#that fucking x from that object youtube series or whatever

[year2000electronics]

turning off reblogs preemptively bc im nervous about annoying people finding this but honestly why in the world was benrey included in the s*xyman "people wanted to FUCK this thing" type posts. like hes literally just a low poly model of a human man. and dont play semantics with me that 'well thats how hes depicted so its weird that people wanted to fuck a low poly model' did you know that back in the day, video game graphics were still not powerful enough to render complex faces so people would often have to extrapolate what people looked like using the medium of art and also their imagination? thats crazy. thats crazy what youre telling me.

[happylandfill23]

hey babes x

welcome to my lovely little dumpster that may or may not be on fire hope ya have a great stay! here's a lil about me woohoo

☆ i'm ember aka the evil bisexual alien from pluto. or something. use whatever pronouns 4 me idc go wild

☆ i luv making art!! my art tag is styrofoamm if ya wanna check it out <3

☆ FREE PALESTINE 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸 don't forget to do your daily click! and here are palestinian blogs that have reached out to me

☆ more about me under the cut xoxo

where can u find me??? other than the bog. ofc

☆ my other blogs! -- @styrofoamm (art blog), @ask-cyberdevils (oc ask blog), @murdocniccalsreactionimages (exactly what it sounds like), and cyberdevils' blogs totally not mine - @gu1t4rf41ry (pixie), @acexofxspades (ace), and @shags-shags (shags)

☆ youtube (i post song covers n art-related stuff mainly. but i also just kind of do whatever y'know a bit like this blog but probably slightly less annoying probably)

☆ spotify (self explanitory. js playlists no original music btw lol)

for a more comprehensive list/info on my tagging system, here's my links page from my custom blog setup :] (there's fun stuff in there!!)

i have a lot of interests. yay

☆ damon albarn's numerous projects (gorillaz, blur, the good the bad & the queen, solo music, etc) as well as jamie hewlett's numerous projects (gorillaz once again, tank girl, phoo action/get the freebies, the 16s even tho there's not much content of it i just think they're neat dot jpeg, etc)

☆ manic street preachers!!!!!!!!!!!!!

☆ more britpop/britpop-adjacent stuff (elastica!!!!!!, suede, pulp, lush, oasis, the stone roses, etc etc)

☆ other music too (bikini kill, nine inch nails, björk, fiona apple, skinny puppy, einstürzende neubauten, joy division, siouxsie and the banshees, david bowie, MF DOOM, mars argo, nirvana, julie, my chemical romance, poppy, radiohead, and i'm going to stop now. sorry there's so many jesus fuck)

☆ the mighty boosh!!!!!! (vince noir ily. my special little princess)

☆ scott pilgrim :] (the comics, the movie, and the series! especially the series actually. never played the video game tho)

☆ um i luv comic stuff. and i plan on making comics in the future. i like a lot of comic stuff (tank girl, scott pilgrim as i mentioned b4, heartstopper, the st. hell series, nimona, the junji ito collection, etc) i also like reading books in general (some faves r the bell jar, solitaire, the spirit bares its teeth, and no longer human)

☆ daria/beavis and butthead

☆ i like movies too. woohoo (tank girl, rocky horror picture show, scott pilgrim again lol, velvet goldmine, perfect blue, nimona, labyrinth, the machinist, corpse bride, atomic blonde, and other stuff too i'm avoiding saying 'etc' again bcuz i've said it a lot)

☆ moomin! as u can tell from my moomin cookie dividers yippee hooray (ily moomin shop i hope i go again soon <3)

☆ collecting objects such as records/cds (maybe i'll show off my respective collections of those sometime), buttons, soda can tabs, cool rocks, small broken pieces of things that used to be something such as zippers or little fake rhinestones or perhaps the tops of acorns

☆ goin 2 concerts!! in order 4 the most part i've seen (not counting th openers) taylor swift (oh yeah ember lore i was super into her as a kid), depeche mode (2x), the rolling stones, queen w/ adam lambert, gorillaz, julie (2x), foo fighters, bikini kill, fontaines d.c., and paul mccartney!! my next stops r hopefully deftones, poppy, and/or pixies

ok that's enough interests 4 now figure everything else out on yr own lmao

currently reading: self-portraits by osamu dazai

currently watching: the day of the jackal, limmy's show!, the mighty boosh

currently listening to on perpetual loop: for tomorrow by blur, revolving doors by gorillaz, satellite of love by lou reed

spotify playlist of my current faves (hopefully i'll remember to update it regularly lmao)

that's all!

thanks 4 stoppin by lol i hope i haven't scared u off yet with my strange demeanor xx

divider here!

[crowhyun]

LEVEL INFINITY

Chapter One

Chapter Warnings: cursing, monsters

Pairing(s): (Y/N) x ???

Series Warnings: eventual smut, death, blood, kinda scary

Masterlist

Next

"Beomgyu, no..." You said, your eyes widening at the game the boy slammed down on the table.

"Beomgyu, yes!" He said with a wicked smile.

"You're a fucking idiot." Taehyun said. "An Ouija board would've been safer than this."

"Do you guys actually believe those dumb creepy pasta YouTube videos?" Beomgyu scoffed. "They're just fake, and the game is probably fun."

You looked at the board game with weary eyes. 'Level Infinity' it read. You’ve seen the videos hundreds of times. You play the game, and the game plays you. "Beomgyu, this isn't a good idea. I'm not playing."

"Oh, come on." Beomgyu pouted. "We have nothing else to do."

"We could maybe go to sleep? It's three AM." Taehyun said.

"Despite the name, you actually don't go to sleep in sleepovers." Beomgyu retorted. "Come on, guys, just one game? One? Then we'll go to sleep. Creepy pastas aren't real, they're just to scare you."

"I fucking swear Beomgyu- one game." Taehyun rolled his eyes. Beomgyu's eyes lit up at this then he looked at you. You didn't even want to play the stupid game, but you also didn't want to be left out. Who knows? It could be fun.

"I guess I'll play..." You said.

"Yes!" Beomgyu exclaimed. "Okay guys, choose your characters. I choose...this one." Beomgyu held up a scary looking character with tentacles coming from its back. "Reminds me of slendy."

"He's so weird..." Taehyun murmured under his breath. "I'll take this one." He picked one with large claws for hands.

"These characters are weird. What's the point of them looking like that?" You said, frowning.

"I don't know, girl, pick one." Beomgyu said, wanting to get on with the game.

You looked them over. There was one with horns on its head, one with wings that had sharp looking feathers, and one with a creepy looking smile.

"I guess I'll pick this one." You picked the one with the wings.

"Finally, now let me go over the rules." Beomgyu searched for the paper rules in the box before pulling out a single sheet that looked like it was worn with time. "Hm...so it says to start at the 'begin' square and roll the... dodecahedron...? Whatever that is. Anyways, after you get past this red square, you have to pick a card to tell you what to do next on your next turn. Sounds easy enough. Let's play."

"Okay, but what’s the final objective? Is there any more on the paper?" You asked.

"Nope, that was it." Beomgyu shrugged.

"Well, I'm going first since I'm the mature one." Taehyun said. You rolled your eyes. He always said that, when in reality, he was no more mature than the both of you. He grabbed the 12-sided dye, and tossed it across the board. You watched it tumble around until it landed on six. He moved his character past the red square, which was square four.

"My turn." Beomgyu said before you could and he snatched the dice, rolling it. After watching in suspense, it landed on the number 9. "Ooh, I got further than Taehyun, ha."

You rolled your eyes, then rolled the dice after Beomgyu moved his character. You pouted when it landed on one, making Beomgyu and Taehyun laugh.

"This shit's rigged..." You mumbled, moving your winged character a mere step.

"I gotta get a card now?" Taehyun asked and Beomgyu nodded. Taehyun grabbed one of the red cards and flipped it over to read it. "The smilers may be too hostile. Move up one square...whatever that means." He moved up one square.

"How do you not know what a smiler is?" Beomgyu scoffed. "Good thing you moved up one square, smilers are dangerous." Beomgyu then picked up a card as well. "You may be suited for the skinners. If you believe so. Move 0 squares. Ugh, whatever."

"Beomgyu, what's a smiler and a skinner?" You asked him, confused with what this all meant. "Shouldn't there be an info card somewhere? Or at least some descriptions?"

"Is there anything on the box?" Taehyun asked, and Beomgyu looked at the box, but all it had was the title and absolutely nothing else. Beomgyu shrugged.

"It's a poorly made game that originated from social media." Beomgyu said. "(Y/N), your turn. We'll just see how everything turns out, I guess."

You sighed, slowly starting to become uninterested in this game. You rolled the die, it stopping at zero. "There's a zero?!"

"Huh? It's a dodecahedron, there is no zero." Taehyun said.

"Well, apparently, you're wrong, because it clearly says zero right there." You pointed to it.

"Then where did the one go? You rolled a one the first time." Beomgyu frowned, picking up the die and looking at each side for the one. Once he turned it back around, he paused. "What? Guys, I think I'm going crazy."

"What is it?" Taehyun asked with interest.

"The one is right here, but it's where the zero was." Beomgyu said.

"What are you talking about? Give me that." Taehyun snatched the die out of Beomgyu's hand, examining it for himself. After a couple of seconds, he looked back up at you guys with wide eyes.

"He's right. There's no zero, now." He handed it to you to see, but all you got was confusion.

"What do you guys mean?" You said. "There is no one, it's a zero." You looked all around the die, searching for the one, but it still had a zero on the spot that it landed on. "Is this a fucking joke? Don't do that to me, guys."

"Do what? There's no zero on it!" Beomgyu frowned. "It said zero at first, but for some reason, it's a one now. Are you blind?"

"Yah, (Y/N), be serious right now." Taehyun said in a scolding tone.

"I am being serious, I literally don't see a one on this die right now. It goes from zero to two." You said, trying to show them what you saw. Taehyun and Beomgyu looked at each other in silence, then looked at me as if I was crazy. "This is fucking weird, I don't want to play this game anymore." You tossed the die on the board, and tried to get up so you could get a snack, but for some reason, you plopped right back on the ground, hard.

"Oh my god, (Y/N)!" Beomgyu said, pointing to your feet, and you thought he was just being over-dramatic as usual, but once you saw genuine fear in his eyes, you quickly looked down at your feet. Instead of seeing your black socks, you saw what looked like a highly pixelated 2D surface.

"What the actual fuck?!" Taehyun said, trying to scoot back on the floor, but nearly falling on his back due to his hand that was in the same condition as your feet. He looked at his pixelated hand in fear and he held his wrist in front of him.

"Guys, please tell me that you two are playing a prank on me." Beomgyu gulped. "I don't know how you two are doing it, but it's not funny."

"Does this look like a prank to you?!" Taehyun yelled in anger and frustration, making Beomgyu flinch back. Your breathing was labored and it felt like you were going to barf as the pixels started to spread up your leg.

"It's spreading!" You panicked.

"M-maybe it's the game..." Beomgyu said, and there's nothing more you wanted to do at that moment but chuck a textbook at his head.

"Maybe it's the game..." Taehyun repeated with a humorless chuckle and wide eyes, showing that he believed Beomgyu was a sack of shit right now.

Beomgyu reached for the box only to notice that both of his hands were pixelated and it was visibly moving up the expanse of his arms quicker than yours and Taehyun’s were spreading.

"Holy shit..." Beomgyu whispered, looking at his hands. At this point, you had nothing much to do or say as you slowly began to change into a silhouette of pixels.

"This must be a nightmare..." You said.

"Yeah, well we'll see about that, because we're turning into game characters, apparently." Taehyun said, the pixels up to his chest by now. Beomgyu loudly gasped, and the both of you looked at him as your chests heaved in fear.

"G-game characters?" He said, then after a couple of seconds of silence. "Jumanji!"

You looked at him in disbelief, and you couldn't stop myself from trying to lunge at him to put him in a choke hold. You could potentially be dying, you could be drugged somehow, anything, and this mother fucker compares this to Jumanji? Before your pixelated hands could even come in contact with Beomgyu's neck, or any other part of his body, he suddenly wasn't there anymore.

"Uh, Taehyun..." You said in a shaky tone to the boy who was seemingly mesmerized by his own pixelated body. He looked up. "Beomgyu's gone."

"Wha-'' He stuttered. "What the fuck happened to Beomgyu?!"

"H-he just disappeared!" You said. "Is it because he said jumanji?" You seriously asked with a tone of misplaced realization. Taehyun looked at you as if he wanted to punch you at that moment, but that was the last thing you saw before he suddenly fully pixelated and then disappeared just like Beomgyu did, right before your eyes. "Holy shit...this isn't a prank. Maybe I'm just dreaming." You now spoke to yourself as tears started to well up in your eyes, and the pixels went up to your neck. "It's just a dream, (Y/N), it's just a dream." You shut your eyes tight, hoping by the time you opened them, you’d wake when the sun is up with Beomgyu and Taehyun safe and sound by your side. "Wake up, (Y/N), wake up."

After a couple of seconds, you finally opened your eyes. But...You weren't where you wanted to be. You were no longer pixelated, which was great, but you also weren't in your room anymore and your best friends weren't by your side. In fact, you were completely alone in an empty space of a building, it looked like. You looked around, your body frozen in fear and confusion. It seemed as if you were in an office building, but there was nothing inside of it. There were hallways stretching out past corners that weren't visible to you from where you stood, and the buzzing of the fluorescent lights filled in the silence. The carpets were dirty and damp, and the walls were covered with yellowed wallpaper.

