#old's backstory is being gay and stupid nothing else matters

[evilkitten3]

been reading the wadanohara manga and omake stuff and. y'know what maybe old deserved to go a little evil. as a treat

it's ok to go evil bc ur crush fell asleep on u and also ur an emotionally constipated sharkman. that's fine actually

[terminalmistake]

Ok, so I'm gonna get brave because I have no one to talk to and I wanna yell about my Newsies OC. (Please be kind to me-)

If anyone feels so inclined you can ask questions about him, but no one is required to do so.

Tw: description of Transphobia/transphobic parent. (nothing in graphic detail, but just in case. If you feel something else should be tagged please send me a message and I will warn accordingly!)

Luke with long hair, and Luke after he gets his hair cut, images from Picrew, linked at the bottom of the page!

Luke Dawson

Age: 18

Gender: Trans Male

Sexuality: Gay (absolutely has a crush on Jack but that's cause I'm cringe.)

Backstory: Born Dorothy "Dottie" Lorens, Dottie was raised as any girl would be. Her father was well off, oil money, and has a snobbish attitude. Dottie never subscribed to what he wanted. She failed out of her etiquette classes for being "Boyish, bratty and crass", much to her father's dismay.

At age 15, Dottie told her father that she felt "More like a boy, than a girl." To which he reacted very negatively, threatening to send her to an institution, or even the refuge, just to keep her in control. It worked, though, not for long.

One day she just couldn't take it anymore.

Just before her 18th birthday, Dottie Lorens stole clothes from her brother's closet, money from her father's safe (around $50), and left.

While she had the stolen money, she was smart enough to know it wouldn't last forever, and now, being on her own she could be whoever she wanted to be. Didn't matter that she was sleeping in an alleyway, at least she could buy food.

She could also tuck her hair in her hat, and bind her chest with bandages, that combined with clothes that were a bit too big on her, made her look...like she wanted. Like a boy.

He is a boy.

And that was all he really cares about. He didn't really make waves, he didn't hang around other newsies, and no one even really seemed to know his name. He just got his papers and did his job.

He was on the streets for a little over a month and a half before having the fortune to meet one Jack Kelly on a rainy evening. When asked his name, he stammered, he didn't even come up with a new name? How stupid.

He glanced at a sign, and remembered his old dog. He'd gotten good at lowering his voice.

"Luke Dawson."

With a smaller frame and a babyface, Jack just assumed the hesitance was him intimidating a younger kid.

"I'm 18."

Not to the people on these streets he wasnt. 18, but could pass for 15, especially if he was pouty.

So Luke and Jack found an agreement, Jack would teach Luke everything he knew about sellin papes, and Luke would split the profits 60/40.

"I'm not stupid. 50/50 or no deal." Took some butting heads, but the agreement was made. 60/40, and Luke could come to the Lodge House.

Jack doesn't find out that Luke wasn't born a boy for a while, and when he does it's on accident, though it was well intentioned.

Sleeping in a lodge house with 10+ other boys, Luke doesn't take his binding off anymore. He doesn't want them to know.

Before he could tuck away in an abandoned building or some other shelter and at least breathe soundly at night, but with constant and dangerous binding, it was barely a month before Jack saw the boy pass out, and after waking up with an argument, and Luke passing out again, Jack dragged him back to the lodge house and wanted to check the boy.

He wanted to make sure he wasn't mugged, that he wasn't hurt badly.

What he thought was dressings for broken ribs turned out to be...not that.

"I thought you were a guy!" "I am!!" Luke hadn't cried in a while, but he was damn close then.

In the end, while he took a minute to understand, Jack ultimately decided that if Luke was a boy then...fine. Who was he to say otherwise? It's not his life. But he does haphazardly help Luke cut his hair, though when the scissors broke halfway through, he had to take him to Miss Medda to get it fixed and cut properly.

And he brings him up to the rooftop with him and Crutchie so he can unbind. Luke told Crutchie when he asked why he was staying with them. He trusts Crutchie.

They're the only two that know, and only because Luke trusts them. Otherwise he would've been gone the second Jack found out.

This is all I have for now! But I hope you all like him...I've been working really hard on him.

[casliveblog]

Custom Toonami Block Week 138 Rundown

Spy X Family: Following last week’s… explosive entrance into school, Anya has an uphill battle trying to fit in. Loid becomes an almost literal helicopter parent making sure she’ll apologize to him and despite Anya’s new friend Becky objectively being a best girl, she’s kinda getting in the way of the apology and everyone else hating Anya’s guts is kinda not helping. She eventually does get to apologize after Loid’s vandalized like a quarter of the school to give her the hint but because Damian’s friends mentally teasing her, Anya ends up crying while apologizing and making a really moe face, this combined with Damian going to Spike Spiegel school of loving women that kick his ass, means he now has an epic crush on her but given he’s like six this just amounts to shouting at her and running away, making everyone else think he hates her. Back at home, Loid’s trying to tutor Anya but just because she’s psychic doesn’t mean she’s smart so she’s having a really hard time of it and runs off. Loid and Yor have a nice little talk about how to do what Anya wants and lay off the Tiger Dad stuff a bit and Yor talks about how her brother loved sharing his knowledge with her and if Anya doesn’t find joy in learning and/or motivation in improving her mind to show her loved ones things will be hard for her on that front. Loid agrees and they try to find a gentle way to motivate and encourage her but when he goes to check on her he finds she’s already been studying as much as she can and knows how important it is that she does well. Kinda fucked up honestly that Yor just thinks Loid’s pushing this huge academic weight on Anya to honor his dead wife like that’s a lot of pressure to put on a six year old like getting into the school was one thing  but keeping her on the super elite honor roll deal feels like overkill. Anyway the stinger shows Yor’s brother getting home from doing espionage shit and finding out his sister’s apparently been married for supposedly like a year and never told him so… that’ll be fun to explain.

Inuyasha: We continue with the Naginata of Kenkon filler arc and the group faces off against the four Demon Ninja henchmen. Sango gets a lizard guy that can shoot scales or some shit, Miroku fights the tiger dude that can just kinda fuck him up, Inuyasha gets a turtle dude that’s too tough for him once Hoshiyomi sucks the power out of the Tessaiga and Akitoki and Shippo get the gay bird guy that can fuck up Shippo because he’s Shippo but also has WAY too much trouble fucking up Shippo for any respectable demon. Though the fights are brief and instead of a 1v1 where everyone gets to shine and do some trickery to beat their bad guy Inuyasha fucking does a sneak attack that frees Miroku and he just fucking Wind Tunnel’s all four of them, like props for efficiency if nothing else, just throwing all the filler villains under the bus and reminding us why Narkau carries a metric fuckton of Saimyosho everywhere he goes, though for Demon Ninjas you’d think at least one of them would be versed in poisons but guess not, get wrecked I guess. Meanwhile Hoshiyomi has Kagome and reveals his tragic backstory of being betrayed by a priestess woman and now he thinks humans are stupid and shitty and the reason he didn’t take the other half of the naginata is because he uses the blade to absorb Kagome’s spirutal power to break the priestess woman’s seal on it and just kinda fucking call the other half right out of Akitoki’s hands so I guess it didn’t matter but like he coulda just grabbed the other blade on the way or something Akitoki was right next to Kagome when he captured her. Hoshiyomi uses the completed naginata to open the Dead Zone and floats up into the air because when you open a hellish nether realm portal the first thing you wanna do is get right up next to it, man learned from Garlic Jr. and took his lessons to heart. But yeah the crew’s kinda fucked, Miroku can’t suck up Kagome and Inuyasha’s down one sword and you can’t just throw Hiraikotsu at a hell portal and hope for the best.

Yu Yu Hakusho: So this episode’s kind of fucking fantastic. Turns out Itsuki’s power is summoning Prismo from Adventure Time to swallow everyone but Yusuke up so he and Sensui can have a fair right. You know for all Hiei’s talk about ‘Toguro wanted to release your potential and Sensui won’t be that generous about handing you the key on a silver platter’ if Sensui really wanted to he could’ve just had Yusuke swallowed up too and the plan would kinda be fucked right here but luckily Sensui does want the chance to be proven wrong by Yusuke. Itsuki’s motivation is kinda interesting, he’s actually a demon that stalked Sensui when he was a young Spirit Detective and started to get Sensui to think about how some demons can be good which paved the path for his flip on humanity. Itsuki makes no bones about being totally fucking gay for Sensui and says he’s the kind of pure person that will reflect anything given to him so if he’s become evil and deranged it’s because he’s absorbed a world that is equally so and whatever he does to the world is justice. That’s basically a fancy way of saying ‘the guy I simp for can’t be wrong’ but it’s nuanced enough that it makes sense as the logical thought process of someone that’s become enamored with the depth of Sensui’s multifaceted personality. Meanwhile Sensui’s giving Yusuke his own lecture about how doing a hard job like this will inevitably corrupt him and if he embraces it and chills out and enjoys becoming a sociopath it’ll be a lot easier. Yusuke has a pretty awesome comeback about how up until now his life’s been pretty shitty and the so-called dirty job Sensui thinks is corrupting him is the thing that’s let him help people and learn to reach out to others and he refuses to be bent over backwards by it or by Sensui. The rest of the episode is the fun opening volleys of Yusuke vs Sensui and we get the reveal that Yusuke is actually stronger than Sensui in most every regard but Sensui’s smarter and more experienced, like a Piccolo vs Form 2 Frieza situation. After being off the wall enough to catch Sensui off-guard Yusuke gets a couple first blood shots in and Sensui reveals he’s fucking covered in scars that he inflicted on himself as part of his training, just in case we hadn’t sold the fact he’s crazy enough yet.

Jujutsu Kaisen: So this week’s our official intro to Gojo’s powers and it’s suitable epic, he spends the whole episode bouncing Captain Magma around faster than you can say Krackatoa. He has like… parabola armor in that the closer you get to him the harder it is to actually hit him with anything and also he has the power of Infinity which for some reason means shooting laserbeams like idk I can’t exactly tell him it’s scientifically incorrect to be able to shoot laser beams by touching infinity because who would be able to fucking test that. Like his power doesn’t really seem to have ‘mechanics’ to it beyond the theme of Infinity and his ability seems to just be ‘be stronger than you’ from what I can gather which don’t get me wrong it’s fucking awesome I’m just not entirely wrapping my head around how it functions and how it displays the mechanics of Jujutsu. Captain Magma is so pissed that he forgets all about the Hypercube plan and just wants to fucking murder Gojo which he should’ve realized wasn’t going to happen when Gojo pulls a fucking Metro Man from Megamind and dips out of the fight halfway to run an errand to grab Yuji and come back so he can watch their Domains expand. From what I understand Doman Expansion basically means everyone gets a Reality Marble from Fate to power up their attacks and like create fire and shit if your power is fire or… be Itachi’s Tsukuyomi in Gojo’s case since he just basically paralyzes Captain Magma with infinite possibilities aka the college experience. So yeah basically Domains work on Bleach rules where the stronger power overpowers the weaker one or how Field Spells used to work in Yugioh where one can overtake the other with splashes of Pokemon with elemental weaknesses can trump things that are basically tied otherwise. Idk how I feel about that like I don’t really like the mechanics of the show telling me ‘this person is stronger so they can no-sell the other’ like I’ll have to see how it plays out in the series but I think it’d be a lot more interesting if the Domains mingled so you had a different type of terrain for every battle based on the clash of the two peoples’ innate powers. But yeah Gojo fucks Captain Magma up and rips off his head but Flower Dude comes to save him and run like a bitch. So Gojo’s just like ‘yeah let’s get you strong enough to do something like that’ and meanwhile evil leader dude is chilling on a beach playing soccer with Captain Magma’s still living head.

Chainsaw Man: We cut right back into the Eternity Devil fight which again has Jujutsu Kaisen mirroring the pacing of Chainsaw Man with them fighting something that has to do with Infinity, though in this case unlike Gojo the Eternity Devil gets its fucking ass kicked because it’s basically a million balloons filled with purple flurp against Chainsaws and Denji can use their blood like gasoline to keep healing and fueling forever literally out-eternitying the Eternity Devil. Himeno has a flashback to her partners talking about how the only way to beat Devils is to not be afraid of them and only someone fucking crazy wouldn’t be afraid of them and luckily Fucking Crazy is Denji’s middle name… possibly also his last name idk if he has any other names besides Denji. So Denji carves up the Eternity Devil like a Thanksgiving Turkey full of Grimace Shake for THREE DAYS and the Eternity Devil’s just like ‘fine here’s my glowing weak point just please stop bro this is awful’. So yay victory for Team Fucking Crazy. Himeno’s really happy about this because it means she may be able to save Aki from going all Kurakpika and blowing his life force load in search of vengeance and the plan is to throw Denji at the problem and hope he out-crazies the Gun Devil which isn’t a great plan but given their last plan was not having a plan it’s an improvement. Kobeni and other dude are quitting after trying to murder Denji and shitting themselves at the first sign of miserable groundhog looping hell so they’re having a big drinking party to… celebrate that I guess. But yeah we go around and flesh out the side characters a little bit and even get some more character stuff for Makima so that’s fun and Himeno gets shitfaced and decides to give Denji his kiss and… fucking pukes in his mouth which even Denji has standards against but I’m sure it’s someone’s fetish, two devils one cup and all that, I knew the scene was coming and Hulu pixilated it but I’m still glad I watched it after dinner instead of before. While Denji’s puking his guts out and having an existential crisis over why his every step towards physical intimacy is fucking cursed as hell, he passes out and Himeno just kinda abducts him from the bar and takes him back to her place, so shitfaced that she doesn’t even remember doing it until he wakes up in her bed and she’s half naked. Still pretty fucking drunk and watching another man hopelessly chase after Makima, Himeno does a little projecting and offers Denji they just fucking fuck which is kinda… dodgy? Idk what the ethics are here like Denji can barely fucking move so I don’t think either of them are in a consenting position and also Denji’s 16 but because he’s Denji even he’s not entirely sure of how old he is and he’s probably just guessing which gives hentai artists plausible deniability I guess so the situation is so fucked up that it kinda wraps back around to being morally gray enough to not be all that problematic I guess?

Ranking of Kings: So Turns out Daida’s gross dad milkshake was a potion of resurrection and led to him getting his body possessed by presumably his dad. Meanwhile Bojji’s still in hell trying to get training and they bribe Despa enough for him to actually train Bojji and despite seeming dodgy at first it seems like he’s a nice guy that really wants Bojji to succeed and is on the up and up. He analyzes Bojji’s potential and finds out he has zero muscle potential and literally can’t get stronger no matter how hard he works so he’s basically like a Reverse Rock Lee. Still Despa’s like ‘motherfucker you paid me, I am gonna make a fucking king out of you’ and resolves to train Bojji, giving him a mystery weapon that suits him and training him for weeks outside of Kage’s (and our) view. We get a nice little montage of how Bojji’s doing studying, training, and housework before anyone’s even awake and then going to the real training to learn techniques from Despa to make up for his lack of physical strength and capitalize on his speed and skill, almost like standardized teaching is bullshit and playing to your students’ strengths is the only way to help them succeed. Anyway there’s a huge explosion and Kage sees Bojji standing in front of a huge fucking rock looking like he cut it in half somehow, like this could easily be a joke or a swerve but if he found a way to actually be good at fighting this is big.

Vinland Saga: Turns out the King of the Danes decides to let the soliders take the winter off from killing the English which makes things hard for Askeladd’s crew since they’re profiting off the war and have already sacked all the good places around. Askeladd’s just like ‘hey somebody’s gotta be killin’ somebody somewhere right?’ and they just fucking go to France for the winter. In France they find a skirmish already in progress where two French generals are just kinda fighting each other I guess, one’s raiding the other’s fortress and Askeladd wants to join the raiders since taking everything from the fort is probably better pay than helping defend it and sends Thorfinn to go negotiate with the raiders specifically because he doesn’t care if the raiders just fucking off him for the language barrier. Thorfinn’s getting fed up with being strung along for like the better part of a decade at this point and asks Askeladd when he’s gonna get his fucking duel and Askeladd tells him if he kills a general and brings him his head he’ll duel him. Thorfinn meets with the lizard-looking motherfucker leading the raiders and it’s funny because they just have a translator but since we’re obviously not gonna have them speak French and Norse he’s just repeating everything that’s said in English. Thorfinn tells him it’s better to attack from the river than the front door but apparently there’s waterfalls and shit stopping them from getting upriver, meanwhile after Thorfinn gives the signal that the raiders are in on the plan, the French soldiers see Askeladd’s men carrying the figurehead of one of their ships over the mountains and mistake it for a real fucking dragon which is pretty cool. The battle starts and turns out the fucking Vikings carried all three ships across the plains to drop it in the river right by the base to flank the fortress. Askeladd sees the French general and immediately just fucking leaps over the fortress to go for his head, distracting the crossbow guys and inadvertently saving some of Askeladd’s men and it’s kinda funny because he mows through the French troops like crazy but then accidentally drops the general’s head off the side of the fort and is just like ‘ah fuck’ and has to go in after it. Askeladd’s men flank the base and just fucking slaughter everyone before the raiders even get inside and by the time the raiders figure out what’s going on Askeladd already has all the treasure and is like ‘yup, our half’s all this shitty gold, you get the fort and all the glory, pretty cool deal huh?’ and Thorfinn fucking jumps back onto the boat just in time and tosses the general’s head in front of Askeladd, challenging him to a duel. Askeladd’s just like ‘yeah kid that’s pretty cool and I’mma let you finish but we gotta get the fuck out of France like five minutes ago so we’re gonna hit pause on that for right now’.

