#literally canon nobody can convince me of anything else

[computervampir]

Peter Shaw.

[spopsalt]

More miscellaneous She-Ra pins I found while sorting through Pinterest that made me want to die and my commentary on them. Pt. 2

Don’t you have to at least like eachother to be family? Thaws guys aren’t even friends. The only ones that get along are Scorpia and Perfuma, which was forced as hell, and Frosta is on okay terms with most (not all) of the characters listed. Everyone else tolerates eachother at best, or seem to flat out hate eachother at worst.

For example… Just gonna drop a little fun fact here, Mermista is the only Rebellion member who can breathe underwater. So, pairing that knowledge, along with Mermista’s subtle-as-a-bat-to-the-face hatred for Entrapta, and her overall unpleasant personality that leads me to believe she would do this without batting an eye, I’m fully convinced this fanart is just Mermista trying to murder Entrapta via drowning, and they made Entrapta seem too stupid to realize it. Listen, I watched Steven Universe, and specifically remember one of the eventual protagonists did try to drown others the same way. But at least they called her out for it at some point. Lapis didn’t seem to regret it, but at least they call her out. Knowing that Perfuma yoinked Entrapta off a high-ass rock, and could’ve killed her by doing that and didn’t seem to care… Idk, I feel like Mermista casually trying to drown Entrapta and Entrapta being portrayed as obliviously smiling because she’s treated as too dumb to live could easily be something I could see happening in canon. No, it hasn’t happened in canon, but it’s just so in line with the writing that I could see it.

Double whammy here. Some fans must be gymnast level flexible with how much they’re reaching. This is literally just her sleeping. Lots of people sleep that way. I mean, if it was the canon reason she does this, I wouldn’t take it so much as a sign of shipping as much as it’s a sign of Catra being entitled. Girl has a bed and chooses to take up half of Adora’s. I get that real cats do it, but real cats are also not the size of a teen girl and taking up that much space. I definitely don’t think the way Adora sleeps has anything to do with Catra. I’m just saying if it did, it wouldn’t be great anyway.

Idk about same, but it’s definitely similar energy. But these fans gotta realize it’s not a good thing…

Also, I hate how Glimmer and Bow are just smiling and letting it happen. I don’t even like Glimmer or Bow that much, but I can confidently say that they’re better friends than this. I swear, their writing in S5 was utter trash.

Like how you said, most of these people just tolerate each other at best, and hate each other at worst

Yeahhh given the Mermista is VERY obvious in her distain for Entrapta, I doubt it's just some cute silly thing

Damn Catradora stans back must hurt from all the streching their doing. That's a common sleeping posistion? I sleep like that, does it mean I'm making space for my abusive sister to sleep at the edge of my bed like a dog?

Ah yes, two people disobeying their love interests boundaries while nobody does anything to stop them when the other person is clearly uncomfortable..how romantic

[lesbiannancytruther]

MY stranger things unpopular opinions <3

ok nobody asked but these r my stranger things unpopular opinions, inspired by a tweet where people just shared super common and well accepted opinions instead of actual controversy lol

also half of these r gonna be ronance centered because they’re literally all i think about

- first and foremost, nancy is a lesbian. i think so many of her actions and struggles can absolutely be traced back to comphet and repression and i feel like people want to cling onto her romance with steve and jonathan as a way to justify her fondness for them, when i think she can just care about them because they’re her friends and they’re trauma bonded(tm)

- while i like steve and robin being besties as much as everyone else i feel like people overestimate how close they really are in canon. of course they’re best friends but they really aren’t overly dependent on each other like people interpret them to be. they’re best friends but they also function really well on their own.

- though there’s no denying that will has feelings for mike i sincerely doubt that those romantic feelings are reciprocated and i think people are way too confident that byler is gonna be canon

- elmax is miles better than almost every canon AND fanon relationship in the show (i’d argue jopper and lumax (and biased opinion ronance) are the only genuine contenders)

- while i make a habit of being overly critical of men i think people forget that the “grumpy dad” trope with hopper that they like so much comes with him being a total dick sometimes lol

- both jonathan AND steve were weird as fuck in season 1. y’all r having a mid-off when u argue jancy vs. stancy

- and by mid-off i mean stancy wasn’t as bad as y’all act like it was and jancy is not as good as y’all act like it is

- y’all infantilize the FUCK out of robin buckley and im SICK OF IT!! she’s incredibly smart and strong and u people act like she’s stupid/a pushover/a nervous little baby

- in general i think the ronance fandom likes to apply tropes to nancy and robin in a way that isn’t accurate to their characters. its a very common and predictable pattern and i think thats why a lot of fan works feel out of character (an example to this is people applying grumpy x sunshine to nancy and robin respectively and it just doesn’t fit)

- karen is not a good mother. i think everyone can agree karen is weird as fuck for the billy thing, but i see a lot of people argue for karen that she’s really grown as a mother but i’m not seeing it. i don’t doubt that she loves her kids but there’s a reason mike and nancy are Like That

- y’all made up a ton of steve’s personality traits. i’m all good with interpreting his character a certain way but if the reason you hate nancy wheeler is because she unknowingly poked at insecurity of steve’s that u made up i have 0 respect for ur opinions lol

- and on that note steve is pretty badly written. i don’t think his path to “redemption” was bad but he’s so far from anything special that the love he gets from the fandom astounds me

- luckily this opinion isnt as unpopular anymore but steddie was figment of fandom imagination and the fact that it rotted y’all’s brains so bad to the point where you convinced yourself eddie munson was actually really important is just so...

- if you make fruity four content without nancy because you don’t think she’s interesting enough you’re a loser

- byclair is literally SOOOO much better than byler the fact that y’all aren’t going to war for them is upsetting

- this better not be an unpopular opinion but ive been seeing more of it recently: if you think joyce byers is a bad mother block me rn

- any hate that eleven, max, and nancy get is almost ALWAYS rooted in misogyny

ok thats it i probably have more but i cant think of any </3

[kingly-court]

Fun fact: while I can't deny the comedic potential it implies and some ships that derive from this are very fun, I hate hate hate the implications that Gideon's parents don't love each other/one or both of them are unfaithful. Therefore, while nobody asked me to, mostly to comfort myself, I present

Stupid Bud Gleeful x Mrs Gleeful headcanons!

I like to think that her name is Clara because of that one commercial, but I'll use Karen because you seem to like that variant more.

We shall begin.

They actually talk a lot between each other, we just never get to see it on-screen because their usual convos are not relevant to the plot.

Karen was never really talkative actually, but Bud just tries to get her to chat sometimes because he thinks it might prevent amnesia from progressing. (It is heavily implied that the poor lady is Like That because she got her memory erased many times before)

Post-canon he actually got her to a neurologist and she's getting treatment. Recovery for the win.

Karen steals blankets. Bud kicks in his sleep. No matter where, when, or how, every morning Bud wakes up without a blanket and Karen wakes up on the floor. They're okay with it though.

Bud: "do u like stars"? Karen: "ya, theyre cool" (/ref)

Bud can actually scoop her up like a kitten because she's shorter and he does it whenever he can. She unironically likes being held, so she doesn't mind.

When Karen can't fix her emotional turmoil by vacuuming, she tries to fix it by Sleeping For Way Too Many Hours For A Human. When she does that, Bud doesn't interfere, but tries to get her something nice or write her a comforting message he leaves on the nightstand.

Bud cooks because he doesn't trust Karen with sharp objects. There is thankfully no experience to connect with that, he just doesn't think a person who is not completely mentally okay should be allowed near them. Gideon isn't allowed to have anything sharp either for the same reason.

Karen can randomly remember some fact about Bud that he mentioned literal years ago. It creeps him out /not neg.

Bud likes to play with her hair. Sometimes he braids it to calm down, which works well for both of them.

Literally incapable of sleeping apart.

Bud's parents weren't very fond of Karen but he Literally Did Not Care about their opinion. Still doesn't.

Bud has been looking for her during Weirdmageddon. Almost got caught multiple times because he kept trying to find her. Tried to find Gideon too, but after failing assumed that he stayed somewhere in the prison for safety (he didn't believe it one bit but tried to convince himself of that to stay calm)

Bud literally just kept Karen in a less than 3 ft distance after Weirdmageddon for at least a week because he was pretty terrified of losing her. Sometimes just walked through the house holding Gideon with one arm with Karen over his other shoulder. (Gideon's aversion to touch softened a bit for the first 2 days after weirdmageddon or so due to shock, then he came back to hissing if Bud tried that /lh)

They literally just cried in each other's arms the night after weirdmageddon ended. Grown people. /aff

Really lovey dovey post canon. Gideon pretends that he thinks it's cringe but actually he's really relieved and thankful for it because he has some deep seated paranoia that his mental issues Fucked Up The Relationship Between His Parents and knowing that they love each other still helps him sleep at night.