"Beom...Beomgyu?" You called out softly. "Taehyun?" You didn't know what to expect. There was obviously no one here, wherever here was. The scariest part of all this was that it felt too real. It could've been a lucid dream, yes, but even lucid dreams don't feel this real.

You looked down at your hands, but was startled to see that you were wearing something completely different than your pink pajamas. You were wearing all black, instead, long black sleeves and black pants. The one thing that intrigued you the most was the number zero on the back of your hand. It was like a thick black ink tattoo was plastered right there, and you caressed it to see if it was real. Like you would have imagined, it didn't budge. Even at the age of 19, your mother wouldn't allow you to get a tattoo, so you didn't know where this could've come from, or how it appeared, anyways. You paid no mind to it, focusing your energy on the fact that you were in a creepy, empty place with no sign of Taehyun or Beomgyu.

Instead of just standing out in the open, you decided to finally move. Maybe if you walked around a bit, you’d be able to tell where you were. There were no windows as far as you could see, and it seemed like the buzzing of the fluorescent lights slowly got louder. You shook my head, ignoring the buzzing, and started walking down the corridor. You took many turns and twists, but no matter where you turned, there seemed to be no exit. There were no doors, no stairways, no objects, nothing. Just walls going on for what seemed like miles.

As you continued walking, I felt as if you were going crazy. You must've been walking around in circles by now, but even though the walls stayed the same, and the carpet was still so damp, you could tell that I had to be getting somewhere at least. There just had to be a door somewhere, or a window that you could climb out of. You don't know what happened at the sleepover, but as you walked, you continued to speculate on what happened.

An intruder could've come in the house, and drugged you. They could have dragged you off in different places so that you could suffer. Another reason for this could be that it was of course a dream or a lucid dream. Even thinking of the possibilities, one seemingly impossible one stood out to you. Before Beomgyu disappeared, he said that it might be the game, and brought up jumanji. Of course you thought it was stupid before, but now that you think of it...where you were really resembled the back rooms.

You were unfamiliar with the other levels of this stupid game, but if Beomgyu was right in the slightest, then you knew a way out. But, if he was right, then there would only be danger waiting for you at the other end. You didn't want to think about it, but at this rate, you could be dead soon.

Though, you could just stay here. You could stay here where it was safe and not go any further. You could wait until maybe someone else stuck here could come and help you. You thought about the Backrooms videos that Beomgyu forced you to watch so he could share his excitement. If you could remember correctly, the back rooms stretched thousands of miles. This was no ordinary building, that was obvious, but the sudden realization that you were actually in a game told me that you had to find a way out, and quick.

You feet moved faster, almost on the verge of running. You would have to no-clip out of this place. You ran your hands along the dirty walls, hoping that I could touch a somewhat glitched spot where you would end up somewhere else. As you ran, it felt like the buzzing of the lights only got louder and louder, and it was to a point where you thought they would explode.

"F-fuck..." You said, slowing down and covering your ears. The buzzing was getting to a point where it was unbearable. You cringed as you still heard it even though your hands were clasped tightly over your ears. The sound was making you delirious and the lights suddenly started flickering. "What the fuck is happening?" You spoke to yourself to try and stay grounded. You shut your mouth once you heard voices speak back. You didn't know what they were saying, but you heard them over the sound of the lights. It was as if multiple people were whispering to me in a language that sounded familiar, but you couldn't understand.

You heaved air in and out of your chest as if you couldn't breathe, and you collapsed to your knees, your hands still over your ears. You shut your eyes tight so you wouldn't see the lights flickering, but that didn't help much, as everything was so loud, it was painful. You started to think of Beomgyu and Taehyun, telling yourself that they were safe and that you’d get to see them again, to distract you from the sounds.

You then suddenly heard a loud, distorted scream, and your eyes shot open just as the lights stopped flickering, and it turned silent. There was no buzzing of the lights, either, just complete silence. You jumped once you heard the distorted scream again, but this time it was louder. This was your cue to run, and so you did. You didn't know where you were going, or what you were running from, but whatever it was was faster, as you could hear its screams louder and louder. You didn't dare to look back even though you knew it was in sight of you, now. Though, as you ran, the curiosity began to grow bigger than the fear and adrenaline. You wanted to look back. You wanted to see the entities that were so feared in the game world. And so you did.

Your legs kept moving as you looked back for just a quick peek at what was after you, and you immediately regretted it. Behind you was a large tangle of what looked like human legs and arms that were stretched to great lengths and dyed a grim black. They all moved in a heap as it ran, but there was no face or eyes. The image of it was simply terrifying, and you feared that you would soon become a part of the mess of limbs.

You turned back around before you could see any more horror, but what was facing you was a wall. Before you could stop yourself, you ran straight into the wall. Or...at least you thought you did. You didn't feel any harsh impact at all, and you also didn't hear the distorted screaming any more. You opened your eyes to find out that you were no longer in the same place as you were before.

Instead of the back rooms, you were in a large warehouse looking place. The pipes were visible on the ceiling, and for some reason, there was thin fog in the large space.

Your eyes were wide as you noticed that you no-clipped like you were planning to do, and there seemed to be no more danger. You looked behind yourself to see where you no-clipped from, and there was just the wall. You guessed that the entity that you just saw wasn't able to no-clip. You sighed in relief before the corners of my lips twitched upwards. Although you were nowhere near where you wanted to be, you were in a place where your breath could go back to normal and where the deafening sounds of the fluorescent lights weren't there. You looked at your hands, surprised when the zero on your hand turned into a one.

"That's what this must mean..." You said to myself. The numbers signified what level you were on. You were on level zero and now you’re on level one. You didn't know anything past level zero, so from this point on, everything would be new to you. Although you should be relieved, that simple fact instilled a whole new fear within you. You may have been able to escape that thing by accident, but how long would you be able to go before you could no longer escape?

You gulped, your eyes locked down on your hands. You wondered how many levels there were, and how long you’d have to go through this. You wondered if you were all alone. Beomgyu and Taehyun disappeared, but you didn’t know where they could've ended up. Maybe this was a hallucination.

You looked up, deciding that thinking of this stuff was going to drive you in a deeper hole of despair. You had to find a way to get out of here. The only sound you heard was the dripping of water from the pipes and your own footsteps as you walked through the large space. There were puddles on the concrete floor that splashed a bit when you walked through them, which made you flinch. You wondered where the water was coming from as they dripped through the pipes, and why there was fog in the air.

As you walked further, it seemed like there was no end to this space, yet it was less frightening than the twists and turns of the back rooms. If there was an entity here, then you would most likely see them clearly, but running from it would be a problem.

You suddenly stopped, as you almost tripped over a crate of some sort. The weird thing was, you didn't see a crate in your line of vision before. It was just all empty. You paused for a second, looking at the crate suspiciously. Maybe there could've been an entity inside of it, or maybe it was an entity itself. You licked my lips nervously, tapping against the wood with the tip of your thick, black shoes. It was a medium sized crate, about the height of up to your knee. It didn't seem threatening, but you still didn't know what could be inside of the crate. You contemplated ignoring it and continuing along your merry way, but this was the first inanimate object that you’ve seen since the back rooms.

Without thinking any further, you moved to push off the heavy lid off of the crate. Your curiosity just couldn't handle it anymore. After the lid tumbled to the ground, making a loud echo in the space, you looked into the crate. Instead of anything that was alive, or anything that was scary, there were things that were useful. You widened your eyes at the objects. Inside of an open black bag were cans of some sort that said 'Smiler Exterminator', bottles of almond water, and a small covered knife. You thought back to the game that Beomgyu, Taehyun, and you were playing. Beomgyu said something about smilers, and the game said something about them being hostile. You guessed that was the name of an entity here, but you doubt it was that thing that chased you in the back rooms.

You picked up the knife, slightly let down because it was so small. It wouldn't really do much to protect yourself here. You reached to take off the covering of it, so you could examine the sharpness, but as you pulled it off, what once was a small knife turned into a sword. The sound of metal slid together as the knife jumped up to four times as long as before. It frightened you at first, but after examining it, you were much more joyful of it being larger.

"That's more like it..." You said, then you stuck it back into the bag, zipping the bag up, and hoisting it over your shoulder. You were sure these items would be useful. "Now, where do I go from here...?"

You decided to continue going forward, because that has, so far, led you to a good thing. Yet, it seemed like this fog was never ending. As far as you looked, there was no wall, no door, nothing. Just a damp floor and a low ceiling. The humidity made it seem as if you were breaking out in a cold sweat, and the long sleeves of the clothing that you were in made it feel as if it was all sticking to you. How much longer will you have to travel to get to something, at least?

Your question was answered in a matter of five minutes, as you finally reached the other side of the huge warehouse. You must've walked a mile to get here. You still couldn't see any other walls of the warehouse other than the one you just approached, but that didn't matter, especially since there was a door on this wall.

It was a small door, one that you would have to crouch a little to get inside, but you were hesitant to do so in the first place. You put your ear up to the door so you could be able to hear what was going on at the other side, but you heard absolutely nothing. Could it be another warehouse? You were inwardly hoping and praying it wasn't, but there was even a chance that it could be another doorway to the back rooms.

You sighed, gulping. "It's either stay here forever in fear, or continue on." You said to yourself. You grabbed a hold of the bronze doorknob, holding it tightly in your shaking hands. You took one last deep breath before you turned the knob and cracked the door open. Peeking inside, you were surprised to see what looked like a diner.

Your heart leaped with joy and bewilderment when you saw people everywhere in this diner. They seemed happy, eating and drinking with their friends. Music played at a low volume, and it was like this place came out of a movie.

Could this be some sort of trap? You were frozen in place, not wanting to go in, but also not wanting to stay in the foggy warehouse.

That decision was made for you when you were suddenly yanked inside of the diner by an unknown person, and you heard the door shut behind you. Your eyes were wide as you frantically looked around to see what dragged you until your eyes landed on a harmless looking man.

"Y-you're not supposed to keep the door...open..." He said in a quiet voice, his eyes darting from place to place. Your eyebrows furrowed as you looked at him in confusion and in slight fear. "We keep that door closed. T-the warehouse...the warehouse is kind of dangerous, so...yeah, we keep the door c-closed."

"Where am I? What is this? Are you real?" You questioned him. He looked at you with wide eyes, and pointed towards his chest.

"Me?" He said, then paused, his eyes darting around again. "I am real. Well...I think I am real. And everyone else is real...I think. A-and this is Tom's Diner."

You shook your head, still utterly confused. "No, no, like...is this not some game or something? Who are all of you?"

"Ah! You're talking about...this? Like, as a whole, right?" He asked with big eyes, his hands motioning around so you could get the idea, and you nodded. "Sorry, I've been here for a while, so I kind of...forgot about all the levels and entities and stuff." He chuckled awkwardly. There was a couple of seconds of silence before the boy shook his head as if he was waking up from a daydream. "S-sorry, let me explain, you must be confused. Firstly, would you...like something to eat, o-or some water, or something? We have a lot of stuff here."

You paused for a second, just blinking at nothing before you slowly nodded your head. "Uh, yeah..."

He nodded, gesturing for you to follow him. You followed him to one of the tables, and he told you to wait before he went somewhere in the diner for about a minute, and he came back with a tray of burgers, french fries, and almond water. You stared at the food wide eyed, wondering exactly where this stuff was coming from.

"You're probably very hungry." The man said, sitting down and putting the tray down on the table. "It isn't real meat...by the way. I don't know what it is but it tastes good."

That frightened you a bit. Who knows what creepy entity that could be in this burger. You gulped, my mouth watering at the delicious smell. Entity or not, you were too hungry to care at this point. You bit into the burger, your eyes rolling to the back of my head at the taste. It was heavenly.

"S-should I start explaining, or do you wanna eat first...?" The boy asked.

"You can explain now." You said, mouth stuffed.

"Well...basically, you're in the Trader's Keep." He said. "This is a city surrounded by The Warehouse. The Warehouse has some entities there, but since it's so big, it's rare that you'd come in contact with one."

"A city? You live here?" You asked him, and he nodded.

"I don't know exactly how long I've been here, since time isn't really a thing here. I've heard that time goes slower in the warehouse." He said. "I was probably in the same place as you. I started in the back rooms, and I somehow ended up here. I've been too afraid to go any further since then. I've almost died nearly three times and this is only level one."

"So...you're planning on never leaving?" You asked, and he nodded once again.

"You can do the same, if you don't want to go further." He said. "It's safe here, and there's always enough food."

You thought about it for a bit. To be able to stay in one place where you’d be safe without having to go through whatever the fuck you went through in the back rooms sounded like heaven. But then, you remembered your best friends. Taehyun and Beomgyu were around somewhere, and you wouldn't be able to live with yourself if you gave up on finding them.

"I can't." You shook my head. "I came here with others. I just don't know where they are..."

"How...did you get here?" He asked.

"I'm not exactly sure, but...the last thing I was doing when I was at my home was playing a board game called level infinity with my friends." You said. He looked at you with wide eyes as he froze. Then he started looking around as if he was suddenly on edge.

"Uh, we can't be here anymore." He said, suddenly standing up. You looked at him in puzzlement. "I'll explain later. Just come with me. Please."

You stood up, holding my bag over my shoulder even though you were still confused. You followed him out of the diner, and you were met with a long hallway. There were doors lined along the hallway, each one identical except a different number on each one. You followed the boy down the long hallway and up a flight of stairs until you both approached a door that had a golden 55 plastered on it.

