#sorry for all the boop posts

[voiider]

*New York accent* I'm boopin' here!!!

[atsushis-fangs]

Scotland: get in the halloween spirit and make a ghost!!

Ireland: that’s called murder and I heard somewhere that it’s illegal

@winterwrites23 I’ll have you know that I am NOT dead, SoT is STILL my all time favourite fic, and I MISSED making these. Happy Halloween! :D

[jattendschaton]

Side effect of booping is I am now learning who has unfollowed me adsjkflgjsdkfl

[good-beans]

*sets this bowl out on my porch with a sign that says Take One :)*

[imdead770]

Just a quick warning that if you show up on my feed you're getting booped

There's no way out

[forkpigeon3146]

to know me is to be shaken

my hands shake when they hold yours, they havent been steady in years

my arms tremble when i hold you, i havent loved someone like this in awhile

my voice breaks when i tell you, my memories sounding like a eulogy of a sad person's life

[pocket-lin]

my dog died on march 8th. i only talked about her and her cancer a few times on tumblr but it's been very hard and i just wanted to post about it, i guess. i was just starting to maybe make some friends on here and i was doing a few fic recs and ask games and i had ideas for some more fun fandom stuff. and then she died! and i lost all momentum! i'm sorry if i stopped responding to you or never sent a message back in the first place or some other genre of ghosting! so many people followed me and then i just kinda dipped out of existence. whoops!

we knew her death was coming and had time to prepare, but i don't know if that will ever make it "easier" or not. she was my best friend and i miss her a lot but also i feel so relieved that its over. i felt guilty for that at first but now that its been a few weeks, i'm just letting myself feel that relief. october - march were some incredibly difficult months!! she had several surgeries and i had my own health issues and had to go to the hospital (again). she was doing a lot better and then a new tumor popped up so fucking quickly and we just made sure that the rest of her life was going to be as happy and as pain-free as possible. and it actually was!! still fucking sucked for me to make that happen though!

anyway. hello again!

[axelfrosteffect]

[dazzlingqwq]

lets go this is too easy

[clownhonkbonk]

being booped feels like i am walking about my simple suburban home but the kid from home alone set up bap traps me and now i snag a suspicious piece of wire that slaps me in the face with a paw.

[show-us-kaidenshenandoah]

a loved one of mine sent me this post back in June, but i was immediately afraid of being a party-pooper so i didnt post my reply publicly but, now, ive had more than enough emotional distance from the knee-jerk anxiety of "oh no what if i correct people and everyone sends me hate and doxxes me" that im like "oh yeah i should post that" lmao (if i already did this: sorry, chronic memory loss stinks. i dont remember having done this before lmao)

if you dont like reading a long thing of text to get information btw, totally get it, here is a video link to Jessica Vill's video about the topic which will walk you through identical information if that is your preferred way to process/learn

also: you can easily google and wiki my sources, these arent hard things to verify once you know to look them up to begin with. but i did include screenshots below as my various sources; as well as evidence of "yeah, it would be super easy to fact-check me about this if you feel so inclined" [transcripts of images will be my reblog of this post under a read more, bc tumblr kept throwing a fit otherwise if i did it here] nonetheless, never blame people for not knowing what they didnt know. the misconception is absolutely the fault of PBS (for not fact-checking the author of that article pre-publication if nothing else) for publishing an article preying on the Black community's pre-existing attachment to Betty Boop for clicks. i wont be going into that article itself that had so terribly misreported, esp since PBS already apologized, im just reporting the information i know

i will add the following corrections to what i said in that DM:

i do not "blame" anyone above for the misinformation. if i "blame" anyone, it is PBS for claiming Fleischer consciously based Betty Boop's personality and design on Esther Jones, which you can see in the screenshot above; where BlackHistory.com cites and quotes that said misreported article. thats who i was groaning about in my DM, the PBS article; i was not nor was i ever attributing misinformation to come from @rikareena or @lveshae, but especially not @rikareena who fact-checked and was lied to by (a) said misinformation and (b) there not being an editorial within the snippet SAYING "oh btw sorry, our source we mentioned was bad actually. PBS apologized for the misinformation and not fact-checking it and we should too for spreading it without fact-checking our source ourselves". you should always google your facts and that is exactly what @rikareena did. it was not anybody in this post's fault that these sources were based on misinformation. do NOT blame or send negative attention to any tumblr-user/individual person within this post or outside of this post, istg, demand better of these website-sources instead (esp to have fact-checking teams themselves) and not individual people omfg