There was definitely something else but I forgot.

I hope you enjoy these!

“I hope you enjoy these!” Anon casually says, sliding the most personally made post to make me unbelievably happy waking up in the morning, including the fact they even switched around a non-canon character name to a personal HC (oh my god??)

-NO BUT FOR REAL OH MY GOD, I do enjoy this so much, because we’re on the same page. I really do think Bud and his wife just don’t have enough screentime to explore what a complicated relationship that whole household experience must’ve turned it into.

(I too am drawn the ships going the opposite way could produce, but also I’m polyam and 90% of the fandom jokes about polycules so I do a lot of my stuff in that sorta context anyways. I have the weirdest Vee/V polyam setup in the past with some of my other, less canon focused Gleeful work that I even have a playlist on spotify for akdbkdnfd.)

BUT YES YES ALL OF THIS YES. I’m gonna hit some of these beat for beat under the cut because I’m fucking obsessed. BE WARY OF ANY MISTAKES/TYPOS, I’m mobile-bound and typing this out like that.

(The two do talk quite a lot.) YES. We’re not gonna see 100% of their dynamic, with the Gleefuls being such minor supporting characters and Gideon still just being a minor antagonist. (They’re basically narratively treated like Gideon’s little henchmen.) They talk all the time behind the scenes.

(Karen has always been a bit quiet.) “Bookish” is always a word I sorta mentally described Karen with. Always the sort of quiet wallflower types. But that’s not bad!! She’s sorta the polar opposite and balancing force the more social, chatter-box, quick-talking used car salesman Buddy Gleeful.

(Above, cont. The Amnesia) And oh god, the amnesia… I can see him doing so much to try and keep it from progressing to badly or to far. And sitting down and trying to chat with her, good god my HEART.

(Post canon) POST CANON RECOVERY. OUGH. It’s always so important to me that he gets her some sort of help. She’s clearly been suffering. I always personally think her and Bud are co-tandem using the memory gun on themselves, though Bud less so, and seeing her take the downturn she did was heart breaking. He helps her get help in a few different ways, both medical and social support.

(Blankets and Kicking) OH YOU KNOW YOU’RE IN IT WHEN YOU GET TO THIS SORTA HC /SUPER POSITIVE. I love this sorta dynamic as someone who’s had a couple different pretty similar setups kahdksbd. I like to think Bud is pretty cuddly, and goodness is this appreciated any time except for late spring and all through summer.

(Bud likes to pick her up). YES. YESSSS. You can’t hear me cackling but I am, I LIVE to play with Bud’s height. My man is a literal Giant. I know heights in the show are inconsistent but he is so consistently Massive it’s so fun. Hold your wife soft and gentle like a cat 🥹

(Sleeping to cope) Oh as someone with Chronic Fatigue and other issues that cause coma-like sleep patterns, Buddy is the goal sort of guy. I imagine in this sorta case it’s suggestible to also probably leaves things like bottles of water and easy to digest snacks to get her sugar back normalized, because god waking up after that sorta sleep makes you feel like a zombie.

(Cooking, sharps) HE JUST CARES ABOUT THEM I’M GONNA LOSE MY MIND. It makes sense to try and lee them away from unnecessary threats like that, no matter the history of anything they’re both in pretty fragile or volatile states and need that extra boundary.

(Randomly remember fact) Oh that sort of stuff is so sweet I’m?? Especially considering her state with the memory gun involved it’s bound to be such a sweet thing to hear.

(Hair, Have to be in the same bed) NO BUT YOU GET IT. The physical closeness is necessary. It’s probably so grounding for both of them to be around the other, and doing things like that just makes it better. The hair braiding is so sweet oh my lord… And you know these two have to have one of those like big-and-tall California King beds, with how big Bud is aksbjbd

(Bud’s Parents) The vibe here is so good I’m,, The sheer love of one’s wife transcends all sometimes, legitimately and completely.

(Looking for them, weirdmagedon) I’M WASTING AWAY /POSITIVE. Losing them during the literal apocalypse must’ve been so damn stressful. And almost getting caught several times looking for his wife I’m actually sobbing. They’re his whole life and he has no idea if they’re safe at all, and with the state his wife is in and how unstable Gideon is it’s bound to be so terrifying… The sense of loss there is so sad, man D:

(Holding onto them, Crying,Post-Weirdmagedon) YES YES YES YESSSS. Has to keep them close, has to express how hard it was and just sit and cry and hold his wife - just because this was so stressful on all of them. And I don’t doubt that neither of them is complaining. BUT ALSO GODS THE DETAIL WITH GIDEON, I’M SHATTERED. That boy deserves to recover and get hugs and cuddles from his pa again :(

(Lovey-dovey, Post-Canon) Unironically, kids pretending to be grossed out and cringing at their parents but are secretly so glad they’re doing Good is my fucking favorite. You don’t see it much but when you do it hits so damn well. And here it hits especially hard. The kid probably blames himself for so much, and this is a huge weight off his lil ol’ shoulders - even if it shouldn’t be there in the first place. It’s comforting,,

[passthroughtime]

Was Sawa-sensei really the only argument Yagami had? The answer may shock you

So, few people know that I fucking despise this take. It's been fun and still can be fun to me sometimes, but as time goes, I see more and more people thinking that unironically and even hate Yagami for this, among other things.

(Huge spoilers for both games ahead. Obviously.)

And I do a lot of (over)thinking myself, as I am writing a looong fic (first three chapters already live on ao3, sorry for shameless promo), and I always love to delve into characters' motives in canon events, goes with writing exclusively canon compliant things of course, and adding to my ever existing brainworms. Moreover, I'm revisiting Judgment atm for the first time since early 2020 if I'm being correct? And I see a lot of things I've forgotten which give lots what has happened in Lost Judgment pretty damn much sense. The Sawa argument is among these things.

First things first, what was the takeaway of the first game for Yagami? His trauma at first was that he fucked up bad and felt he had lost some crucial evidence that Okubo was actually the killer, but during the events of the game it transforms into "I haven't done anything to get to the truth". His trauma, as well Kuwana's, has its core in their inaction during the critical events of their lives. They were never the same again because they didn't do anything while they could, and yes, in that regard they are wounded in the same way.

How have they both responded? In a similar way. Yagami swore to always get involved there he can do something to change the situation before it escalates. Kuwana does the opposite, he tries to punish for the mistakes already made. (Which is funny considering that Yagami as a lawyer dealt with consequences while Kuwana as a teacher had the power to navigate people's lives to prevent the same mistakes, but it's the whole other theme in itself, and has little to do with the initial one.) Let's focus on Yagami though.

The only reason why Yagami repeatedly gets involved on his own in the Lost Judgment plot time and time again, though literally nobody asked him to do so, is the lesson which he learns in the first game. He says explicitly that he wants to get to the bottom of things, and not forget about cases when a trial is done. That's the reason why he doesn't want to be a lawyer again and why he can never be one again, not full-time at least.

And then Sawa gets murdered. Yagami draws parallel to Terasawa Emi (because of course he does) and is determined to bring everyone who is responsible for her death to the light. For now, it's Soma, the direct murderer, and Kuwana, which made Sawa the connecting thread between his crimes. Yagami realizes that Sawa's death was a tool for everyone to get what they wanted, like Emi's. He references it here:

At this point, Yagami has no proof to think otherwise. He thinks that everyone has forgot about Sawa and that she shouldn't have died. The very least Yagami could do, is to make sure everyone will answer for what they did to her. He sees that Kuwana feels guilty and quite shitty that the student which he thinks so highly of was murdered. Kuwana feels responsible, and Yagami knows that someday he will break.

I think it's also important to say that at no point of LJ has Yagami says anything remotely identifying the goal of his words and actions as "murder bad", but that's more obvious than anything else though requires explanation too if I'm to be believed that Yagami isn't after justice for all the murders.

This whole scene is the Sawa argument summarized, but if you look closer, it is really the only beef he has against Kuwana.

BTW he's not as goody two shoes as you prefer to see him in LJ, if his "I get how you feel" doesn't convince you.

And then the one person Kuwana is determined to do anything for has betrayed him, right before Yagami's eyes. What does Kuwana do? Abandon Yagami when Soma has said to his lackeys to do anything so he wouldn't escape, even murder him perhaps?

Great question, Yagami. This really does contradict everything he has thought of Kuwana since forever. After, instead of a goodbye Kuwana makes sure Soma couldn't stay on the boat longer and kidnap/kill Yagami. RK had no time for that, fleeing was the priority over someone they can find some time after.

First thing Yagami does is visit Kusumoto at the hospital, where he learns she has no regard to Kuwana's life, as long as her son is safe and her crime stays uncovered. Which is fine, I guess, though it's sad because Kuwana would do anything for her and for Mitsuru, but whatever. Ehara doesn't come around too, which also understandable, though Kuwana has risked his life to give Yagami the crucial evidence, he is nothing to him and has already played his part. He is just a tool in his revenge. Wait... What?

