#some of what I said isn’t directly their opinion btw

[ovium-sheep]

I don’t think some people really understand their message. They’re telling people not to build their career and entire image around other’s work. That being said, I love drawing stuff from fandoms because it’s what I, myself, want to do and like to do, but I’ve also posted my own characters (very sparse, though.)

Personally, I think artists and creators should do what they want, but it’s not just your art or other works people are there for if you make it of entirely someone else’s creation. I’m aware of that and I’m also ok with this, for myself, of course. I wish it were different but it’s easier to get recognized if you are making work of popular media or already existing media in general.

I’ve understood for a long time my art isn’t truly? what people come for. I know because I’ve drawn for a total of three fandoms now and each time I’ve changed, there’s only been a select few who still interact with my posts. I appreciate all interaction though, because if I have made things that make others a little happier, disregarding if they’ll stay for the long run or not, and if I have made them happier with work I just kinda wanted to make is all the better.

Anyway, this, that I just added, is just supposed to be an example, I’ve experienced it first hand and it’s true, people like your art of someone else’s work, someone else’s creative image. Your art, or your work, isn’t what they came for.

Don’t stop doing what YOU want to do, but don’t forget to do your OWN thing as well.

Please don’t let this be controversial, it’s just my take and opinion. If anyone would like to discuss it that’d be cool, just be respectful. I am a child.

“You need to know this: When you use an iconic piece of art/famous face/pop culture image in your work, the 90% of the ‘applause’ is NOT for your work, it’s for THEIR image. Sorry…🙏 Don’t use nostalgia, that’s easy. Try to be the nostalgia of the future.”

—

[cowardlybean]

ok so

beyond being gross and weird I think there’s something to be said about the lack of literary analysis in proshipping (this post is about mp100 in particular but this can apply elsewhere)

there’s two points I’m getting at here: lack of understanding of the characters being interpreted, and intent of author

first of all, the common rebuttal to “he would not fucking say that” is “it’s just fiction and for fun” (which is just a really common rebuttal for everything but that’s beside my point). But that point lacks acknowledgement that their interpretation isn’t based on the source material. For example: Reigen, the guy who notoriously stood up against a terrorist organization to keep kids from being in danger, being interpreted as a pedophile (there’s no soft way to put it). It’s going directly against what is set up in a (in my opinion) disrespectful way. Also there’s a point to be made about trampling over platonic relationships for the sake of shipping and how that applies to proship but i digress!

There are methods to have characters act in ways they would not normally. In fact, most of my favorite fics across all of my fandoms do this!! What they all have in common is an understanding of that character that explains what pushed them to the point of deconstructing their own morals and values. “Wouldn’t it be fucked up if this happened?” works so much better when you can see how it led to that point. And even then I’d venture to say there are some lines that shouldn’t be crossed, knowing these characters do in fact belong to the author, but me drawing lines in the sand isn’t going to be accurate to everyone’s view. It’s always going to be a nuanced topic!

Second of all is the importance of authors intent when reading. Rather than applying this to the base media, however, I’m pivoting focus onto those creating proship content. What is their intent while writing? Through unfortunate exposure in Multiple fandoms I see these common reasons: fluffy content with or without acknowledging the ship being (for lack of a better word. i wish i knew a better one) problematic, dark content such as gore or rape, or (there’s no way to put this lightly) jackoff material. Keep in mind these are generalizations, but im also not giving some of these people the time of day to add defenses.

The “fluffy” content I can sometimes see as the author of the content not understanding the consequence of the ship itself (incest and pedophilia bad) due to a multitude of factors, and I genuinely do think there are learning experiences for them in non negative or aggressive ways. Dark content I can make a case that this is a form of self harm whether intentional or unintentional, however for some this gets looped into the last category. Finally, it’s pretty obvious some people just yank their shit to incest and pedophilia and I REALLY don’t think I need to explain why that’s bad. Point is, it’s important to consider proshippers intent, and how it’s more complex than just gross people who are intentionally malicious. I think there’s learning experiences here for every proshipper, however those who refuse to acknowledge that their actions have consequences (entirely different post to make there about how proshipping can in fact have real life repercussions) I hold a special vendetta against.

To conclude I’ll say I’m not someone who calls myself an “Anti”. Do I hate proshipping? Yes, absolutely I do. But I also enjoy fiction with darker topics that are handled in a critical manner!! Think Oyasumi Punpun. Good manga btw, absolutely horrifying though. I don’t think dark subjects should be kept out of fiction but I do think they should be handled with care.

[catras-breakup-song]

I know v0id-clawz is one of the recent people wa came after and you can see some of the asks on their blog. Its unfortunately quite real; thestargayzingetherian has a series of docs with receipts and miraculoustakes was also talking about it because they used to do the same thing to miraculous ladybug fans

If you search “salty kinkshamer” on wa’s blog you can also see some messed up stuff from like 2016 for yourself. She’s lying about not having seen the docs because everyone who contributed has been getting slammed

I know this is your friend and I’m not asking you to change that but she’s hurting people and has been for a long time

thank you for at least providing something for me to work with. while i still don’t know the full story, i can address a bit of research i did.

the only asks on the blogs of v0id-clawz (who is a catradora anti so i'd rather not dive too deep and break their boundaries or make myself uncomfortable) & miraculoustakes that i could find from searching "witch apologist" are VERY recent, like... as of yesterday recent. and there aren't more than 2-3 on each. not to mention, these still carry the same issue as you in that it’s all words from unnamed blogs with no proof. the fact that it’s multiple people means nothing when we know there’s a whole clique of people supposedly trying to “cancel” (for lack of a better term sorry) WA. also, i don't want to accuse you of anything so this isn't an attack because i'm still open to reading from you, but it looked to me like those anons' typing styles were similar to yours. not sure if that says anything (or enough) but i’m throwing it out there anyway.

i couldn't find anything on @thestargayzingetherian by searching "witch apologist", "doc", "document", and "receipt." do you have any other suggestions, or a link? or would she know what you're talking about since i tagged (feel free to ignore this btw; i apologize if you didn't want to be involved but i don't like mentioning people without them knowing)?

i don't really have an opinion about kink discourse, at least not one i'd like to share in public on any of my blogs. if you're going to assume my stance from this, make it neutral.

i'll be wary of stuff that went down in 2016-2018 since holding people accountable is important, but it's also important to remember that was 6-8 years ago, so i'm not too keen on defining someone by their actions after so much time. i had mindsets that i wasn't proud of as little as 3-4 years ago (although it didn't directly affect anyone nearly as much), so i believe in improvement. i mean, hell, i'm literally a catra kin/stan. that being said, i appreciate that you’re not trying to force me to break it off.

now, i’m speaking for WA here since i sent them a screenshot of this before posting, and here’s what they said (paraphrased):

1. they can’t access the google doc because it’s limited to invitations, and they’re not willing to give their main(?) email. they can’t create a new burner one because they need an extra phone number which isn’t readily available, but are currently looking into if they have any old ones from a while back. that being said (i have only partially brought this up in a different way), i can volunteer to do that with my own extra email and screenshot parts of it or something, or send a recording of me scrolling through. i’ll just need a link. UPDATE: they suggested the same thing right as i was ready to post this, and have already sent me the link. i’ll see what i can do.

like i said, i won’t reveal whether i’m positive or negative about kink stuff, but obviously i have to stand against certain dark themes people are into initiating such as CSEM, rape/CNC, actual incest (as opposed to catradora lmao), etc, which is what they claim to have been shaming years ago.

[dearweirdme]

that jkker responded to you!

https://www.tumblr.com/jeons-catalyst/753758801558208512/hello-i-am-a-taekooker-who-doesnt-lurk-in-other?

Hi anon!

I’m not really interested in a back and forth with a Jkk account (though I realize I called this upon myself by making that first post 🙈). I'll reply to you, but I'm honestly not going to entertain this back and forth, because like that blog said, we are just not going to agree and it will become a back and forth with no end. I've spoken about Jkkrs in detail in the past, my opinions haven't changed, so people can easily search my tags if they're interested.

Because it’s a Jkkr, I’m not really that interested in their opinion. I have no doubts about Jk and Jm not being together, and in my opinion Jkkrs in general are wrong in their ideas about Jk and Jm and I think they are pretty wrong in understanding Sk culture, the music industry, closeting etc. The above mentioned blogger isn’t really an exception, even though they speak kindly of Jk and Tae’s friendship. They are still wrong about the nature of Jm and Jk’s relationship. And why would I put much value in someone who is in my eyes just plain wrong.

What they do, is describe the history of jm and jk’s friendship and i have no problem at all with that. It gets a bit weird when you directly compare moments of that friendship to another pairing (Tae and Jk). No matter how you turn it, both that admin and I would be comparing a romantic relationship to a best friendship.. and that is like comparing apples to oranges. Jkkrs have all these moments that they enlarge and make into this huge romantic story... but it's moments that they have been given by the company mostly (yes I am absolutely not refuting that.. it is obvious, and it is silly to even try and act as if that is not a business choice.) That does not mean that those moments are fake, but it means that there have been choices in editing made. A company will always show you what they deem is most interesting to watch and what will give them the most positive outcome. Admin says we don't see much of Tae and Jk together because they probably aren't together that much... but when we then do see Tae and Jk together outside of company content (HS show being clingy) it's only because it's something fun they do. The asumptions are huge. Admin only knows what Jk and Jm are like because they have been told though mostly company content.. and other members. Which brings me to this..

Suspecting that Tae and Jk are together, for me comes with the believe that when BH found out about them they tried to hide their relationship. I truly think that’s the reaction all Sk music companies would have to there being a queer in band couple. Had there been an actual romantic relationship between Jk and Jm.. I am convinced they too would have been hidden… but they clearly weren’t ... as is being portrayed even today (which is not my sole reason for not believing they are together btw). It’s easy to make fun of Tkkrs or to ridicule us even, because ofcourse there is a lot of vagueness and there are indeed things that we do not understand and that might possibly be weird. I cannot emphasize enough that we are possibly/probably talking about two men in a closeted relationship here though.. and there is an element of cruelness when you mock the possibility of that and what that entails. Closeting isn’t the ‘oh, just don’t kiss in public’ fluffy kind of closeting that some Jkkrs seem to think it is. It is cruel and it comes with extreme measures. It comes with actively hiding stuff and with lies at times. Ofcourse you are not going to see a ‘normal’ version of a relationship take place (whatever normal might be to you). There are plenty accounts of western artists having been closeted, there is no doubt in my mind that a Sk music company will be extreme in closeting their artists, and there is little doubt in my mind that for a long time Tae and Jk had no choice (except for leaving the company and their careers with a huge amount of debt) but to adhere to that. Is it nice to have to think about them keeping things from us and to think of possible lies and manipulation… absolutely not! But it is a reality for many queer people in which they are not to be blamed or ridiculed, because they haven’t got a fair choice. Talking about a closeted relationship automatically comes with vagueness.. that is basically the point. And I understand that to many that makes me and other Tkkrs look delusional, but for me what I see play out just makes sense in how I understand relationships, how I think a queer relationship would be dealt with by BH, and how I understand Tae and Jk and BTS members in general. It makes a whole lot of more sense than to talk about a friendship that is highlighted by the company as though they are a closeted couple. You have to take into account Sk culture and not only when it suits you in case of couple holidays. Queer people have it hard in Sk, and there is nothing to make us believe that BTS members would be the exception to that.

Jkkrs can talk all they want about looking at what they see, but when push comes to shove… even the admin you refer to is quick to go answer ‘you don’t know if they didn’t see each other on Jk’s birthday last year’ when confronted with Jm and Jk not having seen each other then. Many Jkkrs’ responses to the time when Jk and Jm seemingly did not see each other last year when Jm was working in Face was that ofcourse they saw each other.. we just didn’t know about it’ and they might be correct... we don’t know. Just like we have no clue about everything Tae and Jk do that we don’t see. I think they see each other often. I think all members see each other more often than we know of.