Next

—————————————

Taglist:

@bluesoobinnie @sweetrainwrites @satorusimpp

[trutrustories]

Okay, this will be probably long and with many errors (my english isn´t very good) But I saw several posts here on Lokius tag, talking about this ship as result of gay fetish, and about non existing chemistry and  how this ship doesn´t make sense etc… And from what I understood there is tagged Lokius because of genuine interest to understand others point of view, so here is mine: I wil try to explain where my frustration comes from, and how I feel about Lokius, Sylkie, AND representation + some other things which I saw here somewhere. But first of all: I like Sylvie, I don´t hate sylkie shipers, and after so many years reading fan fictions, I don´t mind selfcest – I read weirder things. I have some issues with this ship (the mainlythe fact that it isn´t Lokius), but  this is not one of them. Also, I am not about to tell anyone, they shouldn´t ship sylkie.Ship whatever. And I LOVED the show as a whole. 

I just want to defend my standpoint, that Lokius does make sense, people shipping it does make sense and whether it will happen or not, (I don´t have my hopes very high, and I learned to be very skeptical in this regard ) it is more than just about crack ship, or fetish. I´m honestly blown away that people are still surprised that this ship became a thing :D First of all, let´s look at some romantic story telling and tropes: I mean the way they introduced them in the first two episodes set the tone for all series and how the heck this isn´t romantic? Somehow there are all these romantic tropes existing in a show. They´re just there. Just chilling between Loki and Mobius and large portion of audience can´t even see them. (and some of those tropes were used for Sylki as well, so you could actually see them side by side)

For example: 1) traveling to the apocalypsis 2) breaking law/rules for the other 3) literally changing for the better thanks to the other 4) arguing like old married couple 5) saying secrets, personal things to the other 6) sharing glances, touches, visibly being happy around each other - in case of Loki happier then we´ve ever seen him before 7) being completely themselfs around each other 8) One knowing everything (even the worst) about other and still accepting him completely 9) teasing, being comfortable and domestic around each other 10) one being literally enthusiastic FAN of the other 11) Mobius defending Loki whenever he has a chance 12) Freaking amnesia trope that they pulled of in the end??? (It could be different Mobius, but point is he suddenly doesn´t know him - and Loki knows more, in contrast with the beggining) 13) the jealousy in ep4 14) Misunderstanding - when Mobius thought Loki betrayed him and Loki (thanks to Ravonna) thought Mobius betrayed him... 15) witnessing death of the other and being absolutely broken afterwards 16) The goodbye hug with romantic music in the backround 17) Saving life of the one (even when it means problems for the other ) - like Mobius saved Loki´s ass at least three times when he was trying to stop others from pruning him. 18) sharing deep conversations about meanings of life, freedom and how it would be fun to make some chaos and ride that fucking jet ski!!! 19) Inspiring the other 20) looking for each other (Mobius didn´t believe for a second, that Loki would die in the Void and the way how in the last minutes of the series Loki run through all places they were together when he was looking for Mobius... and I could go on. Point is, even if they are not planning to make Lokius canon, all these things are used on a daily basis to describe romance in media and they are used here. On top of that it´s just very poetic and cute, that this drama queen and powerful god of Asgard who looked down on people would find his match in someone, who is so quiet, ordinary on the first sight, and basically is just human from 90s, who loves jet skis. Mobius can´t even fight. But is highly inteligent and he also happen to be as good manipulator, such as Loki himself. - That´s why they work together so well. Mobius sees right through him and once Loki understands that, he drops his evil persona. Almost nobody expected to ship it for real. But story itself and chemistry between them just made it probably the most exciting duo in the whole MCU. And I mean it genuinely. Third episode, even though it was beautiful and Sophie was great in it (and is literally dipped in bisexual colors), is the least favorite for a reason. And that reason being, there is no interaction between Loki and Mobius whatsoever. Lot´s of people though that series slowed down a bit. Even when in fact there was more action, then when we watched Loki and Mobius working at the TVA.

(and let´s just talk about evil!Mobius narative for a bit and how some people say he is manipulative and toxic for Loki: show itself explore heavy themes and one of them is in Loki´s line: no one bad is ever truly bad and no one good is ever truly good. And as a theme in a fictional world, it is working as it should, for the  story. When Loki and Mobius meet, one of them just killed lots of innocent people and destroyed almost whole city. The other one is a part of fascist organization – and in the beginning of the series they both believe what they´re doing is right. They´re both bad, they´re both good, they´re both broken. And they are changing with the help of the other.) From all reactions I watched - and there was many of them, lots of people actually didn´t see dynamic between Loki and Sylvie as romantic in the third episode. So it´s not like Sylvie and Loki had unequivocally love story right from the start.

The only difference is that lots of people won´t see romantic tropes, when it comes to two men in a mainstream show – show that isn´t primarily about relationships and problems that queer people has to face. Because in super hero story and science fiction we have to warn audience, that they´re about to watch two man in love, right? At this point It´s just frustrating really. There were many M/M dynamics that used similar story line, as for example Lucifer, or X-files, or Bone collectors. -  But unlike those M/M pairings, no one was making fun of people for shipping main characters in these shows. But when it comes to two men suddenly you´ll see from all corners of the internet: “why can´t it be just platonic?” “There is not enough platonic relationships” “why can´t two man just be friends?” (They can and they almost ALWAYS are) and “if you think there something romantic between them, you´re delusional” “fetishist“ “And for god´s sake just let them be friends, Loki needs a friend more then....” oh wait, but Sylvie is allowed to kiss him. Sylvie doesn´t have to be just friend. (And I must say, that I love Sylvie, I liked most of the interactions between her and Loki and I think she is a great character ((I hope we learn more about her in the future)) it just doesn´t work for me as well as Loki´s dynamic with Mobius. Maybe partly because of chemistry between actors, partly because combination of characters and they´re personality and also because I had two whole episodes to fall in love with the pair before Sylvie was even introduced.)

First of all: people can be friends and then evolve into lovers. Not only it is common romantic trope, but it is also the most realistic one. And those relationships are usually strongest. second: If people want to see Loki in a platonic friendship so desperately, why can´t it be a woman for a change? They were acting like chaotic siblings for most of the episode three anyway. The age gap aspect is also very funny. Owen is only about 12 years older (That is not that much. But I imagine, some people would get uncomfortable. But If it was man and woman, most of them wouldn´t even blinked. But two men, that has to be somehow automatically son and father figure dynamic) And If you want to dive into age of an actual characters, then good luck with that in a series about gods, variants and time travel. Almost nobody cares about age gap between Lucifer and detective Decker, or Bella and Edward. On top of that, it was heavily implied, that Loki slept with older, silver haired guy in Ragnarok, so it´s not like he would have problem with that.

Different standards are projected in a way how we see romantic dynamics between fictional characters depends on what we are used to, how are we perceiving world around us, what we are expecting to see and ALSO, what we would like to see, that much is true.  When people are used to make no differences between heterosexual and homosexual pairing, then everything what happens to the characters is measured with the same meter. (Even though I experienced queerbaiting many times (( Once upon a time, Sherlock, Supernatural, Good Omens – the last one hopefully is not the case, but I guess we´ll see)) I also saw lots of lgbt shows like Queer as folks and Sense8.) And when we are not used to see it the same way, well… then it looks basically like that one comment under Castiel´s “I love you” scene on youtube, that said  “what a beautiful friendship”.

If we forget about all that chaotic mess behind the scenes (all those articles and contrary messages)  What is happening in a show between Loki and Mobius can be objectively considered romantic and what is happening between Loki and Sylvie in a series can be objectively considered platonic (until the kiss) and vice versa.  And then to see comments about how absurd it is to even think they have chemistry, and about gay fetish - it´s hard to swallow. I read posts about absurdity of a ship and how there is absolutely nothing that would suggests romance.  Well there is, actually. But whether creators are going to work with it or not, that´s something we can only speculate. They already made Loki officially bisexual. So why should it be so absurd to assume, that there is an actual possibility of romantic subplot between Loki and Mobius? Oh right… it´s Disney and Marvel we are talking about.

So on a subject of bisexuality: Bi people can date whoever they want.  But It is a little frustrating, when there is so many heterosexual pairings in the mcu and disney but when there is a promise of lgbt character (speaking of endgame) we get one line about date from a man we´ll never see again. And when there is a promise of lgbt representation you can´t even blink during movie, or you´ll miss it (Star wars, Beauty and the beast). And then Loki said “A bit of both, I suspect the same as you”. And I won´t lie, I was happy. And I think creators made biggest step yet with this one line (which is honestly terrible, that “a bit of both” coming from Loki of all people, is the biggest step forward.) But they played it VERY safe. Obviously, both Loki, and Sylvie are bisexuals, and in three episodes, we had Loki flirting with female flight attendant, Sylvie talking about her relationship with POSTMAN and then they fall for each other. So the only thing that suggests they are really as bi as Lamentis 1 is that little sentence, that can be edited out, or easily overheard. It´s the bare minimum. And I think that frustration with how freaking slowly we´re moving into some progress is understandable. From all those great M/M dynamics I talked about, those, that could make great love story, nothing happened, because too many people “don´t mind gays but don´t need to look at them” or are scared for their children. In 2021.

It is not a fetish to wish for a gay love story in superhero movies/series. (But anyway, I don´t think there is anything bad about it. Some men like to watch lesbian porn, some woman like to read gay porn. AO3 wouldn´t be were it is today, without people reading and writing slash :D – but that has little to do with what we actually see on tv)

I´m not delusional. As much, as I love these two characters together, I know how little chance it has.  I´m not delusional. I´m just in the future, old and tired, waiting hundreds of years for at least one of my OTP to finaly become a fucking canon.

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 06 part two

(Masterpost)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Bathing Boy Beauties

So, now we and Wei Wuxian get to see Lan Wangji with his shirt off. Eventually Lan Wangji will realize that his brother set this up, and will think of some way to get back at him, possibly by spending three years being stubborn in a cave or maybe by chopping an arm off of someone his brother cares about. 

This is A+ Yibo fanservice but it's also a male-male version of a trope that's ubiquitous in c-drama, in which the male lead takes a bath and the female lead sees him. The purpose of the scene is almost always so a woman can look a man’s body over and decide, not to put too fine a point on it, whether she wants to fuck him. 

Examples:

The Pillow Book - “Which part of Shen Ye is better than me?”

Women’s sexual agency is not often at the forefront in c-dramas, but the bathtub scenes are an acknowledgement of the female gaze, and of male objects of desire being subject to evaluation & approval.

Tientsin Mystic is a show with a lot of muscley swimming in it, In case you’re looking for your next Netflix show. 

As a CGI artist I have to mention that water does not reflect or refract 100% of light. If you look at a naked dingle-having person in a bathtub full of clear water you will definitely be able to see their dingle. But C-drama water is magic and nothing is visible below the waterline, to the point that Bai Yu is modestly covering his thoracic surgery scar chest in Detective L while leaving his lower half uncovered.

Note: that caption isn’t fake; she is really saying this on her way out the door, after having a long chat with him in the bathroom. You can find the whole series on YouTube.

Seen in this context, The Untamed’s two bathing scenes are saying quite a lot. Wei Wuxian, being a boy, doesn’t display any female-encoded shyness or modesty, but he and his sword pause for a moment of admiration.

(more after the cut!)

16 years later, Lan Wangji will sit quietly in this pool and let Wei Wuxian examine his wet body thoroughly from multiple angles, in a more prolonged invocation of this C-drama mating ritual.

Carrying on - was Xiao Zhan supposed to kick his boot in the water like that? Because if not, he rolls with it like a champ.

Wei Wuxian starts trying to be direct with Lan Wangji, giving him the worst, most neg-filled compliment ever, bless his heart.  

Then he says that there are benefits to being his friend, and starts taking off his clothes.

Wei Wuxian here takes his first step into the bold new world of respecting Lan Wangji’s boundaries, asking Lan Wangji to stay and saying he will keep his clothes on. 

Lan Wangji actually does stay, so he's apparently not too angry with Wei Wuxian about the drinking. Wei Wuxian invites him to visit Lotus Pier sometime (see my gifset here), but the promise of lotus pods doesn’t impress him. Then Wei Wuxian tries to tell him that the Yunmeng chicks really knock me out, they leave the rest behind. This also doesn’t impress him. 

You could read this macking-on-ladies talk as a sign that Wei Wuxian is oblivious to LWJ's feelings for him. But I read it as a bisexual boy being horny on main with a boy he likes, not  understanding yet that some boys don’t share all of his turn-ons.

Lan Wangji is sort of mildly startled when Wei Wuxian disappears under the water. His eye makeup is good here, isn’t it?.

Ice Cave

They end up in an ice cave and both spend the rest of the episode showing how good they look with wet hair. 

When the guqin starts attacking, Lan Wangji is only mildly perturbed about Wei Wuxian getting his shit rocked over and over.

Eventually he sends Bichen to protect his very bedraggled date. Lan Wangji’s sword is faster than the speed of a very slow sound wave.

Beauty's where you find it not just where you bump and grind it 

Gusuship Down

I feel like there are a couple of things in this show that are so problematic the fandom has silently agreed to never discuss them. Well, I’m here to talk about this one:

There are rabbits in this ice cave and they are wearing headbands. HEADbands. On RABBits.  