Yes, actually it's Kuwana who is being brushed off as collateral damage by everyone. Everyone he has helped actually. And he hasn't come clean during the time before Ehara's trial (he at least could leak the information or point to the body without endangering himself, idk) nor he disappeared to save his skin.

After the trial he thanks Yagami for helping Ehara (which Kuwana wasn't able to do himself) and points to his, and Kawai's body, location. Kuwana knows damn well he can die, but getting to the one who murdered Sawa is more important to him. So, Kuwana has no one on his side, even himself.

No one is going to save him. Sure, he isn't as innocent as Emi, he has fucked some shit up. Does he deserve to disappear for good and be forgotten, or even worse, be remembered as a psycho teacher who killed his student? Yagami doesn't think so. All Yagami sees is that Kuwana desperately tries to protect everyone who did everything right or did nothing at all, every victim of bullying. He has no other motive.

Yagami takes no shit from Kuwana, he isn't afraid or angry when Kuwana threatens to blow up the warehouse (as Sugiura and Higashi for example). He knows that Kuwana isn't capable of killing anyone who doesn't deserve it, he takes no pleasure in murder and doesn't do it for personal gain. Yagami, Kaito, everyone else aren't guilty of anything which deserves death as punishment.

If not for the gang, he would set off the bomb though, I'm 100% sure. But that's besides the point.

So, returning to the question: Was Sawa-sensei really the only argument Yagami had? An answer is yes. Because he really doesn't fucking care bullies are being murdered, slay worstie. But it's not because he's such a crappy lawyer, but because he realizes the importance of a person's life above everything else. And a person who cares is not necessarily stupid or unprofessional.

You can argue all you want who was right and who was wrong. It doesn't matter for the characters.

It was never about justice. They don't argue from a legal point of view. It was about remembering about the importance of a person's life.

I beg you to look at this story from another perspective. Not as a technical coldly-perfect story it should've been. People are imperfect, and Yagami, first and foremost, a person. A person who cares. And JE with LJ as stories can be imperfect... but also realistic.

Terasawa Emi is murdered for the greater good. Sawa is murdered for selfish reasons. Kuwana is almost murdered for the both. I can't imagine Yagami would want to go through lots of red tape to do something someday. He does this something right now. Because the lives of people, living and breathing, should be protected right now and valued above what's right legally.

Please, stop looking at fiction as something which should be perfect, or make more sense, be more logical and emotionally detached than the real world. Some can be like that, but Judgment hasn't been from the start.

[therealvinelle]

What's your opinion on the fandom's obsession with Smeyers mormonism? I'd just recently discovered your metas(and they're so interesting btw they brilliantly expand upon the almost kinda psychological horror esque feel of the characters and story). But then I go into your replies and tags expecting everyone to marvel at your genius exploration of what's eluded to in the canon text or just the likelihood or natural outcomes of certain scenarios and decisions that have/may have not happened in the context of the overall story. Instead it's most of the time just a bunch of people going, "Aha. Confirmed it! That's so because Meyers a Mormon" or "See, that insert literally anything happened because of the Mormom themes, characterizations and ...idolization??? of insert literally any character/aspect of the lore. "

It would be a lie to say it isn't irritating even speaking as an atheist because it literally stifles any actual exploration of nuance within the books. Any theory, character analysis, or legitimate in/out of universe explanation in regard to canon can be boiled down to such an archaic supposition. And it's not just your blog. I see it everywhere here on tumblr when discussing anything twilight. Even people indifferent to twilight and twilight antis alike are of such strong conviction that they erase any character's belief or motivation or really anything Meyer has said in regards to that matter

Seeing as I'm running a doylism purist blog I obviously agree with you. The author's religious belief are a non-issue to me when I read Meyer's works, or anyone else's for that matter.

I say that, but there are exceptions - there's something strikingly Calvinist permeating the world of Harry Potter in that people are born good or bad and the juxtaposition between Tom Riddle and Harry Potter seems to boil down to Tom being a bad person who will make bad choices while Harry is a good person who will make good choices, and this extends to the rest of the cast and the Hogwarts houses as well. However, these are children's books with Good Guys and Bad Guys and I won't pretend to understand what's happening in JKR's brain, and so you won't see me saying that Harry Potter is Calvinist: merely that there are parallels that can be drawn.

Similarly, taking a step outside the YA genre I find that Victor Hugo's own political and religious personal journeys are reflected in Jean Valjean and Marius Pontmercy, but while it adds to the reading experience it doesn't make me see the characters any differently. They stand on their own.

I bring up these examples for a reason - sometimes, no matter how Doylist you want to be, you read a book and you can tell that, "oh this is an allegory for apartheid", or "I can tell the author is writing about personal experiences with trauma" or the plain old "you know, this feels like the author was projecting a lot" (frequently found on Ao3).

Twilight, for me, is not one such work. My thoughts on Mormonism and Twilight are summed up here, but one point I feel I should make is that although Twilight never read as Mormon to me, I also straight up know very little about Mormonism, so who knows, maybe I would be picking things up if I was more into it. As it is, however, the analyses of Mormonism in Meyer I've seen have been consistently reductive and superficial, where things like "Carlisle is a young blond leader -> Joseph Smith, the Cullens are a perfect family -> they're mormons, nobody in this YA series drinks alcohol -> they're mormons" are presented as compelling evidence, so I've yet to be convinced of it.

To actually answer your question though, I would just block "Mormonism", "LDS", and "Joseph Smith" on tumblr saviour and smile blissfully at my Mormon free dash. In fact I would do that anyway, regardless of what the Twilight fandom is posting.

[mayxthexforce]

⭐️ ― convincing portrayal of a canon character

💻 ― excellent writing

🌼 ― creative headcanons

🎙️ ― great to talk to

📚 ― nice threads to read

🎀 ― all-around kind person

🥇 ― well-developed oc

😍 ― admiring from afar

📌 ― a staple on the dash

🏆 ― 10/10 blog, would recommend

🧡 ― sender's choice ( sender can add whatever category they want ) - MICA I LOVE YOUUUUUUUU ❤️ you're the best mwah thanks for being such an awesome and cool friend ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ having you in my life has been PHENOMENAL!!! Thanks tons for the awesome joyride

💜 ― receiver's choice ( simply shout out whoever

🐝  *  ―  𝑺𝑯𝑶𝑼𝑻-𝑶𝑼𝑻𝑺 𝑶𝑭 𝑨𝑾𝑬𝑺𝑶𝑴𝑬𝑵𝑬𝑺𝑺. 

*-cracks knuckles-* alright, let's do this!

⭐️ ― convincing portrayal of a canon character

Shout-out goes to @prodijedi. I love Callie's Dooku, he has so much depth and layers and cares so much about the people he loves deep down but is too deep in the mess he made and doesn't know how to show it, but Callie doesn't erase the fact that he has done terrible things.

💻 ― excellent writing

Shouting at @tacticalvalor for this one. So far, I've only interacted with Paz but I love him, and I love how well he's written. Jay has a way of making Paz so expressive despite the fact he's covered head to toe in armor and -understandably- unwilling to take it off. His inner thoughts are always a delight to read and the things he says always manage to crack me up.

🌼 ― creative headcanons

I think there isn't a single person in this fandom that's not creative when it comes to headcanons because we're all pretty big brained with them. But if I have to name just one, I'm gonna go with @thrawnur I LOVE YOUR HEADCANONS PJ! And I love the HCs and worldbuilding we've worked on together for Chiss. Our blueberries deserve more lore!!

🎙️ ― great to talk to

Shout-out to @corruptedforce/@crowsandmurder because Tanya is that one person you can always count on to be up to talk about literally anything. Everything I know about baseball, I learned from her. I also always love yelling with her about the stupid Star Wars questions people ask on Quora (still not over the person who had the audacity to ask why Obi-Wan didn't just kill Anakin, I'm outside their house with a baseball bat).

📚 ― nice threads to read

To this day, I still go into @d4gangera's blog just to read the stuff KT writes, and not just the threads I'm in, but everything she writes. I love how she writes Dagan, his inner monologues, his trauma after spending decades in bacta, his issues with the Jedi Order and the Empire and this new era he got yeeted into. I love it all.

🎀 ― all-around kind person

@vendettavalor IS THE KINDEST BEAN EVER!! I'm still absorbing all the analogical horror stuff that you recommended me and you bet I'm going to be yelling in your DMs once I'm caught up.

🥇 ― well-developed oc

Shout-out to @gwiazdowe for Cirz. HE'S BABEY!! I love him and how kind he is and how he sees good in people that nobody else would see good in. But he's not dumb. He's a smart boy and he deserved the world, I'm protecting him at all costs.

