#or teenagers ig idk how old this person is

[torahtot]

how is this funny & not just misogyny

[llycaons]

I need you all to know there are lan sizhui self-shippers out there

[kirbear]

thinking abt compulsory transmasculinity (a thing that affects me and only me and is not a real thing at all)

[yesimwriting]

how old are they? (best friend!felix x reader)

short answer: felix is late 19/20, reader feels late 17/18 (i like the thought of reader having skipped a grade bc one of her main insecurities is constantly wanting to seem older bc being mature is the one thing her dad prasied her for)

elaboration below the cut!!

i saw a picture of Saltburn's script that says felix is supposed to be 20,, ig that could be wrong bc of editing/verification,,

i don't remember his age ever being explicitly stated in the movie though, but i feel like it's implied (through his status/familiarity in an on campus routine) that he's not a first year/a little bit older than oliver, but i do picture felix as 20 (maybe late 19 if i ever want to write a blurb where reader and felix are celebrating his birthday)

also it just feels like a good age for him! just starting to get his foothold in the adult world, enough youthful idealism still in his system to want to make someone as "tragic" as oliver his project when a safer choice would have been someone a little shinier,, and just as he's leaving his teenage years behind, he dies (ironically and arguably bc of the youthfully naive concepts his family life would have encouraged him to keep into adulthood) :(

so now instead of being forever 20 bc of his comfortable life style, he's forever 20 bc he has to be,, in a way oliver got to know the only version of felix he would ever know but i digress

bestfriendreader feels like a 17/18 year old freshman to me (hear me out),, i like reader as a freshman bc it's one more thing that should make reader feel closer to oliver,, but she just doesn't, which adds to their dynamic that i haven't shared much of but i will!!

also,, i see bestfriend!reader as someone that's spent their entire life hanging out with people a little older, constantly striving to seem more mature/be a grown up bc her mom's a free spirit and her dad only praises her when she handles his disappointments "like an adult"

also something about bestfriend!reader being on campus for like two weeks, hearing every story on earth about felix and his friends that he's more of an enigma than person (campus celebrity vibes) that she doubts is that impressive until he sits down next to her in class and starts talking is cute idk,, like reader not even realizing how big a deal felix's interest in her is until one of her friend's is like dude.

it's the kind of luckiness that oliver originally hates her for,, reader walked onto campus,, new to oxford,, new to the country, and still manages to snag felix's attention without even trying

idk if the age gap is weird tho😭 (i'm 20 rn and would never date a 17/18 year old but my best friend is 18, started college at 17 bc she was ahead a year and when she was that age she dated 19/20 year olds that went to school with her and that didn't feel weird bc they have enough in common bc of their setting) sooo i'm open to reader having an early enough birthday that she's 18 by the time her and felix get close,, i like the idea of writing a birthday fic anyway lol

[c-art00nish]

So uh. I made some Ocs for @elmushterri stories.

"The Knight’s Handbook" + gunntech because I swear they had me on a chokehold with how amazing the concepts are (*´∀｀*)ﾉ

First starting with The Knight’s Handbook;

Matilda Grayson. An OLD knight, she's been around for some time, but oh well who keeps count of the years anyways?

She died protecting her little brother from- what was it again? Nevermind, that's all she needs to know.

While I got carried away in her fighting poses + awakened form, she doesn't use them much actually! Her main hobby is cooking and if she could do anything other than being a knight then that would be it!

She does just enough knight work to not be scolded around or anything, but most of her time is spent either cooking in the kitchen of the castle or around earth tasting all new combinations of food!

Personality wise she's mostly chill (unless actually pissed off) and goes with the flow. Ever since there were two queens she's pretty much neutral on either, both are actual kids and Matilda is totally side-eying the fact that literal teenagers have so much responsibility on their shoulders.

Ig in the story she'd still hang around the castle and spend her time as always, though if there were to be a takeover from another queen, she wouldn't mind if she got to stay (also totally not to make sure the other teenager with too much angst eats well)

That's about all I got from her for now, but I still have another oc! (^o^)/

This time from Gunntech;

Oof! Isn't she a fun one?

From all the gunntech ocs I've seen (correct me if I'm wrong) none are non-gunntech kids, so I decided to play with that!

I thought it'd be fun if someone had a conspiracy-esque blog about the Gunntech company, that someone is her!

But she didn't start off as anti-Gunntech, oh no, she was actually a really big fan! It also helped the fact that her bestfriend was child of one of the engineers at Gunntech (oc not drawn yet). But one day he just. Dissapeared.

One thing led to another and a rabitt hole was open, every inconsistency that may seem like a coincidence. Every whisper or rumor about something else going on inside those pristine walls. Every single thing is recorded on her blog.

Ofc it is like, very unpopular bc who would dislike the very-good organization that saves the day every day? (With child-soldiers)

I think she'd be hanging out really, REALLY, in the background until last season when the city(town?) needs to be shown what's going on in this facility. Idk, I'd say she'd be a hacket-trope character and then get her hands on those info.

Anyways that's all! And a lot- (゜ロ゜)

[sandraharissa]

So a normal average person engaging with arcane and seeing the conflict pertaining Jinx as ‘monstrous’ vs ‘healthy’ sees the situation in like, the normal way these things really work but I don’t think this outlook should be projected onto the characters.

This meta is motivated by me remembering how ppl would often frame the conflict between Vi and Silco as ‘Vi wants Jinx to be healthy and Silco wants her to be monstrous’ and honestly idk why I didn’t write this earlier, I guess I didn’t care cos there were a lot of bad takes flying around back then but I wanna talk about it now.

My thesis is that both Silco and Vi want Jinx to change in some ways and the simple way of saying it is ‘come out Powder’/’Powder must die’ but I’d argue another way of describing the conflict is seeing Jinx’s mental issues and not seeing them, but in opposite ways ig.