[qqueenofhades]

Fake dating AU for the idiot Heartrender Husbands! I beg of you!

As ever, I am preposterously easy to enable, and since they will eventually make an appearance in A Phantom in Enchanting Light, I decided to write their backstory for that verse. Also, “fake dating but it’s only fake because they’re both idiots” is an Aesthetic. I love them.

Moscow, 2010

The guy is most definitely late. Fedyor got here early – probably too early, since they’re supposed to meet at eleven and he arrived by quarter past ten – but it’s now 11:08 and still no sign of him. Fedyor has claimed a corner table in the coffee shop just off Red Square with its splendid old tsarist-era décor, surrounded by the murmur of conversation and clicking laptop keys as his fellow Muscovites get on with their daily lives. The rule is fifteen minutes, yes? If Ivan Sakharov doesn’t show up in another seven, Fedyor is free to bail. But it’s been so long, and Nadia, the mutual friend responsible for this set-up, has begged Fedyor to give him a chance. And since it is understandably difficult to date as a gay man in Russia, Fedyor’s patience must be tested longer than usual. He sips his flat white and glances at the door again. Still no Ivan.

Fedyor opens his phone and checks the photo that Nadia sent him, trying to decide if this man is attractive enough to compensate for his tardiness. It’s hard to tell. It is 11:14, and he is absolutely about to pack up and leave by no later than 11:25, when a tall, grim-faced man in a red windbreaker strides in. He stops short, glances around, spots Fedyor, and powers over with such single-minded determination that Fedyor fears he’s about to be arrested. “Hello,” he says curtly. “I am Ivan Ivanovich Sakharov. I believe you are waiting for me?”

“Ah – ? I am Fedyor Mikhailovich Kaminsky, yes,” he manages, offering a hand, which Ivan crushes in a Terminator grip. “It’s – nice to meet you?”

Ivan snorts, pulls out the other chair, and drapes his jacket over it, then orders a small plain coffee (black like his soul, evidently). Then he returns, sits down, and claps his hands as if he is calling a misbehaving class to attention. “Where are you from?” he barks. “How long have you lived in Moscow?!”

Fedyor continues to gape. He’s genuinely not sure if this is Ivan attempting to get to know him on speed-run, or if he’s being interrogated by a FSB agent who can’t even act for two seconds like he’s not. It’s ominously possible. Dmitry Medvedev is the president and there are hopes that there might be a social liberalization, but the Orthodox patriarchs and the far right have been increasingly agitating against Russia’s embattled LGBTQ community, and things could just as easily get worse. Is this a setup or a setup? Nadia would never knowingly put him in a dangerous situation, of course, but maybe she was likewise fooled. You’d think that if this was a sting, they could have found a guy who was actually capable of pretending to be on a date, but maybe that’s the point? What the hell is going on here?

Fedyor opens his mouth, then shuts it. As a matter of fact, he is originally from Nizhny Novgorod, but moved to Moscow for university and has lived here for seven years, but if Ivan is with the FSB, he probably already knows that. Is this a trick? Is Ivan trying to match him to some police intelligence file or see if he’s a liar? Fedyor is seriously about to get up and walk out (or maybe sprint out) when Ivan, perhaps realizing that he’s blowing this to a heretofore unprecedented degree, says, “Sorry. I am from Krasnoyarsk. I enjoy rugby.”

Of course he likes rugby if he’s from Krasnoyarsk. This is a disaster. “Uh, what side?”

“Krasny Yar,” says Ivan, in the tone of a man about to stand up and belt out the fight song. “I also enjoy football. Yenisey Krasnoyarsk. Though I have begun supporting Lokomotiv since I came to Moscow. That was five years ago.”

So, he’s definitely a hooligan. Fedyor does his best to keep smiling. In the flesh, Ivan is definitely not unattractive. His hair is crisp and brown, there are glints of hazel in his eyes, and he has that hard, chiseled handsomeness that Fedyor always ends up getting suckered into. Except for the fact that he is lively, extroverted, and outgoing, likes clubbing and mingling and making friends, and this man does not appear to have ever heard of a single one of those things. What was Nadia thinking? It’s not like her to whiff this badly. Or did she have to be so circumspect in asking Ivan if he would like to meet Fedyor that, even if he’s not an undercover cop, he is in fact clueless about the true nature of this social engagement? Thinks it’s guys being pals?

“Did you have somewhere you were coming from earlier?” Fedyor asks, after another excruciating silence. “Is that why you were – ?”

“My apologies. The bus was late. I am normally very punctual.” Ivan scowls ferociously, as if the bus ever dares to do such a thing again, he will personally murder it. “What hobbies do you enjoy, Fedyor Mikhailovich?”

“I think you can call me Fedyor, yes?” They are clearly nowhere near “Fedya” and “Vanya” just yet, but “Fedyor Mikhailovich” always makes Fedyor look around warily for his grumpiest professor at MSU. He tries to think of subtle conversational gambits to find out what Ivan knows, without being obvious. Oh God, he really should just cut his losses, but something – perhaps the pathetic conviction that even a terrible date is better than no date at all – keeps him in his seat. Presuming that he does get out of here alive, he will call up Nadia straightaway and ask her many, many questions, mostly consisting of Why??! “Well,” Fedyor says at last. “I like having fun?”

“I also enjoy fun,” Ivan says, stone-faced. “I am very funny.”

Russian humor is normally extremely deadpan, to the point that Fedyor does wonder if Ivan is in fact a diabolical troll genius, but somehow he doesn’t think so. The rest of the conversation proceeds in this fashion, but by the end of an hour, Fedyor still has no idea if he has just been on a date or a trip to the gulag. Ivan gets up, administers another bone-crushing handshake, thanks him for his time, and marches out. Fedyor can practically hear the Red Army Choir thundering some patriotic anthem in his wake.

When he gets home that afternoon, Fedyor is resolved to write off the whole thing, except it was weirdly kind of not as bad as he first thought, maybe, somehow. If nothing else, he’s fascinated by this, like watching a slow-motion train crash. He takes out his phone with the intention of calling Nadia, only to see a text message from an unfamiliar number. When he opens it, it reads, Hello. Your company was agreeable today. Thank you. Perhaps we could meet again next week. Please reply yes or no. The message uses the formal styles of address, and some of the spellings are slightly old-fashioned. He has also signed it – Иван Сахаров – in case there might be some confusion with another Ivan the Terrible at Dating of Fedyor’s recent acquaintance. It is a bit like getting a text from the undertaker.

Fedyor stares at it, insanely tempted to burst out laughing, and finally, just because now he’s too curious to refuse, texts back his gracious acceptance. Still chuckling, he makes dinner, and then, as his phone pings with Ivan’s response, wonders in horror what on earth he is getting himself into.

This is how things continue for the next six weeks. Ivan and Fedyor meet up for the second time, stroll sedately around one of Moscow’s many city parks together, then part ways, and this time it’s Fedyor’s turn to ask if he would like to do it again. He isn’t sure exactly why, except that Ivan is unexpectedly easy to spend time with, and he nods in stoic approval of whatever Fedyor says. Of course, they follow the usual rules of dating which are especially important in Russia: don’t talk about politics, don’t talk about religion, don’t talk about America, don’t talk about Ukraine, don’t talk about Chechnya. From what Fedyor can glean, Ivan’s views tend to the doctrinaire, but he is surprisingly undogmatic, and willing to at least act as if he has an open mind. If he was an FSB agent, it feels like he would have busted Fedyor by now, but maybe he is waiting for him to do something unmistakably gay. That’s not it. Right?

Nadia calls, wanting to know how it’s going, and Fedyor grills her for forty minutes over whether Ivan is a law enforcement plant, a lonely guy looking for a friend, the world’s most method practical joker, or just extremely stupid. Nadia insists that he is actually very nice once you get to know him (HA, thinks Fedyor) and has no particular affection for either the ruling classes or the oligarchs. He can certainly be an acquired taste, but he is not evil.

Forced to accept it, still chickening out of asking Ivan whether he knows they’re dating, wondering if they are dating, if Ivan knows that Fedyor knows they’re dating, if Fedyor only thinks he knows that they are dating while they are not actually dating, or if Ivan thinks he knows that they’re dating while they’re… whatever the fresh-fried fuck is truly happening here, Fedyor trudges off for what has become his almost-weekly rendezvous with Ivan the-Maybe-Not-Quite-So-Terrible. They manage to have a few conversations verging on meaningful, and Fedyor has found himself telling Ivan about his family and Nizhny Novgorod and other such things. Fedyor likes to talk and Ivan likes to listen, though he breaks in now and again with a bone-dry quip. He’s still never what you would call loquacious, or easily forthcoming, but Fedyor likes that. Ivan is tough, complex, enigmatic, guarded, occasionally willing to let down his walls but only if the other person is worth it, and Fedyor finds, to his surprise, that he wants to be worth it. If this is a long-con mind game, he almost doesn’t care. (Almost.)

The problem, however, is that they’ve been seeing each other regularly for a month and a half and they haven’t gotten any closer than walking through a park, outdoors, in full view of their fellow comrades. Even the first time Fedyor takes the plunge and invites Ivan to his apartment, they sit three feet apart on the couch, watching a badly-Russian-subtitled version of Die Hard and providing critical commentary. Fedyor’s English is a lot more fluent than Ivan’s, and his middle-class family, while not exactly wealthy, is definitely better off than Ivan’s hardscrabble clan of miners and loggers in Siberia. That upbringing certainly does explain, to some degree, why Ivan is the way he is, and Fedyor wonders anxiously if Ivan views him as an insufferably posh city boy. Ivan barely finished high school and went straight to working in a Krasnoyarsk aluminum factory. He definitely did not faff around Moscow State University and attend global development seminars in Paris.

Nonetheless, despite their obvious differences, they do get along, and Fedyor is unable to deny the fact that he would, if it’s all right with everyone, like it to be more than that. Of course, finding out if Ivan knows, etc. etc., has been the paramount challenge, and there is no way to find out other than to go for it. Fedyor is 75% sure that they’ve been going steady for two months, but if it’s actually the other 25%, this is going to get awkward in a hurry. Is this essentially a fake relationship, or is it only fake because they’re both idiots?

After having duly commended his soul to God, Fedyor invites Ivan over on Saturday night. He rents a tiny flat by himself since he’s been burned on rooming with strangers, but Ivan is used to it by now, and it doesn’t feel too small with the two of them. Fedyor strains his limited culinary skills to cook supper, probably making his babushka cluck her tongue and sigh in a judgmental fashion back in Nizhny Novgorod, and they sit down and eat in silence for five minutes. Then Fedyor says, “Vanya?”

The consistent use of the diminutive has started sometime in the last few weeks, neither of them remember quite when. Ivan doesn’t correct him. “Yes?”

Fedyor clears his throat. “Do you…” He winces. “Do you… like me?”

“Yes?” Ivan says again, looking confused. “I would not have spent so much time with you if I did not, don’t you think? We are friends.”

“Yes, I know that we’re friends, but…” Fedyor looks at the ceiling. It doesn’t help, so he looks back at Ivan. “Are we… special friends?”

Ivan continues to look blank. “Are we?”

Fedyor resists the urge to tug at his collar, thinking that it’s a damn good thing that he didn’t go with his other idea of just leaning across the table and passionately kissing him. With absolutely no change of tone or expression, Ivan says, “Please explain. Special friends how?”

“Friends who want to…” Fedyor takes a deep breath. “Be… more than friends?”

“How?” Ivan orders again, ruthlessly. “Be clear, Fedya.”

“Are we maybe… boyfriends?” Fedyor’s voice squeaks on the word. “As in… we have feelings for each other that aren’t just… friendly? Like… feelings which are… romantic?”

Ivan continues to stare at him like a statue for several more seconds, and Fedyor contemplates the feasibility of tunneling directly through the floor of his apartment and running all the way to Latvia. Then at last, Ivan throws his head back and – startling Fedyor deeply – breaks into real, genuine, belly laughter, the kind that he has never heard from Ivan before. “Oh my,” he chortles, slapping the table. “Your face. You were sweating bullets.”

“WAIT, WHAT!?!” Fedyor pushes his chair back and stands up with a clatter, incandescently outraged. “Are you – were you messing with me?!!”

“Maybe a little,” Ivan says, wiping his eyes. “You know, all this time, I have not been sure if you are shy or a terrible prude. Why haven’t you kissed me yet?”

“God’s Mother in Heaven – ” Fedyor feels another prick of disloyalty to his babushka for swearing on the Bogomater, but some people deserve it. All inhibitions forgotten, he charges at Ivan like a runaway train, as Ivan springs out of his own chair in readiness, and starts pounding on his chest in transports of fury. “You are the worst! You are the worst person ever! For two months, what have we been doing?! I have been afraid this whole time that maybe you don’t know what’s really going on, and now – ?! You are the worst!”

Ivan catches Fedyor’s flailing arms, holds them away from him, and picks him up bodily, swinging him around and pushing him against the wall. “Maybe I am just a dumb country boy from Siberia,” he remarks, “but even I am not that stupid, Fedyor Mikhailovich.”

“I hate you,” Fedyor pants, their faces and their mouths an inch away from each other. “Get out of my apartment.”

“Mmm?” Ivan cocks an eyebrow. Then he plants both hands on either side of Fedyor’s head, leans in, and deeply, savagely captures Fedyor’s mouth with his own.

Every remaining vestige of barely rational thought in Fedyor’s head evaporates in screaming shock. He still wants to shove Ivan away, knee him in the balls, or break a chair over his head, but if he did that, he would have to stop kissing him, and he can’t do that either. He moans, Ivan’s tongue takes the opportunity to slip into his mouth, their hands clutch and claw and their legs melt out from under them, they turn away or break contact only to gulp a breath before diving back in again, and the next time Fedyor is aware of anything, they have collapsed on his kitchen floor in a wrung-out, entangled, gasping heap. Ivan says in his ear, “Do you still want me to leave, Fedya?”

“No,” Fedyor manages. “Because now, I am really going to make you suffer.”

Ivan’s smile is dark and full of promise. He pulls back, gets to his feet, and holds out a hand. “Then I’ll meet you in the bedroom.”

(Ivan doesn’t leave Fedyor’s apartment that night. He doesn’t leave it the next night either. At the end of the week, Fedyor calls up Nadia and informs her that he hates her so much, and when they do next see each other, he’ll shake her by both shoulders and then thank her for introducing him to the no-good, truly awful, very bad love of his life.)

[lassieposting]

Bit late and random but it's the anon you leave food out for here to give away I am also bi and I think exactly the same as you about bi val pretty much, every time Derek offers me representation my reaction is to slowly, hesitantly take it and say "thaaaaaaaaanks..." while rolling my eyes, in much the same way one accepts their least favourite flavour of sweet from an annoyingly enthusiastic uncle-type-individual. Ironically I feel I had more in common with her before the bi shit started up.

What I find really amusing is that Landy actually did reasonably well at representation when (and only when) he wasn’t trying. 

Oh god, this got long, anon, my ass rambled.

tldr; I'm glad actual bi people dislike bi val (or how Laundry handled bi val) as much as me, this will probably offend at least one person but i don't really care, Dirty Laundry wrote better rep when he didn't mean to write rep at all, and if he ever starts trying to "represent" groups I'm part of I'll take him out back like a dying horse and shoot him.

Like, yes. He had stupid and potentially offensive shit - I say potentially because what offends one member of a group won’t necessarily offend all of them. His attitude to mentally ill people is, frankly, disgusting. We’ve had “Skulduggery can’t be abused, he doesn’t have feelings”. We’ve had “eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY”. We had Ping, who seemed to be pretty much universally offensive. And that's what's always going to happen when a straight, cis, white, wealthy, male author tries to write marginalised groups he doesn't know shit about, because inevitably he's going to fall back on stereotypes.