😍 ― admiring from afar

Not really from that far because we've actually talked but I have yet to start a thread with @alootus and that is a crime I should be in jail for. But I'm admiring because the blog theme is just so PRETTY, I love the color palette and the graphics.

📌 ― a staple on the dash

I love seeing @kylo-wrecked's posts on the dash. From the aesthetic stuff to replies to answers to ask memes, it's always god tier content!

🏆 ― 10/10 blog, would recommend

@ofthestcrs AMAZING MUN, AMAZING CHARACTERS, AMAZING BLOG! Gee is one of the first people I interacted with in this fandom and honestly, I'm holding on like an orphaned monkey. 10/10 will not be letting go anytime soon.

💜 ― receiver's choice ( simply shout out whoever you want )

[isitoctober212015yet]

MOB PSYCHO 100 WARRIOR CATS AU WHOOOOOO

I've been chugging along at these designs for ages and I am so proud of them and stoked to finally share them AA if you have any questions FEEL FREE to ask me I have been plotting and drawing this au so much (have many things still in the works to post!!)

AU Summary: A Long time ago a strange interloper claiming to be a Starclan warrior took over the clan (Dimple/Mosswish). He gave them a prophecy from the ancient times of a cat that would one day be destined to take his place as the True leader of the clan.

Years later, a stray (Reigen/Weaselflight) found two kittens (Mob & Ritsu/Sproutmask & Thistlestrike) abandoned in the trash and took them in. If anyone asked he would claim it was just so that he wouldn't have anyone's death on his conscience but nobody ever asked. He staked out a human neighborhood and left them on the doorstep and once he saw them get taken in went off on his way.

Almost a year after that Sprout and Thistle have no memories of the cat who saved them and they have both grown. Sprout is constantly wondering what lies beyond his yard.

He befriends a stay who just came back to town named Weasel that seems oddly familiar, who's been mentoring Sprout on the ways of the Clan. He uses Weasel's "true" stories as a springboard for all the things he wants to do someday and tells his brother all about (Thistle hides his concern about that) But there are clan cats who have been watching them convinced Sprout is the one chosen by Starclan to help them.

Eventually they come to him, offering him anything he wants if he will join them, permanently.

I have a lot more I'm keeping secret for now you'll have to find out >:3c

design and name notes under the cut!

First off: I started on these BEFORE the fursona plush actually ever got announced but about mid-way through plotting all this They Happened and I knew I could not use any aspect of them for these designs so if u want to know why they don't look like those. that's why. I ardently refused to use those designs. I love them!!! I have fanart in the works of them, but they're not part of this.

Mob - he was the first character I drew and the base off of which I drew everyone else because he's the default. He's the glass of water, the firestar, the plain chip, the True Neutral of design.

He was also the last one i colored and actually finished a design for LMAO. When it came to his name I knew I wanted -mask as his suffix because of the fact he is the most autistic character I have ever seen in my life (I am a professional autist, I know my own) and he is absolutely masking 95% of the time before the confession arc. I was stuck on what his suffix could be though, but my friend @cellulr suggested broccoli as a name and I remembered that OH YEAH he can make plants grow, which is how I got to Sprout, also it just sounds cute. He's a growing little sprout, it works.

Reigen - My design is very specifically based on the Least Weasel. I do not subscribe to fox headcanons under any circumstances. I don't care what reason people have for them he's not a fox. He's literally the quote "weaseling out of things is important to learn! It's what separates us from the animals...except the weasel." incarnate.

His name was the easiest one for me. He's a weasel, he loves to get out of Situations, Weaselflight. It's a winner.

Serizawa - He's a calico :3c I made him a calico because it matched the color palette of his pajamas and I just love his pajamas look because the blue suit is............kind of boring sorry <3.

I was really stuck on what to name him but i found out on the wiki that the zawa kanji of his name means Marsh and I really fell in love with that. -whisper was based on him being kinda shy when he first joins the clans but just like in actual canon he gets braver but is still a big gentle giant type guy

Dimple - I don't believe in realistic cat genetics for warrior cats content, these are a bunch of strays in the woods who have organized religion and superpowers. The cats can be green if I make them green. So Dimple's design was translated pretty literally but I made him very short and rounder than everyone else. And I gave him the same nicked ear that the claw security guard people draw him with/as all the time has. Also he's short and people keep thinking he's an apprentice I think that was a funny part of Scourge nobody used.

If you want to get realistic or something you could say maybe Dimple being green was proof enough to the clans he's otherworldly and therefore totally a real starclan warrior. His suffix Moss is pretty obvious but -wish has an in and out of universe explanation. In-universe it's about his own wishes of being important (godly perhaps?). Out of universe it's a reference to my favorite old timey warrior cats fansite warriors wish.

Teru - okay I will admit this is the only design that's loosely based on some fursona art. I saw art of him as a Pomeranian with the rest of the gang and I was obsessed I could not let him be a cat. He is a full respected warrior of the clan though do Not make any comments about him being a dog unless you wanna get killed. I love warriors aus or fanclans where non-cats are part of the clan too I think adding other animals adds a lot of fun elements to the world. In another clan of mine there's a pig. Reject canon. Add more animals to the clans.

As for his name I thought about naming giving him the Star prefix just to be annoying but theres certain lines I won't cross and that's one. So he's Suntuft. the -tuft is because he's a big fluffy dog lots of fur.

Toichirou - So like...in terms of structure Claw is basically just Bloodclan and guy who shows up out of nowhere with a huge army at the last second w/ plans to take over the world (forest)? that's so Scourge coded. Why does he have a clan name though? Secret For Later >:3c

In terms of design he's literally just a taller pointier Mob now in Red. Why he has the -claw suffix should be pretty obvious and I know in the anime his hair isnt quite red but i remembered it being pretty red when I was designing and Shou has red hair (im getting to him dw) so...red. I also thought it would be diabolical to give him the same name as the canon hero of the actual warriors books.

[alatismeni-theitsa]

I swear I remember seeing your critique/opinion on the Hades game at some point but now I cannot find it. I've scrolled through so many of your posts and tags and I still can't find anything in relation to it. Despite remembering your name attached to the post, I'm starting to convince myself that I saw someone else's post and not yours.

In any case, I would really like to know your thoughts on it. I'm not Greek but I am a casual player of the game, and recently (thanks to a friend of mine who is Greek) I've been interested in how Greek people view the way Greek mythology is being used in western media. So far I've only seen rants on Lore Olympus, which is admittedly a story I've always disliked. Even without the context of it misusing Greek mythology and spreading misinformation about the culture, it is still in general just a bad story with equally bad characters. The fact that it IS bastardising Greek mythos is the cherry on top, but without it it can't stand on its own two feet. It's literally relying on the content of Greek myths, otherwise it would not have gained the positive attention it still has today, yet it still has the audacity to treat the context of Greek myths and culture so poorly. I have a lot of beef with Rachel Smythe because of this. It's why I'm anonymous, I don't want to get harassed by her fanbase if they see this 😅

Hades, on the other hand, is a game I enjoyed a lot, and because of that I want to challenge myself and possibly learn a thing or two from an actual Greek person. I don't want to just agree with someone when it is something I already dislike and then completely ignore them when it has to do with something I do like but possibly has problems.

If you haven't shared your thoughts yet, I'd really love to see them. If you've already made a post or more about it, I would appreciate you directing me to them or to the tags where I can find them, cause I'm genuinely lost (how does Tumblr work???)

I'm sorry for the long ask, I understand you spend a lot of your time answering questions and dealing with ignorant people. It must be tiring. Thank you for your time ❤

Hello! Thank you for the asks and the supportive words 💙 here's the tagged posts :) the tag is #hades game . (Tumblr doesn't make our lives easy, does it?)

TL;DR for those who won't bother to look: Game looks fun and I'm thinking of playing it in the future but it's far from "Greek representation" and "Greek culture". It has some references to Greek mythology; some quite obscure (so they can mess canon things up without being called out xD) and others very superficial, like when someone might think of cowboys when thinking about the USA.

While nobody minds some creativity regarding the Greek myths, and we all enjoy a fun game, it's also good to know when a "Greek myth" product is not what it sells itself to be. To be fair the game itself never said it's going to be accurate, but almost nobody checks for accuracy anymore and they assume that what they see is correct, so the game doesn't have to put a disclaimer "we are inaccurate" to begin with.

[fyeahcompetentwomen]

Elimination Poll Group 1

This is the first of two elimination polls that I'll post today. The top three scorers in this group of 10 will get the three spots left in Group 1 of the bracket! This poll only goes one day, so vote quick!

Endorsement/blurbs under the readmore!

Sarah Jane Smith, Doctor Who: Investigative Journalism! It's how she solves mysteries with the Doctor and the Bannerman Road Gang.

Janet Frasier, Stargate: Frontline doctor to teams dealing with alien crap nobody has ever seen before. She is having to write the book, there are no guidelines but she is so steadfast. There’s such a strength to her that makes me believe in her. Big heart too. Adopted the only survivor of her planet, a young girl, and somehow balanced the career as head medical officer of the SGC with being an amazing mother.