Comparing two bonds with each other is silly. It just cannot be done the way that blogger tries. Especially between Tkkrs and Jkkrs, because our sides are just not able to find common ground (except maybe for loving BTS in general). Look at your own relationships with your best friends and your partner.. it’s separate things that easily co-exist. Jkkrs and Tkkrs’ ideas cannot co-exist without butting heads. It’s very much up to what you think is the most likely situation. In my opinion Jkk being a couple isn’t possible, because they don’t act like one and because BH would never treat them the way they do had Jk and Jm been together romantically.

[just-orbiting-you]

“if jikook invited the members out or a member happened to be in the area and they had dinner together, i really wouldn’t be so peeved”

“tae said directly, “why am i being left out?” im SORRY? they’re allowed to do things without you??” ^ these two points you mentioned i just totally agree with. This is exactly it!!

And it’s also why sometimes i think V worked the cameras more than any other member, and if he can see a way to insert himself that will also look good in the eyes of the fans/tkkrs he will 🙄 that’s my opinion. Just like all the lives he did in 2023/24 just to mention Jungkooks name. If he just wanted to hang out with Jikook, he could’ve done that any time - WHICH THEN he mentions at the restaurant saying “I shouldn’t have come, we do this anyway without the cameras” - ok then why did you come?? To insert yourself to a planned shoot for a Jikook series with 2 days notice?? It’s clear the staff had to scramble a bit, it’s just inconsiderate. This wasn’t totally, at the end of the day, just a friends private trip. It was a show with at least some planning and lots of organisation and it just seems selfish to me. It’s showing of his character.

Just can’t see someone like Hobi doing something like that, for example. Imo he would come for a visit or a meal, like you said and then just go because he would recognise this is their own ‘thing’ — don’t overstay your welcome, even if they’d be happy to see you!

just to make one more point - we won’t know how much jikook saw eachother over the ch2 break, but for a time Jungkook clearly was struggling. The car convo isn’t necessarily gospel truth as to how much they saw eachother. We just Don’t know. It could’ve been more about quality time over quantity. Anyway, the point is, I feel Jimin pushed forward with this show as a way to 1) make up for lost time 2) make it up to JK if like he said, JK kept looking for Jimin regardless and Jimin didn’t (as much 😂) it’s a trip to spend quality time together (btw tho it sucks so much Jimin go sick), they were together for days and we’ve only seen like 1hr each of it, and “rekindle” their relationship, whatever that may be, before they then have to go into the military and could be apart for each other for 18 whole months, as they didn’t know they were accepted to the buddy system yet. So for any member to insert themselves into that, regardless of how much the members knew, is a bit off.

exactly anon.

It was a show with at least some planning and lots of organisation and it just seems selfish to me. It’s showing of his character.

and i see people in the tags saying we shouldn’t be upset because clearly jikook didn’t have a problem with it. regardless of whether they were okay with it, this to me is a classic exhibition of his character which i am oddly continuing to find issue with. and that’s my opinion. we are allowed to have our opinions on the members actions, as long as you’re not attacking them for what they did and taking it to them directly. this situation is honestly just a stating of fact.

maybe in combination with how marketing was handled i’m just a little more salty, but damn. like you said, tae overstayed his welcome in my opinion, especially if he was going to come out with comments like “i shouldn’t have come here.” can you at least be grateful of the people who welcomed you with open arms and probably had to pull some strings to make sure you were accommodated for?

im just very glad that jikook had the opportunity to do this show and seemingly see each other more in the second half of the year as opposed to the first half. i’m glad they were able to come back together and that’s what matters. and to your final point, there’s a problem with tae’s awareness that i think probably didn’t even think about why they’re doing this show or what it would mean to join. he’s very haphazard to his detriment. it’s just not a good look for him.

[excalisi]

my personal opinion on yoohankim

the reason why i am unwillling to read more than three pages of ao3′s yoohankim ship tag (this prelude is, in fact, ineffectual to my argument because at the time of this post, ao3′s yoohankim ship tag has three pages, but please ignore this for my following point) is because they all get them completely wrong. 

all three of these mfs are emotionally inept and incapable of speaking their true feelings directly. they would not say, “i love you.” 

what they would say (in a scenario [not Scenario] wherein they’re not at the pre-relationship stage, but not quite past the pining stage, after going through extreme amounts of character development. important, because at any other stage in this process, except in the ones past the pining stage, these would either be insults or just not said ever): “your prose is beautiful.” “i wrote this for you.” “i want you to be my ■■■.” “you were my beginning, and i want you to be my end.” “you’re my protagonist. i’ve put too much effort in you to let you go now.” “thanks for betareading for me.” “you’ll starve if you don’t take breaks, technical god of this universe or no. i made kimchi jjigae.” 

the stages are like this: 

pre-relationship is them at the end of canon. 

pining is an extremely long period of uncertainty and miscommunication and learning each other where they help each other smooth over some issues (ie. thinking that kim dokja is going to disappear again if yoohan take their eyes off him, yoo joonghyuck having to acclimate to not regressing anymore bc he’s in his epilogue and the idea that any death he will experience will most likely be permanent, and han sooyoung grappling with the fact that she very publically arranged for kim dokja’s return so everyone knows that she has non-negative feelings about him, and just non-negative feelings in general). 

getting together is a long space where they realize other, not apocolypse-related stuff about each other (kim dokja’s home isn’t the house kim com share, kim com themselves, or even yoohan. it’s ways of survival. han sooyoung is the type of writer who churns out ludicrously high word counts with an appalling ease and practically posts their first draft with minimal revision, but the end product is offensively flawless. yoo joonghyuck’s favorite skill he owns is cooking, not only because he likes taking care of others, but because he vastly prefers being able to create something with his own two hands over killing.) 

the relationship life stage is domestic bliss (with an excruciating amount of annoying married “it was your turn to do the dishes; you forgot to write this on the grocery list, dumbass; you said you’d do the laundry yesterday!” bickering)

extremely important that they sound like they hate each other. all of them are very quiet about affection, and their eqs are all collectively shit enough that they would be unwilling to discuss whenever they cross a relationship milestone, such as holding hands, sharing a bed, or saying they care for one another aloud. but this ends up working in their favor, as they’re on the same, emotionally inept “i would actually rather strip in public and get arrested for public indecency than talk about my feelings” brainwave, so it doesn’t matter that they don’t talk about it

every time people write them as anything but the codependent, emotionally incompetent, bitchless trio of dumbasses they are, a part of me dies a little inside.

btw: they are in an ace relationship. either that or qprs. they are all in some shade of love with each other, whether it be platonic or romantic. han sooyoung is a lesbian.

thank you for listening to my tedtalk

[strawberryjamsara]

I’m interested in your thoughts on ztd since you said you don’t think it’s that bad (I have never played a Zero Escape game btw)

Hmmmm. I’m probably gonna state some unpopular opinions in this but sure.

So I’m gonna start by saying I don’t think this entire game was one big asspull. There are several, but lots of stuff had been hinted at in earlier entries, and… unfortunately mind hack was foreshadowed in the very first entry. And sadly, it makes the twist that Cradle Pharmaceuticals was in the pocket of Brother which I didn’t like in vlr make more sense because it would mean Delta gathering more information on that. I think it’s the way it’s written that’s so infuriating. It’s essentially a last minute plot device that isn’t really properly explained, and doesn’t even have any bearing on the plot, which is better than if it was a huge inescapable part of the plot, but good lord it feels contrived.

I also heard a lot of decrying before playing this game that everyone was ooc but I… respectfully disagree. It felt more like a sense of not knowing the characters as well as I thought I did and trying to adjust my view. Akane is not running the game for the first time so it changes the way she acts. She’s vehemently against it when Junpei wants to kill everyone and yeah. Fair. She did kill people as part of the plan in 999 but for her, those were people who put her through misery and killed her. I can understand the shift in tone. She’s willing to kill to achieve her goals but she’s not bloodthirsty, and she’s in this timeline specifically to have the life she couldn’t in the others. She wants a fairy tale future, and she’ll even ruin another chance with Junpei to have this ideal. This is Akane Kurashiki, wanting things desperately to go back to normal after the nonary game, when they never can and never will.

Sigma I was expecting more mad scientist and evil vibes out of, but I think it’s more fascinating that he’s just himself but overly serious. He’s still a self sacrificial goofy dude, and knowing who he is and what he’s done makes it all the more stomach sinking when you see that, despite the change in tone, he IS Sigma. Sigma did what he did not out of any sort of malice or hatred towards anyone, not even for his children who suffered, but because he loved the world and everyone in it so much that it was worth everything he did to save it, which is so in line with his character in VLR, but to a horrific degree.

Also Junpei being emo. I’m fine with it. He went through a death game. Old man Junpei in VLR is a good person overall but he has had moments where if it came down to Quark or everyone else, he would choose Quark and this is the same but with Akane.

The new characters are where it starts to fall apart a bit…

So I think Diana was a good character and predecessor to Luna. I don’t really have much to complain about with her. She’s a kind person. Kind enough to kill six billion people. And that’s a brilliant premise of Sigmas love interest because, for the reasons listed above, she’s the perfect foil. Kind enough to save the world at the cost of people close to you and kind enough to doom it for the people close to you.

Carlos is also a good character. Sometimes all you need is a fun goofy dude who loves his friends and his little sister. I also think he’s a parallel to Aoi in a sense. Akane is close to some dude who won’t shut up about how important his sister is, and there’s moments where she directly calls to how he’d do anything for his sister, and all I can think is if she’s thinking of Aoi in that moments. Aoi would do anything for her. He doesn’t get much in the development department despite the fact that he’s one the only ones who remembers most of the timelines though, which is dissapointing. I liked that they took away the decision to have him shoot delta at the end. That was his choice in this world, and nothing else mattered to him at the moment.

Q is also a pretty good character. He’s a sweet kid, and I enjoyed his arc where he learns his role in the game and his nature, and still wants to form relationships and be happy.

And then you have the last two…. Mira and Eric

Mira had me fascinated when I learnt her backstory. A serial killer who wanted to know what a heart is. That’s cool! I can’t wait to see more! How she develops or gets worse! She has a deep sadness that she herself can’t understand, and she does love Eric, but not for him. She doesn’t even know what she wants or even seem to understand what she’s doing is wrong. It’s a beautifully toxic relationship. But we really don’t get anymore besides two scenes. I also thought they were gonna drop the reveal that she killed Eric’s mom because of the parallels between her first victim and him, but it didn’t really come out. Sad.

Eric is a character that I can see where a lot of the hate comes from, and I can also say he’s not a good person… but he’s a very interesting and sympathetic character. He’s gone through so much trauma, he has essentially become just like his dad, and he thinks love will fix him, because his dad was so happy when mom was alive, obviously this pretty woman will make him better too. We don’t really… get any conclusion though. He flip flops between finally calming down and being better to Q than his father was to him to rageaholic murderer, and the game ends with his kind send off to him which after all we’ve seen doesn’t feel like it’ll stick, and seemingly blissfully ignorant that his girlfriend wants to murder him. Again, like Mira, this was a character we could’ve watched get worse or better but we didn’t get anything.

So yeah the two extras on Q team didn’t really develop. I understand it’s hard to have characters in a story with multiple timelines have consistent development, but give us something man. Or better yet, just replace them with old characters who’d we already be able to recognize as full characters. Have Aoi there. It’d make the parallels to Carlos more obvious. And maybe Lotus, since this sort of mars mission seems up her alley. It’d also be very funny for these two to see each other again, they see each other on the base and spiderman point at each other. Oh, I actually love the idea of an Aoi Lotus Q team. I want this now.

But yeah then there’s the worst character of all… Delta.