But we also had:

SEXUALITY REP: Phase One's nonstraight characters were treated like the straight ones, and like, isn't that the whole point? There was no need for a massive Coming Out Story TM to grab for those sweet sweet Woke Points, because sexuality isn't supposed to be important to mages. I never understood why Val needed that whole Coming Out Panic storyline. Like...Des and Melissa are ridiculously supportive, encouraging, loving parents. They accepted you dating a ~19 year old when you were ~16. They accepted you revealing you could do fucking magic and that you'd been lying to them for like seven years. They took your undead buddy in stride and the most pressing question your dad had was whether magic toilets exist. There is zero reason to think that "I'm bisexual" is gonna be the thing that makes them flip and throw you into the streets in disgrace, Valkyrie. Come on.

Tanith had girlfriends and it was just mentioned casually, because it's normal.

China had massive UST with Eliza. That was an opportunity right there to not only include a f/f relationship, but also to bring back one of the few precious surviving characters from Phase One, using characters and a relationship that already had several books' worth of setup and tension and interest from fans.

The Monster Hunters have a casual conversation about which one of the Dead Men they'd date.

Ghastly has a conversation with Fletcher about the pain he's been through being in love. He never uses any pronouns.

It was confirmed at one point re: the Dead Men that at this point, after 300-odd years, everyone's been with everyone else at some point.

Thrasher is gay, and while Scapegrace's...everything...is treated as a joke/comedic relief, Thrasher's love for him isn't. He's completely devoted to Scapegrace, and that in itself is not played for laughs, even though the rest of the scene usually is. Thrasher's description of their first meeting is essentially a love-at-first-sight situation for him.

"ABNORMAL" RELATIONSHIP REP: Age gap relationships are normal for mages. Off the top of my head, using only canon, canon-implied or almost-canon ships:

Ghastly/Tanith (~350 year age difference)

Tanith/Sanguine (~250+ year age difference)

Tanith/Saracen (~350 year age difference)

Caisson/Solace (~250 year age difference)

China/Gordon (~400 year age difference)

Kierre/Temper (~500+ year age difference)

If you include fan ships, there's also things like Mevolent/Serpine or my Mevolent/Vile, which are both ~600 year minimum age gaps based on the timeline, or Valdug (and its variations) which is ~400 years.

Now, whether you consider this kind of rep positive or negative is up to you, but it’s there.

MENTAL ILLNESS REP: more like "Which characters in this series don't have a mental illness or a personality disorder?" I have some of these issues, but not all of them, so this is just how I read it, but:

ADHD: Skulduggery

Dissociative Identity Disorder: Skulduggery & Vile

Dissociation: Skulduggery again, most notably in DD and DB

Schizophrenia (or similar): Valkyrie & Darquesse, Valkyrie "seeing" Darquesse's ghost thing in Phase Two

Impostor Syndrome: Reflectionie

Autism: Clarabelle

Trauma/PTSD/CPTSD: Skulduggery, Valkyrie, China, Ghastly, Erskine...pretty much everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. People struggling with trauma are spoilt for choice of characters to see themselves in.

TRAUMA REP: This series is a trauma conga line, but everyone has a believable, understandable, morally grey trauma response in this series. I see little bits of myself in more than one Phase One character.

Childhood Abuse (of varying degrees & types): Skulduggery, Carol & Crystal, Omen, Fletcher, Ghastly, China, Bliss, Sanguine...

Estranged Family: Skulduggery abandoning his crest, Fergus & Gordon, China & Bliss

Bad Romantic Relationship: Skulduggery is also very clearly an abuse victim. He’s got a solid history of romantic attachments to women who manipulate, use and gaslight him for their own agendas.  There's a whole paragraph in SPX about how Abyssinia broke him down, isolated him from his friends and preyed on his desperate need to be loved, all classic abuse tactics.

And I’m personally a huge fan of this backstory for two reasons:

1) Society likes a plucky victim in media. The "My suffering made me stronger" type of victim. And it's not always like that in real life. Not all survivors come out of their abuse stronger or kinder or more understanding. Some of us come out cold and fucked up. Some of us end up as emotionally stunted, bloodied-nails-and-bared-teeth survivors, broken in ways that can't be fixed and sustained by enough rage to power a small sun. But society doesn't like to tell the story of that kind of survivor, because we're not usually a likeable protagonist. When we're shown in media, we're usually the sympathetic villain, or maybe the antihero. But Skug is someone who's done awful things and lost pretty much all his faith in humanity and been burned more times than he can count, and he still makes the conscious choice to try and be the good guy when he could so easily go Evil Supervillain on the world, and I don't know about any of y'all, but I've modelled myself on him in that. I've made the choice to do something good when all I really want to do is just become a horrible, shrivelled ball of nastiness and revenge. And that's because I saw him do it and realised that I could do that too.

Skug is an incredibly capable, strong, masculine Man's Man. He gets in fights all the time, and he usually wins. He's military, an industry that's Really Bad for stigmatizing weakness and mental illness, and he's right up at the top of the hierarchy. Almost everyone is afraid of him. He's a straight up cold-blooded killer. Skulduggery Pleasant is precisely the type of person who's not normally portrayed as a victim of anything. Nothing about him screams "victim" at all. But his abuse history is insidious. He's so conditioned to respond in a certain way to abuse from the women in his life, probably from a very young age, that despite all that strength and capability and stubbornness and ego, he just goes along with it. And it's an established pattern going back hundreds of years. He keeps going back to China, even though he knows she's bad for him and his friends keep telling him to stay away from her. Abyssinia latched onto him when he was traumatized and vulnerable and weaponized it against him to make him easier to control - and when she reappears, hundreds of years later, she jumps straight back into using, tmanipulating and gaslighting him and not only does he let her, he doesn't even seem to realise that behaviour is abusive. He thinks it's normal! That's how he's always been treated by his long-term girlfriends, with the notable exception of Wifey. Even when Val is being fucking nasty to him in the first couple books of Phase Two, sniping and lying and blaming him for everything under the sun, he just takes it. There's no attempt to tell her she's being unreasonable, no telling her to fuck right off and give her head a wobble, no defending himself even when she's bitching over something that isn't even his doing. And this is a man who has an absolutely gleaming steel spine the rest of the time; Skug has no problem saying no to anybody else, but he can't get past the way he's been taught to treat the important ladies in his life. Skug is a walking reminder that anyone can be a victim of abuse, even the ones who seem least likely to be susceptible.

GENDER REP: This one is the most iffy out of the bunch and definitely was not done very well in the eyes of the people who matter most, but I'll include it anyway because it mattered to some.

So there's Nye, who's...agender? Genderless? And uses "it" pronouns? Nye was generally considered horrible rep because it's also a war criminal and experiments on people and I've seen people say "Well I don't want to be seen like that" but? It's still possible to be a war criminal and also genderless. I never saw the two things as being related or relevant to each other.

There's also Mantis, who's in exactly the same gender/pronouns boat as Nye and always seems to be forgotten about, which sucks because Mantis is a war hero. It fought for the Sanctuary during the War and they never lost a battle when it was in command. It's called out of retirement to fight for the Supreme Council in LSODM, ends up fighting alongside Skulduggery during the Battle of Roarhaven, and ultimately dies attempting a very brave, very risky strategy. Mantis is, unreservedly, one of the good guys. It was also my introduction to sentient beings using "it" pronouns, and did it in a way that felt natural, so when I met my first person online who used "it" pronouns and hated to be referred to as he/she, it was...weird, but not as weird as it would otherwise have been, because I was like, "Oh yeah, like the Crenga. Okay."

And then there's the Scapegrace sex change plotline, which...I might have an unpopular opinion on this one. From what I’ve seen, trans people don’t seem to think was handled well or with any sensitivity at all. I’m not trans, so if the trans community says he was being offensive to them, I’m not going to claim otherwise. But...I first read the Scapegrace plotline as a young teenager in a tiny rural school with zero diversity, going through a period of being deeply confused about my own gender identity. He was more or less my first introduction to the idea that genitals =/= gender. I was relieved, at that point in my life, to read someone having a lot of the same thoughts I was having about being in the wrong body. So while it may have been badly done and yeah, the series would probably have been better without it, it did make at least one kid suspecting she might not be cis go “Huh! So there are other people who feel like this.”

Thrasher is also implied to be legitimately trans/gender-questioning, and that's not played for laughs either.

So? Phase One, while it absolutely had faults and issues and things that were just "Oh god why", was actually full of rep, at least compared to the other series that I read as a child/teen. But? As soon as Dirty Laundry started trying to be woke? He fucking sucks ass at it. Aside from confirming Phase One's hints that Skug has a background of abusive relationships, every single attempt at shoehorning rep into Phase Two is Bad.

The painfully OOC, forced, badly-written awkwardness of Val suddenly being rabidly horny for women out of fucking nowhere. The stilted, forced cringiness between her and any of the women she's flirted with - contrast that with Sorrowscorn's interactions, full of natural chemistry that had us all like 👀 I mean, I never shipped Val/Melancholia, but I could always see why people did - they had miles more chemistry than Val/anyone in Phase Two.

The fucking mess that is v*litsa, because if someone says "I'm really not interested in friendships/relationships right now", clearly the route to true love is to bulldoze their boundaries and forcibly insert yourself into their life and proceed to treat them like a delicate soft uwu flower, completely ignoring the horrible things they've done, while gleefully damning their best friend as an irredeemable monster for the exact same things, which is. You know. Gonna affect your so-called love's self-confidence and self-esteem because she knows she's no different to him. Y'all know I love an angsty ship, an unhealthy ship, a ship with fucked power dynamics, but I literally cannot roll my eyes any further back in my head at this shit. I never read Demon Road, but from what I've heard from friends who did, it does seem like every time Laundry tries to write an f/f ship, he comes up with a cringey abusive/manipulative caricature and tries to call it rep, and he needs to Stop.

Val's Mental IllnessTM arc. It's funny how he wrote Skulduggery as a wonderfully complex character with deep-rooted psychological damage and long-lasting trauma, but believes he wrote a character with "no feelings" - but when he tries to delve into the damage the world of magic has done to Val, he turned her into a weak, whiny drug addict who treats everyone around her like garbage and is so selfish and dislikeable that I? Honestly can't even reconcile Phase Two val with Phase One val. They're two completely different people. He's shown on Twitter that he doesn't have any respect for mentally ill people, and it shows. Other mentally ill people might see it differently, but the whole thing just makes me go "yikes".

Never, who has no personality outside of being genderfluid, and whose pronouns make no sense. I'm sorry, I have never met an nb person who insists that you change from male to female pronouns multiple times in a sentence, every time you refer to them. It's confusing as fuck. Now I have been told that Never has apparently received some character development in the last couple books, and if so, fair play, but I quit reading after Midnight, and Never and the rest of the personality-less new characters introduced in Phase Two who just seemed to be 2D Stereotypes to snag Woke Points were a big part of why, so. Development too late, I'm afraid.

(Now, if anyone is looking for a well-written genderfluid character, I recommend the Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb. I have a lot of issues with her as a writer, and unfortunately I hate her POV character which puts me off the series as a whole, but she wrote the Fool/Amber/Lord Golden and their gender identity/approach to sexuality with so much more respect and realism. That is the kind of rep nb people should be getting: 3D, complex, realistic characters whose gender is only a tiny fragment of their personality, not the be-all-and-end-all of their existence. You know. Like cis people get. Nobody wants to be represented by a 2D cardboard cutout stereotype.)

Anyway idk how much sense this makes it just really amuses me that Laundry would include all this rep completely unintentionally and then go on Twitter and remind us all that actually he's a massive asshole via insensitive/offensive tweets about the groups he'd actually done a fair job of including (i.e. Skulduggery has no feelings, mentally ill people should find another series to read, the bullshit about Val being "heteromantic bisexual" on Twitter and then spouting all the "the woman she loved uwu" shit in the books (proving he has no idea what he's talking about), eVeRyOnE iS bI eVeNtUaLlY. He can only write half-decent rep when he's not trying and he inevitably outs himself as having a really shitty attitude towards those people anyway, proving that ultimately it's all either unintentional rep or performative wokeness.

[normal-thoughts-official]

Thots on a figure skating au??? 🅱️lease

hmmmmmmm ok so disclaimer that i know nothing about figure skating so i'm just making up whatever

you got me in a difficult position here cuz on the one hand, i'd love for magnus to be a trainer/coreographer. i think it suits him wonderfully and that while obviously he is great at dancing and loves it, i think that he's more on the creative side of things, you know? so i could imagine something like figure skater alec and trainer magnus. and like alec is a shadowhunter so of course that demands a high level of control over your body that is similar to a figure skater's

but at the same time its funny to me to try to imagine alec figure skating when hes a fucking giant like that because like hes so big?? and when ur big like that ur kind of like... mandatorily graceless and clumsy to a degree methinks (not in a like oh hes always tripping and blushing way, more like the "you're on my leg, you asshole" blooper), because things aren't made for you. like really its an actual matter of accessibility sometimes, especially if you actually have the proportions of a real person like alec does (well, except for the yaoi mcfuckhands. they look big even compared to the rest of his ridiculous body he just b standing there and im like christ edward fingerhands we get it) cuz then Everything Is Bigger Than It Should ya feel

so yeah i can't really imagine alec in like, spandex being all graceful and shit, but at the same time rationally i could imagine that for his character, but also no. so i can't really go with that idea without laughing

but also i can't imagine him as a trainer/coreographer and i don't know who the fuck else is involved with figure skating anyway so is alec like, the janitor or some shit???? some fucking basketball player who sees him at the olympics??? lord help me i have no idea

OK SO IT'S BEEN LIKE 5 MONTHS SINCE I FIRST PUT THE FIRST PART OF THIS ANSWER IN MY DRAFTS (rip anon im so sorry) and i THINK i got it!!! alec could be like, the uhh personal trainer? physical trainer? YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN like the one dedicated to making sure the figure skater's body is. capable of. dancing. idk how to explain it but you do get it don't you??? ok

i'm mostly going off my dancing experience here (i had dance classes for like, 10 years of my life, and ugh i miss it) and like besides dancing you always have to train like lifting and doing localized training and stuff because you can't really dance if you don't have strength and flexibility and stamina and all that stuff. the only time i would willingly work out was for dancing lmao especially when i was in my hiphop crew. anyway

and while for me the one responsible for that part of training was the same person as my teacher/coreographer (or when i was doing hiphop it was just. on me to do that lmao but i'm not complaining) i figure when you're a professional and not just a dumb kid that's probably two different people, right? if not it is now. idc

i could go with figure skater magnus and trainer alec but also im really feeling the dynamics of coreographer magnus and trainer alec? like it'd be cute/funny to see them trying to work together for that ya know. so sorry that this feels less like a figure skating au especially since it took me so long to answer it but aaa

but also i mean as a coreographer magnus would have to know how to do it obviously so you would most definitely get a figure skating magnus. alec going to close up the gym and seeing magnus practicing by himself just for fun, anyone? and magnus looks gorgeous as ever way more gorgeous than whoever they're coaching but that's just alec's opinion and magnus kind of stops like "oh, i didn't know you were here" and alec's like "oh oops. anyway keep going you're great at this" and magnus feels a little self conscious but soon he gets lost in it again because really he loves doing this and alec is just appreciating the artwork :)

ANYWAY the dynamics of trainer and coreographer are fun. magnus showing up to alec like "hey alec so i need some heavy lifting on them arms cuz meliorn [idk i don't have any better ideas for who they could be coaching] is gonna carry an elephant onstage" and alec is like "uhh" and meliorn is like "a fake elephant" and alec is like "i mean good but i still have questions"

and magnus is like "obviously we would never use trained elephants, the way they are treated is inhumane" and alec is like "you're completely right but also that's your only worry when it comes to meliorn carrying a real elephant?" and magnus is like "i'm sure you could pull it off ;) you're the best after all" and alec gives him that amused smile

advantages of meliorn: they don't care about the flirting anyway since they are literally Like That too

also magnus and alec working out together off the clock, some ogling on both sides and just generally funny competitive shenanigans. especially cuz like magnus is hella fit but alec works in that stupid gym so he knows what he's about. and alec's all smug about it like "i can lift more than you :)" and magnus is like "oh yeah? let's see how you do in the ring" "no" "yes" "no" "why, can you not do it?" "yes. i know my limits" "well that's too bad... because you're going in anyway"

cue alec falling on his face probably but also like goddamn it he's competitive and he's not gonna let magnus have too much of a win so he tries his best rip. anyway then we probably get some hip touching bullshit when magnus tries to explain it to him and magnus is flirting the whole time and alec's laughing and it's sweet

i have half a mind to make up some angsty backstory about how magnus used to be a figure skater too and his partner was (you'll never guess it) camille and then she pulled the rug from under him and he kinda left the competitions altogether for a while. and then he came back as a coreographer (listen, he loves to dance, but creating is one of his favorite parts and he was always involved in coreographing anyway. his old coreographer and him were always having a blast and camille did not like it) and this is kinda his debut as a coreographer at some big shot competition idk and he just feels like he has so much to prove?

lol bonus camille's new coreographer is lorenzo so the hating magnus squad is in thick against him and it's a whole thing you know

OH MEGA ANGSTY camille got him out of the competition because she outed him as trans and he was declassified because something something transphobic bullcrap so he wasn't allowed anymore. i assume this was like right after they won because of course she wouldn't compromise herself, or maybe it was at the beginning/pre-stages of the championship so she had time to find a new partner. yeah that last one and then she won with the coreography that he had helped them create. im saying she did that because he broke up with her finally after years of abuse both in work and out of it so she did that as revenge or to make sure he couldn't have his passion anymore. and it took magnus years to build himself back up as a coreographer this time because transphobia (and racism) in the market but guess what? he is extremely smart and talented and creative so now he is back at the championship and he wants to show the world what they have been missing on

hmmmmm also i implied this is in pairs since magnus and camille used to be one so i think meliorn's pair would probably be izzy and maybe that's why alec's involved? like he was already a personal trainer or whatever which his parents were fine with even though it's not of course as grand as they would've liked (meaning they were total asses about it) but when izzy decided to go into sports/art they lost their shit and didn't want to support her so, you know, alec did and became her trainer. which is just as well because he is the best so like, deal with it. not saying they like kicked her out or anything (esp cuz i imagine part of alec's reasoning is that izzy stood by him when he came out and if they didn't kick him out over being gay they wouldn't kick her out over being a skater but y'know) but they definitely wouldn't support her so they both also feel like they have a lot to prove

lol me: i have half a mind to make this angsty. also me: paragraphs and paragraphs of angsty backstory

anyway they win obviously idk what to tell you they just do cuz we stan talent. camille is second for maximum drama and vengeance, the lightwoods try to get the spotlight once izzy wins and she and alec tell them to fuck off, they advocate for specific rules prohibiting ppl to declassify trans ppl over being trans and that's all i have tbh

sorry it took so long to answer daiudsauihda but i hope that outline is at least interesting for you!