It’s a bizarre take to say Silco doesn’t see or understand Jinx’s issues or that he doesn’t want to solve them. The shared trauma is literally the basis for their bond and overcoming trauma is literally at the core of Silco’s ideology. Silco is the character who’s shown to be the most aware of Jinx’s issues and who helps her the most. He in his lair surrounded himself in water and Jinx in her lair surrounds herself with memorabilia of her family, both things that would trigger them but this environment shows that they exposure therapy-ed their way through it. Jinx gets a PTSD flashback from tinkering with the arcane and she goes to Silco for comfort and he takes her to where he suffered his trauma and literally gives her a pep talk about becoming a stronger person and it works! and Jinx goes back to tinkering with the arcane unafraid, and of course the finale where he seems aware that Jinx is in distress while Vi isn’t. Then there’s other things like how she helps him take shimmer or her space in the rafters, both things that would convey that she is needed and trusted, so things that would appease her insecurities and abandonment issues. These are small things but they convey that Silco is aware of Jinx’s issues and models their relationship and environment in order to adjust it to her needs. So basically Silco wants Jinx to be monstrous AND healthier cos he perceives these as the same thing. Based on his dialogue being a monster = being stronger = being a new person = not being the old, weak and afraid person = overcoming your traumatic past.

Conversely Vi has a lot of throwaway lines like ‘and I thought Powder could get obsessed’ and also just from her behavior in act 1, even tho we can already tell smth is wrong with Powder Vi seems oblivious to it, or she underestimates how bad it is. She gives her advice but it seems like general advice one would give to any younger sibling. Powder has a violent panic attack (? or maybe meltdown?) and it seems Vi didn’t anticipate it, she never sees it happen and then after the fact she never learns it even happened. When they’re little we the audience take notice of how Powder has no reaction to their parents’ corpses but Vi doesn’t. We the audience see her excitedly waiting for her bomb to pepper a teenager with nails but Vi doesn’t. And so Vi has these memories of Powder as being just a normal little girl and that there was nothing wrong about her, and seeing Jinx of course she initially assumes Jinx faked loyalty in order to survive only to switch to believing Silco got her brainwashed and mind-controlled so bad that she has to physically remove Jinx from his presence/influence to get through to her, the REAL her. She essentially wrongly assumes Powder used to be ‘normal’ and works off of that false assumption, and imo that’s a huge part of the sisters’ misunderstanding. She sees Jinx enjoy violence but I highly doubt Vi sees this and like the audience thinks of possible diagnosis, I think what she thinks/notices is that her sister acts immorally, so it’s less about her health and more about morals, ‘this is bad cos my sister’s kinda a bad person now, Silco corrupted her’. The tricky thing here are the hallucinations, several times Jinx speaks to no one and Vi has no reaction whatsoever to this and so it’s hard to judge why that is but my thinking is that she’s just too stressed out and overwhelmed in these situations to address this. Cos it’s not like Vi ever has a line like ‘I need to take Powder away from Silco cos he treats her so badly she has hallucinations now’ so like I said, no reaction to the hallucinations in the moment and then later she never has any thoughts about them like she didn’t even notice. And then we’ve got the finale where she triggers Jinx and doesn’t even know it.

But obvs it’s not a one person is completely wrong and another is completely right situation. 

Silco’s understanding of Powder’s mental health issues and his own experience make him think that Jinx’s ‘monstrous’ aspects are good actually, the exact same way he thinks about himself, he in his mind likely equates them, the cruelty, the lack of empathy, the power-seeking to a sense of independence, protection from further trauma, protection from panic attacks etc. so he completely lacks understanding of Jinx’s issues (that maybe aren’t directly a matter of mental illnesses depending on whether you interpret Jinx to have APD but influence her mental state negatively anyway).

Meanwhile Vi has no understanding of all of the mental health issues Powder suffered from however that also makes it extremely clear to her when she comes back that there’s smth wrong with her sister. So even tho she never talks about ‘Powder getting better’, so again from Vi’s pov it’s not about mental health, she has great understanding that Jinx’s current issues are issues that need solving.

So de facto the whole ‘retrieving Powder’ vs ‘letting Powder die’ boils down to removing the part of Jinx/Powder that’s bad for her and based on the characters’ different perspectives on Jinx they want her to either move on from the trauma that was being Powder or erase the corruption of the Jinx persona.

Obvs both are wrong <3, Vi idealizes the image of Powder, her sister, and Silco idealizes the image of Jinx, his daughter, and right now they’re in competition over her and they’re not about to lose lol.

[vriskaserketdaily]

its so hard to write vriska as an adult because she is So chronically a teenage girl. like a good 30% of her actions can be explained away with "shes a teenage girl"

yeah being 13 is just like that idk what to tell you

this is gonna probably get into "your experiences are not universal" territory but (pic unrelated)

vriska is the kinda chick where, you weren't exactly friends with her, but you ran in the same circles of weird-but-not-too-weird kids. like, neither of you were popular but there were definitely two or three freaks lower on the social scale than her, and unlike you she was a huge bitch about it. anyway, you have a massive but not-unforseen falling out (she is a LOT) and end up going to separate high schools. years later you reconnect with a different friend from the same school, and as you're catching up with them her name comes up.

and your first thought is, "damn, she's still alive?"

let's say, for example, that this is kanaya and nepeta catching up. the trolls' friend group might not have been as freaky as my own, but there are FOR SURE two or three of 'em where looking back it's like "yeah, no way that kid isn't dead/in jail by now." and then, pleasant surprise, ten years later nobody's offed themselves BUT the guy you least expect (karkat) is now a father. go figure. anyway nepeta/kanaya gets curious and asks what the hell vriska is up to, since last she heard vriska was a pretty troubled kid and it'd be nice to get some closure on that front.

same old shit, somehow. except now the police can get involved, and basically her life is a huge mess. does she have a job? no. a degree? well, half a bachelor's maybe, but everyone else who hasn't made a trainwreck of their lives is either thinking about a master's or certified in some trade of choice. does she even have a car? . . . not as such. the perpetual mystery is how is she GETTING into all this insane and petty drama with the most QUESTIONABLE people like how is she GOING to these VENUES with no car??? WHERE is she meeting & dating this BIZARRE rotating cast of shitstain losers and rancid wannabe IG baddies?????

has she like, developed or grown in any capacity? well, now she's cool with tats and piercings and has a big ol anchor on her shoulder she got while dating a hot college chick as a high school freshman, but no, she is in no way a nicer or more mature person. anyway let's circle back to karkat being a teen dad WHAT??? how did THAT happen???

so to answer your question, i prefer to write adult!vriska as "that one chick in your old friend group who never actually grew up past middle school, to the detriment of herself and everyone in her immediate vicinity." the degree to which she completely wrecks her own/others' lives is up to you (i stop short of putting her in jail for vehicular manslaughter by simply not letting her have a car) and whether or not she Can develop into a stable, well-adjusted adult is Also up to you. personally i think she'd make an excellent fake psychic, but singer-songwriter, professional wrestler, vlogger/streamer, and independently wealthy layabout are all viable vriska "careers" (also, most miserable history major on earth, if you truly believe she would get a degree in l*beral arts). hope this helps!

