#like? the way people were just. Stuck in the 2000s or early 90s they were just STUCK even as time WHIPPED forward and everything changed

[garycxjk]

Why most people don't get Europapa

So, Joost Klein's Europapa apparently is taking the world by storm. With its happy hardcore or gabber house tunes and beats and the silly music video, there's no denying that this song has a certain charm, though it also has its detractors.

The thing is, though, most people on both sides don't fully get the song.

To summarize the song, it's essentially about an orphan who travels around Europe to find himself. Those were in Joost's own words.

Europapa is about an orphan who travels throughout Europe (and beyond) to find himself and tell his story. At first, people don’t recognise him, but he goes on seizing any opportunity he gets to let himself be seen. Europapa is a tribute to my father. When bringing me up, he passed on to me an expansive view of the world.

Okay, but why does the song sound so silly? Well, that's something deliberate. I don't really know much about Joost Klein's music, but what I do know is that this is basically what most of his songs are. Silly, yet deep.

Okay, brief detour to give context to the rest of what I'm writing, but it's important to remember that Joost Klein basically became an orphan at a young age. He lost his father to cancer when he was 12, and a year later, his mother died as well. This essentially shaped his music. From what I can gather from the many YouTube comments, he always watched Eurovision with his parents, and told them that one day he'd be there on stage.

So, let's just talk about the elephant in the room. Some people call this European propaganda. However, just the first few lines clue you in that it isn't just some pro-EU propaganda.

Welcome to Europe Stay here until I die

In fact, there are several lines used that wouldn't sit right if it were pro-EU propaganda. Let's look at the second verse.

Ich bin in Deutschland Aber ich bin so allein

Which roughly translates to

I'm in Germany But I'm so lonely

The next lines, "Io sono in Italia / Maar toch doet het pijn" (first line Italian, second line Dutch), which translates to "I'm in Italy / But I still feel pain".

Essentially, the entire song is him trying to let go of his past, to let go of his grief. That's essentially what the burning house and the windmill represent at the end, finally moving on from the past.

And that's essentially what the entire song is about. The entire song sounds like it's stuck in the '90s and early noughties. Naturally the most glaring part is the music style. Back in the '90s, happy hardcore and gabber house was really big, especially in the Netherlands. The way people dance back then and dressed when they did can be seen in the scene with Paul Elstak. Then there's the Gameboy Advance, which came out in the early 2000s.

Another cool thing is a reference to New Kids, a Dutch comedy show from 2007, when someone says "Welkom in Europa jongen!" ("Welcome in Europe boy!"). On the television screen, you can see Gerrie van Boven, played by Tim Haars, a character from New Kids.

But it isn't just a throwback. It's all being done deliberate. Something that gets lost in translation is the text. The rhymes work, however, to a Dutch person, it sounds a bit... childish. Very simple, at the very least. But I think that even that is done deliberately. It sounds like a child has been writing these lines, but I think that's the point of the song. It's supposed to sound like a child has been writing these lines.

The entire song is about the protagonist being stuck in the past, being stuck in his grief. It's why there's a disconnect between the text and the melody. Sure, it's a celebration of Europe, of Eurovision. Joost Klein genuinely loves Eurovision. However, it's also essentially him saying, this is me closing another chapter in my life.

Let's take a look at the outro of the song.

Op kruistocht in m'n spijkerbroek, lopend door de velden M'n papa en m'n mama zijn voor altijd mijn helden Aan het einde van de dag zijn we allemaal mensen M'n vader zei me ooit: "Het is een wereld zonder grenzen" Regen op het raam en ik stond huilend bij het venster Veel te vroeg duister, het is winter in de lente "Ik mis je elke dag", is wat ik stiekempjes fluister Zie je nou wel, pa? Ik heb naar je geluisterd

This... seems quite long, doesn't it? Well, that's because that's the full outro. What most hear during the video clip is this:

Aan het einde van de dag zijn we allemaal mensen M'n vader zei me ooit: "Het is een wereld zonder grenzen" "Ik mis je elke dag", is wat ik stiekempjes fluister Zie je nou wel, pa? Ik heb naar je geluisterd

Let's translate the full lyrics. I'll put the translations of the lyrics in the music video in bold and italic.

On my crusade in jeans, walking through the fields My dad and mom are forever my heroes At the end of the day we are all human beings My father once told me: "It's a world without borders" Rain on the window and I stood at the window crying Darkness far too soon, it's Winter in Spring "I miss you every day", is what I secretly whisper You see dad, I listened to you

So, basically, the gist is, this song has many layers. It's a heartfelt tribute to Eurovision, while also telling a personal story about grief and letting go of said grief.

Though I think this interview with Joost Klein on De Avondshow met Arjen Lubach may say more than I could.

Well, sometimes you must say goodbye to whatever is most dear to you. And when one door closes thousands of others open, apparently. But what I've learned is that you tend to hold on to your own pain sometimes. So this letter provides some sort of closure, dare I say. Saying: "Hey, Mum and Dad... You will always be there for me, but I can't carry this pain forever."

[oxtoxtoxto]

You know, Carrie probably stuck around in the public consciousness in a much more active way on Earth Bet than it did in our own universe.

Think about it: Carrie - the novel - was published in 1974, and it was in 1987 when the active parahumans at the time decided to go public. We can assume that, because they could decide to go public in the first place, there were probably not that many parahumans around at the time, but even so, there had to be some people with powers by that point. So that's our baseline: 1987 is when people had powers.

1974 to 1987 is a little over a decade, which is a while, don't get me wrong, but it also isn't really enough time for something as widely popular as Carrie to fully leave public consciousness, like how there are plenty of books from the mid-2000s and early-2010s that sold well enough to stick around as something people are aware of and talk about in 2023.

Seeing as how the emergence of powers seemed to ramp up after 1987 in the Worm universe, it likely was not that long (late-80s, early-90s) until you had a mass casualty event which echoed the events that transpired in Carrie. Some kid in highschool going postal with powers nobody thought were possible and had no reason to expect.

I mean, shit, technically the Slaughterhouse 9 was around in 1987.

And people would want to look for some way to contextualize that, to understand horrible tragedy like that, or just find a reference frame for it, and waiting for them, as if by design, would be Carrie, which was likely not even fully out of the public consciousness by this point. A story that has paranormal elements that aren't quite mystical, where the powers are fantastical but the situation itself is almost mundane in its cruelty and ends in a lot of dead teenagers.

I can only imagine Carrie reasserted itself in mainstream culture at that point.

I never really dwelled on Taylor making a reference to Carrie back in the story. I could put two-and-two together. But I imagine her thinking that probably carries a whole lot more weight in her world, where that shit can and almost certainly has happened, then it would here, where Carrie is mainly known for being a good novel that kickstarted Stephen King's career, and where "going Carrie" is an evocative phrase, but nothing more than that.

It also makes me wonder what kind of existential crisis Stephen King would have gone through in Earth Bet. Imagine being The Guy Who Predicted The Horrors.

[groovinrightalong]

Alright, as promised, here are some ✨married Byler/Byler dads headcanons✨

A little preface that this is specifically for my transmasc Mike headcanons, so it’s not necessarily canon compliant, it’s pretty much just MY older byler AU so if it’s not your cup of tea you can just scroll along. Brief mentions of being a seahorse dad and a heads up right now that transphobia will get you an IMMEDIATE block:)

Now that that’s over with!

-Mike and Will get married at some point in the early 90s. Mike doesn’t get his birth certificate changed until some point in the 2000s, so legally he’s considered female, and you better believe they take advantage of it. He’s like at least three or four years on hormones by the time they get married but they’re just like :D yes we’re a straight couple I love my wife :D

-Bonus points if Will wears a dress for the wedding

-They get a dog pretty much as soon as they move in together. Will loves dogs (Mike’s more of a cat person but he adores the way Will’s face lights up when he sees them) and she’s probably a birthday present from Mike to Will. They like to joke that she’s their child, they bring her along to family picnics and events. Joyce and Jonathan are obsessed with her, she reminds them of Chester.

-Mike grows up to be an author! He makes a decent living between selling his books and a gig working at the local library, and Will does some graphic design. He doesn’t particularly like how regimented it is, he prefers doing art for the love of it, and he gets his chance when they’re early to mid 40s because Mike’s books start to get really popular and they can live off that income. Will then pretty much just does the art for the covers and works as a freelance artist. Gloats about being a trophy husband.

-They spend the first decade of their marriage just being the cool uncles for Jancy’s kid, always stopping in for surprise visits because they all moved to a bigger city within a decent distance from each other. Mike likes to buy the kid gifts he knows will piss off his sister, like water guns and play dough that’ll get stuck everywhere. He’ll sneak them candy, pick them up from daycare to take them out for the day. He’s a nuisance.

-Will aids in the schemes, but obviously he’s Jonathan’s baby brother so he’s the good one and Mike is the bad influence😇 And then the kid learns their first curse word from him when he accidentally slips up in front of them and he never hears the end of it.

-He’s really soft and happy with them though, and Mike obviously notices. Mike’s sort of iffy on if he wants any kids but he can tell Will does even if he won’t say anything.

-They adopt their son in like early 2002/2003. His bio mom was really young. They keep in contact with her, send her pictures and updates. His name’s Sam! (Short for Samwise. Because they’re fucking nerds.)

-They end up with two kids. Their daughter’s only six or seven months younger than Sam because hey y’all testosterone is NOT birth control. She pretty much looks like a mini Joyce, her name’s Gwen. (Gwenevere. Like I said, NERDS.)

-Their kids kind of have a similar dynamic to Will and El because they’re so close in age, they’re always in the same grades, etc. People jokingly call them the twins.

-Nancy takes her revenge by doing pretty much the same thing Mike did with her kid with the twins. She’ll sneak them treats, get them sugared up when they’re at her house then send them home. Sam thinks she’s the coolest person EVER (much to Mike’s horror)

-Gwen’s nonverbal. As a toddler, Sam talked for her pretty much all the time. She never said her first word, was really quiet and reserved, and it worried them obviously. But then they were like, oh wait, let’s try sign language (Mike has times where he’s pretty much totally nonverbal too so they already know a decent amount) and as soon as she figures it out she’s talking to them all the time. She’s super high energy and between her and her brother, they get into a LOT of trouble (Mike’s first gray hair comes in when he’s like 34😭)

-She also has a bit of a sixth sense! It’s mostly to do with the supernatural (which isn’t really an issue since the gates are all closed now… right?) but sometimes she’d react to something right before it happened and it would freak her parents out. Will has it too, but he’s so used to it now that he doesn’t really notice it? And Mike’s just like oh well that’s just how he is it’s not weird. It’s a… lot freakier when it’s a toddler.

-(Bonus!! Jonathan, Nancy, Mike, Will, and the kids all have the last name Hopper. Hop adopted Jonathan and Will and they changed their names to match him and their mom and El because FUCK Lonnie.)

I have lots more thoughts but this is going on really long and just🫠 Yeah. Byler dads.

[n3onwraith]

I forgot to post that I drew Needles! You can't tell, I haven't made the HC doodles comprehensive yet, but hisbneedles hide under his skin and eject when needed, like those spike traps but millions of needles!