[princesssarisa]

“Beauty and the Beast”: Belle’s beautiful discontentment (warning: long)

In my Feminist Defense of the Animated Belle, I addressed most of the issues I’ve heard people complain about regarding Belle’s character. But there was one I didn’t touch on, because it has very little to do with gender roles: the common complaint that Belle is a “snob.” I’d like to discuss that topic now. I’d also like to use it as a springboard to discuss a valuable aspect of Belle’s character that sets her apart both from certain Disney princesses who came before her and from depictions of Beauty in other Beauty and the Beast retellings: her willingness to own her discontentment.

I do understand the “snob” accusations. After all, Belle’s neighbors are poor peasants working hard to eke out a living. It’s only natural that they have little time for books or dreams of adventure and think Belle’s passion for those things is impractical. It’s reasonable to sympathize with their perspective more than the movie seems to want us to. It’s fair to argue that the movie has a (probably unintentional) classist undertone by portraying the villagers as small-minded and bigoted and by having Belle only find a kindred spirit in a prince, albeit an enchanted outcast prince, and find her ultimate happiness by leaving the town in favor of a royal castle. I’m grateful that other BatB retellings exist (e.g. Megan Kearney’s webcomic, or Robin McKinley’s Rose Daughter) that portray Beauty’s peasant world in a more positive light, depict the historic cruelty of royal court life in the Beast/Prince’s backstory, and have him leave the castle in the end to become a peasant rather than Beauty becoming a princess.

But none of the above is any reason to criticize Belle.

I don’t think she looks down on her neighbors. She most certainly doesn’t shun them, as some critics claim she does. Just look at her meeting with the baker during the opening song: she tries to have a friendly conversation with him and tell him about the wonderful story she’s read, only for him to rudely brush her aside with “That’s nice... Marie! The baguettes!” I don’t interpret her subsequent shrug and eye-roll as showing disdain for his “low-class” disinterest in books – just as “Oh well, as usual, no one shares my interest.”

Nor do I buy the claim that she shows disdain for the “I need six eggs!” woman (and by extension for all struggling mothers) when she rides past her. It’s true that she does seem to be smiling, which might imply amused contempt, but she might also just be enjoying her ride on the wagon while at the same time wistfully yearning for a new life, with her expression having nothing to do with the woman. I don’t know what the animators meant to convey. And even if that overwhelmed mother does represent the life Belle doesn’t want for herself, and if Belle sings “There must be more than this provincial life!” in response to seeing her, what’s wrong with that? I don’t think it’s an insult to women who choose to have big families. Even a woman who chooses to have five kids shouldn’t be expected to wrangle them all by herself while also doing her grocery shopping, with no help from her husband or from anyone else. That’s the kind of unpaid labor women have too often been forced into and it’s not “insulting other women” for Belle to yearn for something different.

Belle has the right to be bored by her small town life and want something more. She’s not some rich girl looking down on the poor peasants; she’s a poor peasant too. A person trapped in a dull, stifling lower-class existence has every right to long for a different life. Would we accuse Cinderella of being a “snob” and “ignoring the value of domestic work” because she dreams of escaping from her enslavement by her stepfamily? Of course Belle’s life in the village is more comfortable than that, but it’s still reasonable that she should want to break free from its limits.

“But Belle is clearly richer and more privileged than her neighbors!” some critics argue again and again. “Most peasants in those days were illiterate, so the fact that Belle can read shows she’s had a higher-class education, and in the stage musical, Maurice tells her she’s ‘class’ while their neighbors are ‘the common herd’!” I don’t buy that argument. I’ve never bought it. Not one bit. The movie’s setting isn’t the real late 18th/early 19th century France – it’s the Disney version of it. The village has a bookshop in the animated version and a church library and schoolhouse in the live-action remake. There’s no indication whatsoever that Belle's neighbors can’t read. (Gaston holding her book askance as he looks for pictures in it and Le Fou’s inability to spell Gaston’s name don’t count; the first is a “parental bonus” gag implying that Gaston is looking for a centerfold, while the second is a “Le Fou is stupid” gag. Gaston quotes Shakespeare in “The Mob Song,” so he’s clearly had some education.) Belle just stands out because she has a passion for books, instead of only reading now and then during breaks from “more important” things, and because she would rather read than engage in smalltalk about practical everyday matters. Belle is shown borrowing her books, not buying them, which I presume implies she can’t afford to buy them, and Maurice builds his invention out of ordinary household items (e.g. a wood stove, an axe, a teapot), so he presumably hasn’t spent much money on it either. Nor are they any better dressed than their neighbors, nor does their house look any fancier. They certainly don’t seem richer than Gaston, who apparently owns the village tavern and can afford to arrange a wedding party on short notice and bribe Monsieur d’Arque with a bag of gold to help him blackmail Belle. As for Maurice’s remarks in the stage version, they’re clearly about her personality, not about social class.

Belle also has the right to be an individualist and a misfit. That’s part of the whole point of her storyline. It seems to me that critics who complain that she “looks down on normalcy” are doing the same thing the villagers do, which is supposed to be wrong: saying “It’s a pity and a sin she doesn’t quite fit in.”

It’s no surprise that people should complain about Belle’s complaining, though. Traditional fairy-tale heroines aren’t supposed to complain. As much as we can joke about the cliché that the “I want more” heroine became during the Disney Renaissance, we shouldn’t forget how innovative that kind of heroine was in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Just think back to Snow White: at the beginning she’s dressed in rags and forced to work as a scullery maid by her stepmother, but we find her smiling and cheerfully humming as she scrubs the castle steps. Then there’s Cinderella: a bit more complex and openly discontented than Snow White, but in general she still goes cheerfully about her chores. The heroine who lives in unhappy circumstances but “bears it cheerfully and without complaint” is a mainstay of classic, old-fashioned fairy-tales (and other stories too). The early versions of Beauty and the Beast are no exception. After Beauty’s family falls into poverty, we’re told that her sisters constantly wail and cry over their lost wealth and status, but Beauty swallows her grief, resolves to be cheerful, patiently shoulders all the household chores, and devotes her days to consoling her father and siblings. For this she’s held up as a role model, in contrast to her complaining sisters, who despise her and insult her for it, but whom she always loves and forgives.

Of course there’s value in that kind of character. Resilience in the face of adversity and finding happiness where others find none is a strength in its own right. But it can be overdone. The more that women, poor people and outcasts are encouraged to be cheerful, patient and uncomplaining, the more they’re expected to “stay in their place.” Any righteous desire or demand for a better life or better treatment is labeled “rude,” whiny,” “petulant” and “selfish.” It doesn’t always cross that line, but it can.

Linda Woolverton, the head screenwriter of Disney’s BatB, knew that she wanted Belle to be different both from the traditional Beauty and from the likes of Snow White and Cinderella. So did lyricist Howard Ashman, whose experience as a gay man did much to influence the outcast heroes and heroines of the three Disney movies he wrote for. As noted in this Time Magazine article, they resolved to create a heroine for “the next century,” who wasn’t “based on being kind and taking the hits but smiling all the way through it.”

They definitely succeeded.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s wonderful that Belle owns her discontentment. It’s beautiful that she doesn’t try to fit in or put on a patient, cheerful mask, but unabashedly yearns to escape from her dull, small-minded village and find adventure in the great wide somewhere. It’s wonderful that she has no patience for Gaston’s rudeness and arrogance and that she loathes the thought of having to give up her reading and intellect in favor of a mundane marriage and raising a gaggle of children. It all leads beautifully into her friendship and romance arc with the Beast, where she refuses to tolerate his bullying, refuses to let him control her even though he’s the master of the castle, only forgives him when he earns her forgiveness, and inspires him to change for the better. The happy ending comes about precisely because Belle was willing to be discontented and shamelessly wanted more than she was given at first. This makes her almost the opposite of the original tale’s Beauty, whose story was written as an allegory for arranged marriage and whose purpose was in part to convince girls to submit to unwanted circumstances for their families’ sake. I love that instead, Belle refuses to submit to what she doesn’t want, and her refusal becomes the catalyst for all the positive growth and transformation in the story.

Let’s hear it for heroines who want more!

[cynthiaandsamus]

Custom Toonami Block Week 73 Rundown

Code Geass: Lelouch and co. are still stuck in China and Xingke’s flipping out because the Chinese assholes are gonna kill the Empress and go with someone less problematic for their political marriage to Britannia’s creepily overaged prince. However Lelouch pulls out a Knightmare that’s basically the Twink version of the Gawain and busts everyone up as well as pulling a Father Cornello on them and letting the people know they’re all elitst 1% assholes that don’t care about them, which I suspect all countries probably know about their leaders but it sucks to hear it in a recording so riots show up all over China and CC Geass Flashes Anya to take her out so Britannia has to back out because the Chinese Hierarchy are now the least popular people in the world. So Xingke gets to be with his Empress and joins the Black Knights but Dietard wants the Empress to marry someone on their side so they can basically do the asshole move Britannia just tried to do but for them. All the girls are like ‘hey no’ and Lelouch is like “Oh hey Tamaki buddy, let’s go talk and get me the fuck out of here” so before Lelouch actually has to give Tamaki more lines and elevate him beyond the Black Knight’s Yamacha Shirley calls and Lelouch just straight up asks Shirley about love in a weirdly forced series of circumstance. But Shirley’s like “Yeah don’t fuck with love, don’t you love anyone?” and Lelouch is like “Yeah I do, Nunally!” and I don’t think that’s at all what Shirley meant but it does mean Lelouch sees that fighting for something beyond politics is powerful and agrees to not marry off the twelve year old girl, so that’s good. Lelouch decides to return home while they hunt down the Geass cult which is in China for some reason despite that being one of the like two places on earth Britannia doesn’t control and the Geass Cult largely being a Britannian affair. Meanwhile Sayoko is basically a Lelouch Vtuber at this point with her insanely accurate Lupin III mask of Lelouch and kisses Shirley so Shirley’s a little bit more gay than she was before and is not sure how to feel about that. When she’s about to tell the real Lelouch he kisses like a girl, Anya and Gino show up because we’re retreading the whole ‘sleeping with the enemy at school’ thing from the first season except with way less interesting enemies. Also the preview for the next episode is Lelouch dramatically talking about enemies finding out he’s Zero overtop footage of Shirley and Milly absolutely naked in a batthouse scene so I think we know what kind of episode that’ll be.

Inuyasha: The Panther Demon filler concludes with everyone meeting at the site where the Panther Master is being revived behind a strong barrier, if only someone just got a barrier upgrade to their sword, oh wait. But yeah everyone manages to free the hostages so even though Kagome’s jewel shards revives the Panther Master he’s still a zombie without a sacrifice which is weird since Naraku managed to completely revive the Band of Seven with one jewel shard each from skeletons and the Panther Lord has three shards so idk the rules here but yeah he steals the souls of his own men to revive and is Wind Scar Proof because he just is. It’s pretty cool to see him shooting his claws and lightning and shit but he’s too big and slow for it to be much of an interesting fight. Sesshomaru’s about to go full demon which would be interesting since we haven’t seen his full demon form since he lost his arm but in a neat bit of character development, Tenseiga calms his rage and tells him to use it instead. You get the feeling Sesshomaru only goes full demon when he flies off the handle and forgets about speed and strategy so him opting to not repeat the mistake he made against Inuyasha is pretty cool. Anyway Tenseiga heals the souls of the Panther Demons and drains their energy from the lord so he’s back to Zombie Cat Man which Inuyasha can Wind Scar because that’s what happens to villains on this show, all Wind Scars all the time. The Panthers don’t wanna fight anymore since their boss just killed them and tell Inuyasha to tell Sesshomaru the feud is over and they’re going back to the West. Honestly this is basically the same backstory they gave Kirinmaru in Yashahime so it’s funny for them to say they’re going back to the same place Kirinmaru is from, wonder if it’ll ever come up in Yashahime since most filler seems canon there.

Yu Yu Hakusho: Yusuke and Kuwabara continue the assault on Tarukane’s compound and basically plow through the lower demons easy since they’ve been fighting minor deities up to this point. It’s always pretty cool in Shonen to just have a few rounds to show how much power creep the heroes have had where certain things just don’t bother them anymore. Toguro murders a Chimera which has an oddly similar backstory to Nina from FMA and he seems really bummed about it but he’s like “Hey we’re both monsters made by humans telling us to do shit, so sorry for killing you bro”. And Tarukane basically sees Toguro is the next boss and is like “Yup time to scam some people off of this” and he sets up a betting ring for how far Yusuke and Co will get into his compound. This is kinda neat because it puts Tarukane in the weird position of betting against his own guards and hoping Yusuke will make it all the way to Toguro and then lose after everyone else has seen how awesome Yusuke is and bets on him. And funnily enough Sakyo’s in on the betting and he’s watched anime before so he knows to bet on the plucky teenagers with weird powers. So yeah Yusuke and Kuwabara finish plowing through the demons while Hiei kinda stalks them and remembers getting his eye surgery and wanting to help his sister but it’s kind of against spirit world rules for demons to just go plow through humans even if they’re scumbag humans so now Yusuke and Kuwabara have to go fight the Triad of boss demons Toguro has under him before Hiei busts in and just murders everyone for kidnapping his bird-loving jewel-crying little flower of a sister.

Fate Zero: So Kiritsugu can break Kayneth’s Terminator 2 Gaara defenses with rib bullets that just say ‘no’ to using magic and fucks his arrogant ass up. Saber and Lancer do some combo shenanigans to stab Caster right in the book and disrupt all his hentai tentacle demons but the book heals so idk why he can’t just make more. Kirei fucks up Maiya and Iris but didn’t double tap Maiya and DID double tap iris but she’s got Saber’s bullshit healing scabbard on her which no one knows about so Saber’s like “uhhh why are you healing” and Iris can’t tell her so she’s basically “Uhh internet?” Lancer comes in to save Kayneth’s worthless ass and tells Kiritsugu to stop being a dick to Saber because she’s pretty dope. But as usual for an early Fate encounter, no one dies and nothing of terrible consequence happens despite it being teased a couple times. I’ve noticed a trend with Fate that it really doesn’t like killing characters early so you’re basically guaranteed to have the first 2-3 major battles have a zero net gain/loss. Rider in UBW was probably the subversion to that since it happened crazy fast and anticlimactic but even that wasn’t till like ten episodes in.

