pretend around them all the time, and a good case is also good escapism.

During his time deducing The Shake, he accidentally stumbled along a different Shake which meant something else entirely and it all got rather embarrassing from there.

Iris:

had an emo phase, which heavy quotations around 'phase'. The fashion style changed, obviously, but she's still emo in spirit. We all know it.

She probably played the cruellest pranks on Alby known to man. To be fair, Alby fought back just as hard - especially after that one time that Iris accidentally spilled water on his new fancy tech during a prank gone wrong when they were teenagers. THAT did not end well for her and there were definitely a shitton of slugs involved or something equally disgusting

Hates sweets. or sugar in general. Shes a fan of bitter, strong things. Like vodka, probably. Or that 'six-shots-of-espresso-nothing-else' monstrosity Crowley ordered in good omens

Tried to hit on Lorna a couple times early on and when Lorna remained totally oblivious she gave up.

Was really into true-crime stuff as a teenager, but nothing involving terrorists. Ever. For obvious reasons.

She saw Mannix as a sort of father figure for a breif period of time, which is part of the reason she was so loyal to him. Immediately after the incident at the throat in episode 5, she turned her parental figure attention to Shahara.

[doom-nerdo-666]

Something i once mentioned in a post about DE's art style and tone is how "nerdy" the game is: Like the pop culture references and whether or not people were turned off by things reminding them of Disney or He-Man, but could've been okay with references to Conan or Spawn even if they weren't original Doom influences like Aliens.

Or the fact that something like killing the Spirit with the Microwave beam is an 80's Ghostbuster reference but you still have an aesthetic with modern trends like the demons' chitin features.

Because certain id titles are "fantasy and sci-fi mix" but they look different and partially because of influences.

That's why Q3 and even Champions are interesting, because they can present a variety of characters from different settings fighting against each other.

Hunter for example is the way she is because she's inspired by Simon Bisley's Full Cirkle, which is also a more obscure reference compared to other stuff that usually influences other id material.

And in a way, this can also lead to why Q3 and QC feel different.

It's the thing with nerds making games where sometimes they wear their influences really hard and we don't always notice because they pick something less convinient, which is a contrast to portrayals of nerds in pop culture being centered around Star Wars and Marvel/DC comics.

I remember someone's tweets being "the reason why Halo/WoW aren't what they used to be is because the original devs were inspired by Aliens/Akira/Warhammer/old novels/etc and the new ones are from people that grew up with the MCU".

I always thought the word "uninspired" was a weird way to describe something since technically "anything is inspired by something else, right?".

Then i realized: You look at certain popular games and their influences are either obvious or at least specific as if the developers had ideas of what they wanted to be influenced by.

Like things they liked and wanted to put in a game because they choose to do so.

That's probably why some people think stuff already looked AI generated before AI art was a thing: There's this idea that a lot of game concept art either has the same basic influences or just subscribes to vague ideas of "sci-fi and fantasy", which is why certain trends persist.

And with game studios being bigger, you may have a clash between a director with a clear vision and an artist who draws things as according to a certain standard that doesn't come off as specific.

DE still has memorable designs but i can see why people think it's weird that a game that tries to pride itself with 80's and 90's references still has modern looking elements.

And in a post of mine about classic Doom's art style, a recent edit mentions a lesser known movie somehow influencing the Cyberdemon's face.

[ask-artsy-oncie]

Saw u were asking for asks so i was wondering what was the process in designing Tys character :)

Tagging @fox-faced as they had sent a fairly similar ask to @swindle-comic and I felt it would be more effective to kill two birds with one stone.

I am honestly so sorry for taking so long to answer this. This is going to be a fairly long post!

So, as far as designing Ty goes, it was mostly a process of learning how to draw bears. Specifically Disney bears.

When it came time to design Ty, I was definitely not practiced in the art of drawing cartoon bears. In fact, I was mostly doing Moomin fanart at this point, and was still trying to figure out how I wanted to draw DT17 characters in a way that wasn't just the style of the show. Ty's design hasn't changed much, conceptually, but instead has been heavily tweaked and refined as I simply got better and more used to drawing bears.

As Ty was, at the time of his creation, so derivative of Kit, my plan of attack was pretty much just "figure out how to draw a bear cub in the DT17 style" using Kit's design as a reference for drawing a Disney bear cub to begin with. Lolly had been the one to choose which species of bear Ty was, so I was trying to focus instead on his general aesthetic while translating the proper features over. Once again, I used Kit as a reference - or rather, his athleticism - and pushed it to the point where Ty looked very jock-ish (though you can blame my love for letterman jackets on that).

You can tell in a lot of my older drawings of Ty that I really hadn't actually gotten used to or properly figured this bear thing out, yet. His face, especially, looks extra blocky and awkward. However, these early drawings were where I quickly decided to make Ty fairly large and thick as a teenager. This was before I had really considered the idea that he grew up underfed, it was more just "I want to play around with this body-type".

Among these earliest drawings was also one of Ty and Louie as adults, where, again, you can tell that I hadn't quite gotten the hang of drawing bears, but you can see that from the very beginning I had wanted him to be a more top-heavy adult (mostly just to allow for some variety between him, Kit, and Baloo. As much as I do love Kit's adult design, Disney has a bad habit of copypasting character designs from parents to their children, and I really wasn't interested on continuing that trend).

I wasn't super confident on how I was going to properly refine this design, so his adult design ended up taking a back-seat for a while as I instead focused on getting better at drawing his teen design.

This was pretty much accomplished simply by drawing him more, and lord knows I was hyperfixated as FUCK on this funky little bear cub, so drawing him a ton was not hard to do. I think what really helped me figure him out were these drawings, here, where I had to really think about what angles I had him posed at, and how his features would properly look in a more 3D or dynamic space. This was also where I started looking at any details I wanted to add to his design (the stripes on his collar were introduced to his design at this point, for instance).

At a point, I felt as though I had gotten good enough to at least create some proper "stock" images of the boy to properly solidify his desgin and all the little tweaks I made. I think the differences between this and his very first drawings are more subtle, but you can DEFINITELY tell the difference between these drawings and my other early Ty drawings.

And interesting fact was that I hadn't been drawing early Llewerius art with the idea that Ty had gone through a growth spurt before they started dating, so you end up with sketches like this:

PART 1 OF 2 BECAUSE TUMBLR SUCKS AND WON'T LET ME UPLOAD MORE THAT 10 PICTURES EVEN THOUGH THIS TECHNICALLY QUALIFIES AS A TEXT POST (as it, for whatever reason, decided to switch to mobile mode even though I'm literally on a desktop computer, I hate this broken-ass website)

[crystal-moon-101]

So I’ve got three AUs here with The Secret Generator 10 Trio, and I drew them all together because they are all connected based on the same idea. In these AUs, instead of receiving their powers from something, they are what their powers are. Basically, Zak is still Kur reborn, but was born a dragon who disguises himself as human, Rex is the Omega (His design is based off of my sentient Omega AU), and Ben is the Omnitrix who decide to become a living being, choosing a human body as his main form. I’ll go into a little more detail to explain each AU, and I hope you enjoy! If you have any questions about any of these AUs, don’t be shy to ask. 🧡 💙 💚 -Zur AU- In this world, Doc and Drew never had any biological kids, as Drew found she was unable to bare any. This did distraught the pair, as it had been one of their long life dreams, but they stayed strong and decided to focus on their work for a bit, deciding on future family stuff later.  Eventually, they came across the Kur Stone with the rest of the secret scientists, and as the story goes Argost snatched it, and the secret scientists rushed into Weird World to retrieve it, losing many of their teammates in the progress. But things take an interesting turn when taking the stone back to base. You see, as the scientists were discussing what to do, now understanding what the stone really was, they all suddenly heard a faint crack...then another, then a few more, and before anyone knew what was happening, the Kur stone slip, breaking open into four pieces as a tiny, baby, serpent-like dragon crawled out. That’s when they realized that the stone was not a stone, but rather an egg, and putting two and two together, the group assumed that this was Kur’s child. Of course, they freaked out, not wanting something tied to the being said to desire to kill all humans to be wandering around the lab, but their panic caused the little infant dragon to panic too, and a chase sparked, with the little dragon rushing around the labs to hide and keep away from these strange people. The young dragon was confused, as it didn’t understand what was wrong, why these people seemed so scared, though one of these people did catch his eye, the woman with white hair. He had seen her first when hatching, and developed this strange attachment to Drew. She ended up being the one to corner the baby, who came up with a...odd idea somehow. Reaching deep within himself, he found the ability to shapeshift into a human form (Albeit with dragon like features), basing features off of Drew and Doc. This caught the two off guard, especially when seeing bits and pieces of themselves in this child. At first they thought he was trying to trick them, but when they started clinging to Drew, something sparked in the two, this need to protect this young one, who had clearly bonded to them so fast (Drew was quick to scoop them up and be ready to tell the other scientist to a back off).  It was a longgggg discussion with the others, many having concerned and worries, but eventually it was agreed that they could not place Kur’s blame onto his offspring, as it was unfair, and since Drew and Doc handle cryptids for a living, it was best that they looked after him. So, they gave him the name Zak, and their little family began.   Now, Zak is very well aware of what he is and who he is, and is very grateful for his parents for taking him in, despite what he was. The main plot of the series would most likely be the same, with a few differences, like people like the Nagas and Argost eventually thinking that Zak is Kur’s son too. But then the twist eventually comes in that Zak isn’t Kur’s son, he is Kur himself, just reborn like a phoenix. This leads into Zak’s anxiety crises about who he really is and what he could do, just like in season 2.  Zak can also switch between his human form, and real dragon form, though he is able to summon parts of his dragon form, like wings or his tail, if that’s better to use at the moment. He’s quite the magpie too, often collecting ores, gems, jewelry and anything that catches his eye. His loves the outdoors quite a bit, and spends a lot of his time out in the woods or grass fields around his home, connecting with the local wildlife too. He’s also known to straight up hiss and growl, even in his human form.  -Omega Rex AU- After the failures of the Alpha project, the crew on the nanite project eventually moved onto the Omega project, which was being lead by not only Caesar, but his parents as well this time. Based on Alpha’s designs, tweaking them quite a bit, they eventually made Omega, a much more friendly and kinder version of Alpha. Omega started off as mostly robotic, being tested on and merely hanging around the labs until needed for something. But like all of Caesar’s project, things started to change, and Omega started to become something more. It was little things at first, Omega asking little questions, curious about the world and people in it. Then Omega started mimicking people, copying human mannerism and even style of speech. People caught on quick, and become a little nervous, given Alpha was kind of the same when he started to change and eventually go rouge. They kept an eye on Omega, making sure nothing went down hill, but instead they went an opposite direction, taking a more wonder filled out look on life, wanting to know a lot about life and what it meant to be living. There were mixed responses to this, some telling Omega that they were just a robot and nothing more, others wanting to see where this would go.   Omega seemed to follow three people the most, Caesar, Rylander and Van Kleiss, each peeking his interest in different ways, each one seeing and treating him differently. Caesar often regarded him as one of his great inventions, and was enjoying seeing where Omega was going, and how they were growing, and while there were moments that Caesar treated him a little more human they he would admit, he tried to keep it professional and just say Omega was a tool. Rylander was the kindness to Omega, and would be happy enough to answer their questions and let them understand life a little better, often thinking he saw a spark of a soul in Omega’s eyes from time to time. Van Kleiss was intrigued by Omega, especially when Omega seemed unphased by Van Kleiss’s off putting nature. Like Rylander, he was fine to answer him questions about the world and life, though his negative views on life due to past issues made things a little sad for Omega to hear, even trying to ‘comfort’ the man despite Van Kleiss telling him not too. Then, the nanite event happened. It all happened so fast, but that didn’t matter in the end as Omega awoke with no memories...not even their own name. Left wandering the world now being infested with EVOs, he eventually ran into the Hong Kong Gang one by one, where he started to developed a more teen like personality, and even got the name Rex from them. This made that desire to be something more, something alive, stronger, and that feeling stayed with them even after he left the group, lost his memories again, and got picked up by Six and Providence. At first, they had assumed he was an EVO, but once they realized he was something else, a living nanite it seems, they kept him around in hopes he could help, especially after seeing he could cure EVOs and talk to other nanites.  Rex is very curious, and still mimics quite a bit, you often seen him copying gestures from Six and Holiday. Not in a mocking way, but more so like a little kid taking after the adults around him. He’s still learning a lot about being ‘human’ so he does stumble quite a bit, doing things like saying a phrasing wrong, not understanding latest trends, and sometimes forgetting the body limits of a normal human. -Omni-Ben AU- While Azmuth was alone, isolating himself in his work for the Omnitrix, he eventually managed to complete it. However, while he was having it do some test runs and look overs to make sure it was ready, he came to find that the AI may have been a little more advance than he was expecting, for the next thing he new, the Omnitrix shapeshifted into the form of a 13 year old human male. Of course, being highly confused, Azmuth questioned his creation, and the Omnitrix explained that, after looking through the DNA is had, seeing all the different speices in the galaxy and seeing how they live, how they work, they wanted to be like that too, wanted to be alive and real. They had picked a human as their man form as they enjoyed the idea of how humans grow, how individualized they are as a species. Azmuth thought about it, but finally agreed to let the Omnitrix try this out. For the next two years, still living in isolation, Omnitrix and Azmuth started up a simple life living together, Omnitrix even calling him father, which Azmuth was fine with and grew accustomed to. However, Azmuth never let Omnitrix out of the lab/base, for he feared what was out there that could try and use his creation for awful things, and with the Omnitrix alive and sentient, it made that fear worse. But, of course, things couldn’t stay the same forever, as one day Vilgax came knocking and demanded the Omnitrix. Azmuth was quick to tell his creation to flee, despite the Omnitrix’s hesitation. But, unable to deny orders from his father, the Omnitrix fleed as Vilgax followed after, taking Azmuth as his prisoner just in case.   Needing somewhere to hide or run too, the Omnitrix thought back to some of Azmuth’s stories, recalling the tale about a human called Max Tennyson, who had once defeated Vilgax, and was well known by the Plumbers. Given the Omnitrix had a human form, and knowing Max’s history with the Plumbers and Vilgax, he decided to find him, making his way to earth and crashing there. He had been following Max’s Plumber signal (Which was in the rust bucket), and ended up being found by Gwen, who took him to Grandpa Max. After explaining his situation, Max agrees to help, and after some debate, Gwen could come too.  The three begin to travel across the USA, going to old Plumber bases to collected needed weapons as Vilgax was on their tale, and looking for help in the matter. Needing to blend in with humans, Gwen helped Ben get an outfit that could hide him (Not quite the one up above), and used some make up along with an eye contact to cover up anything he couldn’t remove from himself, and eventually gave him the name Ben. Ben is quite...alien, for lack of a better term. Given he was isolated with Azmuth his entire life, there’s a lot he needs to learn and understand. He is quite smart and quick to pick up on things, but does stumble up in the moment. He’s found that the world outside it quite big, bigger than he realized, and now he’s experience so much, even new emotions he thought he never had, but...he does wanna see more of the world and what it has to offer.

