#tbh tho i didn’t use it with any real consistency for a long time and i didn’t have much interaction with mutuals for even longer

[halfahundredcats]

Y’all I always have a hard time remembering when I first checked into the Hotel California, but doing a search on my blog, I think I found my first post (or definitely one of my first) , and it was on January 8, 2011. I have been on the hellsite for over THIRTEEN (13) YEARS.

[babyspacekwid]

Some of my Astro placements and how they manifest

Chiron 4th house:

This placement talks of a wound surrounding the family and home, and well, I would often search for a home because no where to me felt like home. I still feel misunderstood and out of place, BUT, I have made deep and valuable connections that have helped guide me and make me feel the love I should have had. Not to say this placement is completely hopless, it’s beautiful and it’s real and it’s tough, but you come out stronger. I use to hate that fucking perspective too. Like okay??? Who gaf if I come out stronger I’m fucking suffering, like why didn’t I get the parents everyone else has? Why’d I have to walk on eggshells? I felt like my anger and sadness was invalidated because I didn’t feel strong. I felt worthless and disorganized. I was a mess and I still am. Idk if that’s ever gonna change tbh, but despite all, it’s true. You DO come out stronger. In every aspect I have. Home is your people it was never a place, home is your mother cradling you for the first time in a while, it’s your friends taking care of you when you’re sobbing. Home is your dad realizing his mistakes and apologizing. Home is a feeling, it’s refreshing and comforting. Home was never suppose to be stressful, or feel like a war zone. To whoever has this same placement I feel you and I love you.

Mars in Aquarius in the 5th house

I do things unconventionally and I only realize this when I’m with other ppl. It can be as simple as the way I eat my burger, to my taste in music. Which is everything. I like literally everything. I don’t care the genre. If it’s good and catchy I love it. I did a lot of different hobbies as a kid too? Like taekwondo, dance, soccer, painting, singing, writing. But I never stayed long in any of those hobbies. Loved anime which ik everyone likes these days but where I live and during my childhood it was still a bit taboo or considered weird to watch. I was the kid that got along with everyone at school too. I didn’t see the point in highschool having a social hierarchy of popularity. It’s fucking stupid. I remember this one kid in my class who everyone thought was weird, which from their perspective I understand because he liked to talk about taboo topics that everyone thought was outrageous, but I was enjoying conversing with him because his perspectives were fresh and built my own views and opinions. I also have a 5th house stellium and I just fucking hate anything that isn’t fun like. I can’t do the 9-5 I have to enjoy my life like this society was not meant for the way my brain works istg.

Lilith 8th house

Constant comments were made about my body when I was young. From good to bad to what the actual fuck are you saying to a 12 year old. No cause it still happens and I’ve learnt to deal with it, but it has greatly affected how I view myself, my sexuality, and my comfortability with it.

Sun and moon in Gemini

I got the worst of both worlds wtf is this?! Considering my chart is 60% air signs you’d think I’d be use to it but I’m notttttt. I try to stray away from the stereotypical “Geminis intellectualize their emotions” but it’s true we do, but I think it’s cause feeling our emotions are overwhelming. Geminis ARE emotional. There’s just so much going on that my brain decides “I need a solution to this now cause feeling is pain” also hate that I’m not consistent. Consistency is my worst enemy, it doesn’t agree with me and my behaviours and we have an ongoing tense relationship, so I don’t finish anything. Not the books I wanna write or the paintings I wanna finish. Working on it tho 😭

Jupiter in Leo in the 11th house

I know so many people, and the friends I’ve made feel like my soul family. We’re siblings at this point. (Also rlly love the spotlight. What can I say I’m an attention whore)

[mayakern]

I saw on your Twitter you play dnd! What kind of character do you play and what system? Also, do you do your own commissions of your characters or do you get it from other artists?

oh hell yeah i love dnd!!! i mostly just play 5E but my regular group did our second session in city of mists last night and it was SUPER fun (we play that instead of our ongoing game whenever our aussie players can’t make it)

i don’t usually reuse dnd characters because even tho i love my characters, they usually all end up with their own history and relationship to their games so adapting them feels weird, but here’s a run down of some of my favorite characters i’ve played! (and ye all this art is by me)

1. anenome (or nem for short)

she’s a water genasi arcane trickster rogue/divination wizard. she’s from a game where we started out playing kids (nem was 11) and then after a Big Event had an 11 year time skip where everyone in the party had to separate before a big reunion. she used to be a really shy and sweet and optimistic kid, but after everything fell apart and she became an accidental criminal, she stopped believing in any sort of fairness in the world and grew up super jaded and nihilistic, tho she still strives to protect that spark of optimism in others (not that she’d admit that). she is SUPER SUPER gay and is married to flare (fire genasi sorcerer). they have a bunch of history and i love them a lot!

2. nora

this is my city of mists character!! she’s a twitch streamer/cam girl/only fans model/l33t h4x0r. she’s clever and compassionate and very silly and a bit gross. part of her backstory is that when she was a relatively new twitch streamer, someone tried to cyberbully her by calling her a “garfield looking ass motherfucker” and so she immediately dyed her hair orange and made that her entire persona just to fuck with them (thus the custom garf headset).

3. hemlock

hemlock is an onomancy wizard! she was made for a storybook game — essentially all the characters lived on a bookshelf in someone’s home and can travel between books.

when characters travel into a new book, especially if it’s an “active” book (i.e. currently being read), they get assigned a role that is both available and closest to their archetype (so, as a wizard, if hemlock entered a book of king arthur’s tales she would likely be assigned as morrigan or merlin if available, or another magic user if not).

hemlock herself was from a story where her family (two sisters and her mother) were turned from good witches/princesses (it was unclear) into evil hags/witches and hemlock bartered her name (and right eye) to keep her mind/heart/goodness.

the onomancy wizard subclass is SUPER interesting and fun and is all about the naming of things and works super well with fairytale stuff (which i love). tbh i REALLY want to play hemlokc more. that game was insanely fun and ended prematurely due to scheduling difficulties. i just don’t think there is another game setting that would ever work for her bc she is so specific.

4. althea

my most recent character is althea! she’s an aasimar grave cleric. she woke up in a morgue about two weeks ago (in game time) and instantly fell in love with the mortician who discovered she was still(?) alive. she has no memories of her past (and tbh no real desire to go looking for them). she is smart but also a dumb ass, has 6 charisma and no sense of self preservation and is completely and utterly in love with rosemary (the mortician, now barkeep) and will literally do anything she wants, no questions asked (and will even do things she THINKS rosemary wants unasked... such as maybe yoinking a very obviously cursed goblet from a ritual circle of living corpses in literally the first game session just bc she thought rosemary would think it was cool).

5. penny

penny was my first long-term dnd character! she was my third dnd character ever but in a lot of ways i consider her my first because the other two were run primarily in 4E and didn’t meet often enough (or just enough period) for me to get a grasp on them or the game mechanics.

penny is a light domain cleric. she was made for a buddy cop game i joined randomly on roll20 because i couldn’t find a consistent group to meet with IRL. i was super nervous to join a random game with strangers but really wanted to play dnd so i gave it a shot and i am SO glad i did because i still play with that group! or.. what became of that group. it started out as a group of me and a bunch of strangers, but i quickly made friends with the DM and one of the other players, then devin joined a couple months in, and slowly original players left for various reasons and we invited other ppl in (a couple of my friends, the other longterm player’s gf, etc) and now that is the main group i still play with! (nem and nora and a bunch of my other characters are from games w that group)

when the game was open for player/character apps, we were asked to pitch what role our character would play in a buddy cop movie and i picked the straight man archetype (haha i know). penny is very sweet and shy and wholesome.

i have a bunch of other characters, most of which can be found on toyhouse, but this post is already way too long as is! whoops!

[pitch-pearl-void]

(The borderlands anon from however long ago)

So, I finished watching the show a couple days ago, because there were a couple things that showed up consistently in fics i that I didn’t understand (blood blossoms, some of the baddies, a handful of fenton inventions, etc)

First off, I still very much prefer pitch pearl to amethyst ocean or whatever the hell it’s called

And also, do you know where pitch pearl as a ship came from? I know there’s the episode with fun and super, but is that all there really was? Or were there more early fandom headcannons that supported them as separate beings?

Hello again! Sorry this took so long, I wasn’t sure how to answer 😅

Canon did a poor job with AO. I would even say it did it dirty, but it's popular enough it doesn't need that kind of support lol. If you really want to give it a fair shake I’d recommend reading fanfiction for it, but I understand everyone’s preferences are different. I personally don’t ship it because shipping best friends is something I have real issues with, but it’s not a bad ship if you want something that’s soft and makes you feel all warm inside.

Onto pitch pearl tho!

Tbh, I’m not entirely sure myself how pitch pearl as a ship started. I don’t believe it was because of the Fun and Super episode, largely because those two are rarely used in the ship. 

I asked someone else, and they thought that moment in What You Want when Phantom was first torn from Fenton as this colorless ghost might have been what started the concept they weren’t one whole person. Because, honestly? This ship goes far, FAR back. A lot of the older fics made Phantom into a voice in Danny’s head or a spirit that could separate from him at will without the need of the Ghost Catcher in order to offer Danny comfort. They had no rules because there weren’t any set way yet. The fact that Phantom could move and think independently from Danny was enough to get people thinking. It wasn't all romantic, most of it was borderline at best. They mostly focused on hurt/comfort and self-love, finding a balance between human and ghost with the occasional kiss thrown in.

Then there’s TUE, where Danny meets his evil future self and learns that his ghost half killed his human half after merging with Plasmius. It definitely gave more credence to the idea there might be more to Danny’s ghost half than simply having ghost powers. It aired before Identity Crisis, so it set the stage with a BOOM and had a much bigger impact on the ship. Phantom being seen as his own person is a bit more credible when he’s willing to kill Danny. It helped that TUE was a VERY popular episode. It drew in a huge crowd, and everyone was curious about what made the ghost half snap like that if he’s supposed to be Danny.

Supporting that idea is that a lot of the older art and fics took a darker view of Phantom in general, seeing him as Danny’s darker half or a ghost out for revenge after being imprisoned for so long. Even the name “pitch pearl” was created with that in mind. I always thought of it as “white hair/black hair” in the same vein as AO taking inspiration from Sam’s purple eyes and Danny’s blue, but when I went searching for the origins for the name, the old explanation set Danny Fenton as white pearl and Phantom as pitch black. The reasoning for that was partly their jumpsuits pre- and post- accident, but also because Fenton is human and “pure” while Phantom is a ghost and dangerous--because without Fenton, Phantom became Dan and destroyed everything.

For obvious and somewhat personal reasons, I don’t subscribe to that. But it does make all the art where Phantom looks evil while holding Danny make sense. I don’t like dark romance, and I’m personally thrilled we moved away from such a dark beginning, but it likely had a hand in the early popularity of pitch pearl.

If I were to guess how else it started when the source has them as one person, I would say it was most likely the fanart? Putting Fenton and Phantom side-by-side has a yin-yang appeal, and when they interact in art, you get the sense that these are two characters, not one. This was really popular when the fandom was much bigger than it is now.

For instance

Save Our Soul by nycken isn't a shipping piece by any means, but it could very easily give rise to the idea, especially if someone is new to the fandom.

They did not shy away from it being a self-cest ship back then, though. The idea that Phantom wasn't Danny was there, but I don't think anyone looked for evidence in the show to support it. That seems to be something the ship has evolved into rather than something it started from, and it is honestly my favorite way to see it.

I do have many headcanons about how they aren’t the same person in canon if you're interested! There’s the out of sync transformations, the title sequence and how Super and Fun are shown to separate in the Identity Crisis episode, Vlad’s inability to clone Danny, the way Danny talks to himself, just all kinds of things! If you want to hear more about those I'd be happy to answer 😁 (they'd probably be easier too lol)

But yeah, I think it was TUE and fanart. There may have been other factors (I think this was around the time Yu-Gi-Oh and puzzleshipping was popular too) because fandom doesn't exist in a vacuum, but I really couldn't say for sure. It's a ship that means different things for everyone who ships it. I like the psychological questions when they start off as "one" (the bonded peeps version) and enjoy the aus like soooo much, but others like it only for aus, and others like it as a crack ship, and then there are even others who like it as something dangerous. Some people love it for Fun and Super in Identity Crisis because they're just fun caricatures. It's hard to find the origin point when it has so many branches lol

[doomednarrative]

On the topic of listening to "Marsha, Thank You for the Dialectics" one too many times, and the idea that you might be identifying too much with your trauma and mental illness:

----

If you've followed me for any length of time on this blog, you'll probably be aware of two things about me:

A. I'm clearly mentally ill in some regard, and B. I use music to cope and work thru the issues related to my mental illness and trauma a lot.

The past four years have been both the worst and best years of my life. I ran away from an abusive home, I've gone thru two major breakups and one of them just absolutely rocked my shit for awhile, I've been consistently working thru my queer identity and figuring all of that out for myself, and the list goes on.

Finally leaving an environment that had trapped me in a cycle of traumatic experiences for years left me in a weird place. For once I was somewhere where my illness and suffering was being taken seriously and not constantly belittled and ignored, and my queerness was accepted and respected. And that felt great!

What Wasnt so great about that was the Overwhelming feelings of "oh my god I've been suffering for so long and now that i'm out of that place, I cant stop thinking about it and realizing how much its truely fucked me up and worsened my mental health" that came with everything else.

And with that overwhelm, somewhere along the line I started to identify with that suffering. I had spent so long in a place that refused to acknowledge that I was hurting at all, that now that I was in a place where I could truely express that hurt and how it affected me, I didnt want to let go of it.

This was a cycle that went on for awhile, and one that I didn't really realize I was trapped in until about March this year.

Enter Will Wood and his wonderful music.

I'd heard of him months before, already had Dr. Sunshine and Hand Me My Shovel in my spotify library. But I didn't really give him a Proper listen until Miles suggested I do so, and I fell in love almost immediately with his stuff. Underneath his music just being fun and wild to listen to, Will's music talks so openly and genuinely about deeper themes of personal identity and mortality and the current culture we live in, and so many other important things.