Delta fucking sucks man. In 999 and VLR, Zero was the highlight, and now they follow up Akane and Sigmas act with this guy. The ‘complex motives’ stuff he keeps spouting is the kind of thing you put in your first draft with a ‘rewrite later.’ next to it. Like seriously? That’s what you come up with? You could’ve drawn from resentment of being abandoned by his parents, maybe have him bring up the whole ‘Timelines you shift to have the consequences left behind’ thing incorporated while he looks directly at Akane because he can’t shift and will have to deal with whatever choices his sister and father will make. I dunno. Do SOMETHING. Also why did he kill the dog? To make him more evil? Uchikoshi why did he kill the dog-

I like his design in the Zero costume though. It looks like a plague doctor which is very fitting. He’s still a dissapointing reveal of Brother though. And hey, if Dio was a clone of him why did he have blonde hair? Why did he have blonde hair Uchikoshi-

Also the models. They’re an improvement on VLR… but still bad. I’ll give them credit on how they stylized them a bit. They have defined lines that makes them look like sketches, and a very cool cell shaded style. When paused the game looks good! Only when paused though. The second these guys start moving it is laughably bad. Sigh. I miss the first games sprites.

But anyways. I think the game had a lot of stellar moments. Akane making her decision to save the world from R6 hurt, and I also adored all of c teams interactions. Diana giving the phone call that reveals she was the one in vlr who we heard declare she’d kill 6 billion had my heart in my stomach. Carlos telling everyone he was friendly while covered in blood… was hilarious.

I think overall the game had great scenes to set up VLR and while the near ending and villain reveal were incredibly bad, I think I liked where it left off. The characters make the decision to create their own future, and break free from the shifting and loops we always see, and for finality’s sake, Carlos pulls the trigger without any alternate routes. That’s a good ending. Delta still sucks but that’s a damn good ending.

So overall, I think the game has some dropped arcs and a woefully bad villain in a game that lives and dies by its villains, but it is NOT the worst ending to a series I’ve ever seen, go watch the dr3 anime and then tell me that this ruined the series for you.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Overview of Bertolt Brecht.

I admit I put off reading Brecht in full, because 99% of the time these guys are a-holes and I haven’t had the mental energy to get through another one. But Brecht is philosophically, at least, easier to read. He’s not a raging a-hole, nor stuffy about what he thinks. He gets to the point quickly and doesn’t beat around the bush or mince words. And honestly after reading Freytag, this is quite refreshing. 

So if you have structuralists at one end and Modernists on the other, Brecht kinda of falls somewhere near the middle, but towards the Modernist side.

Brecht is pro-Marxism, anti-capitalist, anti-functionalism. (Getting into Functionalism, the other side of Structuralism would take a while, so... uhhh... Google or similar.). Oddly he gets taken in by capitalists later, but that’s separate of this post.

Original text is here: https://ia801405.us.archive.org/18/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.150164/2015.150164.Brecht-On-Theatre.pdf

This is my particular summary of the text, but may not be yours. So read and check my work.: - Bertolt Brecht is diametrically opposed to two key figures: Gustav Freytag (launching specifically against a lot of Freytag’s theses, if not all of them) and Aristotle on some basic grounds:

- Theater, and writing itself must be FUN.

Page 7.

Page 12

This is his MAIN thesis. He repeats this over and over again.

- Theater has to matter to the contemporary person and be accessible, rather than do calls to the ancient past.

Page 7

This is a stab against Freytag’s thesis which Freytag goes on and on about empathy and how Theater must be a call to the past to make for great Empire building, and thus take over Poland and kill them all. But yeah, the Middle Class and lower class, in Germany should still get their dues. Kinda. Under this Empire making... I said that reading Gustav Freytag was oppressive to read and I do mean it. His contemporaries do better at writing German. I checked.

Page 15. Another stab against Gustav Freytag. He’s against the “Sober” and”Matter-of-fact that Freytag was for. The muted. He calls this “boring.” This is the interview where he defines Epic Theater, but doesn’t come completely agains structure itself. He’s promoting new structure. It should be noted that the notes on this interview state that he was edited by the interviewer, but this is the first time he defines Epic Theater and specifically goes against Freytag, but Freytag isn’t named.

Freytag. Another anti-Freytag statement without naming Freytag.

20-21

He doesn’t stop skewering Freytag over and over again. I have to admit that Freytag does deserve it.

I’ll get to more and add to this document. But not Anti-Shakespeare. He thinks that Freytag (again, Freytag isn’t directly mentioned) is misunderstood. (Which is fair because I’ve gone over Shakespeare prior based on actual facts.)

However, he’s against Aristotle sharply.

Page 24-25 He doesn’t like Sophocles (this is a specific performance commentary.) and is against Oedipus as a play at all. This turns into hating Aristotle. (I like people who hate Aristotle for being a misogynist pig, but some of Aristotle theories of plays, etc were also strange).

So this is where you don’t understand why the whole “Lowest point” philosophy comes into this that the structuralists stole from him (Let’s be honest, stole is the correct word) and somehow attributed to Aristotle. BOOO.

He was pro-optimism, even after 2 World Wars. You have to really, really hand it to this guy. He’s also anti-Empire, but subtly so (well, in my opinion)

So I think the start of the Low Point philosophy is here. This is in direct opposition to Aristotle, BTW.

But notice there is much more going on in this argument that “Bring a character to a low point to see what they are worth.

The argument is specifically saying: The man needs to be in a large group of people, put under pressure by those people, who are both are cooperating and working against that person, to see what they are made of--leadership material or not. It’s NOT saying, you need to bring *every* character to a low point and make the audience suffer--he’s against that.

He’s specifically against the audience relating to the character on a personal level as he’s gone on and on about in case you missed it. 

If you missed it, this is kind of part of the “Great Man Theory” but he has an anti-Imperialist view of it. AND he wants the moment where the guy is under pressure to be UPLIFTING. He’s brought to this place of high pressure and SUCCEEDS against the odds. His whole thing is optimism, spectacle, fun and visual wonderfulness in a way that novels can’t achieve.

Some odd thoughts of mine:

There are times I wonder if he has ADHD. Because he talks about impulsiveness as being a good value. And to do things from the gut or it has no value. He likes big. He likes loud. He likes a ton going on in his plays.

There is no way to know because it wasn’t defined until later.

On the spectrum from improviser to outliner, he’s heavily in favor of the improvising side. He goes on at length about how there are people who are in the middle, and on the outlining side, but he prefers heavily to improvise because he’s afraid it won’t be fun.

Theoretically, I do agree that maximizing what theater can do is wonderful--maximize what it is good at.

However, I kind of think there can be a balance between the extremes of spectacle for the sake of it. (Lloyd Webber) and being able to relate to the characters.

You see, I kind of think that Brecht might like Miyazaki films, which are filled with all kinds of empathy, but also because they talk about morality, optimism, and values he really cares about. Mononoke-hime, I would guess would be his favorite. That’s the sort of film he’d like--large cooperative groups. See what people are worth when working together for a bigger cause.

I feel all kinds of pain that his work is SOOO understandable and then he’s misunderstood and buried. It’s oddly uplifting reading through his book. He’s uplifting and actually funny in places. Despite all of the gloom around him, he’s still saying, let’s make music and fun for the audiences that are suffering because we serve them. And that I really love as an attitude. I don’t always agree with specific opinions, but I get the sense that he was lively to work with and talk to as you read through his work. And I would encourage you to. It takes the gloom out of your terrible day. It overflows on the page. And he’s adamant about citing his inspirations, etc (Though he still hasn’t called Freytag by name. lol “Poor” Freytag gets referenced a whole ton but doesn’t get cited in any of these works) While Selden Whitcomb is studious and careful and diligent in a way that makes one envious, Brecht is oddly uplifting and thoughtful at the same time. I can’t hate him even when I disagree, because I’m still saying, “Oh good point.”

[sincerely-krp]

no one’s out here sexualizing minors. none of these rps allow minors. they’re all adults. take that out of your argument bc that’s not even at all what we’re talking about // not any of the previous OPs you’re replying to and not even directly replying to you. i just want to take this moment to bring up “barely legal” type of kinks existing, which are usually used as ways to *legally* enjoy sexualizing young people without being, yanno, branded for p*doph*lia. while ur not wrong that anyone above 18 or 19 (whatever the consenting age may be in ur country of choice), the sexualization of minors and the sexualization of freshly legal young adults come from similar places, their youth or “innocence” or power imbalance or physical appearance. i got my own opinions on everything and what i think is creep behavior, i dont care what other people think for themselves, but i’m begging for some self awareness whenever people bring up the “but they’re above [legal age]!!!!! they’re not a minor anymore its fine for them to have sexuality!!!!!” in 'defense'. because often the discomfort isn’t with sexualizing minors (though that DOES happen and no one should be defending btw), it’s with sexualizing young muses ESPECIALLY when they have young faceclaims and young muns. most people who want age gap ships arent out here being like ‘i want my muse to be 18 specifically!’ i guarantee you they’re just picking a legal age on the young side because all they care about is it being legal so they can get off on their fantasies, usually involving the faceclaim - hence the problem when the face is the same age. you can cry ‘the face isn’t the character!!!’ all you want but if it really is about the character and the kink for you then i want to ask the same question someone else did, why DONT you just write the character using an older faceclaim or no faceclaim at all? then at least you’re just sexualizing your own barely legal muse, which has better standing in the “its all fiction” argument. but if having a barely legal faceclaim is so important to you writing your barely legal character, esp. if you’re writing them mostly for the kink, maybe ask yourself why having that real life physical reference to a young faceclaim is so important to you. someone's number age is NOT the only reason people get uncomfortable, it's also how their relative youth/inexperience is exaggerated SO much that their mental, emotional, and sexual maturity basically resembles more of a minor's. them being above the legal age just lets defenders bring up the same old "they arent minors by LAW" argument. i would actually respect certain people more in this if they just said out loud that they want to fantasize about younger legal faceclaims than people who try bring up age and swear that they actually see the character or faceclaim with the same maturity as an adult.

・❥・

[terence-this-is-stupidstuff]

@reasonsforhope Thanks for sharing! Ha my day job (I deal with these types of federal documents every day, though of a different department’s) almost never applies so directly to any post I’ve seen but it does here and I thought I might be able to help - takeaway though is this is good news still!

Adding a TL;DR because I just realized how deep into boring legal stuff the below got: this current doc for comment isn’t an executive order or a change to regulations as some of above wording makes it seem - but commenting still great to do because it helps support the steps the Biden admin is taking to set itself up to step in when a drug’s price is determined to be against public health or safety needs. And as a good news win overall for democratic procedures, the update that already happened to these regulations in Mar 2023 took public comments - 81000 of them! - into account on the pricing issue and as a direct result worked harder to make taking this step possible if required! Your opinions matter!!!!

More detail:

I just want to help anyone who clicks that link to the RFI (Request for Information) understand what they’re seeing:

1. That link takes you to where you can submit a comment about a guidance document, which is a nonbinding (but influential) set of guidelines agencies can issue. This one is directed at other agencies from NIST and clarifies the 4 criteria for exercising “march-in rights” (aka the topic at hand of stepping in to make a drug more available).

2. Those 4 criteria ARE in the regulations, and those regs were already updated by the Biden admin in Mar 2023 in what is a called a federal rulemaking. A lot of this particular rulemaking was technical in nature - corrections to outdated references, streamlining, etc, but it also provided new instructions to agencies for HOW to use march-in rights, which is a nice huge banner to companies that this admin (unlike all previous) would be willing to actually do it.

3. That’s a big deal because of course pharma is going to fight any actual exercise of these rights, so this guidance document (which I know sounds so boring lol…but hey they matter!) gives agencies credible, already vetted argument fodder for why they are stepping in and how they determined carefully before doing so that whatever drug patent is at issue meets one of those 4 criteria for this process.

4. Importantly and encouragingly, from reviewing the info NIST has available on this, the great news is that public will was already at work in the right direction on this! The draft version of the *rulemaking* had a line that basically said price alone does not meet the criteria, and most of the 81,000 comments received objected to that. They therefore removed it from the final rule and began drafting this just-announced guidance document instead, and the slides from their webinar on it show the following:

So this winds up helping on the price question since it clarifies that inflated prices could fall under “health or safety” needs!

5. Therefore commenting on it in support is still great to do, to counteract any shenanigans attempted by pharma to try and argue against the above clarification. But - to my original point my OCD brain just couldn’t let go - this is neither an executive order nor a rulemaking. (Guidance docs, btw are easier to undo than rulemakings unfortunately, but still involve a careful process by the agency. Given how many agencies collaborated on this one, reversing this would be quite annoying for a bad-willed future admin!)