[fraudulent-cheese]

So i watched episodes 3 to 8 of Pahkitew Island

Again, watched these with my buddy @rockin-it-rusty! And, holy shit these episodes have got me genuinly wondering why Pahkitew's so hated.

I'll go over the negatives first; the challenges are kinda eh. The Truth or Scare one is great, and the cave one is interesting due to it's hints at the Fake Island reveal (as heavy handed as they were), but most of these were just pretty out there to me? They mostly felt like an excuse to put the characters in situations mostly. Just have Topher make a narration joke, give Max and Scarlett an interaction, have Sky and Dave dance around eachother all due to a thing the challenge made them do. I don't mind the first two much, but the last one gets super repetitive man. Glad they mixed it up a bit by making Shawn try to wingman Dave though, i like their friendship! im a bigger dashawn shipper now oops

ANYWAYS IMA TALK ABOUT THE CHARACTERS NOW BECAUSE LET'S BE HONEST, THE CHARACTERS CARRY THE SHOW!

Amy... Ok im very mixed on her. On one hand, she serves her role as the mean twin relatively well. But on the other, that's all she really is! Her one trait is being mean and hating her sister, and that's all she really does! Granted she has a thing? Where she gets sayings (?) wrong, or just gets words wrong (she says parfait is german. it's french. i would know) which! could hint at something! (maybe less smart than her sister?) but they don't do shit with her outside of her swimming back to the island in episode 5. god i wanna rewrite this season so badly now to give her a bigger role. idk shoutouts to Twinning with a Twist for redeeming her while still giving her some edge ig.

Rodney. i uh

I haven't thought about him since his elimination honestly. I just doooooon't care about him it's crazy. Most forgettable guy in the entire series.

Sammy! Ok back to the siblings rambles! I wish the show leaned into her scheming more. Girl in five episodes pulled identity theft and did nothing else. Why. Her relationship with Jasmine is adorable, and i wish she got Jasmine to call her by her actual name, and a personality too! It's really a shame man :(

Sidenote, but like her team fucking hated her for some reason??? Like what. I know it's because of that one scene, but really?

Ella!! My sweet girl Ella!!! She didn't do anything wrong man she just likes singing leave her alone!!! Chris really fucking hates her and it's pretty entertaining at least, but i'd say his beef with Topher's funnier. She has a nice singing voice, and i love how passionate she is about fairytales and stuff. You could do so much with the Prince thing and the show... didn't. Like what even was that. Conflict that wasn't one that lasts an episode. what

Gotta say though, her elimination was fucking ass, Max 100% should've been kicked instead of her.

Topher. Ah the opher. He's a special case, even in the context of Pahkitew Island itself! Because the dude's not here for the game. He's here to meet his idol, Chris Mclean (he really knows how to pick em, huh). I like the progression he's got, from wanting his approval to straight up wanting to host the game instead of him. I'll admit, my opinion's a little skewed since i am mutuals with the Topher guy on Tumblr, but i like him regardless!

His relationship with Chris is easily one of the more interesting parts of the season, mostly because a 30-something year old dude having beef with a teenage fan is hilarious, and you could definitely spin it in a sad way from Topher's perspective.

It also helps that he's genuinely funny! His few interactions with the other campers are also pretty fun, he dgaf about them it's great.

Im kind of mixed on Dave, i'll be real. On one hand, im glad they ditched the whole "he doesn't like anyone on this Island" trait three episodes in because that would've gotten. SO ANNOYING. SO FAST. (hell i'd argue it was already annoying), and him being a hopeless romantic could be a fun trait, if done right. It also helps that he's really pathetic and i find that funny. His friendship with Shawn's fun too!

But on the other hand... Yeah, even before the finale the Skave plotline's really boringgg. They just dance around eachother for half the season for like! No reason! Please just have a conversation, even if it takes other people to sit them down to have it! I know why they didn't because the finale needed them to not actually talk about it but at least have Sky tell him she'll explain later or have him not be a coward and ask her about it himself!!! ack!!

Also the thing with him and Ella went literally nowhere. I have 0 feelings about it because it's just there for some reason. Idk they just really wanted to shoehorn in romance for every girl this season huh.

Scarlett's a really underutilized character pre-Island reveal. The bulk of her interactions with the other campers are with Max, who has a ton of screentime for some reason (which i don't personally really mind but i'll explain later) which honestly sucks because she's a fun character! I want to compare her to Twilight Sparkle at the very start of MLP. She's smart, she knows it, she can communicate with her teammates just fine and just chooses not to usually. I like her alot! Im just... really disapointed that she's so in the background usually; if anyone's a wasted character in tdpi, outside of the Twins i'd say it's her.

Her legit wanting to kill Max is great though. That's how i'd react to him irl. Don't get the Max saying she had a crush on him three episodes in, or the quip Chris made during the team switching tho.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, MAX! I swear, i was convinced i'd find this guy annoying pre-watch but uh... I like this guy! No really, i do! He's like Mal, only the narrative doesn't take him seriously in the slightest and it's hilarious to watch! Im like Sugar in that one clip, i am laughing at this buffoon's intelligence, and his stupid catchphrase, and his "evil" plans, and his general delivery! Max is funny!

Even when the Scarlett "minion" thing kicked in i still found him funny! Don't get me wrong, i wish he'd gotten out earlier (ESPECIALLY when he was supposed to get kicked in the episode Ella got eliminated into) or just gotten less screentime in general, but in the season proper, yeah he's a funny guy! Big gimmick, but i like him! Please don't add nuance to him, i don't care

Jasmine... certaintly exists! I'd call her the Season's rock, the one character that's emotionally intelligent on the show. She's fun in general, and also the only one noticing things going wrong with the robotic island. As said before, her relationship with Sammy is great to see, and i wished we'd see more of her and Sky's friendship and uh. For there to be more between her and Shawn? Because the only things i've retained is that they blushed at eachother once and then trust issues party because he hit her once during a challenge and that completely broke her trust in him - which, could be an interesting aspect of her character to explore since if that's all it took for her to pull a 180 on Shawn, the girl must have a complicated relationship with trust. That's an interesting flaw! It also shows up with her rapport in Sky in the later episodes of this batch, and. GOD. I wish it was developped man!