[deepseavibez]

Drowning Too Deep_2.1 || KNJ || JHS

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-> Picture Source - Pinterest

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Drowning Too Deep [Namjoon x Hoseok x Reader]

Part 1 || Part 2 || 2.1 || 2.2 || Part 3

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Genre - Established!Boyfriend(s) au; Poly;

Summary - Alone at home, nothing but thoughts, pent up emotions, roaming fingers and a wild imagination... that is... until your boyfriends catch you in the act.

Word Count - 1.6k

🎶 - Anyone - Justin Bieber

It had to be her, it just had to - Namjoon

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Choices were a part of everyone's life - - she was definitely one he could never turn back from, one he didn't want to turn back from.

It wasn't easy for Hobi, or any of them for that matter, but they had all grown up together; Hobi knew and felt and observed and listened. Joon took action, implemented and took charge. Cues, after years of being together with people were unspoken. Sharing dorms and cramped spaces, privacy non-existent, problems solved as a family in family meetings. Yeah… it took time. 

Joon had had his fair share of bad days with Taehyung. Namjoon was too serious when they first met each other - - the random thoughts and eccentric actions, 'the world would go on anyway' energy, it took Joon some time to realize that Taehyung cared, just differently. 

Over time Namjoon exercised looking at both the heads and tails of a situation, stopping to smell the roses, using the rose-coloured glasses and Taehyung grew to understand why there was a need to be serious in certain circumstances, that not everyone deserved a smile, that the black and white existed on either side of the grey.

Most importantly, he was Joons maknae. Every hyung had a maknae; Jimin and Hobi were roomies, Jungkook had Jin and Taehyung was Joons. It couldn't necessarily be called a responsibility, but Joon wanted Tae happy, stress free, in control, able to think level-headed and be strong. 

Joon had to learn how Taehyung worked. How he liked his food. His distaste of coffee. His eye for fashion and style. In return he trusted Joon with lyrics, with ideas, with his vocal range. And somehow, they just...were. Just were. As themselves. As each other. It worked. They had made it work.

But with mistakes, misunderstandings and arguments, and time. Y/n had barely been here a year, and yet… 

'I don't think you're wrong, Tae.'

Joons ears perked up at the statement. He had a clear view of them as they all faced the wall length mirror.

Y/n sat side by side on the floor against the wall of the dance studio right next to Taehyung, who currently had his head hung low, legs stretched out in front of him. 

Tae's argument with Jungkook the day before had been weighing on everyone's minds.

Jungkook had left for vocal practice immediately after the group dance practice and Jimin was caught in between the both of them.

Jungkook isolated, he needed silence, he needed to be ready to talk first. Taehyung needed to talk, to drive his point home, to be himself. Jimin needed to clear his head. He loved too hard, knew both of them weren't wrong, but it was tricky to handle a situation where what you said could break someone's heart if it spoke for either of them. 

Joon himself tried, earlier on, yesterday, last night even, to diffuse the situation but to no avail. He had found Taehyung in Jimins bed that morning. Jin reported Jungkooks door locked, when it was generally closed or slightly ajar. They weren't on talking terms, avoiding each other at the dorm, staying as far away as possible for the group schedule. It was obvious they had decided to keep their distance until further notice. 

Y/n was passing by when she noticed them; Tae, Jin, Hobi and Joon were the only ones in the studio. 

They needed the extra practice, and Tae was only scheduled for vocals late this afternoon so he hung back. They could see how deflated he was. She saw it as soon as she stepped in, asking for him to check out the twitter trend affiliated to him going on by ARMY's before looking up from her phone and reading the room.

Intrigue, general interest not even the least piqued, even she could put two and two together, after all, everyone had heard of argument that transpired in the studio the day before.

Greeting them softly with a nod, she walked straight toward the sulking puddle of grey sweats, shirt and beanie.

She bent down at first, whispering a few words, pointing to her phone, and when he shrugged in nonchalance, a mumble that sounded like he would 'check it out later,' uncaring of her suit, she sat down, her heels kicked off and placed on the side, socked feet stretched out next to him. 

She had gotten used to them over the last year. She knew who she had skinship privileges with. Jimin liked hugs, Jungkook liked clinging on the odd day, and Taehyung liked her overall. He said she had a specific minty scent that curled around him and Joon knew the perfume firsthand, having seeing the bottle on her dresser so many times.

She hadn't visited the night before, texted Hobi and Joon that their family came first, she shouldn't be a part of it quite just yet.

It seemed a couple hours had changed her mind considering what she did next.

'Listen,' she stared ahead at the mirror as she spoke.

'I haven't been here very long and I have no right to say anything about this. But Tae,' Y/n looked at him, placing her hand over his to have him look up at her. 'You know you're not just anyone to him.'

Hobi helped Joon with a particularly subtle hip movement that would make a step easier to manoeuvre, Jin next to him nailing it in three tries. They pretended to be preoccupied, uncaring that the music wasn't even turned on. 

Offering up a soft smile, she continued, 'The people that coax us out of our shell, the people that reassure us, the ones that grab onto our hands when we get off balance, the ones we find home with, sometimes it's hard to accept that we rely on them as much as we do.'

'I won't leave him alone, Y/n. I would nev-.'

'I know you won't. And deep down he knows it too. But you are all growing up Tae. You know more people and have grown into so many new things about yourselves.'

Y/n could hear the desperation in Tae's protest, his eyes filled with hurt at the very idea of ever leaving Jungkook to do life alone.

'I mean look at his tattoos, look at your hair, and you all want to do more side projects.'

Ofcourse, Taehyung had never meant to sound insensitive about pursuing acting jobs, and he didn't mean to say that their group, their lifstyle, was something they should just put behind them.

Lowering her head to meet his eye, she brought him out of his mini spiral and continued.

'This is the only family he's ever known Tae, he knows everyone won't live together someday, he knows he wants to do things that are different, that are on his own, he knows he can't have both worlds always, but knowing doesn't mean it hurts less. Acceptance doesn't mean being ready to move on, and he, himself needs to come to the realization that he can come back to you when he's done, his brothers...his hyung.'

With her soft touch and her words, recognition slowly sunk in. 

'Like I said, you aren't wrong,' she closed one eye, measuring a shirt distance with her thumb and forefinger in front of it, 'but your mind, and how it works, sees things a bit further ahead than Jungkook right now. So, you can either go to him, and talk to him, about the pressure, and the pace and the after, even if it's not what he wants to hear, or you can just give him time and let him come to you.' 

Y/n clasped his hand in hers, letting it fall in her lap as she whispered her next words, 'We don't stay far from our homes for very long, he will come back to you,' 

Joon found Hobi in the mirror, he had his chin up in pride, a smile akin to Joon's own, and Jin turned toward them at the same moment, blinking slowly as he nodded his head once. 

It did something to Joon to have the sign given, so silently, so freely, because Jin was their hyung, the eldest, nothing would go on without his consent. There were no serious dislikes about Y/n but this, this moment, it was a yes, it was an approval, it was a statement - - your choice is not wrong. 

When Joon turned back to her, seeing Taehyung's face light up at the tweets on her phone screen, seeing her smile at him, genuinely happy on a sweaty dance practice floor, next to a brother they would protect always, Joon's head immediately filled with maybees. 

Because maybe it was that she took over without meaning to when they were busy or when they couldn't get anywhere with the situation. 

Maybe it was her words. Maybe it was that she took the time to make the people important to them understand.

Others might see it as butting in, an emotionally off kilter person would feel like she was meddling in business that was not hers. She could have gotten fired, had they just said the word.

But Y/n sat there, disregarding her own busy day, to make sure Tae understood that he was the bigger brother even if by only a year. 

She did it all without looking at Hobi or Jin or Joon, she didn't need them to be there, to see or to show off, she did it because she was that type of a person. 

And maybe, just maybe the blanket on Joon's heart, an emotion full of warmth, spread in earnest because when she spoke of homes and shells and coaxing, the emotion behind it said one thing only to him - - Hobi and Joon…they were her home.

Part 1 || Part 2 || 2.1 || 2.2 || Part 3

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[mikaze-discord]

Quartet Night: Love letters

Annnnnd these are the love letters written for Quartet Night!!!

Please enjoy under the cut~

REIJI KOTOBUKI

From Anon:

I've always been drawn to characters with complex (and fairly dark) personalities, so liking Rei-chan was honestly inevitable for me.

He looks like a very bright and cheerful character at first, which he is, but sometimes that part of him is a little misleading because, in actuality, he's a character that holds a lot of negative feelings about himself due to a past that he can't seem to move on from. He holds a lot of those feelings to himself because he doesn't want to burden anyone else with them. He's a reliable, cunning, and ultimately selfless character that chooses to shoulder a lot on his own out of his infinite care for others, and perhaps a secret sense of atonement, all hidden behind his bright demeanor and goofy smile, and it's endlessly interesting to me.

Besides the duality of his personality, he has a lot of other endearing quirks to love about him. He loves his mom a lot and is a mama's boy. His old-man jargon and catchphrases never fail to amuse (I still can't get over the way he says "my girl"). His obsession with anything even remotely British is something my APH England phase can relate to. His style of music brings a lot of pleasant feelings of nostalgia for me, and his pretty voice suits them a lot. And most of all he's just a very good boy overall. I rate 99999 out of 10 would love and support him and also maybe pay for his therapy because god knows he needs it. Happy anniversary!!

From another anon: 

Would you like to hear a story? You do? Very well then, may this story be one you enjoy.

What do I like about Reiji kotobuki? A Lot of things actually!

Well, I've always really liked Reiji as a character as he seemed to be one of the more interesting characters to me, due to how complex he is with his backstory and general just personality.

I have always really enjoyed how Reiji just solves problems too? Like he is just such an outgoing person who deserves all the support!!!

Like the best word I can use for Reiji is just, unique. Everything about him is just so Reiji. From the way he talks, to his nicknames or even his texting style. Like have you seen how many people use emoticons when texting as Reiji? It's just so him.

I like his way of thinking too! I feel like some of the interactions in the games are just so interesting, just seeing Reiji’s point of view. How he deals with a sort of survivor’s guilt and all of that.

Personally, some of my most memorable roleplaying moments were watching a Reiji rper in action, like just seeing them interact and flow so seamlessly with the other characters was just so fascinating to wee baby rper me. Such a large part of playing Reiji is just how you flow with the people around you and comedic timing. I have so many funny moments where Reiji was just interacting with people and it was just so inspirational (?) like I couldn't stop the smile on my face. I had learnt alot from them. I still consider them my roleplaying senpai almost! I don't talk to them anymore but I really had an amazing time just seeing their spin on the character.

I don't find him to be a romantic partner towards me nor do I see any of the characters in that light, but I've always found Reiji as such a personal character. Not even just towards me, like even with other utapri stans. The most relatable character always seems to be Reiji.

I've always been pretty similar in many aspects to him and I often find myself relating to him in numerous ways like his vibe is just relatable! I have often found myself trying to make other people laugh and have fun that many times I'm spreading myself thin and feel unappreciated...Reiji really helped with that.

This is where i start getting into the really personal stuff LOL feel free to skip if you dont wanna hear the angsty backstory.