"The Biden Administration last week [early December, 2023] announced it would be seizing patents for drugs and drug manufacturing procedures developed using government money.

A draft of the new law, seen by Reuters, said that the government will consider various factors including whether a medical situation is leading to increased prices of the drug at any given time, or whether only a small section of Americans can afford it.

The new executive order is the first exercise in what is called “march-in-rights” which allows relevant government agencies to redistribute patents if they were generated under government funding. The NIH has long maintained march-in-rights, but previous directors have been unwilling to use them, fearing consequences.

“We’ll make it clear that when drug companies won’t sell taxpayer funded drugs at reasonable prices, we will be prepared to allow other companies to provide those drugs for less,” White House adviser Lael Brainard said on a press call.

But just how much taxpayer money is going toward funding drugs? A research paper from the Insitute for New Economic Thought showed that “NIH funding contributed to research associated with every new drug approved from 2010-2019, totaling $230 billion.”

The authors of the paper continue, writing “NIH funding also produced 22 thousand patents, which provided marketing exclusivity for 27 (8.6%) of the drugs approved [between] 2010-2019.”

How we do drug discovery and production in America has a number of fundamental flaws that have created problems in the health service industry.

It costs billions of dollars and sometimes as many as 5 to 10 years to bring a drug to market in the US, which means that only companies with massive financial muscle can do so with any regularity, and that smaller, more innovative companies can’t compete with these pharma giants.

This also means that if a company can’t recoup that loss, a single failed drug can result in massive disruptions to business. To protect themselves, pharmaceutical companies establish piles of patents on drugs and drug manufacturing procedures. Especially if the drug in question treats a rare or obscure disease, these patents essentially ensure the company has monoselective pricing regimes.

However, if a company can convince the NIH that a particular drug should be considered a public health priority, they can be almost entirely funded by the government, as the research paper showed.

Some market participants, in this case the famous billionaire investor Mark Cuban, have attempted to remedy the issue of drug costs in America by manufacturing generic versions of patented drugs sold for common diseases."

-via Good News Network, December 11, 2023

[thejudgingtrash]

Unpopular Opinion;I'd rather have show!Annabeth as a kid with dark hair and eyes. Honestly,the whole "grey eyed blonde Athena kids" was odd in the books,and would be even worse in live action,IMO. While I like seeing fanarts of show!Annabeth with blonde hair and/or grey eyes,I don't see why this detail has to be faithful to the books. Besides,I feel the same about Percy,if to a lesser degree.

Yeah.

Sorry for answering this so late, I’m not really active on Tumblr therefore I tend to forget to check whether or not I’ve received some asks and I tend to take a while for answering them anyways. Also, this is going to get very long and rambly, so prepare yourselves!

My opinion on this whole casting situation and book accuracy is: I legit don’t give a fuck. More than that, I just side-eye people that were freaking the fuck out.

I essentially cut contact with 98% of this fandom (aside from few core groups) and left Tumblr last year because it’s a toxic mess and I try to avoid other PJO related social media branches (with the exception for AO3 for dumping my Percabeth fics, next one coming up soon <3) because they’re more than often even WORSE (!) than this hellsite but I still can’t escape casting news. So it’s incredibly hilarious to see so many people freaking the fuck out over something they have little to no control about.

My wonderful friend @mapendo-c essentially brought it to the point with this post but let me add my two cents to this entire situation:

2020 was hell on tumblr for the black crowd, let’s not act like it wasn’t (it was hell for black people in general if you care enough to remember). From harrassing the black PJO Tumblr side, to straight up lying to us, to doxxing, to us being called slurs in DMs and asks, to receiving open death threats and being sent lynching videos, we had it ALL. Some people that were directly confronted with this shit victimized themselves and fled the scene to this day, literally going out with a bang. Congratulations for that, BTW.

And that was only because a few people started to create PJO artwork that involved Percy of Color. Being more open to otherness. Critizing the white status quo and branching out. Questioning the constant projection onto these characters. That set a chain reaction into other endeavors and arguments but alas, this is already enough babbling. 

The fact that we had over 17 years of artwork and fics and videos and movies filled with Cocaine White Percy wasn’t enough for some of you. No, you had to break the spirits of those that are a minority and do not look like you. All of that shit was so unwarranted and unnecessary.

And then when you got warm to the idea of Token Black Percy (in 2021 might I add), you were delighted to see that he would be indeed white in the TV series as announced in the past few months. But oh wait… What was that?? Is it a bird, is it a plane? No?

ANNABETH ISN’T WHITE.

The whole world just got hit by a big rock and the apocalypse is nearing. The way some of y’all acted… Doing the same exact vile shit that you were doing in 2020 to a twelve year old, because she got the role of her life (so far) in portraying a major fictional character… The fact that y’all lost your goddamn mind without having even seen Leah act is MIND-BLOWING.

The same people accusing the black side of the fandom of likely being aggressive towards White TV Show Percy (before casting confirmation which also — newsflash — didn’t happen) are now the same fucking people freaking out about Leah as Annabeth. Tale as old as time.

I said this two years ago and most of y’all stank bitches proved me right: “Let’s be real: if Annabeth Chase would be black for example with the way she behaves, 85% of the fandom would hate her, cry for Perachel and Percabeth would be the least popular ship. I don’t trust people who are saying the opposite.”

As if anything else was about to happen… if I’m to believe certain Twitter threats and Reddit posts (taken with the biggest grain of salt ofc), some people where close to unaliving themselves because we all seemed to collectively have forgotten that Annabeth stans (this is coming from a core Percabeth shipper, so don’t come for me!) are fucking INSANE. Imagine loosing your shit on a harmless decision like a differing casting choice. Some of y’all need psychiatric help, ESPECIALLY looking at you 

“I can’t be racist, because I’m neurodivergent” crowd!!

I absolutely do not get why people get worked up about this. The minute a live version (aka NOT animation) project was announced, all of you should have collectively kissed the idea of a 100% book accurate adaptation goodbye, just as with the movie version. 

Do I think the show version will be closer to the books? 

Yes. 

Do I think it’ll be a 1 on 1 adaptation? 

Absolutely not. 

The announcement of the blind casting and therefore going for talent approach should’ve cemented the fact that this show won’t be book accurate at all.

How difficult is it to understand for some of you that the image of Annabeth, Percy, the storyline and everything else that you made up in your mind will NEVER be depicted on screen??? This is purely from a logical standpoint. I know Disney has resources and shit but they aren’t infinite. They have to break even eventually. I guess none of y’all have absolutely any idea how the medium of film works behind the scenes. 

Even Riordan’s (as the author with actual authority) initial version is impossible to bring to the screen. Trust me, there will be other things omitted or added to the show. You can either tune in, or don’t. It’s as simple as that. That is the only thing you can influence.

Coming to the next point: do all of these changes even matter?!

Stripping Annabeth and Percy of their default hair/eye/skin color doesn’t really change anything that significantly imo?? 

If you are reducing Annabeth and Percy to their appearance and not the character, what they have as traits and could represent that’s on you, sweetie.

Additionally, most of y’all are ignoring the polar opposite: the nuances and depth Black Annabeth (less so White Percy tbh) could add are entirely forgotten. How they could enrich the story, bring other perspectives in and give in Annabeth’s case the opportunity for black girls that are sexualized and treated like complete shit everywhere else on the planet (anti blackness and misogynoire say hello!) a chance to see themselves portrait in a multi-dimensional character but NOOOOOOOO!

Y’all act as if Californian Dream girl blonde, tall, tanned Anna Bethany “my father went to Harvard and I’m a descendant of Scandinavian royalty and only white people live in Sweden” Chase lives the same life and is equally as oppressed as characters like Hazel or Beckendorf. You know… the little black girl that lived through segregation, got cursed, killed and resurrected and has Hitler as her fucking half-sibling, and the token negro who was one of the very FEW diverse characters in the OG book series that got BLOWN THE FUCK UP as a plot point.

Like GIRL?! (Nella Rose voice:) ARE YOU NOT EMBARASSSSSED?!

I’m not saying that Annabeth doesn’t have her fair share of issues, all I’m saying is SHE’S NOT FUCKING OPPRESSED. Her problems are not the same in comparison to Hazel, Piper, Leo, Beckendorf, Reyna and others. I know white women loooove playing the victim (see: current real world issues where instead of listening to the warnings of black and brown women and people decades ago, they just sat around until they were on the receiving end for once), but no. This is not the fucking same.

Don’t act like it.

“Oh but the dumb blonde stereotype...“

DOESN’T EVEN FUCKING MATTER?!

Not only that, you could use that for show Percy for all that I care now that his actor won’t be forced to dye his hair/wear contacts. Percy gets treated by all fronts like an idiot (thank you, Annabeth), let him be the one proving people wrong about the dumb blond thing.

As if there aren’t other white female (main) characters that you can latch yourselves onto if you feel like projecting. And you still can, because the OG book series is still a fucking thing!! This is all about the show!

Like you, @mrhomerxsimpson have said, the OG descriptions sound unrealistic and would look tacky in the live action. Fanart ≠ real portrayal of characters. Having sparkly glowing sea green eyes would look weird in reality. The focus of Annabeth’s on her gray eyes… this is readable but would likely transfer poorly onto the screen.

And let’s not forget the trashy exotic portrayal of Cinnamon Toast Hazel and Kaleidoscope Eyed Piper. Let’s just let people and characters of color chill for a while. Please.

I’ve said it ages ago and I’m too lazy to look it up but I think that as long as Percy and Poseidon reassemble each other slightly, the show will be fine. And if these people can act. Also important.

Which brings me to my final point/question: How are some of you unable to understand that different adaptations of the same enterprise can coexist and be just fine?

Book Annabeth 

≠

Movie Annabeth

≠

TV Show Annabeth

There is a reason why you can filter the universe (book, tv show, movie, etc.) in which your story is set on AO3 and FFN. Because not all universes are the same!!!

Rowling is trash but as an easy to understand analogy: if you think about the Harry Potter franchise…

is Emma Watson automatically Hermione Granger for you? Is Daniel Radcliffe automatically Harry Potter?

Because whenever I’ve read a HP Fic they’ve NEVER come up in my mind. Emma Watson is Movie Hermione, but she’s not THE Hermione. She isn't any better or worse than Stage Adaptation Hermione. Watson certainly isn’t the Hermione in my head.

Dr. Who is a sorta weak comparison but there are a million different Doctors sooo what??

Can’t you separate different versions of the same medium? The same core story just with different faces for the same role? Am I in the minority with this??

Book Annabeth is Book Annabeth, Alexandra Daddario is Movie Annabeth and Leah will be TV Show Annabeth. And none of that is in conflict with each other.

If you still want to create moodboards and artworks with Surinamese!Percy, Haitian!Grover and Desi!Annabeth, no one’s stopping you!

If you see Aryan, Walker and Leah as the new default and want to create artwork with their likenesses, also fine!

If you want to go all white like Burdge and Viria have over ten years ago… lame and side-eye worthy but ultimately your decision.

If you want to do all of the above, go ahead!

Just chill and wait till next year when the show finally hits before y’all start throwing tantrums, jeez. Oh wait. Too late!

Peace out.

TL;DR: It really doesn’t fucking matter how TV series Annabeth or Percy look like. Their actors need to act and that’s about it. However, I agree that the book portrayals (at least to a certain degree) would look tacky on screen. Also, this fandom is trash. 

Stop being dickheads and I’m out until November or so for my new finished fic.

[aeempress]

Apritello Express Evidences, part 2

Khem-khem, ladies and gentlemen, we shall continue out praising Apritello's episodes. And yeah, this part will be dedicated, in entirety just one episode.

Purple jacket. April and Donnie's episode.

I really love this piece of masterpiece, because it show April and Dee relationship, better reveals them as characters, and demonstrates their connection. (My previous points at this whole situation)

The episode begins with Donnie sneaking into April's school under the pretext of helping her. Soon, April stated the reason why she called D - her science computer project. Actually, she could take a photo of the code and sent it to Donatello, and I'm sure, he would send her the correct one right away, he's coder, he's prodigy, no probbles.