"Marsha, Thank You for the Dialectics" is a song about both sides of the mental health discussion and about the struggle of how everyone deals with their own personal identity in relation to their mental health treatment. Its a song that once I heard what it was really saying, it slapped me in the fucking face to say the least. I havent heard someone describe the things this song is trying to say in a way that actually made sense and summed up my feelings on the discussion so nicely ever honestly. The things Will addresses in this song are important, and its all stuff I've personally pondered on for awhile too.

Some lyrics that really stuck out to me would be these two:

"Who makes the call, whats a symptom whats a flaw, can it be both? Well I suppose thats an answer."

"Ain't your identity at stake? Does aspirin kill you with the pain?"

What a complex question, isnt it? Does treatment kill your identity, change who you are as a person? Is that a bad thing? Whats really a symptom of the mental illness and what makes it that? Do those symptoms also count as personal flaws?

What do you do when you identify too much with your illness that you feel you can't get treatment for it?

That was the real question I got stuck on for myself. Because after a lot of deeper reflection on my own behavior and thoughts towards my illness and trauma, I made a discovery I hadn't known before really thinking about what this song was saying:

I found that I was scared to be treated. I was scared of finding an identity outside of my illness. I had become so accustomed to defining a part of myself by my suffering, that i became afraid of what or who I could become without it constantly weighing me down. And thats a very heavy thing to realize about yourself, but it was a very eye opening thought for me to have.

And I dunno how much longer itd have taken me to figure out if it wasnt for this song tbh. Its just not something I wanted to think about for awhile. I became content with identifying myself by my illness, and I was resistant to seeking out treatment for fear that I wouldnt like who I'd become if I tried to treat it.

Thankfully, this is something I've been working thru more recently after having that revelation.

I don't really have some grand statement to make at the end of this. I'm really just here journalling and writing down how I feel about all of this stuff recently. But, I do think theres something to be said about how art and music can really affect people. Hell knows I've had quite a few good mental revelations about myself since listening to Wills music more recently. Its been helpful honestly.

If you take anything away from this tho, maybe it should be that its not a bad thing to examine just how much you define yourself by your illness and trauma sometimes. You might find that you're in a little too deep sometimes and want to pull yourself out.

You're more than what your illness is. And treatment for it isn't a bad thing either. I may just be learning this for myself, but I do think its true.

Just something for yall to ponder for now I suppose.

[mego42]

Shamelessly stealing @foxmagpie​’s monthly rec thing without the ability to get my life together to do these on a monthly basis so, seasonal recs! So excited to see if I manage to do this again with anything remotely resembling consistency but i’ve been keeping the notes for approximately 43 years (or since ~september, whatever that means) so by god i’m gonna use them. 

found my thrill - s_t_c_s / @sothischickshe​

Turner POV!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

guys turner is SO OBSESSED with Beth and Rio

both canonically and in this fic

it’s gr9

also features a weirdly soothing and relatable cord untangling moment as a metaphor

truly disturbingly relatable turner pov tbh

relentless boomer disdain, always a plus

led to the creation of this monstrosity, not sure what kind of a monster would do that

War In My Mind - mintletters16

Backread!!!!

post-213, gorgeous character study 

guaranteed to make you feEl stUfF

I really love the like, cyclical, fractured pattern of Beth’s internal monologue, it gives the whole thing a really affecting at times dreamy, at times haunted vibe

the end twist is *chef’s kiss*

mourning bells - Ejunkiet / @ejunkiet​

Backread!!!!

Later s2 era, Rio’s at a funeral, gets drunk and calls Beth

V short, kind of…..mmm, not sweet, but almost? Idk

It’s got a wistful sort of almost/i can be quiet with you vibe that i go extremely bonkers for

delinquents - foxmagpie / @foxmagpie​

Lol are any of you actually not reading this yet?

g o d ch 8 where do i start

First off how ABSOLUTELY VERY DARE for the tragic angst that is delinquents!beth boland. This poor baby, this precious bean. MUST PROTEC

SHE’S TRYING HER BEST AND I LOVE HER

zero percent deserves dean’s clammy hands, no i have not forgotten, tattooed on my brain, will never forgive

I also love love love love LOVE the ruby/stan subplot happening

(and ruby’s mom!!!!!) (seriously though you write the best moms)

oh god and baby beth starting to have confusing feelings about rio?????? *chef’s kiss*

p sure i was just like, straight screaming the entire end of the chapter

the dugout is like, pure serotonin

I can’t even talk about the closet

tHe teNsiOn

thank you i will take eleventy billion

don't give it a hand, offer it a soul - medievalraven / @medievalraven

am a desperate heaux for any fic that features rio and mick friendship

you are all incredibly shocked i know

still would not be mad if this swerved into rio x mick fake dating but beth x rio is cool too i guess

Speaking of things i am a desperate heaux for: DIANE!!!!!!!!

and DATING ANNIE???????????? Blessed

honestly this fic is worth it purely for the assertion that mick watches queer eye

Why don't we go to Venus? - watermelonriddles / @bensonstablers​

another grief study! 

apparently i was working through some stuff in september, idk, that was like 4 years ago

considering it’s the premise of the fic, i don’t think it’s a spoiler to say this fic is canon divergent and working with the premise that rio killed beth in 302

he is uh, not coping well

extremely haunted you might say

lots of marcus and rhea which is a delight!

rhea is to good for him tbh

i said what i said

truly top notch dream (nightmare?) sequences

the conversation at the end is extremely uncalled for

drop the game - Ejunkiet / @ejunkiet​

Backread!!!!

Am going to die mad Beth and Rio didn’t hook up in 211 but luckily this fic scratched the itch 

(temporarily, it’s a fairly permanent itch)

Bonus rec: missing scene series i wanna do bad things to you featuring 2x02 and 2x04

Viva Voce - zetuslapetus / @querenaxx​

Whoops we woke up married Vegas shenanigans!! 

So cute!!!!! So sexy!!!!! 

What more do you want?

am desperately obsessed with how beth can’t help stalking rio

feels right, feels organic

this makes me feel a lot of stuff about how they could be without their canon garbage between them

🎶 we could’ve had it aaaaaaaaaaall 🎶

you showed me colors (i can't see them with anyone else) - gild_fire / @gild-and-fire​

really into the use of color to illustrate beth’s emotional state, i feel like there’s a word for that but idk what it is

UNIMPORTANT

really nice job capturing beth’s inner vulnerability balanced by her outer stubbornness

am DESPERATELY into Mick playing matchmaker

more please???????

Both Sides of the Law - JoeyLee / @joeyjoeylee​

LAW SCHOOL AU! I suuuuuuper love Beth and Rio here (alt pov!! a gift!!!!) I love how initially prickly they are, I love how it’s evolving into a grudging respect, I love how INCREDIBLY AND HILARIOUSLY OBSESSED WITH EACH OTHER THEY ARE and neither one of them seems to see it

listen I know we’re all already foaming at the mouth over this one but as it’s gonna go down as one of my all time favorites it bears repeating/rereccing

cannot stress enough how masterful the use of POV is here, both voices feel completely true and distinct and I love how the alternating chapters revisit, reveal and emphasize pieces of each other

i can’t talk about this fic without hyperventilating

I LOVE IT SO MUCH YOU GUYS

the slow burn is going to ACTUALLY KILL ME

rip, no regrats

Earned It - wakeupflawless / @wakeupflawless​

spanking

that’s it that’s the pitch

H O T

living for beth’s exit in the first chapter, rio and i are both incredibly into it

second chapter also features violently possessive Rio who cannot deal with anyone messing with his girl so if that’s your thing boy howdy get on it

shake, baby, shake - openhearts

backread!!!!!

according to my bookmarks this was a reread but ???????

must’ve read it in the fugue state that followed reading for a moment we were strangers which is gr9 and I believe I have recced it before. If not, horrible oversight, reccing it now

beth and Rio POV lead up to the bathroom break, beautifully done, low-key feel bad reccing it bc the end point of both chapters makes me want to throw things but it’s super worth it for the tEnsiOn. ENJOY

What the Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have - flashindie / @pynkhues​

I’m assuming all of y’all are already reading this

If not OH MY GOD FIX YOUR LIVES

P I R A T E  A U

I’m sorry maybe you didn’t hear me piRaTE aU

meticulously researched, brain-meltingly vibrant, already painfully sexy slow-burning PIRATE AU

god where to start okay so first off, the world-building here straight up breaks my brain, sophie’s put in the work and it SHOWS

second, the atmosphere. i’m generally a pretty like, vague mental picture sort of reader but the sensory detail here grabs you by the throat and like, forcibly hauls you in whether your brain’s wired that way or no

and hey speaking of throats if you, like me, go a little funny about the knees at the idea of beth holding a knife to rio’s throat (he’s fine, calm down), there’s a v excellent beth-in-a-barrel moment for you

oh christ and the sexy tension

it’s gonna be a race to see which slow burn takes me out first, this or law school

Stunner - foxmagpie / @foxmagpie​

Another high school AU, this time with baby Rio absolutely head over heels for his older sister’s bff

stunner!Rio has an emotional earnestness about him that I feel like delinquents!Rio has already outgrown and it’s so SWEET I can’t get enough

Desperately cute!!!!!!

alL he waNts iS foR beTh tO bE hiS girL

also unreasonably angsty???????

ANN ARBOR IS NOT THAT FAR MEGAN

A Heart's A Heavy Burden - tooshyforthis / @bathroombreaks​

Howl’s Moving Castle AU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love Howl’s!!!!!!!!!!!

perfect opp to roast Rio for being a Dramatique Heaux 

and it’s gonna be 9 chapters?????? H Y P E

author’s note boldly presumes I did not know I needed this AU when the reality is I did in fact know I needed this AU, I just wasn’t expecting anyone to deliver

so blessed

author also claims to not be team nose stud and yet it features prominently in all its magnificent glory

what is the truth dot gif

A Bit of a Stretch - septiembre / @septiembur​

SO????? CUTE?????????

would be on this list for Rio calling Beth E alone tbh

really really really really really love this Rio POV of being settled into a relationship with Beth

It manages to be sweetly domestic af while still holding the edge that makes brio brio which is a neat trick

@septiembur may be a witch

beth’s approach to getting rio to do yoga with her is hilarious and exactly right, canon-typical amounts of subtlety 

1000000/10

Post Break-Up Sex - femalegothic / @bethsuglywigs​

stg this was called Hit Shuffle

no matter

h O T

with a side of damn i’ve made some questionable choices in my life haven’t i introspection

(no regrats tho)

(esp not with this fic)

not the point of the fic by a long shot but i’m also extremely obsessed with Weed Eddie, so real

She drains my soul... she drains it not - niham87 / @niham87​

ABSOLUTELY OBSESSED WITH THIS CONCEPT

am a complete sucker for paranormal world building that satirizes bureaucracy 

Is that a trope? If so that’s my favorite

I did it. I’m picking a single favorite. You know what that is growth dot gif

ANYWAY i love the concept, i love the humor, i love beth instantly clicking with annie

I love her and mick’s sort of grudging professional courtesy

Love beth as a champion of environmental responsibility and all of the underworld being like …...okay??

cannot wait to see where this goes

Nine-Tenths - riosnecktattoo / @riosnecktattoo​

*INCOHERENT PTERODACTYL SCREECHING*

sometimes i think about rio putting beth’s hair in a ponytail and have to go lie down

science please explain why this rUinS mE

wait hold on i skipped ahead

HEY KIDS DO YOU LIKE UNBEARABLY CUTE DOMESTIC TENDERNESS

opens with rio sleepily holding beth’s hand to his heart so that’s the kind of thing you’ll be dealing with

uGH theY’RE sO CUTe

idk why precisely but rio adding hair ties to his bracelet collection is my undoing every time

Missed Call - foxmagpie / @foxmagpie​

Rio doesn’t come home from a job when he’s supposed to. Beth (and I!!!!!!!) slowly loses her mind

Truly a masterpiece of rising tension

Will literally never forgive her for calling this light angst

I was SO STRESSED OUT

The first person to point out there was an author’s note at the beginning I obvs didn’t read is getting blocked

crush - foxmagpie / @foxmagpie​

Listen even though this is centered around two OCs, they are OCs FROM a (n iconic) brio fic AND Beth, Ruby and Rio all make cameos (I mean, Rio’s pretty present since he lives in Mar’s mind rent free bc they are THE SWEETEST MOST ADORABLE BEST OF FRIENDS so idk if i’d call it a cameo but whatever)

and even if it didn’t feature any official GG characters I’d still rec is bc that’s mY SON AND this fic is TOO CUTE

I have so many feelings over mar and rio growing up and not knowing how to cope with girls becoming a Thing in their life and how it affects their friendship and mar feeling left behind but (SPOILERS) at the end of the story rio starts feeling that too and it’s so poignant knowing how that’s going to continue in delinquents

while mar may be my son, i also claim elena’s #1 stan status

before you’re like meg you’re only reccing it bc it’s a bday present ask yourselves do i really strike you as the kind of person that wouldn’t be equally obnoxious about this either way?

truly cannot fathom how hard i have fallen for these OCs i don’t normally do that

@foxmagpie is definitely a witch

The Ottoman - Niham87 / @niham87​

look i will be the first to admit that i don’t go near as bonkers over the ottoman line in 308 as y’all do

(don’t get me wrong, i love it!!! I love that he laughs and i love that she’s pleased it just doesn’t hit my lose my whole mind button like idk, the dubby or the 306 convo, idk why)

BUT i v v v much love the context this delightful Rio POV pwp gives it

am also absolutely feral for 209 missing scene fic

and anything that captures the complexity of Rio’s s3 feelings for Beth and how twisted they’ve become

so this scratches a bunch of itches, is what i’m trying to say

Bet On It - zetuslapetus / @querenaxx​

*INCOHERENT PTERODACTYL SCREECHING*

That’s what my brain does when I think about Beth and Rio meeting in ch 1

am DESPERATELY OBSESSED WITH the tension between the two of them in this fic

I love how it plays with the ways they have to rely on but don’t trust each other

plus FAKE DATING and BED SHARING (fair warning hasn’t happened yet but the set up is there)

originally supposed to be 2 chapters, already up to 4, prayer circle it goes on forever

do you like drugs (tonight) - s_t_c_s / @sothischickshe​

v important focus on hydration, other fic should take note

extremely about the use of cut to and then flashback to enhance the ‘we were on drugs’ vibe

speaking of, beth and rio absolutely would take ecstasy to prove they are fun bc they are the exact kind of idiots that would peer pressure themselves

so glad beth kept her purse, got a bit stressed there for a second, clutches in that kind of circumstance are A Risk

not that i would know

FLAWLESS USE OF VOICEMAIL TBH

really love the ongoing denial that they are remotely into each other while proceeding to demonstrate how they are in fact, extremely into each other, great vibe

rio dances

I know my brain broke too

mmmm bacon

Navigate A Broken Path - flashindie / @pynkhues​

*INCOHERENT PTERODACTYL SCREECHING*

I have a long standing tradition of getting unreasonably obsessed with side characters so i’m not like, entirely surprised by how obsessed i am with both Mick and Mary Pat but i never in a million years considered them as a ship

AND Y E T

they fit????? so perfectly?????? It’s amazing how she developes them individually enough that i look at them together and think ah yes this makes perfect sense for both characters

and they’re such an amazing foil to Beth and Rio? 

can ships have foils? do i know what a foil is? 

unimportant

GUYS you dON’T uNDERStAN d 

hell i don’t understand

how absolutely very dare you make me care about YET ANOTHER set of gg ‘verse children

do not read this fic if you have no interest in feelings you zero percent asked for

wHA t hAPPeNED iN aLASkA?????????