The issue? Yeah it's dragged on so longggg man! It's frustating to watch frankly because i really wish they'd resolve this conflict quicker since it's like. The same thing every episode :( to my knowledge it's solved in episode 9, but it did NOT need to be dragged out for 4 episodes.

Unrelated to her charater, but her height difference with the other campers is kind of ridiculous. In some shots the characters look so small compared to her it's crazyyy

Ok, now. Sugar. I'll be honest? She's great! She's just a menace and doing her own thing and it's fun to watch! She's also interesting in terms of backstory since she's canonically a pageant queen; her relationship with Ella is greatly impacted by this, since she heavily suspects her of lying to her face when it's just. Ella being Ella. Similar thing to her opinion on Topher; she doesn't like him for his sucking up to Chris, the host (something that Rusty probably agrees with). I fucking wish she was more popular because then people would look into her more, but alas. She's a female, plus sized character in Pahkitew Island, so considering the Fandom's biases, it was never going to happen. U_U

OK TIME FOR ZOMBIE BOY. So, Shawn. He's definitely more present in these episodes than he was before, and, again, i think he's fun! He's a weird little guy. He's got interesting skills (his camouflage, legit parkour, general athleticism) and his personality's interesting as well compared to the other guys. The zombie thing is fine, actually, because they do different things with it over the course of these episodes. Not much to say about him, he's a solid character to me and i wish he had more interactions with the cast outside of Dave and his pining for Jasmine. Who he's talked to like, five times at this point? Again, they probably should've talked stuff out faster than this for me to actually enjoy it. Oh well.

And finally, Sky. She's an interesting case for me? She's fine, mostly. She's the Normal Person™️ of the cast to me, and that means she really struggles to grab me. It's made worse by her main plot being a basic romance plot where the gimmick is that she's a reasonable human being and Dave isn't. And neither are able to have a normal fucking conversation about it either. The mixed signals thing could've been interesting, but this is Fresh TV writters, so of course it didn't end up that way. I assume the episodes without Dave are the ones where her personality shines more? Because so far she's just been really reserved and calm. And said she'd "focus on the competition only" And then. Doesn't. Really. God i wish this season treated it's female characters better :(

OK SO OVERALL THOUGHTS:

Im mixed on alot of the character decisions

god i wished these people talked more

the screentime is not well split among the cast

the romance plots and pacing of the Island plot are the weakest parts of this season

the challenges are fine

Why does Chef have 5 lines total.

Pahkitew Island does NOT deserve the overly negative rep it gets in this Fandom, at least based on the first 8 episodes.

[spider-jaysart]

just had a dream where i was going through my childhood vhs tapes and one of them was a live action superboy movie where jon was played by a baby heath ledger (like in 10 things i hate about you) but with a bowl cut

Not so sure when this came in but omgg that's hilarious loll😂 but also awesome, cause it's a Jon movie actually existing. It's very funny too that he had a bowl cut for some reason. And with all of that you just described, it makes me imagine that it was most likely a fun 90's coming of age type of hero film that probably focused on a teenage Jon (not aged up!Jon tho) who goes to high school and stuff, while he's figuring himself out as both a young hero and also a person now that he's really growing up more, dealing with puberty (especially with Kryptonian effects), begins questioning things about himself more as someone who's half alien and human, wants to start becoming his own person, and all that kind of stuff (idk if I'm explaining it well lol)

Which I think is pretty interesting, I like old teen films like that, but idk how I'd feel if it was something real lol, since that's not the type of film I would envision for him, and also cause I definitely don't want one starring a teen him either (unless he grew during other films ig). Imo one with his younger self would be pretty great tho and really cute now that I think about it!

But okay, now I'm just rambling I feel lmaooo, but still, that's a cool dream you had lol!

[hereforthefunnyguys]

okay okay marik ishtar getting psychosexual in the club brain time. (Sorry in advance for the bigass text block. also if you are an ace/aro marik truther then A) I can see it but also B) this is very much not that. be forewarned.) I know things along these lines have been said before, but I truly cannot picture him being some kind of crazily sexually/romantically liberated flirt like you see a lot in fanon. Feel free to argue with me if you want in the reblogs or comments or whatever I am not sure about what I'm saying here. (+1500 words of Help Me under the readmore!)

He grew up underground, with no one else around but his abusive highly religious dad, personal manservant/extremely protective brother figure, and what seems to be the only even somewhat normal family relationship he has with his sister that's almost as isolated and frankly seems moderately socially awkward outside of telling mysterious prophecies. I do not think he was not getting Helpful and Informative Sex Ed, to say the least, and also if/when he started going through puberty he would have functionally nowhere to project those urges. Maybe he can get a crush on a particularly well-drawn wall carving or statue idk but the point is that he doesn't have any actual human reference for what the feelings mean other than his immediate family which is a uhhhhhh different and much more uncomfortable conversation!

Also, even when he and Rishid finally get out of there and start up the Ghouls, I don't think Rishid would bother with telling him about sex and romance as he gets older - if anything, he would be less likely to tell him, because if there's one thing Rishid would want to do as little as possible, it would be to allow more opportunities for Marik to act out in more "depraved" ways - I mean, come on, the guy already forces people to commit suicide, brainwashes them to fight in death matches, and do weird little dances in public for his entertainment (I know that one isn't as intimidating as the other ones, but I do think it's important to establish the sheer level of pettiness and self-indulgence he's at by this point.)

We've already established by this point that his ability to empathize and sympathize with other people is currently somewhere at the bottom of the Marianas trench, assuming he may not have had low empathy before then, which he might've judging by how he treats his siblings (diversity win! the arc villain has low-functioning empathy!), though that may also be due to being the "favorite" and getting what he wants all the time and not being raised to consider them real people on par with him and his father. But I digress. I do think Rishid would be at least considering the ways that those behaviors would intersect with teenage hormones, to say the least (plus the whole Yami Marik thing, which I'll discuss. Later.)