Konosuba: So we finally meet Wiz the big booby Lich and Kazuma learns a new skill, both fun things. Also the gang gets a house to stay in after escapades with an army of haunted dolls and the most “I need to pee” in a horror setting since Corpse Party. But yeah, good progress this time honestly, the living in a stable gag was getting kind of old so Kazuma’s a bit stronger now and they have a home base so that’s pretty cool. Also Wiz is a Demon General or some shit but no one cares cause there ain’t no money in murdering busty zombie waifus.

Sailor Moon Crystal: So turns out Minako is Princess Serenity, except everyone who knows anything about Sailor Moon or indeed plot structure knows Sailor Moon is Princess Serenity, that’s like the Luke I Am Your Father of this series. But still turns out Minako has been guiding everyone with the power of video games but also thinks the power of friendship sucks and she’s gotta go do everything alone. This makes things super awkward because Mamoru’s pretty sure he was in love with the Princess but likes Usagi, now instead of running with this interesting thread of a reincarnation falling in love with someone new we’re gonna do the reveal that Usagi’s the princess and the whole ‘till death do us part’ part of marriage was just a metaphor and you’re stuck with one person no matter how many times you reincarnate. But yeah, Minako fights the bad guy on top of the tower but he has Naraku’s Barrier now and Minako doesn’t have the Red Tessaiga upgrade yet so she needs the power of friendship but this barrier is friendship-proof and this fight is basically a bunch of kids on the playground making up increasingly stupid powers that negate the other powers the other guy just made up. Anyway Tuxedo Mask shows up and is like “Holy shit Sailor Moon I love when you kiss me and kick ass, go get em sweetie I’ll hold your flower” and they kiss and Usagi has learned that if she just pretends she got this the power of her confidence will beat the bad guy. Unfortunately she does not got this and Tuxedo Mask has to pull a Piccolo and throw himself in front of the blast.

Durarara!!:  So now that we’ve had our climax for the arc we have a six month timeskip and everyone’s just kinda living life, Mika and Seiji are being clinically insane together, there’s cops harassing Celty to the point of mental breakdown (normal cop stuff) Shinra’s dad’s in town, Namie’s become Izaya’s secretary for blackmail shit, you know, normal stuff. Also there’s a katana-wielding maniac going around slashing people and Anri’s being bullied and sexually harassed to the point of mental collapse, normal stuff.

[borisbubbles]

17. CZECH REPUBLIC

Benny Christo - “Kemama”

So first off, thank you for the nice commens. 😇The past few months haven’t been the happiest time for me, so thank you for your patience as I scraped my bearings together for another post! 😁

So I will now extend that same sympathy to Benny Christo, whom I think I damn fucking underrated. Let’s jump in~

ENTRY ANALYSIS

As one may expect i INSTANTLY liked “Kemama” because you know, it’s a fun, laid-back, tropical afro-breeze, completely different from anything else we would see in NFs and the year. EXACTLY the type of song I was hoping the Czech NF would deliver (and deliver they did, see NF Corner). This level of mild like swung into strong unironic like upon realizing that the title is a contraction of “Okay Mother” 😍 and the song deals with the subject of overcoming racially-tinged discrimination and rising above the hate. That just feels very poetic and apt? “Kemama” felt like the entry that had to overcome the highest odds in order to earn the respect it so fully deserves, and still hasn’t fully reached it.

.In our Western European bubble, comprised mostly of gays and left-liberal straights, we have a very grateful and universal acceptance of many different kinds of [lizard] people that make up Eurovision casts. Yet with “Kemama” we may have reached  an unusually grimy undercurrent of coded racism. 

Of course nothing I read was outrageously rancid, than Cod for that. The worst statement I read was a double-whammy of “EWW THIS ISN’T CARIBBEANVISION” and “WHY WOULD SOMEONE FROM *KENYA* WANT TO REP CZECHIA IN EUROVISION?”, and yes they first got the continent wrong and then *also* got the country wrong in the follow-up post and then they were torn limb from limb by a pack of aformentioned left-liberals. I’m sorry but i can’t not have any other response than laughter in the face of yet another fucking MORON faceplanting themselves with words like a... racist JK Rowling if you will?

Still, while I never read something outright vile about Benny doesn’t mean I found his deniers really annoying and they were! Think “Ew Solovey is ‘Too Aggressive’ it will NEVER DO WELL IN ESC”, a statement that isn’t coded nor racist (and yet extremely false and misguided), functioned as a similar idea by the same minds. A statement borne from the same breed of narrow-minded stubbornness which has caused elitist morons to be all “there is **SOMETHING** about “Kemama” i do *NOT* like and I cannot lay my finger on it... but I **DO NOT** like it at ALL. It won’t ever qualify because everyone will think the same way I do” -- Eurovision snobs, tiptoeing around racial coda in January 2020.

 They would also insist that Benny was “arrogant” because he was seemingly impervious to their (de)constructive criticism. Like, if you were a biracial butterfly living in a slavic country who had to deal with statements such as the above on a regular basis, you WOULD block out the noise. And if you heard them often enough you will start to block them out pre-emptively. DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW COPING MECHANISMS WORK?? (oh wait you’re white-privileged. Nevermind 🙄)

 So naturally, when Benny decided that he would revamp “Okay Mother” by adding in MORE African elements it only made me love him even more lol. 😍 Was it a bull-headed, contrarian and possibly really stupid decision? Yes, yes and absolutely yes. Was it worth it? Well he managed to incite even more meltdowns in a group of people I feel nothing but contempt for, so hell yeah? Eurovision was cancelled anyway so who cares how much ‘worse’ “Kemama” actually got. 

Okay, so we’ve arrived at the revamp.

Granted, it wasn’t the best ‘vamp, I’d be a fool to deny it. The new elements threw a wrench in the melodic balance of the song. Out went tropical laid-back fun, IN went that fucking guitar oh my god this is some Hotel FM piano levels of overbearing I swear. (nb: this still didn’t stop me from ironically stanning Hotel FM’s lame asses anyway 😍). However, it made the personal backstory that I loved and savoured take a backseat to the now inferior composition. 😭

Regardless, New Kemama was fundamentally the same song, and I fundamentally liked Old Kemama, so whatevs, it made no different to me. In the eyes of many Eurovision diehards we were experiencing WORST PRESHOW SEASON EVER (after three songs... lol) and nothing clinches this brainworm more than a revamp announcement. “OH MY GOD HE WILL RUIN IT! I CAN GUARANTEE YOU I *WON’T* LIKE IT”. Self-fulfilling prophecies, ya know? It certainly didn’t help when the official channel accidentally uploaded a vid with broken soundmixing (‘OMG HORRIBLE LAST IN THE SEMI!!!!’ calm the ever-loving HELL down) and took another FULL WEEK to upload the correct vid. The damage had already been done. Typing "SEE I TOLD YOU THE REVAMP WOULD BE SHITE HA HA HA” in the Kemama comment box really just is the ESC equivalent of reponding with “Actually, *all* lives matter :smug:” to a BLM support pamphlet, isn’t it?

NF CORNER

While not my favourite NF of the bunch, I found the Czech NF to be lowkey epic. Not epic enough to remember its name but regardless Czechvision or whatever marked the end of an era because it was also the last selection spearheaded by Jan Bors :o

I think I’ve made it clear enough in the past that I’m somewhat mixed on Bors Era Czechia - Lake Malawi were a toetapping good, Ickolas was a pockmarked, skin-crawling evil and the other three inhibit a purgatory somewhere between “moderately nice” and “moderate timewaste.”

Still, I have great respect for the man who orchestrated Czech’s comeback after scoring NINE POINTS TOTAL across three years with the mindset of “So what? Why says we can’t win?” so ofc I was all into the idea of the “EIGHT INDIE ANGELS, HAND-PICKED BY BORS HIMSELF” NF that would serve as his swan song.

Naturally things went down the drain the second Bors left, with one of the eight peacing and his successor cancelling the live broadcast (does anyone remember what exactly happened? I vaguely recall one was the cause of the other but lol it’s July can’t be bothered to factscheck (Factsczeck?) anymore, bitches.

Anyway, ON TO THE GOOD STUFF, and yes, there was plenty.

We All Poop - “ All the Blood (Positive Song Actually)”

Yes, as you can imagine I ofc IMMEDIATELY fell into like when I saw that chyron and invisioned the inevitability of the Czech Rep’s Rep immediately alienating every parent just based on their name alone <3 😍 w/e WAP quickly became that “Good but not great” song you find in every NF that everyone gushes over because it’s the whitest option available. Like, yes, “All the blood” is good, but musically it’s identical to Green Day and Twenty-One Pilots and god name ANY 90s-early00′s American Punk Rock band. For me the enjoyment came from the fact that WAP were openly crazy vegan fundamentalists and the VC clip actively condemns the use ANY animal protein by replacing the cattle and game with LITERAL HUMAN BEINGS. 😍 :fusedmarcintensifies: :kasiamosage:

Pam Rabbit - “Get up”

Ohhhh YES a glorious experimental Synth-Trap song only I could love and ofc I did. God what is there even to say; the provocative darkness of the verses combined with the swirling amorphousness of the chorus gives me LIFE. LUFF THIS SHIT <3333 Ftr, this was also the fave of Slovene Juror duo / synth angels / Boris faves ZALAGASPER, further proving their pathetic naysayers that they own all things music and the haters can suck a series of-

Barbora Mochowa - “White and Black Holes“

Lol, yes even with a “Get up” existing, there was a song I liked even more. Barbora proved a very competent Lana del Gay last year, but I was a YUGE fan of this year’s... Kate Bush-Björk blend of ethereal awesome. It is so soothingly beautiful and the rare example of a song that I find completely free of flaws. Were the competition not such a hard place, I’d be pissed she didnt win (at least she won the jury vote MASSIVE KUDOS to every alum on that) but w/e this selection had opions and I’m rather robbed of a “Kemama” than I am of a BRILLIANT IRREPLICABLE AETHERBALLAD. ~Danse balance sûr les white and black holes~

Elis Mraz & Cis T - “Wanna be like”

I *VERY* strongly felt that if the Czech Republic wanted to win ESC, they should have picked Elis and even now I STILL believe she could have won. That isn’t to say I gushed over “Wanna be like” because I find it kind of annoying lol. Yes, I LOVE an annoying female voice (:Tones&Icackle:) but Elis’s reaches a Camilla Cabello sort of place for me (good lord get Senorita OFF the fucking radio) and the Scat + White Guy Rapping middle-eight. 😬. However, the second I opened up the video clip for this paragraph and was immediately BLASTED by Elis murdering a ukelele and wearing a  “schoolgirl” outfit straight from a Japanese tentacle porn movie and OH MY GOD THE AGGRESSIVE TWERKING made me reconsider that hey, this min-sized Meghan Traynor actually kinda highkey owns, yo!  Yet, I’m not at all bothered we lost her in the Czech NF because we got UNO DOS QUATRO CINCO SEIS :fatmansplit: fill up the megameme slot instead, so...

Eurovision 2020 vs Eurovision 2021

BENNY RUINED HIS SONG AND NEVER WOULD HAVE QUALIFIED. jk I’m not a moron. Sure, “Kemama” wasn’t an easy sell because you know AFROBEAT in a contest where half of the people watching are fash (ie: all of Eastern Europe, who watch out of ~Nationalistic Sentiment~ 😬), but there are Kemama live renditions out there and he owns them SO hard lol. A few soundmixing issues really would not have stopped Benny from qualifying in that RIDICULOUSLY WEAKSAUCE SEMIFINAL are you fucking kidding me. He probably would’ve bombed in the Grand Final, but I mean it’s Czech and it’s not Ickolas so ofc it would have.

And Czech renewed him for 2021 regardless of the sceptics, woohoo! I think part of it was due the Czech not wanting to re-organize an ENTIRE NF from scratch without Jan Bors, but probably also because Benny owns live when he isn’t engaged in psychological trench warfare with actual human detritus <3 and also because the Czech fucking CARE about their artists and don’t drop them like a sack of rotten potatoes wtfshitprus.

Can’t wait for the moment when he qualifies and Efendi does not, etc, etc. 

FREAKY! FRIDAY! FACTOR!

I’d say that the core around which the Ben Drama spun was pretty standard fare: niche fave beats out the concensus fave, meltdowns ensue, people convince themselves it was the WRONG decision because it wasn the result they wanted, try to disown the song and make a fool of themselves because the song slaps, sorry. Even the revamp drama felt more of less generic for me, because yawn fantards melting down over a revamp of a song they don’t even like what else is new.  

However, what I do take away that the revamp was ENTIRELY Benny’s idea which he told no one about (cue to JAN BORS having a social media meltdown like he’s Caesar at the Ides of March 💔) added MORE afrobeat just to troll his haters even more <3  God, I’d say it was bad from a musical perspective but this level of in-your-face defiance is fucking iconic and hilarious, sorry. This entire this year is so batshit bonkers that the concept of a someone potentially shooting themselves in the foot and “torpedo’ing” their qualification chances  (not rly, he would’ve Q’d anyway lol) JUST to take the moral high ground in a racially coded argument only HE took seriously may not even be the craziest concept in the year! (lol it definitely isn’t. Look at the pics I haven’t greyed out yet)

This and more yield Benny some well-earned Senheads! Yay!! 

Score: 3 Senhits out of 5.

[butididnottried]

I’m late to the party, but whatever. After a (ehehe he) few months of thinking about it, i finally watched netflixs “She-Ra and Princesses of Power”.

- Oh. Oh... Oh wow. Just wow. All these jokes and memes about Catra and therapy makes so much sense now. Like, even TOO much. This show have no business in showing all these issues so good, and yet, there they are.

- Scorpia is such a cinnamon roll. But she’s so stressed. She tries to play it cool, but man, her stress level is on some cosmic level. I have no idea how she do not lost it and not murdered anyone. Come on big girl, i’m going to be your best friend and you can hug me as much as you want. <3

- Hey Adora.

- I hope that Shadow Weaver will not pull some betrayal shit right now and will stick with the rebellion against Horde Prime. I don’t need her to be redeemed, she don’t really deserve that and probably don’t even want that. Also, she’s on the good side out of bad  motives, so that’s that. But her changing sides again would be just stupid and too predictable. It’s obvious that she will again try some shady magic to “save” the planet, while also at this same time gain more power, but i hope that will blow up in her face. Badly. Buuut. Since king Maika is alive and back at Bright Moon maybe he will have some good influence on her. Strongly doubt that, but its always a possibility. 

- Bows voice acting is probably my favorite in the whole show. The comedy timing with his voice, when it’s going a little to high and cracks up? That’s The Good Stuff.

- And i don’t really like Entraptas (not Entrapa, what) voice timbre. This voice actress is very good - like every other on this show tbh - but something about her voice alone annoys me. She also often sound like her nose is stuck? Which is a nope for me.

- Hey Adora.

- Ah, Entrapta, my adorable science baby. How someone so smart can be so dumb at this same time. I know that she’s autism coded, but im not talking about that. She figured out this whole The First Ones tech, this whole connection of magic, princesses and rune stones to the WHOLE planet, but didn’t thought even for a second that maybe activating this machinery could most probably blown everything up. Really? ReaLLY? But maybe that’s just a science people thing, being sooo much into it, that nothing else matters? Idk, i’m a dumbass, i do not get science very much. But when she was like “we need to turn this portal thing off, Hordak will understand” i was like “oh no, oh honey, no, he DEFINITELY will not” and this moment was kinda hilarious. Oh well.

- And they we’re lab partners. _^_

- I don’t really know why, but i like Hordak. He’s that good kind of dumb, angry and nor very well socialized villain. Well, he lived in a place not very well suited for proper socializing. Yeah, that - he got a nice, kinda different backstory. Usually when a character is a clone their big and dark torment is the fact that they’re a clone. But he’s even proud of that? Because the original one is powerful and magnificent Horde Prime, so it’s an honor to be his clone. His problem is that he is a defective clone, unworthy, when he was made for such grande purpose like conquering the galaxy. I can’t even very much blame him for his bending for murder and destroy. Not because he’s sad, but because he was made in a lab to be like that, more or less programmed - murderous, angry and destructive. In cases of characters like that it’s not very much like an explanation, but almost an justification (but hey, that’s me, about fictional people, so chill please (: ). It’s like blaming a not self-consciousness machine for going rouge. Well, Hordak is not a stupid, unaware robot, but idk, there’s no real analogue in real world for a beings like this, so i “choose” to feel like that about fictional characters being made to be put-there-whatever. Also, he’s physically so fragile? It’s hysterical. It feels like the faintest wind would blow at him, and every bone in his body would broke. 