A Moment’s Silence - femalegothic / @bethsuglywigs​

*makes sign of the cross*

y’all are gonna make me rediscover religion

extremely appreciate the author’s note approach to backstory top notch prioritization

listen it’s basically 3k of beth deep throating rio idk what more you need me to say about it

it is…..good stuff

bless the kinkmeme or fest whatever we’re calling it

praise - civillove / @blainesebastian​

I mean you had me at “three times rio calls beth a good girl and one time he really means it”

ephemeral rio

I left that note for myself in here in the middle of the night and haven’t the foggiest what i was thinking but i stand by it none the less

okay okay i think i know what i meant, this fic (as do all of my fav civillove brio fics) has this sort of like, liminal, in the quiet moments feel to them that makes the moments and feelings somehow feel like i’m catching a glimpse of something secret and precious???

idk i just really like it okay

Heart and Soul - riosnecktattoo / @riosnecktattoo​

oh look more unbearably sweet domestic tenderness, this time to music

thank you ma’am for my life

rio remembers beth used to play piano and gets her one and revoltingly cute shenanigans result

also hilarity

and sexiness

this fic has it all, truly

shout out to mick who sees no reason to keep rio’s feelings to himself

good girls tumblr fic - prettylittlementirosa / @hypermania​​

cheating and reccing a whole series

It’s my list and i can do what i wanna

stop crying about it, it’s four fics and they’re all AMAZING absolutely impossible to pick a fav

truly flawless characterization, next level ability to capture evocative mood, cannot get enough

three’s a crowd: who knew ballroom dancing while dean watches and grinds his teeth could be so sexy 

(trick question everything about that premise sounds A++++ and boy howdy does it live up)

feel it on the way home: rio tries to break up with beth, it goes about as well as you’d expect

(thE angSty tenSioN)

i want to play the game: [from the floor] i’m still not ready to talk about it

(rio/turner, missing scene, 10000000% a taste of what went down in that hotel room)

june after dark: pitch perfect annie pov, really really love the take that Annie is the baby whisperer, can’t fully explain why but it feels incredibly right

(ANNIE X NANCY COULD WORK SO WELL YOU GUYS)

[teamjacobthot]

I would have cut bella off too tbh, she did use Jacob as a way if getting over Edward for the time being and never did think about how Jacob felt about it-i mean she was heartbroken but still

(ok yall im about to rant about canon jacob/drag bella/drag eclipse/drag smeyer so KEEP mf scrolling)

i wouldnt have cut bella off for that exactly bc she WAS in a vulnerable place in new moon, but the moment she broke jacob’s heart in order to save the guy who broke HER heart??? issa wrap. jacob deeply needed to understand from that point on that bella was NAWT fuckin with him anymore!!! i get that he mistook her vulnerability for romance (and in the book they always held hands so there was the physical aspect) but i wish someone (probably billy) sat him down and said “....your lil crush is over. find yourself a bad bitch.” then again, smeyer’s dumb racist ass wrote jacob to literally flip flop personalities and become unnecessarily hardheaded in eclipse. he was probably trying to force himself to imprint on bella/already feeling the imprint from her egg that would become resume, but you know. i really dont fuck with the dumpster fire that’s eclipse, but i digress.

actually NO im not done with eclipse yet!!! im not ranting at YOU bc your ask is valid and i love ALL my anons sm <333 but now you got me thinkin! (i’ll spare yall and insert a “keep reading” tab tho)

everything surrounding eclipse w jacob and bella was SO unnecessarily painful. maybe it’s just the scorpio in me jumping out but EYE would’ve cut my losses! EYE wouldnt have waited until someone got half the bones in their body fucked up to finally say goodbye! like, eclipse was about goodbyes right??? bella and jacob should’ve said goodbye to each other much much MUCH sooner, before he went on his real clown boy shit. but smeyer needed enough ~drama~ to fill 600 pages.

i get that bella’s goodbye to jacob wouldnt have been the most concrete as long as the colonizing ass cullens were still living in the la push/forks area, since jacob HAD to stay and help protect his community so he couldnt even like run off anywhere for very long. but remaining friends w her didn’t help, and bella remaining friends w him sure as hell didn’t help either, esp when they both knew she used him as an emotional crutch back when she was super sad. 

she felt bad, but the way i see it, she didnt need jacob around anymore once she got edward back and she didnt want to admit it bc of their history. it was also clear that edward wouldnt leave her again. i don’t think she shouldve felt bad for picking edward, but she shouldve felt bad for handling the jacob situation poorly. she shouldve stepped tf up and cut her losses way earlier bc he consistently failed to and THEN gaslit her the entire fucking time and for WHAT. in a perfect world, smeyer wouldnt have made him do a 180 and turned him into a total JACKASS to make edward look better. if i were smeyer i would have simply made edward a fleshed out character.

bella should’ve focused on her unhealthy attachment to edward over the course of eclipse. she shouldve focused on her friendship with alice and saying her goodbyes to her human life. AND even though she fucked over jacob, she shouldve been the woke ally this fandom paints her as and tried to convince the cullens to move away, employing loads of white guilt. it would have been a hell of a lot easier on jacob and the rest of the tribe if she did. the cullens should have used their endless wealth to move tf AWAY from the quileute land. they could’ve lived in literally any other town in the world that didnt get a lot of sunshine without making a bunch of local native teens start turning into werewolves. if bella was really bout it, she and the cullens wouldve paid their reparations and left. but what do i know, im just a wolf pack stan account 

[whetstonefires]

Do you think the DC fandom maybe, Infantilizes Tim a little too much? Like for a rich kid character who's main trauma for a long time was a getting left home alone too much there's an oddly amount of meta abt how much how much his parents hurt him~ compared to, y'know the two poor characters who grew up with physically abusive dad's+druggie mom's, or the two that were raised assassin cult's, etc

…well, yeah, I do kind of think that? His whole schtick for so long was being too old for his age in ways that didn’t sacrifice his jokey, relatable teenager energies. It’s weird how little of that we see anymore, sometimes.

And then DC broke him and discarded him and he’s sort of awkwardly hanging around getting reimagined as more woobie with every fan generation. It is weird!

But tbh I do get it. And I think the reason his parents’ failure of him and his vulnerability get played up so much, and Jason and Steph’s sufferings (while used a lot for things like motivation and context) not dwelt on quite so much in the same lugubrious style, are kind of the same reason.

Which is that canon didn’t commit to it. Jason and Steph’s experiences with bad parenting were foregrounded and retconned more dramatically awful several times. (There’s some definite classism in how that was approached imo, and I’m never budging on being mad about DC retconning out Catherine being sick and then ignoring her forever in all Jason characterization because a drug death invalidates a person ig, great message during the opioid crisis guys.)

They engaged and coped with it–Steph (and Cass, our #1 canon batfam parental abuse victim) pretty directly, Jason a little less so because of the dubious and fluctuating canon status of most of the content more specific than ‘poverty, homelessness, theft, parental drugs and crime in there somewhere,’ so most of his parent issues have been focused on Bruce. He sure has dug into them tho. 😂 Rarely well or productively, thanks DC, but it’s explicitly part of his character, is my point.

Whereas upper-middle-class Tim was always treated by the narrative as fortunate and unharmed by his experiences with his parents. Even though they were clearly behaving badly in several ways, and Tim showed signs of being harmed by it.

Tim outside of immediate moments of frustration always was of the opinion he was Fine, and Very Fortunate Actually.

Therefore a huge chunk of the numerous everyone who’s got parent-related mental and emotional harm, but has struggled to have that validated and hasn’t responded with a lot of anger toward the parent, identifies with Tim. The only one who’s never really lashed out at his parents for fucking up with him. The one who still needs it explored, because canon ultimately didn’t.

[editing post to put in a readmore because lol it’s long, post otherwise unchanged]

(Dick obviously didn’t ever have any Issues with the Graysons, but he Angry Teenagered at Bruce so hard it changed Bruce’s characterization permanently, rip.)

The things Jason, Steph, and Cass have been through are dramatic, obvious, and fit stereotypes because that’s what they’re based on.

That’s important content to have, but because it’s right out there in your face even people who identify with it quite a lot are less likely to feel the need to work all the way through it again in fanworks. That part’s there. It’s text.

(Well actually Jason having been physically abused kind of wasn’t? I think? It was mostly assumed on the basis of stereotyping and Jason’s not caring about the man much even as he felt possessive of information about his death, which is valid. I don’t actually know what’s up with Willis now, Lobdell did some weird shit that lacked emotional resonance or staying power because he’s Lobdell and has no soul.

Cass’ wandering years are also ludicrously underdeveloped. But very very few comics fans or writers can personally relate to being amazing child warriors with no grasp of language living feral under bridges. That part of her life is consistently represented in terms of absences, in terms of its deviation from the norm and the deficits of normality it left her with, which is typical but unfortunate.) 

-

The interesting things to do with these characters are often informed by the bad stuff in their childhoods, but there’s relatively rarely that much more to say about the fact that those things were bad. They know they’re bad. They’ve had a lot of on-panel rage about it, as discussed above. Steph and Cass both beat the shit out of their dads.

Jason is, in fandom especially, a sort of Platonic ideal of a kid who’s mad about his bad childhood and really bad at figuring out where to point that rage.

(Damian is a whole other kettle of fish, because he’s been lumbered by so many detailed retcons coming so fast no two people can seem to construct compatible models of what his early childhood was like, and even more because he’s still ‘a child’ enough that he’s necessarily in a different stage of processing than someone who’s officially only a few years older than him at this point, but still functionally 8 and also 20 years older, and whose parents are no longer in the picture to continue screwing up.

Also there’s no question that if he brings up an abusive thing the League did, he will be validated by his current environment about his realization that it was in fact bad. There’s a lot of fic on that theme! But it doesn’t have the same tone precisely because it is usually understood that that support will be there if he wants it. Realizing that his previous context contained things that were wrong keeps being made the focus of his arc.)

The badness of Tim’s childhood, on the other hand, was mainly in subtext. Even when we were clearly meant to understand Jack was fucking up, like when he canceled plans with Tim at the last minute to go on a date with Tim’s stepmother, or that infamous time he came to apologize for not being a great parent and got mad Tim was distracted by a crisis on TV so he flew into a rage and took the TV and smashed it and was like ‘that’ll teach you,’ it wasn’t leaned into.

The story didn’t treat Jack as a minor villain to be overcome but like a sort of environmental hazard of childhood, like homework, to be endured and coped with. Tim said things like ‘it’s fine’ and ‘at least he left the computer.’

(And like. It’s not about having a TV and computer in his room. It’s about not letting a child have boundaries, pointedly not respecting a child’s possessions, creating an emotionally insecure environment, punishing minor infractions in proportion to their momentary impact on your own ego, physically lashing out at a proxy for the child…)

Rather like Tom King later didn’t understand about the punching from Bruce, whoever did that story (probably Dixon? I don’t care enough to check) did not understand how serious a case of bad parenting that scene was. That is most definitely textbook abusive behavior. (It’s a hell of a lot more common abusive behavior than being a lame supervillain or shooting you when you screw up, and a lot more specific than ‘was a thug, might have hit me, dead now.’)

And Tim was never allowed to be mad at his parents about it. It was fine. He needed to be ignored so he had the freedom to be Robin. He deserved his dad being mad at him because he was keeping secrets. He complained too much, although objectively he did not.

The universe punished him for ‘complaining,’ more than once. We cut straight from him shunting aside his disappointment that his postcard from his parents was just to say they weren’t coming home yet after all with ‘if it will stop all the fights they’ve been having lately it’s more than fine’ to them getting kidnapped.

He agreed not to come on the rescue mission. His mom never made it home, and his dad was in a coma for a while. And then ultimately Jack died as a result of Tim’s decision to be Robin, immediately after finally deciding to accept it.

So Tim walks around feeling a huge burden of responsibility for his parents’ deaths, and completely unable to process any hurt they did him as real or valid, especially in comparison with the far more blatant awfulness other people have been through, and canon is clearly never going to address it. Or even acknowledge it properly.

Let me repeat that because it’s kind of my main point:

People are fixated on getting Tim’s emotional abuse validated because that’s an incredibly important step in recovering from emotional abuse, and it’s one canon consistently denied him.