But by contrast, I don't think it makes sense to say Marik's completely innocent to the concept - he may be a very socially isolated 16 year old, but he's still like. a 16 year old. He regularly pries inside of peoples heads to manipulate them, and if you go by anime canon, he is definitely aware of very strong romantic feelings (and therefore possibly sexual ones, though maybe not? arkana ace king ig) in the form of arkana/pandora's little anime lost love scenario. Also, I think its fair to assume a Good Number of the Ghouls would possess sexual or romantic feelings as well. However. However. I am going to go out on a limb and say that learning about sex from people's personal fantasies is to sex ed what learning about how to cook from Hell's Kitchen is to chef college; everything you absorb is overdramatic, unrealistic, extremely emotionally charged, and often involves a surprising amount of violence and degradation for a day-to-day activity.

I'm going to say Marik then is Aware of sex, but doesn't fully "get" it. Like. It makes him uncomfortable to think about it for too long, and in general, it's just something Other People do. It's something he can use to get close to people (sign that says ASK ME ABOUT FEMME FATALE MARIK ISHTAR PROPAGANDA), but its not really something he fully accepts as something he would do just for the sake of it. He's aware of it, but it's still a moderately alien concept to him, at least that's how he would think about it.

Additionally, I don't think his vision of romantic love is going to be any better. In between societies massive effort to romanticize (ehehe) those specific feelings as the end-all-be-all of affection and the fact that, again, he didn't really grow up with anyone (and still really doesn't have another outlet) other than his dad and siblings as who he "loves" - I do think he loves his siblings, and, tragically enough, probably his father as well. (Thats something else people ignore a ton. We as The Audience do not like Peepaw Ishtar but Marik himself has NO clue what he did was wrong or bad or unforgivable. If anything Marik considers himself the problem for not being able to take it. But that's another convo. God I'm going all over the place today.) Anyways what I'm trying to say here is that Marik probably sees romantic love as something that's present and he should Want but doesn't quite fully understand the emotional implications of it or investment necessary to make it work. If anything he would know less about romance since while old Egyptian myths do mention sex and sexuality with fair regularity - albeit not with much that would help a clueless 12 year old that associates said myths with his imprisonment and doom - there is very little talk of True Love in there. The fact that his knowledge of marriage extends to "my mother died a horrible painful death in childbirth having me and my dad didn't really care" probably is not helping matters!

Also tying this all together is the fact that Marik seems to have a Fraught and Uneasy relationship with his own body, to say the least. Like. I'm just going to go out on a limb and say he seems to consider it just another damp, dark prison he's stuck in, one that has done nothing other than provide an easy way to hurt him and keeps him tied to the Tombkeeper legacy. And who wouldn't? The guy has a massive scar carved into his back permanently reminding him of how trapped he really. Additionally, that's another barrier to intimacy, since there's no way on Earth he's letting anyone touch his back without an INSANE amount of trust - I imagine even Rishid is somewhat suspect in allowing him to touch his back.

The only time he seems really happy is when he gets to extend his mind outside of himself, into other people's brains and giving him a sense of power in an otherwise very controlled life. So that's definitely one barrier there! How do you even begin trying to make your body feel good when all your body has felt like all your life is completely awful? Especially when it would involve letting another person have access to it in a very vulnerable state??? Nuh uh no way thank you sir but we're staying repressed forever and shoving any and all Perverse Urges into a box deep deep in our Mind Room and ignoring them until we die, which we never will because we're Special. This is to say nothing of the fact that one of his tombkeepers duties is theoretically to procreate and create a new generation of keepers which is. Wow. Another conversation entirely but for our purposes means that he already is not going to have a good relationship to that! (Bonus points if it turns out he's homosexual. I'm not saying he is gay, but layering the Problems with "not attracted to women" would be an interesting intersection.)

Anyways the cherry on top of this miserable sundae is the Existence of Yami Marik, the Good-Times Ruiner. Point number one: in between the weird sadomasochism thing he has going on and the fact that he seems significantly more physically and emotionally liberated than Marik, I think it would be fair to call him a moderately sexualized character, though not a straight-up succubus (yes I am aware the term for men is Incubus. quiet).

Point number two: Yami Marik is generally seen to represent Marik's repressed urges and grudges, so we can pretty easily make the assumption that Yami Marik being sexualized comes from an attempt to absolve Marik of such uncomfortable distractions. So there is the thought there that he considers his sexual urges on par with or at least related to his violent and vengeful ones.

Point number three: You would have thought that at least partially realizing this by the end of Battle City would result in Marik realizing he should stop repressing his emotions. But it won't! Because that's not how that Highly Functional Ishtar Brain works! It goes "I now associate sexuality with one of the worst and most publicly humiliating and traumatic times of my life, so I now consider it an Active Problem to get rid of instead of just a uncomfortable quirk of mine." So no actually I think he would be getting worse! Someone send him to a therapist please or at least figure out a way for him not to simultaneously hate himself while still hating everyone else More.

anyways tl;dr: Marik ishtar knows about an extremely warped version of sex but good lord he is repressing it fifteen feet underground. Again feel free to argue with me if you want I'd like to hear other opinions. Anyways hope yall have a nice day and thanks for reading thru all of that!

[daz4i]

wait okay. instead of going to sleep like a normal person. here's how I'd change the ages in bsd (for those that have a canon age), bc no one looks their age/it makes the timeline feel weird, i wanna let at least some major past events breathe a little between one another. possibly controversial takes ahead:

atsushi: i like that he's 18 actually. he looks and feels 16 but no yeah 18 works better. I'd say 20-21 would be nice but that'd reallyyyy throw his backstory's timing off unfortunately

dazai: 25

kunikida: around 27-28

ranpo: 28 also, maybe even 29 (his whole thing is that he looks young for his age anyway)

yosano: 28 as well

tanizaki: like. he does look 18. but also 16 and 21 at the same time. i like him as a bit older than atsushi so let's say 19-20, and naomi as well while we're at it

kenji: why is he 14. it's not that he doesn't look 14 it's that i simply did not expect a child to be the muscle in a detective agency. so please make him like at least 16 which is only just slightly better tbh

kyouka: yeah 14 is chill in her case imo. makes her more tragic 👍

katai: 27-29ish as well

fukuzawa: at least in his 50s. maybe 55ish, or even more. he def looks like it and it fits more with having a son in his 20s

akutagawa: i do want him to be older. but making his age gap with atsushi bigger is weird. so keeping him as a 20 y/o it is, maybe 21 at most

chuuya: 25

kouyou: 30s. early 40s even. she is already so milf coded. finding out she's 26 in canon was straight up offensive i swear. come on.