But still, April just asked him to come over and help her without stating any reasons. And he, indeed, came at speed of the light.

I want you to understand what exactly does that mean.

First: April is aware how much Donnie is into human culture. He wants to study in normal human school, do some average teen stuff. Especially, he is loving school and science-related stuff, all these science school projects, visits to botanical gardens, experiments and laboratory work. Because it's his field. It's exactly his domain, where he's good at. His family does not share his interest in science, and April is only one who can understand him. Probably.

Also, April know, how badly Donnie wants to go to school, which gives him an excuse, even if not the most solid one, but an excuse, nevertheless, to visit her school again.

Why again?

Because he has no problem navigating there. Donnie went directly to April's computer class.

He loves this place. And he'd already helped April with her projects.

Even so, knowing that every time she asked guys, especially Don, for help, it turned into a cataclysm, April still called him to help.

It's just a weird, indirect way to say, " Let's hang out, I know how much you like this whole situation with science, school and etc. Here ya go, buddy"

It seems like April did that to make something pleasant to him, something small, but nice to make him feel better. Because, as I state before - he likes to help April (praise, doing something useful for April - still counts as a motivation) and he likes school.

Second: khem-khem, D came at her school, as it seems, right away she called/texted. He didn't even know the proper reason, but c'mon: April ask for help, plus, her school. Sounds legit, don't you think?

Anyway, April has always been being the reason and excuse for teetles, but especially for Donnie. Clear? Clear. Good.

Donnie also tends to not think things through when he is excited. Because he went at the daylight in place, full of people just to help April.

ROTTMNT shows us how turtles were really afraid of human reaction and possible consequences. They have plan "H" to pretend they are going to Galaxy Con, brothers have explanation why they look weird and it's definitely not because boys are mutants, uh-huh, no, plus, guys go on surface at evening or night hours, when there are not so many people, and it's dark, obviously, to cover them and keep unseen.

Yeah, of course, Donnie seems more capable then his brothers to handle the surface (he has cash, D's dressed up as old ladies more than once, according to Leo, he was in April's school before, so yeah, no big deal) and I suspect that his friendship with April is one of the reasons.

Third: do you remember how April worried about looking "normal" when she was finally invited to a school party? She even forbade Mayham to appear nearby, just not to look like the lizard boy. Because cool kids don't bring pets to school. April doesn't have many friends, or rather, there are none at school, and she's been trying to solve this problem by getting close to Taylor Martin, the coolest girl in school.

And April O'Neil just calls Donatello, an objectively strange guy (since when is it normal to be a fan of school? Pretty questionable) in place, where her reputation is hanging in a balance. Our girl does not try to hide Dee, as it usually shown in shows for kids, and April do not pretend that she sees him for the first time in her life because, you know, Donnie will catch everyone's attention being himself and may embarrass her in front of her classmates. But no - April says with all her actions: "Yes, I know him. Yes, that dork is with me. And I don't give a damn about your opinion. Your problems, not mine. And yeah, I'm fine with him being here."

I mean it, guys. The devil is always in the tiny details.

The way they behave around each other.

Donatello is way more, MORE relaxed and just being himself: dramatic dorky nerdy ninja with current obsessions. The way he sneaked in school and April's classroom, the way he behaves alone with her is contrasting the way of his attitude while his brothers are near.

Don has a specific way to shown up. Instead of texting her, Donnie used shurekens. Yes, he almost fell off the lamp, but still, that's... quite an entrance he makes there.

April worries about him, when he fell from ceiling.

Our girl feel relaxed enough around Donnie, so she winks at him.

A wink is a fairly casual gesture that shows some expression of sympathy, trust, and togetherness. It's both good for saying "We're in same boat, we're team" and show the playful attitude towards someone. Isn't that an indicator?

Ironically, that being the best friends April and Donnie do not have any secret handshake/brofist/special greeting, as it usually the besties have at kid's series. Like Kendra and Jeremy have.

I can do only one possible logical conclusion: their relationship is far beyond "friends," "best friends," and "family".

Btw, about this certain phrase about secret five.

- Nay, fair April. A secret five[...].

Once again, nice wording, Donatello. Fair April? Maybe I'm too critical, but often when someone wants to convince their interlocutor and at the same time show one's condescension to them, it's usually uses "my dear ..." or something like that. I understand that semantically the difference is not very big, but in the first case, you can feel Donnie's personal attitude, even though he uses a book word. The second is just formal politeness, which emphasizes the difference between the rightness of the disputants.

This phrase were interpreted on official Russian dub as (okay, it's really hard to choose the correct word, because there's a lot of synonyms in English that sits quite well, while on Russian it's just one word, damn) "Нет, милая (No, honey/sweetheart )". Actually, a strange choice of wording, 'cause this is not what usually friends use to say to each other. We prefer use words like " my darling", "my dear", to demonstrate leniency. And again, most often this prerogative belongs to the older generation. Russians rarely throw around such words as "honey", "dear", "sunshine", because this deprives these endearments of any meaning, and a person using them, as a rule, is familiar. Of course, there are people who use them on a regular basis, but I HIGHLY doubt that Donatello is one of them. It's not his style.

But still, maybe I just too critical at this point.

April, as it is shown, have some kind of power to cool and calm him down and bring Donnie back to life reality.

1. Don awakes from his daze while heard April's voice

2. He's literally coming back to life, when April said about his broken jetpack.

3. Dee obediently interrupts his touching farewell to the jacket when April yells at him.

Oh, and his face. I remind you, fellas, we're talking about Donatello, "I really do not like to express emotions"-guy and "I will die if someone broke my bAbEyS"-guy.

And what do we see? Donnie's emoting. And feels free to do that. He's even drooling. (What seems kinda interesting without context, if you're understand what I'm talking about ;))

Dee doesn't seem angry about broken jetpack. And his wide smile, while he's assuring April he can fix it? A few minutes ago, he was steamed when his stuff was stolen, but when the jetpack was broken, he doesn't even raise an eyebrow. Very eloquent.

April is his support

April also supports Donnie whatever he's up to. Yes, she hadn't been excited when Othello had expressed a desire to join the club. However, she also introduced him to Kendra and company. Yes, she showed by her whole appearance that she did not share his joy, but nevertheless, our loyal captain O'Neil was there for him, by his side all this time.

And her sweet facial expression. From "Srsly? Join this jerks?" to "If you dare to even think about to hurt him, I'll smash you".

And one more cute detail about Dee. Even if he does whatever he wanted so badly, Don constantly looks around at April, looking for her approval.

- Be honest, April, do I look fantastic, or SUPERBLY fantastic?

- You look like you drop a juice box in a laundry. (Play nice, April, don't be mean)

He cherishes her opinion.

April had even called him late at night just to, technically speaking, say that his tech were stolen. And what's the big deal with all his outfit? It's late night, they can just sneak out into Nakamura in their usual form. But noooo, April give a special ride on her bicycle. Just. You know. Our girl carried her own weight and his all the way without stopping. And then she went up 53 + floors running non-stop because Donnie's equipment was stolen. And then she had to chase the her classmates, dodge and jump out of the window. Because Purple dragons stole Dee's tech. Like shooting fish in a barrel, no big deal at all.

And it's definitely not because he will be totally crashed or he'll do stupid things during his anger, which will then come out sideways.

And April comes along with him to very end.

By the way, their phone conversations.

Donnie is the very case when "Call at any time of the day or night and I will pick up the phone".

When April called him when he needs D's help with Albearto, when something is definitely going on behind.

As it says in transcript of the episode:

[April takes out her phone, scrolls to Donnie’s listing and calls him. Donatello appears on screen. Behind him a flying microwave wearing boxing gloves shoots lasers at his brothers.]

Don: "You are conversing with Donatello."

April

[Crouched on floor in hiding.]

Dude, I need your help."

Don: "For you, anything. As long as it does not involve bees, or spiders, or beach balls.

[There’s an explosion behind him and his brothers cry out, which he ignores.]

And yeah, he took her incoming immediately, he ignores absolutely and totally everything around him, because... April? Expositions, bloody flying microwave bot turned to destroy mode, his brothers screaming and being in life-threatening situation? Naaah, it can wait.

Donatello was at Todd's, building "the puppiest place on Earth" and was very enthusiastic about to finish this thing. But he paused anyway to answer April.

We already know how obsessive with work Don can be: if something interesting gets into his field of view, he begins to do it all day long. Remember "The Purple Game" - a very revealing case. Yeah, we weren't shown how much Donnie is into engineering, but I can guess that point remains the same.

April called him at late night and Donnie picked up the phone.

April, unlike Donatello, is a teenager who is burdened with social relationship such as family, school, and work periodically, which implies a more or less strict schedule to follow and some conventions, such as " April, you can't go out late at night to catch robbers, you are underage and you have to go to school/work tomorrow). However, she was watching the news late at night, so she called Dee. ( I have a lot of questions, but I'll never get answers, as it seems)

D, in turn, doesn't have so many contacts with the outside world. I highly doubt that anyone else outside of the family and April has his number. And yet, when he hears the call late at night he takes it. Yes, he had awaken from the nightmare, but still.

And what's up with his usual "You're conversing with Donatello"? He didn't even understand what's going on, as it seems, he's too sleepy to play his usual image and playfully attitude as we could see in "Hypno Part Deux" and "War and Pizza".

Adorable couple-like D&A arguing

April very rarely uses "I told you so" against anybody, or rather, this is almost the only case. This phrase is more suitable for Leo or Donnie, and you know," I told you so! " we usually use on people we know well, and we want to tease 'em about them being wrong. Which, in fact, once again highlights and proves how close D&A are. And I don't even get started about the fact that this is more like a couple's quarrel, not a friend's.

And one more time - in the end, when April suggests using the jacket to stop Kendra.

Their teamwork

I stated that before, I'll tell it one more and more times. The chemistry of their team interaction is incredible. It's as if they can feel each other, and each knows what the other is capable of doing in the next moment. April easily adapts to Donnie's attack, realizing his plan.

Donnie also throws them both out of the window in order to continue the pursuiting Kendra on the jetpack. Don is one hundred percent sure of April, that she will understand what he wants to do, Dee trusts her with his life without hesitation, and she has never used his jetpack. He just puts her before the fact: April will be using the tech.

Up for Donnie!

I really like how this scene was made. Donatello struggles with his own tech, somewhat he made by himself, having invested almost whole himself and his soul, but what "betrayed" him in end. When Dee finally managed to shake one of his battleshell, which almost choked him, Donnie feel so scared and unsecured. We can see his anxiety - Dee's coaching position with covering his head with his hands and tucking his knees.

Defenseless, helpless, and mostly lost, and then, just in time - hero comes to save his life. She uses Donnie's name as battlecry, look how furious she is.

Funny fact: on Russian dub April yells "Don't touch Donnie! (how dare you, madafaka)

April fits in Donnie's type of girls. She's cute (obvious) and mean (not so obvious).

I can't say that meanness is the main feature of April's character, as we can say about Kendra. But this personality trait is still present in her and sometimes it does not manifest itself so widely. April's meanness is not so pronounced, it is much softer and smoother, and it is not exposed.

But April becomes really mean when someone messes up with Donnie.

She's his support and prop. Literally. Just look at first frame, okay-okay, jokes aside

She's genuinely enjoying of kicking bad guys ' asses, even letting go of witticisms and barbs.

Last scenes

Don survived a rough night: he was used, his tech was stolen, so he and April had to chase the satin robed punks. Donnie was hit in the head with a hammer, he fell from a bird's-eye view, passed out and then his battleshell tried to strangle him. And April is here to comfort him, to cheer him up.

Yes, we don't get any hugs (because it's kids show, bleh), the tactility is kept to a minimum, except for April's comforting hand on his shoulder, but they don't even look at each other. But the softness of her voice, the intonation with which she utters a phrase (that is usually sent to the friend zone, but "pal" is really neutral word, and the most important how she said that) turn the scene upside down. It is not what April did to comfort him matter, it's how she did this.