I'm gonna put all my HCs below the cut just to spare yall

He's def a natural redhead to me, but bleached it a lot before becoming an avatar

Technically, this would only be his human disguise thing. Full eldritch is reserved for attacking ppl and defense, which is rarer than attacking people, and in that form he's all lanky with all his needles out all the time like a fucked up longhorse and pincushion had a baby and it got possessed

He just has no sense of pain most of the time, at least related to intrinsic issues. Getting stabbed or shot hurts, but when his bones constantly break as Eldritch Needles or when his limbs fall off (like Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas) he doesn't feel all the pain, just a tinge or a pinch

Can remove his needles from his skin, but their 'slot' stays open until he puts them back or replaces them (like shark teeth, he grows them but can also swap them out for found ones) and he uses that to sew himself back together as needed

Lots of piercings, most home-done. Really only his lobe and one of three cartilage rings is professional, he did the rest as an angsty teen for fun

Was turned as a late teen/in his early twenties, and therefore his disguise stays looking that age because that's the only way he really remembers who he is and what he looked like. Eldritch Needles is just a fucked up skinsuit really, a puppet for what he needs to do, and Needles himself can't remember or guess what he would look like by now (bones, probably, with his luck, but he was taken as an avatar/eldritch in the 90s/early 2000s so realistically only around 40-50 or so)

Got in a ton of accidents as a kid, always was and always is banged up somehow

Flashes his needles and puffs up on instinct when things piss him off, has to stop himself from doing it around people

A gifted kid for the institute who ended up being neglected outside of schoolwork and what he could do (projection?)

Glitters in the sunlight even with the needles put away. Its just bcs he's got so much metal in him and the sunlight catches the slots weird enough to glint briefly

The jacket reacts the same way his hair and needles do, like an external organ, but it's only due to it being part of his avatar influence shit and its not actually a part of him. It goes dormant when removed or unwanted

Like a hedgehog hair-wise, it's harmless and like regular hair until it's Needle Time (TM)

Easily offended/angered, as seen in the 911 call, and likes to fuck with people. I'd guess older sibling if he had any, but the kind where you matured too fast and then slowed your roll so late you were the immature one (projecting)

Likes to be colorful but in a dull way. Washed out colors just suit him better in his opinion and let him express himself without drawing attention to himself and the fact he's not quite human anymore

Gap teeth <3 Wanted to get braces as a teen but didn't, still pissed about it because now he can't and it doesn't matter since hes not human anymore anyways. slowly learning to like the gap when his angel fangs don't get stuck in em

Didn't draw it but he has snake bites too, just rarely wears them. It's either angel fangs or snake bites but never both because they tend to snag for him

A parallel of both Nikola and Michael, kind of. He's got little bits that Norris, Chester and Augustus would recognize if they ever met him, like his speech pattern and penchant for never giving straight answers, but he's got his own thing going on more than the parallels ever could be.

Rip off Cheshire Cat. Alice in Wonderland, the animated one, was his favorite movie growing up for the colors, and when he got older for the story

[teeth-cable]

Have you seen The Amazing Digital Circus yet?

If so, what's your opinion on it?

I LOVE TADC! It’s my favorite indie show at the moment! There’s just so much I like about it but my main ones are

1. The setting and execution being unique. A horror-like project taking place in an late 90s/early 2000s digital game is not a new idea and same goes with characters being stuck in a purgatory however it’s how the artists reinvent those idea that makes it new. The digital Circus made its own aesthetic that makes it stand out from other projects with similar concepts and designs. When I first watched the pilot, one of many things that stuck out to me was how new the story ideas felt. I couldn’t think of any other pieces of media similar to TADC beside for surface-level comparisons. The TADC created its own aesthetic and knows what it wants to be and I like it!

2. Soundtrack. Speaks for itself, the soundtrack for the pilot is so good especially Your New Home. That song is very catchy and emotional too. It has such a unique melody, everytime you hear the first few notes you instantly recognize it. It does a great job highlighting the dread and existentialism crisis of Pomni’s situation. I recommend to give it a listen if you haven’t.

3. The characters dynamics. I just love how the characters interact with each other. The majority of the jokes comes from characters’ interactions and dynamics and how well everyone plays off of each other. The best example is Jax with everyone, Jax is a funny jerk who likes bullying his peers. It’s funny to see what creative ways Jax will bully the other people whether it’s being sarcastic and making quips at them, or though goofy pranks and how the characters react because of their contrast in personality. Every character beside Jax is openly stressed or worried in someway while Jax, at first seem like a chill layback dude.

4. The characters differences. I adored the differences between each character from how they talk to their poses. After watching HH and HB, I learned to have an appreciation for character differences. It’s just refreshing to see characters allowed to be different instead of the same tired reused tropes and repeating the same type of dialogue again for every character.

5. Mystery and lore. There is so much to explore in the pilot, it’s make you wanting more. When going in to watch the pilot, I made the mistake of thinking the series will be predictable. I didn’t see how they could make this premise work because by the end of it, Pomni will go insane but then I watched the pilot and was speechless. The pilot does a good job setting up questions for the audience to ask. If Caine lied about the exit, what are other things did he lied about? How long has the cast been stuck in the circus? Who are these people? Are they previous game developers? Who were they in their previous lives? What is the company’s motivation to create the headset? What are the abstractions in game? Are they viruses to the game program? Who were the former cast? What horrors has Kinger seen to be as paranoid and easily frighten as he is now? Do the abstractions still have a consciousness? You just want to find out more about the lore to solve the many mysteries in the show. I find it impressive Gooseworx was able to stir up the theorists because they have admitted in an ask, there are already theories floating around that are almost right about the show.

One problem I did have for the pilot were the scenes containing the Gloink Queen. The pacing of the pilot was fine until we got to her then it was slow. I feel it dragged longer than it needed too but beside that, my issues for the pilot ends.

I can’t speak for the fandom on other platforms but the tumblr one is great! Most of the time everyone is being respectful towards each other and I love seeing what creative theories, AU, fanfics, and art the fans created. The only people causing drama are the anti-shippers, and it’s just dumb. All of the cast are adults, if age gaps ships makes people uncomfortable, that’s valid but they shouldn’t make it into other people’s problems. Gooseworx themselves admitted they don’t care for romance and they don’t want fans in the fandom getting harassed over shipping.

Overall despite what issues I had for the pilot and fandom, they’re overshadowed by the positives and I can’t wait to see the full show and the fandom’s growth.

[annaizscribbling]

Ch 6.

Wordcount: 2706

Content warnings: Arguments. Choking. Paranoia.

Virgil came up upon the door at a swift speed. He was on a mission, and God help anything that got in his way. He was done avoiding and just getting out of the room as fast as possible to avoid a tense confrontation. He was over it.

The door was orangey, in that distinct shade that wood in the 90s and early 2000s seemed so fond of. It was a little chipped and worn down, as if it really was from back then. A wide collection of stickers adorned the door, all at varying levels of being peeled off or unrecognizable.

A cluster of cat stickers with encouragements around them were stuck on at eye level, some so fresh looking they could’ve been put there yesterday. A few others could have been there for a decade. A sticker of a knight was placed way up high, along with some Disney princesses, most of which were Cinderella, they were a bit older, with a few newer looking stickers from more recent princess movies. Towards the bottom of the door there was a sparser collection of smaller stickers, a few astronauts, a dinosaur, a few decidedly realistic animals, and a tiny unicorn, all on the much older side.

Lots of other, less organized stickers dotted the rest of the door, many of which were getting pretty gross looking from age. Though a few looked brand new. A few spiders, a begrudgingly adorably drawn rat, and an unsettlingly illustrated man with two faces.

Not subtle. Don’t act like it is.

Virgil doesn’t give them a second glance as he kicks the door open with his grungy sneaker and a loud snarl. It swings open with a creak and a crash as the other side of the doorknob slammed into the wall. He storms through the doorway without shutting it behind him.

His stomach turns in disgust and anger as he walks in on the revolting scene in front of him.

Patton and Janus are together at a small table, seated on a little chair on either side. Like a fucking tea party. Two long since drained, now empty cups are set iin front of them, a scornful piece of evidence that they had spent some quite time together.

Janus is holding a wine glass, Patton too. That’s new.

All of it is new. All of it. And all of it bad.

Patton had chosen to trust Janus of all people. Patton chose Janus’ advice. Patton chose Janus’ company over his own. Patton chose to ignore Virgil’s warning. Patton chose Janus. Patton chose Janus over Virgil.

He clenches his teeth, glaring daggers at the pair of dirty traitors.

The two are staring at him, raised eyebrows and in Patton’s case, slightly widened eyes. They’re looking at him like he’s the irrational one. Like he’s the one in the wrong. How dare they?

“… See?” Janus said to Patton slowly, not taking his eyes off of Virgil. He sets the wine glass down. He looks concerned, but hardly surprised. He very subtly adjusts his glove, pulling a beaded bracelet of some sort below the yellow fabric. It was blue.

“Yeah … I see what you mean,” Patton says with a slow nod, also not looking away from Virgil’s angry form.

They have been talking about him. They’ve been discussing him. Janus has been whispering about Virgil into Patton’s ear, making things up. Lying. Telling Patton about the water, about how Janus didn’t believe him. Traitor. That fucking snake.

On top of it, Patton is wearing a matching bracelet. A matching bracelet. They are matching. Virgil takes a slow breath to control himself before he breaks something. Because they are matching.

Virgil feels his blood roaring in his ears, but he can’t properly communicate if he loses it just yet. He bites the inside of his mouth until the dull ache gets sharp enough to pull him out of his spiraling thoughts.

“Shut up.” Virgil says darkly, pointing at Janus. “You’re messing with Thomas. You’re going around me and Roman’s back. You’re sneaking around. You’re a bitch, you don’t know what’s best for him. You can’t hide from me, I know you. I know what you’re doing.”

“Virgil,” the accused says slowly.

“I said shut up!”

Janus coolly raises his hands in surrender, that stupid bracelet still hidden under his glove as if Virgil didn’t already see it. “Happily, Virgil dear. But let’s calm down a moment, hmm? I will shut up, though I recommend you talk with Patton here. I can take my leave, but perhaps you would benefit from talking to a … friend?”

Virgil is just about to break somebody’s nose, and he had a certain person’s in mind.

“Well sure, bud,” Patton nods along kindly. “No pressure, no pressure. I know we’re, uh, we’re going though it right now, so I’d understand if you don’t want to. Just know your pal Patton is here with two big old listening ears, mmkay kiddo? Or uh, Virgil. Just Virgil. Sorry,” he chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I’m fine,” Virgil says in a low, husky, dangerous tone. He is clenching his fists hard, so he shoved them into his pockets.

“And that’s okay too!” Patton chuckles weakly. “No pressure, just like I said. I just wanted to offer.”

“Why?” Virgil presses, eyes locked on him like prey.

Patton realizes he’s on thin ice. He nods placatingly, absently stretching at the beaded bracelet around his wrist. The knife in his back twists furthermore. “Well, uh. You know…”  Patton trails off nervously.

“I mentioned my concerns,” Janus intervenes smoothly, in that same infuriatingly calm and serene tone of voice. As if he’s better than him. Wiser. More rational.

“What the hell are you saying behind my back, Snake?” Virgil turns his fury onto the other side. He comes closer, scowling.

“Nothing of importance, Virgil. All I said was that you seemed troubled, alright?” the snake says soothingly, in that disgustingly patronizing voice that makes Virgil want to wrap his sweaty hands around his throat and stop him from using it at all.

What did he tell Patton? What did he say? What lies did he spin? Did Janus tell him about the water? It makes him feel cold with dread. Did he tell him? Do not dare tell Patton about the cave. Nobody else can know. Cruel. Cruel, don’t be true. Janus is spreading his lies. He can feel his sweaty hands start to tremble.

“... you told him.” Virgil says hollowly, his empty gaze burning holes in Janus’ skin with his eyes. The betrayal aches like nothing else. He didn’t even think he trusted Janus enough to feel betrayed by anything he did. It hurts. It burns. It feels like a blunt steak knife is carving out where his stomach should be.