Una Chin-Riley (Number One), Star Trek: Canonically, she's a badass who has hopped around multiple departments in Starfleet and is serving as the First Officer of the flagship (where she is 'the best first officer in the Fleet'). She collects information and people tend to 'end up owing her favors.' Her Illyrian heritage gives her increased strength and a super immune system, which she successfully hides from everyone for decades while serving with distinction. When Captain Pike is kidnapped on Talos, she goes after him, breaks into the lair, and convinces the Talosians that humans would make terrible slaves by threatening to blow herself and all of them up rather than remaining imprisoned.

Zelda Spellman, Sabrina The Teenage Witch: High Priestess! Mortician! Midwife! Diretrix of the Academy of Unseen Arts (and its choir)! Teacher of ancient languages! Witch! Aunt and mother figure! There are not many things this woman is not competent at.

Barbara Gordon, DC: Batman but better. She’d the og batgirl, obviously kicks ass, but most importantly after batgirl she becomes oracle the smartest and most competent person in the extensive batman gang. she's the girl on the computer, she runs everything behind the scenes, she knows everything and if she doesnt know it she will find out if you give her two minutes also she's a wheelchair using queen

Emerahl / The Hag, Age of the Five: Magician so competent she reached immortality, clever enough not to want to be deitified. Works whatever jobs are necessary to reach her goals, from prostitution to healer.

The Armorer, Star Wars: She is a total badass: expert armorer, leader and mediator, warrior

Tara Cole, Leverage: Highly skilled grifter, the only one Sophie trusts enough to help out the Leverage team

Jancy True, Drawtectives: Investigating, being a detective, solving cases... herding junior drawtectives like cats...

William Patterson, Blindspot: Anything to do with computers or science or problem solving, she's your girl. She can hack, she can program, she can find answers, crack codes, solve puzzles, make connections no one else can, notice details. She kills at trivia because she knows everything. She's also highly competent in the field, with firearms and other physically demanding tasks. Her knowledge of science is profound (her father is Bill Nye the Science Guy. No, literally).

[soullessjack]

okay it’s not important at all but i finally verbalized the thoughts I had connecting mob and jack, and I think the biggest one is the whole aspect of having another side to you that you don’t like, that tells you this is the Real You and nobody will accept the Real You so it’s stupid to have to pretend to be someone else or hold yourself back for the sake of people who don’t matter or want you.

in mob’s case that other side was SHIGEO, the personification of his powers and internal will, and in Jack’s case it was Hallucifer, his hallucinatory subconscious self represented by his biological father (the latter of which puts further yet subtle emphasis on the fact that jack views this part of himself as the True Evil he was supposedly always born to be). additionally, the 14x18 script towards the end literally says that Jack is “in thrall to the darkest part of himself.”

obviously mob and jack are drastically different characters from drastically different medias with drastically different themes and morals, but something else they have in common that i find incredibly interesting is that they both have self-centered tendencies and desires which they struggle to accept or compromise with a moral code that demands them to be selfless all of the time; mob spends so much of his life trying to be cautious about the people around him and the consequences his emotions would bring to them that he can barely smile, let alone even laugh in season 1. he refuses any easy pass dimple offers to get the things he wants, and while it is noble in a way to strive to earn the things you want, mob still just shuts off the part of himself that can want anything at all because he adheres so strictly to Reigen’s advice of how to get it.

jack is canonically characterized to always be thinking of other people and never himself (another script mention), and in 14x15 he blatantly tells Cas that it’s selfish of him to choose not to use his powers to help the people he loves, even if that choice is for a good reason, ie self-preservation. despite how adamant jack is for his own autonomy and responsibility, he rarely advocates it for his own sake more so than he does the sake of others. he doesn’t like having to see his family worry about him, he doesn’t like being considered a weak burden on their shoulders, so he just represses himself and shoulders his own burdens and tries not to be too needy with it despite loving the feeling of being needed. but then this guy who blatantly feels like putting himself first is selfish and wrong is revealed to harbor a subconscious that tells him the exact opposite; he can’t worry about anyone else now, he shouldn’t bother trying to make amends or to earn back their love because he’s just trying to “shed his own skin” and be something he knows he isn’t, a self-made pet monster who was never really loved for anything more than what he could do for them, so nothing matters more than staying alive and solely trusting himself.

i’ve talked about Jack’s rejection sensitivity before (and i will talk about it forever believe me) but I think that can also be applied to Mob, too—or at least it can be applied to SHIGEO (also, on another note i absolutely love how the hidden part of him is referred to with his real name, it’s such a good detail that adds so much to him considering himself the Real One). going back to what I said at the top, SHIGEO spends the second half of the Bouquet Arc trying to convince Mob that nobody else really wants him—everyone was either just using him or saw him as a freak because of his psychic powers, and the only person who truly accepted him was Tsubomi. furthermore, SHIGEO presses on that he’s the Real One—similar to how the Mauler Twins from Invincible are constantly arguing over who’s the original and who’s the clone (insane stretch but hear me out)—and since he’s the Real One, he’s the one that nobody will accept. ‘Mob’ is just a mask; ‘Mob’ is just the persona that everyone else wants SHIGEO to be; Mob is what forced SHIGEO to hold back from doing literally everything he wants, from being who he wants and getting what he wants, completely inconsequentially to the effects it would have on others.

both jack and mob are completely horrified by these two sides of themselves; they are literally horrified by their own wants and internal desires and thoughts. mob is even so horrified that he internally tries to tell ritsu and teru that this side of himself isn’t him, and not to accept it—to fight with all they have against it, even—because they’ll just get hurt otherwise. and jack isn’t even just horrified, he’s so angry at himself for even being this way to begin with that he tries to punch his own hallucination because he just can’t accept his own subconscious thoughts. he can’t accept the notion that this is his true nature or that he’s going to lose everything he’s ever had or loved because of it. to pull from my other RSD post, both jack and mob (or, these specific parts of themselves) are reacting to the idea of being rejected rather than the actual action, and projecting their internal self-rejection onto everyone else around them

TLDR autism blast they’re best friends

[audoodle]

persona 5 party and how gay I think they are (also I get very distracted writing post canon ideas and write a lot about haru)

(also disclaimer I'm going to be describing anime girls as butch and femme I know that NONE of these characters are anywhere close to butch because the men who made this game don't know what that is. I'm talking pure head canons. I promise I'm not trying to convince you haru as she exists is butch)

joker - he's a he/him lesbian and if you don't see it I hope you get better.

ryuji - dude doesn't know what he is. people keep telling him he's bi and has had it explained many times but it doesn't add up in his brain.

morgana - your kitty hatred has blinded you from the fact that there's something gender in this cat. nobody knows not even him. nobody has really bothered to figure out.

ann - I could go one of two ways with ann. on one hand she's got like a real adult job and defined sense of style so I could see that just being how she carries herself for a long time but also she's like 17? I could easily see her having a breakdown and completely restyling herself into something more punk and alt because of how much of her image was built up by people not around her. oh she's a lesbian also but you knew that.

yusuke - the least gay. dude is like harry styles or that soccer mom that looks like a lesbian. he just dresses like that and is like "what??? no I don't like men how silly." maybe he'll like men later once he stops being absolutely weird to people and asking them to strip for him but right now he's the straight one to me. (am I a yusuke hater yes)

makoto - makoto is a lesbian and makoto is more femme than you think actually. like after she gives up on being a cop and decides to do literally anything else she relaxes and connects with a feminity she never got to fully explore. she can't really leave her old style behind fully and is probably ending up a he/she and just presents differently based on the day.

futaba - futaba is our most obvious contender for a trans woman lesbian as well as a character who's already trans before the events of the game but honestly imagining that I think that would mean she has the most awful 4chan brainworms about being trans and combined with her depression it she ends up with a lot of self loathing. it's a bad time and as makoto learns more about how she wants to present she realizes how insane futaba sounds (a fight breaks out when futaba calls makoto a theyfab).

or honestly? I can kind of see trans guy or cis ally lesbian futaba? like I could them being the absolute weird 4chan trans lesbian but I could also see her being the kind of girl who trans girls flock to because she's pretty and is also way too online. and then she's like mid 20s and is dating a trans girl she met off 2chan and being like "I used to say kek but if you call someone a passoid one more time I'm going to fucking destroy you."

haru - I said makoto was more femme than you think and maybe you saw this coming but haru is more butch than you think. similar to ann her entire aesthetic is built by what was expected of her and now that she's free of that she kind of accidentally falls into something more butch. I think an underrated aspect of haru's character is how much she enjoys violence.

like obviously we talk about sadist haru as a haha funny but I find something very compelling about the fact that haru has an intrinsic enjoyment of combat. other female characters like ann and makoto talk about feeling uncomfortable and scared in the metaverse while it seems to be a fantastic stress relief for haru. it's probably the most physical activity she's ever done. her satisfaction doesn't come from taking down a target (because you know. taking down her dad didn't go well and then after that she's in the endgame where it's really really do or die). it comes from the process of being in the metaverse and fighting shadows.

and she learns that working up a sweat, destroying things, and getting her heart racing are all things she learns are good for her mentally. after the events of the game when her outlet for that is gone she tries to find something more sustainable to do with her energy from fencing (a safe form of combat and competition), to weightlifting (so she build up more muscles now that she can't summon a persona), and finding something like axe throwing to do as a way to use an axe of some sort again.