I had really come to love Reiji when I had just...hit a low. I had a group of friends who I enjoyed hanging out with and just talking to, but they weren't very good friends per say. I often had to schedule every activity we did and I spent days and nights trying to think of concepts that might be fun. They took it for granted.. I had spent 4 months trying to make a game for them, and they had constantly pushed back times that we would play it. Using excuses to not play it, without telling me out right what they did not like or even why. The site I used was later taken down without notice and thus I had lost all my progress. Later, they had mentioned how they would like to play it except that later ended up being two years later. I really wish I could've solved things with that friend group like Quartet Night did but that didn't happen. That is when I started seeing things Reiji’s way? Not to say that it was the same or similar scenario to Reiji but I had just associated it with him.

RANMARU KUROSAKI

From Anon:

Ran is such a fun character! He sounds like a "rough outside, soft inside" kind of character, but his roughness is more like an integral part of him and it's through it that he shows he cares rather than setting it aside. That's what made me want to rp him. I also like how he is such a strong guy who's always determined to do his best in everything he does despite so much having gone wrong in his past. And it's very satisfying to see him form bonds and start to trust people.

From @mikaze-san:

Originally, my favourite Utapri boy was Ai, and it had been the robot boy for several years upon entering the fandom. In fact, it only switched to Ranmaru sometime late last year but regardless, I would still die for this man. Part of the reason why I switched is because I’ve always been a fan of Suzuki Tatsuhisa and I have a huge bias towards any man who wears nail polish without fearing being “feminine” because fuck gender roles.

As someone who studies fashion, I think Ranmaru is very coordinated and confident when it comes to portraying himself that way. He knows he’s not very good at expressing his emotions and utilises his passion for rock and playing the bass to portray those feelings through his songs. It’s also incredibly inspiring to know that he bounces back from pretty much anything considering his backstory and the stuff he deals with in the game/anime.

But my main reason for loving Ranmaru so much stems from the fact that I admire him a lot and want to be more like him. For a long time last year, I got to roleplay as Ranmaru in a few Utapri groups and through those experiences, I gained a better understanding and appreciation of the characters that I wrote for. In some weird way, by highlighting his flaws, character progression and how he dealt with different emotions, I ended up providing insight into how I dealt with similar issues by looking at them from a 3rd person perspective.

I used to be very shy and was very shut off from friends and family, and due to this I’ve always admired people in my life or fictional characters that are so confident in being who they are. Ranmaru particularly struck that chord in me because his bluntness knows no end. He’s very opinionated and doesn’t fear confrontation, in most cases being the one to provoke it. He speaks his mind openly without being overly anxious of the consequences. This is something that I feel is especially relevant today with being your authentic/unapologetic self is such a trend.

It’s something I’ve also noticed with having met people in or outside of this fandom, the notion of idolising a fictional character containing traits that we want to see in ourselves. Which made me think about a lot of my favourite kinds of characters which at the end of the day all boil down to sharing one similar trait: Being a bitch.

And in Utapri, Ranmaru embodies that. So naturally it’s very easy for me to idolise him.

(Tldr: I like his bitchy attitude.)

AI MIKAZE 

From Arashi:

It's hard to put into words why I love Ai Mikaze, perhaps it's because I'm subconsciously drawn to him, maybe it's because his hair and eyes are my favorite color, maybe it's because his voice is that of an angels, there are many reasons why I love him. I couldn't tell you a definite, "These one or two reasons are the entire reason I love him", but I'll try to sum it up.

I grew to love him by admiring his personality, his smile, his determination to reach his goals, everything about him made me happy. He's strict and a little scary at times, but when he sees people caring for him, he becomes happy and in a way, sentimental. He's not sure how to explain the way he feels, but he tries. I think I admire how he holds all the little things precious to his heart as he learns about them, and he wants to understand how to care for others and how they care for them in return. Even after six years, he still remains the most dear to me. I think that he now has a sentimental value to me, because even if I 'loved' another character more for a while, I will always come back to Ai. Ai deserves the world, and I'd give it to him if I could. He'll always be special to me, and I think that he very much deserves that.

From Maronda: 

My love for Ai started after I found Shining Live by chance and started to play. At first I wasn't particularly attached to any of the characters and decided to go back and watch the anime to maybe remember some context other than who Starish was. When I got to the episode focused on Ai and his "secret" I was absolutely thrown off by it all. I ended up feeling like I had so many questions and I knew that the anime would give me little to no answers, so I frequently turned to rambling on the internet about it. Eventually, this fixation on weird things about him seemed to turn into a clear fondness for him, and friends made me realize just how much I liked him. Knowing the cold and often strange aspects of his personality was due to something out of his control was something I resonated with as someone on the autism spectrum. He reminded me of some of the ways I used to think and behave.

I also began to notice other things I loved about him. Things like how soothing I found his voice, the pleasant shade of light blue in his hair and eyes, how ridiculously pretty he is... but the best things are the endearing parts of his personality. Though he's somewhat harsh, he's still entirely genuine. His curiosity is absolutely precious and his occasional awkwardness in expressing emotion or understanding the emotions of others made me empathize with him. And if you look at the Ai in Shining Live and compare it to the Ai in the anime and games... he really has changed a lot and grown as a person. He now seems so much gentler and understanding, and he clearly values the friendships he has now too! I think he's a wonderful character and ever since friends of mine encouraged me to selfship I've essentially been in love with him, but it also makes me happy to see other people appreciate him for other reasons as well. He's just so lovable!

CAMUS

From @uta-no-fakku-sama:

At the very beginning of my UtaPri interest, Camus never really caught my attention. That is until he became my first My Only Prince UR. I’ve come to appreciate him a lot more ever since, and now he’s become my favorite QUARTET NIGHT member! Along the way, I learned more about him and realized he’s one of the more complicated characters to understand. Nonetheless, I absolutely adore him. I tend to tease and make fun of him a lot, but deep down I truly do like him a whole bunch!

From @/waddamaloooon on twt: 

A little Camus appreciation post

(alternatively known as; how this guy managed to harshly take my heart and step on it like the gumin I am.)

Hello, this is Suikamaru, here to share a tiny story of why I, and eventually you, love Camus Rondo Cryzard.

At first glance, his looks appealed to me, but not his behavior (and ironically enough, his voice) so I didn't bat an eye on him. I've always been on a neutral leaning to dislike opinion on Camus, which is quite understandable because have you SEEN the way he acts. Unfathomable.

…..To a Young Suikamaru, that is.

I've grown, so naturally I've changed preferences regarding characters, ikemen, and who to stan and who to avoid like the plague. I will lie if I said that I expected to like that blonde confectionery devouring machine at any point of my life.

But it did happen so who are we fooling here.

It dawned on me that Camus is the type of character that you cannot appreciate unless you go in depth into his lore, backstory, and see him for who he really is. Because then everything else will make sense. And that never happened in my case until I started roleplaying as him.

I realized that he's not just a two faced, sweet toothed mean man. He's a perfectionist, someone who's always been raised since his childhood days to be nothing less than complete, who has locked on his heart and emotions to devote himself completely to the purpose given to him. He has the looks and brains for what though? He should be a little stupid honestly.

But his intelligence gave him the complexity that he just needed for his characteristics. Because as aforementioned, he's not someone to easily like or fall in love with. And I think that's quite rare in characters, and very much appreciated due to the fact it gives the fans a chance to not actually stay on a flat level of knowledge regarding their favorite characters.

I've slowly started to see myself in some aspects of him, which was the number one factor of liking him. Then came the Maeno magic when I realized Camus shares the same VA as another character that I love as well. (Hamelin, from SinoAlice.) From then, everything went downhill.

In a good way. I think..

Well, that is all from me, please read about this handsome man and appreciate his hard work both as an individual and as an idol. There is SO much to him that's p much overlooked and I'm getting broke from spending my money on his living expenses rent free in my head. Take him off my head.

[transhawks]

So does that mean bakugou is also a abelist too and so was most of the kids in the class since you call Inko one I mean if you are going to go that far

"Go that far"

Let's unpack this because this is more than just an opinion about anime and hopefully what I write can change your opinion on a lot of things going forward in your life. Which is an opportunity I am very happy about. A lot of people really get upset when you call something "ist". Racist, Ableist, Cissexist, etc. Or the phobic words.. You get my meaning. But the upset over it shows that people mistake what is really being said because we think very simplistically about this - that everyone who is an "ist" or a "phobe" is inherently a bad person.

Why? It's due to a lot of people getting caught up in individual actions over the societal motivations behind them. So, if I was to say "every white person is racist" or "every man is a misogynist" it feels like an unfair absolute, right? Not all people are like that, right? What if someone is actively trying to be an exception? The point blank statement feels mean, right? How could you just generalize?

Here's the thing, the reason the general statement is made is because it more talks about society than individuals. What I mean is this - not every white person (in the US or West, though we can talk about other places too) is actively being bigoted, but we are born in societies that have historically (and today too!) been built and profited off the oppression or exploitation of people of color. And like in a lot of things dealing with unfair power structures, there's a lot of motivation to make sure shit does not change you know, which is why people end up, even if they don't realize what they are doing, defending things. Are they trying to be actual bigots? No, not always, and something to learn is that a lot of these ism do not equal just plain bigotry. There's always a power structure behind it, or an imbalance. So, you can find someone who is bigoted but isn't actually being an 'ist'. When a lot of people complain about 'reverse' anything, what they are usually talking about is bigotry, which is an individual action that on its own doesn't confirm or defend a power structure.

I know this is a bit complicated. It took me a few years to grasp it too, but understanding the difference is really important.

Now, let's go back to Bakugou. In my post about Deku and Inko and how Deku states how much her initial reaction to his quirkless was hurt him for much of his childhood, I did mention that Inko admitted she didn't support him. So there's no argument about whether she did or didn't because Inko took accountability for her mistake. Now, the reason she did it in the first place was because she grew up in a society that tells people quirks are their personalities.

I made a post a couple weeks ago about Deku and Hawks and being 'selected' out of their circumstances where I talk about how the Quirkless are sort of seen as lesser humans simply due to the way Quirk society has folded. You can see it the older name given to Ujiko before the changes, and in Izuku being read as 'Deku'; the implication is of wooden people, puppets, etc. Then you have lots of ranting on the MLA part that revealed that a there kid's books that teach kids people aren't always their Quirks but that this is seen as a very PC concept and not really taken in by the population. Sure the average person probably isn't a Geten level supremacist, but we see how the Fox lady was treated when she was walking outside by her neighbors, or how Spinner was bullied, even by his own family, or just what Endeavor did to 'fix his quirk'.

Inko is a 4th generation quirk owner. That means one, or more, of her great-grandparents have been quirk users. Dr. Tsubasa, upon seeing Deku, also says it's rare for someone to be like him these days, implying the statistic given to us by the manga, or the 4:5 are quirk owners, is very much based on age (I've seen people put forth it might also be location based too). Toshinori adds to this by saying it was more common when he was a kid, and he is likely in his 50s.

Okay, so that's the society Izuku is born too, right? Stay with me, I know this is long but we're getting to Katsuki right now.

In the ask that you messaged about where I explain why Inko's initial problem can be criticized, I said what she did is very similar to how parents treat children with disabilities or illnesses. Hence, why you said I was calling her ableist. As I've been trying to explain in this ask Inko may not be actively trying to be 'ableist' and bigoted, but her apologizing to her son was an issue that he felt insecure over. And that this is of course tied into the fact quirk society does not treat the Quirkless well.

You see this early set of panels? This was Deku explaining that Katsuki only began to bully him really when he manifested his quirk. Why? Because there was a clear difference in the way he was treated and the way Deku was.

These panels show Katsuki looking at Deku and seeing how he's being talked about. Children are impressionable and understand that there are these dynamics even if they don't get why. Katsuki is being told here that he's amazing, that he's going to achieve greatness, and being praised. Deku is being whispered about, pitied. They are not the same. It even goes into their teens:

Katsuki is immediately praised even if he was the one in need of rescue. Deku's actions bought time for All Might but he's seen as reckless especially when he's Quirkless. I've said in the post I linked that Deku's amazing traits - his natural skill at analysis, his quick wits and reactions, and dauntless nature are really where he shines, but until he had a quirk, that society didn't see any of that about him. This is a clear example of how much importance people place on quirks. So is it any wonder in a society like this that a little kid like Katsuki soaks it all in?

Deku also calls Katsuki a bully a few times. I'm not going to post the panels here but I collected a few so there's an absolute acknowledgment on Deku's part that he is bullied for being quirkless.

As I said in the previous ask, you can't remove a lot of these actions from greater societal trends. I also, personally, refuse to label Katsuki as an abuser because he is a child and abuse is usually a very intimate thing which is not the relationship Katsuki had as a former friend. He was, however, a bully who does bigoted things like tell Deku to jump off a roof if he wants to be a hero so he can get quirk in the next life. So, he was bullying out of bigotry and doing so out of societal norms and ideals that he has absorbed growing up.

Most children that are bullied are bullied on differences, and a lot of the time it really does fall on the same divides that as adults turn into oppressions. The children's bullying reinforces the same dynamics marginalized faces outside of childhood.