“Virgil,” Janus sighs, before taking a large drink of his wine, finishing it off. “I didn’t mention anything specific, truly.” he licks a drop of wine off his bottom lip.

“You’re lying,” Virgil growls, but he’s sounding frantic, his pitch rising in a panic.

“No, I am not,” he insists gently, he puts the glass down “Virgil—”

“You’re lying! You always fucking lie,” Virgil clutches at the side of his head as his panic grows and swirls like a cyclone in his chest. He can’t breathe. He can’t see.

“I did not tell him anything you wouldn’t want me to, Virgil. Look at me,” Janus says firmly.

“Shut up!”

“Virgil, kiddo, I have no clue what you guys are talking about,” Patton says gently, looking genuinely confused and concerned by it all. He looks to Janus helplessly, then to Virgil again. “All Janus told me was that you seemed to be struggling, I’m sorry. It’s okay, okay?”

Virgil looks up, feeling his vision trembling. “… Say it again,” he says hoarsely.

“I don’t know what’s going on, Virgil,” Patton says again, his face pinched with empathetic concern. 

“... again.”

“Virgil, kiddo. I don’t know what’s going on. I would like to, if it means helping you, but I don’t know anything. Okay?” Patton says softly, looking at him like he was a frightened, injured animal backed into a corner.

“I– okay. Okay,” he said slowly. He still feels tense, still feels frantic, but he wants to calm down a little bit, at least just a little bit.

Patton nods encouragingly. “That’s good, good. It’s all gonna be okay,” he slowly gets out of his seat.

“Wait! Stay back!” Virgil growls, sharply shifting his weight to the foot closer to them, like a threat of attack. His heart rate spikes again.

“Okay, okay, I’m sitting, it’s okay,” Patton says, sitting back down, though he looks torn. His mouth is pressed into a worried line and he doesn’t take his fretful eyes off Virgil’s shaking form. “It’s gonna be okay, kiddo. Take a second.”

Virgil holds himself, feeling his body tremble and his head spin. Somehow in the midst of the panic and adrenaline, a tiny part of him is relieved. He believes Patton, at least mostly. Janus didn’t say anything, probably good. It’s okay. He just needs to ride out the attack, just calm down a little. He wants a hug. He wants to bite somebody. He wants a hug.

“Can I come over …?” Patton asks softly, seeming to sense some of the conflicting emotions in him.

Virgil hesitates, but slowly nods.

Blink.

He feels the water make impact with his body, like a bucket of water has been thrown at him, sending a cold wave of shock through his too hot system. He gasps for breath as his body recoils from the cold. He frantically wipes his eyes so he can see.

The room is dark. The walls look smeared with dirt and grease. Grungy handprints can be seen dragging up and down along the walls like one trying to claw upwards.

Normally the room is filled with natural and sunlight from the large windows on all sides. In the evenings, a half dozen yellow hued lamps bathe the walls in that nostalgic wash no longer seen often in modern white light LEDs. Now the room was dark and dingy, with exactly one large spotlight coming from an endless, empty night sky peering down at them.

The spotlight descends unkindly in a blazing hot burning stream of light. It is unforgiving.

Patton kneels on the floor, one of his palms flat against the faded brown shag carpet. His figure is hunched over in pain and distress. His other hand holds the wine glass from before, but he’s crushing it in his hand.

The blood drips from his hand, making an array of dark red spots in the carpet below.

Patton is not wearing his glasses. Instead, his eyes are bound by a long strip of thin fabric. The blue fabric is silky like satin, decorated with little black flowers. The blindfold is so long that it draped down his shoulder then ran down his side like a waterfall, pooling at the floor by his knee. It caught the light brilliantly.

Janus staggers out from somewhere, previously cloaked in the grungy dark. He limps from the dark, pausing halfway on his path to Patton. Half stepped into the light, his face was divided down the center. The scaled side was laid bare by the stark light, the other was still enveloped by shadow.

He stares at Virgil blankly, but not without intention.

Virgil notices with no small amount of dread.

Janus tears his eyes away, slowly kneeling beside Patton. He runs his yellow gloves over his sweaty hair, smoothing it back delicately. His skin is pale and dry, too much so. His body looks weak and heavy ladened. There is something wrong with him, and he knows it, something painful and weary is being housed within him.

Patton makes a dry choking sound, coming from the very center of his miserable being. His hands crush the sharpened remains of the wine glass he was still holding. A fresh, particularly deep cut in his hands sends a thin stream of blood to the carpet, making more of a puddle. There is no dripping sound.

Janus pulls off both of his yellow gloves, revealing hands that shy away from the stark light above them like a helicopter beaming an indicator over a fleeing target being closed in on. There is nowhere to go, nowhere to hide from what searches for them, from what chases.

With dry, dry hands, Janus unties the fabric wrapped around Patton’s eyes, letting the blindfold fall away, into the weak puddle on the carpet.

For a moment, Patton’s eyes are open. There are too many eyes within Patton’s eyes.

Janus takes the underside of Patton’s jaw and tilts the other side’s head upward, those eyes being blinded by the inescapable light that is so hellbent on drowning the pair.

With his free hand, Janus reached down Patton’s throat, shoving past teeth and tongue and maw to get his fingers down up to his elbow. Patton retches and convulses, but Janus remains steadfast. Gentle, but steadfast.

Janus pulls his arm free, fist closed around something small. He drops the object without care.

It is a photo. A crumpled, wet photo of a toy car. The type toddlers can get into and push with their feet. The classic red and yellow one.

Patton breathes deeply, as if he had been unable to do so properly before, but Janus is not yet finished. He takes Patton’s jaw in hand again, then takes his gloves off. He wads them up in his fist before shoving it down Patton’s throat, slowly at first, but Patton starts swallowing, chewing them. Janus does little else save hold Patton’s head up as the gloves are digested.

Blink.

                                                                         Virgil!

                                                         Virgil!

                                         Virgil.

                         Virgil.

Them.            Virgil.                           you.

                         Virgil.

                                         Virgil!

                                                         Virgil!

                                                                         “Virgil!”

Virgil is screaming.

The room is warm and clean and yellow again. Sunlight warms his skin. The carpet is clean and free of blood or any other noticeable bodily fluids. The charming knick knacks and well loved furniture are back to where they belong. All is back to how it should be. He is screaming.

The screaming is hurting his throat.

The sound hurts his ears. Hurts his body. His vocal cords feel as if they are popping and snapping like too taut rubber bands, or chopping like the way a helicopter’s blades sound after getting fast enough.

He is still screaming.

“Virgil! Come on, look at me!” Janus is raising his voice. He is far, far too close to Virgil. He’s kneeling next to him, they are both apparently on the floor of Patton’s room. Virgil is screaming still.

Patton is a mere two feet behind Janus. He has the correct number of eyes within his eyes. The regular amount of eyes express worry, concern, affection. There is clear distress and worry lining his face. It should be comforting, but it is not. It may not be real. Nothing can be real.

There are lies in the walls.

Virgil keeps screaming.

“Virgil, please!” Janus begs. It is a horrible sound. Something is wrong with Janus. Something evil and cold. The water wants him to know, wants him to understand. The weight of such a calling is like being chained by the neck to an ocean.

Virgil can’t tell if he’s screaming anymore. Does it matter? Reality keeps moving, life goes on, no matter how tangible life may be.

“That’s it, just relax,” Janus says, seeming to think he’s the one helping. He does not help. He causes this. It is his fault. It must be.

Virgil stumbles to his feet, alarming the other two. Janus makes a disapproving sound and reaches out to hold down Virgil’s shoulder.

He doesn’t think twice before he shoves Janus hard with his shoulder, knocking him onto his side. Janus yelps in surprise as he tumbles backwards. It’s a good sound. The impact of Virgil’s shoulder against his body is real and solid. It reminds him that no matter how sick and deceptive Janus may be, he’s too real to be invincible. Too real to escape truth in the end.

He leaves.

Nowhere is safe.

And yet the water flows unceasingly.

Ch 5. Ch 7.

[1800duckhotline]

temerice stature, motion, formal

oc asks: character design edition

TEMMY TIME!! THANK YOU ANON ILY I love thinking about her so much

stature: What’s your OC’s body type? How tall are they? Do they wear clothing to accentuate their look or do they try to mask it?

Temmy's body type is pretty lanky but not overtly so! I will have to research on this properly whenever I get the chance, but before her embrace she used to have estrogen tablets in smaller doses since her hormone transition was more or less in its beginning stages, and as such she hadn't yet put on more fat on her bones and the fat distribution shift is now stuck in a sort of mid-stage. She is an average height, standing at about 165 cm / 5'4" tall.

Being a computer geek and spending most of her free time fiddling with codes at home and rarely going out, her physique is not super exercised, which is something she used to struggle with a lot in her life as a human. She felt very inadequate, especially since she felt a lot of pressure on how she "had" to present to the world - which meant baggy and covering clothes were her go-to. Now, as a fledgling, she doesn't go out of her way to accentuate her body type necessarily but she cares less about what people think of her appearance.

I definitely want to expand more on how she transitioned from human to vampire psychologically, and how her embrace positively affected her relation to gender as well, but more or less one thing she realized is that she was so entrenched in her insecurity (not by fault of her own, tbh) that she had no idea how more people love lanky alt nerds than she thought! Especially girls!

That said if she could she would continue HRT, but I guess that is a limit based on how "faithful" I want to be to the VTM TTRPG lore. I could also just say fuck it and say she can still take it, hahah

motion: How does your OC move? How does their clothing help or hinder their range of motion? Are they flexible, coordinated, clumsy?

Temerice tends to wear baggy, loose clothes, kind of reminiscent of the skater boy and nu-metal mall goth style of the late 90s-early 2000s, so undoubtedly her range of movement is only limited by her physical skills. The heavy chains dragging her pants down might not help but that's just something you gotta sacrifice for the sake of a cool style.

She is a bit clumsy since physical activities were never her forte, though as Kindred her skills have obviously become better with experience, especially as she is specialized in melee fighting. For comparison she is not on Ranx's level of skill with weapons but she can swing a mean axe with no problem. Of course being a Gangrel only contributes to her advantage in fighting now, but she's very young and still learning the ropes of her disciplines.

formal: What’s your OC’s formal look? Do they like dressing up? Do they have different looks for different occasions?

Formality and Temerice have never really been compatible... She loves being comfy much more than looking "dressed up". She's worn her couple of suits for family events before she moved away on her own and transitioned socially, but even now that she feels comfortable as butch she doesn't really care for restricting clothes. The most formal it can get is her wearing a band tee and proper clean shoes and maybe a vest jacket, possibly with her hair up. Her in a suit? Nah... it's not gonna happen. For her it toes a bit too much in gender territories she doesn't want to get into again and feels like it just doesn't fit her.