higuchi: 21

tachihara: 22 or 23 maybe? (the hunting dogs don't have canon ages but i like jouno and tecchou as 26ish so that way he's still like the baby of the group)

hirotsu: how is that man 50. make him 65 at least. jfc. the whole point is he's been with the mafia a long time. ik they keep recruiting teenagers for some reason but give me a break. my dad is pushing 70 and looks younger than him

q: actually my issue with them isn't that they don't look their age (tho they do look a bit younger ig) but that timeline wise?? they're so weird?? why did the mafia have a 6 y/o on deck that's just inconvenient for all parties involved. like i can excuse kyouka at 11ish but come ON. at least make them 10 in fifteen. or just bring them in later bc i just realized the timeline doesn't line up with the dazai and chuuya changes otherwise. man idk

odasaku: girl that man was NOT 23 when he died he should've been like at least 27 then

mori: late 40s or early 50s. keep the few years gap from fukuzawa maybe but he should still be older

ango: 29ish in the current timeline. or even 32. idk why but that number feels right.

francis: 45 at least. how is a 32 y/o man supposed to have a daughter old enough to study abroad...

poe: 29

melville: actually he is the only one aged correctly in this entire manga. bestie 🔥🔥🔥🔥

steinbeck: 24. maybe even older

lucy: 20-21ish. same issue as akutagawa really

louisa: 25 at least please 🙏

nathaniel: 34 maybe.

margaret: also early 30s. how the fuck is she 20. like kouyou this is straight up insulting 😭

mark: ageless for he is the spirit of youth and joy (yeah 22 is chill for him actually. he's like the taylor swift song. he'd love that)

mushitaro: tbh I'd make him more around 29 or even older than 30. like he would be a believable 35 y/o to me if needed.

nikolai: actually him being 26 is chill too. tho i wouldn't mind making him around 28-29ish too since i already aged up most 26 y/os so may as well go all the way.

shibusawa: yeah he can stay 29 too idm. i actually didn't know he had a canon age until now. cool!

i think that's everyone who has a canon age (excluding lns bc i haven't gotten to them yet)? aside from sigma maybe but his age is more of a plot device than a fun fact. and fukuchi is implied to be the same age as fukuzawa so, yeah just make them the same in this case too.

i did mess up the timeline myself with this. so lemme clear it up:

The War and the whole thing with mori and yosano still happened when she was 11, so 17 years before canon. that means mori was still in his 20s back then, no big change

untold origins still happened when ranpo was in his teens, honestly we can keep it 14, so 14 years ago, meaning fukuzawa was in his late 30 or early 40s. again not too big of a change I'd say

fifteen happens when. well. dazai and chuuya are 15. ten years ago. i don't want q there get them out of my sight (for now) let them be a kid for a bit!!!!! but yeah like in canon that means the previous boss's murder was a year before, 11 years ago. also while we're at it, stormbringer is also the same aka a year after 15

now this is where we shake things up just a bit. rather than occuring when dazai is 18, i think we can push the dark era to when he's 20 and still maintain the whole childlike thing he has going on there, it's not that big of a difference imo.

that means, 5 years before canon instead of 4, making akutagawa 15 back then, and ango 27 like odasaku.

also yeah q comes in at some point in the middle between those^ I'd say close to dark era than fifteen.

originally i wanted to make skk 26 but this started stretching things even more. bc now we gotta figure out how long dazai spent in hiding. and ig we can keep it 2 years and just make it so his entrance exam was 3 years before canon. again imo not that big of a stretch 🤔

idk why i said this changes the timeline a lot i think this is p simple. also lets ppl stew in their situation for just a bit longer which i like more.

thank you for reading. you are very brave and strong for pulling through. feel free to disagree with my takes but just be nice about it please. I'm also open to hearing other takes if you have any that i didn't consider 🫡 but again just be nice okay?? 🥹

[nevoadecaipora]

Hiiii tagged by @xielianss (thank you darling! <3)

list 13 songs you’ve been listening to lately

Francesca by Hozier this song took me completely when i first heard it, i love the lyrics and the emotions Hozier puts in every verse. i keep singing it non-stop

Enamorado Tuyo by El Cuarteto De Nos that i've first heard in a sasunaru edit tiktok. i have no regrets since i always discover great songs by sns AMVs and they always manage to pull real human emotions from me when i'm feeling disconnected

Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones there's something about this song that sounds so crispy and good to me but like texture wise?? idk how to explain it but it sounds so so good to me

Maar Daala from the movie Devdas so Devdas is one of my favorite movies ever, is so dramatic and the visuals are beautiful, but this song in specific is the reason why i went after the movie to watch and it was super worthy, and this song is so good and the scene is amazing. seriously Devdas is a gorgeous movie and the songs are great, but this one is *chef's kiss*

...IN HEAVEN... by BUCK-TICK i just love the vibe of the song, and BUCK-TICK in general. as jade said, their vocalist passed away, sadly, but the great songs remain with his beautiful voice. since it came out i've also been liten to Mugen Loop a lot too since it came out

Identity by Sakanaction this song is soooo good. Sakanaction in general is a band that i've discovered a few years back and i love their songs and videos, but mostly i loooooove the baseline.

When I'm Alone by Twisted Nerve got addicted to this song since i first heard it in my friend's ig story. really good and idk i really like this texture of old recordings it adds yo the song.