So, to finally answer your question, if 'quirklessness' is pretty much a bnha-verse disability and is treated very similarly some that we have in real life, then yes, Katsuki as a child and a tween was indeed 'ableist'. But again, this is not remarkable..I don't want to say he's exceptionally bigoted even since so much of it was also fueled by his own insecurities and cognitive dissonance when it comes to Izuku. And unlike Inko, who unconsciously hurt Izuku, Katsuki did so actively but, again, he was a child and he is capable of maturing, reforming, and learning which I think perhaps he might be heading to. EDIT: a few hours after I posted this, he apologized to Izuku so he has gotten there! Katsuki was this was because he was raised to be, so outright condemning a 16 year old for a norm doesn't really solve the real issue that it was a norm, does it?

Now, I will say for victims, it's often very hard to parse this too. Even if it's normalized, the individual bigotry of a person does hurt, and it really doesn't matter to kids that it's other kids. It's why a lot of people who are marginalized will bring up childhood memories, because we are shaped so much by our experiences as kids. But kids don't always have cognitive ability to challenge the norms and ideals around them, it's one of the biggest differences between an adult and a child. Making Katsuki out to be 'biggest bigot ever' is not what I am trying do with this ask, and it's silly to think so.

I will thank you for giving me the opportunity to write this answer. I often forget that my style of applying what seem to me very basic concepts in discussions of identity to anime analysis are not as basic I assume. Your ask seemed incredulous but it reads as someone genuinely new to the concept of societal vs individual actions, and how oppression and strata work with that. I hope that whatever you gained from this ask is something you can apply to a realize situation in the future by the dynamics I speak are real life ones, with genuine real consequences, and I'm happy I can use a manga as teaching or outreach tool. Thank you for allowing to do so.

[miaclemeverett]

Wilbur, Fundy, and Purpled were interviewed for this great article on the Dream SMP and the Minecraft community! Full article below the cut. 

"Minecraft" launched over a decade ago and the video game is as popular as ever. With over 126 million players worldwide, the voxel-based survival game drops adventurers into a world where they can craft, build, explore, destroy, and create to their heart's content. Aided by tools, blocks, and creativity, the simple sandbox world allows anyone on PC, console, or smartphone the chance to project their own feelings and creations directly into their virtual space.

"As long as you have the mind for it, you can really just do anything," 17-year-old "Minecraft" YouTuber Purpled, who has 700,000 subscribers, told Insider. "Because of how simple Minecraft is and how easy it is to build with it, you can create whatever you want."

In recent years, Microsoft's never-ending game has evolved into a tool for content creators to express themselves, leading to high-profile collaborations with some of YouTube's biggest personalities. By creating their own private "Minecraft" servers, creators have been able to craft ornate worlds and stories that they can explore in streams and videos, immersing fans in a cinematic-style universe.

Minecraft has a long history on YouTube

"Minecraft's" versatility has made it an incredibly popular game for content creators and influencers. In 2012, a change in YouTube's algorithm promoting watch time over video clicks led to a renaissance of "Let's Players" who recorded themselves reacting and playing their favorite games. "Minecraft" was one of the most successful, spawning some of the largest channels of the time like SkyDoesMinecraft (11.3 million subscribers) and Tobuscus (6.25 million subs).

Though the popularity of "Minecraft" remained fairly steady, content about the title waned a bit over the next decade either due to content fatigue or newer titles like "Fortnite" taking the spotlight. 2020 flipped the title back into the forefront, with both streamers and YouTubers capitalizing on the title's popularity.  

The biggest breakout star for "Minecraft" in the past few years is Dream, an expert, faceless player with a neon-green avatar with over 17 million YouTube subscribers. YouTube labeled him the second overall content creator of the year and his streams consistently pull in a quarter of a million people.

In May of 2020, Dream decided to create a small, private server for his friends to play around in. This SMP server, or "survival multiplayer," started off with only a handful of content creators being invited. Soon, the server would expand to over 30 members, bringing in millions of views from fans who chronicle every moment of the lore the creators eventually created.

Viewership on Twitch of "Minecraft" content went from 17 million hours watched in January 2020 to 74 million in January of 2021, according to data from analytics company Rainmaker.gg.  

How the Dream SMP grew from a private server with friends to a cultural milestone

Purpled has been playing "Minecraft" for the past eight years and is a high-ranking player in a multiplayer game mode called "Bed Wars." He had started talking to Dream in the summer of 2019, when the pair were both small, mutual fans.

"When the SMP was in its infancy, I just asked him if there was any room because he said how it's just for friends and if a friend wants to join, they can," Purpled said. "So I asked him, he said, 'Sure.' He sent me the IP and I was in."

The server was originally just a place to create and hangout, with no intention of creating an overarching story or plot.

Fundy, a 19-year-old Dutch YouTuber with 2.7 million subscribers joined when only a handful of other creators were on."I had talked to Dream on a few occasions, out-of-the-blue Dream sent me a message about a survival world that they had going on. It was very small at first," Fundy said. "I thought it could be a fun little side-project I could stream every now and then on Twitch, so I decided to join."

Fundy joined in the early days alongside Wilbur Soot, a 23-year-old YouTuber with 3.8 million subscribers. Soot, after attempting to create an "illegal potion shop" on the server, decided to establish a nation of non-Americans players called L'Manberg. Soot said he wrote a "treatment" for how the formation of his country would go, creating an official canon that fans could follow along with.

"I was invited into the Dream SMP near its inception but I only joined fully when I had an idea for building a country in 'Minecraft'," Soot said. "I write up a series of plot hooks and points that should tie together, however we improv dialogue and comedy throughout to take us from point to point."

These streams and pieces of content all had a canon that could be followed and consumed like a television show. L'Manberg eventually started a war against Dream for its independence, staging a rebellion chronicled in YouTube videos with millions of views.

These streams and videos aren't just randoms in "Minecraft" trying to defeat the end-game Ender Dragon — these are performers putting on a show that their fans can't miss. As the lore expanded, so did the rules needed to keep a sense of continuity and order. For example, each player only has three lives before they are removed and deleted from the server.

"It went from a casual survival game to a whole story-line filled with plots and twists," Fundy said. "Role-playing at this point is a key-feature of the Dream SMP, some parts are scripted, some parts are improv, and some parts are 'non-canon,' where it is just counted as a standard 'Minecraft' server."

The fan communities have risen up and made their voices heard

Over the next few months, the lore and world would continue to grow and so would the fan base. Hundreds of thousands of viewers would tune in for these streams, trying to keep up with the lore and content. To help catalog the story, a network of fans established themselves as lore keepers, documenting each moment for those that had to miss a stream.  

The "DREAMSMP UPDATES!" account on Twitter has established itself as one of the most popular locations to find all this content and lore on social media. Starting in December 2020, the account has grown to over 147,000 users with just a team of seven administrators, ages 14-17, in different locations around the world, posting updates and stream notifications for fans. "Minecraft" is a game that appeals to all ages, but the audience for this content tends to skew younger, with 41 percent of Twitch's user base being 16 to 24, according to GlobalWebIndex.

"You can tell they're all friends and it's a lot more lighthearted in general and it shows," mod on the "DREAMSMP UPDATES!" Twitter account eclaire said over chat app Discord. "When it's not lore you see them actually having good chemistry and it really pulls you in because it almost feels like being pulled into a friend group."

User SamHQ first started the fan account with a couple of friends from high school but the group quickly expanded after the account tweeted that they needed more fans of certain streamers to join. She is online and runs the account "24/7" but "it's just like answering a text."

"When I started the account I knew lots of people who couldn't catch up because of work or school," SamHQ said. "So I gathered friends to help and now people rely on us when someone's streaming or to catch up with the lore when they can't watch."

For the fans that run the update account, keeping up with the Dream SMP isn't dissimilar to following the Marvel Cinematic Universe or a long-running television show. Characters come and go, but the improv and roleplay stay.

"The Dream SMP did something really special — taking an original idea, creating new things that have never been seen on 'Minecraft' and incorporating them with humor and characters that you can become easily attached with," mod NotAlex said.

Though other SMP roleplay servers, like EarthSMP and SMPLive, have been created over the years, none have been as successful or popular as the Dream SMP.

Finding a fan base on the Dream SMP can lead to major growth.

For the performers on the server, addressing fans and their responses comes with the territory.

"The Dream SMP viewers are very important to the Dream SMP, and the fact that they openly speak their mind about how a certain stream went only helps the streamers improve," Fundy said. "It's basically an instant review of what was liked and what wasn't."

Like most major fandoms with a young audience, fanfiction of these streamers has popped up online. Dozens of Dream fics and drawings exist online, some going a bit far and putting underage characters together. Dream responded on Twitter to those "ships," writing that they shouldn't "ship creators that are uncomfortable with it, and especially not minors."

The Dream stans, or the super fans, also tend to be very vocal online about the SMP. Hashtags on Twitter like #dreamnotfound and #dreamfanart consistently break-through to the trending page, confusing those who have no idea this world exists. The most ferocious of stans sometimes overstep the boundary between polite disagreement and outright harassment. This vocal minority has sent death threats and waves of harassment at those who criticize or disagree with their favorite content creators.  

The growth and future of these channels is in large part due to the Dream SMP server

The popularity of Dream SMP has helped grow the content creators that take part in it. Since joining the server, Purpled is gaining three times as many subscribers a month on YouTube and has been introduced to an entirely new fan base. His streams used to pull in 3,000 viewers but now his average is closer to 35,000 to 40,000 viewers.

"Some people think of them as obsessive or stalker fans, but those are people that really like to talk about certain creators and really get invested in things," Purpled said. "And it's really nice because they care a lot more and connect more with the creator than the content."

These creators understand the power of the fan base and know that they come for the content.

"I think the Dream SMP is popular thanks to the brilliant creators and funny improv moments," Soot said. "I think we'll be seeing the emergence of a huge wave of roleplay-centric gaming communities."

[solarscholarsofmagick]

Saturn in Aquarius: 2020-2023

Beginning on March 21, Saturn entered the revolutionary sign of Aquarius for a brief month and a half preview and will retrograde back into Capricorn until the end of September. On December 17, it will re-enter Aquarius until March of 2023. Saturn is known as the planet of limitations, boundaries, responsibilities and hard lessons, and up until now has been making its way through the restrictive and authoritarian sign of Capricorn since the beginning of 2018. Though Saturn is the ruler of earthy Capricorn and identifies well with that controlling energy, it doesn’t always do its best work in this sign. Traditionally, Saturn also rules the airy free-flowing sign of Aquarius and tends to be very comfortable in this sign, despite how different they may seem. When Saturn enters this humanitarian sign, it evolves into a higher version of itself, capable of bringing much needed equality and change into the world. How do we know this? Well, let’s take a look at the last few Saturn transits through Aquarius – from 1991 to 1994, and before that, from 1962 to 1964.

Let’s begin with Saturn’s transit through futuristic Aquarius back in 1962. Right off the bat, as Saturn entered the sign, the first automated (unmanned) subway train in New York City began running. Aquarius rules technology and automation, so this stood out to me as a very modern Aquarian development already. Also in 1962, Spacewar! was developed and released as the first computer game, featuring two spaceships fighting it out. Each spaceship was controlled by a player, meaning it was not only the first computer game, but also the first multi-player game for computers. Fitting, as Aquarius rules groups as well as spaceships and technology.

In the early 1990s, there were also some major technological advancements, specifically related to the internet and computers. In 1991, at the beginning of Saturn’s transit through Aquarius, Apple released the PowerBook, the first modern laptop computer, which was a huge development in the computer world and has influenced our modern computers significantly in their portability and design. The WorldWide Web was technically invented in 1989, while Saturn was transiting Capricorn, and it was exclusively meant for information-sharing between scientists in institutions around the world at that time. However, in April of 1993, after Saturn had entered Aquarius, CERN made the “www” software public, accessible to anyone with a computer. This is significant because Aquarius represents freedom and equality, and though it was still mainly the upper class that could afford computers at the time, this movement away from intellectual elitism essentially opened the internet up for free public use like we have today. In 1992, ViolaWWW was released, and was the first web browser to become popularized by users. It was also the recommended browser by CERN until it was replaced by Mosaic in 1993, the first web browser to display images with text rather than in a new window.

In the upcoming transit of Saturn through Aquarius, we can expect to see even more advanced technology developments. Many people are expecting Artificial Intelligence to really take off in the coming years, as well as 5G technology and space travel on a grander scale. Smart devices and appliances are becoming more readily available and more advanced.

The future of technology was on the minds of many in the early 1960s, reflected in ABC’s first color animated TV series, The Jetsons, premiering in September of 1962. Not only does Aquarius rule color television and cartoons, but the futuristic utopian vision held by The Jetsons is also very Aquarian in nature. Television also welcomed the eccentric and beloved Addams family in 1964 with ABC’s premiere of The Addams Family. This television classic questioned social norms of the time, specifically the values of the traditional mid-century American family, which were quite conservative at the time. This series became a symbol of the counterculture in television, a typically Aquarian concept. Another incredibly popular futuristic TV show that technically started during Saturn’s transit through Aquarius, Star Trek began filming in November of 1964, during the last couple months of Saturn’s journey through this sign. Star Trek is also notable for this transit due to the fact that it was one of the first television shows to give women, especially black women, prominent and respected roles. The character Lt. Uhura, the ship���s communications officer, was played by Nichelle Nichols, a black actress. At that time, black women typically only appeared in television as servants and maids, so this was a revolutionary change not only in television but in the civil rights movement as well. In fact, when Nichelle Nichols considered quitting the show to pursue a career on Broadway, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. met with Nichelle, convincing her to stay on the show as a part of history.