I said "yes" to you way too often

April mirrors Donnie with his "Anything for you". Yes, of course, she said this with a certain amount of grumbling, but her voice and her demeanor suggest otherwise - she is not at all averse to going to giving in him.

And the way they're look at each other.

This one

And one more detail

It's really tiny, it's hard to catch from the first watching the episode, but still, it's possible. I'm talking about graffiti on the walls of the alley where April and Don had landed.

This one

Yeah, if we speak about reality it's quite normal to see graffiti like this. But we talking about TV-series, where everything has its own place and meaning. And if there something, it must be there, it's not just whim of artist who put it in there. But this little graffiti changes the mood of scene.

[hintofelation99]

Hi! I love your posts and want to ask your opinion on something. Who do you think in the batfam has the most and the least common sense of a normal person? If you can, can you also list how they are arranged? Thank you!

Ooohhh, this is a fun one! In my mind all bats lack common sense. Like obviously they're hella smart, after all they are a family of detectives, they just aren't very bright.

Here's a quick rundown (least to most): Tim and Dick tie for first place, both lack common sense in just in completely different ways. Then Damian (mostly cause of the whole 'being raised by league of assassins' thing), Bruce, Cass (controversial ik), Steph, Jason, Duke, Babs, and last on the list is obvs Alfred. (Kate is probs between Cass and Steph, but I've only really seen her in the DCAMU and need to get to know her better).

And Ima add a 'keep reading' cause this is gonna get long.

Tim:

Tim is one of the smartest in the family. He deduced Batman's identity as a child, majorly fucked up the League of Assassins, and has been honored (I say this v sarcastically just btw) with Ra's creepy obsession. He's smart, plain and simple. However, when it comes to just day to day survival and being loved, goddamn that boy is dumb.

He regularly mixes energy drinks and coffee. Sometimes he even mixes energy drinks, alcohol, and coffee.

In his mind warnings are optional. "Tim, did you just sniff that drano?" "Yeah, why?" "IT LITERALLY SAYS DO NOT SMELL" "Oops"

He regularly tests shit on himself. "Why is Tim on the floor?" "He mixed joker venom and fear gas to see what would happen" "HE WHAT"

Also if you try to compliment him or tell him you love him he will find a way to misunderstand. "Tim, I love you and you are an amazing son." "I don't know who this Tim is but he sounds great" "It- it's you, literally you. Timothy Jackson Drake." "I'm a bit confused, I didn't know you knew two Timothy Jackson Drakes. You should really introduce us."

Dick:

Dick in many ways is a total himbo. He's a complete sweetheart, super supportive, and very ditzy. His ditzy-ness directly correlates to how relaxed he is. Chilling in the manor? Peak himbo. A mission in space? Absolute genius and amazing leader. Just took down a bunch of thugs? Slowly reverting into dopey boi. He always has the ability to be super analytical, smart, and big brain, but he likes being whimsical and even airheaded. And that's not a bad thing, it's just him taking mental breaks, being lighthearted.

"YOU PUT DIESEL IN YOUR CAR?" "...Yeah, in my defense the nozzles look basically the same" "They're different colors?! Also the diesel nozzle doesn't even fit into your gas tank, how did you get it in?" "I'm a good pourer."

He always responds to the word dick and it always confuses him. "God Ra's is such a dick!" "What?" "Ra's is a dick" "I'm not Ra's!" "Wha- no! I mean penis dick!" "Ohhhh, yeah he is a penis dick"

Once Dick is safe he reverts into himbo pretty quickly, even after stressful situations. "Hey Wally?" "Yes babe?" "I forgot how to change my lock screen again" "Dick, you just hacked into an alien spaceship not even an hour ago??" "What's that have to do with anything?"

Damian:

Damian lacks common sense from growing up with the League of Assassins. He's an amazing warrior and super analytical but casual human interaction alludes him. He is getting better though, so eventually he'll be lower on the list than Steph. But for now he's a senseless bby.

The first time someone tried to give him high five he assumed it was an attack and flipped them. Same with a fist bump.

This is complete canon but his original treatment of Alfred, his brothers, and, well, everyone. Like bby boy please read the room.

His ego can easily override common sense. Like he wouldn't jump off a bridge if everyone else was doing it, but if someone said he couldn't he'd immediately swan dive off that bridge.

Bruce:

For the world's greatest detective he can be a major dumb bitch sometimes. Some of it's growing up rich and some is being so wrapped up in his 'crusade for justice' that he just misses basic shit.

One time he walked in on Roy and Jason making out, the next day he saw them cuddling, then they mentioned moving in together. It took him three months to realize that they're dating.

He doesn't understand coupons, like at all. Jason has tried to explain them but Bruce just gets even more confused.

Bruce tried to make coffee once. He literally just poured coffee beans in water and microwaved it. He was surprised when it didn't taste good.

Cass:

Cass is similar to Damian in she lacks common sense from an unconventional upbringing. However she's learning way faster than Damian and depending on where in the timeline you're looking she might have more common sense than Babs.

Basic things like lines, turn taking, and speaking when spoken to aren't innate to her. Like, she knows and understands them, but often forgets about them.

There are many times that she blurs the line between civilian and vigilante because she'll do something that looks v stupid and dangerous for a civilian. The thing is she never notices when she does this.

One time she was in a restaurant and there was a cockroach on the wall across the room (cause Gotham) and instead of getting up and killing it like a normal person she threw her steak knife and impaled it.

Steph:

Steph is probably lacks common sense the most conventional yet slightly concerning way. She lacks common sense in the same way a cartoon character or sitcom character would. Like it's sorta realistic but at the same time damn bby girl why are you such a disaster??

She will do anything on a dare. Anything. There is a rule against daring Steph to do things while in the manor or on patrol.

Every time she hears someone say Red Robin she yells yum. This has gotten both her and RR shot.

Steph is v lucky that 1) she's a badass and 2) the batfam loves her because she annoys absolutely everyone just for shits and giggles and the only reason she hasn't been murdered is that Cass scares everyone.

Jason:

All common sense is lost when dramas at stake. Say what you will but Jason is the (second) biggest drama queen in the family. Also he, like most bats, lacks a sense of self preservation which leads to shit common sense.

He tried to steal Batman's tires.

Sometimes he listens to music during patrol and tries to hit people/shoot on beat. This has lead to stab wounds.

Jason loves to loudly quote classic literature while on stake outs. This is a problem for obvious reasons.

Duke:

Ok this is around the time you get to average common sense levels. But he still runs around Gotham beating people up in tights (or kevlar) so he doesn't get full points. Also he's still not Babs level common sense. One area Duke lacks common sense in is how to deal with the Batfam (which is v understandable tbh)

One time Duke was joking around with Jason and decided to steal a roll off of Damian's plate. This ended in blood.

Other than lacking Batfam common sense, most of his poor judgement moments are less notable but still concerning.

For example the time he challenged Dick to a hot dog eating contest then went on a roller coaster.

Babs:

Other than being a vigilante Babs almost has normal human common sense. However being a vigilante has negative side effects on ones common sense.

While Babs' sleep schedule isn't as bad as Tim's it's not a whole lot better. She's stayed up 72 consecutive hours multiple times.

She has accidentally poured coffee onto her computer instead of into a coffee mug.

One time she drank an entire gallon of milk before realizing it was a month expired.

Alfred:

Most assume that working for Bruce Wayne is a sign of him lacking common sense. But nah, it's him knowing, understanding, and challenging his own limits. Also it's him being a charitable human being. Like he has enough common sense to go around and tbh it's the only thing keeping the family alive.

"Master Bruce, you may not use Elmer's Glue All to close a wound."

"Master Dick I would encourage you not to teach Master Duke acrobatics on the glass coffee table."

"Miss Stephanie I would not advise trying to consume an entire jar of peanut butter in one sitting, and no, I do not care if Master Jason dared you to."

Tada, there's the list! Sorry that was probably a lot longer than anyone wanted, but I enjoy talking about how ditzy the batfam is. Like they're all geniuses but at the same time they're just sooooo dumb.

[hopefullystillatheatrestudent]

this might be a weird thought but the way jensen performs masculinity (and i KNOW it’s a performance cause like, have you SEEN the mockumentary?) is just.... so inherently queer to me lmao

ok. okokokokokok. you asked for this. i have a LOT of thoughts on this. it’s gonna be under a cut because i’m gonna be annoying and psychoanalyse a celebrity i’ve never met(and hope i never do) but trust and believe when i tell you i know what i’m talking about so

you want my opinion? here goes. there is absolutely no way jensen ackles is straight. i hear you, ‘how do you know that he’s bi? that’s invasive and creepy’ but may i counter that point by saying how do you know he’s straight???? why is the default for everyone heterosexual? that’s a toxic mentality to have; ‘oh you don’t know for sure so just treat him like he’s 100% straight just in case’ like....what? heteronormativity drives me wild i’m sorry

and also, um, just to, um, prove my point that this man is decidedly not straight™(i really don’t want to do this but like it has to be said) we KNOW he’s not straight because his d*ck has spoken for itself around misha, like, four times. I HATE SAYING IT!!!!!!! but, um, straight men don’t get aroused by men. ...do i really need to explain myself further???? that’s what i thought(and don’t give me the ‘it could have been for unrelated reasons’ or ‘that wasn’t a boner!’ crap because um good lord yes it was and misha caused every single one so no it wasn’t a coincidence i’m gonna move on before i collapse into myself like a dying star)

anyway, on to the topic at hand which is jensen and his performative masculinity. and it’s a juicy one.

after the unconscious amount of hours i’ve put into watching and subconsciously judging jackles, i have come to the conclusion that like, 90% of how he presents himself and talks and even moves is an act. it’s a facade. it’s a shield. he is not that person. it actually seems exhausting, because he tries to compose himself in this macho, manly, confident and effortlessly cool way, but he’s not that person he desperately wishes he was and wants to be perceived as. he’s on guard every second, even the slightest tilt of his head is like, pre-meditated in some way? if i’m going FULL body language analyst mode, i’ve noticed he has a certain posture he always shifts himself into, and it’s very ‘pursed lips, stoic faced, gruff voiced, square-shoulder, broad and manly’ but, not to be rude jensen, it kind of reads as a little kid imitating the adults he thinks are cool? oof i am going IN huh(it’s out of love though i promise)

he is trying to be this person at every second:

because that’s who he wishes he was, because that’s how he gets validation from the people around him that he looks up to; straight white guys. but to me, who he presents himself to be at conventions is just as much of a performance as this whole eye of the tiger bit is.

oh i should mention i know his body language isn’t naturally like that because how he naturally carries himself is actually pretty flamboyant? like he seriously must be toning himself down HARD

examples:

there’s no tension in his body here as opposed to the eye of the tiger gif. i’d describe it as...generally loose and free? he’s at ease when he moves like that and you can see it.

oh and dude!!! DUDE!!!! how could i not mention the fucking SPECTACLE that is his voice??? jensen. i watched season one. i know where your voice naturally sits. THAT IS NOT WHAT YOU SOUND LIKE. and there have been so many accounts of fans visiting jensen in his trailer and being surprised that his real voice is two octaves higher. again, his performance of masculinity is all encompassing. he can’t even talk normally because, in his mind, that’s a chink in his armour.

and, like you said, anon, this whole smokes-and-mirrors gong show of ‘i am the cool texan man’ is inherently queer. who are you trying to impress??? guys??? that’s pretty gay dude.(btw: gay[honorary])

i feel like i’ve already read this man for filth but i have to keep going bc i have so much to say

ok next thing i’m gonna talk about is how jensen says one thing but everything else about him tells us the exact opposite. another HUGE element of performative masculinity, ONE THAT DEAN WINCHESTER IS A MASTER OF. have i mentioned how dean and jensen are like mirrors of each other when it comes to their sexuality and queer identity??? because it is fascinating how everything i say about jensen also directly applies to dean.

allow me to introduce the grumpy face™. as in, the face he glues on when he’s enjoying doing something but doesn’t want to let anyone know it. and it’s ALWAYS when he’s doing something that could be seen as unmanly in any way. (and when i say manly i mean the ‘ideal’ version of manhood that doesn’t really exist but that jensen seems to be striving for[and dean too])

prime example is this video he did with daneel. the grumpy face™ doesn’t budge the whole time as he’s like,,,,playing an instrument and acting like he doesn’t want to bc i guess that’s too girly??? but i also find this video fascinating because the joke IN it is kind of that they’re both poking fun at him for being so insecure about playing a freaking flute. because, i mean, he gets into it, but he wants you to think he is not.

also this picture.

what is this. i hate them. jensen is smushing himself into misha’s forehead but noooo his face is telling us ‘i hate this’ because CLEARLY he does. also misha’s so happy ew gross

he does that face in photo ops with misha ALL THE TIME but how many times has he also literally asked the con goers if he can also have those photos on his phone too? because of course he actually loves touching misha and is actually a sentimental fool but he tries so hard to hide it and fails so spectacularly.

oh and this. and of COURSE this. actually let’s talk about the hitch kiss for a hot minute because it’s a perfect example of exactly what i’m talking about

(he is so transparent guys. he tries so hard but he’s so obvious.)