[fruitflavor]

anyone want my curious family headcanons. yes you do come here. long post warning

VIDCUND

post-psp he becomes the estranged relative that fucks off and disappears. he comes back about 10 years later like… surprise 

in those 10 years i like to think he lived in some apartment in belladonna cove as a horticulturist or something to do with plants

his natural hair is dark brown due to recessive genes or however genetics work idk man

he started dying his hair blonde sometime before he started college to “reinvent himself” but oops! once a loser always a loser. also to fit in more with his family

besides circe and his brothers his only friend in school was the librarian. they were on first name basis

everything about his life is just profoundly Sad and Pathetic. look up the price is right losing horn sound effect his whole life can be summed up with that

his wardrobe is stuck in the 1970s and only wears warm tones

had a really close relationship with his mom. slight daddy issues

extreeeeme perfectionism. probably wont even do anything if he know the outcome isn’t going to turn out well

secretly jealous of his siblings for various reasons but will he ever admit that? fuck no

JENNY

jenny is actually just a nickname, her full name is genevieve! i feel it fits in more with how her other brothers are named 

also her green eyes are actually eye contacts, her natural eye color is brown. all the curiouses have shitty vision

was good friends with lyla grunt in high school

dropped out of college after finding out she was gonna have johnny

had him without the rest of the family knowing, they just assumed she was busy with her nursing degree and only had time to call instead of visit

her favorite song is our house (the one by graham nash) she hums it a lot!

oh trust me shes a huge fucking nerd just like the rest of her family. was very apparent when she was in school but after college you’d have to really get to know her to know that

puzzle enthusiast of all kinds. (crosswords, jigsaw, sudoku etc)

was the photographer/spread designer for the yearbook committee

adds a smiley face at the end of all her messages :-) just like me fr

PASCAL

he had a pet lizard that he got when he was 8. her name was eunice and he took her everywhere. to the dismay of literally everyone

his childhood dream? to become a mailman. 

sparkling water enjoyer…

most definitely becomes a pta parent when tycho starts going to school. also chaperones for all of his field trips

proud member of the neighborhood watch. which contains literally only 2 other people 

favorite genre of music is songs that sound like if you just spammed the auto predicted words on the keyboard over and over again (stuff is way by they might be giants, once in a lifetime by talking heads, yaknow)

in his free time hes always on some forums about obscure topics. sorry to say this but he’d probably be a redditor

somehow ended up on a gameshow once. didn’t win anything though. he thinks being on it is the crowning achievement of his lifetime 

his car looks like this 

LAZLO

his favorite movie is bill and ted’s excellent adventure (i promise my profile+pinned has no influence on this what do you mean guys hahahaah) and the other quintessential stoner movies 

because of his high cooking skill and scientist career, his career ends up being in the field of molecular gastronomy. food science, baby!

shared a room with vidcund before jenny moved out for college

oh in middle school he absolutely had that like, that gelled spiky porcupine looking hair that boys had in the 90s-early 2000s

i feel like he’d be the perpetrator of some in-universe version of an early 2000s meme in the same vein as none pizza with left beef or operation baja blast

speaking of baja blast. his favorite fast food chain is taco bell. 

favorite mode of transportation? rollerblading. 

collects novelty mugs

one of those guys that can solve a rubix cube in under 10 seconds

MISC

the smith family house is actually the curious family’s childhood home

they all have matching “C” middle names:  jenny celeste curious, pascal calliope curious, vidcund cecil curious, & lazlo caelum curious. vaguely space related except for cecil i just liked how it sounded

they’re mixed white/filipino from kitty and glarn respectively ;-)

okok this is a general headcanon but. i like to strangetown “takes place” in 2008, because my timeline is:

base game [2008] -> psp [2008-2009] -> strangerville [2018-2019]

anyways this is relevant because birthday headcanons! i havent come up with actual dates but... jenny (1968), chloe & lola (1972), pascal (1974), vidcund (1976), lazlo (1980)

yes chloe & lola are 3 years younger than jenny but i like to think aliens age really slowly so they still look like they’re young adults  

[d3m0l1t10n-lvrs]

SO I JUST SAW THE FNAF MOVIE AND I WANNA TALK ABOUT IT!! SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

UGH HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!!!! I LOVED IT!!!!! THERE'S SO MANY DETAILS AND REFERENCES TO THE GAMES AND FANDOM!!!!

ALso MattPatt said "that's just a theory" and it made me laugh way harder than it should have lol. I'm so sad Markiplier wasn't in the movie!!! Ik it's because he was working on Iron lung, but he was such a huge part of FNAF gaining popularity! You can't have FNAF without him! Hopefully if there's another movie he'll be in it

ALSO SPARKY THE DOG BECAME CANON?????? THAT WAS SUCH A FUCKING SHOCK!!!

Also also, there was a scene where Freddy bit someone's head and so many people in the theater went "WAS THAT THE BITE OF 87????" it was fucking amazing

Also there was a scene where Mike watches an old VHS of an employee training video, and it went all glitchy and stuff. That was cool and creepy! I wish there were more scenes like that!

THEY ALSO PLAYED THE LIVING TOMBSTONE AT THE CREDITS!!! HELL YEAH

Also Abbey is autistic and I'm CORRECT and you KNOW I'm correct

I was hoping for more gore but it was rated pg-13 so eh

Also the scene where the animatronics build a fort with Abbey was so cute lol

Idk how I felt about the animatronics being humanized a bit more! It made them really seem like just kids stuck in animatronic suits, but also, I like the idea of the kids being angry and killing machines

Also the timeline of this is a bit weird! It seems to take place in the mid-late 90's or early 2000's, but Vanessa was in Security Breach, which takes place way in the future. But also this Vanessa acts different from SB Vanessa, so maybe they're different Vanessas?

Also apparently William has another daughter lolz

This actually makes me think, is the movie a different thing from the games? Like how the books have different lore? Because some things don't line up. Like why didn't Vanessa talk about Evan or Charlotte? Also why was she being so secretive in the first place??? Like bro you waited until a kid was about to be killed to tell the truth. Instead of telling the truth she threatened to shoot Mike?? Like that isn't very officerly of you, Ma'am. That's actually such a serious threat, like couldn't she lose her job of get demoted for that?

Anyway, the movie was an 8/10, a must watch if you've been a fan since the beginning! Tbh a must watch if you're a newer fan, too!

[mfmilligan]

In the Midst #1

The fantasy of running away is a nice one…until you realize you never really wanted to run away. You just wanted somewhere to escape to every now and then.

     I’ve been stuck in this…place for nearly two months. And no matter how hard I’ve searched for a way out, I can’t find one. It’s as if this place doesn’t want to let me go.

     I say “place”. Perhaps I should say world. Place is too small for what I’m living in. But if I admit it’s a world, then does that mean I’m forever lost? That there’s no hope of finding home or family or anyone ever again?

     Nearly everywhere is a place designed for humans. Neighborhoods of cookie-cutter houses, malls, grocery stores, restaurants, offices, schools, playgrounds, pools (lots and lots of pools). Any and every kind of building or place you could imagine. Everywhere you go, there’s intent behind it. Someone had to have built everything. But in two months of wandering, I have yet to meet anyone else.

     And that lack of people makes every doorway and every hall feel ominous. Like maybe even if there isn’t a person around the corner, something else is waiting and watching. Something I can’t begin to imagine.

     It’s to the point where I avoid going inside most buildings. The only ones I step into are grocery stores for food and the Pink Mall to sleep. You might think it strange, sleeping in a mall, but if you set foot in one of the empty houses, you’d understand. With no life and no furnishing whatsoever, you get the feeling that something else is inside. Something else will find you sleeping and –

     It’s creepy not just because everywhere is barren. Everywhere is familiar. I remember places like this from the late 90s and early 2000s when I was a kid. Rigid carpets, peachy-beige walls, warm lighting that throws lots of shadows, glossy sheens, wacky colors. Even this notebook I’m writing in is straight from childhood. It’s the same Lisa Frank journal my older sister had – two hugging penguins with bright purple and orange accents.

     It’s like I’ve been left behind in a strange bubble where the past never stopped existing. It’s just abandoned like a stage when a show is over and for some reason, I’m the only actor left.

     I can’t keep thinking about this right now.

     Another day in the world of nothing and nowhere.

     I know there’s no one to read any of this except me. But I can’t lose my mind. I need to at least imagine the hope that someone out there will see this. That someone out there can find me.

     I haven’t done much exploring lately, but I’ve been constructing a map of sorts. Naming places. I’ve even started a list.

            Pink Mall = explored

            Daisy Hill (suburb) = unexplored

            Sweet Tomato (grocery store) = explored

            White Collar Avenue (business district) = unexplored

            Waterworks (park) = unexplored

            Familiar School #1 = partially explored

     These are just a handful. And as you can see, mostly unexplored. I’ll admit I’m a terrible coward, but…even if there isn’t anyone around, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being watched. I can’t ignore that feeling, however irrational or paranoid it seems.

     I realize I’ve said nothing about how I got here. “How” is a question I really can’t answer because I don’t know how.

     The last time I was in the real world, I was alone in my apartment. I remember it was almost 3 AM because I’d stayed up late again to finish homework. Around that time, I went to brush my teeth and when I looked out the bathroom window, I saw someone high tailing it from my car. I ran out to check, but nothing looked damaged or broken into. Shrugging the incident off, I went back to the main door of my apartment complex.

     When I opened it, nothing was the same.

     Ahead lay a dim hallway with beige walls and dirty carpeting. The only light came from a bulb at the end that kept flickering.

     Thinking the all-nighters were getting to me, I closed the door and opened it again. I blinked. I pinched myself. Nothing changed.

     When I turned around, the parking lot was gone. There was only open road and open fields. All darkness except for a few lamps.

     Now I was properly scared. Inches away from hyperventilating. But I didn’t want to lose reason. You’re tired and stressed, I told myself. You’re not in your right mind. The last thing you should do is freak out.

     With no other options present, I started walking down the road. Alone and vulnerable in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere. The quiet out there was unnerving – not even a faint whistle of wind to cut through the darkness.

     About 20 minutes later, I finally saw a gathering of lights in the distance. A town. Surely there’d be someone to help. My feet dragged as exhaustion kicked in. I don’t remember closing my eyes for the last time. I only know I woke up later in a playground on a grey foggy morning (Pinwheel Playground = explored).

     From that day on I kept track of my time here by leaving tally marks at the Sweet Tomato every time I came for food. That and the watch I got for my birthday last year are the only things keeping me grounded.

     I was scared once I realized this all wasn’t an insomnia-induced hallucination. Still, I had a sliver of hope of finding a way out in that first month. Or at the very least, of finding anyone else. It was the only thing that kept me wandering the streets, knocking on doors, and peering through windows.

     But the longer I spent walking through the stillness…

     Hearing in the quiet a near-imperceptible hiss …

     Seeing things out of the corner of my eye…

     Seeing no end to this emptiness…

     The longer I’m here, the closer I tip-toe to the edge of my own sanity. This place which months ago was the kind of place my mind would have gladly run to in darker moments…

     This is why I’ve started writing. I know I could just talk to myself to deal with my reality. But this world makes you feel like anything you say will be lost. That eventually your existence will lose all context, just like these buildings made for people that have no people.

     I’ve already lost the real world. I don’t want to lose anything more.