- And what i wrote about Hordak i think also about Light Hope. Shes and AI, probably almost at point where she could obtain self-consciousness, but not quite yet there. And she did what she did because she stick to her main program, she really didn’t have a choice. But she had! This one time. Because she is capable of learning and grow beyond her program. I don’t now if younger audience is going to catch that, but i’m happy that AI was showed as it is - just an very advanced AI, and not a mean, bad person. Or maybe she is self-aware and i just didn’t noticed that. Also, her design. <3

- hEy AdOrA.

- I was so ready to like Double Trouble, and eeeh. The only magic here is acting. I do not copy, i perform. I put everYTHING into ROLE! I’m an Artist! ArTiSt! IT’S ART! asdfghjkl just go away with that you pompous prick. Uuuugh, this is just the worst kind of artists. But, i still appreciate how they do not have any sad backstory (yet?), and are there only for money, drama and spreading chaos. At least someone is having fun in all this mess.

- Adora is so gay for big ladies. When all this mess is going to end, she deserve some romantic plot with gentle butch. Give Adora some big woman to love, you cowards!

- One of Bows dad is wearing socks and sandals. That’s it. 

- Swift Wind was visiting madame Razz all this time, because shes and old lady living alone in the woods. My heart just melted. <3 Also, i really want to know whats going on with her. Like, no one cares that’s shes probably more than a one whole thousands years old? But it look more like she has some time bending powers, that she do not control? And it messes with her memory and mind? Poor lady. ): 

- I had this feeling deep in my guts that The First Ones are going to be revealed as stupid bitches. And hey, they turn a magical planet into a super weapon. Why these ancient civilizations are such ignorant morons?

- I know that relationships between characters are the most important thing in this show, but man, i was so much there for the worldbuilding. The more information they were giving, the more i was like “just tell me what’s going on!!!”. And wow, i’m not disappointed. A++. But tbh, if we put aside all this cute stuff like magic, princesses and shiny, magical stones, this whole shit is pretty terrifying.

- When during daring rescue of Glimmer and Bow in Fright Zone Perfuma admitted that working with Entrapta can be... kinda difficult, and Entrapta - with a smile! - just nodded in agreement. This. This is probably my favorite joke in this whole series.

- h e y a d o r a

- Seahawk. Much love. Much joy. Gold of heart, dumb of ass. Yes.

- Also Huntara. Damn, woman, can you maybe tune down your attractiveness? I’m trying to keep myself together here.

- Designs in this show are just top notch. Bon Appetit.

- I love how this world is inhabited by so many various creatures, not only humans. NICE.

[smoresiesfanfic]

Ok so basically your fic Deliverance gave me feelings and also made me like the members of Akatsuki that I didn't care about that much before, and now I have a plot bunny that won't let me go :[ I really really want to write about them, but I'm not sure I have all of their personalities straight... It's been so long since I watched the show, and again, I didn't pay that much attention to some of them before!

You need help writing Akatsuki members??? Look no further. Here’s a surefire way to write them all:

(Let’s start with my favorite…)(Canon)Hidan: insert random religious babble. Make most of the words offensive. Be loud. When in doubt just throw Jashin praising in the mix. Yell at Kakuzu for being mean. Call people athiest bastards to spice things up. (“Lord Jashin would be proud of me for relishing in this sweet ass death. Hell yeah boi. Fuck you Kakuzu, you old fuck. Fuck you with your detachable dick, you heathen athiest.”) Kakuzu: take your grumpiest thought and multiply it by infinity. Take any positive feeling of emotion and throw it across the ocean. Kakuzu hates you and he DGAF. He likes money. Give him money. He hates Hidan and insults him regularly. But make him do something nice for Hidan to really give his grumpy character depth. (“Hidan I can’t believe you did this you dumb fuck. This is why we can’t trust you. Can you do anything right? I fucking hate you” kakuzu says as he literally sews Hidan new clothing because it’s snowing outside and Hidan is not allowed to get cold and he ripped his shirt for the thousandth time)Kisame: he’s literally the purest soul. Don’t pay attention to the sadistic side. Kisame is literally the offspring of Mr Rogers and Bob Ross. The best way to write kisame is have him mention Itachi no matter what he’s talking about because kisame loves Itachi and I’m fairly certain there’s nothing else he can talk about… That and shark facts. Oh and he totally takes his sword on walks like a dog because he love this sword. (“Hey everyone, so sorry I’m late. I was 17 villages over getting Itachi his favorite dango because I love him- I mean… I love him. No you heard that right. Samehada and I want you to be in our family. Pls love me.”)Itachi: low-key wants to ride that shark dong™ acts like he’s super cool and just chills in the background but actually high key can’t see for shit. He speaks in weird riddles that make him sound deep but he just doesn’t make sense. He just wants to love kisame. But first he needs to avoid all the booby traps deidara set for his blind ass. (“Kisame, we aren’t fish, we’re people. You can’t love me because I have a tragic backstory™ and kishimoto literally hates me so I’ll likely die. But don’t worry because you’ll die too and when you die, they’ll play my theme music to underlying out hella gay partnership. Also. Can you help me? I’m fairly certain deidara strapped explosives to my body”)Deidara: deidara is a teenager so he’s crazy and irrational and he doesn’t know what taxes are but he 100% knows that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. Deidara is tough because depending on who you are, you ship him with different people. Or you’re like me who ships him with everyone so he my lil ho. So let’s just pretend he’s a ho. So dei is doing his ho thang just tryna bang, doesn’t matter in which way tbh. Deidara is cocky so he likes to talk about himself. He also likes to talk about art so when he talks just insert random realizations of art in whatever he’s doing. Then he blows shit up. Add his tick to random sentences. (Deidara was doing his homework for biology in his bedroom when he realized how artfully structured his spoon was. The one from the bowl of captain crunch he ate 4 days ago but totally left in his bedroom because he’s a teenager and they leave dirty dishes in their room. It’s in their DNA. He learned this from biology. “Katsu” he whispered and blew his desk up. He sighed, realizing his homework was on fire. Now he’s have to fuck his biology teacher for a grade. Again.)Sasori: uhhhhhhh drama drama drama. The best way to write sasori is to ignore him but know he’s lurking in the background. You know how they say that writer’s need to stop thinking their character is 100% of everyone’s attention at all times? Yeah that’s the truth when sasori is in your story because he’s likely spying on them. He knows everything about everyone. He learned several languages so when he gets his nails done at the salon he knows if they’re talking shit about him. I also don’t ship sasori with anyone because I’m not tryna get fucked by literal wood, ya feel me? (Sasori crept in the background undetected. he couldn’t help himself. He had to know. It was brimming with curiosity. What was next to the story? “Oh my god they were roommates.”)Zetsu: ok you tryna write white or black? Whatever. Just throw two completely opposing personalities together and also add in cannibalism and there you go. Also white zetsu loves everyone so he shows up to talk to people but likely kisame is the only one who pays attention to him. Black zetsu likely wouldn’t even give you a ride to see your dying relative in the hospital. He also sucks. (“Wow what a beautiful day to have friends!… What’s that noise?” “Hm? Oh sorry. I was eating” “… Is that my bff Wilbur?” “Yup” “😭” “🤷”)Tobi: do you remember that weird kid in your class that wouldn’t shut the fuck up? Yeah use him as an inspiration and also make him talk in first person and have a good boy kink and for calling people senpai. He also needs to be the most extra person in the room and act like a damn fool. Also, add a tragic backstory and personality disorder. (“Tobi is a good boi, senpai.” That’s it. And that was Canon.)Pein: God complex. Loves himself. Thinks he’s got shit. Strong af. Tries to be stoic but probably 100% cried during each piercing. Konan: the mom friend. She just wants her children to survive but they’re… So dumb. They’re so fucking stupid. Why was this a good idea. Someone please save this poor woman she dies so much.

So anyway, you put that all together and get something like this:

“Can everyone please listen to me.” Konan said, looking around at the clusterfuck anxiously.

“YEAH BABY, FUCK ALL OF YOU BITCHES. ITS TIME TO BE A TRIBUTE FOR MY LORD! KAKUZU I SEE YOUR UGLY FUCKING FACE, IF YOU LOOK AT ME ONE MORE TIME-”

“Don’t lose your head you moron. I’m not even looking at you. I’m thinking how much money I can get for your bounty.”

“Did someone say Itachi???”

“No Kisame. Literally no one said Itachi.” Sasori said with an eye roll. “Stop thinking about Itachi for three goddamn Seconds”

“Tobi is a good boy!”

“How the fuck do we have Tobi and sasori at the same time, hm??”

“Shut up, deidara.” Said kishimoto, probably.

“Did you finish your homework?” Konan asked seriously.

“Of course I did you dick”

“Ok what what did you learn?”

“… The mitochondria is the powerhouse-”

“Ok but you were doing macroeconomics???”

“Katsu! Oh look at that Itachi blew up I gotta go”

“No! ITACHI!”

“DONT WORRY.” Sasori said bravely.

“But he had no chakra left!”

“And with his negative chakra he managed to summon a giant snake and teleport himself away in the knick of time.”

“That seems highly unlikely.” “so does me as the villain but hey, just roll with it” white and black zetsu argued.

Pein looked around the room and nodded firmly.

“I am a god.”

Ok I hope that helped you. In all honesty id love to hear your idea!And if anyone has any questions they’d like answered, let me know!

[sol1056]

the consequences of unexplored implications

One of the hardest things to do in writing (above and beyond all the regular hard things) is recognizing the unexplored implications. Some of these can be more obvious with some simple stats: how many characters are male vs female? how many white characters get speaking parts or are named, vs how many non-white? 

Others take a bit more thought, like realizing the only female characters are unnamed prostitutes, or the only Hispanic characters are janitors. Sometimes it means untangling a well-meaning attempt to subvert a racist trope (ie uncivilized/inferior primitives) that actually ended up unwittingly in a completely different but equally racist trope (ie the noble savage). 

And then there’s a really tricky one to realize, that at least in my experience needs a big-picture view of the entire story. Only then can you see how seemingly independent parts, when overlapped, result in unfortunate implications. 

It’s this last one that I’m starting to twig on, in VLD. And it comes from a combination of a particularly pernicious trope in American media, the canonical relationship between Keith and Shiro, and the purpose of repetition in stories.

the bury your gays trope

Basically, this trope shows up when a story establishes a happy queer relationship, and immediately decides one of the two must die. 

Often, especially in older works (to the extent that they are found in older works, of course), gay characters just aren't allowed happy endings. Even if they do end up having some kind of relationship, at least one half of the couple, often the one who was more aggressive in pursuing a relationship, thus "perverting" the other one, has to die at the end. ... Nowadays, when opinions on sexuality have shifted somewhat, this justification will often be attempted via Too Good for This Sinful Earth. Sometimes it's because the Magical Queer has died in a Heroic Sacrifice so that the straights may live. 

(Also, for some reason, it’s a particular favorite to have one-half of a lesbian couple killed by a stray bullet. Google it.)

Honestly, this trope is so pervasive, it’s damn hard watching popular media. You end up constantly braced for the inevitable death (sometimes followed by the surviving partner going totally evil, a la Willow in BtVS). Well, unless the relationship is toxic or controlling, and then the implication is that het relationships are the only healthy ones, but that’s a slightly different trope. 

In short: if you’re queer, happy endings are not for you. And if you do manage to get a happy ending (ie Bill in Dr Who), you had to suffer ten times as much as anyone else to get there. Compared to het relationships in the same story, it’s always the queer couples that suffer the most. One way or another.

canonical and word-of-god Shiro/Keith

Assumption: Keith and Shiro have an emotional bond much deeper than any couple we’ve seen on-screen. The very least one could say is that they have a deep relationship, albeit presumably platonic. (I should also note that I do consider ‘platonic’ love to be an equal to ‘romantic’ love; it’s just a different type of consummation.) 

Apart from that, there’s word-of-god: the EPs’ comments (ie “beloved mentor”), VA interviews, and various directors/artists posting sheith images with romantic vibes. Yes, that’s all non-canonical, but the message is: if you read this platonic as simply pre-romantic, well, the series’ creators are there with you. 

I will note, I don’t consider this as representation. In canon or it doesn’t count! (Looking at you, Rowling.) Still, word-of-god is clearly impacting the fandom’s interpretations of the relationship.  

using repetition in stories

The try/fail cycle and repetition have a core element in common: an event repeats until the character learns what they need to achieve victory/resolution. The difference is that in try/fail, the character should move up each time. In repetition, the character must re-experience a lesson they failed the first time.

To compare: 

try/fail: the antagonist has a black belt! get white belt, challenge antagonist, fail. okay, green belt! challenge antagonist, fail. next belt!

repetition: the antagonist has a black belt! test for white belt, fail. test for white belt again, fail. test for white belt again... 

When the overall plot’s try/fail is too similar, readers will see the protagonist as too stupid to quit (or change tactics). Repetition works best as a recurring motif: event A, parallel event B, character learns and changes, we have development, and this happens in support of, or alongside, the plot’s try/fail cycle.

Example: if Lance were to flirt with ten different girls and they all shot him down, that’s try/fail. His development is via repetition: it’s a repeating pattern with Allura, until he learns to take a different approach.

Here’s the important thing: like try/fail, repetition is a lesson to be learned. Most readers assume repetition means the previous instances were failures. If the character does the exact same thing and this time it goes beautifully, expect some side-eying from your more astute readers. 

But at the same time, if the character had no control over the outcome in previous instances, expect frustration instead. Readers will intuit the story is indulging in a kind of victim-blaming: the character had no power to ‘do it right’ before, yet the repetition implies that failure was their fault.

And that brings us to how these three parts, combined, make me see some seriously unfortunate implications in VLD.

all three together

So we have sort of this gray-area kinetic-platonic, potential-romantic, relationship. And twice now, one-half of that relationship has been, well, not killed, but sort of killed. Gone, vanished. The other half is left behind, grieving. It’s implied Keith fell apart the first time, and then we got to see it on-screen, the second time. 

It doesn’t actually matter whether S3/S4 Shiro is the ‘real’ one. If he’s not, then we have a third loss. If he is -- but compromised as a tool of the empire -- then it’s still a loss, if a psychological one. He’s there, it’s just not... him, anymore.

In other words, three times that a potential-queer relationship has been put through a Kill Your Gays maneuver that ended up being just a ploy. 

Done once, it could’ve been a subversion of the trope. Aha, the writers could say, we didn’t kill anyone, instead, we brought him back! Yes, one-half of the couple (and later, we find out, both halves) suffered during the separation, but since that’s mostly backstory, it’s all good, they’re happy now. Carry on, Jeeves.

Done twice, the writers not only re-triggered a possible KYG interpretation, they also tripped over the issue of repetition. Remember, the repetition is a lesson -- something must be learned, to prevent its recurrence. 

The problem is removing Shiro leaves Keith to experience the aftermath. By default, he takes the protagonist’s role, and according to the literary convention, he has to learn something to prevent a repeat. But in neither instance -- the Kerberos mission, or Shiro’s disappearance from Black -- does the story give any indication that Keith had a direct impact on the outcome. He did nothing to cause either, therefore there’s nothing he could feasibly do to fix either. 

That makes it especially infuriating that the third time around, one could conceivably say: gee, Keith kept looking, until he found this not-Shiro. If not-Shiro does any damage, that can be traced back to Keith. 

On its own, that could be an interesting dilemma. Taken in light of repetition, not so good. The unfortunate implication is he should’ve learned from the previous two times, and his failure to do so is the reason he ended up here.   

what’s the lesson, then?

Is it: stop caring for this person? Is it: loving someone that much means you have to suffer? Is it: you can’t just be happy? Is it: if you want to try for happiness, you have to earn the right to it? 

How is it that Lance can just flirt, make peace, and develop a deep friendship with Allura -- and neither are forced to undergo repeated trauma in the process? Or that Pidge has just one scene of implied loss, and it’s over and resolved in the same episode? Yet meanwhile Keith -- the only one with a same-sex relationship of significant depth -- has to lose, and lose, and lose? 

Maybe the writers figured: well, it’s not really death, it doesn’t count, let’s go ahead and yank that chain a second and third time. The story is blind to how their plot-twists aren’t all that better. It's still the same old bullshit: if you’re queer, you don’t get the happy ending. And if you do, it can’t be the simple meet-like-love of a het relationship. You’ve got to suffer for it.  

But the story they’ve written, and the choices they’ve made, tell me: these implications are not on their radar. Worse, I end up feeling like they don’t care enough to even put it on their radar.

That’s why it really bothers me when the EPs say they’re pushing for queer representation. Because if the writers can’t even see the implications of doing this to a deeply caring platonic relationship between two people of the same gender, like hell if I want to see what they’d do to an actual, onscreen, queer relationship. 

If you are rising up right now to insist ‘this is what the story demanded!’, I strongly recommend you go read this post: this is a jar full of major characters. Yes, that post is talking about black characters vs white, but it goes for any marginalized group, including lgbtqia.