How ‘bad’ things are ‘in comparison to’ problems other people have is a bad and unhealthy way to engage with trauma. Okay? That’s just a really harmful framework to apply to pain.

It’s also a way that both Tim and people with experiences similar to Tim’s are encouraged to engage with their own experiences, compounding the existing problems.

So. Not a form of relatable DC was ever actually aiming for when they tried so hard (and pretty effectively) to make him a relatable character as Robin, but an enduring one for a lot of fans.

-

So Tim’s childhood is a natural target for fanworks in a different way than the traumas that have been made explicit and taken seriously by the text. And then a lot of that got compounded by the way the introduction of Damian as Robin was handled, and the lack of resolution that got. And his current status as not quite having a place in the family anymore.

So between the level of projection encouraged by that context and how relatively difficult to access Tim’s Robin run has become ten years after the fact, this has led to a lot of fanworks on these themes that are based mostly on other fanworks, and stray further and further from the original content.

So at this point there’s an entire wing of Tim’s fandom wherein this side of him has expanded enormously, and he primarily exists to suffer, frequently in ways that 1) escalate to a point that is inarguably ‘valid’ and hard to dismiss and 2) set him up to rebound from it in whatever way the writer finds emotionally satisfying or useful–being ultimately cared for and reassured by people who value him (the most infantilizing option but like, popular for obvious reasons), or unveiling his brilliant scheme that was causing him to pretend to be passive in the face of mistreatment, or turning around and using his genius ninja skills to wrest power back from his abusers, or just laying down some sick burns about being treated fairly.

But not that many of the last one, because that’s mostly done with other batfam members.

Tim’s become a vehicle for a lot of vicarious coping that Steph and Jason just aren’t appropriate for, because they get angry and they get even. And those are stories that exist already, so there’s less scope for telling your own.

And because Jason’s reaction pattern is ultimately so masculine (i’ll make them all sorry! with my guns! blam blam!) while Tim’s is pretty gender-neutral, the demographics of fanfic mean that the bulk of the people using Tim vicariously in this manner are female-aligned, which has over time feminized this archetype of him a lot. Sometimes in ways I find really uncomfortable, like there’s a lot of forced pregnancy stuff which activates my panic buttons. x.x

But, ultimately, it’s fandom. People are going to do what they’re going to do, DC in their perpetual fail has hung Tim out to dry in narrative terms, and I’d rather the people who are using Tim for victimization narratives over the people who can’t dismiss or discredit him fast enough now that his position has been filled. 🤷‍♀️ What we gonna do? Fave’s in an awkward spot. DC hates us. This is the life in this comic book pit. XD

-

Also if you’re the same anon who left me a callout about op of that weird Steph post in my inbox, or if you aren’t @ that person, 1) I refuse to get involved so I’m not answering that ask 2) those aren’t even particularly dramatic fandom crimes? That’s pretty normal? That’s just…Caring Too Much About Ships And Disagreeing With Me.

Do I also feel those opinions are kinda bad? Yeah. But I disagree with everyone about something. Chill.

[photolover82]

The Masked Singer Season 6 Episode 3: Time to meet Group B! (Commentary & Guesses)

Hello fellow humans! Welcome (or welcome back) to Ana’s Masked Singer recap, where I recap and talk about this show called The Masked Singer if you wanna stick around for that. So, this time around, we get to meet the other group, Group B, who we might not see again for 2 weeks, since we are going to see group A perform again this upcoming week with a new wildcard, Pepper. Anyways, let’s get started with the recap:

Group B was introduced and they consisted of Dalmatian 🐶, Queen of Hearts 🫀, Mallard 🦆, Cupcake 🧁, and Banana Split 🍌🍦. They performed, and one was eliminated unfortunately, let’s start with that…

So the contestant that was eliminated/revealed first in Group B was:

Dalmatian 🐶

Performance Commentary: ok, so I wasn’t super surprised by this elimination honestly, I expected it since he was the weakest vocally of this group. He sang Beautiful by Snoop Dogg ft Pharrell Williams and I gotta give him props for actually singing when most rappers just decide to only rap and not sing at all on this show. However, he did sound a bit like they put way too much of that auto tune stuff on his voice so it sounded like a robot him singing, which kinda made him the weakest link. However, his rapping was awesome (duh because that’s what he does professionally… and btw not spoiling who he is with that comment because when you hear the performance, you’ll know 100% it’s a rapper)

And he was revealed to be…

*DRUMROLL PLEASE*

Tyga

Omg I knew it!! Thank you Twitter for helping me out, y’all are the best. I thought at first it might have been Chance the Rapper but then people started saying Tyga and I was like hmmm lemme see the clues, yup makes sense, well great segue (segway) Ana because imma show you some of the clues you might have missed:

Scream Poster= he was in the Scream series

Cat Doll= play on words because his name is Tyga (like Tiger… man these producers are really into puns, it’s kinda clever tho)

Was discovered by a big player= in 2007, he started doing mixtapes and he was discovered by Travie McCoy who offered him a record deal

Now, that we have that out of the way, let’s get into our remaining contestants (big warning: this group has left me all types of confused when it comes to guesses so I apologize if my arguments aren’t perfect with some of these):

1. Cupcake 🧁

Performance: This performance is so confusing to me. Idk if this is a man or woman, sometimes I think woman with deep voice and other times I am like no that’s a man. So I don’t know about this one, it’s a very good performance of Heat Wave by Martha and the Vandellas but I need to hear more because I am confused. I am in between a specific man or a specific woman but I am not sure so unfortunately for this one I don’t have a guess

Sorry y’all no guess for this one :(… hopefully, next time they perform I will have a better idea*

*(I will say the guess I am leaning towards that a few people have said *just in case the cupcake leaves next* is Ruth Pointer from the Pointer Sisters because there were supposed to be multiple cupcakes and not just one, and in the PKG, cupcake said they were used to being in a group)

2. Banana Split 🍌🍦

Performance: They were 1000% my favorite performance of the night even though only Split/Ice Cream sang A Million Dreams from the Greatest Showman. She is amazing, I absolutely love her, she has that iconic Broadway sound that I absolutely adore. Just her singing this makes me so confident on who she is omg I’m stoked!

Having said that, I am so positive, like way too certain none of y’all will convince me otherwise like Todrick level confidence they are…

Katherine McPhee and David Foster

Ok, so you guys are probably like “Ana, how can you be so sure if the damn banana didn’t even sing a note, he just played the piano?!” Well, my friends, you have a point, but I know who she is and honestly I don’t even care if I am wrong ab him (I won’t know for sure until he sings a note) but HER I am absolutely positive….and they are a married couple and the banana has heart eyes so in my head it makes sense with the clues too, but before I go to the clues, I have a funny story on how I know who Ms. Katherine McPhee is… so like I was watching this performance and was like omg her voice Sound so familiar! Where have I heard her before?! This is driving me nuts… And then I saw people on YouTube saying that it’s them and I was like wait Katherine McPhee that name sounds so familiar. Then I looked her up and I found out that I knew who she was because I randomly watched a show on Netflix called Country Comfort (which side note: LeAnn Rimes or the Sun from Season 4 guest starred on that show and LeAnn’s husband stars in it… so connection there?), which to explain the show briefly it’s literally the Nanny but with country music and in Tennessee instead of NY. Anyways, she sang a lot on that show and it clicked, I was like BINGO OMG THAT IS HER IT CANNOT BE ANYONE ELSE (similar to how I felt about Todrick being the bull when I saw that damn sneak peak performance). Anyway ya, that was unnecessarily long, now onto the clues:

She left school to move to the city= she attended Boston Conservatory for 3 semesters and left to move to LA to try out for TV pilots

Thought she got her big break, but it wasn’t it= she got an MTV soap opera plot but it never made it to air

Collaborator who sticks with me through sweet and sour= they have known each other ever since she was on the 5th season of American Idol in 2006 and their collaboration is that he is a music producer and she sings (on American Idol, he would play the piano while she sang… does this sound familiar to you guys yet? Ringing any bells? If not, rewatch the performance Banana Split did)

3. Queen of Hearts 🫀

Performance: She sang Born This Way by Lady Gaga and I already knew she was going to be good, but this was like Black Swan all over again. This beginning song wasn’t the best for her voice, but she had fun and she did the damn thing. Closest Lady Gaga singing impression I’ve seen, but I am positive it ain’t Lady Gaga. Also, she slayed that ending.

Ok, so I am not too sure about this guess but after a bit of research and voice matching, I think it might be…

Jewel (the singer, not an actual jewel)

Again I say, with a bit of research, I feel like she’s the closest guess I can give you guys especially matching the singing voices, but let’s look at the clues:

Grew up in a house that lacked warmth= she grew up in Alaska (born in Utah)

Tin man from Wizard of Oz= she played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True in 1995

Hilary Swank photo= Swank has a dog named Jewel (when I read this I laughed, wow Masked Singer really?! 😂😂)

4. Mallard 🦆

Performance: This performance was not my cup of tea tbh, it was real deep country which is not my jam at all. The song title says it all: Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy) by Big & Rich. Like it was great no lie, but like I just don’t really enjoy that kinda music so it wasn’t for me.

Again, this one is a shot in the dark guess but I am gonna stick with it and it is the one I am leaning towards voice wise:

Willie Robinson (yes the guy from Duck Dynasty)

Ok, so again hear me out, this might sound stupid (and half of me thinks it is) but it kinda makes sense in a strange way especially looking at the clues:

Surrounded by dollar bills= Duck Dynasty merch raised a ton of bills

Photo of Chris Pratt= they worked together and became friends filming Jurassic World in 2014

Platinum Album= Has a certified platinum album “Duck the Halls: A Robertson Family Christmas” (I can’t believe this one, I was pretty surprised)

Anyways, that’s it! I can’t wait to see Group A next week.. again yeah but with Pepper this time so woohoo another Wildcard. I just hope we can see more of Group B too because it feels like too much of Group A is being seen. Anyways, see y’all next week with the recap for tomorrow’s episode! Bye guys! Remember to do all the social media things! Like, comment, follow me for more, all of that 👋🏼

[snakedevour]

my thoughts on chapter 81 ahead, fellas. it feels like it’s been a while since i analyzed a chapter drop but in my defense they only release once a month and 80.5 didn’t give me a lot of meat to bite into.

nyanyway -- here’s kkg 81. this chapter brings the focus back onto yumeko a little bit, showing us again how she plays, how she thinks, and how she challenges the people around her. basically, for me, this chapter was the whole buffet after several chapters of scraps.

SPOILERS BELOW.

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.

.

i made a post maybe a week or so ago at this point mentioning that i wanted to talk about how yumeko’s friendliness is “impersonal” despite being genuine and how that feeds into her ( for lack of better words ). and i’m still going to do that and it’ll be in a separate post from this one but this chapter gave me some ammunition in regards to that thought.

the thing that makes yumeko difficult to navigate in terms of interacting with her is that she challenges the conventional definition of “kind” and in a way kind of forces you to delineate between that and “friendly”. 

yumeko is a cocktail with two major components:

1. she is friendly 2. she is powerful

and when you have a friendly powerful person it’s easy to fall into the trap tsubomi has here, in which you feel that because you side with someone friendly and powerful you’re inherently under their protection.

and in a lot of storytellings that’d typically be true... but yumeko is awfully atypical. recall tsubomi’s commentary from chapter 63:

so long as we frame “friendly” as something that inherently goes hand-in-hand with “good” i think we set ourselves up to misunderstand yumeko’s personality. yumeko is friendly but she is not altruistic. yumeko does not “save” people; every time that it seems that she has it’s because they “won” it from her -- yumeko has never been benevolent for benevolence’s sake.

by a lot of standard definitions, i’d argue that she’s not even a good person. 

it’s really nice to be reminded of that weird layer of nuance. we’re also reminded of something that might have gotten overshadowed by her comparative calmness lately and the housepet drama from the last few chapters --

more than just wantonly putting herself at risk, yumeko is obsessed with simultaneously imposing high antes on other people.

let’s briefly throw all the way back to chapter 16 just to get that in her own words:

i kind of want to say that yumeko has sadomasochistic tendencies but that’s probably for another post another day.

anyway, this takes us back to today and chapter 81, where tsubomi goes on to notice the folly in her own thinking:

paired with her thoughts from chapter 63 this says a lot.