[heatwavering]

when-harry-met-sally-ification of hangster is genius!!!! i would love to hear more about that if you don't mind sharing!

also - what's on your bradley bradshaw playlist? what's genre do you associate w/ him the most?

oh god. oh you don’t even know man. hangster being harry met sally (1989) is one of those things that only makes sense in my head or with a lot of background context, because if i were to just come out and say “rooster is like sally because he’s a chronic perfectionist and an emotional powder keg that lets everything pile up until the last moment (plus his mom is meg ryan), and hangman’s like harry because he’s an cynical asshole who’s actually gooey on the inside and doesn’t speak before he thinks and chooses to push peoples buttons and yearns more than he lets on” to someone who’s only seen both movies in passing, i’m going to get a lot of blank stares and nervous laughter. "isn't that every romcom couple ever?" yes. but i mean--

BAR. FOR BAR. I have wayyy more examples and comparisons but my computer explodes every time I try to add a picture or god forbid a gif. mostly, the "we've met before and it went terrible both times, but the third time we met it stuck and we managed to finally find equal footing and fall in love," is sooooo special to me. and since when harry met sally is an 80s movie (derogatory) and people bog down on the "men and women can't be friends" thing it gets a lot of flack, but by the end of the movie the whole dynamic shifts and becomes more like "why are we putting such big expectations on a relationship when I just love you. plain and simple. no wishy-washy philosophy applies because we've outgrown it and now know each other as equals." (plus that whole first "idea" is brought up by a cynical twenty-something who changes his entire worldview by the end of the movie bc he's fallen in love. why stick to your guns about an idea that's outdated when (a) people are too complicated to fall into your boxes and (b) uhhh who cares. you're in love. I always thought the change in harry's character is supposed to reverse his previous claim in the beginning of the movie and make fun of it for being kind of elementary. but maybe I'm thinking too hard about it.) I'm definitely glossing over some plot points and nuance and whatever but again, this dynamic is something that came directly out of my mind and basically only applies to how I've sandcastled hangster into what I want to see. plus I watched WHMS at like nine years old and it might've had some debilitating side effects. enjoy with an entire pile of salt.

about music now. I'm one of those people that is the ugly kind of pretentious about character playlists (his ass would NOT listen to hayloft by mother mother, shit like that) but also spends net zero time actually building a playlist that follows a timeline or theme. so I just sort everything into two separate playlists/categories: songs that [insert character] would listen to "canonically" and songs [insert character] is aligned with in my own opinion. sometimes there's overlap!!! and sometimes I'm forcing myself to decide if Bradley listens to third eye blind or is the kind of guy who makes fun of people who listen to third eye blind. I still can't decide. I wasn't alive when he was in high school. and you know you're up a creek without a paddle when American Pie (1999) becomes reliable historical material. anyway here's the best way I can describe the difference in the two:

Bradley's own playlist: teenage boy from SoCal in the late 90s early 2000s. in my mind he was always kinda quiet in school and did partake in band so he could play the piano (yes, in jazz band. if I hear a Whiplash joke I'm airing the room out) and spent a lot of time listening to anything and everything that wasn't uhhh Britney Spears adjacent. but lots of blink-182, foo fighters, Pearl Jam, nirvana. probably some early Coldplay. maybe some of The Killers when he got to college, and Radiohead but in secret and when Maverick wouldn't bully him for listening to so much "sad ass (unspoken: gay) music." and of course he's Goose's son, soooo: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Jim Croce, Billy Joel, Allman Brother's Band, Hall & Oates, CCR, Eagles, etc. From Maverick (and Ice): U2, Pearl Jam, The Cars, more dad yacht rock, maybe Metallica (??) depends on if you think Maverick would ever mess around with something hair metal adjacent. of course he prays at the alter of Bruce Springsteen like his fathers before him. and his mom filled in everything else: Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, Paul Simon, Wham! (George Michael being outed....hoo boy. #1 topic NOT discussed at the Bradshaw-Mitchell-Kazansky dinner table.), George Strait, Hootie & The Blowfish, miscellaneous female country music from the 90s like Faith Hill and Shania Twain. Alison Krauss & Union Station! Alanis Morissette! The Goo Goo Dolls? now I'm just listing things but you get the picture.

my playlist about Bradley: anything about hating your dad or your hometown with lyrics that apply. see photo below and you'll get the vibe.

[also, that ONE specific photo of miles teller in project x is the photo that sailed a thousand fics. i love that photo. i wrote this entire fucking fic around that photo. it’s so bradley nicolas bradshaw to me.]

but overall my biggest examples of songs that apply to him (for me) are Little Giant by Roo Panes, Release by Pearl Jam, and The Long Way Around by the Chicks. Seventeen by Sharon Van Etten bc of how it makes me feel about Maverick and him (sick in the head.) souvenir by boygenius. faith by bon iver. Hot & Heavy by Lucy Dacus and The Steps by HAIM for hangster vibes. too much Taylor Swift and Maggie Rogers that I don't know how to explain without having a published fic. I have a ton more and I want to pick like 10 songs from each section and go into heavier detail, but I should probably put something out before I dig myself a hole pffft.

[yarns-and-d20s]

I'm a fandom old.

I just left this comment on a Reddit post. Thought I'd drop it here. Just to have extra access to it.

I've been around the block in fandom. There's always been holier-than-thou types, but they were... tamer.

I started on the peripheries of fandom in the late 90s, and then I was in a fandom that didn't have fanworks. I got involved, fully, properly, at 18 years old, in 2000, in the Due South fandom. I have the very distinct honour of being the reason a separate mailing list, "Due South After Dark", had to be created. I wrote a fic that involved either handcuffs or a blindfold. Some people were SO OFFENDED by this tiny bit of mild kink that it caused an uproar.

But it was kind of just pearl clutching. I wasn't called a monster or suicide baited or anything like that. In fact, a lot of the offended parties didn't even talk directly to me, just around me and about the fic itself.

And that's the flavour that sort of stuck with a lot of fandom drama for years. The shipping wars of the early 2000s were shockingly tame, and there was also a lot of--to use an antiquated term--wank about slash shippers; the first time I saw the "fetishisation" accusations dating back all the way to the early/mid 2000s.

I do remember that there was a small contingent of Harry/Hermione shippers who accused Hermione/Ron shippers of liking "abuse" because Hermione and Ron bickered (not unlike Han and Leia or Elizabeth and Darcy). One of the big things is that a lot of this was not actually targeted. It was people pontificating on their LiveJournals without calling out anyone by name. Not that there wasn't a lot of arguments In the Comments(tm) and whatnot.

The first time I ever saw the term "SJW" was actually in fandom, some years before I started seeing it in "mainstream" online discourse. It was in the late 2000s, and it was used by left-leaning fanpeople against other left-leaning fanpeople. Right or wrong, it was a term levied against a certain type of, and I'm not going to beat around the bush, middle-class white woman in her late 20s and older. To be clear: fandom, especially when involving middle-class white women, has long had problems with racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc. But this specific type of fan, the "SJW" type, held to their convictions so hard they would drive people out of fandom. This is when things started to get targeted. When individual fans would get called out not for behaviour (eg, MsScribe, Victoria Bitter) but for what they made. For their fic. One young person who wrote a thoroughly misguided SPN AU (I don't remember if it was RPF or FPF--she wrote the characters as aid workers in maybe Haiti?) was driven out of fandom over that one fic; there was no atoning for it. There was no ability to learn why she shouldn't have written it. She was just a monster.

I can see these threads all converging and leading to, for instance, the Voltron: Legendary Defender shipping nonsense and the demonisation of one pairing over the other on moral grounds. I can see it coming from the Due South ladies who were offended by handcuffs and/or a blindfold, from the Harry/Hermione shippers saying that Hermione/Ron shippers were okay with abuse, from the specific callouts by white women towards people who wrote things unthinkingly and out of ignorance without having the opportunity to make amends for their grievous misdeeds in fic.

I can see how it leads to this thing, where we have people telling folks to kill themselves because they like a pairing with a 5-year age gap. Saying it's immoral to ship two characters because one of them is "autistic-coded" and therefore a child even though the character is in their 20s, it doesn't matter, that's pedophilia somehow (hey, Critical Role fans). Painting people as monsters because of a video game where the main characters commit murder and cannibalism and incest and it's not the first two things that are a problem.

The antis make everyone out to just be monsters, even the people who don't even like the taboo and dark fics, they just don't believe in censorship, harassment, suicide baiting, etc, over fucking fanfic. It's become "with us or against us". It's... terrifying. Especially because it's targeted against oftentimes vulnerable people who don't have, say, studios and publishers and tons of money to keep them safe. They go after, y'know, AstarionsGirl292 and not George R R fucking Martin. Well, I think they went after Tamsyn Muir? But she ain't GRRM, is she?

It's a helpless feeling, seeing fandom get to this point. But I can untangle it. And it sucks.

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Making Peace With It

There's plenty of discourse, as per usual, going around about the latest film from THE Walt Disney Animation Studios...

A lot of the more deriding comments remark that the film in question, Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn's WISH, is just the same movie as TANGLED/FROZEN/MOANA but with a cheap 2D filter. I'm sure that it's not a filter nor is it cheap, and while it doesn't seem to be doing what experiments like PAPERMAN and FEAST did a decade earlier, there's still plenty of hard work on the screen and I think the visuals look very, very nice.

I've noticed, amidst a lot of the discourse, that some people just want WDAS to make a new hand-drawn animated film instead of what they consider an "imitation". A 2D film, not a film that's made up of 3D models but looks like a painting or illustration, but an actual 2D film with some CGI stuff... Something that looks like TARZAN, not PAPERMAN.

But, I don't see a 2D film happening there anytime soon. I know legendary animator Eric Goldberg said something about a particular 2D project being in the works about a year ago, but that to me meant a new short or maybe a Disney+ series/special... Not a full-blown feature length film. Disney removed what remained of their 2D animation unit in early 2013, pink-slipping several of their best 2D animators. All the assets and desks, gone. Goldberg, Mark Henn, and Randy Haycock stuck around, their work usually amounting to small stuff like Maui's mini-Maui tattoo in MOANA, 2D pencil tests, and the opening theme to STRANGE WORLD.

The attempt to make hand-drawn features a thing at the studio again amounted to disappointment. I love THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG and WINNIE THE POOH, but the former did so-so at best at the box office, the other was sabotaged... But also, this may sound a bit harsh, but I feel that Disney made a big mistake in having those two stories be their comeback 2D features... An old-school-style fairy tale movie that looked like it could've been made in the early '90s or even before that... and a very '60s-looking Winnie the Pooh movie that only ran an hour long and had very muted stakes... Not necessarily the most thrilling-looking things to audiences in the era of UP, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, TOY STORY 3, TANGLED, and KUNG FU PANDA 2, for sure. Like, even much-maligned movies like CARS 2 and THE SMURFS did way better than both of those movies.

So that didn't happen. Disney's future was CGI once more, because capitalism had once ruled - in the early 2000s - that hand-drawn animated features just weren't worth making in America... Unless they were based on hit TV shows, like SPONGEBOB. And it seemed that the ho-hum box office of PRINCESS AND THE FROG, and WINNIE THE POOH's lightning-fast in-and-out run, further "proved" that. When PAPERMAN debuted before WRECK-IT RALPH in fall 2012, it gave us something of a glimmer of hope... That 2D *could* live on as a part of CGI. The three-dimensional qualities made less complicated in CGI, but with hand-drawn's special sauce, so to speak... But it didn't amount to much, either.

But no, the reality is, you have to look elsewhere for 2D animated features... Anime, non-American features, films like KLAUS, etc. That's where it's all thriving, in alternative avenues. It's not happening at the big studios, including Disney Animation themselves.

However, here's the thing about the whole "bring back 2D already!" and "WISH isn't like PAPERMAN so it's a failure" discourse...

I feel that we are lucky that Walt Disney Animation Studios even exists.

Do you know when they were last on the chopping block? As in, facing a complete and total shut down?

2006...

Not that long ago...

Disney Animation had no new movie released in that calendar year, their latest movie at the time was their first in-house all-CGI affair, CHICKEN LITTLE. That movie did okay at the domestic box office, but what it coughed up overall worldwide wasn't all that great against its bloated budget.

Michael Eisner had stepped down as CEO of The Walt Disney Company in September 2005, after a very turbulent and controversial final set of years running the joint. Bob Iger, his deputy, had taken his place and after seeing firsthand what was going wrong, he sought to fix some of the major problems... Namely, the severing relationship between the DizCo (to borrow an abbreviation from Steve Hulett) and Pixar. Pixar's contract was over after the completion of CARS, released in 2006, and they weren't keen on renegotiating because of how Eisner was running things. Iger repaired the broken bridge, and DizCo bought Pixar in early 2006 for a whopping $7.4b.