we do have few photos of Little Esther (you can see all of them in Jessica Vill's video), not just one. but they all are of her as a child. we have NO confirmed photos of her as an adult. also, to clarify, Little Esther was who i was talking about in regards to lost media, we have VERY little records of her performances (to which im glad people HAVE been looking into her and finding more about her that we can confirm is definitely her through this misreport. i love that she is re-gaining fans and her story is being shared, very big silver lining of this whole thing. if you're into uncovering lost media, please do look into her and help find more about her) also, she goes by "Baby Esther" and "Little Esther" as well as her name of Esther Jones/Esther Lee Jones

the photo i said was maybe her as an adult was incorrect. you'll see it below, it's the "Do Tell by James Van Der Zee, circa 1930" portrait that has oft been misattributed to Esther Jones. we do not know who this woman modeling for him had been

the cosplayer in question i mentioned was specifically Olya Gussy. she dressed up as Betty Boop and was photographed in 2008 by Retro Atelier. she is often misattributed as being an adult Esther Jones, which she is not

part of why i can never remember Betty Boop's primary "original" voice-actress is because Betty Boop has had SO MANY, even in just "classic Betty years". but i was specifically thinking of Mae Questel. the main three classic 1930s Betty Boop voices were Mae Questel, Mary Hines, and Bonnie Poe, but there were also several others in the 30s alone. but, yeah, when i was trying to talk about Betty Boop's voice-actress, it was Questel specifically who was in my head

i got my information wrong about the Betty Boop musical "Boop!". i got confused; i blame my chronic memory loss, but still my bad. anyway. it has so far ONLY been OFF-Broadway and is DUE to be ON Broadway in 2025 (get hyped!!! im so excited!!). off of Broadway, it has so far only been in Chicago according to the Wikipedia. and though it only had a had a short run in Chicago overall, the entire time it WAS in Chicago, Betty Boop was played by a Black musical actress: Jasmine Amy Rogers. love her, go support her!!

here are various screenshots with more information. feel free to look into them and/or the court-case on your own time. this is just "yep, shallow 2+2=4 levels of using google/wiki to fact-fact" on myself (which, to reiterate: is NOT a diss on anyone who didnt know what they didnt know, outside of this post or within it, idgaf, i do not tolerate trolls and dickheads being mean and utalizing me/my posts as a weapon to do that with) and show my sources in a more visual way

so yeah!! Betty Boop absolutely should be claimed by Black people since she has so many connections to Black American art within her performance, and Betty should 100% be drawn as a Black woman by any and everybody who wants to depict her that way

but also dont give Fleischer Studios credit for things they didnt do. they did not utalize Ether Jones in their initial conception of Betty in any purposeful or concious way; they did not design a Black animated female character in the 1930s. do not give them that credit that they have not earned. Fleischer Studios only utalized Esther Jones to get out of a court-case they had with Helen Kane. them accidentally creating a character whose performance is heavily in connection with Black American artists, like Esther Jones, is VERY DIFFERENT than them basing a character off of Esther Jones or being inspired by her in of by itself. do not give them flowers for making a Black female character star in her own shorts (and then rescind said flowers-that-they-didnt-earn for how she then "became white-washed" like that PBS article misreported) when they just?? didnt do any of that?

(also this is mostly unrelated but bc it is tangentially related to "dont give Fleischer Studios credit for things they didnt do" thing: if you know me, youll see me specifically crack jokes about Betty Boop being wlw and/or about her "he/him butch girlfriend, Freddie". im talking about her canon boyfriend, Fred or Fearless Fred, who is a human (unlike her also once-canon boyfriend of Bimbo, the anthropomorphic dog). do not take me making jokes about headcanons and how "Fred's design is too sapphic to be a cis man" as legitimate fact. youll see the internet jokes of a similar vein sometimes, im definitely not the originator of that joke)

Betty Boop is for everybody in the same way as youve likely seen that Hatsune Miku trend where everyone is making a cultural Miku re-design to their specific ethnicity or way of life; we've seen Betty Boop be flexibly "for everyone" tons of times, even outside of her being a nostalgic tribute to the flapper girl era (a cultural niche in which women of ALL backgrounds took part). in classic Betty Boop cartoons alone, we've seen:

Betty Boop as white/white-passing (especially any time they copied Helen Kane which Fleischer Studios did OFTEN and didn't even HIDE until it became a legal issue; but also Helen Kane wasn't even being that original. baby voices like Betty Boop's was a common gimmick of actresses then and Helen Kane's catch-phrase wasn't even her own. i still personally think Fleischer was copying Kane, but also it makes 100% sense why she lost that lawsuit),

we have had Betty Boop be Jewish (the most obvious being parents in some shorts speaking with thick Yiddish accents, implying she is the daughter of immigrant parents, most famously in the "Minnie the Moocher" short as part of the set-up before any music even began to play),

we've had her be rotoscoped dancing using Indigenous Hawaiian dancers, in their regalia, and given a tan (multiple times but my favorite is "Bamboo Isle" for sure),

we've had her collab with Cab Calloway (a famous Black jazz musician for anyone who doesn' recognize the name) along with others and had Betty Boop's catchphrase ultimately come from Baby Esther's scatting, along with other instances of Betty Boop's performances having connection to Black American performance-art

and, hell, you could even make arguments about Betty Boop as a cowgirl in her "Nan McGrew" parodies. cowgirls and cowboys were a largely queer and/or POC group, paid very little but allowed a lot of freedom of expression and welcomed isolation, until America cinema and the like white-washed cowboys to hell and back. you could see Betty Boop as anyone of any identity, really, but especially as being of the marginalized in that vein

Fleischer Studios did definitely (accidentally popularize infantalization in animated women woah who said that, who brought up my special-interest) only announce that they used an alagamation of flapper women in their design to better shoot down Helen Kane, but that doesn't mean it wasn't true. Betty Boop IS the 1930s tribute to the flapper era of the 20s and all the women from there, of all skin-colors and ways of life. anybody can cosplay or draw Betty Boop. but Black people especially do have a special connection to Betty Boop that cannot be denied and is v beautiful

(i could talk for a few hours about Betty Boop, and i will be the first to admit this isn't even her first "well, originally..." debate concerning her as a character, much less the breadth of her impact OR all aspects of her history. there's all the ways she did steal/borrow from Helen Kane, at least in my opinion; her impact of infantalization in animated women's designs; her hyper-sexualization and how theater at the time functioned (in a sexual way*) and her specific "gags in the margins"(*×2) animators would make; her almost movie about her and her father that a lot of Betty Boop fans have dug up and shared the conceptual work of around; and even the debate of her age as that is constantly in flux depending on where you look and at what time of history (*×3). all of which i mention in an "if you liked learning about Betty, there is a lot more to look into learning about her" way rather than an "ask me, ask me, ask me" way)

(said * clarifactions will be with the aforementioned reblog to not make this post even LONGER than it already is lmao)

anyway. again: A++ art though, absolutely love it ♡

boop-boop-a-doop

[good-beans]

Awwww I'd love for them to keep this booping system after April fools, I really love the idea of just booping mutuals I haven't had fandoms in common with for a while/rarely interact with just to be like hiiiii :3

[themagicaltunaa]

FINALLY

[juniperberrypipebomb]

Sees that you've booped me 20 times. Goes on your blog. Reads your pinned post. Leaves.

Funniest thing is about this is not you posting this in my ask box after i started booping you

But the fact that I dont think i even have a pinned post

I dont even think my goofy ass knows how to pin a post, knows how to find it or even knows whether i have one or not

[crazypercheron]

[pomefioredove]

Can we have more of snuggles for hire please?! > <

YES always. I need more cuddle content

part one (leona, tweels, vil)

*ੈ✩‧₊˚ snuggles for hire (encore)

summary: first years try helping you out with your touch-starved problem type of post: blurbs characters: rook, idia, silver additional info: romantic or platonic, reader is gender neutral, reader is yuu, rook is rook as usual

"Really? That's it?" Ace scoffs.

"So, they haven't been hugged in a while. Okay? Neither has Deuce,"

Deuce glares. It's almost menacing. "That's not true, and you know it! I get lots of hugs every time I visit home!"

"I do, too. But that's just the thing, though, ain't it?" Epel says. "They don't have no home to get hugs from."

The huddle of first years goes quiet. Some days, you become such a part of their world, they forget you're really not from it.

"...Okay, point taken," Ace sighs. "But they have Grim! And he only stinks like, half the time!"

"If memory serves, Grim usually sleeps on the floor..." Epel says. "Poor prefect, all lonely. Now even their sleep is suffering 'cause of it!"

Jack rubs the back of his neck. "It must be tough, not having anything to look forward to,"

Another melancholy silence. Finally, Ace stands, hands on his hips.