I think her green thumb nature stops her form getting a lumberjack occupation so she doesn't get much excuse to use a full size axe and something more aggressive like boxing or MMA she doesn't actually have it in her to hurt someone else so intentionally like that. so she isn't fully back to where she was mentally when fighting shadows but its a routine that really works for her and allows her to relieve stress and gets her stronger so she can work on her gardening which gets more and more physically demanding as she expands her garden more and more.

I think one time the group meets up for the first time after a few months maybe a year and someone (probably ryuji) is like "damn haru you're like the most built of any of us now! right on man!" and haru is like "huh?" because she still sees herself as the way she had been set up to see herself for her teen years. she spends that night looking at old photos of herself and it finally hits her how much her freedom has changed her for the better. how when she was 17 she couldn't have imagined what she would be like now but now she can't imagine anything else.

I still think she dresses femme pretty often when she's going out to fancy parties for work or meeting up with friends. she hasn't given up anything from exporing this part of herself. she's just become a more well rounded (and far too busy) person.

oh uh where was I?

oh yeah she's bisexual. by the way.

akechi - oh this is a gay boy. he thinks joker is into him but joker thinks akechi is also a lesbian. like when akechi kills joker in the interrogation room he's like "so sad to kill the only gay guy I know my age. if things were different..." and then in third semester joker is like "I heard the recording. I'm a lesbian are you not a lesbian???"

yoshizawa - dog I don't know what her deal is. honestly I think she's straight. she doesn't seem like she thinks about romance enough to have an opinion so she's probably comphet.

sophie - she likes girls but doesn't know why. (I could probably write a lot of thoughts about sophia being an AI and how she sees love but the post fell off the rails once and I haven't played strikers since it came out so)

zenkichi - dude is too sad about being a single dad to realize he's probably bisexual.

[starry-blue-echoes]

Alright, follow me with this one: Au where Dio is the good guy is Jonathan is the bad guy. One where Jonathan instead hates Dio from the moment he arrived, threw his own dog in the incinerator and blamed it on Dio. And he might try and poison his father, but unlike Dio he doesn't really have access to anything really potent. Maybe he does try to poison his father. But I feel like Dio would have an innate sense for when something is wrong and catch him in the act. He goes and does the whole tracing when the poison comes from while Jonathan plays around with the mask. Now in this au, I don't know if Dio would really have a reason to look into the stone mask, but I could be mistaken. The whole plot of Phantom blood plays out with Dio being good and Jonathan being bad, and also in this au Erina is Dio's s/o instead- but anyway. Yeah. The whole boat thing would probably play out the same and Battle Tendency would probably look the same as well, but you kinda get a bit iffy when it comes to SDCs. Thoughts?

-fanfic author anon

I actually have an AU that's almost exactly this! It's called Shattered Glass, but admittedly there are a few differences. One of them is that Erina and Jonathan still end up married/in love (and I'll admit I've been pondering the idea of them being an evil power couple)

As for the plot of PB :)

the beginning goes mostly how you said. Jonathan's a brat and an asshole and Dio genuinely wants to take this opportunity as a fresh start. George still ends up slightly favoring Dio, but that's because most of Jonathan's attempts at making the other boy look bad fall through since Dio does what he can to avoid responding to the taunts, which then just serves to make Jonathan hate him even more

Jonathan still ends up researching the mask, but similarly to Canon Dio he ends up poisoning George because he's finally around the age where he could get his inheritance without issue or much suspicion. Maybe he still finds the letter from Dio's father which inspires him to do it in the first place

but obviously Dio ends up fucking that up too and using some of his old knowledge he goes to find the guy who sold Jonathan the poison (and also picking up Speedwagon along the way)

so naturally Jonathan is kinda freaking out a tad. After all, Dio cannot make it back or else literally everything is going to be ruined. He has a similar moment like canon where he uses the Mask on some randos, but instead of waiting until he gets back to the mansion to use it he ends up putting the thing on the second the sun goes down again

this then leads to nobody actually knowing that Jonathan has the Mask in his possession :)

because while yes Zeppeli ends up mentioning to Dio about the existence of a mask, because of how vague he is about it Dio has no reason to believe the thing Jonathan had been researching was the same one, nor that Jonathan still has the mask in his possession. After all, Mr.Joestar apparently had the mask long before Dio had even been born, and he's not too certain if the timelines line up because Zeppeli looks WAY younger than he actually is

so then fast forward a bunch because honestly everything in between Jonathan using the mask and the Boat is essentially exactly the same, and things go....... rather differently here

see..... this time, because they were unaware of its existence, Dio And Co never actually destroyed the mask. Instead, Jonathan had entrusted Erina with keeping the Mask safe. She'd also been watching from afar and ended up rescuing Jonathan's head (she might be a vampire at this point too? or maybe she isn't yet because she was able to convince Jonathan that having someone capable of being out in the day would be useful)

And while I'm still figuring out the specifics of the when and how..... in order to make it so Dio can't use Hamon, they use the mask on him :)

While this does give him a massive physical boost, Jonathan is way more experienced and takes advantage of his confusion and inexperience to beat him in the end. Maybe Dio even ends up accidentally trying to use Hamon and very nearly kills himself in the process

And Jonathan....... he has none of the same respect Canon Dio grew to have. He loathed Dio for his meddling, for this invader intruding on his life and making everything so much worse and more difficult than it had to be. And while killing Dio would've been satisfying....... it wasn't enough

He wanted Dio to suffer

so he steals his body and locks him in a coffin and sends him to the bottom of the ocean, and there he stays for 100 years

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

HIII DUDE good afternoon how r u how's the tokyo ghoul rewatch going!! i would. Love 2 hear ur ghostkicks and/or tg thoughts literally at any given time. taking ur joke tags absolutely dead serious because im trying 2 figure out How To Write Them currebtly & we're doin a bit of wrangling in the google doc 😭.

u know i have the brainrot so so so badly because im on episode 3 of tg and all i can think is "i can make a pd au out of this" so im feeling rlly normal abt it basically. im blaming it on unravel.

ANYWAY. ANYWAY. ANYWAY. YEAH. HI. GHOSTKICKS. they are soooooo. tired depressed introvert gets adopted by a loud bubbly extrovert trope. at least on the surface. like how they behave at school in season 1. thinkin abt jimmy going "what is UP with bro behind u" and william just ominously lurking there. and how dakota defends him later !!!!!!!! idk how much of this youve gotten to yet bc i dont remember when it actually comes up in canon bc its such an ingrained part of his character but dakota is soooooo. guard dog coded. this hits especially hard in the "what if pd were villains" oneshot but its sooooo prevalent in canon too.

they both hold each other in the highest respect. william sees dakota as the prime (ha) example of what a hero should be. hes brave hes kind he does his best to protect everyone no matter what. hes all the things that william Isnt. BUT !!!! dakota also looks up to him !!! hes so smart hes good at problem solving hes so curious about everything and asking questions and poking his nose into things that nobody else would even consider. dakota knows hes not smart so he automatically looks to william whenever he needs a plan or someone to tell him what to do when he feels lost. they complement each other and they dont even !!!!! know it !!!!!!!

also regarding williams powers. fuck dude. season 1 he was so fucking scared of himself and ashamed of the things he could do . he hid every time he had to use wisp form !!! but dakota always thought it was so cool and was not QUIET about it. boy went fucking STAR EYES the first time he saw wisp form !!!!!! i will never stop thinking abt the first rolled for season 2 where charlie goes "if dakota hadnt left, he probably wouldve been able to convince william to keep using his powers and not to completely disregard their existence like he has been" and . considering what william is like in season 2... god this wouldve been a COMPLETELY different fucking campaign. theyre so. incredibly soulmates to me. theyre so important to each other theyd do anything for each other. i cant say too much more without accidentally giving you spoilers bc i WILL keep talking and not be able to shut up but GOD fuck ghostkicks enjoyers eat so well in the latter half of s2. moirails. 2 me !!!!!!!