EXCELLENT FUCKING QUESTION, LAN WANGJI

*deep breath*

Are these rabbits lineal Lan descendants? Who makes the headbands? How do they stay on because “headband” here means “glowing cloud on forehead” without any actual band.  When rabbit babies are born, how do they stay safe while they’re waiting for someone to make them baby-sized headbands? Do these rabbits adhere to the other 3499 Lan Clan principles or just the headband one? Is any ol' rabbit allowed to touch a rabbit’s headband or is it limited to parents and significant others and is that even relevant when presumably these bunnies are all fucking each other like...bunnies?

The characters are like “oh, the rabbits are wearing headbands; killer guqin problem solved.” And then they move right the fuck along with their lives and the rabbit headbands are never seen or discussed again and I just want a hit of whatever the author or creative team was smoking when they came up with this whole idea.

Headband Sharing

When Wei Wuxian tells Lan Wangji to hand over his headband, Lan Wangji understands his entire rabbit-based thought process without asking

Gen-X Joke Alert

Wei Wuxian is awfully impressed by this sword-recall trick, considering that he did it himself when they went to the lake.

I see you know your way around a sheath

Killer Guqin

When they approach the guqin I hope that the subtitles are mistranslated, because Wei Wuxian keeps promising not to touch it and then says he can't look at it without touching it. I'm not going to touch it, I just need to touch it. 

Lan Wangji is going to teach Wei Wuxian some goddamn boundaries no matter how many times he has to make him fondle his sword.

Nothing suggestive here

Lan Wangji sits down to play the guqin and immediately goes off into the ether where there are seagull noises and plenty of fans. This is either a state of pure bliss, or he just really likes seagulls.

Did Lan Wangji just have a stealth orgasm?

Speaking of getting off, get your ass off of my desk

The Yin Iron

Lan Wangji does some spirit whispering, and suddenly the cave starts yelling at them. A bunch of clans are chanting in unison about a plan, which is the cultivator version of a battle cry.

Lancestor Lan Yi shows up. She is elegant and has a combination of sweetness and gravity that is similar to Lan Xichen’s. And none of Lan Qiren’s douchiness.

Search Party

Lan Qiren is worried and Lan Xichen is worried and they have sent people to look for the boys. It's really too bad nobody around here knows magic.

All these powerful cultivators search for missing people by running around outdoors yelling for them. 

Yanli is excused from PE class because she’s not feeling well, so she sits on a rock in the woods instead of, you know, staying home in the first place. She gets bored sitting down and unwisely decides to walk two or three steps. Xuan Lu, seen here competing in a gymnastics event, gamely pretends she can’t climb a small rock. 

Yanli falls into Jin Zixuan's arms and they gaze at each other for a long heterosexual moment. 

No homosexual explanation possible

This means two things: 1. he isn't looking very hard for her brother if he's hanging out here catching wobbly girls 2. soulful longing looks from him ain't shit, because he's going to dump her in the next episode.

Lanny Granny

Lan Wangji intros himself to Lan Yi and does a full prostrate bow. Wei Wuxian does a standing bow since he's not a descendant, just a future in-law.

No I mean come on, HEADBANDS

Lan Gran explains the entire history of the yin iron. It's bad, it's full of resentful energy, no-one should use it. She’s going to dump it on a couple of 16 year old boys, one of whom has a woody for using resentful energy, because it’s destiny and her battery is about to run out. 

Props to the Prop Department; this thing does look pretty cool

Xue Chonghai was the most problematic cultivator back in the old days. He killed a lot of dudes and fed their resentment to...a turtle? To the disk? I don’t know; I literally am unable to pay attention when anyone is explaining the intricacies of the unobtanium Yin Iron. 

Anyway there’s a disk and it’s soaked up a lot of resentment.  

Using it makes people evil. Well except..clearly this dude started off evil, yeah? If he was feeding people to his turtle.

Side effects may include: being fucking crazy

Here Wei Wuxian brings out his "resentful energy is awesome" theory and has an experienced grown-up grand master tell him that she also thought this, and has spent 100 years locked in a cave with headband-wearing rabbits because she was super fucking wrong. Does this deter him? ...nope

Baoshan Sanren

Now she name checks Baoshan Sanren, and Wei Wuxian has a big reaction and Lan Wangji has a big noticing of Wei Wuxian’s reaction. He’s very attuned to Wei Wuxian’s emotional state, in the moments where WWX lets his actual feelings show through the sass and swagger.  

Lan Gran talks about her search for the Yin iron, and Lan Wangji wisely says, if you can't neutralize it, why look for it? And she says, I was filled with hubris just like ya boi Wei Wuxian.  Lan Wangji points out the exact same shit he will later point out to Wei Wuxian.

So now we have a parallel in which Lan Yi is just like Wei Wuxian and Baoshan Sanren is just like Lan Wangji, yeah? Which is kind of sweet; it shows how these types are drawn together and how your clan doesn't determine your personality. Also it shows how the Lan clan has room for an unorthodox clan leader. Also it shows how the Yin Iron causes some really bad breakups. 

These boys are standing on snow barefoot which has got to take a pretty high cultivation level. Look how short Lan Wangji is without his stilettos, aww.

Flashback to Baoshan Sanren, just long enough to appreciate how beautiful she is.

Did OP give up on recoloring that flashback-blue-hazed image and just start fucking around with random filters? Yes she did. 

We also get to see that Lan Yi and Lan Wangji have more common than just guqin, because they both like to solve problems by kicking them.  

So after breaking up with her girlfriend, Lan Gran became invisible in this cave for 100 years while trying to contain the Yin iron and put headbands on rabbits. 

Soundtrack: Vogue by Madonna Writing prompt: Watership Down rabbits meet Lan rabbits

Bonus extended bath clip:

Bai Yu, Detective L

[galaxina-the-pyro]

There's NO PnF x Epithet Erased AU and I'm Here to Correct That!

Well, really I just wanna theorize on what everyone's epithets would be and to just have an excuse to talk about the show, because "Epithet Erased" (produced by @jelloapocalypse) is fucking amazing and ya'll need to stop what you're doing and watch it on VRV (also available on YouTube if you can't afford VRV like me - but if you CAN afford VRV, you totally should considering making an account so you can support this AMAAAAAZING project) Go on. Do it.

So - a little info dump for ya'll who aren't in the know...ahem...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h97aI5SZHk4&ab_channel=JelloApocalypseJelloApocalypseVerified

SO! In the world of Epithet Erased, there are those who are gifted with the rare power called, you guessed it, Epithets. Some have them - others don't. The ones who don't are called Mundies, and the ones who do are called Inscribed. Those who are Inscribed each have a unique word attached to their soul that allows them to do "stuff" depending on the given word.

Ex. One of the main characters of the series has the Epithet "Goldbricker", which allows him/her to turn objects into gold, including him/herself.

Inscribed are able to train and hone their powers so that they can gain more abilities in the process - however, depending on the word you get, you may be the most dangerous being in existence, or have the lamest superpower ever. Though, do not be fooled - even the dumbest sounding words can hold their weight in ways you never suspected if you use them right.

Inscribed and Mundies alike are all ranked by three stats: Stamina, Proficiency, and Creativity (arguably the most IMPORTANT stat for Inscribed). These stats dictate one's power and durability within a battle or even for everyday tasks and jobs, like building, or stuff like that.

In the end, Epithets are NOT in any way, shape, or form connected to genetics - Mundie parents can conceive Inscribed children, and Mundie children can have Inscribed parents. All of it is randomized, from whether or not you'll have one, to the word you get in question.

Now with all THAT out of the way, I can go on to ramble about the possible Epithets the REST of the gang has.

NOTE: this isn't me saying EVERYONE listed would be Inscribed if they WERE in Epithet Erased because that's not possible - chances are, someone like Isabella would be a Mundie while that one background character named Baltazar the Ballpit Kid would be Inscribed. This is just for funsies! (Also, because Perry's an animal he doesn't get an Epithet, sorry)

So...without further ado...what I think the cast of PnF's Epithets would be:

Phineas: "Lightbulb" (an Epithet that seems useless on the surface - Phineas is able to cause lightbulbs to appear from thin air upon thinking of an idea. But he's ALSO able to generate electricity and use it in battle, and can use it to charge his machines and anything he builds)

Ferb: "Toolbox" (Ferb is able to pull an assortment of tools and useful gadgets from seemingly nothing, hence him being a literal "toolbox" - these tools vary from things like hammers and saws to actual weaponry. Lord help you if he gets his hands on an ACTUAL toolbox or anything like it)

Candace: "Gatekeeper" (This was a tough one - basically, "gatekeeper" refers to her control-freak personality. Her abilities can be as small as being able to lock or unlock doors from afar/without the use of a key, to being able to create doors and gates to keep people in or out of something or somewhere)

Dr. Doofenshmirtz: "Self-Destruct" (This probably doesn't count because "Self-Destruct" is two words, but DANGIT I'm gonna do it anyway because this is just too perfect for Dr. D! Doof's ability allows him to cause explosions of any kind within the vicinity, including himself. He takes recoil damage from this ability, but it's actually really powerful if used correctly [which luckily, given that he's PROBABLY a Bonzai Blaster in this, his Proficiency is probably too low for him to use it that way, though I'd imagine his creativity is as high as Phineas and Ferb's])

Isabella: "Daydream" (This Epithet allows Isabella to create illusions and false realities with her mind - oftentimes it's to her detriment, as one of her most utilized "fantasies" is Phineasland. However, she can use this ability to trap her enemies and can even summon "imaginary friends" to help her in battle)

Buford: "Wind" (Though the word is simple, Buford is able to control the winds around him - even to the point of creating gusts to blast at enemies. He's also able to fly effortlessly through the air, though for a short period of time [pray that you're not beneath him when he runs out of air]. The catch? His power is through farts and belches...shut up, you all know this makes sense)

Baljeet: "Multiple" (Baljeet's Epithet allows him to project numbers and math problems for all to see - it COULD also allow him to increase in size and to create clones of himself if his Creativity was much higher than it already is. Luckily, he's at the very least able to use these numbers as projectiles)

Vanessa: "Rock" (Which refers to her being the kind of person people can open up to ["Candace Against the Universe"], her tough, firm personality, as well as the kind of music she listens to. With this Epithet, she is able to turn parts of her body into pure stone [much like "Goldbricker"], making her nearly invincible)

Major Monogram: "Screen" (Is able to appear on any screen without the need of a camera - he can also take control of any device with a screen so long as he is inhabiting it...which...kinda puts Carl out of the job, so...uh...let's fix that!)

Carl: "Intern" (Yeah. His Epithet is Intern. Because that's what he is. His ability is a wildcard, as it allows him to work in any environment with high proficiency, but depending on the location he's in he's either a force to be reckoned with or is completely useless in battle. Ex. in an office setting, he's just really good with numbers and writing checks and stapling papers, etc., but in a hospital setting he can have the ability to heal you in battle)

And that's all I really got so far. I might add more in the future. If you guys think their Epithets would be different, I'd LOVE to hear your thoughts!

"Epithet Erased" is fun, creative and such a joy to watch, it'd be a crime for this project to not be completed from a lack of viewing. It's got poignant humor, a cast of quotable, likable characters I guarantee will make you all smile, FANTASTIC MUSIC LIKE OMG IT'S SO GOOD YOU GUYS, an engaging storyline, and is just a charming DnD-esque adventure throughout. And that's just seven episodes - that's right. Season 1 of Epithet Erased has seven beautifully made episodes that you can watch on YouTube/VRV now right on your computer or phone or whatever!

Seriously, I do not kid you, this series has the potential to be as good if not better than shows like "Avatar: the Last Airbender", it's that brilliant. And again, IT ONLY HAS SEVEN EPISODES SO FAIR! It'll only take you, like, three hours to watch them all at most! So really, you don't have an excuse NOT to watch this wonderfully made series! I implore you to give it a look - you will not regret it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMesNJy06kM&ab_channel=ChimericalNightcoreChimericalNightcore

[alittlebluewolf]

Check out How to ADHD on YouTube! ADHD manifests itself so differently in different people that it can be hard to give advice if we don't know exactly what symptoms you are experiencing. What are the issues that you are facing? Totally okay if you don't want to share, but it can help us help you!

I am so more than happy to share because by gods if it isn’t ADHD i still need help.

sorry if some of this stuff is unrelated or incorrect there’s a good chance i’m depressed too so maybe some of that comes from here

basically;

- i always leave things to the last minute or forget to do them until right before the deadline and then crank them out. My dad used to call it “last minute dot com work”

- I can sit still or sit down, and if i do i’m moving my leg or picking my nails or listening to music.

- I exclusively study with music or a physical object like blue tac or a hair tie in my hand (or paper! I love rolling receipts up)

- I get ‘bored’ of stuff easy and zone out or switch the conversation and bounce around topics at hyper speed. When i get excited about something i also talk super fast but i mostly don’t talk about stuff like that with people because i feel like i get to be too much and i get super intense about it too.

I mean like i constantly zone out and slip into daydreams and every car ride or transport is just me ina. fantasy world. I’ve done during really important exams too , I just fade into a daydream and i can’t control it.

- I can only focus on stuff that i “enjoy” and when i do focus i go down a rabbit hole and ONLY do that for several hours. When i was younger it was reading and once i read every fucking harry potter book in an afternoon because.... idk. Haven’t really read like that since the depression hit but sometime i’ll get a burst and go through 10-12book series in like 5days.

- I always write lists and organise stuff and then never ever stick to my schedule. Doing stuff like cleaning the house or my desk or whatever (even get out of my bed in the morning sometimes) just feels really overwhelming and exhausting and i know i would feel better if i did it but i just can’t.