“would yumeko bother helping me if I’m not taking any risk?”

i’m pretty sure the answer is no. 

this really just sort of further cements my original opinion that yumeko definitely operates on some sort of metric of “earning” what one has. if you’re interested in my thought piece on that subject it’s right over here.

i really like where tsubomi’s train of thought is going here. up until now we’ve seen yumeko’s cutthroat mentality mostly as applied to herself and an opposing player. we’ve seen her drive the stakes high with yuriko, with sayaka, with miyo and miri and so on. 

this is what i mean when i say yumeko’s friendliness has an element of uncanny valley to it. you can argue that we’ve seen yumeko drag people into gambling alongside her ( like itsuki ), but we haven’t really seen it in this kind of light where it’s leveraged against her willingness to help people.

so +1 to chapter 81 for re-highlighting this fact about yumeko.

moving along, tsubomi is having these thoughts in the first place because terano came by and pointed out to her that she’s an “extra”, and per the logistics of the game yumeko only really needs suzui’s cooperation to win. then we cut to this short set-up scene where yumeko tells the gang ( and us ) the plan for this turn:

this gets tsubomi thinking. because yumeko is donating to suzui, she’ll have 0 points which means if tsubomi challenges her, she’ll win and thereby fulfill the requirements of her life plan to “knock either yumeko or terano out of the election”. tsubomi we’ve seen in past games though is still kind of coming into her own individuality, and is very much used to just taking orders. on top of that, she still feels indebted to yumeko for pushing her to play against kiwatari during the debt swap indian poker.

another thing i commented about in the past was the “human” qualities and motivations of the characters. tsubomi is a real highlight of this chapter because she reminds us of that quality too, because terano’s remarks spark what i think is a very organic conflict in her thoughts:

“i don’t want to be a housepet” vs “i don’t want to betray the girl i’m indebted to”

“i want to live as a person” vs “i want to keep a good conscience”

it’s the portrayal of internal struggles like these that make me angy at the sexualization in this series because these really show that it just isn’t needed. kawamoto absolutely knows what he’s writing and it’s not like he’s writing it poorly so its like...what gives.

not to make this about yumeko again but she does seem to get pretty meta here. i’m pretty certain that she knows what tsubomi is thinking here and i’ll also go as far as to suggest that she might have even set up the play this way to test tsubomi’s mettle. i’ll get into that here in a moment though :)

i say yumeko has an idea of what’s going through tsubomi’s mind here just because her question is very telling -- “have you made your decision?” -- yumeko definitely knows that some sort of choice has been imposed onto tsubomi, and tsubomi’s mentioning of her lack of guidance this turn also implies that yumeko is leaving her to fend for herself. which i think is something yumeko will always do. we’ve established that she’s not altruistic in the slightest...i don’t think yumeko is at all interested in people who lack the will to help themselves, regardless of how pitiable their circumstances.

i know suzui is supposed to be the audience-proxy but idk my guys... i think tsubomi is shaping up to be the better conduit through which we see yumeko’s real colors. 

also, more of yumeko giving us some insight into her values and how she thinks... but @ naomura why did you draw her doing this. yumeko you look SILLY but ily anyway

“only a choice at the end of agony can move your heart” -- yumeko’s starting to give me vibes of someone who’s apathetic unless the ante is driven wildly high hence why she does it but i need at least one more backstory drop before i speak more on that one. just saying it’d line up with a few things tho

moving on, it follows that tsubomi ultimately decides to challenge yumeko because that’s the logical thing to do if she wants to look out for herself. plus some commentary from terano about how it’s all according to keikaku.

anyway, i really enjoyed this next sequence because it throws back to yumeko even more. it reminds us that while yumeko loves taking on huge risks, that doesn’t mean she plays to lose. it’s been a while since we’ve seen yumeko engage in a setup like this so it was great to see that kawamoto still remember what kind of gambler she is:

i actually really love terano but i do enjoy seeing yumeko consistently trip her up. it really upholds yumeko’s role as a dark horse.

anyway, remember how i said yumeko probably set this play up to see what tsubomi would do? this is where we can circle back to that because we see, in fact, that yumeko did not donate her points to suzui like she said she would. 

yumeko is such a convoluted character that you can get caught up on one aspect of her character to the point of forgetting another. in recent chapters we’ve seen her in a supporting role: supporting mary, seemingly helping tsubomi... but thanks chapter 81 for reminding us that yumeko is a gambler before she’s anything else and can and will set up other players. this also kind of raises a mild albeit interesting moral quandary: i think it’s pretty safe to say that this was manipulative on yumeko’s part, but it could also be argued that this is a gamble and she read far enough ahead and just acted accordingly. i think that ambiguity is the point.

and that’s the jist chapter 81, and tbh i really enjoyed it. it felt like i was back in ye olden days of yore where kkg was yumeko’s misadventures. for a while there it felt like they were like “ok we’ve established she’s a really good gambler we must shine the spotlight elsewhere now” -- which is fair, don’t get me wrong. knowing the rest of the -bamis is really important to the plot. it’s just nice to see yumeko back in action proper again 🥺

[magicrobins]

Mass Effect Tag

Tagged by @commander-krios & @actualanxiousswampwitch! 💕

I am a fan since: ...Um... Oh god I can’t remember when I first heard about Mass Effect and decided I want to play it. It was a while after the trilogy had been out though. Like Andromeda was the first Mass Effect game I was there for the launch of. 2016 I think is when I first started ME1.

Favorite game of the series: If we’re only going with the trilogy, then ME3. If we’re going off of the Mass Effect franchise, then Andromeda is my favorite hands down.

MShep or FShep: My main Shepard is a male Shepard but he’s actually genderqueer, using he/him pronouns. So technically mShep but also technically neither as majority of my Sheps are nonbinary iirc.

Earthborn, Colonist, or Spacer: Colonist

Biotics or Tech: I’m a sucker for magic and biotics are the closest we get to magic in ME so while I have characters that don’t have any biotics, biotics and their classes are my faves.

Paragon or renegade: Paragade! : D Why pick one when you can have both? LOL.

Favorite Class: In the trilogy it’s adept, though I excitedly can’t wait for either of my vanguards. If we’re counting Andromeda, then my favorite is the explorer profile because of the biotic blink effect it gives you asdfghjkl;

Favorite Companion: I uh - I’m very basic in the fact that I love and adore them all and who I pick is more based off of the Shepard I’m playing and who they’re drawn to. With my main Shepard, Duncan, I had a variety of different squads I’d take with me ‘cause his main romance was Steve so I didn’t have a love interest to take around. I did take Samara a lot iirc in ME2 ‘cause I did her “fling” with Dunc.

Least Favorite Companion: I don’t have any LOL. I love them all. :’D It’s actually very rare for me to dislike a companion in a game (tho I can def think of two, they’re not from Mass Effect LOL).

My Squad Selection: Depends on the Shepard and who I feel like bringing along. Like stated above, the most consistent I took with me I think was Samara a lot in ME2. In ME3, I took Garrus, James, and Kaidan with Dunc a lot for reasons specific to Duncan. It’d def vary from my other Shepards, who are lucky enough to date squadmates and bring their LIs are mission dates. :’)

Favorite in-game romance: My favorite for ME in general would be in Andromeda. I’ve only completed Steve’s romance - and Samara’s “fling” - in the trilogy so far and while both are very nice imo and I adore them (the pacing in Steve’s could’ve been written better but I can admit that and still enjoy it) I wouldn’t say either are my favorites. /:

Other pairings I like: I like any pairings so long as they’re not like Steve/femShep or Traynor/mShep. All the romances in the trilogy are nice and I think quite a few are underappreciated. Jacob/Shep (regardless of gender) could use more love imo. I know how his romance ends in ME3, but his romance in ME2 seems quite nice still to me and Dunc would’ve romanced him so fast if he’d been bi, gdi the chemistry. -clears throat- Don’t mind me, I’m just crying in a corner LOL.

Favorite NPC: Oh no I love so many. ;-;

Favorite Antagonist: As a character I actually quite like Kai Leng and the Illusive Man. As people, I don’t like them LOL but as characters they’re very fascinating and interesting to me.

Favorite Mission: I really liked the Leviathan mission, the one at the end in that ocean. Maybe it’s ‘cause Steve was actually in it quite a bit and Dunc had some new/feelsy scenes with his boyfriend LOL. I’m desperate for Shortez content, okay? ;-;

Favorite DLC: Citadel. I am bASIC LOL. I like how almost everyone shows up again (I say “almost everyone” ‘cause obvs Chakwas isn’t there and Kelly doesn’t make an appearance again) and it’s funny and goofy and parts of it were some of the few times I actually felt like I related to my Shepard more or he felt more real to me during that DLC? Idk how to explain it tbh.

Favorite Loyalty Mission: It’s been a while since I played ME2... I think Tali’s maybe???

Control, Synthesis, or Destroy: Destroy! The other options don’t really appeal to me however I find it fascinating that there are players they appeal to and I find that really cool. :3

Favorite Weapon: Sniper rifle. Unless I can count biotics LOL. I got Dunc’s weapon weight down so low in ME3 that his biotic powers’ cooldown was 100% lolol.

Favorite Place: ...A bad thing about Andromeda being the most recent game I’ve played, I only remember the locations in that one LOL. ^^”” The quarian (sp?) homeworld was nice iirc!

A quote I like:

“They rebuilt Mindoir... It wasn’t the same.” - Colonist!Shepard

“Someone needs my boot up their ass.” - Shepard

“Never do that again! ...Sir.” - Steve Cortez

“50,000 years and I still don’t get picked.” - Javik

And honestly any dialogue line from the Citadel DLC or the final mission in ME3 LOL.

Tagging: @bxtgrl​ and anyone else who wants to ‘cause I’m realizing idk how many of my mutuals play ME. o-o;;

[steponmepinkjun]

I NEVER FINISHED MY STORY OMG. ok so i left off at being too proud to tell my friend she was right and kpop fucked hard. the difference between u and me is that i’m too good of a liar. too good. i kept up the “i hate kpop it’s cringe” facade for ALMOST TWO WHOLE YEARS, I SHIT YOU NOT. why? bc my dumb ass, extra ass, dramatic ass self thought “ok if i’m gonna have to deal with the embarrassment of admitting i’m wrong, i better do it in such an extra ass way it’ll knock ur socks off so hard that YOULL be the one embarrassed not me.” the original plan was to learn the entire choreography to bts dope, bc it’s the song that she told me to listen to and inevitably the song that got me into them, but later switched to bts fire bc i saw too many of those “choreo matches w any song” videos, and then her birthday party came up. and here’s the real kicker. her birthday is April Motherfuckin Fools. so it would be So Perfect for me to reveal my kpopism as a birthday present And a april fools prank in one. so i was Set on the Reveal being on april 1st, but the day rolls around and god that choreo is so fucking hard and i am Not a dancer. never have been. so i abandon that and go ykno what… i’ll do it Next Year. BC MY BITCHASS WAS LIKE NO THE MOMENT IS TOO PERFECT TO DO IT ON A NORMAL ASS DAY ITS GONNA BE ON APRIL FOOLS ON HER GODDAMN BIRTHDAY OR NOT AT ALL. a year rolls by, i’ve told most of our friends except her and they’re all in on it, i’d made so many subtle kpop references to her without her realising they were fully intentional and had too many scares where she almost figured me out but i lied my way out of it, and i’d given up on showing off with choreography bc i couldn’t make that shit look good. i’m not a dancer. i am, however, a rapper, and a damn good one, so i inhaled the agust d mixtape and decided i’d just rap the eminem of kpop’s anthem at her face. in korean. and change the lyrics at the end (if u haven’t listened to agust d, the bridge repeats “i’m sorry” a lot) to “i’m sorry i kept this from u for so long” and “i’m sorry i actually ult got7 not bts” (this was like the april after skz debuted ok i was holding onto got7 for dear life knowing full well skz we’re going to convert me smh) and the best part? she never saw it coming. her official present was a cd with a bunch of kpop on it but she thought it was just a personalised mixtape for her so i told her to play the first song out loud and she knew the song Instantly. it has a long intro so she was like “i guess u did listen when i recommended u this song!! i knew you’d like it since u like rap so much!!” and then i started rapping and i shit u not. she started SCREAMING. like the initial reaction was her jaw dropping and then instinctively covering her mouth but when i kept going and she realised i wasn’t fucking around she just fucking screamed like a banshee. at the end during the sorry bit i threw off my jacket to reveal a got7 shirt on the inside and she fell off her chair and started rolling around on the floor. needless to say it was every bit as satisfying as i thought it’d be LMAOOOO afterwards her ass was like “I CANT BELIEVE U HID THIS FROM ME FOR OVER A YEAR” and when i tried to explain my ego couldn’t take the “i told u so” she was like “you know i wouldn’t have made fun of you for it right? i would just be glad you’re not hating on my boys anymore” so basically i’m a big dramatic fool and she was always too good for me.

don’t mind the weird spaces here my ipad is being all fucky wucky w me rn. damn sad to hear ur sideblog experience didn’t go so well, i’d have shown u the cool side of the fandom if i knew 😤😤 leading u thru the cursed halls of kpop stan tumblr like a sketchy tour guide that’s actually 3 small raccoons stacked on top of each other like a trench coat, like “over here we have the fanfic writers that honestly need to publish a book, over here we have the gif makers that are responsible for my entire camera roll, if we take a quick swerve past the death threat anons and the twt fanwar screenshots - mind ur feet bub the 14 year olds were tryna make a grab for ur ankles - ah here’s the holy grail of shitposts, you might be here for hours, to the right we have the weird aussie side of the fandom that projects our childhoods onto chanlix but also all the members as we decide what their life in australia would’ve been like, and down there is a secret trapdoor to the blogs w endless random headcanons that will make you laugh, cry or blush depending on if the author woke up and decided to choose violence today. enjoy your Stay!” but then again i’m not so active on tumblr anymore (ngl you’ve become the highlight of my tumblr experience these days, interaction wise,) so maybe all my Local Hotspots are inactive now. i know a bunch of them are, it’s sad. “i don’t fw stan twitter for the same reason i don’t hang out in meth dens” oop. guess i’m a meth addict. no but i get u i rly do, it’s a hellhole out there, but the fact that things get shared and spread a lot easier than on tumblr and how short most things have to be (therefor keeping up w my adhd attention span without having to resort to the mental torture that is tiktok, with the added bonus of not always needing headphones.) that i just. couldn’t leave if i tried. maybe i should try being active on tumblr again but it’s a dying site in comparison.