Senhor cidadão by Tom Zé this song is a bit tripy and in general feels like a post-modern play written by liberal theater students and the lyrics are soooo fucking powerful and it never stops com making me feel punched in the chest when they get to "eu quero saber com quantos quilos de medo se faz uma tradição" (i want to know with how many kilos of fear a traditions is made) and after that is just non stop raw feelings

O Mundo É Um Moinho by Cartola i love the guitar of this song it's beautiful, but in genera this song is heartbreakingly beautiful and sad even if it makes me optimistic. i wish i could talk more about it but it's something that you have to listen and read the lyrics and you'll feel

What's Up by 4 Non Blondes i was singing the He-Man meme version of the song one day and then i stopped to pay attention to the lyrics and i thought "oh shit i'm going through this exact same thing right now what the fuck?" so this is the song i'm listening to lately to go through the very difficult days at work

Holy by King Princess i needed to chose a name for one of my fishes and this song was playing and i really liked the melody then i got really addicted to in and listened to it non-stop for four days straight

Baby sung by Gal Costa i love this song so much and i love every single version i've listened to so far, but to me this one is THE ABSOLUTE BEST because the strings and Gal's voice is angelical. and again, old recordings have a specific texture and this one i feel like im in a huge theater as the only person in public listening to them perform. in general is feels very dream like, an absolute fave. and i'm cheating a little bit because i'm always listening to this song not just lately, lmao, but it deserves to be mentioned

Tá Escrito by Grupo Revelação listen, samba and pagode in general are not music genres i'm really into, i have nothing against it, it's just not something that i listen. but one specific hard day i was taking the bus home in a bad mental health day and this song came randomly and saved my day. it's very optimistic and hyper, and now every time i'm needing some hope in my life i listen to it.

So, now that I see it, a lot of them are stuff that i've been listening since teenage years, but i always go back and forth when it comes to songs/artists/genres. this was so much fun!!!

thank you again jade for tagging me!

ill tag: @jcamilov06, @soda-limonada; @happyholand; @adimelo; @zapatism and @corrupted-willy. Feel free to do it if you want, I thought it was really fun!

[demonsfate]

me personally, i feel like booboo the fool 🤡 bc i got hopeful seeing how old victor was so i dared to wonder if reina would be. Not Young SKSBSJSNSB i forgot only males can be over 25!!!! OF COURSE they made her a highschooler 💀

i DO like her characterisation and i get it but like. i feel like things like her voice and attitude don’t really match her appearance…? with the way she acts, i feel like it would have made sense to make her, idk, a little older? not 30, bc that would have been too much for the babies at namco to handle 🥺🥺 but at least, not a highschooler!!! there was literally no reason for that except for the fact that they’re cowards LMAO. i would have been pissed if they made her all squeaky and shit. but at least right now, i just don’t feel intimidated by her at all. idk personally i find her characterisation (mainly her voice tbh) a little jarring with her young looking design and she just seems like a little shit AJSBSBSB

really im not surprised AT ALL, but a sigh was still soghed 😔 ig we’ll find out in january what she’s really about. i have a feeling i’ll warm up to her at some point though

LIKE. i was already expecting reina to be young. i knew there is no way she's gonna be as old as kazuya or lee. but i was guessing she'd be around 24-28 years old. i was... not expecting her to be a high schooler LOL. like, for some reason, that took me by surprise. so reina was worse than i was expecting!!

and i know, know, there ARE plenty of old dudes who have children later in life. but the problem doesn't necessarily lie in heihachi having a kid at a late age, it lies in the fact that there can't be any older females in the tek series. jun's the only "older" woman we have whose actually 40+ in the game. nina and anna don't really count since they were cryogenically frozen, and therefore haven't actually aged mentally or physically since tek2. hell! even lidia is only 29, and according to her backstory, was apparently 21 when she got into office. except... i looked it up and yup

poland's the same rules as we are, you have to be 35 to be president. they couldn't even make a PRESIDENT 35 years old. so, of course heihachi's youngest kid is his daughter.

and i do agree, it is kinda bizarre since... they did actually give her a fairly deep voice (as you would expect heihachi's daughter to have) which isn't seen often with the "school girls" of tekken who usually have higher pitched voices. so idk why they went with the idea that she's a high schooler at xiao's and jin's school. since that raises questions (has she seen xiao and jin before?) but... MAYBE she's actually gonna have something to do with jin and xiao, so maybe THAT'S why she has to be a high schooler. we'll see when the game comes out. right now, reina's background is a total mystery, we're only guessing what it could be. hell, her being heihachi's daughter isn't even actually known yet, we're just assuming due to her taking his personality / movesets, and the leak.

which, yeah... that's also why i'm scared she'll be an actual threat / hinderance in the story. because a high schooler isn't all that intimidating. an older woman would've been much "scarier", and more believable she could go up against the likes of kazuya and even jin. which i've seen many people try to defend it with "so what if it's a high schooler flooring kazuya? this game is full of unrealistic crazy stuff!" and it's like i'm SOOO tired of "TEK IS UNREALISTIC IN THE FIRST PLACE, SO THE SUSPENSION OF BELIEF SHOULD JUST BE COMPLETELY SNAPPED!!11!" it's like..... a story can be fantastical, but still have grounded rules for its own universe. and when it comes to power level scales, the series has been... mostly consistent. so to have a teenager who can possibly be a threat to kazuya or jin is just going too far imo. BUUUT... we also don't know if that's what's going on. we'll just have to see when 8 arrives.

which i would've liked reina a lot more if it just wasn't for her connection to the story, and my fears i have regarding her because of that. but we'll see when the game comes out. maybe i'll be blown away and she'll become one of my favorites. we won't know until we play 8!

[mwebber]

here to gush about ur latest writing because i’m obsessed with it i absolutely love the formatting the confessionals AAA so so creative. and the way you manage to capture their voice (personality? idk a better word) while also putting them in the au is so so perfect. it’s just so good and i love healing and i love tensions and i love guilt and blame and yeah!!!! just really really amazing

wahhh thank you so much!! ;-;

truth be told it kind of Spilled out of me.. went to brunch on saturday with my friends and while we were talking i was like, well i've always had a thing for brunch, but i haven't really, yknow? i only got into it in my last yr of high school with my old friend group that formed after my best-friendship homoerotic fallout, and i don't talk to anybody from that group anymore bc we've all moved on physically and mentally... but it got me thinking about how transient those relationships can be. idk, something about the scars from our adolescence being with us forever, but also how growing up is learning to live with our sins rather than try to cast them away from us, and how taking responsibility for something doesn't mean shouldering all the blame/accountability, but recognizing the situation as it was holistically and coping with the part we played.....

the whole mess between seb and mark is actually a combo of stuff i fucked up as a teenager, and rereading it now, i can see so much of the two people i wronged/who wronged me in both of them LOL. i don't think i'd ever have gone into the effort of repairing either of those relationships if i had the chance back then, but ig it's interesting to be like, well, if all of us had the opportunity to control the narrative. if it wasn't just your word against mine, if you didn't make me the most hated person in high school at one point bc i gave u the cold shoulder for two weeks, if we didn't have a screaming match in the bathroom, if you didn't give me that funko pop anyway for my 14th bday after i was too pussy to face u because i didn't want to go to nationals with you but didn't know how to say it, if you hadn't told your mom to call my mom just to tell me you didn't want to walk to school with me anymore because i cramped your style just weeks prior. well, maybe things might have looked different.