- I have a similar block when it comes to messaging people back? It feels super draining and there are maybe one or two people i feel like i can message without issue but for everyone it’s just.. hard

I spend most of the day wasting it, and then get super anxious about how i’m currently failing my classes and gonna get kicked out, and then do a burst of work for like a few hours because i get really tired and crash in bed. I have no hunger cues i just eat cause warm stuff feels nice and that leads to me overeating, but i’ve literally gone a week without eating cause i wasn’t hungry and was just curious to see how long it would last.

I have very little impulse control and no sense of self preservation (but i’m very good with money management, i don’t impulse buy).

When i write something or message and have to be careful and make myself slow down because i’ll jump over words or entire parts of sentences and only later realised that my entire paragraph is fractured and makes absolutely no sense

- as a kid i had the classic “X is smart but has to apply themselves harder and study more/ focus kind of thing.

I have no idea if any of this is relevant or helpful but thank you so much for taking the time to read and ask. I’ll take look at the video/channel

[floraisann]

ateez reaction: filming an asmr video with an asmrtist s/o

➣ requested? X

➣ genre: fluff(prolly not but we’ll go w it), humor

➣ masterlist

A/N: yeah this was made entirely bc i was thinking about seonghwa getting scared over the fact that he made a nice sound in his one asmr vid so,,,, yeah. enjoy! :)

❅♩♬♩❅――

❥ kim hongjoong

was iffy about the idea until he realized hey, the two of you could still make music, just much quieter

you’d probably film like,,,, asmr songwriting,,,,, where it’s just you two working silently on a song

in the beginning it’s really quiet, but you do get some sexy pencil/keyboard sounds 🥰💕

once he gets into the groove of things he’s very calm and focused, and that relaxing vibe transfers into the video

tries to do actual asmr triggers, but everything gains rhythm and before you know it heyyy this a pretty sick beat 😳

the song he ends up writing uses only asmr triggers for the instrumental along with very soft vocals, and bc this man lives and breathes music ITS A WHOLE BOP

10/10 content. would nap to again

❥ park seonghwa

could not find gifs of his asmr video smh but anyways seonghwa, we know ur hot already, we get it. pls calm down

kq sir where’s the seonghwa asmr series the people don’t just want it, the people NEED it

was ready for this since before he exited the womb

since this man is already a whole asmrtist you’d film something like that “asmr friend tries giving me tingles” video 

very excited by the expensive mic

“is this how you do it” except he really doesn’t have any reason to ask you, he already knows what he’s doing

gets REALLY shook whenever he makes a god sound

like remember the plastic wrap/facial mist moment he had in his own vid?? that x10

the video you post with him ends up your most viewed. not because of the emotional support kpop boy you got on the video, no it’s the extreme quality 

❥ jeong yunho

you guys would probably film SOMETHING with talking, maybe one of the asmr interviews w magazine does

except there’s a real asmrtist asking questions and a kpop boy to answer

REALLY good at soft spoken asmr. like the low rumble in his voice!?! mmm. 23/10 would tingle again

probably really good in general. like even if he doesn’t watch asmr normally will probably watch a number of videos before filming to make editing easier on you so the video is actually VERY GOOD

honestly he probably makes the best sounds in the video and you’re just like :o

“jeong yunho, where’d you learn how to do that” “👀 the nice russian lady on youtube”

overall a very relaxing experience

he’d probably end up filming w you again because of how smoothly it goes

well done jeong yunho

❥ kang yeosang

does not have the slightest clue what the fuck he’s doing but he’s already quiet and gentle so you wouldn’t be able to tell

the very definition of fake it til you make it!

anyways you’d also probably have to film a semi-crackhead video with him to keep him engaged

yk the crush on 9 fast tapping relay thing w his 3 friends? i imagine that but w yeosang

maybe not the same exact concept, but like you’d definitely make something with the same relaxed “just playing around w my friends :)” energy

that being said yeosang is a package deal. if you have yeosang, at least one other member will make an appearance

but he’ll make sure it’s at least not the chaos lord wooyoung

idk his humor’s kind of underrated but it would definitely show in smth like that

like he’d actually produce good content, but his bloopers would be so funny that you can’t remove them, you just quiet them

the people would want him back anyways so he’d get better with time

10/10 recommend this mans as an asmrtist kq where’s the ateez asmr-

❥ choi san

i was looking for a certain gif of him from the woosan tingle interview and i was unsuccessful but you know what? this is just as good if not better because SAN

a lil too psyched for this relaxation joint but issokay, he cute

y’all probably make some type of ear cleaning video bc remember how excited he was when they gave him the earpick 🥺 

very focused on sound quality

squeaks whenever he makes a somewhat unpleasant sound

gets shiber into the video as an object to make triggers with

probably gets tingles somewhere along the way and just giggles to himself. it’s a little loud but please don’t edit it out

can and will recite ateez intros/outros. like he’ll just be vibing petting shiber then suddenly he’s leaning into the mic and just

“the freezing winds may make us-” he starts shaking shiber to emphasize his point “-shiverrr”

and what can you do but smile when all that separates you from the only man ever is a binaural mic?

one of the members whose end video is actually super high quality

❥ song mingi

clueless. there are three question marks floating above his head at all times

like he’s actually trying, he’s just big and loud

follows you around like a lost puppy

tries VERY hard to copy whatever you do and it’s VERY cute

phases in and out of whispering but completely on accident, he’s lost

like yunho, actually has a nice soft speaking voice once he figures that shit out

cute smile when he’s actually producing good content

honestly tho for mingi to stay engaged you might have to play some sort of game 

the video would probably be one of those “guess the trigger” games

like the one co9 made w his one friend? yeah that

mingi would end up with the chicken toy though

you’d have a lot of bloopers bc he either hits something/talks too loud/laughs but it’s okay, we stan song mingi!! and you know he wasn’t nearly as bad as a certain sagi groupmate he has!!!!

❥ jeong wooyoung

my good nctzens, my fellow grass, you know the jsmr jeno filmed w jaemin that absolutely went to shit? that’s what you’re filming with wooyoung. 

he’s jaemin, obviously

you’re probably gonna film some type of cooking asmr so he’s not BREATHING DIRECTLY INTO THE MIC

PLEASE don’t bring the electric mixer PLEASE make him whisk the batter like a “real man”

you probably get a shot somewhere along the way of him tossing an ingredient wrapper into the stratosphere or several

will lean into the mic to bring up a random tmi he remembered, all while breathing VERY heavily “ATINY DO YOU WANNA HEAR MY YOSHI IMPRESSION”

when he does that too he probably phases in and out of whispering in his excitement. your ears? wasted. 

probably whisper yells too

the video ends up really short because wooyoung is too chaotic for this type of thing. record a normal cooking video with him next time, please.

❥ choi jongho

actually relaxed, even gets the art of not breathing at the mic down very quickly and picks up filming tricks along the way

but since he’s still part of the chaos line you’d film something like the gibi/marno/goodnight moon collabs.

50% asmr misc. roleplay, 50% comedy film

an apple would make its way into the video YES he’ll break it

but far enough from the the mic that it doesn’t break you ears

and mr jongho is the master of keeping a straight face. the one pulling the stupid shit would be both of you, but ALL your noise cuts would be because YOU laughed, not him

maybe if you two had a brain this would’ve been the most successful endeavor but nope y’all take “no thoughts, head empty” way too seriously for that to happen

anyways stan choi jongho, aka my fav grocery store

❅♩♬♩❅――

[snugglyporos]

Alright boys and girls, rant time! Not about anything serious mind you, just something that’s really bugging my brain. 

Okay so i’ve been trying, mostly because of friends, to try and get into all these gacha games. Now look, I love me some gambling. I also don’t really spend money in them. Buttttttt. Why does it feel like they are could... do better? 

Example A: Fate: Go. Okay so, I actually first heard about the series back in college with Stay/Night, but I didn’t really care about it that much. I never really got into it. All I knew was that King Arthur was a female and apparently was brought back to life from a mortal wound by fucking her. It’s weird. 

But apparently, there’s a mobile game! And it is... disappointing? Like the more I delve into the idea of the game the more disappointed I am in it. 

This should be a slam dunk. Take histories greatest figures, have them fight each other. This doesn’t have to be complicated. Instead, this is somehow made extremely complicated by having it be about time travel and the end of the world. Why? For what purpose? There’s no need for this. It just makes everything dumb. 

Like, I feel like a lot of series in general do this to try and ‘raise the stakes’ but having low stakes is often better and more interesting! How about instead of making it about the end of the world, you have Odin and Zeus fight over whether two mages get Dominos or Taco Bell for dinner? That sort of contrast makes for interesting dynamics. And you can flesh it out with deciding if those summoned are willing or unwilling, or if there are conditions, or if they remember it each time or not. There’s a lot of interesting ideas for low stakes. 

But that’s only half of it. Like, these designs are just... not good. At all. Look, I have no idea why all these designs are so... young? Someone needs to explain why we need to turn all these world heroes into preteen girls. Look, it’s not interesting, it’s creepy. It’s weird. Like I feel dirty looking at some of these. And when the characters in universe comment on it, it’s even weirder. Whoever decided ‘hey let’s make blackbeard a weebo pedo’ should be shown the door. It’s just awful. 

Also, while I know a lot of people object to genderbending on principle, I could theoretically go along with it for historical fiction. But here, it’s not done for any interesting reason. And it only goes one way. And it’s always, always done to make x historical figure into someone I swear the creators are fapping too. it’s weird. 

And so I went from that to Azur Lane, which for those who do not know, is a game about WW2 ships re-imagined as anime girls. For some reason. 

Again, I could see this idea being interesting. Ships are already always referred to as she’s. And there’s lots of them throughout time. And you could cross this was something like, Gundam or whatever. Like if you said to me ‘humanize these ships’ my first idea would be to create things more akin to Samus Aran than I would Princess Peach.

And obviously, there is a good conversation in our culture about what the ‘right’ way to portray women is. And I feel like if you took a hundred people, and told them to create a design for any one ship, you’d come up with a hundred different ideas. 

But you know what I wouldn’t expect? For people to imagine like, 90% of the ships as seemingly preteen girls. It’s weird. It’s uncomfortable. It’s creepy. 

Maybe it’s just me, but if you said, ‘turn this battleship that fires rounds as wide as your forearm’s length into a human woman’ I would not decide to make that ship a preteen girl. I would probably have come up with someone in their mid-20′s to 30′s, with scars or the like, in full body armor. Something akin to a giant armored kaiju battle. So basically Gundam with giant humans. 

I would not have decided to make them into preteen girls with giant boobs that makes me wonder if the creators should be on a watchlist. 

And yes, I know it’s japan and all, but surely this has to make even the native culture uncomfortable? This is clearly meant to be fap material. And so many of them being so young doesn’t make any sense. 

I mean, you could do something where smaller ships are younger, larger ships are older, or something, but so many of them are just so, so young and it’s really off putting. What were they thinking? Wait, don’t answer that, you’ll end up on a watch list too. 

As a random third aside, one friend was like ‘hey you should download Arknights’ and it was the worst mistake I ever made now all I get on youtube are ads for it and I hate it. 

If only there was some way to shove like micheal bay level stupid with all this japanese stupid and create something that was less creepy and more awesome. But I don’t think that’s possible. I feel like it would come out more like The Fly and be a monstrosity. 

Anyway, this foray into mobile gacha games is pain and I regret my life choices. 

[crazy-talk]

As promised, here’s a little large compilation sort of thing of little moments and memories from SBFP that you folks have submitted. I really appreciate everything that you’ve all submitted, it’s pretty clear that SBFP helped and entertained a whole lot of people - in equal amounts.

Here’s some SBFP moments:

Grand Wizard Wakka

The Shitstorm VII Woolie haunting plan

“What a mysterious game.”

MY HOUSE

“Wait, what’s my objectives?” “You don’t haaave any objectives!”

Qui Gon Chi

“Whah happuh?” “das whah happuh!”

“No, shut up though.”

The Baby

“Shut the fuck up about Face/Off!”

“Bleetzboll...”

The Sadness Trilogy

“KIDS LOVE THE FOCKIN’ DEVIL!”

Pat thinking he’s dying because he sat on a chocolate bar

Kenpachi Ramasama

Shit-kids

“Whut deh fuhk? Is he using duh bät room?”

Mr. Shakedown/Kenny/Quint/Eric Sparrow

TAR-KUS! TAR-KUS! TAR-KUS!

“Love is just chemicals.”

Pat eating candy alone in a closet

Matt throwing the fire axe

“Oh no, I make’da bad game!”

“Hey, is that the script?”

“JAAASON!”

“It’s fine.”

The RE2 valve noise

“Yeyeyeye!”

Woolie’s atomic purple Gameboy

“Eyy, what’s goin’ on, man? You ready to play?”