“their music doesn’t consistently hit for me as much as skz” i’m sorry we can’t be friends anymore. what. what. you don’t dramama ramama ramama hey? you don’t feel a little jealousyyyyyy, naega anin? you don’t shoot out, shoot out, shoot out, or aremdaeun love killa love killa? you can’t be your hero du du du du du du du du du dududu? u disappoint me. literally like everyone i know who likes skz music likes mx music like it’s a rite of Passage. they’re kindred spirits, monsta x music is like skz’s music’s cool but mildly heterosexual older brother. neither of them know what a bad song is it runs in the family. and both their music runs in my VEINS. whenever i describe my music taste they’re always the first two that come to mind, skz being my number 1 bc they are my best boys but mx bc of the Flavour. pls listen to the entire the code album then get back to me 😤🙌 ok but fr ur so right they are 7 of the finest men i ever seen (yes i say 7 bc i’m including wonho cause he deserved better and i’ll die on my ot7 bullshit.) like don’t get me started on them either LOL i LITERALLY downloaded that one insta video of changkyun working out his back n arm muscles w his tattoo showing bc i needed that shit saved for Science. they could do Anything w me like frfr. yes vixx is the bdsm contract group i’m telling ya they wildin. or at least they were. it’s been years since their last comeback idk what they’re doing anymore tbh. and yeah that makes sense, savouring the hyperfixation i feel it, but also i’m so attached to skz that i never let it die. like i hyperfixate on other things and other groups but i will Always go back to skz cause they’re my homeboys. hell, they’re my home. being a predebut stay i’ve spent more time w skz than most of my actual family members at this point. but that’s just me you do u boo xx just know that if ur anything like me ur never letting go once skz it’s been my longest lasting fixation cause they hit like Nothing Else Do. ik i’ve already said that but i cannot stress it enough. they’re really special. i’m gonna stop here before i get all sappy and emotional bc i really love those boys so fucking much and i don’t drop the L bomb often. SIDE NOTE I WOULD LIKE TO SEE UR LIST OF GROUPS RANKED BY THORSt. i need to judge ur Taste. and omg cat&dog is such a guilty pleasure song bc the lyrics make me cringe so much bc while pet play can be fun they be doing it in more of an “i’m an innocent soft dogboy uwu” kinda way that just Does Not Sit Right with me. it comes back to the objectifying of asians that asians themselves don’t help in industries like these and maybe i’m looking too far into it when rly it is just wholesome n cute or maybe they are into some pet play shit idk idc i will bop to the song regardless but i will not acknowledge the lyrics nope.

YOURE RIGHT THO SKZ’S OPENNESS IS IN FACT, A BIG DEAL, i’ll grab them for u if u want but i found these twt threads of skz supporting the lgbt community and i just felt a special kind of happiness man like sure the delusional part of me likes going “haha they’re gay” bc my brain likes to imagine them as my polycule of mlm boyfriends bc sometimes thats what gives me the serotonin to get me thru the day ok don’t judge but also bc it’s nice knowing that yes i’ll never know them personally, but at least i can support them knowing they’d respect my gender identity and my pronouns, they’d respect who i choose to love, and that’s already more than the general public can say so shit, it is special! it’s special that they don’t treat being cishet like the norm - they constantly remove gender from their songs and speech entirely, they don’t assume all stays are female anymore, we don’t talk abt the babygirls incident cause we got babystays in the end outta that ok, and it’s just. so refreshing and important to me bc i can’t get that anywhere else!! like my semi ults are the boyz and while i love them very much and there’s no way all 11 of them are straight i refuse, i do get just a little bit sad whenever they she/her their fandom by default and call them their girlfriends n shit even tho i do still identify as a girl, i’m also genderfluid/nonbinary/transmasc, and i have a very love/hate relationship w my womanhood and rarely use she/her pronouns, cause it’s like, do you not see me? see us? the ones who aren’t cishet women? i mean i know kevin does bc he congratulated a fan who came out as nb but it’s just not the same as the openness we get w skz. like how do i trust cishets i could be supporting them as a queer person when in reality they’d call me a slur. what would i know, behind the screen? so it’s so good that skz go the extra mile to make it a safe space for everyone. this is already long enough i will reply to the second half of that ask in another message… tomorrow cause it’s 1am and i’m tired gn -felix bi anon

I'mma have to start putting these under a readmore so that i don't absolutely make everything who is still following me for some reason go totally fucking insane 😂

NDJDHWJJAHFNAKBSJSBFBHHDBDNAJD YOU HAVE NO IDEA THE FACES I WAS MAKING READING THIS, I WAS FUCKING CACKLING AND GASPING EVERY OTHER SENTENCE SO HARD THAT I SCARED THE CATS NDJWHSHSB the fact that you went "oh you want me to get into kpop? Give me a hot minute, and I'll give you a whole ass private concert for free" biduehsjdbd biiiiiiiiiiitch you're a fucking ICON, I stg I could NEVER 😂 (and not just because I couldn't find a tune if you gave me a printed set of Google maps directions and that I embody the steriotype that white people can't dance, like my sister kept sensing me tiktoks of the whole "dance like a white girl" trend going lmfao look it's you and eventually I was like "sis please this trend has me feeling like being white is a disability and these mothafuckers are being ableist 😭 also I could NEVER be that on beat so yall ain't even doin it right 😭😭😭😭"). Tbh if I told one of my friends (lol what friends, i got jokes) to get into Skz and they showed up at my bday and performed the entirety of I Got It I would simply shower them in money and go "aight everyone else go home, you are no longer needed, you are being laid off, your position has been eliminated, we're downsizing, the company is moving up and you're moving out, you are not qualified for this role any longer, best of luck with future endeavors" 😊

I think part of the reason I can't deal w Twitter is the exact reason I refuse to leave tumblr, in that I've been on tumblr since 2006 and twt since 2008, and tumblr literally has not changed at all, not even a little, whereas going from the early days of twt where there were no corporate sponsorships or ads and you had to manually copy and paste someone's tweet and @ them to retweet it, to how it is now, like 90% ads and showing me shit from the timelines of people I don't even fuckin follow n whatnot, it's just not enjoyable. Idk how anyone finds anything on twt, it confuses and frustrates me because I am old and have not adapted well to technology changing 😂 But arguably, the skz fanbase doesn't want me on skztwt anyways so like it works for both of us lmfaooo. I am old and cringey, and also still think of twt as stream of consciousness whereas tumblr is your teenage bedroom where you can decorate the walls with anything that interests you. I do really love the nonsensical kpoptwt shitposts tho fhshsbdjjss like it is a very specific flavor of mental instability that I enjoy immensely 😂 OH and also I initially misread part of that and thought you were saying you actually irl do meth and I was like 😳 WHAT DO I SAY TO THAT. HOW DO I HANDLE THIS. Like how do I express like "I wasn't being judgy of people who use substances cause I've been there but I was just being insensitive 😳" And then went back and reread it and was like WHEW, IM JUST AN ILLITERATE FOOL 😂😂😂😂 ejeywhdhrhjwbfbdjshdhdhd I spent like an hour bwign like "IS THE REASON WE GET ALONG BECAUSE THEY'RE ON METH???? WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS INFORMATION??????" hrhehshe I am literally a fuckin idiot it's fine

It's not that I don't fw them, it's more like... Okay so like there is no situation in which I am going to skip a skz song if it comes on shuffle. You will not ever catch me NOT in the mood to listen to Sunshine, if God's Menu comes on we are THROWIN the meager amount of booty meat I got hither and thither, I could be in the happiest mood of my life but if Ex comes on I will stop to SOB. And I'm not like that with most music, so mx just falls into the category of "there is a time and place." Idk why but it just doesn't forcibly grab hold of my heart and ass the way skz always does. I really don't WANT my skz fixation to ever end, but I know that eventually it'll stop giving me dopamine bevause my brain is my worst fucking enemy 🙃 like my arcana fixation is to date the longest running hyperfixation I've ever had, going on almost three years, and I used to not be able to spend every single second of every day thinking about Asra, but now... I just feel nothing when I look at arcana stuff. As you can probz tell by the fact that I hardly post arcana anymore 😂 So I know that eventually all my happiness will end, it always does, I can never stay just as obsessed with something as I was for long. I CANT SHARE THE LIST BECAUSE I DONT *HAVE* TASTE YET 😭 I'm basically just compiling a list of any group someone tells me I should look into, ranked by how strong the kitty purred upon googling pics of them 😂 My mom read my ass to FILTH over txt lmfao she was like "they're not that adorable. Maybe your standard for adorableness has gone down with You Know Who still on hiatus 🤔" bfjwhdhd like MOMMAAAAA THE LIBRARY IS CLOSED 😂 she attacks me any time I even hint at stanning other groups, she is a skz purist and stans skz only, unofficial Momma Stay of All Stays keeping me in check lmfao.

I feel like skz really do follow thru on their promise that they're a safe space for stays, it's nice to see that they hold space for anyone and everyone in their fanbase and do it in a really simple and elegant way, I feel. Like they never make it seem like "okay here are the fans and here are the token weirdos that were only recognizing to make a buck off of them" the way a lot of artists make it feel like 😑 like they don't go out of their way to act like it's some revolutionary act to do the bare minimum of not shitting on certain parts of the fandom, if that makes sense. They feel very "yeah, of course we love all our stays, this is a welcoming space for literally anyone, that's how it should be, that should be normal," instead of like "Hi fans we love you 😊 and special shoutout to you ell gee bee tee folk, make sure to buy my rainbow merch after the show!!!" you know? Like, they're the friends who would never make you feel weird or different for some shit, the friends that take the attention off you if something they know ur sensitive about comes up, instead of weirdly snapping at whoever brought the unfomfy thing up which ruins the mood and makes you feel tiwce as bad, yk? They just give off this vibe that they, and the space they create with their music, is just a genuine and chill place to be and hang out and relax and bond. I feel like they'd be the friend group that is so goofy and sweet and silly and accepting and lovely and always makes you feel loved and excited to be alive 🥺 They are all good noodles 🥺🥺🥺

[majorxmaggiexboy]

author interview tag!

tagged by la joie de ma vie, @f-ro-g

Name: ostensibly it’s Maggie but also Major but also whatever anyone feels like calling me as long as it’s not deliberately mean or something.

Fandom(s): as far as the ones i actually try/intend to make some content for, we’ve got BBC’s The Musketeers, BBC’s Merlin, AMC’s TURN: Washington’s Spies, The Grinning Man (Musical), Hadestown (Musical) Lazytown, probably Legend of Zelda if things keep going the way they are, uhhhh...I used to write for Ranger’s Apprentice, and am likely to do so again. I also have a Marvel (Mostly Bucky tbh) blog that was pretty active for a while before infinity war crushed my dre- OH RIGHT also How to Train Your Dragon. and a bunch of others that are just. dormant atm. pretty much anything i’ve ever enjoyed, ive got at least one fic for it. why did i forget to say Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, this is an outrage.

Where you post: 😂😂😂 when i make it that far, it’s usually on here? i have an ao3 but always get intimidated by the tagging system.

Most popular oneshot: oh god it was probably one of my Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time fics actually. Nothing recent, as i’ve not posted anything in forever

Most popular multichapter fic: i had a somewhat popular Ranger’s Apprentice story back in the day! I don’t recall if it was my most popular, or if that would’ve been one of my Musketeer fics, but the Ranger’s Apprentice one was one of my earliest fics and i remember being so surprised to be getting a lot of comments and consistent readers/engagement on.

Favorite story you’ve written so far: as far as Original Fiction, i’m still pretty attached to my unfinished saga that started out as a Short Story Writing Exercise and turned into about 18 separate stories within the same universe. Having recently looked back over the outlines for that one, it needs a lot of work and there are plot aspects that didn’t age super well, but i’m fond of the characters, settings, and premise and still think it could be salvageable.

as far as fanfic tho...i’ll have to actually finish and post some before deciding :3

Fic you were nervous to post: pretty much everything from 2014 onward has been accompanied by absolute terror immediately upon hitting ‘post’

How you choose your titles: ngl it’s usually either, think of a story and then find a song or song title/lyric that fits, or hear a song and go “Oh, i like that for a title” and make a story to suit. for fanfic, anyway. for my original fic...i don’t really know how past!me came up with the titles, and i haven’t made any new stories in quite some time. I think we just picked stuff we thought sounded cool and then found a way to tie it to the story. Except the ones that were like “This is an adaptation of The Grasshopper and the Ant. It’s called Grasshopper”

Do you outline?: obsessively.

Complete: i’ve never finished a story in my life negl

In progress:  so many. i’ve got 42 drafts on my Main blog alone

Coming soon/not yet started:  SO MANY.

Do you accept prompts?: YEPPERS, usually on my specific fandom sideblogs.

Upcoming work that you’re most excited about: probably The Manner of Things, which is a magic au of The Grinning Man. And then also A Moment to be Real, which is a Grinning Man au based entirely on one single scene in Treasure Planet. im also excited for all the Floydmadge shmoop i hope to write soon.

tagging the following people: idk who all this would be relevant for so, apologies if i tag u and it’s non-applicable! also if it is applicable and you’re not tagged, go for pls! @samayla, @midnight-reader-morning-sleeper ,@the-walking-pie

[tangerinegod]

Hello! I am sorry to bother you but I am a senior getting ready for college this year. I am in the US and I wanted to major in the same thing you did, do you have any possible tips for me? I still haven't even looked for colleges that would be best for animation majors so I figured if you were up to giving out any tips/saying any basic ideas if you wanted to/if you had the time to then maybe I'll have a better idea! I apologise for if I sound weird! I'm tried to word it correctly but I can't 😿

hi!! i’m totally down to share my experiences! someone else also had some questions so i’m going to put them all together in this post haha, hopefully this helps! it’ll get pretty long so apologies ahead of time but art school is a lot to think about so i wanna be as helpful as i can around it, its a lot of time and money. I’m gonna put it all under a read more cus it is really really long!

i wanna start off with the fact that I had the privilege of attending school in a financially stable environment, my parents were/are really supportive so w merit scholarship i only came out with around 20-30k in debt and i also had housing support my entire time in school. they were ok with me focusing on academics so i didn’t hold a retail job unless i was out of school like summer/winter break. Ofc though i regularly take commissions/do merch/cons to try and pay for all bills that arent rent cus i did want to be financially independent where it was possible. I also did try and work during the semester but everytime i did my body would deff start to breakdown from the fact that i didnt wanna compromise schoolwork with jobs.. so just read ahead know this experience is from a student who was able to attend focusing only on school work for most of the time!

the biggest thing is knowing art school is not required to become a professional in either freelancing or industry! there are a huuuge amount of online tools and classes these days that provide the exact same education and for cheaper too. i think it depends on what experience you prefer/can handle/want but it’s definitely possible to make art/animation art your living without higher education. the thing that college will for sure give you though is the ability to meet deadlines, work even when you dont want to, and connections with peers+teachers. i think the connections part is invaluable because you’re basically coming out with a network of people you already know and who know you! 