"Well, let's do something about it, then. There are tons of boys at this school- one of them should be willing to help,"

You were slouched over your desk, dozing off over an essay you hadn't even started yet, when your door flies open.

"Prefect!" Epel shouts, his eyes wide with panic. Immediately, dread sets in. Had someone else overblotted? Was Grim in trouble?

"I'm sorry! I was looking for Vil, but he found me first!"

Huh? "What do you mean b-"

"Oh, Trickster~!"

That question answers itself. In a blink, Epel is gone, bolting before he could get dragged into this. Rook lets himself in, smiling as if he'd just won a million thaumarks.

"Ah, there you are~! I have been waiting for your call!"

You blink. "...Hi, Rook. What?"

He slides his hands under your arms, and lifts you like a cat. You remind yourself that he's much stronger than he looks.

"How my heart ached, watching you suffer! But I had to be patient- I had to wait for your call, Trickster! And when I heard Monsieur Pommette was looking for someone to come to your aid... I knew it had to be me!"

Rook sits you in his lap, squeezing you as if you were a small, cute animal. Which, to him, you sort of were. "Now, rest. I will comfort you!"

"Rook," you say, smothered in his arms, "This really isn't necessary."

"For your health, it is," he boops your nose. "Bonne nuit, mon ange."

With the way he's cooing and cuddling you so closely to him, you know there's no getting out of this.

...Not that you're complaining. He's right, after all. And you're really just grateful that he decided to break in while you were awake.

You're still going to have to kick Epel's butt for it, anyway.

"I already told you, I don't have a problem,"

Ortho Shroud beeps at you. "Incorrect. Your hormonal levels and kinesics indicate you've been sleeping poorly," he says. "...And the other first years were talking about it."

Of course, you sigh. Ace and Deuce. "It's not that bad,"

"Then perhaps you would be interested in solving another problem?"

He brings you down a long, cold hallway, and stops at a door. You hadn't been inside Ignihyde before, but with all the tech stuff, you figure there's some kind of freaky sleep machine in there.

You raise an eyebrow. "I dunno. The technology here is pretty weird,"

"Not that kind of problem!" Ortho opens the door with a giggle. "Idia, look who's here!"

To your surprise (horror? delight?) there's no sleep machine. Just one wide-eyed, blushing, terrified Idia Shroud.

By the look on his face, you can tell he knows just as much about this as you do. He and Ortho exchange glances, having an entire silent conversation while you awkwardly stand in the doorway.

Finally, Ortho looks at you: "Idy has been having similar troubles with sleeping,"

"Ortho-"

"I thought you might be able to help each other!"

Idia looks about ready to crawl under his bed and hide. You look between the two.

"Is he okay?"

"Oh, don't worry! He always gets nervous around pretty people!"

He makes a noise like a deflating balloon. Ortho giggles. "I'll see you later!"

He leaves, and a whir and a thump follow him. You stare. "He took the door knob,"

Despite all the awkward staring and blushing and groaning, you end up in the same bed, anyway, lost in a tangle of limbs that is somehow both awkward and comfortable. Idia is a lot warmer than he looks. And a very, very clingy sleeper.

You'll both lament about how terrible it was to Ortho in the morning, and you'll both leave out the fact that if it really were so terrible, one of you could've just slept on the floor.

But... you didn't. And you won't tomorrow night, either.

When you told your friends you'd been summoned to Diasomnia, they looked at you as if you'd just said your exact time and place of death.

Ace and Deuce whisper-shouted something about "not telling him", but you didn't ask. You weren't worried about Malleus, after all.

...Except that the person waiting for you in the lounge isn't Malleus.

"Oh... hey, Silver. Did you...?"

You hold up the summons, and he nods. The way he's avoiding your eyes is almost... shy. Bashful.

"Sebek came back from class yesterday yelling about you... he made it sound like you were dying," Silver says, his arms crossed tightly over his chest.

"...But if it's just insomnia, I can help."

You blink. "Oh... I appreciate it, but..."

...You can't bring yourself to finish that sentence. He just looks... tense. This isn't exactly an offer he makes to most, after all.

You're just special.

And you need that.

You sit beside him in comfortable silence. The lights in the Diasomnia lounge are already dim, and it's as quiet and solemn as ever. Silver guides you into a soft position against him, your head on his shoulder, his head on yours, his arm around you, and he falls asleep.

Maybe it's just the exhaustion finally catching up to you, but it's surprisingly easy to follow his lead and fall asleep against him.

You dream of him that night.