Television in the early 1990s during Saturn’s next transit through Aquarius was just as influential on culture as the television of the early 1960s. One of the first TV shows that comes to mind when I think of the 90s in television is the classic sitcom Friends. Though this show technically didn’t air until Saturn had moved into Pisces in 1994, the concept of the show resonates very closely with Aquarian themes. For one, the name “Friends” is representative of Aquarius, the sign of friendship and camaraderie. David Crane and Marta Kauffman, the show’s creators, began developing Friends in late 1993 under the early title of Insomnia Cafe, as Saturn made its way through the last 10 degrees of Aquarius. Though it initially had mixed reviews, Friends grew to become one of the most popular and beloved television shows of its time. Another well-loved show of the early 90s, though aimed more towards a younger audience, Bill Nye the Science Guy first aired in 1993, and embraced the forward-thinking Aquarian scientist archetype. Science in general is ruled by Aquarius, sign of innovation and discovery, and this show was designed to teach children about the realities of science and observation. One TV show I thought I should mention here as well is The Real World, which first aired on MTV in 1992, and is credited as being the birth of the “reality TV” genre of television, though it was edited quite often in favor of certain situations and reactions that didn’t quite reflect reality. It received a lot of criticism as well for not ever casting an Asian man in nearly 30 years on television. Reality TV is also very much a Saturn in Aquarius concept, as Saturn rules realism, and Aquarius rules television in general.

Aquarius is also the ruler of cartoons, as I touched on earlier, so it’s only fitting that I discuss a few cartoons of the early 90s. The trend of “cartoons for adults” was beginning to take off around this time, after The Simpsons paved the way in 1989 with its adult humor and hidden messages about adult life. One of the more “mature” cartoons that comes to mind when thinking of Saturn’s transit through Aquarius in the early 1990s is The Ren & Stimpy Show. This show first aired in 1991, and was quite grotesque in its animation style, featuring detailed animated close-ups with which other shows later followed suit. It was especially adored among college students due to its bizarre animation style and dark yet quirky humor. Another “adult cartoon” that began while Saturn was making its way through Aquarius is Beavis and Butt-Head, which first aired in 1993. This cartoon had mixed reviews and stirred up a lot of controversy with its seemingly idiotic social criticism, but became a staple of early 90s adult television nonetheless. The social criticism in this show is representative of Saturn in Aquarius as well, as Saturn portrays a harsh, critical nature, and Aquarius is a sign of society and social groups. Rocko’s Modern Life was yet another cartoon series that was aimed for young adults rather than children, and achieved moderate success after its initial release in 1993. This show was known for highlighting adult situations through cartoon animation- combining the adult responsibilities and themes of Saturn with the off-beat cartoony Aquarian personality. One last cartoon I’d like to mention in this segment of adult cartoons is Animaniacs, which first aired in 1993, and quickly became a hit with both children under age 11 and adults over 25. The large following among adults even led to one of the earliest Internet fandom cultures, another Aquarian concept.

Television in the coming years will likely circle around again to some of these rebellious Aquarian ideas, and it’s likely that TV will become even more entwined with the Internet over the next few years, as online streaming is more common these days than watching cable TV.

Saturn’s movement through Aquarius was a big part of the civil rights movement of the early 60s as well. The sign of Aquarius is a sign of freedom, equal human rights, and disrupting the status quo, which essentially were a few of the main goals of the movement. In fact, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a 10th house Aquarius Mercury, which is why we remember him best for his “I have a dream” speech, which he delivered August 28, 1963 in Washington D.C. for the 200,000+ people who gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington. During the time he was writing and revising this speech, Saturn was transiting his Mercury in Aquarius as well. Later in 1963, on October 22, roughly 200,000 students stayed out of school in Chicago to protest segregation of African-American students in schools. This was a major peak of an ongoing battle to desegregate schools across America, again acting out the Aquarian values of equality and social justice.

In the early 1990s, this theme re-emerged through the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. A video went public in 1991 of five white Los Angeles police officers severely beating Mr. Rodney King after pulling him over for speeding. The riots began on April 29, 1992 after a trial jury acquitted four of the officers, enraging thousands of Southern Californians who took to the streets in anger. By the end of the riots, in early May, sixty-three people had been killed and thousands more were injured or had been arrested. The 1992 Rodney King riots went on to inspire the folk song “Like a King” from Ben Harper’s debut 1994 album Welcome to the Cruel World, which was released just after Saturn transited into Pisces; therefore, the songs were written and recorded while Saturn was in Aquarius.

In the coming transit of Saturn through Aquarius, we can expect to see another revolutionary movement, particularly watching the Black Lives Matter movement, because the hashtag was born while Saturn was in Scorpio, meaning Saturn in Aquarius will be coming up on a Saturn square for the birth chart of the movement.

Furthermore in music, there were a few major developments in the early 1960s while Saturn was in Aquarius that stood out to me. First, in the early to mid 60s, Joan Baez was beginning to make a name for herself in folk music during the American folk revival. Then in 1962, Peter, Paul & Mary released their debut album, which reached #1 on the US album charts. During the same year, Bob Dylan released his self-titled debut album of cover songs, and later went on to release his first original album The Times They Are a-Changin’ in 1964, towards the end of Saturn’s journey through Aquarius. These politically-charged folk artists all peaked with the folk revival during Saturn’s transit through Aquarius, which makes sense, as folk music is Aquarian in its nature, typically discussing issues of politics, inequality and other “radical” ideas of change. In fact, these artists also all performed “We Shall Overcome” at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington in 1963.

Another emerging group that stood out to me from this Aquarian transit was The Beatles. This incredibly successful rock group released their first couple of songs, “Please Please Me” and “Ask Me Why,” in January of 1963. By the next month, their single “Please Please Me” was topping the British rock charts. The Beatles released their debut studio album, Please Please Me, in March 1963, and by May had landed on the top of the UK album charts, staying there for 30 weeks, only to be replaced by their second studio album, With The Beatles. By October of 1963, the media began using the term “Beatlemania” to describe the frenzied behavior exhibited by Beatles fans across the globe. Many of their live performances were accompanied by the sounds of screaming fans and general hysteria. Fanatics, by the way, are also ruled by Aquarius. In February of 1964, The Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, drawing a record 73.7 million viewers. The crazed audience clearly depicts the “Beatlemania” phenomenon in full swing. But how do The Beatles relate to Saturn’s transit through Aquarius? First off, The Beatles were one of the first mainstream groups to market to the younger generation of teenagers rather than to their parents. This was a big shift in the music industry, as typically it was the older audience with all the spending power, whereas now, young teenage girls were a powerful force in the music market. Though their earlier songs avoided heavier social topics, it became obvious later in their career that The Beatles were a huge part of the birth of counterculture and anti-establishment ideas. In 1964, when the band was informed that a venue they were scheduled to perform at in Florida in the US was segregated, they refused to play unless the audience was integrated. Many more conservative countries refused to allow The Beatles to perform at all, in fear that their progressive counterculture ideas would “infect” their younger population. Even the United States attempted to ban all British acts in 1965, as they saw their emerging rock ‘n’ roll culture as “dangerous” to the youth of the nation. The Beatles were also highly progressive in their music style, and incorporated many new and unusual recording techniques into their albums. This ongoing theme of progressive thinking and “peace and love” apparent in the music of The Beatles is very in line with the nature of Aquarius.

Later, in the early 1990s, grunge bands were the new emerging music trend. A number of grunge rock bands all released major hit albums around the same time: right around Saturn’s transit through rebellious Aquarius. In 1991, Pearl Jam released their debut album Ten, followed by Nirvana releasing their second album Nevermind, and then Soundgarden with Badmotorfinger– all within a span of two months! All three albums were incredibly successful, and resonated strongly with the Aquarian counterculture and anti-establishment ideas brought out by the earlier generation in the early 1960s. Then in 1992, Alice in Chains released their second studio album, Dirt, which is considered by many to be their best work. Also released in 1992, Stone Temple Pilots debuted with their first studio album, Core, which received mixed reviews, though it went on to win a Grammy in 1994 for Best Hard Rock Performance. Nirvana received a lot of attention and success in the early 90s as well, and Kurt Cobain was dubbed “the voice of a generation” by many. Similar to The Beatles influence on counterculture, Kurt Cobain’s darker lyrical content touched many listeners’ hearts on a deeper level than the earlier hair metal had been able to.

In the next few years in music, we’re likely to see younger emerging artists, similar to Billie Eilish, who has an Aquarius Moon, taking over the scene with some revolutionary new ideas and social commentary in their lyrics.

Though Aquarius is a masculine sign, I’ve also noticed a pattern with emerging feminist movements during these transits due to the focus on equal human rights. The second wave of feminism began picking up speed around 1963, when two major works of feminist writing were published: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. Both works were largely critical of the typical role of a female as a domestic housekeeper/mother figure in 1960s society. These works encouraged women to pursue careers that they felt passionately about for the first time. Also in 1963, journalist Gloria Steinem became a prominent figure in feminist culture after going undercover as a Playboy Bunny and revealing the poor treatment and underpayment of the waitresses at the Playboy Club.

In the early 1990s, during Saturn’s next transit through Aquarius, the third wave of feminism began to emerge. While second-wave feminism dealt primarily with issues surrounding equal opportunities for [predominantly white] women in the workplace, this third wave of feminism dealt with issues regarding intersectional feminism, violence against women and reproductive/sexual freedom. A trend of reclaiming “derogatory” female terms (for example: bitch, slut, whore) began largely with the Riot grrrl movement in punk music, popularized by female-constructed bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile, as a way of expressing feminine identity on their own terms.

Feminine power is already on the rise again, with Uranus having moved into feminine Taurus a couple years ago and still having several more years to go on that transit. Women in power will do great things with that power, and more women will come to be in power over the next few years with Saturn in this sign. Whether it be individual political power, or power in numbers, women around the world will come together and rise to power from now until 2023. Another trend I expect to see play out while Saturn transits Aquarius these next few years as well is that of gender revolution. With the gender roles of the past melting away, a revolution is roaring around the corner, and gender queer/LGBTQ+ identifying people will likely score a few big victories in the upcoming Aquarian transit.

Another theme I noticed through Saturn’s transit of Aquarius in the early 1960s was a theme of national independence and freedom. In August of 1962, the colony of Jamaica became independent, freeing Jamaicans from the United Kingdom after 300 years of British rule. In October that same year, Uganda also became independent from the UK. Then, in 1963, Kenya declared independence from the UK as well. Meanwhile, the Dominican Republic and Zanzibar both experienced major revolutions during this time frame in search of freedom. This trend continued in the early 90s, with many countries, including Lithuania, Ukraine, Latvia and Estonia, all declaring their independence from the USSR in 1991.

It’s likely that we will see many more uprisings and movements towards independence, including the United States’ Pluto return in 2022/2023, which is expected to be a revolutionary moment for the history of the country.

These are the kinds of themes we are likely to see re-emerging until March 2023, while Saturn roams through free-spirited Aquarius. Technological innovations are going to be increasingly involved with our lives, as the internet of things develops further. Television will trend towards witty humor and social criticism, as it did the previous few times Saturn was in Aquarius. Civil rights movements will be center-stage, writing more groundbreaking history into our textbooks, while the future leans towards figures who are genderqueer, females, diverse, and/or of color, rather than in favor of the cis-gender/heterosexual white male. Mainstream music will take on its own social commentary within the industry. Independence of the individual as well as the nation will be stressed in the coming years. Saturn feels confident in this sign, and we should too, moving forward into Saturn’s “Age of Aquarius” with hope for a better future.

[poisonepel]

School Uniform Story Notes ✨ (1/2)

this is for the people like me who can never remember which story a certain scene you’re trying to find came from 💢 and for anyone else who just wants to know what happened 😭😭

Part 1: Heartslabyul, Savanaclaw, Octavinelle, Scarabia Part 2: Pomefiore, Ignihyde, Diasomnia (coming soon!)

Riddle 🌹 There’s No Drawback to Not Knowing

Ace and Cater discuss which phone cases are in style right now; Riddle doesn’t know anything about the latest trends but he’s fine with that because it makes no difference to him. When Ace tries to explain them, Riddle repeats that it’s not important and snaps at them to go somewhere else. Once they leave, he mutters to himself that he’ll look into them later.

They mention that a paper talking about new discoveries in the history of the Land of Hot Sands was published (which affected everyone’s history tests) 👀 I wonder if that involved Jafar at all

Riddle doesn’t check the results of his exams because he knows he always gets 100%

Cater’s phone case is considered trendy right now lmaoo

Ace mentions wanting a phone case design featuring creatures with “fuzzy heads and legs growing out of their eyes” (the momeraths??)

Ace ♥ Such an Honest Freshman

Ace helps Trey carry back groceries from the store, under the guise of wanting a piece of pie with lots of cherries on it in return. Trey suspects that he wants more than just some cherry pie—Ace ends up spilling that he wanted Trey to tell him which topics would be covered on their history tests.