And with that move, change came to Walt Disney Feature Animation, which would be renamed to Walt Disney Animation Studios...

But the road to the studio's future was rocky. Steve Jobs, who of course was one of Pixar's founding fathers and former owner, had actually proposed the idea of **shutting down Walt Disney Feature Animation**! His reasoning? Basically, "Well who needs them when you got Pixar?" John Lasseter vetoed this, and he and Ed Catmull were named the new heads of Disney Animation, tasked with helping restore the studio's box office fortunes.

If Jobs had had his way, Walt Disney Animation Studios' whole "canon" of animated features would've possibly ended with... CHICKEN LITTLE... Ending a decades-long legacy that began with the very, the one and only SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS!

Upon "reviving" Disney Animation, the initial plan was to have a new hand-drawn feature every two years. THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG would've gotten that whole ball rolling, but it didn't... In fact, the Lasseter-era CG pictures got off to a rocky start as well. MEET THE ROBINSONS was largely dumped and it failed to recoup its budget, BOLT did so-so. TANGLED would be the first big hit of that then-new line-up of CG Disney movies, and then WRECK-IT RALPH and FROZEN continued it. It was a straight, uninterrupted hit streak from there until COVID-19 broke out in March 2020. None of the movies really deviated from the assets and style and tricks used in BOLT, TANGLED, and FROZEN. Even a sci-fi techy movie like BIG HERO 6 still felt like it could be set in the same universe as those other fantasy movies, albeit set far into the future.

That continues today in movies like RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON, ENCANTO, and STRANGE WORLD. WISH is that same look, too, but rendered and executed differently. Whatever the 2024-release feature film is, probably the same deal.

Other studios, even Pixar, have been varying it up. Disney Animation, the oldest of these big studios, is staying the course...

I sometimes grouse about it, I sometimes say "C'mon Disney, vary it up a bit!"

But the other part of me is saying... We're lucky they're even still around.

Walt Disney Animation Studios is literally the bedrock of the entire company. No Disney cartoon studio, no Disney company, plain and simple. Walt Disney didn't get into doing live-action movies until the 1940s, TV in the early 1950s, and themes parks in the mid-1950s... and a lot of that took off because of the strong image he and his crew had built with all the Alice Comedies, the Mickey Mouse and friends cartoons, the Silly Symphonies, and the beloved animated features.

It seems shocking and almost sacrilegious that Steve Jobs himself took a look at that studio, after 68 years of making animated features and had just released feature #46... and thought "Ehh, shut them down." In the brutal world of capitalism, sadly, WDAS at the time looked like an old and injured horse that needed to be put out of its misery. Whatever we might think of those divisive early 2000s features sans THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE and LILO & STITCH, they were - at the time of their release - not critical darlings nor box office giants. Certainly not enjoying what Pixar's movies were rewarded at the time. MONSTERS, INC., FINDING NEMO, and THE INCREDIBLES were critical darlings and box office titans, LILO & STITCH got great reviews but only coughed up around $273m worldwide. That was around as much as what MONSTERS, INC. and THE INCREDIBLES made *domestically*. CHICKEN LITTLE outgrossed LILO & STITCH at the worldwide box office, if you can begin to wrap your head around that!

2D got the boot over these box office failures and many other reasons, but the studio was also on thin ice...

But you would think, they're safe again! More than safe! TANGLED was a hit, WRECK-IT RALPH was a hit, FROZEN made gazillions of dollars, and so on and so forth... But I get the sense that Walt Disney Animation Studios is only kept around for... Legacy reasons. Because it is *the* studio, again, the bedrock of the whole company. It's kept alive simply because of that. And what's better than having two animation studios making big hits year after year? And movies that are 95% of the time guaranteed Oscar locks?

Consider how long *other* animation studios and projects lasted at Disney...

Blue Sky Studios, which they got as part of the package when they purchased 21st Century Fox film/TV assets from the Murdochs? They shuttered it after SPIES IN DISGUISE, *one* single movie, lost money at the box office. That was the *only* Blue Sky movie that Disney distributed. Then they proceeded to pull the plug on NIMONA, which was roughly 3/4 done! Though luckily, instead of yeeting it into a black hole as a "tax write-off" or locking it away so that no one else could score a success with it, they surprisingly offloaded the picture to someone else. And that someone else, Annapurna and Netflix, have finished it and it's coming out this summer... The one that got away. I'd have a good chuckle if NIMONA, in addition to be a great beloved movie, beats both of Disney's animated offerings at the Oscars. Would be poetic justice, in a way.

There was also Disneytoon Studios, the makers of all those direct-to-video films from the '90s to the mid-aughts. LION KING II, LADY AND THE TRAMP II, BAMBI 2, ya know? It was kept alive after John Lasseter purged all of the direct-to-video sequel projects that they had in the works (such as DUMBO II, THE ARISTOCATS 2, and a prequel film about the Seven Dwarfs), and it was rebranded as an outlet for CGI Tinker Bell movies (I guess Disney really wanted to compete with Barbie Fairytopia at the time?) and spin-offs of Pixar's CARS franchise. Fascinatingly, PLANES and PLANES 2 would've lead to a movie about subway trains, and also a spacecraft movie. Said spacecraft movie was aiming for a spring 2019 release, with footage shown off at the 2017 D23 Expo... After Lasseter's ouster from The Walt Disney Company in mid-2018 following misconduct allegations, out went Disneytoon Studios. It wasn't rerouted to make a different kind of movie following Lasseter's ouster, it was just gone. Just like that. It was as if Lasseter had kept that small studio on life support.

Those are the most recent examples I can think of.

We can also stretch back to the '90s, when Disney's goldmine that was WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, didn't get beyond a handful of short films and some theme park stuff. A ROGER RABBIT sequel or prequel was a NO-FREAKIN'-BRAINER, but due to various complications, it stalled and stalled and stalled... and didn't happen.

Speaking of Roger Rabbit... Robert Zemeckis, director of that film. Remember how his company, ImageMovers Digital, formed a brief partnership with Disney to create motion-capture movies? It only resulted in 2009's A CHRISTMAS CAROL and the massive flop MARS NEEDS MOMS. They got pretty far long with a gnarly-looking remake of YELLOW SUBMARINE, but that was canned when the partnership ended.

Or how about their partnership with Skellington Productions? THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS was a respectable success in 1993 that became a cult favorite thereafter, but JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH - despite being directed by Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burton - failed to recreate that success some three years later. Doors shut on that whole collaboration, a feature film adaptation of TOOTS AND THE UPSIDE-DOWN HOUSE canceled, Skellington was no more a little after that.

Heck, Pixar themselves could've been toast if TOY STORY didn't do well. Or A BUG'S LIFE. Or even MONSTERS, INC. and FINDING NEMO. And weird contractual agita prevented them from making sequels, save for TOY STORY 2. If one of those originals had flopped in the early 2000s, they wouldn't have had a TOY STORY 3 or an A BUG'S LIFE 2 to back them up.

Anyways, yeah, Walt Disney Animation Studios themselves were almost on the chopping block as late as 2006... And they were on the chopping before that, too. There were eras where each movie of theirs needed to do well in order to justify their existence. If anything, that's been almost their entire existence. SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS was a box office phenomenon in 1938, but World War II completely took the wind out of the studio's sails, partially causing PINOCCHIO, FANTASIA, and BAMBI to flop. The studio spent almost the whole decade making anthology movies made up of smaller, disconnected segments until returning to single-story features in 1950 with CINDERELLA... Then when SLEEPING BEAUTY bombed hard in 1959, the studio was on thin ice once more. Roy O. Disney and the business side of the company saw no future for animated features and felt "Why not just continue to re-release the 10+ movies that we've already made?" Walt still kept animated features going, but the studio was significantly scaled down.

So throughout the 1960s and 1970s, each new movie had to be a profitable success, or else they would've been shut down. 101 DALMATIANS was a blockbuster, as was THE JUNGLE BOOK. THE SWORD IN THE STONE did alright, THE ARISTOCATS, ROBIN HOOD, and THE RESCUERS made decent coin in North America, and did significantly better in Europe. I swear, France and West Germany literally carried Disney's feature animation wing on their backs during those decades!

And then when outsiders came in and took over the Disney enterprise in the mid-1980s, and THE BLACK CAULDRON was released to middling reviews and weak box office? The reasoning was "Why are we still making these?" New CEO Michael Eisner and new chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg seemed more interested in the adult-oriented Touchstone division that Walt's son-in-law Ron Miller founded in 1984 before his ouster. That, and the then-newly opened Walt Disney Television Animation. Imagine that! THE BLACK CAULDRON being Disney's final animated film, and their future only being in Saturday morning cartoons and adult live-action comedies. Luckily, Roy E. Disney - Walt's nephew - also happened to be there, and he knew the cornerstone of the company was the animated features, *not* this new Touchstone thing that was founded by a family member he didn't see eye to eye with. It took some time, but animated features proved themselves viable again... Funny how it took *one* movie to almost put an end to that! It's not like THE BLACK CAULDRON came off of a long series of floppy movies, it was the studio's first money-loser in decades...

So yes, I feel we're in this prolonged period of Walt Disney Animation Studios merely existing. Now that they're 100 years old and have produced - to the company's estimation - 61 animated movies, soon to be 62 with WISH, they're just... There. Still making movies, but likely not moving the needle. They're pretty much a legacy brand now, and I guess they'd change course if people stop showing up to their movies. STRANGE WORLD was a massive flop, yes, but that had more to do with other things than it being yet another CGI WDAS movie. ENCANTO exploded on Disney+, and RAYA was successful as a streaming title as well. WISH would have to bomb, and their next five or so features, to make a big reinvention happen... Or, they would be shut down. "You had a good run!"

Believe me, I'd love to see Disney Animation shake things up a bit. I'd love to see them try all-new styles and stories in CGI once more, like they did with many of their short films. I'd love to see a feature that looks *nothing* like TANGLED, FROZEN, MOANA, and STRANGE WORLD. And directed by someone who isn't Chris Buck, Don Hall, or Byron Howard. A complete and total outside voice, with a new spin on the Disney animated feature. The way someone like Mark Dindal did with THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE, or Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois with LILO & STITCH. Films that were classically Disney in a unique way, but totally did their own thing and redefined what a Disney animated movie could be! Of the CG pictures, I felt the same about Rich Moore's WRECK-IT RALPH, which feels like the freshest picture of that era to me. ZOOTOPIA, also directed by Moore, a runner-up candidate.

(I know that there have been other directors on some of the recent films, but the main directors are the ones that have been there for quite some time and have been directing all the movies. I see more of a Hall picture in RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON than I do a Carlos Lopez Estrada picture.)

I have no idea what the future of Disney Animation looks like. Jennifer Lee has been CCO of the studio since Lasseter's 2018 ouster, and all of the movies she's overseen so far are Lasseter-era greenlights. Movies that were likely locked down and determined a while ago, plus she spent a good chunk of her first year and a half balancing her CCO duties with writing/directing FROZEN II.