1. misha was never supposed to be onstage with him. so it’s a boldface LIE and OBVIOUS PLOY TO GET MISHA TO KISS HIM when he says ‘they’d like us to make out now’. but of course the way he says it is ‘oh my god can you believe what these crazy panel people are making us do haha but i mean what they say goes amirite’. same energy as ‘oh my god did you just dare us to kiss rn???’ ‘....no i didn’t’ ‘oh my god i can’t believe you’d ask that haha but i can’t say no to a dare lol’ it’s the SAME THING

2. the fact that he was in the worst mood before misha came onstage and FAKE KISSING HIM made him feel...SO?? much better? like not just a little better a lot better like, again, that says a lot, because if they weren’t dating he would not be in a better mood if misha kissed his cheek unprompted. bc that cheek kiss wasn’t a joke it was a genuine sign of affection and AHHHH

3. after the kiss happens. you know, the one that jensen actively leans into and is smiling like an idiot the whole time through and is quite clearly having the time of his life during....he says ‘well, that was uncomfortable’. .......my guy. um. i don’t know how to tell you that i do in fact have eyes and you are NOT pulling the fast one you think you are

like i’m so sorry jensen but i have you pegged. it’s literally no use.

god there’s so many instances of him doing this with misha specifically. the whole ‘ew gross lol’ but then everything about him tells us the exact opposite. like this(i hate this. how dare he say ‘he has though, hasn’t he?’ LIKE THAT?????)

so yeah my point with that is he really wants us to think he is one thing when he is the antithesis of what he’s trying to be. he really likes those things that he talks down about, and everything he’s loudly projecting is all to hide how he really feels. he went to a gay bar with daneel, for crying out loud. he wants to play a role in drag. he’s queer and he likes it. pov: you’re jensen ackles train of thought: ‘ok so i really like this thing that people might make fun of me for or call me gay for liking so if i just say ‘lol as if’ and make a grossed-out face they will be FOOLED. i am a genius. hey misha wanna blow on my ear lol i meAN GROSS EW’

i have two more things i want to talk about when it comes to this topic so PLEASE bear with me anon this is why you took so long to answer clearly lmao

ok so we’re now going to go over my favorite hot take of all time. which is ‘how do we know dean’s performing masculinity? because sam isn’t.’ only replace dean with jensen and sam with jared and oh my god do we ever have a case

jared is as STRAIGHT as they come. he is secure in that knowledge. and that’s why he is perfectly comfortable treating misha like this:

and not try to scream ‘i am not enjoying doing this!!!!!!’ at us. because he doesn’t care what we think of his sexuality like jensen does(because he has nothing to hide whereas jensen DOES)

something i found the other day that no one has brought up but i SCREAMED upon finding it is this one clip THAT I CAN’T FIND OH GOD but i promise i’m not making it up. i can’t believe i can’t find it guys it is gold. i need need NEED to talk about it. and if anyone knows what i’m referencing and can apply links in any way i will love you forever but here’s what happens off the top of my head:

ok so i’m a bit too braindead to explain it perfectly but um basically it’s a j2 panel and someone brings up magic mike and i think jared says ‘yeah i didn’t watch it’ and then jensen says ‘all the way through’. stupid joke. whatever. the joke is that jared is gay for watching magic mike.

and then i literally kid you not. jared gets this like ‘jesus christ ok dude? lol’ look on his face and then goes ‘projecting much, mr. ackles?’ and jensen gets a guilty look on his face and walks away. and jared did not say it as a joke. he was being dead pan and earnest. and jensen knew it too, he knew he was projecting. i wish i could show you guys the clip i promise if i ever find it i’ll link it but IS THAT NOT SO DAMNING FOR JENSEN????? like come ON. also proves my point that when you compare how they feel about watching magic mike. jared doesn’t care bc watching it just doesn’t interest him, but he also thinks that just watching it in itself doesn’t make you gay. jensen however.......has a different mindset, clearly.

‘projecting much, mr. ackles?’ is actually a great title for my next and FINAL section(we’re almost there folks) which is how jensen projects his insecurites about his own sexuality and relationship with misha onto misha.

i hope by now we’ve all seen this video of jensen impersonating cas. it is a blatant microaggression on his part. and like obviously homophobic. it’s like in his mind if he makes fun of them for being gay it makes them both less gay somehow??? it’s self-deprecation in a way??? let’s just tell it like it is: that impression was just jensen’s overt internalized homophobia rearing it’s ugly head. he does it a LOT too when it comes to misha.

i mean:

and that whole mess where he’s making fun of misha for being a bottom in their panel in 2016? ‘so you’re saying, like with football terms, there’s a handler and there’s a receiver heheheehe’ jensen you’re not exempt from being gay just because you know football terms lmao

oh and his OTHER impression of misha where he mocks him for...bicycling...because it’s not a manly enough sport??? jensen NO ONE else has ever thought this hard in their lives about what constitutes as masculine enough to be a sport before. that’s all you bud. we don’t find those jokes nearly as funny as you do. you are reaching, sir

the good news is that misha thinks it’s hilarious and knows it’s projecting on jensen’s part and will tease him endlessly for it. many stories come to mind, like that one photo op story where they’re literally dressed in rainbow banners and pride stickers but when misha goes to hold his hand jensen said something like ‘no way’ and then misha stepped back, put his hands on his hips and went ‘that’s the part that’s too gay for you???’ and jensen LOST it

or when that whole underwear thing happened(messy messY MESSY BTW) and then a fan asked a question about what dean and cas would do in rome and misha just said ‘when in rome’ and jensen makes a face like ‘are you serious’ and then misha says ‘you can’t look at me like that anymore, because of what you did!!!!!!’

OH and that whole story about when misha suggested they put jensen in the closet for that cat video....yeah um

and then when jensen was asked to do bisexual finger guns for a photo op and the con goer said ‘he looks bisexual here’ and misha literally said ‘oh he definitely looks bisexual here. i would say he’s actually closer to the gay side of the spectrum’ so..um...make with that as you will

OH MY GOD i’m finally done. wow. WOW. that was a lot. i hope i’ve blown your minds. ty anon i really wanted to talk about this and i hope you’re happy with the outcome!!!!!!

[ranboo5]

whats 'the clip' and knifetrick?

Augh. Under the cut for shipping discourse and p/dophilia ment (nothing graphic or specific). Gets long bc I discuss my thoughts on DSMP shipping in general. You are setting me up fr anon

Some quick vocab -

intimacy here is used to refer to. Well. Any kind of intimacy between characters, of any sort, as an umbrella term /r, /p, and /qp here are used as shorteners to denote "romantic," "platonic," and "queerplatonic," both as adjectives And as verbs ("to /r" = "to portray romantically") shipping here is used to refer to any focused examination of intimacy between characters

And some clarity that Should follow from the essay next but may not - """anti-antis"""" and RPF writers delete forever

The Clip is from one of if not the? most recent Discord stage(s) Mr Live has done (which I missed when it was live RIP) wherein he issues a hard ban on shipping him ("do not ship me, in any way, with anyone!") which would less influence c!beeduo (which has been portrayed/stated to be romantic AND nonromantic both conflictingly for a while until being confirmed unconfirmed several months ago, that being the last was heard) without its direct invocation if he hadn't also cited for the reason as being underage ("'Cause, one, it's straight up pedophilia") which is! a) immediately applicable to At Least his DSMP character, Partially and b) while not Strictly True (should b obvious that portraying a relationship within the bounds of what it is in canon and in a nonsexual way is not That, and /r-ing c!beeduo etc was possible to do Appropriately again by remaining w/in the bounds of canon) is Clearly Indicative of the fact that baggage-wise it IS associated with people being fucking creeps

This Really complicates things bc like okay the apparent solution is "lol just don't /r it" but it's really like. A Worse issue than that bc like.

Okay the reason shipping in terms of fictional characters is a Different Bar is bc it's an examination of Intimacy and certain lines exist in certain dynamics of intimacy that Isn't Shown (which is the whole Within The Bounds Of Canon thing) which is important in a medium like DSMP because of the smaller gap + more personal relationship b/w character and streamer. Examining intimacy beyond th bounds of the consent that has been established in that regard is Weird at best and Violating And Creepy more often and, As Mentioned In Ranb's Stage, Literally Evil at worst

Which is why writing abt like. QPR or platonically intimate Techno and Philza (characters) is smth that is fine because that's smth that has been shown and repeatedly stated onscreen; it's in the bounds of canon n thus within th bounds of what the streamers've consented 2 be done with their characters. But writing T3chza making out or whatever is fucked up because it's smth that's beyond those consent barriers

And the thing is right

Slapping a /p on T3chza makeout doesn't. Make it less violating

Like what you CALL romantic is not the measure or whether it's past those barriers yk? And if it's indistinguishable, if it's in extrapolative territory that is Past The Bounds, it Does Not Matter how much you /p it EVEN IF IT IS TECHNICALLY PLATONIC y feel? Like at the end of the day placing a moratorium on some/all forms of shipping is placing a moratorium on certain examinings of intimacy

And okay 2 go back to Mr Live and his character. What it implies taken in context w/ older portrayals of c!beeduo and said by invoking smth that both evokes Really fucked up baggage (that does unfortunately exist btw I'm sorry if you didn't know that but People Really Do B Fucked Up Abt Beeduo) AND applies to his character is a revocation of consent to examining deep intimacies:tm: with his character, which is gonna apply regardless of the nature of that intimacy (even if nonromantic)

Like I don't /r c!beeduo myself, do not, never have, but I talk to people who have and have consumed content where they r background /r; I also don't think it matters. Like I don't Actively /r it and I don't Actively Not /r it because imho w/ the intimacy regarding c!beeduo that is plot relevant and character important whether that intimacy is /p /qp or /r doesn't really matter. I don't consider myself Less of a c!beeduo shipper than someone who /rs them because that would be dumb as hell and while none of the content I've made* is Intrinsically or Intentionally /r it certainly can be read tht way as much as it can be read /qp or /p. It's be dumb and hypocritical of me to like, dunk on ppl for /r-ing c!beeduo when I'm also invested in these two and my tonetags r not gonna suddenly Delete the picking apart I've done of the dynamic @ hand

Which Has Been. Within Bounds Of Canon. It's been what's been shown (sometimes to my great distress. There is a reason that the :canon_beeduo: emote looks the way it does) Directly Onscreen and in general keeping with the tone n intensity/directions of what they've Done With The Characters

HOWEVER

As mentioned up there. Revocation of consent

It makes. Full sense 2 me that Mr Live wants to place a moratorium or fullon ban on shipping his characters perhaps where he wouldn't have before because of the Unfortunately Very Extant trends of people being Fucking Weird about shipping his characters AND of using them as a Thinly Veiled Excuse to ship HIM, which. I should not have to explain why shipping real people is fucking abhorrent

THIS creates a problem which is a. Bit of a vacuum in interacting with what is a facet of c!Ranboo's arc, decision making, and character. Like you CAN have c!Ranboo w/o cbeeduo but you Can't Really have his plotline without examining c!beeduo. And as I mentioned earlier: even if your examination of c!beeduo is fully platonic, the significance of it To the plotline means that any examination of it and its relevance to the plotline and characters IS gonna be an examination of intimacy, which. Regardless of it's platonic, Is Still Shipping

Unless some HARD retconning happens it leaves this like. Hole in an aspect of c!Ranboo's arc and decisionmaking and it's very. Uncertain? God. Fucking months ago I was already kind of :huh. Does he know what the fuck he's doing: irt c!beeduo and desperately wishing for things to be cleared up and now it's only That Much Stronger

NOW. KNIFETRICK, FINALLY

Knifetrick (or, as it’s actually listed, Bishop’s Knife Trick) is a fic about "Ran and Jackie from The Pit TFTSMP" in a "canon-typical ambiguously romantic relationship." As you can tell from the scare quotes, especially if you've seen me vague, both of these are, to put it politely, Doubtful. I've read the fic; I will not be sharing my opinions because that would be neither productive nor responsible (I will just say I can't recommend it and leave it at that) but I WILL say the following that Is relevant to the conversation:

Ran's and Jackie's characterizations respectively have very little to do with characterizations from The Pit, and bear a dollar-store-version resemblance to tropes and personality motifs found in ESPECIALLY fanon c!beeduo, especially later in the fic. I would not go so far as to say they are Intentionally Literally Ranboo and Tubbo but they are transparent expies and were clearly written at LEAST unintentionally w/ c!beeduo in mind (esp since. Ran and Jackie barely interacted in The Pit), and for a readerbase that, as far as I can tell, is HUGELY dominated by /r c!beeduo shippers. Like. Sorry. This is off-brand c!beeduo.

