#that shit went hard in the early 2010s

[zevzevarainai]

i'm thinking about what i used to do on this website back in 2011/2012 and trying to decide if the glee obsession or the soupnaturl obsession was more embarrassing and you know what? the glee phase is better and yes it is because of Darren Criss i still listen to his songs unironically

[nico-esoterica]

"Nico, I wanna be a famous artist!" (A Case Study Using Manifestation and Astrology)

Lady Gaga went from no one knowing her name in a hand-made outfit at Lollapalooza in '07 to eclipsing and redefining pop culture in '09. And later headlined Lollapalooza in 2010. She told herself, "I'm going to make a Number One Record," and "The Fame is inside of Me," over and over again. This was what meteoric 'BTS-like' success looked like for millennials (which also happened in the same amount of time).

She manifested that shit like a motherfucker. She's living proof that a small indie artist who can barely move a crowd and who got INITIAL lukewarm reception after releasing her breakout album that only gained traction A YEAR LATER that YOU, IN FACT, CAN DO THIS SHIT. Gaga was performing in hole in the wall gay clubs in Europe and radios didn't care about that album until Just Dance blew up in the US. Every millennial remembers exactly where they were in life when that single became a hit song. This is also the woman who performed in an Ikea Parking Lot to promote said album.

This is a sign for all of the artists in the audience to NOT give up on your dreams. Even if things seem to be slow, delayed, or as if nothing is going on. There will always be SOMETHING behind the scenes if you commit to thinking in your favor. You're human and can have shitty days, weeks, etc, but it's important to NOT COMMIT TO BEING MISERABLE. Your engagement's gonna go up, you can find a new melody for that song, work through your writer's block and just WRITE the damn thing, and you're going to GET the right gig for you. Your dreams will be handed to you if you believe that they will. TRUST YOURSELF.

Astrologically, Gaga was in her 10H profection year when she first performed at Lollapalooza. But between 07-08+ she experienced the classic Jupiter and Saturn squares to her natal planet equivalents which occur in your early 20s that could've served as catalysts or hurdles she chose not to overcome and did the former. Contrary to what we hear about 10H profections being about finally being seen or getting promoted, etc, it's not inherently explosive. It depends on the chart and what the person does with their potential. Gaga used it as exposure and to further build her career that'd soon snowball into legendary success.

This isn't some Capitalistic tale about 'hard work paying off.' I don't believe in toil and 'hard work' in an exploitative economical sense. I believe in all-encompassing self-belief. Gaga could have easily thrown in the towel when the radios weren't gagged or the people weren't moving in the crowd. She, imo, was performing for audiences only SHE could see. Huge ones based on the scale she believed in.

Even if we could say her Mars-Neptune conjunction in Capricorn where she already had an exaltation or that her Moon-Mars or Moon-Pluto helped her, those harmonious aspects could have motivated her in the opposite direction if she wasn't seeing results. Because all of that Mars can easily wear out through exhaustion or entrap itself in the idea that it simply 'can't come easily.' Martian and Saturnian folks tend to enjoy suffering as a kink. She also could've easily been a flash-in-the-pan one hit wonder artist and faded or her era could've been very short. Maybe in hind sight it was from a musical perspective, but that 5 year run between The Fame and pre-Art Pop undeniably gave her quarter century defining success. And she'd later go on to win big accolades as a serious actress and is still going.

And speaking strictly astrologically, I see another big musical era for her coming. I saw it in Galliano's chart when his fire points got activated and will be emblazoned by Neptune in Aries transiting soon. I also see the same coming for our Mama Monster.

So, um, why are y'all giving up out there in the stands? COME GET ON STAGE AND CLAIM IT AS YOURS ALREADY.

[max1461]

Thought for a moment in the 2010s that we were entering a new serious era (e.g. 1920s, 30s, 40s), but it seems that we're instead in an increasingly tacky era (50s, 60s, 70s). Like look at the change in YouTube. Well you all are textheads you don't do video, I know that. But like. In 2017 there was ContraPoints. Agree or disagree with her opinions, what she was doing was conceptually and aesthetically serious. Even her early, low-production-value stuff. She was talking about incels and other internet shit, but the internet is part of the real world, that's fine. In fact that's what gave me hope for another serious era, people were finally talking about internet stuff the way 1920s German intellectuals or whatever talked about the cultural trends of their day. Maybe because Contra has half a philosophy PhD and was explicitly influenced by those German intellectuals.

Another example from a totally disjoint cultural niche was Digi a.k.a. Trixie a.k.a. Ygg Studios or whatever they go by now. Drunk, smelly, and unkempt—yes. Or at least so went the persona. Talking seriously about anime—also yes. When they claimed they were the only good anime reviewer on the internet it made a lot of people mad. But they were right!