Bottom line: no story demands anything. You’re the goddamn writer; you control the story. If you write shit, you’re a shitty writer. 

Think harder. Dig deeper. Do better. 

[nylonsandlipstick]

Hi there, would you mind explain why you consider cc and tmi books problematic? I mean they are a somehow flat especially compare to tid/tda but I don’t think i would called them problematic. As for Claire I have hear people to complain about her in the past but always judging by her books I can’t see why. Now this not to say you are wrong or anything like that. I’m just curious on the matter.

Hi! First I’d like to thank you for being so polite in your ask! I know a lot of CC and TMI fans, even casual fans, can be very rude about anyone who views CC or TMI negatively.

So, I’ll start with the analytical book stuff and then go on to the author gossip so that you can have some legit criticism and then read the gossip-y stuff if you’d like and I’ll even direct you to some posts that explain certain things in better details and offer sources so that it doesn’t seem like I’m just offering a bunch of baseless rumors. Also, be warned, I write long analytical posts as I have no chill lol so this post is going to be rather long even though I'll try to cut to the chase.

The Mortal Instruments books aren’t the best books I’ve ever read, not even by a long shot, but the plot itself isn’t problematic. While I don’t like how the books come off more as a series of events strung together by a halfhearted central plot with rather bland and one-dimensional characters, it’s not those things that make the books problematic but rather the characters and the way Clare handles them.

Let’s start with Clary since she’s the main character. She’s rather bland and just really whiny (not a character I disliked or liked, she kind of feels…there) but what makes her problematic is just how she seems to hate all female characters that are prettier than her and could be possible love-interests for Jace. The books give her a weird relationship with Izzy but it’s nowhere near a friendship. She’ll spend so much time kind of side-eyeing Izzy and judging Izzy for how she dresses and basically slut-shaming Izzy and it’s not even because Clary doesn’t like girls that dress like that and sleep around but rather just because she believes that Izzy is a main contender in the competition of winning over Jace. One thing I don’t like that Clare did was play on that stupid trope of girls only seeing each other as competition for a guy (we even see a bit of that in TID with Tessa immediately viewing Jessie as competition for Will but, thankfully, moving past that quickly as she understands that Jessie has no interest in either Will or Jem for that matter). I also really disliked that Clary uses Simon during that godforsaken faux incest plot just to make Jace jealous (which is so wrong on so many levels, but I’ll get to the incest later). Clary also used Alec’s sexuality as leverage against him which is so wrong (Alec’s reaction to Clary realizing his sexuality wasn’t great either).

I think Clare just doesn’t know how to make good female characters in the first place as she makes Izzy super bad too. She’s written as a character that’s supposed to be a slut in no uncertain terms, and that’s just so bad. It’s not like Clare even tries to make it so that Izzy is super comfortable in her body and everyone accepts her because the way she dresses doesn’t make for her intelligence and her ability to fight (which we all know she’s good at). Clare just makes Izzy a pretty face with nothing but boys and how to dress provocatively on her mind, which I don’t think is necessarily bad, if it weren’t for the fact that Clare makes those things out to be bad. I absolutely adore female characters that love dressing up and love constantly dating and don’t care much for fighting if they’re properly developed because I’m so tired of the “I hate dresses and makeup and I’m not like other girls, I’m one of the guys” female characters that are just so annoying at this point. Clare just acts like being feminine and being comfortable in your body are such bad things when that’s not supposed to be true at all. And Izzy really isn’t even there as an actual main character but rather to make Clary seem like the better of the two girls because she’s not what Izzy supposedly represents (femininity and sexuality) and eventually only there as Simon’s love interest (so to further a male character’s love story).

So, as of now, Clare really isn’t seeming like the feminist she claims she is as she not only poorly represents her female characters, she uses them to further male story-lines and there is a huge difference in the female to male ratio in the series (the story is honestly so male-dominated and there’s no balance in female and male characters whatsoever, e are about three main female characters with a dozen of main male characters).

Jace really isn’t problematic in his characterization like Clary or in what he does aside from the faux incest subplot. He’s definitely unlikable and a total Bad Boy trope with untapped potential for being an amazing multi-dimensional character and has an unnecessarily complicated backstory but that’s not really bad outside of writing-wise. So, because I really don’t want to push it off anymore, I’m going to talk about the incest subplot. First of all, incest should very much not be used as some sort of obstacle a couple has to go through to prove their love for each other or whatever. Anything else would have been better, even having Izzy as a legitimate love interest for Jace would have been better. I found it just so uncomfortable having to read through that Seelie Court scene. And the fact that Jace and Clary continued to have feelings for each other and didn’t even try to squash their feelings down and try to see each other as full-blooded siblings just made it all worse. I was so relieved when Valentine admitted that he pretended to be Jace’s father (again, the unnecessarily complicated backstory)…then almost threw up when Sebastian came in and showed romantic interest in his own sister. I understand that Sebastian is supposed to be creepy and unlikable, but, damn, Clare could have done without the incest subplot. It makes it all more irksome that Sebastian is very aware that Clary is his full-blooded sister and yet he still somehow can’t control his feelings for her? The only time I want to see any incest in any form is in an episode of Law & Order: SVU where the main detectives spend the entire episode denouncing incest and calling it wrong in every aspect.

One of the bigger problems I had in the series was Alec. So that you know, I do not like Alec at all, and don’t care for him. Just because Matthew Daddario plays him in the show doesn’t mean I suddenly like show!Alec over book!Alec (although show!Alec has some redeemable traits). I don’t like him at all, period. That way you know that my criticism about Alec isn’t because “Well show!Alec is better and book!Alec this and that, and Matthew plays him which makes him so much better” as I’ve seen a lot of people do. Matthew seems like a kind and likable dude, but I cannot just get behind Alec at all. Aside from being such a stoic and bland character (I don’t really do serious characters, they’re not very fun and they remain rather static throughout stories which is boring), Alec is such a gross character and such a poor excuse for homosexual representation. I think it’s so sad that Clare made her only gay (male homosexual, I only specify since gay is used as a blanket term a lot of the times) character so unlikable and very biphobic. Not only does Alec threaten bodily harm to Clary so that she doesn’t reveal his sexuality (which is a huge no-no, that’s a terrible way to handle a closeted character’s anxiety over coming out), when Alec’s sexuality is finally revealed, it’s in Simon’s point of view which is just so…ugh. Alec is such a huge slut-shamer too; he’s right on par with Clary. He spends so much time egging Magnus about his past relationships and acting like Magnus, a hundred-something years old man, would never have had any relationship before Alec at all. What makes Alec’s slut-shaming so much worse is that it always points back to Magnus’s bisexuality. As a bisexual myself, I hate seeing people slut-shaming us bisexuals (when we’re not being out right ignored, that is) because we go both ways. It’s as if a heterosexual or homosexual isn’t as likely to cheat or be sexually promiscuous at all. It’s just so gross and uncomfortable and what made me absolutely despise Alec. And anyone, even a bisexual, who supports Alec’s biphobia because it’s “realistic” should remember that the Shadowhunter world is full of angels, demons, werewolves, vampires, and magical objects with few poc and lgbt+ characters; CC is far from realism at this point, she could have done without the biphobia.

Magnus isn’t perfect either as he’s so unnecessarily rude to Alec for not coming out quickly and basically attacking Alec for not admitting his sexuality to everyone. You’d think that Magnus, a bisexual man born in the nineteenth century, would understand that it would be difficult for Alec to come out as gay and that he should be so supportive of Alec and help him through it.

Racial/ethnic and sexual representation is at such a minimum and Clare just doesn’t seem to know how to handle her poc and lgbt+ characters properly at all. We have only four lgbt+ characters, one of which is biphobic (Alec), two whom are super minor and there to further other characters’ stories (Magnus and Aline), and one who doesn’t even appear much in general (Helen) and the only two lgbt+ relationships in the entire TMI series seem to have to go through so many obstacles that either the heterosexual relationships don’t have to go through or if they’re in a similar circumstance is easily resolved (like the immortality question for Malec is somehow unable to be resolved and actually made more difficult while Sizzy resolve the immortality question so quickly and easily). And as far as I can remember, most of the TMI characters are very white. The only non-white/ethnic representation we get are Simon (Jewish), Maia (biracial, black and white I believe), Aline (Chinese, if I remember correctly), Magnus (biracial, Indonesian and Dutch), and Jordan (ethnically and racially ambiguous). That’s five characters that I can remember from a very, very long list of characters. So, Clare isn’t much of a good white ally either.

Those are just some of my main problems with The Mortal Instruments books that I feel make them problematic. I know some people can pull out a lot more things I forgot as it’s been a while since I even touched those books. I understand that those books were her first ones to be published and writing changes (as seen in her other series), but Cassandra Clare as a person really does not seem to change.

I’m not as well versed in the problems with Cassandra Clare so I’ll link you to a couple of posts as I give my brief points that explain everything better and give sources (because in situations like these, sources are necessary so that you don’t come off as some Gossip Girl).

So, for Cassandra Clare, you’ll have to bare with me as she’s done a good amount of things that even I can’t keep straight and I’ll definitely miss out on some stuff.

She has a history of cyberbullying fans and continues to do so (x)

She tried to scam the fandom in something that’s called LaptopGate (x)

She plagiarized the hell out of other authors’ works and she won’t apologize for it and won’t even admit it (x)(x)

She seems to have a need for taking down anyone who tries point out her plagiarism/any problematic content her books have and then cries anti-bullying because she got hurt (x)

She’s was and still is hateful of the show (x)(x)(x)

She basically told a fan asking for positive Muslim representation that it won’t happen (x)

She claims that people dislike her because she’s a woman (x)

She claims that the reason why she couldn’t include much Malec (or LGBT+ rep in general) was because her publishing company was conservative which is a bald-faced lie (x)(x)

She tweeted about Magnus currently identifying as bisexual even though she headcanons him pansexual because he would date someone nonbinary which just goes to show her ignorance about sexuality (x)

I really recommend you go through the anti CC tag. There will definitely be a lot of negative things said as many people are angry at CC but you'll get a better understanding as to why people are mad and believe CC and TMI are problematic.

Just for the record, I will say that I am a fan of the books Clare writes. I really enjoyed The Infernal Devices (although I had a few problems with the series but most of them being plot-wise and not liking a few characters) and I’ve heard better things about The Dark Artifices (I’ve also heard it’s got a few problems with its representation but that it’s a step up from The Mortal Instruments). While I don’t agree with and dislike a lot of the things she’s done and written, I think the books are wonderful. I believe that it’s absolutely possible to enjoy a book or television series or movie or whatever and acknowledge that it’s problematic. And I will also say that while I like Shadowhunters better than The Mortal Instruments books, I don’t think that the show is flawless and free of problems. It’s still rather problematic with it’s use of stereotypes, whitewashing/scooting around the ethnicity of certain characters played by pocs (the Lightwood and Lewis families), sidelining of pocs, inherent homophobia (basically queerbaited with Malec and didn’t even show tons of scenes that would have been shown for a straight couple), and a few other problems. But the show is definitely a step up from the books. They really change a lot of things that just didn’t sit well with not only myself but a lot of the book readers and they also fix a ton of plot holes that were in the books.

Anyway, I digress. I really hope that you see this as actual criticism and not me just hating for the sake of hating. You can totally disagree with some of the things that I mentioned and view things differently than I do as that’s your right. But, anyway, I hope this explained things well!

[qqueenofhades]

(1/2) Honestly, Hilary, you are a blessing. I want to scream about your amazing Fic, how I love Immortal Husbands and the whole Immortal Family and how I had more fun learning history from your writing than in my whole damn school. But I also want to appreciate your TOG answers and meta. All the more because my friends outside the internet saw TOG as some boring movie with shitty plot and I'm just here in the corner, wanting to scream at someone who will understand about FINALLY seeing...

"(2/2) ...some GOOD queer representation, without throwing stereotypes in our faces, and I can't even begin with the found family trope because THE FEELS. Anyway, what I was trying to say with this rambling: thank you. <3"

....I’m sorry what. Who. Who is saying this. Straight people? I feel like the answer is definitely straight people. Because they have had EIGHTY FUCKING THOUSAND shitty action movies with the Boring White Man Hero, the disposable Muslim-coded (or actually Muslim) villains, the equally disposable eye-candy female love interest who either gets fridged or is secretly evil, Grimdark Everyone Is Secretly Bad And Nothing Matters crap philosophy, Moral Hand Wringing Over Superhero Violence, on and on. So of course they can moan and whine about “iT’s nOt OrIGinAL” and apparently not sufficiently Grimdark and Amoral, and how the dynamics of the team are completely reshuffled in a way that actually doesn’t prioritize THEM, and like.... this is why I never trust media only beloved by straight people, and only ever watch anything after it’s been recommended to me by a trusted queer friend. Because sometimes I remember the difference, and WHOOF.

Because: the gays and people of color DESERVE formulaic action/superhero movies as much as the Generic White Bro (in fact, we can all agree, far more than the Generic White Bro). This is the trap where every piece of media that’s not made by a Mediocre White Man has to be the best all-time of its genre, apparently, rather than using some of the same well-loved storytelling tropes but recoding them and re-deploying them for a more diverse audience. Instead of the Hard Bitten White Man Action Hero, we have Andy and Nile (two women, and Nile as a young Black woman who literally cannot be shot to death, in the year 2020, is fucking revolutionary on its own don’t @ me). As I said in my first meta, even Booker, who comes closest to fulfilling that trope, is made the closest thing to a “villain” there is on the team and even then for entirely sympathetic motives that rest on him having teary-eyed conversations with Nile about how he misses his family and feels like he failed them. His emotions help drive the story in an actually GOOD and useful way, rather than sacrificing everyone else to coddle him through his feeble heterosexual manchildness (why yes, I AM staring directly at the Abomination without blinking). Nobody in the story is EVER penalized or made a fool of for loving their found family (itself an intensely queer trope, even before the queerness of the individual characters) or trying to do the right thing even in the middle of the horrors, and frankly, I just want to consume more media with that as the main message. I’M SO FREAKING TIRED OF GRIMDARK. GOD. IF I WANTED THAT I COULD JUST TURN ON THE NEWS.

And of course, my BELOVED Joe and Nicky: an interracial, interreligious gay couple that has been wildly in love for literal CENTURIES and gives me the opportunity to do things like write the most self-indulgent historical romance backstory fic ever with DVLA. They met in the embodiment of religious conflict and have transcended that, there are never any cruel jokes or expectation for you to congratulate the narrative for being so beneficent as to give you “an exclusively gay moment” (fuck you Disney!). Joe and Nicky’s love story is central both to who they are as characters, doesn’t revolve around them being suffering or being Tormented over being gay (when the cops pull them apart for kissing, they beat the cops the fuck up, WE STAN), gets to unfold naturally in the background of the story with these beautiful little beats of casual intimacy (the SPOONING /clutches heart) and since THEY LITERALLY CANNOT DIE, no chance of the “burying your gays” bullshit. Even when they’re captured first by the bad guys, and I briefly, upon first viewing, worried that they were going the Gay Pain route just for cheap emotional points, they remain constantly united and fighting together and able to do stupid things like flirt when they’re strapped to gurneys by a mad scientist. Then the rest of the team ends up right there with them, so it’s not something that happens to them alone, and Nile comes in to save everyone’s asses, and Joe and Nicky get ANOTHER beautiful moment of fighting the bad guys and being worried about each other and tender even in the middle of this chaos and GOD! MY HEART! MY WHOLE ASS HEART! I LOVE THEM!

And just the fact that it’s not the Evul Mooslim Turrorists or Boilerplate Scary Eastern Europeans or whoever else who are the bad guys, but Big Pharma, nasty white men with too much money and not enough ethics, the CIA (at least tangentially; they could have pushed a lot harder on that but I’ll give Copley individually a pass), and the very forces that want to stop the Old Guard and discount what they do (helping the little people) as worthless... GOD. That is fucking POWERFUL. They literally take the time to explain with Copley’s Conspiracy Wall that even the little things the team does, when they can’t see it themselves, spiral out through centuries and have positive effects down the line. And it’s NOT just in the Western world (no scene in the movie takes place in America, none of the main four characters/heroes are American, and they only go to England when the English villains capture them). They’re in Africa, in Asia, in South America, in all these places where the Western/imperial world order has harmed people the most and in a way that Euro/American audience often gets to forget. On the surface this might be an action movie with Charlize Theron beating up men (which I mean, that alone is fine if you ask me) but there are SO MANY WAYS in which it achieves these deeper moments of meaning and subversion of the narrative that we are so often fed and the ways it could have done this (i.e. the same old Mediocre White Man ways).