[jackalsinthekitchen]

pop report #5: endless summer edition (9/16/23)

a sundazed glance at Billboard’s top 20 from two weeks ago – bitch, I said what I said

Summer’s over, the heat from the proverbial kitchen and literal sun still burning the other cheek I feebly turned to both. Per tradition, we’re bidding the season goodbye with a smattering of typical plaints that it wasn’t long enough, or felt like it didn’t happen. But here in Texas, it’s in full swing by early May, with not much mystery over what we’re in for beyond what degree (Fahrenheit) of punishing. So yeah – we’re pretty sure it happened. Yet again, we thought we were ready for it, and yet again, it went a little harder on us than it needed to. Whatever else went down, that lucky old sun made it cruel enough to justify a now-ancient Taylor chorus shooting up the pop charts. Like anything else that shoots up the pop charts these days, reasons why were imperfectly clear. One more testament to the inimitable inhabitability of the One True Pop Star’s catchy canon, perhaps? My summer wasn’t my fave; I can still feel it from here.

I’ve barely touched this new blog o’ mine, which I dreamt of putting up for years – the present you ogle at through the shop window for ages only to take it home and unwrap it, and see all that built-up desire instantly brown with oxidization. While Jackals! still doesn’t have a hook, for the first four weeks of 2023, at a rate of productivity that was ultimately to no one’s benefit, I looked at the pop charts and decided to think out loud about what they meant. But the thing is, in a year when people are thinking about it more out loud than usual, nobody seems to know exactly what they mean. There are analyses trenchant and muddled, and scattered rebuttals to both, strewn throughout comments sections we’ll never read. I’m too bored to even try to recap what I think I know about how these numbers are measured. Even my late best friend’s agitated analyses resisted my comprehension. Why dull the aesthetic with the statistical?

Suffice it to say, there are so many theories about “gaming the system” floating around, it feels a bit like last election year. Most of the people on my radar are in some way convinced that one Oliver Anthony Music’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” won its surprise Billboard victory through nefarious right-wing interference – comparable, you hear, to that Jim Caviezel movie about (fighting) child trafficking, where people bought out whole theatres just to stick it to Brandon. It’s not about the music, they say, it’s about waving a righteous-anger rag, and the rallying cry might as well be coming from any red-faced red-haired Bible-belt boy with a banjo who caught the Qanon virus at très-unmasked family get-togethers. A more neutral friend points out that “Rich Men North of Richmond” hung in at a basically ungameable top 3 place on Spotify for a bit. It was all great industry all around: for MAGAfolk, thinkpiecers, Billy Bragg.

Times change fast, though, so even if a few people are still reeling from them, the Billboard chart – much less Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits, where Anthony has vanished – has moved on to its latest single-star infiltration. That star is Queen Zillennial Olivia Rodrigo, whose guts are is filled with readymade hits, and who may portend a long-awaited pendulum swing back to a more rockist zeitgeist. But because it still literally does not matter what I do here, I wanna warm up these lazy fingers some by casting an eye back to two weeks ago, a whole world away, when the charts looked a bit more like they did in the middle of swelter season. At the ground floor of that top 20 was the indefatigable fatigue-pop of “Anti-Hero”, my most favorite song, which does not seem to have engendered a self-reflection revolution here on earth. But hey, maybe people are just keeping quiet about it. Even Taylor is going through some shit.

#19 is “Thinkin’ Bout Me”, by Morgan Wallen, the, uh, hot-button country artist about whom many folks certainly have thoughts. I haven’t heard this song as of this point in this paragraph, and I suspect it’s not as good as Frank Ocean’s pillow-pop classic “Thinkin’ Bout You”, which is the next song you get when you type “thinkin bout” in the search bar. Mr. Wallen, a reformed butt-rocker, has a harder edge than many of his southern-pop peers, and an excellent article I linked to earlier in this piece, written by a (non-right-wing) writer who’s spent just a little more time with young Wallen’s proudly endless albums than I have, suggests his lyrics even bespeak hip-hop (gasp!) influences. Perhaps this explains some words he enjoys using. The beat of this one is ripped unaltered from hip-hop; the lyrics might pass too, if rapped, though not in what I perhaps unfairly call “truck nuts voice”. Wallen is feeling upset, and entitled, about a recent breakup in this enduring hit, not helping his case by singing the song like an asshole. (More on this later.)

Country really is in its butt-rock era, in a sense – the guitars are amped-up and grinding, the (male) vox are growly and real-ass proud about it. “Need a Favor”, by something called Jelly Roll that’s miles away from Morton, was cited recently in an AA meeting I attended by someone it caught unsuspecting on the radio. We’re a very talk-to-God crowd in AA, and contra Wallen, there’s a humility in this song that’s not matched at all by its sound, but which pushes its stridence into something resembling passion. I’ve just found out via Google/Wikipedia that Jelly Roll is apparently an “American rapper”. He looks like a heavier Post Malone – also an “American rapper” even though everything he puts out sounds just like a pop song – and has a narrative about being incarcerated many times, which also lends some poignant complexity to his hit’s hook. Verdict: annoying if you’re in the wrong mood, but not necessarily bad for your health.

Next in my discovery journey is finding out who the War & Treaty are – they’re a Black husband and wife who weave country and rock into more traditionally Black styles like soul and blues. It makes sense that they’d team up with Zach Bryan, one of the better and, dare I say it, more soulful heavy country hitters hanging out in the high end of these charts. “Hey Driver”, which doesn’t trouble you with electric guitars or even drums at the top, is really stirring. The juxtaposition of tW&T’s full-bodied harmonies against Bryan’s voice, which crumbles once it hits the air, is gorgeous, and the lyrics boast a complexity rarely troubled with on most of these hits. It’s all sincerity, but for the most part, I feel like it earns it. Though the Billboard charts continue to exhibit a kind of separate-but-equal mélange of genres, this sort of crossover still feels rare – even if so much pop, R&B and country takes production cues from hip-hop.

At #16 (we’re at #16 btw) is the ever-restless, currently-somewhat-exhausted Miley Cyrus, whose tired but empowered “Flowers” is already one of pop’s great breakup anthems and stands as one of the songs of last summer. I spent some time in Ms. Cyrus’ canon last spring for a piece I’m proud of, but it didn’t dispel the impression I’ve always had that behind that fabulous voice and insouciant demeanor is not a very clear artistic vision. Cyrus swings from new tack to new tack, and unless she’s put a truly fantastic single together – she does this every so often – there’s always a trace of “unconvincing” there for me. “Used to Be Young” is scarcely different. A piano ballad, something she seems to personally favor, it has an air of reflective weariness (cf. “Malibu”) and light penitence (perhaps for She is Coming?). The media was rarely kind to her, but the hurt only comes out in her songs. The hook is solid, if a little programmatic (“you say I used to be wild, I say I used to be young”), and the music narrowly avoids sappiness with an atmospheric, beaty arrangement. And the fact is, when she starts to belt, she thins out her competition.

“Religiously” by Bailey Zimmerman – I would’ve typed “Blake” based on his face and sound if I hadn’t looked twice – is another revved-up, growly country song about having been deserted, and unlike Mr. Wallen, Zimmy doesn’t wink at you that she was super wrong to leave. The chorus – “I ain’t got the only woman who was there for me/religiously” – skirts patriarchal discomfort, but the lucky among us have had a deeply patient, unwaveringly supportive partner, so the regret is broadly relatable. The religious content is also rather muted – not like this is worship music or anything, though I guess it could pass if it were cornier – weaving the spiritual and secular in a seemingly seamless way. But it’s not not corny. It’s not clear if BZ has a sense of humor, and while his voice has some nice gristle to it (a la ZB), like most of country’s current heavy hitters, the music sounds straight from the factory (a factory with mandolins).

Lil Durk (feat. J. Cole)’s “All My Life”, #14, is also corny, but not enough to drag it down. The slow unfurl of its polysyllabic ruminations (there’s an element of hip-hop the rest of pop would do well to absorb), the classic-Kanye style kids’-choir hook, the simple, gorgeous chord progression: this is a song that aims to make you cry, and more or less earns it. Cole’s climactic middle section about slain young rappers is the highlight, of course; never were more brilliant pop stars cut down too soon than in the modern rap era. But the whole thing has a humility and sense of dynamics that arrests you the whole way through, even the verses you’re not following perfectly between choruses. There is a problem here, though – the single’s sweet sugar was harvested and glazed over by none other than Dr. Luke, one of music’s accused whose charges seemed credible enough to strip him of his license to practice. Can’t Ke$ha count on us?