Ace’s brother is 7 years older than him, and used to take him lots of places together 🥺

Trey usually reads or does homework to pass time at the dorm; he didn’t slack off even as a freshman because he knew Riddle would be coming the year after and he didn’t want Riddle to be angry with his grades 😂

Trey used to make sweets for his little siblings when they pestered him for them!! And he’s been helping around his family’s bakery since he was little

Deuce ♠ One With the Wind

Ace can’t decide which club he wants to join since they all sound tempting. Deuce mentions he joined track and field because there was no Magical Wheel club, which gets him started on a tangent about how much he loves those motorcycles and how he can’t believe Ace has never even touched one.

Deuce tried to open a Magical Wheel Lovers Club but Crowley rejected it

When he was little, Deuce used to get Magical Wheel magazines and admire all the models 😂😂

Magical Wheels are fueled by the drivers’ magic power 👀

Deuce loves the high-speed feeling of “becoming one with the wind” (ie. going really fast on a motorcycle, also sprinting and things for track and field)

Cater ♦ The Portrait of Rosalia

Cater tries to get Kalim and Leona to join a party to keep the lonely portrait Rosalia company. The truth is, he just wanted to put Rosalia in a good mood so she’d share what would be on the next history test with him.

Rosalia hangs in the west school building (the rose in the west wing??), near the staff room and has been there for years; she knows stories about magift tournaments from the past.

Cater implies he knows some secrets about Kalim 🤔

Mentions that Leona comes from a ‘ladies first’ culture

Trey ♣ Open Your Mouth

The Queen has a rule saying that if you eat turkey for dinner, you must brush your teeth two times that night. Ace tries to get away with only brushing once, but Trey catches him and asks both him and Deuce to let him smell their breath to make sure they both brushed at least once already; then he apologizes because he used to do that with his little siblings and it became a habit. He proceeds to give them detailed advice about brushing their teeth.

I didn’t like this one lmao it felt kind of pointless

But anyway Trey knows weirdly thorough tooth-brushing techniques, a lot about teeth in general, and has multiple brushes for focusing on different parts of his mouth 🦷

Leona 🦁 I Grew Up Spoiled

Vil needs Leona to take some pictures with him for the school newspaper. Although reluctant at first, he eventually agrees because Vil won’t stop annoying him about it. Before they go to the shoot, Vil notices one of the buttons on Leona’s vest is coming off and offers him his sewing supplies to fix it. But Leona says if he wants it fixed he should just do it himself (also Leona grew up spoiled and doesn’t know how to sew). Vil gets really salty with his attitude and says he’ll only do it because he needs “his props” to look pristine.

They’re both super catty with each other 😂

At one point Vil said the button wasn’t the right one and asked for a different one; Leona handed him a new one and said “Oh btw this is a magic button, it always comes back even if it comes off.” Vil was like “????” and Leona explained sometimes he’ll leave his clothes that lost a button in his room, and he’ll find it later with this button sewed back on again

Vil said it’s probably Ruggie who quietly sews them back on for him 😭😭 but smh Leona just replied “Oh well same deal, it always comes back”

Jack 🐺 I’ll Expose Your Crimes!

Jack smells something weird in the cafeteria and decides to go investigate. The smell first leads him to the Leech twins; he wrestles Floyd for this suspicious briefcase that they have (turns out there was just a beauty serum inside that they were bringing to a customer). Then Jack realizes the smell was actually coming from Epel; he forcibly pulls a container out from Epel’s jacket pocket and finds... several types of onion product in there (Jack hates onions). Epel reveals he’s been hiding the onions because Vil is forcing him to eat really bland food and the onions help give them flavor.

Jack suspected the smell was a chemical leak in the school and his first thought was “I won’t be able to get in today’s workout!!” sir,,,,,

His sense of smell gets immensely better in his wolf form

After they sorted everything out, Epel invited Jack to sit with him for lunch 🥺

Ruggie 🐆 In Grandma’s Hands

Ruggie comes down to the cafeteria in the middle of the night because Leona wanted a midnight snack. He finds a bunch of vegetables in the kitchen and decides to make some soup with them. Jade appears and informs him that those actually belong to him; to avoid having to owe him any debts, Ruggie offers to teach Jade some ways to cook them, since the reason Jade had left them there in the first place was so that he could ask the ghost chefs for recipe suggestions in the morning.

The awkward laugh they shared when Ruggie realized the vegetables were Jade’s tho 😂😂 I wish the side stories were voiced omg

The one who taught Ruggie all of those recipes was his grandma

Also Ruggie sings while he cooks 👁👁💖

Azul 🐙 Just One Die

Idia brings a game called The Magical Game of Life to one of the board game club meetings; Azul gets very passionate about it despite at first turning his nose up at games that only rely on luck. Eventually he starts practicing how to perfectly throw a die to land on the number he wants so he can cheat the luck factor.

Azul.... honest to god he never slacks off 😭

Jade 🐬 A Mindset I Can’t Understand

Jade is making teas in the middle of the courtyard when Kalim stops by to see what’s going on. Kalim ends up talking about teas from his home, and Jade asks if he could show him how to brew the special tea they have for guests. It’s supposed to be super sweet so Kalim insists on dumping as much sugar as possible into the cup, but Jade really hates sugar.

Kalim got so disgusted when Jade was talking about his raw meat diet in the sea 😂😂

But also Kalim 🙏 He tries so hard to help everyone but he always happens to miss the mark

Floyd 🦈 Talk with Me About Something Fun

Floyd gets bored working on a report so he decides to go bug Riddle, insisting that they do their homework together. He helps Riddle find a book he needs but won’t quit playing around with him over it. In his anger, Riddle brings up how differently Jade is compared to him, and Floyd immediately gets bored and leaves.

The book Riddle needed was called “The History of Magic Carpet Weaving”

Kalim 🦂 Let’s Get Along!

Kalim is shopping at Mr. S’s Mystery Shop for the Scarabia 1st years welcome party. Riddle asks him why he’s the one running errands and not Jamil (the reason was that Jamil was stressed with how Kalim was handling the decorations for the party so sent him away basically 😂). Kalim ends up inviting Riddle to the party; he only agrees after he hears there will be a magic carpet there.

Kalim is so rich it hurts 💀 Riddle called him out for yawning during dorm leader meetings and he said “If I yawned at Scarabia, Jamil would just get my bed ready for me!”

When he was talking about the magic carpet Kalim said “Let’s go to the end of the world together” (Was that the name of the wintry tundra in Aladdin??)

This is the one where Kalim talks about how he only eats Jamil’s food because he used to get poisoned as a child; his dad & Jamil had told him “This is the fate of the oldest son of the Asim family”

Jamil 🐍 I Mean It

At lunch, Kalim and Ruggie go get food for themselves plus Jamil and Leona; while they’re waiting, Leona implies that Jamil might try to hurt Kalim someday, much to Jamil’s offense. Later Ruggie and Jamil mull over having to work with their respective ‘masters.’

Leona’s intelligence is often downplayed bc of how lazy he is but he really is good at figuring things out 👁 This was shown in Cater’s story too.

Ruggie and Jamil having that little squabble about how they think each other’s masters (for lack of a better word) would be more difficult to deal with was kind of cute 😂

[fmdduri]

a headcanon about duri & fashion.

word count: 1,223. about: duri’s experience with fashion, essentially, and how he’s gotten better. this mentions @yenafmd and @taejinfmd because they’ve been apart of the journey. notes: tbh i saw demi and maria doing this so i decided to plagiarize the idea just without the aesthetic. 2013 duri was also a projection. 

fashion wasn’t something that duri had fully paid attention to when he was younger. simply put, duri was paying more attention to music and his music classes to really focus on anything that was fashion related. he didn’t look at any current trends and just wore whatever was comfortable. he can’t say he ever had much of an interest in fashion during his younger years, unfortunately. 

as he grew older, this sentiment seemingly carried over a bit. he didn’t go online to check out the latest fashion trends or really pay attention to much of anything that had to do with fashion. if he saw someone wearing something he liked, he’d adapt the look to himself, and that was really it. nevertheless, he didn’t really use the internet all that much anyways, as he never really found much time to. 

as he entered middle school and his teen years, he wasn’t really any better with the whole fashion game. at this point in time, duri had been really into vintage sweaters, as well as styling vintage sweaters. his whole closet had been full of these vintage sweaters that he found at thrift stores and generally, they were everything you could really imagine. due to being oversized, duri still owns all the sweaters because he didn’t want to part with them - but, he’s better about not strictly just wearing those. though, he does very much want to wear that during the autumn and winter months, but that’s seemingly more acceptable than what he was doing during those years. 

this is something that came to change at some point when duri was in his trainee years. this was where he meant taejin, who ended up being in titan with him later on. taejin had started to take duri out and purchase him different items of clothing, all being designer - rather than those vintage sweaters that he would wear (truthfully, it didn’t matter that there were designer vintage sweaters from the thrift store, since they technically weren’t in season.) but, this had become his first major exposure to brands and the fashion world. 

taejin had been the person to really help him to learn how to style designer pieces and how to make sure something look good on you. if it weren’t for taejin, he would feel a bit lost on what to actually do with designer clothing, especially in the future. he’s a bit lucky to have such a good friend who had done something like this for duri. even if duri was a bit embarrassed to be getting gifts - but, that was just very much duri and still is very much duri to get flustered by such things. (truth be told, this also probably helped him a lot with the pasha de cartier brand ambassadorship and having him be comfortable in that space.) 

by debut, duri had gotten a bit better with fashion. however, due to it literally be 2011 and him still being a teenager at the time, his fashion outside of titan was still a bit embarrassing. but, that was inevitable. (let’s be real, earlier styling as well was probably a bit embarrassing, but again, it was 2011, so what can you do, right?” however, it could be a lot worst than it was, especially since he still had a lot of designer pieces that he knew how to style, thanks to what taejin was giving to him and telling him. 

2012 was when duri had gotten a bit more excited about fashion. this was due to the fact that his first solo venture came in the form of beanpole. this was where he really learned more about styling, especially outside of luxury fashion brands. however, it was probably still a bit funny, considering it was very much more so outdoorsy-esque looks. so, when duri took on that style thanks to beanpole, it probably was a bit painful to see. give or take a few outfits, most people probably wished that it didn’t happen. 

when the beanpole ambassadorship had ended at the end of 2012, duri had fallen back into what was comfortable and what he knew. he had given up that painfully weird outdoorsy-esque looks that were a bit in. however, 2013 seemed to be the year he discovered leather jackets and wore that trend to death. 

2013 was also the year of looking preppy and wearing stripes, so adding onto wearing the leather jackets to death - this was probably a slight fashion nightmare in one way or another. but, he followed a trend that was given to him and he really ran with that. it was really just the trend of the year, so while it wasn’t bad than, it seems like a nightmare now. 

the years went on and duri definitely got better, turning away from those odd and awkward trends - which was really just better for everyone that was involved. 

at some point, duri meets yena and becomes friends with her, which was really nice. they’re very opposite, but they found the things that they like to do together. one of these things ended up being shopping and duri would always call upon yena when he needed to update his wardrobe. 

yena is probably the person that had really made duri confident and comfortable with fashion, the person who really taught him how to be better at fashion. from the advice of making sure you can style a piece three different times, to making sure he had essentials, she had really opened up his eyes in that sense. duri’s really thankful for this because she really jump started the fashion love even more and what had helped him. generally, duri will always call upon yena when he needs to update his wardrobe. 

his cousin graduating with a degree in fashion and becoming a fashion merchandiser had seemingly helped duri a lot too - making sure that he’s actually dressing well. 

whenever he has questions about fashion, he’s either going to his cousin, yena, or taejin because he trusts their opinions. 

duri has become a lot better with his own sense of fashion, where he’s taking things and really just making things his own. he’ll tend to follow trends, but a lot of the time, he’ll just start his own trends and make them his own. he wears a lot of tight clothing, besides for sweaters (turtlenecks are left out of this because he loves a good tight turtleneck), because it’s the most comfortable for him. however, in the summer, he has learned that he enjoys the look of outfits that are bit more flowy because they keep you cooler when walking around the city. 

duri is no longer a walking, fashion nightmare. he’s very comfortable with fashion and styling himself. generally, he might even be able to take his own style and design clothing - even if he might not having anything special when it comes to his fashion, he still looks really good, and he’s considered to be very fashionable - however, that’s mainly because of the influences of his cousin, yena, and taejin. but, no one can see that he isn’t fashionable, because he clearly is now. even his active wear outfits have been considered to be fashionable in one way or another. 

all in all, call him a fashionista now! 

[radramblog]

“internet-core”

There’s a particular sub-genre of music that I’m not entirely sure should count that’s sprung up steadily over the past while, across the internet (but mainly centralized on youtube), and that’s probably worth looking into.

I don’t know whether this has a specific name, so I’m going to call it internet-core for now. We’ll see if it turns out there’s already a name for this.

I think more specifically what I’m looking at is this trend of musicians making what essentially amounts to meme songs or mashups, and eventually upscaling themselves into original works in a similar style or just fully-blown albums of work. While internet/youtube musicians exist for every single genre out there, there’s a more specific kind of sound that appears to have started and exists solely online.