And some SBFP memories. Some of these may be a bit emotionally heavy so feel free to skip this part:

the sbfp lp of yakuza 0 got me and my best friend into the yakuza series. we watched it together and we still laugh about matt falling to pieces over "never-before-seen results" - Anon

the best friends have had such an influence on my speech patterns that i've infected people who've never watched them before. half of my friend group says super big [x] and porked up now - Anon

SBFP introduced me to so many games that ended up becoming personal favorites of mine, like Deadly Premonition and the Silent Hill series. Their videos became a way for me to spend time with some of my own best friends as well! -  captainofthestars

theres one particular moment that will always resonate with me - in their devil may cry lets play, i cant remember if it was 1 or 3, they talk about someone in the comments who mentioned that they had to beat devil may cry with items due to having a physical disability of some kind, i cant remember which. they talked about how it was awesome that he managed to even beat the game like that, and, personally, as someone who struggles with motorskills issues this made me very happy, as a devil may cry fan. theres a lot of other great moments from the tbfp, both funny and genuine that made me happy, but this one in particular stuck with me a lot. -  krillfingers

I'll never stop making "pull out king" jokes thanks to sbfp - venerabledreadnought

I remember the first Shitstorm that made me actually have to get up and sit in a brightly lit room with other people in it, Anatomy. It's become a Halloween tradition to watch it every year since, though watching a whole bunch of Shitstorm also became one. As someone who started watching at their second machinma ep, it's not a lie to say that they made up the entirety of my teenage years. I will miss the channel dearly, but I look forward to the future. -  duke-nitro

My friends and I have been watching The Zaibatsu for so long that we have accidentally adopted a bunch of their phrases like going “yeahyeahyeahyeahyeah” or saying someone “go down.” Also, despite us not knowing each other when we became fans, we all somehow began with their Man vs Wild let’s play and I even made friends with one of them because I quoted something from it at work. Favorite moment probably has to be the entire Omikron playthrough, I can’t pick a single moment. It was a beautiful trainwreck start to finish and I still put on the playlist from time to time while I’m doing other things. I swear I could gently fall asleep to the sounds of Pat screaming about the shooter segments. shogun-ceanataur

Persona 4 and Kenpachi Ramasama were my favourite. I found the name itself hilarious, but how they kept on referring to him as the full name in different little bits and tones never failed to make me laugh. That “See you later, fuckers!” part from when you see Yosuke was also hilarious. I’m not sure if that video is the oeigin, but it’s why I’ve integrated that phrase into my everyday life. Goddamn what a fun, memorable episode. - whatthehellisthisevenfor

tbfp got me through being homeless in my car twice. every time that I wanted to give up, to just stop trying, i'd turn on whatever new video they had out and it brightened up my life. my mom, who was with me, came to love them to, she used to wait to hear them to relax. i have so many memories of that time, and i don't fully relax or even eat on long days until I've turned their videos on. my favorite quote is still "mistakes into miracles". its a rly motivating quote imo. -  c0l0c4k3s

I always loved the Silent Hill 2 LP. I never played it when it came out - all I knew was that it was a horror game, and I hated horror at the time. But when the LP came around, I knew a bit more about the game and I was intrigued. Seeing the game, meeting the characters, hearing Pat disect the story and themes for Matt, I loved it all. I was fascinated, and still am. I will still watch the LP every few months, and I call SH2 one of my favorite games, even though I still haven’t played it.Thanks, SBFP, for all the great moments and the great memories. I wish you all well. - iamthewanderingbard

The best friends are what got me so invested in the Dark souls games, and what motivated me to get through DS2. Even if I say 'You see what i mean' unironically a lot, and go 'You. Did it.' -  awkwardmuses

I got into Super Best Friends from a post on the Twin Perfect forum, that linked to the Silent Hill Downpour lp, and never looked back. Their let's plays brought me so much joy back when I wasn't in the best living or health situation, and continue to do so. My favourite let's plays have to be Eternal Darkness and the Shitstorms; I always go back to those when depression hits, or for any reasons. I'll miss them together, but I'll always have those delicious delicious memories. -  mrjaffesxeldritchtwin

The Best Friends Play are the reason I end so many sentences with "though". I first found them when a friend recommended the Best Sisters Play MLP animations, and I've loved them ever since. I know it's used as a joke, but I really believe they've earned the title of HYPEST GAMEPLAY ON YOUTUBE. I love all of their David Cage playthroughs, and I adore how many plot-points they guess during Beyond: Two Souls. I love how, when they play a game they really love, they show so much knowledge and care. -  mads-in-zero

It was incredibly amusing and oddly touching that the Zaibatsu created this hate circle of David Cage and his godawful games. Even before Detroit’s release, the best friends AND the fanbase were ready to hate it because as a collective, we just latched onto that one thing to hate/make fun of. And we go all out on it together like some fucked up family, and I love it. -  missinghmmingbird

I can’t help but shrug off every minor inconvenience and major issue in my life with “it’s fine” thanks to Gun Jumper Liam. Thanks to Matt and Woolie supporting Skullgirls like no one else on the internet, I really got into it and fighting games as a whole. I’m not good at them, but oh boy do I love them.And if it wasn’t for Pat, I don’t think I’d ever have touched a Yakuza or Persona game.These guys affected my life more than any other individual or group on the internet ever really has. -  dklordg

The first Best Friends video I ever watched was Portal 2. That short LP had me in stitches. I'd never laughed so hard. I've been a huge fan since then. These guys where the ones that introduced me to LPs and made me realize that you can have fun watching other people bumble through games. TheSw1tcher has been one of my favorite channels on YouTube since I began watching. It gave me something to look forward to. I got through high school, and essentially grew up, watching these videos. There are so many catchphrases and memes I will never forget and will always make me smile. I absolutely say stuff like “whah happun?” and “shit-kids” all the time. The Deadly Premonition and Detroit: Become Human playthroughs are wonderful gems in my eyes. It’s amazing how a group of guys can get so many people to collectively love and bash certain games. We’re all on the same page, having a blast like a huge group of friends at a slumber party. Matt, Pat, Woolie, Liam, Billy, and everyone who involved themselves with the Super Best Friends are the absolute best. They gave me a chance to relax and laugh along with some familiar voices. Although it's sad they are going their separate ways, I totally respect that fact. They have my love and support. I wish them nothing but success and happiness moving forward. I'll be watching! And a note to my fellow fans: This has been a wild ride. I'm glad I got to enjoy it with you. You are all fantastic people. -  fablesamongus

[tonya-the-chicken]

Ok, someone (@gucciasswitch ) dared me to do whole list and who am I to resist

1. What was your first OTP? 

Probably Royai. FullMetal Alchemist was my first anime I watched on TV and I immediately fell in love with relationships between Riza and Roy. I used to fantasize about them all the time. I still do love them.

Also I remember I wanted Zuko to end up with Katara

2. What is your current OTP?

Definitely EnjiRei. I think about them and their family all the time. That's just what I do when I ship - I maladaptive daydream. What I like about them is ice and fire aesthetics is how fucked up everything is but Rei still somehow can forgive him or at least try to? He somehow remember her favourite things? I want to know more about them. Like, how exactly Enji found her? What happened to Touya?

I also like BakuCamie, ShinTsuyu, ZenNezu, still Royai, Huwumi, Natsuo x his girlfriend, maybe MomoIida, Jeankasa, Sabigiuy, Levihan, Miritama, Levifar

3. Do you have any OT3/OT+ ships? What are your favorites?

Mmmmmm, probably no. Though, I once saw OchaTodoDeku and it looks wholesome

4. What is/are your favorite trope(s)?

Tropes, tropes... I like what is called "unsexy erotica" by some author on ao3. Like, when characters are processing their feelings and it's the end it's not really sexy though it still somehow amazes me. It's not really a trope though, I saw only one fanfic with that.

I love redemption arcs made well, bad people turning good and having the love no one ever gave them before (duh)

5. What is/are your least favorite trope(s)?

Definitely soulmates au, it makes me cringe somehow. Or is it not a trope? Whatever

6. Do you have a certain kind of ship you’re more attracted to?

I often ship canon ships. Also for whatever reason I enjoy different-sex couples more often. Also if I see a person with fire powers I'll connect the dots them with someone with water/ice, it's just math... Jk... Unless

7. Are most of your ships “pure” or “problematic”?

Actually, they are mostly pure. But also I ship EnjiRei and someone gonna send me anon hate for this, ehhh

8. Who is the most shippable person you can think of?

Objectively it will be the main character of any series cause they have the most interactions. For me personally it's Enji cause I love him right now and I like to explore his relationship with everyone, like, I can occasionally ship him with Hawks, All Might, Burnin', Rei and some OCs

9. Are there any fandoms you don’t have any ships for?

The ones I am not in, duh. Actually, I am not really active shipper... In one punch man I don't ship anyone? But it's not like I am really in fandom khkhkh

10. Do characters have to have canon interactions for you to ship them?

Yeah, if it's not ship with OC (obviously). There can be exceptions like hetalia cause characters are basically countries

11. What makes a great ship in your own opinion?

Logic and some shared life philosophy/goal/struggles. Or just deep feeling and will to understand one another. Dunno

12. What drives you away from a ship?

If I don't understand why, basically. Also any mentor x student relationships are very big no-no for me. I don't like this power dynamic when one person is doomed to see another as they are above them. And also incest is nah

13. Is there anything you ship but refuse to interact with the community for?

Probably EnjiRei? I am kinda scared cause I don't want people to treat me badly based on that, ya know? Actually, I am trying to be more open about it cause fuck society, I am tired of your shit

14. Has a fanbase ever made you ship or not ship something? Why?

I stopped shipping eruri cause I got very fed up with fans being nasty, I guess. Like, they always tried to prove that it is canon and I just got tried and switched to levihan?.. Also I probably started to ship huwumi because of fanbase. I just never thought of the ship. But the most important deed is that fanbase brought me Dabi is Touya theory. Thank you, strangers on youtube

15. Do you like/participate in ship wars? Why or why not?

Define "ship war"? I sometimes enjoy observing people arguing but mostly I am annoyed when someone shit on character or ship. So sometimes I guess I can write something like "bitch can you stop" but usually I try to stay out of it. I guess I am pro-shiping and anti anti most of the time

16. Are there any ships you just can’t/don’t understand? What are they?

Ereri, Dekumight, RoyEd... Do you see the pattern? I highly dislike mentor x student ships. Also incest ships are no-no even if everyone is an adult for a simple reason - I actually have brothers and this shit creeps me out

17. Are there any popular ships that you just don’t like? What are they?

Ereri. It's the only banned tag I have (edit: not anymore, I am trying to ban enji antis). Also probably RoyEd but FMA fandom is not really active or I am not really into it

18. What is your favorite unpopular ship?

EnjiRei........

19. Do you prefer fluff, angst, or smut for your ships? 

It depends. I mostly don't like smut just for smut but if there's some feelings and processing of them, ya know... Angst goes well with everything though I recently found out I kinda dislike seeing violence and suffering in fanart... I actually like comedy more than pure fluff, I am kinda Mr Nighteye and believe in power of humor

20. Do you prefer bigger fanbases or smaller ones?

Bigger ones cause bigger fanbase = more content to CONSUME

21. Have you ever received hate for a ship you liked? 

The most close thing to hate I received was this: https://tonya-the-chicken.tumblr.com/post/189156146100/you-ship-enjirei-and-call-urself-a-feminist

Nothing more probably...

22. Do you have any ships that you ship, but would never want to see as canon?

I think no. I am quite ok with any of my ships becoming canon

23. Have you ever had a ship become canon, but you didn’t like how it was portrayed?

Nah... Though it still can happen since many of my fandoms have actively running mangas/animes

24. What is your favorite canon ship?

Define "canon ship"? Probably Royai

25. What are your favorite ships from a dead fandom?

Sweden x Ukraine from Hetalia. I used to ship ot hard XD I had a whole blog dedicated to it! I just don't know dead fandoms, ok

26. What are your favorite shipping scenes?

Nothing in particular but when a characters does something stupid/risk his life to save/help their love interest. Like, when Zenitsu wet to spiders forest to save Nezuko... Or when Jean saved Mikasa from titan.

27. What are your views on reader x canon ships?

You do you, I guess, but my opinion is NO

28. What is your best shipping advice?

Have fun yourself and don't ruin it for others. You are free to block anyone and anything, it doesn't make you a bad person. And also try to think critically about views shared on social networks, like, not everything in true.

I'll also add here about media affecting reality: aS A fuTuRE PSyChoLoGisT I can say that YES, THEY DO AFFECT EACH OTHER. But often Internet can't get all the nuances and ends up censoring everything. In university we had an assignment where we analyzed modern media. And TV news collected around 30 media risks meaning that materials can affect (usually child's) brain in negative way. What now, are we supposed to not show violence and war? "Destroy everything that can traumatize a child" is a bad solution because of many reasons. Kids are not supposed to read 18+ content, kids are not supposed to spend time on Internet without parental control, kids are not supposed to watch a lot of stuff without an adult's presence. But they do and it's not fault of people who create 18+ / "problematic" content.

29. Do you like OCs (Original Characters)?

Yes, I do, if it's not self-insert OC, you know? I have some myself but usually not for shipping

30. What are some of your favorite shipping blogs?

What is shipping blog?.. Ok, I guess that people who post about ship or what??? Eh...

I'll recommend you to just look up blogs I follow, whatever, I'm tired

[smarmykemetic]

If you want the people who disagree with you all the time to respect you, well respect has to be earned, you cas't just demand it.

When I got this anon the other day, I ultimately decided to ignore it, because I knew it was almost certainly from the same person who sent me these (x x x), as well as several other pieces of anonymous hatemail that I chose to ignore; as well as almost certainly from one of the same two people (BBSAS and anubianpagan) who I am 99% sure run that anonymous chickenshit drama blog that, ultimately, does nothing but provide a platform for racist, self-righteous cowards to be racist, self-righteous cowards. However, since I just saw in my notes that this same blog has tagged me once again, I decided that I may as well go ahead and give this anon the answer I would give it if I genuinely believed that the sender wanted a conversation about my MO when it comes to what I mean by “respect” and how yall can expect me to treat “””people who disagree with me all the time”””” (read: crypto-fascists and their “centrist” or in some cases, “classically liberal” enablers). 