also its good to know if you want to attend/can handle art school! it’s a lot of time and energy and students get burned out really fast. the best piece of advice i got before going was ‘if you draw every single day, even if its for only like 5-10 minutes or a doodle for a whole year you should be fine’ consistency is super key because you’re attending school to draw, and you’ll have to create work for stuff you aren’t excited for at some point or another. burnout is extremely real and the only reason i didn’t experience it was probably because i got super into drawing naruto fanart again inbetween sophomore and junior year! it helped give me something to draw seperated from school which is the only thing i was drawing for since i had entered rip. a heads up id also consider myself a workaholic so i fit in ok with the ‘art school’ environment but it is suuper unhealthy. if you are fantastic at managing your schedule then it’s definitely possible to take care of yourself! freshman year i got 8 hours a sleep a night and only pulled all nighters for some second semester finals at the end. sophomore year + up though i ended up prioritizing hw over sleep and like for sure, definitely shortened my life span. there’s another q down below where i’ll go more into detail but ya, be careful w ur work balance!

another tip especially for animation is knowing for a fact what type of animation you’re looking to go into, and what the school is offering. I didn’t think i’d get into art school at the time so i only applied to two places + decided if i didnt get into either id attend community to get credits out of the way while building portfolio. honestly? i did not do a lot of research LOL but like i did end up having the chance to tour and stuff! just know that each school will have a very different curriculum. The main differences are schools that prioritize 3D (cg animation, cg modeling, ect) and 2D/traditional (hand drawn, ‘oldschool’, digital or traditional based) this is a huge difference so make sure you do research for it! in most cases a 2D/traditional program will also offer 3D since it’s at the forefront of the industry animation wise rn. My school taught 2D but like hand drawn on physical paper 2D, frame by frame. while it was a good experience it’s super outdated because digital tools make it way faster + easier! i’d recommend looking for a program that is digital 2D over traditional 2D. 

if after your senior year covid is still affecting campuses in the US to keep them shut down i’d recommend attending a community college to get credits and then transferring into school. one of the negatives is paying money for gened classes when ur not there for them; if you can get them out of the way sooner and cheaper there is absolutely no negative + you could graduate earlier or use the extra time for better work or to work a job! 

these are all the general tips i think i’d give on like a broad basis of attending or not to think about? let me know if u have more q’s! someone asked q’s im answering below that go more into personal experiences + work culture so heres those:

- how many hours a week do u spend studying, in class, otherwise making art? like how much of ur life does it consume?

I was basically working on art.... 24/7! since i wasnt working a job at the same time i crammed as many credits as possible into my schedule so on avg i did 18 credit semesters (around 6 classes) art classes go for 6 hours and non art go for 3, so i’d spent around 30-35 hours in class a week! hw wise it varied on the class but combined it would be around 35-50 hours a week... im guessing? on average studio classes would have 8-10 hours of hw, maybe 5 for a light week, and gened classes 5 hours w them all combined. or this was probably how things were before junior year? junior+senior year i had thesis + everything else ontop.. i’d spend around 30-40 hours on thesis a week with other classes ontop of that bc my film was super long cus im a dummy! 

- is it hard going to art school n realising that altho u were probably quite talented… so is everyone else? Like. all of a sudden. ur not special and everyone seems as good as u, you know? More generally, how do u deal with comparison?

kinda?? i think instead of the idea of like you vs others it feels more of like a competition at first to be the best. this varies hugely on school culture though; my animation year was really friendly with each other and get along extremely well, so my answer to this is v different than some others who attended different schools. i think that the idea of ‘comparison’ only lasts a portion of the first year because at some point you realize that it’s not a who’s better as much as its a ‘these are my coworkers’ type thing? like healthy competition 100% because we’re all working to improve but i think most of us learned pretty early on that viewing each other as peers going into the same workforce helped a lot. also at some point everyone develops their own style/starts to develop their artistic preferences so there isn’t a way to compare whos 'better’ anymore? i dont think there ever is tbh because style is appealing based off of an individuals preferences. If anything realizing everyone else is also amazing makes you wanna work harder ig? or thats how i felt! it’s inspiring to be surrounded by so many people who create such amazing work. 

- is there a lot of workaholic culture? all nighter culture?

100000% there can be a workaholic and all nighter culture. i know people who avoided it and thats honestly fantastic because i fall super easily into that pit. sometimes i’ll pull all nighters on a personal project just because i really want to finish it... i am definitely considered a workaholic all the way through and its not healthy rip... i’d estimate at the worst i was pulling 2-3 all nighters a week and only 4-5 hours of sleep on the nights i didn’t? that was only for one year tho, after that i was like yeah ok this is really bad for my health in the long run LOL so i tried to cut it down to one all nighter a week and around 5-6 hours of sleep the rest of the week! by senior year my decision to cram in full semesters paid off and i was able to consistently get around 7 hours of sleep a night + no all nighters minus finals since my schedule was lighter despite thesis 😭 while there is that culture i don’t think people view it as like a badge of honor or something to be proud of anymore which is good, we mostly view it as a flaw of the art school system and something that needs to be fixed!!

- are you glad u did it? how did u know it was what u wanted?

i am glad i did it! i’m definitely in a limbo right now of if it was worth both my time, money, and my parents money rip but i think with what i got out of it i definitely wouldn’t be as far skill wise or knowledge wise when it comes to the art industry. i would say it was only worth it for be because i had so much support going in though so i was able to focus so much on improving. if i had only been able to put in part of the effort and not make full use of the resources provided i would honestly have a different answer.. 

i knew it was what i wanted when i realized i really couldn’t see myself pursuing a different profession happily! despite all the bumps and stuff im fully in love with drawing still and feel honored that it’s a field that can provide a living. my second profession choice was to go into culinary school? and third option i think going was into music cus i was also a band kid hehe.  

- how do u cope with ur hobby becoming ur job? how do u deal with art going from something u do for fun to something u do on command constantly?

i think seperating work art from personal art is important! in my case im doubling naruto into being personal work so i have something to fall back onto that isn’t work related. its been a hyperfixation for 12+ years? so drawing it at this point is just like personal art imo. some people have hobbies outside of art and only draw for their job! i think after attending classes for so long the idea of hobby turning into job feels extremely natural? also i enjoy doing it so thats a huge plus! 

sorry this is SO long but i hope i answered your guys’ questions! if you have more just lmk!

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

while i think OBJECTIVELY, okumura’s arc was the absolute worst, i also agree that kaneshiro’s was a close second. honestly, for me personally, kaneshiro’s is worst because of my personal hatred of makoto and the fact that the bank arc is never criticized elsewhere (usually praised for the music, makoto’s awakening, and the dungeon of all things) in comparison to okumura’s arc which is universally hated (both in story and dungeon)

I dunno if it can be objectively tbh, writing wise that is (it’s hard to say something subjective is objective in general, nothing against you just....I’ve been grappling with this myself tbh). I do think if there was a measure to something being objectively bad writing wise.......I’d ask these questions (like I’ve said, I’ve been thinking a bit on this for awhile kfdjaslfa;): Is it consistent?, Does it contradict?, Does it make sense? .....first two can be grouped together tbh (and tbh P5 is littered with all three regardless lfkdjsakf;) But yeah I do know I’m hella biased against Makoto (tho it’s because of how dungeon 3 played out that caused me to hate her) so like there’s that. 8U

Anyway time to make an argument as to why the fandom should adopt Kane as the worst arc, under cut:

Dungeon design I won’t defend it, it’s a slog (tbh anything after Mada goes on for waaaaay to long, needs more substance if they’re gonna make us slog through the dungeon for that long, gimme some cutscenes damnit), it really hurts my eyes (I love blue, tbh deserts are my worst enemy with games, cause they hurt my eyes the  most, but they did something with Oku), and I know people HATE the air lock puzzles (I love them aklfdjska;jfa they aren’t that bad tbh, you just kinda go forward). The puzzles are the only reason I don’t mind it kfldjsafj;akjf;

Ngl whenever I think of Oku’s arc writing wise I’m just...”yadda yadda bs fight, yadda yadda go into dungeon meet Haru/Mona, yadda yadda won’t make up, yadda yadda Anne found Haru, yadda yadda having a nice talk with Haru, MAKOTO CHASES HARU AWAY, yadda yadda Haru tries to run us over (did Mona tell her or did she do it on her own, this would be INTERESTING TO EXPLORE ATLUS!), yadda yadda mona got kicked, Haru in trouble, say we will help Haru, go in dungeon, Haru now full Persona, slog through dungeon, Oku’s been doing stuff people have already told us he is doing! :O SHOCKER! slog through dungeon, slog, slog, Oku fight, he bad, Oku dead, Haru says how her dad was poor. Done. 

Is it a boring ass slog where Haru gets sidelined for a dumb fight, a fight that should’ve been written better? Yeah. Now is it consistent/does it contradict? Fore the most part yeah.....I think......There are some questions raised about Goro and the Metaverse (and how Futaba is a shit Navi *cough* good job detecting him when you guys dragged him in >.>....ngl makes me think she......she’d lose to Rise/Fuuka in terms of locating, aka I don’t think locating people is Futaba’s strong suit). But everything else? Yeah, Ryu’s/Mona fight started with Futaba having a moment on the beach and built from there. Only thing really jank is I think it’s Yusuke/Anne who flip flop on thoughts on Oku (I remember this point more from the P5 crit video tbh). And PQ2 lies about why they went after Oku iirc (or there was more to what was going on and yeah....oversimplified it), but that’s PQ2. And they seem to be surprised by what’s happening to the Robots.....despite.....knowing he’s like that..... Does it make sense? Stupidly bt yes, it’s not fun and boring but yeah. Tbh I really need to refresh myself with Oku’s dungeon (I ought to pick Royal back up sakldjfa;jfl blame the move and Smite tbh), because it’s just......bare......and simple....and dumb....and shallow....and boring. (if you have something to add I’d love to hear it, I really need to refresh myself on it cause....Kane’s is just....so much worse imo). 

Ok so low key, surprised people even like the dungeon’s design. Is it cause it’s a bank? Cause it’s kinda bland, doesn’t help Kane’s the least developed antagonist in the entire game (you’d think they counterbalance not seeing him irl with the Shadow but nope). It’s just grey walls and piggy banks. Not really a puzzle (or what is one is easy/can easily have the solution looked up so it’s not really testing the player). I don’t really care for the music (I only think Sae’s and Royal’s is worth listening to iirc, but I also don’t care for P5′s music in general.....). If you like Makoto I can see you liking this dungeon (other than the music) but that’s it. I still don’t get what’s so great about her awakening. She summoned her Persona and hit enemies with it? Great. Is it cause it’s a bike? Or cause she hit enemies with it? I mean I guess if you like the bike (y’all know I hate the thing ksladjf;a so many issues and I think it looks boring/ugly tbh). I swear to god tho, if it’s because she stops her foot.....Anne literally broke out of steel/iron (?) shackles, disarmed a shadow, jumped several feet into the air while swinging a heavy ass steal(?) sword. Anne’s showcased Persona user’s strength, Makoto’s gonna need to raise the bar A LOT higher than “I stomped my foot cause I was angry and then I beat shadows with my persona-I’m special. uwu” :/ (ngl was disenchanted with Yusuke/Mako(and Futaba I guess)’s awakening, Anne’s showcased power, MC showcased blood/brutality, Ryu’s showcased the pain, Futaba’s was just P4 so nothing special, Haru’s only stood out after all that because of how hammy it was, but Yusuke/Mako/Futaba I didn’t care for cause it was stuff I already seen and wasn’t anything new). 

....anyway...onto my three questions for dungeon 3.....Is it consistent/does it contradict? .......so like.....the better question....is when doesn’t it contradict? Anne’s character? We’re gonna act like it’s more her fault so we can make Makoto look better for when we force her on the team, doesn’t matter that we’ve been showing/stating that Anne didn’t know about Kamo’s abuse towards Shiho because of the miscommunication she was having, we’re gonna make it so that she should feel guilty for not having helped Shiho....even tho she WAS helping her just for a different issue. Iirc Mona states something about having Mako be the key, and then the NEXT GOD DAMN SCENE Mako’s acts like it was her idea:

Hi key had a freaking shit fit when I saw this. What do you mean you had this thought? How many people wrote these scenes without communicating with each other???? Mona had the idea??????? Which is why we even brought you along in the first place????? The hell????? It just doesn’t feel connected at all???? 

The game acts like she’s so smart suddenly, and even takes shit that she didn’t even come up with. Acts like she can def be level headed when she LITERALLY JUST RAN INTO A MAFIA DEN CAUSE SHE WAS TINY BIT STRESSED! Claims she has all these adults on her ass, when it’s just one (who backs down when she says no...AND IT WORKS), and the other who is just trying so hard to be a parent and a sister (who they keep wishy washy so we can like her later cause see she’s not all bad! uwu poor Sae ;w;). Acts like her arc is about adults telling her what to do and getting in her way and probably the reason she didn’t help with Kamo....EVEN THO SHE SAYS SHE DIDN’T DO ANYTHING CAUSE SHE DIDN’T CARE! And while it’s contradicted in retrospect, iirc it’s in her CoOp where she’s like “being a prim and proper prez won’t help me here” (or at least claiming she was one) when like/????? no she did illegal shit this entire arc, which fkldjsaf;jskjsfadf FREAKING LAUGHABLE she is after us when she is 1) stalking, 2) taking illegal recordings, 3) taking illegal photos, 4) harassing us in general like????? you’re the criminal Makoto (tbh her, Futaba, and Goro are the real criminals of the PT skldfjajf the only illegal shit happens cause of them). 

Then there’s the plan scene:

Makoto: What’s your guy’s plan? Ryu/Yuske/whoever: We kinda just go in and look around? Makoto: oh you don’t have a plan? well good thing I’m here! Me: What’s your plan Makoto? Makoto: We’re gonna go in and look around! Me:  (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻

Pre Mako: We worked together to come up with a plan to attempt to sneak the treasure out! Post Mako: You don’t plan????? Good thing Mako’s here! We’re not going to attempt to steal the treasure by sneaking it out, instead we’re just gonna walk in there.....that’s it, no plan, and when there is one it’s gonna suck ass realistically but we’re gonna make it work through the power of ~plot convenience~! Me:  (ノಥ,_｣ಥ)ノ彡┻━┻

Mona: Oh Makoto called to apologize for getting your number via Leblanc. She must be ok! Me: Mona she threatened my livelihood, has been stalking me for weeks, wants me to go after a dangerous criminal that could risk my life AND livelihood otherwise she’ll just destroy my livelihood, wouldn’t help with our investigation one gd bit, chased away my one gd lead.....and..Do....do you think....she’s....”not bad?” Is that where your standards lie?