#13 is “Flowers”, and #12 one of three fantastic hits from the indisputable movie of the summer. Barbie was fainter for me than I wanted, though I’m not sure how much more subversive – it’s quite subversive! – it could’ve been while still nailing the something-for-everyone thing. And anyway, what do I know? I’m just a Ken (or perhaps an Allan). “Barbie World”, the #12 in question two weeks ago – remember, this is all two weeks ago, I make the rules here – is the weakest of the trio. It’s a trap-haze interpolation of the old Aqua hit, a great song which nevertheless felt so aggressively hyper back in the ‘90s, it could hit like a form of torture in the wrong mood. Nicki Minaj, my original 2010s hero, hasn’t helped herself personally for a bit, but her effortless, earth-scorching command, even at a low temperature, is a perfect vessel for the universal empowerment this theme and its film intend – “all of the Barbies is pretty” indeed. #6 on this chart is Dua Lipa’s mint-condition, made-to-order disco anthem “Dance the Night”, the sort of banger that feels like it’s been around forever. The last Barbie hit, Billie Eilish’s startlingly canny “What Was I Made For”, a ballad that astounds a little harder every time it languidly unfolds, hung in at #22.

Oliver Anthony Music had dropped just outside the top 10 at this time. Part of my picking an earlier chart is that I wanted to write about him; that said, I don’t know that a single song has had more written about it in the recent past, and all in one week. Much was made of Anthony(whose beard conceals his build)’s irritation with people who use taxpayer-funded welfare to buy cheap treats. In fact, his fatphobia is the clearest toxicity in the lyrics, though the reference to “minors on an island somewhere” – as if the U.S. government did a thing to keep Jeffrey Epstein from hurting people – codes conspiracy theorist. But all the carping about his fishy success belies the fact that the song sounds great. Mr. Music’s voice is searing and powerful, the stark banjo and the outdoor ambience a production coup, and if it wasn’t so clear he was coming at this from the wrong place (though to be fair, he’s abjured any party affiliation), it would speak to the great open secret of U.S. politics, which is that bullshit pay is everybody’s problem, and these wedge issues, however serious, are there to distract us from uniting against our oppressors. As Billy Bragg put it in his pitch-perfect rebuttal, “join a union”. We’ve just been reminded strikes still work.

Having already touched on #6, I’ll breeze through 10 to 7. 10 is Rema & Selena Gomez’s “Calm Down”, an Afrobeat-graced pop hit with a vibe much resemblant of Bad Bunny and other recent Latin pop. Gomez’s post-Waverly Place penchant for coming on like she’s absolutely done with everything and is too tired to be bothered anymore suits the single’s quiet storm perfectly. “Vampire” is Olivia’s current piano-kissoff coup, and you already know how much it doesn’t suck. Gunna’s “Fukumean” gets stuck in my head here and there – well, just the “Fukumean” part – and I always subsequently wonder what it sounds like on the radio, where you still can’t quite say exactly what the fukumean. The music feels generic if peppy; the lyrics are conventional hip-hop aggro-bravado. SZA’s “Snooze” is no snooze, but also no “Kill Bill”.

I went through a breakup this summer, right around the time Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” blew up. His music is insistently catchy and melodically brawny, so for a short time “no way it was our last night” was sort of a pet chorus in my head. But this deteriorated quickly, paying attention to the rest of the lyrics – said night was booze-fueled, not the most relatable or charming thing for a grateful recovering alcoholic, and once again, Wallen’s greasy cockiness is an automatic turn-off. There’s very little indication that his ex wants to stick around, much less that Wallen, whose cultural function is primarily as a “cancelled” superstar half of the country is propping up in retaliation, has done a lot of self-interrogation about it. The song really does sound great, and its hook is invincible, but once again, it isn’t exactly good for you.

The late-breaking triumph of Taylor’s “Cruel Summer” would also leave a bad taste if the song weren’t one of her best. I say this because of the recent scenario in which our new pop hero Olivia Rodrigo had to pay Swift, whose business acumen seems genuinely frightening, for a touch of inspiration from this song (a chanted section…?) that could be ungenerously interpreted as some sort of theft for which some sort of repayment is in order. Their lawyers worked it out, but bad blood feels inevitable; Swift famously supported Rodrigo in a deliberately maternal way when “Drivers License” (sorry, “drivers license”) hit, but it’s not impossible to imagine that zillionaire cipher feeling a twinge of jealousy from which a few petty things might result. Rodrigo’s evasive responses in interviews seem to give credit to this suspicion.

Into the top #3, and here sits one of my favorite curios, Luke Combs’ musically beefed-up but lyrically unaltered cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”. Combs absolutely has truck nuts voice, and I’m still not clear what people who prefer that voice above all others do when he drops the line about his time as a checkout girl. It’s hard to pinpoint anything nefarious here; Combs has just sent an influx of money into the bank account of a more-or-less forgotten Black female singer-songwriter – though that song endures, and is now living in the high reaches of the charts, because it’s fucking fantastic. But then, I haven’t read any thinkpieces about it, and I’m getting about as tired of writing as you are of reading, so we’ll move on.

My boy Zach Bryan and our girl Kacey Musgraves are (well, were) at #2 with their gently broken collab “I Remember Everything”. With its soft bass-drum pound, quiet strumming, slowly sawn violins and swaths of echo, it sounds a bit like mists floating grimly over fields (antebellum, perhaps? Nah, not for Kacey). Here are two of our deftest, most openhearted country stars, and, finally, a country breakup hit with not a kernel of corn, setting its scene through pure suggestion instead of beating you over the head with a big new cliché in a sack full of old ones. Its magic dispels a little the closer you look, but it really works. So does the unflappable Doja Cat’s “Paint the Town Red”, noted by chartwatchers as the first rap hit atop the hot 100 in a hot minute. As with “Dance the Night”, once DC rolls in over the music, the song feels classic and eternal. Not unlike Dionne Warwick’s “Walk on By”, the source of its sample – a 60-year-old hit of such intense and incongruous fragility, it’s astonishing how well they worked it in. In the Spotify age, all pop is eternal. To that end, any summer whose soundtrack is woven into your soul is endless.

[madtomedgar]

fanfic tropes :)

body-swap

arranged marriage

fake identities/'identity porn'/identity reveal

This is one of those hippie schools where they don't do letter grades btw.

Body swap: in theory i love love love it, but in execution it is often stupid. The potential for autonomy issues alone is so good. Like. I need the character to be preoccupied with how the other person is going to feel when they get their body back OR being kind of shitty about it on purpose and setting up the other character for The Horrors when they do get their body back (but then that needs to come to a head!). It's a great way to explore power/powerlessness if one character is physically much smaller/weaker than the other, who is much stronger and tougher. Forced empathy that nobody wants and therefore backfires horribly yes yes. The other fun thing about bodyswaps is the necessity of acting, and then you get to see how the characters see each other, and that often reveals a whole lot about their biases and assumptions. And like. Seeing how others see you is imo often A W F U L so like. Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah.

Unfortunately it's mostly used for silly hijinks, "why didn't u tell me???" bs, and an excuse for "what if we had to fuck. and we were in each others bodies. and we were both boys O.O" and like. yawn. Do better. The potential is sky-high here people, get it together.

Arranged marriage: frustrating. in most fandoms i'm in i just do not buy socially mandated same-sex marriage. Arranged marriage is about property transfer and alliance through future offspring. That's not compatible with same-sex relationships being given the same social capital as straight ones. So as a set up for romance, i don't love it. As angst fodder where you have characters for whom this is like. The worst option? Yes, love it. Especially if they do care about each other but the situation brings out the worst in them. As you can tell I love torturing my faves. But yeah as a set up for romance, because I can't suspend my disbelief as far as worldbuilding for gay shit, and I'm supremely uninterested in hetero romance, not my thing.

Fake identities: hmmmmmmm. I like the concept. Usually the execution is kind of half-assed. I would LOVE a long fic where post-canon Lan Xichen thinks that he's found the re-incarnation of Jin Guangyao or like. Jin Guangyao possessing someone and is determined to be with them but it's either deeply unclear whether this person really is Jin Guangyao to the audience (but could go either way but never comfortably confirmed) OR it's clear to literally everyone else that this is Just Some Guy who is grifting OR it's a ghost or demon of some kind pretending and preying on Lan Xichen's guilt for nefarious purposes, but they can't get Lan Xichen to a) believe them or b) care because like 38 years of solitary confinement have Fucked Him Up Beyond Recognition :D.

But yeah the Potential I see here is like. "I'm stuck pretending to be this person and I have to be convincing but also they were a dick to you and I really like you so uh.... please have every good thing at my hands? oh shit they're back D:" (there's a kdrama called the crowned clown with this premise and it's GREAT especially because when the love interest finds out that the dick husband has been replaced with nice husband she is SO UPSET). Or like "i love you but i know if you knew who i was you would despise me so lemme just pretend to be someone else. maybe someone specific that you do love. this will be fine because it will never come out consequences are for other people" which. Yi City. Or the evergreen "you know me as I am now but not anything about who I was which I'm pretty sure is a load-bearing ignorance. Hope nothing happens to change this" which... that's less "pretending to be a different person" but it counts. But yeah I feel like it's mostly just "ooooOOOOoooo this EVIL person was PRETENDING THE WHOLE TIME!!! *gasp*" and that is just. the most boring iteration.