There were thinkers, we had thinkers. My generation, or roughly my generation, had thinkers. To be clear, when I include Contra here I'm not including all of her ilk, I'm not including the leftist-theory-regurgitators and so on. But Contra herself was a thinker! Digi was a thinker! We had thinkers.

But that era is over now, on YouTube at least. I go on there and it's all algorithmic drivel. I look for anime content and as I've explained it's all about #hype and #epic and how the new season of whatever #hits different and other empty meaningless bullshit. No analysis, no thought, fundementally unserious bullshit. Tacky! It's tacky! The the YouTube thumbnail O-face is fucking 70s-ass fake wood paneling tacky bullshit!

MrBeast. I've never seen a MrBeast video but I hate him for what he represents. I used to watch this channel called Wranglerstar, he made videos about different types of axes and forest fire fighting equipment and various other stuff. "Modern homesteading" I believe was the tagline. And it was always evident that he was a far-right guy but who gives a shit, his videos where good. Serious videos about interesting topics, that a fucking normal guy might watch. Well around 2020 he basically started flooding his channel with covid conspiracy bullshit and "the Chinese are going to attack us any day!" bullshit and other unserious crap. And I had to stop watching. How could I find any of that compelling? It's vapid nonsense.

And I don't know if it's a shift in the algorithm or people becoming more savvy to the algorithm or what, but all of YouTube is like this now. Vapid clickbait empty meaningless bullshit for another tacky commercialized bullshit era.

And you know, I felt like it might just be localized to YouTube for a while, but I started to look around, and it just feels like everything is like this. Backsliding to the tacky times. God I hate tackiness. I hate unseriousness. I'm having a little meltdown. At least SMW kaizo hacks are having a renaissance. People are doing serious shit in that space, serious shit that is also not anachronistic, you know, it's kept up with the modern world. It addresses modern concerns (fun to play hard Mario). But it's serious. People are serious. One of the few serious things happening in my orbit.

Even in science it feels like people aren't serious anymore. You know, standard Sabine Hossenfelder complaint about particle physics. But I don't really know enough about that to say. Get the vibe that biology is still serious these days.

To be clear, everything I'm saying here is pure vibes. I'm just saying shit. I'm just saying shit that I feel. But I'll be deeply disappointed if I have to live my youth in another tacky era, god damn it. Even the 80s seem like they were better than this.

[batsplat]

I know need to know what the fuck was the honda three rider team about. Bc that sounds made up as fuck

historical silly season: 2010 edition!

in early 2010, casey had very much had enough of ducati

rumours are that he'd already been looking to break his contract for the 2010 season after how ducati had handled the whole mystery illness 2009 saga... releasing inaccurate statements about his condition to the press without his consent, implying his diet was to blame - as well as offering jorge a shit ton of money to come ride for them. crucially more than they were paying casey

this was from mid 2009 and the vibes were already BAD back then... it's hard to know how seriously to take retirement rumours from the time given casey just wasn't. really... talking to the press, so a lot of the times the media was relying on other sources from inside his camp or just wildly speculating

anyway, casey did see out the 2010 season with ducati, but at the start of the year he essentially gave them an ultimatum - he wanted them to rip up his proposed contract and have them show him how much he was worth to them. they did not do so

according to casey, he already signed a contract at the second round of the season in jerez, which gives you a sense of how done he was with all things ducati - but it was only announced after the seventh round in july. the move was made smoother by casey's existing close relationship with livio suppo, who had himself recently made the switch from ducati to honda

very much the right time to make the move for sure. at the time, there was speculation that casey's poor results in the first half of the season was due to decreased motivation, which of course he strongly denied. really, it was the fault of the bike and team - and casey would show as much the following year at honda

one little problem. honda already had two factory contracted riders for 2011: dani and dovi. now, dani had been honda's wunderkind since forever, and after their last world champ nicky hayden - who was not on particularly warm terms with dani's camp, it has to be said - departed the team, dovi had been the chosen replacement. dovi was a long time honda loyalist, even when he was riding their underpowered bikes to championship runner up positions against jorge in 250cc, and he'd also had a highly impressive rookie season