I love the fact that the team unabashedly LOVES each other as their family members (I will never get over them all liking to sleep in one room even in their safe house in France), even when they struggle, and that they continue trying to make it right and never consider leaving Booker behind, because he screwed up but they still love him (and he them). I LOVE LOVE LOVE that this movie gave me not just Joe and Nicky but Andy and Quynh: two completely badass queer couples who kick tons of ass and have romance and Drama and rich and well-realized lives outside being used as emotional manipulation or suffering porn for straight people. (I realise it’s only been two weeks since the first one released, but where is my sequel, I have Needs. Especially Andy/Quynh and Quynh/Joe/Nicky needs). I was disappointed that they’d gotten rid of Quynh in a Bad Medieval Way to cause pain for Andy and then shocked and DELIGHTED when she turned up alive in Booker’s apartment at the end of the film. I LOVE that this movie gave me Nile Freeman and everything that she represents in the middle of this hellish year. I even love Booker! BOOKER! When he’s usually the character type I can’t stand and have the least patience with!

So yes. I have watched it three times already. I am sure I am going to watch it several times more. It just makes me so happy.

[cwdcshows]

Batwoman - S1 E2 - The Rabbit Hole

I gotta admit, the title of this episode feels prescient - I swore I wasn't going to watch this show and here I am doing episode 2, even if albeit like 5 or 6 weeks later. So here we go down the rabbit hole....

Okay, so it's been 15 years since the accident when Kate was a kid and the accident occurred - which is good to know, since when watching the first episode I commented about how Kate getting kicked out of the military for being gay would need to have occurred more than at least 8 years ago, maybe 9; and when someone commented about something being 15 years ago, I thought they were maybe saying it was when she was at the military academy, but apparently it was the accident. I suppose it's plausible she tried to go into the military 5 or 6 years later, and I'm not trying to belittle legitimate issues gay people who served legitimately had until way too recently; plus I know that this was Kate's backstory in the comics, but we're getting to the point where the timeline starts to get a little tight. It's also an interesting insight into Bruce's career as Batman in Arrowverse's Earth 1; because he was Batman 15 years ago and still active until, what did they say previously, until 3 years ago?  So he was Batman for at least 12 years, possibly more; meaning he would have been Batman about two years at least before the Queen's gambit went down - if not longer, depending on how long he had been Batman when the accident happened.   Although a confusing thing about how they're going about this at the moment is where this falls in with the rest of the Arrowverse timeline; since Elseworlds showed Kate already active as Batwoman, with the "red" hair, which she doesn't have yet.  I know she gets it fairly soon(ish), but that would, at best, still put the show a year behind when everything else in the Arrowverse is taking place; because whichever upcoming episode marks when she adds the hair to the costume, that would be ostensibly be the earliest that the crossover with Flash and Arrow could have happened...... Does a private security firm get to make the "dead or alive" judgement call with people they're targeting?  For that matter, how do they have the authority target people to even take them alive? (Batwoman gets shot, looks at bulletproof armor) "Cool." I mean..... I kind of get it, but.... you were in a military academy, trying to become an officer.  It's not clear how far you got, and obviously I'm pretty sure they don't actually shoot you to demonstrate the effectiveness of your armor, but you also did a lot of intensive forms of training to try and get into the Crows; would this really be the thing that impresses you? I kind of prefer the look of her costume without the later modifications - the hair or the red emblem. The emblem will probably be fine, but red hair never looks right, in Elseworlds or in any promo photos I've seen. See, the writers want us to think Alice is the Big Bad, but clearly Kate's arch nemesis is vocal inflection. What was the point of Kate trying to suggest her family that Alice is Beth?  The evidence she has is arguably thin.  She even said it herself in the previous scene that her dad wouldn't believe it.  And how much do the other three know about what went down?  Did I miss a scene where any of them figured out she was Batwoman?  She just casually mentions getting Alice's knife and says that Alice was after her, but for anyone who doesn't know that Kate put on a bat-suit, she had nothing to do with whats-her-name's rescue. I don't actually remember how or when Kate got the knife from her, but I thought it was during the final confrontation when Kate was in the bat-suit; maybe I'm wrong, but even if she wasn't, she notes that she has Alice's knife so casually, like it's no big deal. Why is there any qualms about running any possible DNA from the knife?  Whether Alice is Beth or not, surely having something on file has some type of forensic value, wouldn't it?  And if there's even a slim chance she is Beth, all the more reason to find out - not because it should change how they respond to her as a threat or in bringing her to justice, but just for the sake of knowing.  Sure, you would hope your sister/daughter didn't end up a psychotic lunatic, but eliminate all doubt.  If she's not, you're no worse off, can maybe breath a sigh of relief; and if she is, maybe it does change how you go about bringing her to justice, but as long as it doesn't allow others to be needlessly hurt, there's nothing wrong with that. "You have something of Alice's" And conveniently, it's right here in a bag for you, rather than somewhere else entirely, which odds would normally have favored. Also, just any old shady looking van can pull up into the parking garage of the elite private security firm protecting Gotham; because it wouldn't be a CW show if a protagonist's base was well guarded. "I have a clear shot!" He said loudly enough for the target to hear him; before a small fucking army of sharpshooters moved into a shittier position where there was a whole other person in the line of site between them and the intended fucking target.....

Should Kate have really been upset that....whatever her name is, told Kate's dad where to find Kate and Alice; or that they arrested Alice?  What sort of endgame did she envision after getting the DNA test?  For that matter, what was the best case scenario if she'd let Alice go free while running said sample and the inevitable search to track her down again afterwards?  Hope that she wouldn't kill more people in the interim?

And why did she bother telling anyone she was going to meet her, let alone a Crow's agent? So she feared her step-sister was in danger, so first she put on the bat-suit...sure, makes about as much sense as the days when Oliver first had to go to the trouble of applying his mascara before going out..... I'm not surprised Kate jumped in after Alice and is using the re-breather - the whole time Lucas was showing her the gadgets I thought, "so she's going to end up using at least one of these by the end of the episode; because that's the only reason these shows ever bother pointing stuff out." - and sure shit, here we are.  But it also brings me back to another thought I couldn't help wonder, which is, why the hell didn't Batman dive into the water the first time to try and rescue Beth?  I mean, I suppose he could have and just couldn't find her for some reason, but I don't think there's been any suggestion of that; and given Alice's own recount, for whatever it's worth, it seems like there'd at least have been some window of opportunity. But the plot's gotta happen somehow, I guess.... Okay, fuck you guys; Mythbusters proved that bullets lose pretty much all moment when they hit a good size body of water; and even if they didn't, how the fuck would that have caused anything to exploding under-fucking-water??? Oh, there was an explosion and Batman wasn't there - fuck you, annoying announcer.  Ignoring the fact that a "Bat" wasthere and the general public just didn't know; two episodes in and I'm sick of this bullshit that somehow anyone who dons a cowl is somehow responsible for every fucking thing that goes on in the city like they're meant to be some sort of omnipresent deity or something. Whether it's Batman, Batwoman or fucking Santa Clause, no one can be everywhere or do everything and it's some stupid ass bullshit to have them double down on this asinine, ungrateful mentality, pinning their hopes and dream to one person and blaming them when something goes wrong. And wait just a fucking second; the announcer makes a quip referring to Robin; which means that at leas one of the Robins must actually exist in this continuity; so where the fuck is he? Why is the report that Alice is "in the wind" following the explosion that send her police vehicle into the water?  By all rights she should have been dead and would have been if Kate hadn't jumped in to rescue her.  Even in lieu of a body, would the authorities to conclude with such certainty that she's "in the wind," suggesting she definitively escaped and is again on the loose?  At the very least there should be some doubt as to whether Alice is still alive; and that people should be on the look-out to be safe, while acknowledging the possibility that she's dead. And who blew up the van that nearly killed Alice?  Because that doesn't seem like much of an escape plan, when it requires being saved by the new vigilante who's only been around for a day or two.

[fanficlandofkazamcra-blog]

“How Bad Can I Be?” A keemstar x onceler  cross over fanfic.

Keemstar was sitting at his desk, wondering what he would do in his life. He was a drop out and he still needed adult diapers. Standing up, he exclaimed to himself, shaking his fursuit around, “ I know! I’ll do youtube videos about the NEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWOSSSSSSSSSSA “ he smirked. He visited the wonderful land of Youtube. It was glorious, full of youtubers having a great time, fulfilling their fandom’s ships. Jack and Mark were STILL not together, and the fangirls were crying. Most, if not all of them were playing videogames.  There were also some who thought they were dragons.

Keemstar strutted to the youtube channels in his fursuit, watching them be far more successful than him. He was jealous, very jealous. Eventually, the sky got dark, so most youtubers left the area, but some stayed because they had no life and sold their soul to the devil, to be devoted to posting 18 videos a day. After creating his channel, “Drama Alert”, he exposed a man named XxAlexIsAGoodManXx, ruining his channel. It fell to ashes over the period of a month, brutally getting torn apart from the inside. Drama Alert collected the ashes, ready to make a batch of suscribers. He walked away, holding the remains of his youtube channel in his hand. He was heading towards his cabin in Youtube land, taking off his fursuit to repeal a pink Rainbow Dash adult diaper. He changed his own diaper, but it was extremely difficult, as he had never done it before. He tried to strap it together, but he was too fat, and too stupid. Either way, he crafted a video exposing XxAlexIsAGoodManXx, and walked to town. At day, the youtubers mourned over their loss. Alex WAS indeed a good man, and he helped the youtubers over the years advance. Meanwhile, fursuit man Keemstar was showing off his “Alex Exposed” video, screaming enthusiastically for everybody to call Alex a stupid nigger. They threw tomatoes at him, booing him. After being called out, he sighed, stomping away aggressively. “Maybe my mother was right..” He teared up, and threw the exposed video away, in the hands of a young adult, with beautiful luscious blonde hair and blue eyes. Keemstar was already at his cabin, deciding to move on from diapers due to his heart break. He took off his fur suit and put on a suit to appeal to the Fangirls. Suddenly, everybody rushed towards his cabin, chanting for more videos, subscribing quickly. They begged and begged for more videos. Keemstar sweated nervously at all the people, he’s only seen this many people when his mommy took him to the shop once.

“Keem! We want exposure videos! We need DRAMA!” They scream, beginning to stomp their feet, holding money in their hands. Keem calls his mom on the phone, screaming in utter joy. “MOMMY!! GET MY CEO’S I’VE SUCCEEDED IN LIFE!” his mom replied with a relieved sigh, thinking that keemstar would finally make his parents proud, but then she realised it was in youtube. She frowned, but thought it was better than nothing. Keemstar began exploiting other channels, laughing as they suffered. His CEOs were behind him, as he grinned smugly.

Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki rushed to his hut, while listening to channels internally bleeding to death. “Stop!” She cried. “Hurting all these channels will cause extreme chaos! It’ll be your final regret!”

Keemstar spinned around from his office chair, and smirked, laughing like one of those hot anime boys, munching obnixously on popcorn. “Sorry, Susan, but the newwwssssssssaaaa must be reported by somebody.” He says, spinning back around to watch some newwwwwwwwwwwwwwwssssaaa, his own newsa of course. He began to sing, suddenly changing his voice to sound like a fantastic pop star, “ How ba-a-a-ad can I be? I'm just using the news that comes naturally,

How ba-a-a-ad can I be? I'm just following the news’ lead. How ba-a-a-ad can I be? I'm just using the news that comes naturally. How ba-a-a-ad can I be? How bad can I possibly be? Well there's a principle of nature (principle of nature) That almost every 'tuber knows. Called survival of the fittest (survival of the fittest) And check it this is how it goes. The ‘tuber that wins gotta expose and yell and send and hate! And the animal that doesn't, well the animal that doesn't winds up someone else's ne-ne-ne-ne-news! (new new new new news!) I'm just sayin'. How ba-a-a-ad can I be? I'm just using the news that comes naturally. How ba-a-a-ad can I be? I'm just following the news’ lead. How ba-a-a-ad can I be? I'm just using the news that comes naturally. How ba-a-a-ad can I be? How bad can I possibly be? There's a principle in the news (principle in the news) That everybody knows it’s sound. It says the people with the good news (people with the good news) Make this ever-loving world go 'round So I'm biggering my set-up, I'm biggering my news, I'm biggering my internet connection Everybody out there, take care of yours and me? I'll take care. of. Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. (shake that news you swines!) Let me hear you say 'tobuscous exposed!' ( tobuscous exposed!) ‘He raped me!’ (’he raped me!’) Complain all you want, it's never ever, ever, ever gonna stop. Come on how bad can I possibly be? How ba-a-a-ad can I be? I'm just building a news channel How ba-a-a-ad can I be? Just look at me pettin' this child! How ba-a-a-ad can I be? A portion of proceeds goes to charity! How ba-a-a-ad can I be? How bad can I possibly be? Let's see. (How ba-a-a-ad can I be?) All the customers are watchin’! (How ba-a-a-ad can I be?) And the money's multiplyin’! (How ba-a-a-ad can I be?) And nobody starts exposin’! (How ba-a-a-ad can I be?) And the lawyers are denyin’! (How ba-a-a-ad can I be?) Who cares if a few channels are dyin’? (How ba-a-a-ad can I be?) This is all so gratifying. How bad. How bad can this possibly be!?”

He says, his CEOs singing along. Susan sighs, as she watches the last 5 channels limp down, wondering when they’ll get exposed. She looks at them and pats them. “I’m sorry, Pewdiepie. I tried, senpai.” she begins walking away, eyes watering.

SLAM!

Two days later, the last channel tumbles to an end, sending a final goodbye to the viewers. Susan sheds a tear, as the precious Pewdiepie that was always valued’s channel was ended. She walked up to Keemstar, eyes watering.

“I knew it. You would’ve done it no matter what I said.” She sighs, desperately grasping onto the last tape of Pewdiepie’s video.  The fangirls were running to our good friend Keemy’s house as they spoke. “Now, unless you find someone who cares an awful lot, it’s not going to get better.

it’s not.” She says, before leaving to let Keemstar get attacked by the fangirls.

The fangirls cry and scream, hitting Keemstar’s door. “WE DIDN’T THINK THIS’D HAPPEN! WE WANTED SEPTIPLIER TO BE TRUE, BU-BUT Y OU RUINED IT!” They snapped, disliking Keemstar’s videos. Suddenly, the once beautiful land of youtube was wiped clean of it’s previous beauty. It was now dull, and grey, and covered in the ashes of old channels for others to mourn on. After locking Keemstar in his own house, the fangirls left. Keemstar had been holding the last Pewdiepie video in his hand as this happened, grasping it tightly. He sighed, turning to all his videos.

He would be here forever.

12 YEARS LATER

Hunched over, Keemstar was rewatching his old videos, remembering all the praise and attention he got. He glanced at a large stack of money, reminding himself of better days. Suddenly, he heard a little girl run to his house. Her name was LtCorbis. She was 11, and was trying to impress her friend idubbbzTV with a youtube video. He had always been funnier, better, and smarter than her, and she always tried to copy Idubbbz, he was always tired of her. He said to her one day, that if somebody gave him a youtube video, he’d just go homo for them (no homo) on the spot. The little girl yelled to Keemstar. “ARE YOU KEEM!?” Keem nodded, waiting for her to continue. Corbis yelped to him, “I REALLY NEED THAT VIDEO!” “Why?!” Keem questions, as Sophia continues. “I need it to make..” She read the smudged writing on her palm, stammering. “ Sus-Susy W-wo-wojoockky ! I need to make Susy Wojocky proud! “ She exclaims. He nods, ready to pass the video. “ Once Susan told me ‘ if you don’t try to fix it, it’s not going to get better. it’s not ‘. I wondered what this meant for years, but I finally found out-” Sophia was tapping her foot, honestly not giving a fuck about the backstory. She just wanted to appeal to Senpai edupps like the filthy fucking weeb she is. “What are you, fucking gay?” She says to Keemstar, fed up with his story. “You need a toilet roll to wipe that shit from your mouth, girly?” He hisses, dropping the video and a toilet paper roll from his barricaded window. “Thank you, daddy Keem!” She says, happily, skipping away with the video.

She passes it to Idubbbz, and iDubbbz starts wheezing. “What are you, fucking gay?” He says aggressively, flinging the video away. “I don’t want this shit I was joking, holy fuck.” Sophia cries and runs away. Neither of them realise Youtube was being revived when Edupz flung it away, people were creating channels again. They were mainly reaction channels, but it was better than nothing. Idubbbz made a channel, and got way more famous than lil Corbis.

From Daddy Keem’s house, he shed a tear in joy. “Thank you, Corbis.” He said, putting on a pink fur suit.

THE END