I think JerryTerry’s recently released Kiss Me, Kill Me is a great example of this. Jerry basically started out doing remixes based on Game Grumps, which is possibly the most 2012 thing I can think of as far as youtube goes, before moving into more general remixes/memes and progressing fully into more original things like this incredible track. It is still technically a remix/cover (though the original track I believe to be fairly obscure), but the effort and spectacle in this music video is well beyond the level of many professional counterparts.

Much of the internet’s music does stem from this sort of memetic music, plunderphonics and remix culture blossoming into a subgenre entirely its own. If I had to guess, it’s likely a very visible representation of what recent advancements in software and music accessibility have done to the casual musician’s process- it’s so much easier now than ever to work with existing audio as a base, to learn the basics of theory and what works by manipulating what’s already been made. Its also easier to gather a following doing so, seeing as established music comes with it established fans who are thereby more likely to be interested in what you have to present.

I’d argue this is also the reason for the particular electronic style a lot of these works tend to take up. It’s obviously a bit easier to work within the bounds of electronic music when you’re starting out- after all, you’re probably working on a computer anyway, and pre-made garageband instrument samples are only going to get you so far.

Never mind that this is how the entire Vaporwave genre originally started. Of course, that’s working with a slightly different tone, and has more complex origins, but the baseline is pretty similar.

I do think there’s a lot of examples out there, and I do think it’s pretty consistent, but it’s entirely possible this is a unique phenomenon to the webrings I run around. Things like Siivagunner, explicitly originally a meme bait-and-switch project that grew into a huge number of contributors with original and excellent works, to individuals like William Maranci who are honing the mashup to its own unique, somewhat horrifying artform. Obviously, I couldn’t possible know every example, so I could be wrong, but it is a trend I’ve noticed and put together relatively recently.

The possible exception, and also the inspiration for all of these (because I couldn’t get Aaron out of my head) is Neil Cicierega, mostly because it looks like he kinda went the other way around. Started out with the original music that is/was Lemon Demon, went on to produce the Mouth mashup albums and other related works. However, Neil is such an odd and interesting figure as a part of internet culture as a whole, having shown up behind several huge viral trends, that I’m not sure whether he should even count in the first place. It’s quite possible, though, that his bright, poppy electronic style is a lot of the inspiration for many of these artists- I mean, we’ve all heard something of his at this point, and those dulcet synthesizer tones are hard to forget.

Internet culture as a whole is pretty hard to define, owing to its sheer size and how fast things move, but it is very much something all its own, and as a result it’s not surprising that it has its own music trends that are entirely divorced from what is being done in the rest of the industry. I ultimately do hope it kind of stays this way, as the internet, despite its corporate origins, has always been host to these weird obscure phenomena motivated by people alone, and it’s nice to see things being the result of people’s sole artistic intent- as weird as a lot of it is. So I’d like to celebrate weird shit like this, because without it, the internet, and world as a whole, would be a bit more of a boring place.

[mysewingadventures]

Historical Accuracy of Costumes in Period TV Shows - Anne With An E

I was very surprised at how well my historical accuracy post about The Aeronauts did, so I decided to write about another one! This time I’ll be talking about the fashion in Anne with an E, but I’ll be mainly focusing on the kids’ clothing because kids’ period fashion is something that’s very rarely talked about and we know very little about.

First of all, if you haven’t seen Anne with an E, please do, it’s an amazing adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables novels which I adored reading as a kid, but unfortunately I barely remember anything from the books so watching the show was kinda cool going into it without knowing what exactly was going to happen. But anyways, enough about the show, let’s get to the fashion. A little disclaimer: some of the fashion choices made by the department are very closely tied to the plot so I might be spoiling a little bit, but I won’t be talking about any big spoilers or plot points!

So, the story takes place from 1896 (season 1) to 1899 (season 2), so we’re in the late Victorian time period.

First up, we have this dress that Anne wears at the beginning of season 1. It’s obviously way too small, very simple and plain.

It was very typical for girls to wear aprons as an outer layer so they wouldn’t get their dresses dirty, we can see that all throughout the show with all characters. But here we have something that looks odd to someone who might not know the story and Anne’s upbringing. She’s an orphaned girl, this is the only dress she has and has had for years, hence why she grew out of it. It’s plain, simple, she’s a poor girl who goes from one family to another and has to work to earn her stay. In her surroundings, nobody would have given her a new dress, or even an older but fashionable one. I’m assuming she got it at some point just because she didn’t have anything to wear and "as long as it would do the job, it was good enough."

Now, let’s fast forward a little bit until Marilla decides to finally make Anne a new dress. She mentions having some fabric laying around, so she uses that to sew the new garment.

It’s still very plain and not fashionable for the time, but it’s a garment that fits her, which was Marilla’s top (and arguably only) priority at the time. Marilla is one of a kind, she’s the direct opposite of pretty much everyone else in Avonlea. I won’t get too deep into her characterization, but Anne’s fashion reflects Marilla’s mindset that I just have to mention how she’s a woman who lives in a classist society without really becoming a part of it. She’s old fashioned at first, sure, but her priorities are different from all the other families. While everyone else cares about how they present themselves to others and how they are viewed and their reputation, Marilla stays true to herself and doesn’t change for anyone. They’re not poor, meaning they could afford pretty clothing if they wanted to but to Marilla, this is clearly a waste of money and she values other things more in life. Okay, sorry about this little ramble about her but it’s important to know to understand why Anne doesn’t have the most fashionable dresses aside from the Cuthberts being “poorer” (despite still being middle class).

When Marilla announced she wanted to make a dress for Anne, Anne immediately requested puff sleeves, which is understandable considering they were very fashionable in 1896. Anne has never had puff sleeves before and all of her friends probably did, so it’s just natural for her to want her new dress to have them.

So, puff sleeves... Enter Matthew who has a soft spot for his daughter and doesn’t share the same strict world views as Marilla. He goes out to Charlottetown to get a dress custom made for Anne, which has... *drum roll* puff sleeves!

It’s this beautiful blue dress which Anne falls in love with and wears on every special occasion. With the lace and the frills it almost feels a little too much for a child, as girls’ dresses were usually similar to adults’ but less decorated and more simple. Anne does stand out a little when she wears it to school, but the dress was clearly not made for everyday wear, she was just too excited about it not to wear it.

Here’s a cast photo (I couldn’t find any other ones where you can properly see other girls’ dresses without the aprons) and you can see that they’re generally less embellished than adults’ clothing of that time and just a little frilly.

Unless I am missing something, this was the only puff sleeve dress that Anne owns up to the end of the show, and that is because puff sleeves suddenly aren’t as fashionable anymore in the following years. The dresses still have a wider sleeve at the top but nothing that comes close to a puff sleeve.

Let’s move on with my favorite Anne dress.

I love this dress so much because it’s quite simple but still has that elegance of the Victorian era. So maybe I’m biased but I’d say it’s absolutely accurate! I’ve definitely not been thinking about making a replica and wearing it just for the heck of it. It definitely seems child-appropriate and more like an everyday dress than the previous one.

I’d also love to talk about Diana’s dresses for a moment as she is the richest girl in town (I believe? It could be Josie I’m not sure) but her dresses are always on point and beautiful and just a prime example of rich girls’ dresses of that era. Here’s one of her and her sister Minnie May wearing the same white Sunday dress.

You had to be rich to give your kids white dresses with not even an apron. Sure, you wouldn’t wear an apron on a Sunday dress, but you had to be either rich enough so your kids were used to having the best manners and wouldn’t get dirty or you had to be able to afford to get a white dress dirty. The Barry’s are both of those things.

There are many more dresses that were shown in the show but if I mentioned all of them, I’d still be writing tomorrow! Maybe I’ll make a part 2 someday. However, I couldn’t finish this post without mentioning the iconic... Just see for yourself.

And... I have contemplated for a long time whether I should say this or not as all I’ve ever seen about this dress was pure adoration but from a personal point of view, I... don’t like it. I’m sorry. And that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not historically accurate, it’s just not my favorite personally. But I’ll get into the historical accuracy.

I had to rewatch almost the entire episode to see the dress in its full length, and after searching through a lot of fashion plates I have only found one that resembles it kind of.

But I’m still not 100% satisfied. The bodice almost feels a little outdated? If I had to guess I’d say this dress was more 1889 than 99. The skirt is historically accurate, though, as well as the sleeves. The blouse is laying a little too flat for 1899 and so is the bodice, it would have been more pigeon-breasted, just like the dresses you can see in this previous scene.

Granted, not all dresses in this scene have that silhouette and not all dresses in 1899 had that silhouette, but it just looks a little wrong with that particular style. A reason for that could be the fact that Marilla made it and maybe she just wasn’t completely up to date with the latest fashion trends and/or recycled an older dress, which is both something I could totally see her do. But then again, it could totally be something worn in 1899 and no one would bat an eyelash. Just because something isn’t common doesn’t mean it’s wrong! Actually, the more I look at it the more it looks right.

This brings me to another point I wanted to mention, which is the length of the kids’ skirts.

This is a photo I found in which they are approximately 14/15 years old.

According to a guideline I found from 1900 that I can’t include because of the 10 photos per post limitation but will link here, the hemline for that age should fall right above the uppper edge of the boot. The length we see them wear is appropriate for 4-8 year olds!

But that’s really the only thing I have to criticize. There’s not a lot of info we have on kids’ clothing so it’s hard to make a general statement but these are the things I noticed while watching the show and afterwards while doing research.

PS. The hats are all very cool and accurate! So many hats! After the lack of bonnets in some other movies seeing hats in a period film just make me happy 😊

[arcticdementor]

I’ll be transcribing select podcasts from now on. The one I recently did with Misha Saul had a lot of great insights, so I thought it was a good place to start.

It’s been lightly edited to make it more clear and legible, and sometimes for grammar, while maintaining the general ideas.

…

Richard has hit the spotlight in a big way over the last year – he’s been on Tucker Carlson and is increasingly known for his iconoclastic style. His podcast is excellent, and his essay drawing out the mechanism for how Wokeism grew out of the Civil Rights Act in the US has made waves.

This conversation picks up on a strand that I’ve been thinking a lot about. Diana Fleischman in my conversation with her said: Institutions are increasingly reflecting the values of middle-aged women. Tyler Cowen often writes about the feminization of society at Marginal Revolution. No one, as far as I’m aware, has really buttoned down what that means and what it looks like.

I don’t think that’s quite what we do here.

It’s a pretty free-flowing exploratory conversation about what we might call the feminization of society. What do we mean when we talk about it? Where can we see it? What are its benefits and derangements? We have a crack at the subject, anyway. Think of this as an experiment in chatting through some observations, live.

…

Richard: Sure. This is going to be a very American-centric analysis because it goes back to American history and American law but a lot of Americans don’t actually know this story. A lot of liberals have this idea of the Civil Rights Act… there used to be racism, they still think there is racism, but there used to be official state-sanctioned racism, Jim Crow, private businesses would discriminate against blacks and women to a lesser extent, or the same extent in some people’s minds. Then you pass the law of the Civil Rights Act and things got better. And a lot of Republican politicians, those doing the most superficial kind of analysis, don’t have much of a different story than that. They just think that “whatever, now the wokeness has come and now maybe it’s something a different and that’s a problem.” And they’ll throw in “oh and by the way, those who opposed the civil rights were Democrats." They try and claim the mantle for the civil rights movement for the Republicans, which is nonsense because a lot of those people left and became Republicans specifically over that issue, and a lot of their voters left the party. So it’s really a nonsense narrative they try and throw back at them.

It says you can’t discriminate in government and you can’t discriminate in private business. And most people at the time thought that basically meant you couldn’t put up a sign that says no black people. Even the gender thing they say was added as a joke actually. Somebody was trying to kill the bill, they didn’t want the racial equality parts. They said, “it would be so absurd to have a society where you didn’t discriminate based on sex” so they put sex in there hoping to kill the bill. And it ended up passing. I’m not 100% sure, I was told this by a law professor at the University of Chicago, so it’s not like I read it on Twitter somewhere. It’s credible though I haven’t looked into it.

Misha: American politics is basically a rerun of the producers, like hilarious accidents that keep escalating forever.

Richard: Right. So what does not discriminating mean? It wasn’t long after that that the phrase affirmative action comes along. It comes along in a series of executive orders. Government contractors first under Kennedy and then LBJ in the 1960s. Under Nixon for the entire federal government. Basically it said that the government would have to keep racial and gender statistics and make sure there weren’t any disparities between groups. You also had development of these other legal doctrines developed from the Civil Rights Act which includes a hostile work environment, sexual harassment law, stuff like that.

And lots of people have raised questions about free speech: If I think men and women are different and I’m in a private business and I want to say that, that’s of questionable legality… mainstream conservative views on things. They went after a lot of companies for this. There were some major corporations, I think Mitsubishi was one, they ended up paying a lot of money to the government, that made examples out of certain places.

Another doctrine, which was invented by a combination of the courts and executive agencies, is disparate impact. So if you give standardized tests, Grigg vs. Duke Power Company, this was a case early after the Civil Rights Act. It said if you give an IQ test and it has a disparate impact between groups… you can still use it but it’s a little complicated, it has to be related to the work, but it becomes harder. Everything you do that has a racial disparate impact, and by the way everything in the world has a racial disparate impact, if you find something that doesn’t I’ll be surprised, they can come after you for it either through the government directly coming after you or through people suing you.