This is gonna be a long one, so buckle up:

I treat internet arguments that I either start or stumble into, first by giving the other person the benefit of the doubt, and assuming that whatever the disagreement is, is probably a matter of misinformation or miscommunication. Most of the conflicts I deal with online and irl seem to boil down to this in some way, shape, or form, so these days the first thing I do in a confrontation is show my opponent the basic respect of assuming that they are a rational, free-thinking, intelligent person with the best of intentions who just doesn’t know what they’re talking about as well as they think they do. People get very very angry with me when I let on that that is what I think is happening, so I usually try to give them the information and perspectives that I have without being mean or smug. This is also the stage where I sometimes find out that I don’t know what I’m talking about as well as I thought I do; and while it’s usually not fun to find that out, and the other person is usually very smug and mean when they tell me, I’m proud to announce that I have the basic respect for myself, my opponents, and objective fuckin’ reality that I have no problem posting publicly, “I stand corrected; my opponent was right and I was wrong” when I have been convinced, either through hard evidence or persuasive arguments, that I was wrong about something. In fact, I have a tag specifically for admitting i’m wrong and apologizing on both my tumblr blogs (x x). 

The thing is, often, no amount of sharing information or clarifying my political, philosophical, or personal reasons for taking a certain stance on something, will cause the other person to back off or admit they may have been wrong about something. When I realize that I’m dealing with someone who has already decided what they believe and is just going to waste my time by regurgitating points that they obviously heard either on some edgy adult cartoon show that they clearly believe is not just “funny”, but the holder of some kind of deep moral philosophical wisdom; or on some online meme page that, either knowingly or unknowingly, posts literal crypto-fascist propaganda (here’s where i plug a youtube series that has been invaluable in helping me learn to recognize crypto-fascists, in our community and outside of it; no, this particular youtube series is not my only source on this topic; it’s just the one I think is best for this context)…when I realize that is the situation, I once again extend my opponent the basic respect of assuming that they are a rational, free-thinking, intelligent person who has decided, for whatever reason, to believe the things that they believe. I give them credit for believing the things that they argue in favor of, the things that they send me hatemail for criticizing them for, that they are so fucking furious about that they decide the only way they can possibly deal with the alleged authoritarian injustice of me writing and posting things online, is going around and anonymously, desperately trying to get people to believe that I am crazy, or an immature “child”, or a liar, or a dangerous violent extremist, or in league with A/pep itself. Or, usually, all of the above.

I respect them enough to treat them as what they are telling me, both with their words and actions, that they are. And I treat them with all of the “””respect””” that is due to somebody who acts and behaves that way: almost none. As in, so little that I have absolutely no interest in engaging with you or your ideas in any kind of a serious “debate”. So little that I am not interested in meeting whatever standards you may choose to list so that I may, as you say, “””earn your respect”””. In fact, I respect you so little that I am not and will not ever genuinely “demand” your “respect”, because I do not want to be “respected” by you and others like you. I aspire to have as little to do with you as possible. I aspire to prevent you from hurting me, or my friends, or my family, or my neighbors with your racist, fear-mongering bullshit. I aspire to make you change your mind about acting on the things you are telling me you believe; your *~*~opinions~*~* about why you say and do the things you do do not matter to me at all.

Some may say this attitude is mean or unfair. I say that this attitude is simply me refusing to play the respectability politics game, no matter how much anybody whines and screams and cries anonymously, anywhere online. Some may say that this is about me “lacking the emotional maturity” to deal with you and your ilk. I say that this is about me having the compassion for, and solidarity with, and basic respect for the marginalized and oppressed in the Kemetic community that is required to look at someone saying something like, “Hey, what if it’s actually okay to be racist so long as we say we’re not being racist,” and tell them to either shut the fuck up or leave.

Here’s the thing. The advice that virtually every single adult I have ever talked to, and DEFINITELY every single Internet Polytheist Leader Person, gives me for these situations -the situation of dealing with a would-be bully, either on the school playground or on the internet, is to “just ignore them and they’ll go away”. Online, this is usually phrased as, “Don’t feed the trolls”. THIS IS AMONG THE WORST ADVICE I HAVE EVER RECEIVED by the metric of “what actually makes the situation, for me and my friends who are getting bullied, any better”. What this advice does in real life, is allow the bully to realize they have found the thing that every bully is always looking for: an easy target. When you “ignore” bullies in the hopes that they get bored and go away, all you are doing long-term is teaching the bully that there are no consequences for their actions. I didn’t listen to this advice in the first fucking grade; I didn’t listen to it when people told me that’s how I should deal with Solo and their fanclub harassing, threatening, blackmailing, cyberstalking and ultimately doxing me “because I annoyed them”; and I am not going to listen to it now, because that advice does not work and is not meant to help me not get bullied; it is meant to help the authority figure in charge of the situation not have to deal with it personally because, in the words of a serial rapist who was believed over all of his victims for years because he was just such a Nice Guy who everyone loved so fuckin’ much they refused to believe he was capable of rape: “The parent doesn’t want justice, the parent wants quiet.” The reasons and the opinions of the people who give me the advice I know is bad and doesn’t work are irrelevant to me, because at the end of the day,if no one else is willing to, i have to defend myself and my community from the people who would tear us apart in the name of having their right to be racist pricks “respected”.

So, no, I will not be silently accepting whatever abuse you choose to pour into the kemetic tag or into my inbox in the name of “being the bigger person”. I also will not be going and finding any of the people choosing to send me this abuse, and let them set the terms of engagement and tone of the conversation, and take them seriously as they tell me all of this fucking racist nonsense that they delusionally believe is a bunch of Rational Fair Good Points About Politics and Kemeticism. And, once again to make sure it sinks in, I tell all of you, sincerely: I do not and will not EVER give enough of a fuck about “respecting” your whiny anonymous opinions, to stop saying what I’m saying. I respect you enough not to attempt to proselytize or “sell you” on my religious beliefs, but I do not “respect” you enough (or rather, in the way that you wish I “respected” you) to keep my story, as I have experienced it, a secret to protect your feelings and egos. 

If I blocked you, you’re staying blocked. If you’re anonymous, your opinion doesn’t matter because you will not stand by it. Put up or shut up.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

No Comicstorian, Marvel DOESN’T need a reboot Part 1: DC history

Youtube channel ‘Comicstorian’ recently put out a video detailing why he feels the PS4 Spider-Man game proves why Marvel needs to reboot their history.

I was so gobsmacked by how misinformed his views were I felt compelled to debunk his statements in two parts, the first being a coverage of DC comics history of reboots.

“This game proves that Marvel should do what DC does and soft reboot their continuity every 4-7 years”

 This is the first and probably biggest point of bullshit spoken about and I suspect my points will apply to the rest of the video’s arguments.

 The idea of this one game adaptation ‘proving’ Spider-Man, let alone ALL OF MARVEL COMICS, needs to reboot their continuity is laughable at best. Did Batman the Animated Series prove Marvel needed to reboot their history? Did X-Men the Animated Series? Did the X-Men movies? Did X-Men Evolution? Wolverine and the X-Men? The 1994 Spider-Man cartoon? The Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon? The Raimi Movies? The MCU?

 All of those are wonderful adaptations of the comic book characters (mostly) but none of them led to anyone rebooting anything, reorientating maybe but not rebooting. Moreover if all those more public and serialized stories were awesome and modernized the characters why does this ONE GAME prove that NOW we need to do this for Marvel?

 It doesn’t prove anything, it’s just his ‘feelings’.

 But there is a bigger issue with this point of view.

 Comicstorian is mind blowingly out of touch with the nature of DC’s reboots.

 Broadly speaking it is understood that a hard reboot in comic books is something like Crisis on Infinite Earths wherein the majority of old stories for a character are thrown out and the fundamental building blocks of them are changed or remixed in major ways.

Even for a character like Batman his origin as recounted in the Golden Age was significantly different when it came time to reboot him in the 1980s post-crisis, even though it retained the same basic ideas and story beats. For Wonder Woman and Superman this was an even bigger deal as for the most part their whole origins as understood in the 1980s were burned down and started over representing a drastically almost opposite direction for their characters. And of course 90% of their then established history was just outright deleted, in Wonder Woman’s case this being 100%. Every post-crisis WW story is the ENTIRE HISTORY of post-Crisis Wonder Woman, nothing was carried over from pre-crisis.

 A soft reboot by contrast is something more like what happened in the 1990s with Zero Hour. In Zero Hour the then established lore and histories of every character were retained near identically and only smaller details were changed or tweaked. Those could have big knock on affects but those were not deliberate on the part of the authors.

  Why am I defining what a hard and a soft reboot is? Because Comicstorian claims that DC engage in them every 4-7 years and this is objectively untrue.

 The FIRST reboot DC technically engaged in was in the 1950s when they created Barry Allan, a new iteration of the Golden Age hero the Flash, thus dawned the Silver Age of comics.

 Whilst the intention to create a new version of the Flash was deliberate, calling this a reboot as we understand the term today is kind of weird because back in the 1950s the notion of a sequential continuity that mattered in defining who exactly the characters were simply didn’t exist for DC comics. They just had general ideas of who every character was and then just did whatever they wanted, even recycling ideas every 5 or so years because it was felt that the readership would rotate in and out within that time. no mention of such similar plots occurring was ever brought up even though technically they were happening to the exact same versions of the exact same characters who’d experienced near damn the same things before.

 That type of storytelling just didn’t exist for the characters. Basically Barry Allan was created as the new Flash, interacted with Superman and Batman the way Jay Garrick did all the while handwaving that Jay Garrick was just a comic book character because the writers were like “Fuck it. No one cares and it doesn’t matter.”

 Except fans did care and thus it wound up mattering. Fans wrote in asking how Jay Garrick could be a comic book character in the DC Universe when they’ve seen stories where he wasn’t and where he wasn’t and how the fuck Barry Allan thinks he’s the first Flash.

 This is when DC ‘rebooted’ their continuity by establishing that the Golden Age stories happened on ‘Earth 2’ and all the silver age and beyond stories were on ‘Earth 1’, with the exact point of transition for individual characters varying. This was never the authorial intention by anyone. As far as 1950s Superman writers knew or cared up until that point they’d just been writing the same Superman who showed up in 1938. Same deal with Batman though DC tried to claim that Earth 2 Batman was the guy who didn’t have a yellow oval on his chest and Earth 1 was the guy who did.

 With the concept installed they then went wild with it telling stories about Earth 1 and Earth 2 and how they were similar yet different, e.g. they married Earth 2 Superman and killed Earth 2 Batman whilst they remained committed to Earth 1 (their main versions) Superman staying single and Earth 1 Batman obviously staying alive.

  This wasn’t a reboot that occurred due to freshen things up or anything. It was just the Flash writer not giving a shit and doing what he wanted and DC pulling an explanation out of thing air to justify it.

  Their first true reboot was in the 1980s when they did Crisis on Infinite Earths and in the story combined Earth 1 and Earth 2 whilst deleting parts of it and every other universe so that they could reshape their whole line of comics.

 Did they do this just because you know the old continuity had been around for awhile and it was time to freshen things up and make it more modern?

 No they did it because the writers of DC didn’t want to deal with the insane contradictory mess the old DC universe (that hadn’t had much planning and developed haphazardly) and also because they wanted their universe to be more like Marvel’s.

 Remember that. the biggest reboot DC ever did was because they wanted their universe to be like Marvel’s because Marvel’s, which was like 20-25 years old at the time, was more successful.

  Then the next reboot was Zero Hour in the mid-1990s. Did THIS exist to freshen things up and modernize it?

 Fuck no.

 Zero Hour mostly existed to pay off a Green Lantern storyline and more significantly to just clean up continuity snafus that had cropped up because DC hadn’t perfectly planned out everything the first time they rebooted in the 1980s.

 Then came Superman: Birthright in like 2003. This was originally meant as a non-canon update of Superman’s origin by uber Superman fanboy Mark Waid, recycling ideas from a failed pitch he (and Mark Millar and Grant Morrisson) had made in 2000 to also reboot Superman.*

 But then it was folded into DC’s continuity effectively replacing Superman’s origin story from the 1980s by John Byrne although DC kinda sorta pretended like BOTH origins counted and like between them this is Superman’s actual canonical origin and Birthright contradicted nothing.

 Except it did and they later explained that Superman’s history, along with other alterations to the DC universe pre-2006 had occurred due to Superboy Prime punching a fucking wall which causes reality altering shockwaves or some shit like that I don’t know.

 That idea cropped up in the 2006 event comic Infinite Crisis which was a direct sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths and another soft reboot of DC’s history but kind of a bigger one than in Zero Hour. Whilst Birthright was an unintentional reboot of just Superman, Infinite Crisis was a deliberate soft rebooting of the entire DC universe.

 Because it was just again time to freshen things up, modernize the characters and inject some creative energy into the universe?

  Lol noooooooooooooooooooooooooooope!

  Infinite Crisis existed primarily out of the mind of writer Goeff Johns and to a lesser extent Dan Didio, EIC of DC Comics.

 In not so many words both have more or less admitted their desire to work for DC was specifically to restore Barry Allan and Hal Jordan as the Flash and Green Lantern respectively after the former died and got replaced in Crisis on Infinite Earths and the latter went evil and got replaced in the 1990s Ron Marx run of GL.

 And when you know this and look at their statements and work before and after Infinite Crisis along with what actually happens and the unsubtle metacommentary within the story it becomes obvious why the story really existed.