WISH might be the first greenlight under her watch, and it appears that she was one of the writers on it, too. After all, she did direct FROZEN and FROZEN II with Chris Buck, in addition to writing them. Other than WISH, the only things that seemed to get greenlit after her promotion were a handful of Disney+ shows, only a single one is an original - IWAJU. A collaboration with a Nigerian upstart studio. The few images they released last autumn, it just looks like a generic Disney Junior show to my eyes. The show itself may be pretty good, but I'm thinking... This is all they've got? They're very mum about what they have coming out, we don't even know what Feature #63 is. We know ZOOTOPIA 2 and FROZEN III are in the works, but not what the next original movie after WISH is. Pixar next door, we know what original movie they have coming out in 2024, but WDAS? No dice. Heck, we didn't even know a thing about WISH until this past year, when it was officially unveiled at the D23 Expo. A little over a year before its release.

So, I don't think we truly have an idea of what's next anyways, other than WISH and IWAJU. And maybe they do just stay the course for the rest of the decade.

I try not to complain or grouse, there are things I "wish" (hah!) they would do... But, I've just got to accept that this is the status. They're alive and running and making movies and keeping people employed, and they may have been morphed into a mere legacy studio at this point. Another brand. Like Marvel and Lucasfilm. Marvel is comic book superhero movies, Lucasfilm is just Star Wars and Indiana Jones, and... Disney Animation? "We make Disney movies, just the way you like 'em." WISH sounds a lot like that, honestly: A fantasy musical adventure with a princess and a funny animal sidekick in it.

Maybe I'm wrong, but we shall see... For now, I'll take what I can get. I've generally liked all the post-Lasseter movies anyways, some more so than others (particularly RAYA and ENCANTO over RALPH BREAKS, FROZEN II, and STRANGE WORLD), would love to see them push the envelope again, but hey- What can ya do?

[delulu--lulu]

Spider-Man into/across the spider-verse Spider-sona story

Oc name: Kyana (nickname is Yana)

I wrote a Spider sona story instead of drawing one because I suck at drawing more than writing... so 😃👍

Face Claim! :

Spider-Man into/across the spider-verse Spider-sona story 

Oc name: Kyana (nickname is Yana) Her family moves a lot. She was born and raised in Dallas Texas and her family moved to Brooklyn New York later. 

Her family moved because her father’s family lived there and her grandma was sick so they came to help. 

Mr. Wilson’s family lives in the Bronx but he didn’t want to move back so decided to move to Brooklyn.

She has two annoying younger brothers; Keenan (10) Kel (8). 

She speaks English and only knows a little bit of Spanish but the rest of her family speaks it well which Yana gets frustrated at cause she can’t understand the rest of them while her younger brothers speaks better than she does.

She understands it more than she can speak it unfortunately. So she hears what her family members say about her behind her back. She wishes she didn’t though.

On her dad’s side, they’re Dominican 🇩🇴 . Her mom is just American 🤷🏽‍♀️.

Yes, she knows how to dance bachata.

Yana’s parents swear she was born in the generation because she’s an old-head, loving all the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s classics. One of her favorite songs is I Have Nothing by Whitney Houston. 

Yana was bit by the radioactive spider before Miles was. 

She went to Visions Academy prior to taking the test in Texas and getting in (another reason why her family moves). 

Personality: she’s kinda awkward, little bit of anger issues, but is the nicest person on earth, she’s sensitive and gets taken advantage of sometimes because of it. A completely different person at school than at home (quiet kid 101). 

Got bit by the radioactive spider before she went to school. She was bitten by it without knowing (kinda like a mosquito bite) while she was listening to music and senerioizng on the rooftop.  

School was kinda ass for her. Despite the racial dysphoria of other people wanting to be her race, everything was semi normal.

“How come you’re Latina but your last name is Wilson?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe there’s something called colonization to other countries.”

She handled that better than she thought she would. “By the way I don’t identify as a Latina. I’m black but my ethnicity is Dominican and my nationality is American.”

Gwen noticed her powers first and they became friends first. Yana also spoke to Miles first. 

But that was a mistake after she remembered that her parents were more strict about boys than they were with her brothers about girls.

Ain’t that a shame 😔

Yana was who Miles talked about with his uncle but Gwen happened to be there instead of her. 

While he was trying to rizz up Gwen and his hand got stuck to her hair, he panicked and swung his arms around and it stuck to  Yana’s uniform shirt (she happened to be walking by). 

So they were all embarrassing each other in the middle of the hallway.

Yana spoke to Gwen about what happened afterwards when and explained to her that she thought Miles might be like them.

Spider-Man’s death didn’t take a surprise to Yana with all those crazy villains he fought. 

They both “befriended” him in the forest after they stole the hard drive. She went with Gwen first to save them in her store bought spider man suit. 

Miles and Yana had coincidentally wore the same store bought suit and Yana used one of his cringey lines from the beginning of school.

“Oh, my gosh! This is embarrassing. We wore the same suit.” She laughed but he wasn’t amused.

Yana goes with them to Aunt May’s for the first time and meets the new spider people. She befriends Peni first. She gets to tell her story: “Hi, my name is Yana Wilson and for the past two weeks, I’ve been Brand New Spider-woman.”

Her theme song is Push It by Salt-N-Pepa.

Yana’s spider-woman name is “Spider-Blast” because her spider suit is extremely colorful (she’s based off of the Green Bottle Blue Tarantula) it’s like a “blast” of color. 

The spider team didn’t think that Yana and Miles were good enough to save New York and it made Yana feel insecure about herself.

Of course I’m not going to be good enough, I’ve only been spider woman for two weeks!

When Miles ran away and his crazy self started jumping off of buildings, Yana accompanied him.

They both helped each other personalize their suits. Yana made her suit colorful with the Dominican flag. 

She wanted to practice with him because she felt like she didn’t deserve to be Spider-woman and if she was then she’d at least learn how to.

On that roof after Yana and Miles swung around the city they shared their first kiss. 

During the fight and while everyone was going to leave, Yana almost cried when Gwen had to leave but she assured Yana that she would see her again.

After the fight with Kingpin and after they save New York City, Miles and Yana start a relationship.

A secret one at that matter. Mostly secret from their families. 

ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE

Yana got her phone taken away for failing a class (because she was doing spider things) so she couldn’t call or text Miles.

But he randomly called her phone that was sitting on the counter and Yana just happened to answer the phone before her mom could.

“Boy, it’s past 12! I got minutes.” She whispers angrily into the phone. “Ima call you back on the house phone. Do not call back if I hang up.”

It took a lot of convincing and serious talk with her parents about boys before Yana finally takes Miles to meet her family. But they like him and say that he reminds them of their daughter (no sabo kid). 

Her aunts like that he’s Latino. 

Keenan and Kel do not like Miles at all. They speak about him behind his back in Spanish. Yana tells them to stop though.

Being the only spider people in their dimension gets lonely so they of course miss their friends. 

Yana notices that Miles seems to miss Gwen more than she does. (She finds his drawings of her). 

Once Yana got home from fighting a villain and Spider-Blast was on the TV news in her family’s living room. 

“Spider-Blast?” Her Tia Semira questions while helping fix dinner. “What kind of name is that?” 

Although Yana knew that her Tia didn’t mean it in a criticizing way but it still made her cringe.

“I heard that she was from la caribe.” Her messy Tia Maia says, sticking her nose up. “She better not be dominicana.”

“Nah.” Yana quickly jumped in the conversation. “I’m pretty sure she’s boricuan.” Her tias shrugged it off with a scoff. 

Yana quickly went to Miles’s the next day. “Man, I almost got caught by my nosy tias.” 

“Oh, word?” He says, smirking. “Let me guess… she said that she hoped Miss Spider-Blast wasn’t Dominican.” Yana nods with an eye roll.

When Yana and Miles first met the Spot, as said, Miles didn’t take him seriously. Y’know, that “villain of the week” mess. 

But Yana sensed something off and tried to tone Miles down but he wasn’t listening.

He had to go to his parent teacher conference and was already late so he was rushing. 

Yo girlfriend is always right, Miles 🤷🏽‍♀️

When it’s the party that celebrates Jeff’s promotion to captain, Yana puts off her spider work to go while Miles clearly does not. 

She gets to thinking that he supposes that he’s the better hero than her for still tryna save the city. 

He obviously doesn’t .

When he does get there, his parents are on his ass about not getting there on time and Yana calms him down. While sitting in his room talking, Gwen arrives.

Yana is ecstatic to see her best friend after a whole year and a half. But Miles seems happier. 

And she sho notices too 😒. 

“Wanna get out of here?” Are the last words said that Yana immediately knows will lead to trouble. 

Although swinging around the city with Gwen is fun, she feels like a third wheel even though she and Miles are together and not him and Gwen.

Yana’s petty like that and goes back to the party to see if Gwen and Miles would even notice if she was gone. They do, but not until a little later.

Strike 1

At the party, Yana sulks around watching Miles and Gwen interact on the tower thingy. Rio notices so she goes up to introduce herself to Gwen.

As you could tell, it didn’t go well.

After Gwen leaves Miles and Yana have a little serious talk about what happened and he says he won’t do it again. 

Mhm 😒. 

So to make up for the little argument, Miles decides to take Yana with him to follow Gwen. 

Great job bro 😑

Miles turns invisible and Yana camouflages (another perk of the green blue bottle tarantula). 

Blah, blah, blah, the learn about the spider society and follow Gwen into the dimension. Yana is the first to go in because she feels like she’s being pulled towards it. 

Miles tries grabbing her hand to pull her out but he gets sucked in too.

Meeting Pavitr is the best thing that could happen to Yana. That instantly become friends and she joins in on Pavitr grilling Miles about saying Chai tea.

“That’s like saying Naan bread. Naan means bread. It’s like bread bread, Miles! I thought we talked about this.”

He got sad. “Man, even my own girlfriend is chewing me out.” He mumbles. “I SAID I WAS SORRY, YANA.” ☹️

When Yana met Hobie, it was over. She befriended everyone instantly and it made her happy to meet so many friends since she didn’t have a lot back home. 

Gwen was a little upset that both of them were there because they weren’t supposed to be. But she didn’t have any control over it because Miguel requested both Yana and Miles.

Learning that the Spot was traveling dimensions to get power was nerve wracking to Miles because just yesterday he said that he was just a villain of the week and he wasn’t. 

Yana told him he should’ve known better because she warned him.

Strike 2 

Meeting Miguel could’ve gone better than Yana hoped. He wasn’t very friendly in her opinion. She definitely didn’t like him after how he talked to her and Miles.

She was tryna be nice and chill but obviously it didn’t work.

“Hey, my name is Yana-“

“You aren’t supposed to be here.”

“Damn. This is why you can’t be nice to ppl 😒.” Yana rolls her eyes at him. 

When she learns about the canon events is when things really started to become trouble. Miles’s dad was supposed to die and by Miguel’s introduction on saying that “she isn’t supposed to be here” he explains that Yana is the only variant of herself.

Meaning there are no other Yanas in any other dimension. 

Basically like America Chavez. 🤭

That’s when all her friends turn to stare at her in either awe, confusion, or anything else for that matter. Yana feels exposed in that moment. She didn’t even know it was true but somehow she felt judged.

But the look Miles gives her is something else. It’s the look as if he was hesitant. 

It wasn’t until she and Miles were being chased by every single spider person in existence that Miles realized that she was too fragile. There wasn’t another Yana, so if she died, that was it.

He didn’t want to lose her just like that. 

“Go find Margo and tell her to take you back to our universe.” He said.

Yana didn’t have much choice since she wanted to get out of the chase. These people were chasing her like she owed money. Yana didn’t find Margo until Miles found Margo.

He looked pretty upset. 

Even though they were both invisible/camouflaged, they could sense each other.

Turns out Miles wasn’t even meant to be Spider-Man. So that meant Yana wasn’t either… or so he thought.