Game: You just need to change the person’s cognition and ya golden! Me: Well Kane said we are his customers, can we get in without Mako? Game: Nope! Me: Why? Game: We just need her in the plot is all. Me: But we COULD go without her. Game: 

Me: ????? BUT YOU WROTE THOSE RULES AND SAID THAT THEY WERE KANE’S CUSTOMERS?????!!!

Me: So Makoto can ride her Persona....that kinda shows they can all touch their Personas. Game: .......... Me: Why didn’t they try riding their Personas up to Kane in the first place?  Game: .......only Arsene has wings..... Me: I’m sorry but as Pennywise would say, “They all float down here.”  Game: 

PT: Man we sure do need a target! I wonder if there are any good leads Me: We literally just heard a rumor on the train this morning about a mob boss- PT: Man sure is sad we have no knew leads. u_u Me: I swear to god, I’m this close......I’m THIS close..... 

On a non Makoto related BS thing the game does this dungeon: PT: We need to go after bad guys! Me: What about going after the ones the police are going after! PT: No because they’ll take the credit. Me: Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow this says so much about your character, I thought it didn’t matter unless we were helping other’s? Did I just get teleported to the 5th dungeon for a sec? What’s with this BULLSHIT?  I get you need popularity for Mementos but first and foremost was helping people right? I’m not just bullshitting myself right???? So you mean to tell me, before it actually even went to your head, you already cared about popularity over helping people in general? Holy shit. You know, I give Junpei a lot of shit, but at least he and Yosuke have the integrity to keep doing what they need to do and not deciding not to do their damn job because people aren’t noticing them. You guys are horrible heroes. 

So yeah it’s not just Mako (or because of Mako, but most of it is because of Mako) that messes up the team/writing, even when she’s not related we get lovely pieces like that. It’s inconsistent and contradictory (Futaba is just as bad, it’s just aimed a lore elements that can easily be missed, rather than character/plot writing like Mako’s arc is). Lemme tell you, I’m literally having a shit fit every 2 seconds (btw I can go on about a 2 hour rant with probs each line like that’s how much I get tilted with this dungeon and it’s BS, lying straight to my face they think they can well I’ll just scream into the void! >XO) with both Mako/Futaba, but esp Mako. Oku’s might have a few contradictions or inconsistencies, but nowhere NEAR as many as Mako’s does. 

So now it begs the question.....does it make sense? No. Absolutely not. With that many inconsistencies/contradictions......how can it? Hell the premise makes no gd sense even knowing Humpty Dumpty is with the evil organization. Using her would make no sense, hell he has like a few suspects he could EASILY make a list without even asking around school (both Volleyball teams+track team+Ryuji+MC+Anne because he admitted to all that on stage next to the guy!) Hell it makes no sense why he’s part of the conspiracy when like......his position seems to do nothing for them. It’s just there for bullshit reasons, and to make Mako be put into a bullshit situation, it’d make more sense to hire Goro than ask a normal high school student to play detective (even tho Goro is probs the other one who provided a list, the hell are they asking the principal when they already used Goro?????) Hell, Kane targeting Syujin kids makes no sense, esp when their uniform is very recognizable! 1) They are already in the news for controversy (so unneeded attention), and 2) they’re connected to a fellow conspiracy member, why would you knowingly want to screw him over???? It just makes the conspiracy look dumber than they already look. 

Then there’s also the fact chars act dumber, either to make Mako look smarter, or to make it so she can join the team later. The whole arc smells of plot contrivance AND plot convenience. Literally bending over backwards to justify her joining when....the game accidentally wrote almost every way she didn’t need to join. 1) Found out about Kane before her, 2) Found his name without her help, 3) could use Personas to fly up to his dungeon if they tried it, 4) if for some stupid reason they couldn’t, they’d just make one of them a customer (hell probs just need to “join a scheme” like the other high school kids with the lackeys rather than run into his den himself, Kane seems to keep track of everyone) The game just doesn’t need her, but it realizes that and has to inconvenience itself and twist itself around to try to justify her. 

And this is probably only scratching the surface cause....it’s late.....but this is what I remember off the top of my head at 5 am. 

Like Oku’s is bad, but Kane’s is abysmal (oh, and at least with Oku we kinda KNOW why he’s crazy about power, Kane is more vague, which isn’t good for an already underdeveloped char). I don’t know why the fandom signed off on Oku being the worst when Kane’s around. Or even that “the game gets better when Futaba joins” (it doesn’t, the game was on a decline since Kamo’s dungeon, Futaba was just an apparent uptick from Mako, mostly cause it lacks the character/story assassination that Mako’s had) when the freaking way they handle mental illness should be a big red flag for everyone (the lore stuff? def will go over newbies heads, I get not everyone is a lore whore like me but c’mon, some stuff does make you question it tho even when you only look at P5). 

But yeah I think Kane’s has more writing issues than Oku’s does. Oku’s writing is bland, with one of the worst dungeons, but Kane has the worst writing and a very bland dungeon when you just....look at it.Kane does get shit, but I don’t know why Oku gets more shit, I get gameplay wise the dungeon can be frustrating, but my god......the writing in Kane is......just horrible all around.  

[hqolympia]

chicago’s very own 𝐎𝐋𝐘𝐌𝐏𝐈𝐀 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐕𝐄 has been spotted on madison avenue driving a chevrolet corvette z06 , welcome ! your resemblance to 𝒃𝒂𝒓𝒃𝒂𝒓𝒂 𝒑𝒂𝒍𝒗𝒊𝒏 is unreal . according to tmz , you just had your 𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒓𝒅 birthday bash . your chance of surviving new york is uncertain because you’re 𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒄𝒊𝒔𝒊𝒗𝒆 , but being 𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒍𝒆 might help you . i think being a 𝒈𝒆𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒊 explains that .  3 things that would paint a better picture of you would be 𝐦𝐢𝐝𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐰𝐧 ,  𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐳𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐧 & 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐭 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 . 

hi ,  peachy !  my  name’s  char  &  that  smile  of  yours  is  making  my  heart  melt !  🥺 allow  me  to  introduce  u  to  my  fren  over  here !

full name :  olympia  giselle  hargrove

nickname :  oly ,  pia  (tho, the latter one is reserved for her grandmother)

date of birth :  may  22nd , 1997  (23) 

birth place :  chicago , il

sexual orientation : pansexual

occupation :  competitive diver

labels :  the  crimson  /  the  icarian

𝐢.  𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

one :  picture a little girl with bright blue eyes, pigtails bouncing with every step she takes as a grin makes its way upon her face . she seems happy ---- and in the moment she truly is, despite the fact that the people she needs the most, her parents, are a few thousand miles away and aren’t here to see olympia say her first words or take her first step. she is too young to understand --- honestly, too young to even think about the reasons why they left her.

two :  she is a little bit older now, a full-on eleven years old --- taller, thinner and, most importantly, rowdier. she has quite a few friends, although they all seem to be having picnics with their barbie dolls and sleepovers dedicated to watching princess movies whereas olympia wants to run around and jump all over the place. the girls just don’t seem to match her energy, the boys aren’t exactly welcoming towards her, having this stupid, “ew, but you’re a girl!” mindset. she just wants to find something for herself, something that will keep her interested for longer than three hours ---- that something turned out to be diving.

three :  it’s a few years later, and now she’s standing at the 10m platform. it’s her last dive, and she needs to get it exactly right to win the gold medal. olympia would honestly be lying if she said her legs weren’t shaking because of how nervous she was --- but there’s a camera right in front of her face, therefore she has to keep it together. she turns around, takes one last breath, and then she’s up in the air. fifteen seconds later she’s fully submerged into water ----- and fifteen minutes later she has tears coming out of her eyes. she did it. she’s the world champion now.

four : it’s exactly a year later, and a lot has changed. olympia finds herself in the sunny city of rio de janeiro where she’s come to compete in her first olympic games --- which is exactly what she’s always been meant to do, judging by the name her parents gave her. except this time she’s nervous for an entirely different reason --- she’s now a successful athlete, this season’s leader and the one to watch out for. she’s the reigning world champion, for god’s sake, so she has to prove every single person out there she didn’t win on an accident. a lot of things seem to be going wrong; from oly flubbing her first dive to her coach coming up to her before her final one to say that her parents have showed up at the arena. eventually she finds herself in the same exact position as she did back in Russia ---- her palms are sweating, her legs are shaking, but there’s no turning back. the only way is down, so she has to dive one way or another. a jump, two somersaults, a twist ----- she’s back in the pool, and as she immediately drowns in the roar coming from the audience, tears start coming out of her eyes. she did it again. she’s lived up to her name.

five :  ever since she got back home, her life has completely changed. interview after interview, a campaign after a photoshoot, an event after the other ---- all of that mixed in with her training routine has it ups and downs. her schedule keeps her busy yet there’s something missing. she’s looking everywhere in the hopes of finding that missing piece, and at some point she feels like she’s found it in the face of a stranger who ends up in her bed that night. it brings her a sense of serenity, that lasts a few weeks ---- but olympia knows it’s all too good to be true, and it’s proven to be that way as she stumbles upon a certain page on a random night. it doesn’t seem real at first, but when she spots a tattoo on the girl’s ribcage, a realization hits her ---- she’s plastered all over porn sites, and that particular video featuring her has generated a few million views in a span of two months. she doesn’t remember the night at first due to her drunken state, but she recognizes her bedroom, particularly a personalized louis vuitton gym bag sitting in the corner. details like that help her piece the night together, and from that point on there’s nothing but fear of it all coming out and ruining her career.

𝐢𝐢.  𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀

basically ! this intro is all over the place so here are some bullet points to get u up to speed !

oly was born in chicago but grew up and spent most of her time in toronto with her grandmother, since her parents were setting up their business overseas. they were coming by to visit her maybe once or twice a year, so she isn’t as close with them.

she is a competitive diver (a quite decorated one bc .... why wouldn’t she be 🥺🥺🥺)  representing canada bc of her upbringing despite the fact that she now lives in new york (she moved here in 2017, after the rio olympics)

astrology wise, she is a gemini sun cancer rising .... so sorry to all of u for this

her placements mean that she is quite creative, capricious and may appear manic sometimes --- but really she is just downright STUPID bc she is always trying to get her ass into trouble. like, you can’t even imagine how many times her coach had to drag her out of the mess she got herself into ... 

she is very much about having sympathy for others and helping them and whatnot, but unbeknownst to her, these tendencies can be explained by the “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” mindset. she has to keep her act straight, so getting onto someone’s bad side isn’t in the cards for her --- god knows what kind of shit she may end up in now that she’s a part of ... this world of glamour and fame, u kno?

olympia also really loves to talk, preach, argue --- just do whatever to be heard

in her free time (the time when she doesn’t feel like wreaking havoc tbh) she usually cooks deserts (vegan banana pudding? blackberry sorbet? key lime cheesecake? u want it, u got it!), reads books (painted veil by somerset is her ultimate FAV) and ... drives around town whilst listening to some cheesy music 🥺 

other than that her usual routine consists of training, clubbing and messing shit up due to the chaotic stupid personality !

𝐢𝐢𝐢.  𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒

i promise this intro won’t be that long ... after this ! 🤠🤠🤠these are just the few ideas i can get off the top of my head so ... there’s always room for brainstorming ! :-)

𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐓 𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐃 / close friends --- everybody needs some sort of a support system in their life, and oly is no exception to this rule. she’s never really had a big family, therefore she’s always surrounded herself with people in the hopes of filling the empty space in her heart. and honestly, if it wasn’t for these people, she would’ve quit diving right after winning the olympics, moved to the suburbs of toronto and just lived a quiet life --- but the pride for her friends just gives her enough motivation to move further and become better.

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐒 𝐈𝐍 𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐌𝐄 / best friend --- we all have that someone who’s impossibly close to us; who we cannot imagine our lives without. the bond is so crucial to them both parties that it feels as if there’s never been a moment without each other. the general public and tabloids, though, feel as if there’s more going on and will not stop nagging them about the details.

𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐘 𝐃𝐄𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐃 / friends drifted apart / exes --- as weird as it is, oly is very much a yolo person. in addition to that, she has a ton of love and devotion for every single person she’s ever had in her life no matter what happened between them or what caused them to drift apart. though, her ever-changing nature is known to drive people away which, tbh, happens to be a blessing and a curse -- it helps oly sort of “filter” through her circle of friends, but then again, if someone enters her life, they leave and undeniable impact on it. therefore, she misses whoever left her life more than they could ever imagine.

𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐘𝐁𝐎𝐃𝐘 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐒 𝐘𝐎𝐔 / rival (?) --- olympia isn’t perfect in any way, shape or form. she knows that, but most importantly, the public knows that and will not stop critiquing every little thing that she does. this person, though, is the exact opposite - the public LOVES them to the point where even olympia’s parents would probably say things like “ugh, i wish you could be more like that!”. this makes the relationship between the two quite ... strained. because as much as olympia may love them as a person, there’s always this lingering sense of jealousy that just enables her petty side.

𝐢𝐯. 𝐎𝐎𝐂

ok so ! if you’ve reached this part of my intro ... i cannot thank u enough bc this ?? this is long as HECK but i wanted to actually try and describe the kind of muse i envision in my head. i love u all a latte & if u feel like plotting w/ my dumb kid, leave a like on this post or feel free to mssg me on discord under futurenostalgias#1692 🤠sidenote tho: i’ll probably get to the mssgs in a few hours seeing as i have a few assignments to complete and i’m sorta braindead ... love u , cannot wait to write w/ u ! xoxo ur friendly neighborhood trash char