So what happened? What happened starting in the 1960s is you see the growth of this human resources industry. You can just look at the chart of the number of human resource workers in the US going through the roof. Now if you had just said quotas, hire this many blacks, this many women, that would have been simple. You wouldn’t need a full-time bureaucracy to do that. The fact that it was vague and there were potentially substantial penalties sort of put business on edge. You needed a full-time bureaucratic class to interpret the laws and what was going on.

So the DEI industry is derived off of the rise of human resources. So you know, the way people see woke institutions today, “well they’re just deciding to be woke, there’s just a class of people deciding to take the leftwing issue on anything related to race and gender,” and some of that is obviously right. But you’re ignoring that basically legally you’re only allowed to be on one side of the culture wars. You’re not really allowed to say… if you’re a government contractor you can’t say “I don’t want to count my employees by race or gender. I don’t want to collect that data. I don’t want to take affirmative action to help black people or women out, I believe in a colorblind policy.” Mainstream conservative views, conservatives believe this stuff, it’s not legal. Conservatism is illegal for a lot of institutions. Not everything is covered but huge portions: the federal government, government contractors, subcontractors, it covers a huge portion of the private and public sectors.

And then it filters down, you have these big corporations and other people sort of follow them. And then you have these norms that apply to everyone. Courts will look at best practices, saying “Oh, discrimination is wrong, what are the best practices in the industry? What are people doing to fight discrimination?” And if that’s Robin DiAngelo at one point in time, you start to worry if you don’t have Robin DiAngelo coming to give speeches you might get in trouble. Not specifically Robin DiAngelo, but you get the idea. You have these intellectual fads that come and go and everyone’s jumping on the same train because it’s necessary.

…

But anyway, let’s get back to the feminization issue. I think this is a discussion that can easily devolve into two cranks kind of sounding conspiratorial and bitter. The one place outside this conversation that’s been steadily beating the drum of this thing has been Tyler Cowen on his blog Marginal Revolution. I think we can generally be quite normatively neutral around this trend, it’s not necessarily a good or bad thing, but if you go to Marginal Revolution and search “feminization,” you notice that it does pop up quite periodically.

For example, one thing that Tyler Cowen recently said, and I’ll quote: “one thing the contemporary world definitely has not come to terms with is how much a highly feminized culture will be rather strongly enforcing new forms of discrimination, albeit cloaked under different and rhetorically emancipatory principles.” I think last year or the year before Tyler Cowen said “the feminization of our culture is for me, trend #1,” noting that basically all the top ten selling books had female protagonists and seven were authored by women. And I think you can go through different professions, education and other institutions, over the past 50 years, and I guess it’s not surprising since the kind of increased participation of women in the workforce and democratic process, you’d kind of expect our cultural and institutions to change. But I guess this is what I wanted to spend today talking about, when you kind of took the piss out of DiAngelo and just said “this is just estrogen and mental illness.” Let’s talk about what has happened in our culture, what does feminization mean?

Richard: Well, I think it means a lot. It’s a broad topic. I think what Cowen is referring to is, you have men and women, and men and women deal with conflict and challenges in different ways. We as a society are leaning more towards doing things in the feminized way rather than a more masculine way. Robin DiAngelo is just a great example of this. I mentioned the human resources industry. I also have a chart in my Substack that shows the changing demographics over time, shows something like 60-70% female. So this idea that you have problems with people and then you talk to them about it and you talk to them not for say, an instrumental purpose, “we’re going to work something out,” but talking is a reward in and of itself. You need something, you need to re-establish the relationship, you need to feel heard, feel validated. This is a very feminine thing.

So you have these protestors at universities, and it’s funny because you look at identity politics in the past, anti-colonization or something. It’s just “we want to get the occupiers out of our country, we want to fight them, we want to have our own society” it’s a kind of masculine idea. And you now have these sort of identity politics where it’s like “hire more diversity counselors and have them talk to the people who are mean to us forever.” It’s a very strange thing compared to what identity politics was 30, 40, 50 years ago. It’s a sort of nationalism, a tribalism, an us vs. them that’s there in every society. But it’s morphed into something different.

So DiAngelo, the rise of human resources, even things like how we understand cost-benefit analysis. I think Safetysim is a more female way of looking at things. Bryan Caplan in his book The Myth of the Rational Voters has a few predictors of thinking more like an economist, and one of them is being male rather than female.

…

Richard: Well, if you go to the places where it’s most purely about consumer preferences, just walk though the girls section in the toy store… now they announce there’s no girls section or boys section, but they’ll have one isle that’s all cars and one isle that's all dolls. I was at Target not long ago just looking at the dolls and the Barbies, now they’re in different colors, black, brown, and they have careers, doctor Barbie, astronaut Barbie. I didn’t see a fat Barbie, I didn’t see a trans Barbie, I didn’t see a bald-headed Barbie, I didn’t see a tattooed Barbie…

Misha: Not now, but every joke becomes a reality.

…

Richard: I think things like anxiety, feelings of inadequacy, these things are higher in women. Neuroticism, I think these things are clearly… everyone sort of understands that. Especially the way we talk about things like mental health. Simone Biles… the idea that she quit right before a match, a meeting? A game? Whatever they call it?

Misha: An Olympics thing? A sports thing? We’re the wrong guys here. And she says she doesn’t want to do it anymore?

Richard: Anyway, there’s some kind of competition which she quit. And it’s not about her specifically, it’s about the media reaction which is that this is more heroic than if she would have won.

Misha: The quote in The New Yorker, I think it is, “her radical courage.” It’s deranged! To your point, even the best have blowups and absolutely no judgment, whatever. It’s the cultural reaction to it that is totally hilarious and idiotic.

Richard: Even stuff like therapy, the rise of mental health discourse. If you watch some normal TV shows, it’s amazing how everyone has a therapist. It’s seen as everyone has these problems they gotta work through, and the idea of it is that everyone is walking around damaged. I’m not going to say that’s normal for males or females. But we are tilting towards… it’s closer to the female norm than the male norm. There’s a minority of women who are very anxious and go through life feeling a lot of pain, and even for all our so-called gender equality, there’s still an idea that it’s much more socially acceptable for women to complain about things; for women to cry about things is much more socially acceptable than men.

So women tend to have these negative emotions at higher rates and it’s more acceptable for them to express negative emotions, so what happens is female concerns are overrepresented in the things we talk about. Not even all female concerns, I mean it’s very specific. Elizabeth Bruenig, this is a Washington Post writer for those who don’t pay attention, I think she just wrote some article that said “I became a mom at a young age and this made me happy,” that was the whole article. And every person on Twitter lost their mind and said it’s white supremacy or something. So it’s not the women like Elizabeth Bruenig, though she is a columnist and has a voice, she’s not representative of her class. It tends to be single, urbanized, less connected to family or marriage or a committed relationship. Those people talk the most and they tend to go into journalism and academia. They tend to have a disproportionate influence. This isn’t just women who have influence, but is true of human beings in general and who ends up mattering and having influence. The prominence we give to mental health and the way we talk about it are both signs of feminization.

…

Richard: To go back to what you said about whether it’s an American thing, I don't have much experience traveling overseas. I did a semester abroad in Russia when I was an undergrad, that was about 10 years ago, around 2008-2009.

Misha: That’s awesome, where did you go in Russia?

Richard: St. Petersburg.

Misha: Cool! How’s your Russian?

Richard: Not very good. I have a minor in it but it’s been 12 years so I barely know anything.

So I was there, and I saw Tyler Cowen say this: the gender dimorphism is very high there. I didn’t see any women with short hair. I didn't see any women with sweatpants or anything like that. I traveled a bit in Europe and I think it’s the same way. ‘Letting yourself go’ as a woman is more of an American thing. I don’t know if it’s an Anglo thing, you can tell me about Australia, but it’s sort of like… some women have gotten in their heads the idea that to appeal to a man is somehow sexist or wrong. But it’s human nature, men want to appeal to women and women want to appeal to men.

Misha: Yeah, but you can have an argument that’s regressive and that’s reflective of traditionalist values, that’s basically behind rather than an alternative. I know they look at the anglosphere and see everyone as totally deranged. I can’t even say it on here but the things they say about this whole dynamic is pretty funny. How do you think about that? Maybe it’s just a function of liberation, that you don’t need to be on parade all the time.

Richard: Why is that liberation? You could say someone being obese is liberation, why do they feel like they have to watch their weight? Not caring about how you look, this is a form of liberation.

Misha: You joke, but the US is way heavier than it was 50 years ago. You are seeing all these big is beautiful schtick kind of everywhere, you know what I mean? I kind of get the everyday person rolls their eye at this, but it seems to be a meaningful…

Richard: Do an experiment. Find a woke woman, tell her “you’ve put on a few pounds recently.” Say it in the nicest way possible, and see if she takes it as an insult. The things we say, “big is beautiful,” but try it sometime. Tell someone “I’m a liberal, I don’t have any judgement on these things.” It doesn’t work. There’s what we’re supposed to say and the reality.

…

Richard: Yeah, that’s some of it, and to go back to civil rights law, some of these things have been forcibly integrated. Some big golf course, something related to the PGA… they had men’s only golf and some big lawsuit. I think that’s right… Harvard within the last few years got rid of single gender fraternities and sororities, I don’t know if they went after the sororities too but they at least went after the fraternities. You think about why you’d need a male only space, or an all female space, and the justification would be “men and women are different, I can speak and talk in a way with other men that I can’t in a room with all women,” and that idea of fundamental differences is verboten, it’s something you’re not allowed to say or think.

You do get some all female spaces. It’s sort of like you could have an all black club but not all white club; because that’s the preference of the protected group, people will justify it somehow. They’ll say “blacks or women face unique challenges” not because they’re biologically different but because they’re facing unique challenges due to sexism or whatever. Sometimes they won’t deny the biological, but basically you don’t have to think too much about it, because they’re the “good people,” women and minorities.

And if you’re a man, now you’re talking about differences. And you’re implying those differences in some way favor the men. It’s funny, Daily Caller is a conservative website and they went to some member of the Congressional Black Caucus, a Democrat, and asked him “why do you think that men are arrested for crimes more than women?” Now the joke is that the Congressional Black Caucus says that it’s racism if blacks are arrested more for crimes than white people. And the Congressional Black Caucus, one of the guys was like “oh of course, because men are more violent.” It was nothing. So they sort of got him. There’s not a consistency. Sometimes you can believe in differences, sometimes you can’t. It’s not about if you believe in differences or not, it’s about if you’re flattering the group that needs to be flattered or insulting the group that needs to be insulted.

…

Misha: Just leave the crusty old dudes alone! There’s like 50 female gyms down the road from that same club and no one cares. But this is literally front-page news. No one can get enough of these crusty old dudes getting together for lunch.

Richard: The thing is men don’t want to do identity politics against women. You do have these guys online, men’s rights activists…

Misha: They’re losers! Who wants to be those guys?

Richard: Right. So there’s got to be a way to pushback, while not falling into the “we’re just like women, we’re going to have a fight on equal terms.” I mean if you do do that, you end up with the Taliban. Men will win, if you fight on equal terms with women… Trust me, it’s not going to be much of a fight. You don’t want to go in that direction.

…

Misha: I meant more, does being an immigrant allow you to speak truth to power? People can’t accuse you of being some rich, boat-shoe wearing fancy-boy who is speaking from a place of power in the US. Do you know what I mean?

Richard: Maybe. Let’s say there was a blond-haired blue eye guy who was just like me.

Misha: And you’re light haired and light eyed by the way!

Richard: I’m light eyed and dark haired. But yeah, I think it would be more difficult. I do think that’s certainly the case. There’s a guy named Madison Cawthorn, a young Republican, he looks like an SS officer. But he’s in a wheelchair, he had an accident, so it’s sort of strange that way. But he’s a typical dumb Republican who says dumb things. The media freaks out at him, it’s the way he looks. The wheelchair thing makes it a little strange. From what I can tell he’s not different from any Republican in Congress, just different in the way he looks.

Misha: So this is one of my favorite things about you. And whoever’s outraged at this point would have switched off or stopped listening already, but you’ll kind of point to the demographics or insane institutions in the US and you have this whole wokeness piece, you’re a pretty loud critic of that. But then you look at the Republicans and go “these idiots are totally worse. These idiots couldn’t organize a root in a brothel.” What’s going on there? To go in a different direction, what is with the state of conservatism in the US?

Richard: This is something I actually want to write about. There’s a narrow problem which is that they have never done the things I recommend they do, which is look at civil rights law and honestly face what’s happening. But then there’s a broader question as to why they think about this stuff and why they never intend to do anything about it. So that’s sort of a broader question.

The liberals are ideologically motivated. You look at which sources of news and information liberals trust more, and it’s usually the written word. The New York Times, Washington Post, it’s these other publications. The base driving the Democratic party and the left in the US is journalism and academia. For the right it’s talk radio and TV. Talk radio and TV is not ideological, it has a short attention span. It likes to fight, it likes the reality TV side of things. Sometimes it can win, it can win over the majority of the public because it’s good at showmanship and fighting.

And you have these groups that are issue focused, the gun people and anti-abortion people. These people do well, they’re organized and get the bills passed that they want. But in general, I think conservatism is more of a reaction to an ideological movement and liberalism is the ideological movement.