The dynamic between the two is pretty unambiguously romantic, also; despite what the fic's white knights claim, romantic tropes and implications/motifs/imagery from at LEAST chapter two, and is very much explicitly romantic by the most recent chapter.

FROM CH1:

"And now, with raised eyebrows and a pursed lip, the newly named General Jackie observes Ran in such a way that makes the enderman’s skin crawl. Ran reminds himself that this kid, as short and harmless as he may look, is trained to kill. [...] Jackie narrows his eyes and tilts his head a little, as if he’s trying to read in between every one of Ran’s imperfect scales."

FROM CH2:

"It makes Ran’s skin itch with discomfort. [...] 'That actually doesn’t explain much of anything at all,' complains Jackie, and he pops a few croutons into his mouth with one hand. 'Tell me what you’re thinking, pretty-boy.'

"Ran feels his face flush, no doubt mildly glowing green.

"Yes, that was the other thing. The unnecessary compliments to his physical appearance.

"They don’t happen very often, and don’t seem to have very much meaning or intention behind them— Jackie often speaks like an unthinking kid— but when they do happen… they’re embarrassing. [...] It’s annoying how the rug is pulled out from under his feet in these moments when he’s 'embarrassed'. Like the conversation see-saw has temporarily shifted weight in the general’s favor."

I am not going to include excerpts from Chapter 6 because it's just the entire chapter.

I WILL SAY, HOWEVER, STEPPING ON THIS SCORPION BEFORE IT STINGS: they are not written in an RPFy manner and I don't think there's any grounds, including Vibes, of accusing Knifetrick of being like. Closet truthing or whatever. Also, while I think there's certainly Some Weirdness ESPECIALLY around the reaction, the romance itself is Not written in any way I'd call weird or problematic pre-clip; it's nothing inappropriate or like Weirdly Fetishy or whatever. Knifetrick is not #problematic or anything and I don't have beef with like the concept of liking it intrinsically; if I thought it was like. Abhorrent I wouldn't be sharing excerpts lmao dhjfnhdsbvdnfjh. Hence: if anyone uses this post or anyth like it to send harassment or bad faith ANYTHING to anyone involved with Knifetrick I will hunt you down in the fucking night even if it WAS #problematic that'd be the LITERAL OPPOSITE of productive and as it stands it's Literally Not. Essentially: Knifetrick is a (questionably-written /mean) fic using Ran and Jackie from The Pit as a vessel for a large chunk of the dynamics and headcanons of fanon /r c!beeduo in particular

And again, I would not call it problematic in any way (aside from the disingenuity of the insistence that it's TOTALLY UNRELATED TO BEEDUO and TOOOTALLY WASN'T INTENDED TO BE ROMANTIC GUYS like own your shit please)... IF it weren't for the advent of The Clip, which is calling in2 question the Entirety of the problem of /r-ing any variant of c!beeduo or any of Ranboo's characters at all

I really do not have an answer for this tbh. I genuinely wanna hear from the streamer on this more specifically because I like,,, I got no clue where 2 go from here? Do I just consider an arc retconned? Was it an issue of speaking abt a troubling subject kneejerk wise and I'm reading too much in2 it?

I just. I dunno

Tl;dr (AT LONG LAST)

- The Clip is a clip of a Discord stage where Ranboo (streamer) loudly explicitly decried shipping in a way that implicitly applies to characters he plays - This would be all well and good but is rendered complicated by the plot relevance of c!beeduo, which does not stop being shipping if it's /p'd due to it still necessarily being an examination of a particular intimacy in a way that is in canon hard to distinguish the /p, /qp, or /r nature of - Bishop's Knife Trick is an AO3 fic centered around using TFTSMP characters as /r c!beeduo expies which is not a bad thing in and of itself unless it also is covered under this moratorium - Things remain unclear until and unless we get clearer word from streamer, but considering Mr Live seems to be allergic to clarifying anything abt c!beeduo this is doubtful

*very little if any of the content I personally have made 4 c!beeduo has been posted publicly, for related reasons. You May have seen it if you're in servers w/ me, depending on Which Ones

[artistic-mathematics]

sentience in animatronics, particularly in sister location?

Major FNAF lore spoilers ahead. Also, this is a very long theory post. Consider yourself warned.

This is a list of the main animatronics that are possessed, or have sentience in some way or another. (This list might be a little shady, so bear with me):

Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, Golden Freddy (First Missing Children’s incident, FNAF 1)

Toy Freddy, Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica (Second Missing Children’s incident, FNAF 2)

Mangle (from the fruit maze minigame)

Puppet/Marionette/Lefty (for... obvious reasons)

Springtrap (also for obvious reasons)

Looking to each of their behaviors, it’s shown that the person who possess said animatronic (aside from Puppet) were stuffed into their respectful suit, which is how said animatronic gains sentience. For the Puppet, Charlie’s spirit kind of merged with the Puppet’s because the puppet wanted to protect Charlie, even after death (or something like that. That’s basically how MatPat explained it in one of his videos.) For this, we’ll kind of just... ignore the Puppet, because that’s clearly an exception and isn’t really useful here.

Now, if we look into everyone else’s behavior, we see the following. The main animatronics and the toy animatronics are weary of adults (including Mangle, btw!), especially night guard, because they look the most similar to William Afton (or their murderer). Springtrap is, well, William Afton, and he always comes back because he has the plot armor of every Disney princess ever. They all have a proper motive -- the children and the dog looking to avenge their own deaths, while William Afton murders more people and does more of his twisted experiments with souls and wreaks more havoc overall.

Sister Location is different. We know for a fact that Elizabeth Afton possesses Circus Baby, but even then, it’s an extremely fuzzy grey line. What was her motive in killing her own brother? Michael mentions that the Funtimes thought he was William, so actually, what was her motive in killing her own father?

For my fic (which is why I... started overanalyzing this to begin with...), I’ve written this off as the fact that maybe Elizabeth’s soul wasn’t fully merged with Baby’s yet. There seems to be a bit of a consensus on there needing to be time before a spirit fully merges with the animatronic, so maybe that is the case. Maybe Baby just had sentience and decided to do whatever it took to leave, despite knowing that he was Elizabeth’s father and her own creator.

We know that in FNAF 6, Elizabeth has some control or some say over Scrap Baby. I get that an animatronic literally made by William could call him “daddy”, but realistically, Elizabeth would be more likely to do so.

For the sake of this post, let’s just assume that Elizabeth had no say over Baby in Sister Location, but in part gave Baby sentience (because she obviously is sentient by then). The true motive that Elizabeth has, while actually possessing Baby, is to make her father proud, considering that the very last thing she did while alive was disrespect orders and disappoint him. She wants to make amends and make him happy.

We have all of these possessed animatronics with a clear end motive, one that relates directly to their death in some way. So what on earth is going on with the other Funtimes?

Let’s start with Ballora. The most commonly accepted theory is the theory MatPat proposed, that Ballora is actually Mrs. Afton (whose name has not been confirmed yet). The biggest issue I see with this theory, though, is the fact that not once does she actually display true sentience throughout all of Sister Location. Sure, she has a few lines that were definitely not coded in, but that doesn’t really determine anything. There is one major difference between Baby (who we’ve already determined to be sentient) and Ballora,

Ballora doesn’t learn. I don’t think Baby only meant that Ballora couldn’t learn to pretend in order to avoid getting scooped. When Baby first mentions Ballora, she simply tells you how to get past her. Ballora is predictable, and Baby knows that. She knows exactly what Ballora will do, because she doesn’t learn from her failures. You’d think, after being in an underground facility for so long, that any human (even a child!) would be willing to change their tactics. And yet now we’re talking about a fully-grown adult who’s possessing this animatronic? It just doesn’t seem likely.

I do believe that she is at least partially sentient, though, due to her voice lines and the ability to at least listen to Baby. She also has a less than fun reaction to the controlled shocks and is very, very hostile to you after that, showing that she has at least some capacity to understand that Michael hurt them. Also, if Ennard’s inner dialogue is to be believed in night 5, then I can see Ballora bringing up the fact that he had hurt them. (I do believe that Baby planned this whole thing out and told the other Funtimes to act hostile towards Michael, but uh, Ballora may have just held a grudge regardless.)

Another thing that’s worth mentioning is that it’s been generally confirmed that Circus Baby’s Pizza World opened after the first missing children’s incident. If this is to be believed, then William Afton would have already done experiments with remnant and whatnot. In this case, I think it’s actually quite likely that Ballora may have had Mrs. Afton’s remnant, but not her spirit. This would explain why she’s not as sentient as Baby, but is at least somewhat sentient. I think this was extremely deliberate -- I do agree with the part of the theory in which Ballora was modeled after Mrs. Afton in some way. He must’ve done this to honor her memory or something along those lines.

Now onto Funtime Freddy and Funtime Foxy. We know that the both of them are also sentient in their own way, considering the fact that they were also able to listen to Baby (while Funtime Foxy does have the same motives as Ballora when it comes to attacking Michael, Funtime Freddy does not. so I do believe that Baby must’ve talked to him beforehand to some extent in acting hostile.) My theory is that both Funtime Freddy and Funtime Foxy must’ve had remnants of other people, since they both also seem to have at least partial sentience like Ballora. But who, and why? It makes sense for Ballora to have Mrs. Afton’s if she’s modeled after her. But what’s the point of making these other two sentient?

The best solution I can come up with is to enhance the AI in them, so they do a better job of kidnapping and killing children... or whatever. I have absolutely no proof to back this up, though.

Then, well, Ennard happens. And the three of them vote to kick Baby out. While the three of them kinda just... let things happen in Sister Location, I think the reason for their rebellious behavior was actually due to Elizabeth being merged with them. I think that maybe she passed on some of that sentience to the other three, giving them just enough willpower to boot Baby. Do I have evidence for this? No. Is this entirely based off of headcanons? Yup. Honestly, I’m just spitballing at this point. I am so, so very tired of trying to figure out how sentience even works in FNAF at this point.

(Don’t even get me started on Bon Bon, the Bidybabs, and Minireenas. I have no goddamn clue how any of them even fit. The Bidybabs saying “She’s watching us!” or something along those lines just... my one braincell is crying.)

Anyway, please let me know what you think. This was long and convoluted and I want some opinions from other people, because I really am just overthinking all of this now.

PS. I have no idea how this remnant stuff even works. Couldn’t you tell? I probably should’ve researched it but I’m too braindead for that now. Literally putting this out there before anyone flames me.