Margo didn’t want to send Miles and Yana to Ty roe dimension due to Miguel’s constant threats to not let Miles nor Yana go. 

But she had too.

(She and Hobie the real ones). 

Miles helps Yana into the dimension switching thingy (I don’t know what that thing is even called😭). 

Yana and Margo made intense eye contact which was a whole conversation without even talking. Miles thought it was some girl telepathy thing.

Margo pressed the button. “42.” Yana says with furrowed eyebrows. “We’re not from 42-“ 

Miles yanks Yana along with him as they both tear down through the streets on New York to Miles’s house. Yana climbs through the window first and then Miles does.

His room looks the same… “but this isn’t our New York” she wants to say.

“We made it…” Miles sighs in relief before he turns to look at his girlfriend. “Yana, are you alright?”

She nods. “Yeah, I’m fine… But Miles, this isn’t our-“

The door opens, light filling the room. Panic fills Yana’s head. Since she’s the only version of herself in every universe, that means Rio won’t recognize her.

Yana swiftly hides behind the door. “Miles?” His mom enters with a basket of clothes. Miles had quickly put a large jacket on. “Is now a bad time?”

She continues to make conversation with him as Miles tries to figure out a way to tell her he’s Spider-Man.

Yana watches it all intently. 

“I’m… I’m Spider-Man.” He zips his jacket revealing his suit. 

Rio stares blankly at him. “Who?” 

That’s when Yana realizes. It confirms her suspicions that they aren’t in the right dimension. There is no spider-person in this universe.

No wonder the streets looked so gloomy and dark. As soon as Miles and Rio are out of the room, Yana makes a break for the rooftop. 

As soon as she’s on the roof she takes her mask off to breathe. Taking deep breaths in and out, don’t seem to calm her. They wrack her nerves even more.

Yana looks around. It’s night and it’s darker and gloomier than Brooklyn regularly is. Her eyes soon land on something that makes her jaw drop.

Jeff’s mural. It replaces Aaron’s.

He’s dead in this dimension.

The rooftop door opens. Yana panics again because this time she doesn’t know where to hide. So she goes over the roof but sticks to the wall so she can still see.

“You got the plan?” Aaron’s voice enters her ears. 

Aaron?

“Yeah…” Miles follows quickly behind him looking just as shell shocked as she is. “But maybe we should go over it again… just to make sure.” 

He looks around shocked at all the chaos. And at his face, that’s when Yana knows that he’s seen it. He’s seen the mural.

Aaron gets a text and upon that text, he turns to look at Miles suspiciously. 

At that moment, a dark figure jumps up and punches Miles in the face knocking him down.

Now, how immature would it be for Yana to shout something at this moment? Very. 

“Damn!” Yana exclaims. She didn’t mean to, it was an instinct. She quickly covers her mouth and ducks back down when Aaron and the figure look in her direction. 

“Someone’s here. Check the area.” Aaron orders and slips back into the stair room while the figure disappears. 

Yana panicky looks around for where the person went but doesn’t see or hear them until she’s getting smacked back into the rooftop floor right next to Miles. 

Despite the pain and ringing in her ears, she can look up to see the figure more clearly. A more clean design of the “prowler” suit. 

Another prowler?

The new prowler’s phone rings in his pocket. He takes it out and answers it and his mask opens up. 

Yana’s eyes widen at the face. It’s Miles, but not her Miles. 

It’s the last face she sees before she completely blacks out.

A/N : Do y'all know how long it took for me to finish this?? 😩 I was kinda on and off this this tho

[thetypingpup]

I stay away from twitter for my own sanity and health but I can imagine 😅😅 twitter is wild at the calmest of times but I was hearing some very ugly things being trended like calling Bang PD a "greedy pig" and calling LSM a "senile grandpa". Like... I get disliking them but this is hardly a personal thing, it's cold hard business. And the classlessness of it all sounds gross without even actually going on twitter. I love the humbleness of artists like BTS and SVT who started from small, poor companies, I will root for underdogs any day but the older I've gotten and the more saturated kpop has become, the more I'm finding I'm clinging to SM because there's just something special they keep doing. It could be just me being old and my origins as a kpop fan being a 2nd gen SM stan first.

Alternate theory time and kpop history corner - Japan was the first market SM worked to break into beyond Korea in the early 2000s with BoA and TVXQ, and ironically the idol trainee system had already existed there for decades. A company called Johnny's that has managed male idols since the 60s invented it and I have a strong suspicion Lee Soo Man borrowed the concept and SM is credited with pioneering and establishing it in Korea. They then naturally looked to expand to Japan first with BoA because "look, we did the same thing as you guys but we can do it with female idols too and look how good they are!" I was a j-pop stan before becoming a kpop stan and I'm a little attached to tradition, I must say 😅 I'm attached to the longevity of SM artists because Johnny's artists used to "expire" at age 25 like models until the 90s generation that said "guess what, we're more than that" and started becoming MCs as well. Johnny's and SM were the first to start training idols to be presenters as well. Yuta wrecks me a lot because he looks EXACTLY like what a super hot Johnny's idol used to look like in the 2000s, with his love of rock, the visual kei-inspired hairstyles and the way he does his eyebrows (decidedly un-Korean!!) Johnny's has fallen out of favour in recent years and had loads of scandals as well, like any longstanding company that manages talent and invents things, but there's something to be said about legacy. We need both legacy and innovation.

well nowadays, they're definitely much more focused on legacy than innovation. they're much more focused on promoting and pushing the sm brand, and not so much the artists themselves. that's why there's been such an emphasis on these fuckass group projects, like the collab units or the big sm winter albums. yo sm palace was such a crazy time, bc when that tweet announcing it came out, it got ratioed to death. people of all sm fandoms were basically like "bitch we didn't ask for this. we asked for a comeback for our own artists". and then everything else either had to be crammed in at the end of the year, or get pushed to the next year and get delayed like onew said. and this hyperfocus on the sm brand is why poor red velvet is still stuck at the reve festival, why ay yo...was the way it was with those awful teasers, why key's and other comebacks got delayed, and it's just derailing everything.

and this is pure conjecture so take this with a grain of salt, but considering all the internal strife going on in sm, i wouldn't be surprised if this new focus on legacy and the sm brand is their way of putting up a strong front while they fall apart on the inside. like trying to prove to the public (and themselves) that sm is still an established company with all this legacy to draw from. that's may be part of why why they're roping everyone into this bullshit kwangya thing, even tho half their artists either couldn't explain it with a mic to their mouth, or have already gone on record saying they don't like it. now that they're retroactively trying to rope everyone into this smcu shit with kwangya and everything, it makes a group like aespa have less of their own identity. now their concept isn't ai and kwangya, it's sm's latest venture and using them as the main vessel. but, bc the brand is clearly more important at this stage, and the brand is known of innovation, it's led to misguided shit, like seriously debuting the ai character for aespa as opposed to giving aespa an actual comeback.

Edit: with the whole focus on the brand, it honestly bleeds into how I see nct u now. I was seeing clips of the wayv fanmeet, they were dancing to universe, and i literally forgot yangyang and xiaojun were in that unit. Even nct u feels less like a genuine nct project, and more like those obligatory group projects the company makes them do

so i agree we need both legacy and innovation, but rn sm is just hyperfocused on the past and the future is looking real uncertain. literally every day we're hearing something new in terms of internal strife, like they're genuinely on their house of the dragon shit and destroying themselves from within, and it does genuinely make me wonder if they're gonna make it through the year. and because of that, it does make me worry for the artists bc it is some of the best music in kpop and it'd be a real shame for them to go out like this

[miserably-married-fictosexual]

I was first introduced to this concept last year when I came across an article about it and I immediately felt like “Oh that’s me.” I didn’t feel validated though, feeling as if declaring myself as a particular sexuality beyond what people consider “standard” sexuality would appear disingenuous due to the controversy on what it means to be fictosexual or what some would argue is more fictophilia. Even given what I know of other communities stating that I am fictosexual felt pretentious but, I have terrible anxiety as well as other mental health issues so I just assumed my feelings to be some deviation of my uncertain and chemically awkward brain.

That is not at all a judgment of others. I have always felt part of the fandom communities that deal with romantic and sexual feelings for fictional characters but I am not a mind reader so even reading people's experiences did not register to me as the same as my own because I only know the feelings in my head.

Then recently I began reevaluating this idea.

I had roughly a decade-long relationship with a character and I am not comfortable enough yet to talk about specifics in depth but, this character had an onscreen death that stuck with me enough that I could not shake the feeling that they were dead. I tried coping with this in a variety of ways. Head cannon the person back to life or then cannon media did it for me bringing that character back in a different way. But it wasn’t the same. They died and my brain reacted as if it had happened to a real person.

I can’t imagine trying to explain this to someone outside of the fandom community or even within the community. I kept it to myself and mourned in silence feeling like I was losing my mind because the outside world is judgmental and not at all accepting.

This isn’t the first time this happened. The same thing happened with another character in the late 90’s early 2000’s and even though that character was recently imagined in streaming media and there was a brief moment of a rekindled romance but it didn’t last. I literally have felt like I have been “trying out” new characters or in essence “dating them” until I found another love. And I think it is happening now in an unexpected way.

I think perhaps the worst part of this is I’m married and have been for almost 20 years. And while I do love the person I am with it has never been as intense as my love for fictional people I think back to when I was younger. My first love was fictional, and my first lust was fictional, in fact, the number of fictional characters I have “dated” and/or were interested in vastly outnumbers the real people. I know I was desperate for attention in a romantic way in high school I didn’t date but there was simply no one I was interested in. I did have a brief stint for being in love with celebrities–count that two times and basically I was casting for an OC.

Now I have a better idea of who I was and who I might be now but like so many things people are divided. Some say fictosexuality isn’t a sexuality and doesn’t deserve the term that it should be called something more akin to fictophilia, I don’t agree with this if only from my personal experience of my emotional connections to fictional characters are often stronger than the ones I have with real people. It doesn’t feel like so much of a preference as it does “This is who I am and I thought I was broken perhaps I’m not” but gender is still involved and that is another hang-up. Sometimes what people find attractive gender wise does not translate to the real world. A person may be pan but only pan in a fictosexual sense and perhaps not outside of that in the real world. What I have read with others equates fictosexuality as a sort of subset of asexuality but while that may be true for some my own experience and manic horniness when “falling in love.”

I keep putting things in quotes only because those outside of this realm need to understand how it equates to them with real people vs us with fictional characters. Maybe I should stop the quotations.

At any rate, here I am 42 and still carrying on fictional romances in my head wondering if this is just part of my mental illness or if it is a valid stance on my own sexuality. I feel like some people that know me would argue against what I have presented because I’m married, I’ve had sex with real people, and most of that was not enjoyable. The brief moment I dated a guy before my husband, I felt like I was cheating on my fictional love at the time. I dated him for about a month and then broke up with him because I think he sensed my “issues” and was trying to turn me into good housewife material.

I went through a “bad girl” phase in my late teens and early twenties where I think many people that knew me personally at the time would have called me hyper-sexual to some degree when in all honesty, I was my own OC created to deal with a very messy divorce between my parents. It doesn’t help that I come from a very repressed home where for my entire childhood was told that sexuality in general is something that only happens in marriage. My father is a conservative Christian prick and Q anon follower so I am sure that says something.

I have brought subjects like these up to psychiatrists and therapists alike but no one could ever give me any advice or answers and, in fact, most times they didn’t even acknowledge what I said. I feel lost and what I want is to feel validated and not like I’m even more defective than I already feel. And that is not to say that I think other people like me are defective….I just need to know I am not alone and I am not some sort of deviant.