 The story existed because John and Didio, like Waid, Morrisson, Millar and probably other people at DC,were butthurt that the versions of the DC characters they grew up on had been rebooted way back in the 1980s in COIE.

 And there is plenty of circumstantial evidence supporting this.

 In the 2000s DC had slowly but surely already been working in silver age elements back into the DC universe, for example Superman was dealing with lots of different types of kryptonite, reintroducing his cousin Supergirl and his dog Krypto and getting steadily more and more overpowered. This is in spite of the 1980s reboot specifically wanting to restrict kryptonite to just the green kind, powering down Superman and make him distinctly the lone survivor of Krypton.

 The Superman 2000s pitch by Waid, Morrisson and Millar is very revealing because it makes it very clear that the Superman/Lois Lane marriage (something that was born very directly out of the new directions of the post-crisis era) needed to go so they could get back to the Supes/Lois/Clark love triangle. In fact the proposed story of the pitch was all about Superman rebooting his history in order to save Lois’ life which would mean undoing their marriage. Along with that the pitch made Superman even more sci-fi and powered up again evoking the silver age all of them have been on record as adoring.

 Even if you were unaware of this Morrisson’s All-Star Superman story was built off the back of being a love letter to the silver age Superman stories and his Batman run adopts a Silver age story as a key foundation stone for the story he wanted to tell.

 Johns equally makes his adoration of the silver age obvious in almost everything he does, even referencing how great a new silver age of superheores will be in an episode of Smallville he wrote.

 When Johns personally wrote Superman’s rebooted origin after Infinite Crisis he re-established various silver age elements into Superman lore, including his being Superboy as a teen, his membership in the Legion of Super Heroes, Lex Luthor being a childhood friend of Clark’s and him losing his hair as a result.

 The big takeaway from Infinite Crisis? It existed because DC’s staff wanted to recreate the status quos they loved as kids and because they hated the post-crisis stuff for the most part because it erased those versions. This is especially true of Mark Waid who is candid about how mad he was that Superman got rebooted by John Byrne and asked at a panel in his youth when the ‘real’ version (pre-crisis version) was going to come back.

 Wonder Woman herself underwent a kind of reboot too under J. Michael Straczynski’s tenure where her history got futzed with. This wasn’t an isolated incident.

  Then DC did their second (or third if you wanna count the Earth 1-2 shit) hard reboot in 2011.

 The story was Flashpoint and it set up the New 52 era. The Nu52 was again Silver Age inspired but used shitty 1990s tropes at the same time. Because Jim Lee had been given a position of power in DC by this point.

 What followed was for almost every character five years of near solid deterioration. Wonder Woman and Superman got fucked especially hard, not only because they were shipped together (thus fulfilling a stupid Silver-Bronze Age ship born out of Diana being able to not die during sex with Clark) but because their characters were just....broken.

 Diana devolved into this kind of Xena/300 character who had a biological Daddy (just like in the Silver Age) a mother with blonde hair (just like in the Silver Age) and generally began to have her narrative revolve around the men in her life like Ares, Zeus, Orion, her brother, Apollo, Superman, etc (just. Like. In. The. Silver. Age!)

 Now that wasn’t the case for Superman. He just went back to being an isolated alien God whom Lois Lane didn’t think much of and being overpowered as fuck. They just added him this lame young and unsure of himself bullshit to make him more like post-One More Day Spider-Man. A reboot trying to make a DC character more like a Marvel one, who’d have thunk it?

  Meanwhile over in Batman Barbra Gordon went back to being able to walk and became Batgirl again in essentially the identical costume she had in the Silver Age and Bruce Wayne briefly dated rarely seen Silver/Bronze Age girlfriend Julie Madison.

 Barry Allan meanwhile was the one and the only Flash, Wally West the defining post-Crisis Flash had never even held the mantle and was not going to.

  Basically if Infinite Crisis was the powers that be warping the DC universe to more resemble what it was like when they were kids in the Silver Age then the Nu52 was them just erasing the DC universe and replacing it with their shitty Silver Age fanfiction. It was what they obviously had deep down wanted to do back in Infinite Crisis if they’d been allowed.

  And I cannot stress this enough, it failed.

 It failed spectacularly.

 It was the single most promoted DC reboot ever with TV adds, they made an effort to court the digital comics crowd, they had new #1s to entice new readers, they got rid of all their old history to (in theory) REALLY entice new readers.

 And their sales spiked...at first.

  Then gradually died and died and died.

 Except for Batman, the character who famously changed the least  from one reboot into the next, retaining most of his over all history.

 It got so bad that DC reintroduced the pre-Flashpoint Superman (complete with his wife Lois and now with their new son Jon) and had them co-exist in the primary DC universe alongside nu52 Superman.

 Then they killed Nu52 Superman off and had pre-FP Superman decide to fill in for him.

 And this was all part of an initiative called DC Rebirth in 2016. What was DC Rebirth?

 DC Rebirth was an effort to essentially reinstate a lot of the history and directions of the DC characters from the post-crisis/pre-flashpoint era (so like 1986-2011) BACK into the DC universe via you guess it, soft rebooting it.

 Was this just because it’d been 5 years now so it’s time to freshen things up?

 Jesus Christ no. DC Rebirth existed as  an apology for having rebooted in the new 52!

 Again Superman was a microcosm of this. Not only was the pre-flashpoint Superman, the guy with most of the history from 1986-2011, now the primary Superman but in a 2017 story called Superman: Reborn DC cosmically integrated him into the prime DC universe so that his history now stated he had ALWAYS been there as the main defining Superman and all that happened was he wore the nu52 Superman’s costume for awhile.

 His history though was essentially the one we got from after Infinite Crisis so in effect they reverse rebooted  Superman because the 2011 rebooted version of him was so aweful.

 Wonder Woman got much the same treatment with ANOTHER new origin for her but one more in line with her Golden Age and Post-crisis origin that threw out the trash from the 2011 nu52 origin.

 Sales and critical acclaim for DC over all increased after Rebirth and fans were loud and vocal about how much they appreciated DC essentially fixing what they’d broken in 2011, with Superman being perhaps the biggest example.

 Superman had something like 7+ reboots across his 80 year history and the DC universe over all about 6 across the same span of time.

 Meanwhile Marvel between 1961-present has never rebooted their continuity and...has usually outsold DC.

 In fact the only DC title that regularly tends to outsell major Marvel titles is Batman. That character who again has been altered the least reboot to reboot.

 What is the big takeaway from all this? Well

 a)      DC didn’t reboot (be it soft or hard) every 4-7 years. The Earth 1 and 2 concepts showed up something like 18ish years after the DC universe began. COIE occurred around 20 years later. Zero Hour was 8 years after COIE ended. Infinite Crisis was 12 years later. Flashpoint/the New 52 was 5 years after that and Rebirth was 5 years after that

b)      Reboots never occurred for the sake of keeping things fresh or a sincere desire to generate new creative directions. They existed either to plug holes by careless writing (Earth2 and Zero Hour), purely corporate reasons (like making things more like Marvel), an attempt to recapture nostalgia (Infinite Crisis, New 52, Rebirth) or a desire to ‘fix’ whatever older reboots ‘broke’ (Infinite Crisis/New 52, Rebirth)

c)       Reboots are not creatively healthy, they just lead to more and more retcons and reboot turning everything into a clusterfuck

d)      Maintaining a fairly consistent continuity is actually creatively and financially more sensible hence DC is routinely outsold by the company that has never rebooted

[amirosebooks]

Tagged in a thing

Tagged by: @procasdeanating

Rules: Answer all questions, add one question of your own and tag as many people as there are questions.

1. Coke or Pepsi: Mexican coke 2. Disney or Dreamworks: Disney 3. Coffee or Tea: Tea or flavored coffee 4. Books or Movies: Depends on what I’m looking for 5. Windows or Mac: I like them both, but my current computer is a Mac 6. DC or Marvel: DC 7. Xbox or Playstation: Eh, they both have their pros and cons. We have an Xbox right now. 8. Dragon Age or Mass Effect: I love futuristic stuff and the name of The Geth villains (or whatever) in Mass Effect is one of my favorites ever (I don’t know why, it’s just pretty), but I think I’d enjoy playing Dragon Age more. 9. Night Owl or Early Rise: A night owl that has to get up at 4:30am everyday because adulting is bullshit 10. Cards or Chess: Cards 11. Chocolate or Vanilla: Dark Chocolate 12. Vans or Converse: converse 13. Lavellan, Trevelyan, Cadash or Adaar: Who in the fuck? 14. Fluff or Angst: BOTH. TOGETHER. OFTEN. 15. Beach or Forest: Both, both is good. (I’m from Northern California, I’m used to beaches having the woods dusted up along the shoreline.) 16. Dogs or Cats: Kitties 17. Clear Skies or Rain: Raaaaaain. 18. Cooking or Eating Out: I like food. If I have to make it, it can be fun, if someone else makes it that’s cool too. 19. Spicy Food or Mild Food: Spicy 20. Halloween/Samhain or Solstice/Yule/Christmas: Halloween. 21. Would you rather forever be a little too cold or a little too hot: Too cold, for sure. 22. If you could have a superpower, what would it be? The power to duplicate myself at will (usually used to freak people the fuck out or intimidate them). 23. Animation or Live Action: Live Action. 24. Paragon or Renegade: What? 25. Baths or Showers: I like both 26. Team Cap or Team Iron Man: Team Cap, but Iron Man did have good points. CAN’T YOU JUST GET ALONG?! 27. Fantasy or Sci-Fi: Sci-Fi, but I like Urban Fantasy a lot more than hard edged either of those genres tbh. 28. Do you have three or four favourite quotes? If so, what are they: ♠ "If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you." —Henry Rollins (I believe this was in his book Black Coffee Blues, but it’s been years since I’ve read it.) ♠ “Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” — Bruce Lee, from this interview ♠ “... and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’” — Jack Kerouac, On The Road (I just bought the kindle version of this because I love the quote cut exactly like this, and the internet tends to chop it up otherwise.) ♠ “Real life seeks the gentle slopes at the back of Mount Improbable, while creationists are blind to all but the daunting precipice at the front.” — Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion There you go, four quotes that I’ve thought about getting tattooed on my skin in one way or another over the last fifteen years or so. 29. YouTube or Netflix: Netflix, but I really do love both 30. Harry Potter or Percy Jackson: Harry Potter 31. When You Feel Accomplished: When I’m writing a lot. When I’ve checked off my to-do list. When I’ve made my husband genuinely smile. 32. Star Wars or Star Trek: I CAN’T CHOOSE. Star Trek: The Original Series. THERE ARE YOU HAPPY? 33. Paperback Books or Hardback Books: Paperback all the way, but I read on kindle 98% of the time these days. 34. Handwriting or Typing: Depends on what I’m trying to do. Sometimes my words flow best by hand and ink, other times I need to click them out on my laptop. 35. Velvet or Satin: Eh, I don’t really care. 36. Video Games or Movies: Movies. 37. Would you rather be the dragon or own the dragon? Own a dragon, but just a little one. Like the size of a housecat. THAT WOULD BE AWESOME. 38. Sunrise or sunset: Sunset because of the colors in the sky and the stars coming out to say hello 39. What’s your favourite song? Goddammit... “Devil’s Dance Floor” by Flogging Molly. I’m almost always in the mood to hear it and it always makes me smile. 40. Horror Movies yes or no: Yes, definitely yes, especially if it’s October. 41. Long hair or short hair: I like my hair long enough to hide behind 42. Opera or Theatre: Theatre 43. Assuming the multiverse theory is true and every story ever told has really happened somewhere, which one of the movie/book/tv show/game/etc worlds would you pick to travel to first? Oooo. My first instinct is to say one of these: X-Files, Fringe, Torchwood, Supernatural, Wynonna Earp, Lost Girl or Warehouse 13, but the fun in those would be being part of the “in the know about the weird shit” people, so as long as I can be one of those and get to shoot a gun and play with knives and maybe a badge I’d honestly be down for any of them. (Like I said earlier in this, urban fantasy is my jam.) 44: If you had to eat only one thing for the rest of your life what would it be? Carnitas plate from those Mexican restaurants we get here on the west coast where there’s always a slightly different name on the building but they all pretty much make the same food and have the same menu. 45: Older guys or young guys? Older... I guess, if I had to. Older women, for sure, but dudes... eh, that’s harder. Not younger for sure though. (By younger I mean, like, several years younger than me.) 46: If you could have a night with any fictional character doing whatever you wanted … who? Omg, thinking about potential answers to this is actually embarrassing... Uhh, Mulder and Scully (fuck you, I get two characters) just listening to them rant about whatever off the wall bullshit monster they’re looking for that week? 47: Singing or dancing? Singing 48: No internet for the rest of your life or your favourite show/book/game/whatever has an end so terrible it’s only aired once and never spoken of again? Bad ending tbh. Endings are hard and tv shows never seem to please everyone so, eh. 49: Your favourite TV show gets cancelled before an actual end or the end is just totally crappy/horrible, and you’re distraught for the rest of your life. See: Almost Human with the first part of that question 50. A movie/book/TV show that changed your life. Touch & Geaux by Abigail Roux because it 1) completely changes the rest of the six books before it in the series and 2) made me realize just what books could do and 3) inspire me to start writing. 51. Do you prefer to drive or ride in cars? I prefer to drive and I like to do it with the music turned up loud.

Tagging: @malady579 ; @authorwrightnow ; @nickyoflaherty ; @ngpeltier ; @larchwood ; @morningstarcas and whoever sees this and wants to do the thing