[madalice31]

Diddy’s girls are going to prom and they don’t have dates. My bf was like what did I expect, all them boys scared of their daddy.

The ironic thing is, all this shit happening now backs up my point that I made a while back. As a woman who was raised by a father who dislikes women, trust me, men like that expect their own daughters to behave in a particular way. You are groomed when you have a father like that. Because his disrespect for women doesn’t stop at only the women he’s dating. And what he feels like is his ownership of “his” women does include his daughters.

And so a year or two ago when I noticed that Diddy had invited all these grown ass men to his daughter’s 16th birthday party, I was confused that no one was making a big deal of it then. The only thing people seemed to focus on was the fact that he got them range rovers 🙄. And now if you Google it, that’s legit all you see are footage from them relieving the car and the official pics they posted to Ig.

But before that, Daily Mail had some candid party shots that, surprise surprise I can’t find now. But these shots showed people like Chris Brown, Rick Ross, and yes even DRAKE at this party. Hell I think I saw Micheal B Jordan there too, looking kind of uncomfortable to be fair. Point is Diddy invited majority of what I would call “the eligible men” in the industry and not one had a teenage son to come along. The only person that we see that was anywhere close to their age at this party, aside from their own siblings, was the Game’s 12 year old daughter. Red flag right there. Idk about you but when I was 16, I wasn’t hanging with 12 year olds. We talking middle school and high school difference here. But that’s the only person close to their age invited? No other 16 year olds? Not even any 18 year olds? Why that didn’t strike anyone as odd at the time is beyond me. And do you remember what they all had on?

That’s the game’s 12 [at the time] year old daughter in the middle of that second pic with her prepubescent “cleavage” out. I don’t know what “character” costumes these are supposed to be, but it look like something Meg would wear in one of her anime music videos. And here we are with two 16 year olds dressed like this. Why would Diddy allow his daughters to be on display like this in front of nothing but 30 and up men? These girls legit have on lingerie as if it’s a Pink Pony review (for non ATLiens, that’s an old strip club).

But we just brush it off as “rich people party differently” or “rich people are just weird like that”. “Oh if that’s what they wanted to wear, why blame him” 🙄. Y’all mean to tell me as parents you would let your 16 year old walk out the house like this? Yeah okay. It’s funny how as soon as you have money, suddenly everyone wants to give you an excuse.

The signs are always there. Y’all choose not to pay attention.

I hope these girls turn out okay.

[tadpolesonalgae]

this is kind of a tangent and kind of related to cbmthy but whenever i see one of the fae characters (like the born fae characters, not the archereon sisters) having outbursts i feel so conflicted 😭

bc on one hand, it's interesting to see that even an immortal being with decades and centuries worth of knowledge and experience can still have moments where they are immature or irrational

but then on the other hand, they have CENTURIES worth of life experience and they're acting like petulant teenagers who refuse to communicate or confront anything directly/in a healthy way 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

like, i get that letting these fae have those irrational moments shows that they aren't gods and they can have flaws and vulnerability.... but it's also frustrating that in almost every interaction both in canon and non-canon, it's always the 20-something human-turned-fae character (feyre, nesta, elain, and in cbmthy the reader) that's expected to have the emotional maturity to be the bigger person and be patient w these fae characters that have been alive for like 20 times more than their age and try to understand their perspective and forgive them and etc etc.... 😭

idk ig this is more of a gripe towards sjm's depiction of immortal fae characters 😭😭

anyways, this was not a dig at ur writing in cbmthy by any means, it was just me going thru the internal war of like.. i Get why mor is upset and why she was lashing out but Also girl u are 500 years old...... why can't u be a bit more understanding towards this newbie fae girl that's literally depressed and suicidal.. like maybe ur past was not on the top of reader's mind when she was essentially throwing a lifeline to eris and trying to seek refuge from the possible future of MURDERING azriel 😭😭😭😭

Yes I get that! I feel it would either be a case of them gaining more control over their emotions and knowing how to prevent outbursts, but then also that age would make them aware of what sort of things they feel are intolerable to them and almost solidify their ideas, so when one is broken or pushed at it’s inexcusable and causes rage to rise up?

I think it’s also just perhaps a conflict that arises in this type of fantasy because you want the born-fae characters and the born-human characters to be shown as being on equal footing but then the sheer difference in experience makes that kind of unreasonable? Impossible? Objectively I feel that there’s an inherent imbalance between the two but one has to put it aside for the sake of the story? It’s just one of those things that might be unresolvable in fantasy?

But then again, there are plenty of old people who just become more senile and impatient, whereas others who are genuinely kind and polite so it seems like it might just be a matter of what kind of person you are? How your experience shapes you?

‘idk ig this is more of a gripe towards sjm's depiction of immortal fae characters 😭😭’

Totally understandable if I’m honest 😭

‘i Get why mor is upset and why she was lashing out but Also girl u are 500 years old...... why can't u be a bit more understanding towards this newbie fae girl that's literally depressed and suicidal..’

I suppose I also wonder if having been alive for so long, becoming accustomed to/expecting immortality, having gone through two wars with so much murder if that honestly just might desensitise them the older they get? I don’t feel like that’s an unreasonable take, that just after all this time it becomes difficult to feel for people, having experienced the pain of losing so many? That you have to choose who you care about?

But then again, it’s fantasy, of course it’s going to be unrealistic in some capacity 🤷

‘trying to seek refuge from the possible future of MURDERING azriel’

To be fair to Mor, and by extension the rest of the IC, they didn’t know about the prophecy until Az had to go to Mor when reader went missing? Reader, Az, and Elain have all had the chance to live with that weight knowing what will happen where with the rest of the IC they haven’t had to cope with that ‘inevitability’ for as long? I don’t think Mor knows that was one of reader’s reasons for escaping—so that she wouldn’t be forced to kill someone so important to the people she’s trying to be a part of? Not to get angsty or anything 🤭