2009 had not been a particularly great year for either factory honda rider, partly due to bike performance partly due to injuries partly due to... rider performance. it was a rough year for dovi in particular, despite his win in tricky conditions at donington (all four aliens deliver quite funny performances at that race in different ways. not exactly the finest of hours for any of them)

when casey's signing was announced, honda initially went 'okay three factory blokes but maybe we'll have two in the real team and then one in a fake team'

the problem, right, is that it costs a lot of money to field a three man team - this is why honda was so keen on the red bull option, because then they could pay for the seat

honda confirmed its intention to have four factory honda riders in 2011, those three and sic, in mid-september. but they still needed to figure out where to put them. they didn't manage to get the funds to put casey in a separate team, and then they tried to put dovi on the satellite squad:

now, dovi was on a 2+1 contract, with 2009-10 guaranteed and an option to extend for another year. the contract included a performance clause - and dovi was having a more successful 2010 season, so hrc was having some trouble forcing dovi to accept the move:

so yeah, obviously not exactly great behaviour to sign a third rider when your team is already essentially full... and then immediately spend the next few months trying to get rid of one of your existing riders who is still entitled to that seat

some more details:

for a while, dovi looked like he might be leaning towards accepting it, and was certainly keen to stress that he wasn't rejecting gresini due to his interpersonal issues with some of the team's personnel. this from september:

eventually, repsol agreed to fund the whole thing so that honda could honour their commitments to all three riders:

so, one team for all of them, if still a wee bit of healthy internal separation

and by november the whole thing was sorted

honda did have some internal precedent for this! in 1997, they fielded three factory riders: doohan, criville and okada

also back in the day they did just create shell teams organised around one rider, which is of course where valentino spent his first two years in the premier class

and here's the updated version from 2011!

anyway, it was only something honda was willing to do for one year, and in the end dovi decided to jump ship to yamaha rather than accept internal demotion. the fight for p3 in the championship went right down to the final race in valencia - and it must have been incredibly satisfying for dovi to snatch it from dani there

after this... look, basically they changed the rules to make it two entries at most per team, then they changed it back for like? two years? so that four riders were technically allowed. and then they changed their mind again. now it's just two - obviously teams are allowed wildcards, but they couldn't do this three man team thing anymore nowadays

teams generally wouldn't even want to do this because it's a lot of hassle and, most importantly, money. so yeah, unlikely to make a comeback. very much a quirky curio that won't be replicated... could be funny though. if they want to change the rules again

[onestepbackwards]

Hello! can I ask for a follow-up to your self aware au on ingo and emmet in which they cheer the sad reader who has had a long and heavy working week. maybe one where the reader discovers that the train twins have become self aware or where the two come out of the 3ds. Bonus points if you write both situations

Hello Anon! I wrote them mentioning their awareness, but ended up not writing them coming out of the DS, sorry about that! It was a bit hard to write this one.  Still, I hope you enjoy! CW: Self aware characters, slight obsessive characters if you squint. Word Count: 3426 words!

Something odd had been happening to you as of late. A lot of odd things. It started a few days ago, after you had come home from a bad day at work. The week so far hadn’t been great, and that day specifically had been rather… shit, if you were being honest. One of the first things you had done, much like you had every day earlier this week, was curl up, and play Pokemon Black 2. But something had happened that day. You had received a call from Ingo and Emmet in the game, which you knew was not originally possible. You would have heard about that online with the resurgence of submas content. You had even been able to respond to them with the keypad in game, and they responded, asking if you would like to ‘hang out’ with them. After that, they followed your little character sprite around in the overworld. Occasionally little chat bubbles appeared above their head, and you could go into 3v3 battles with them. That was definitely not in the original game. Ingo and Emmet never left Gear Station after their initial battle in Nimbasa. Nor should they be able to follow you around for 3v3 battles. You would have certainly seen something about that online, or at least seen gifs about it. At the time, you had wondered if you had a hacked copy, but it made no sense. Your parents had bought a retail copy, and you doubt they would have gone to the effort of repackaging a DS game just to lie to you about it. If it had been used, they would have just told you. You had also lent the game to someone for a month to play on your profile, to see if they enjoyed the gameplay. That friend had no idea how to hack game cartridges, and it would have been an impressive hack for only one month of work in the early 2010’s. However, you didn’t really care to think about this. Because if you were being honest… It made you happy. Having both Ingo and Emmet talk to you, and have fun battles with you was a dream come true. After the day you had, you were willing to ignore all oddities about it, and enjoy yourself. It had been a few days since then. When you had woken up the day after, you had immediately wondered if everything that had happened had been a fever dream. Maybe you had forgotten to eat, and went to bed straight away? Your brain simply making you think of Pokemon, and what you wanted to happen. But… You knew it wasn’t a dream. Your dreams were never that realistic. That, and the food you had eaten while playing the game was gone, the remains in the trash were even still there. It hadn’t been a dream. That left you with a lot of questions, and not many answers. If everything that happened that evening had been real, then why? How? Questions flowed through your mind, and you couldn’t help but feel… hesitant. If everything that had happened was as real as you remembered, then why your game? Did your game just allow Ingo and Emmet to talk and interact with you? The only logical thing you can think of is modifications, but again, you know that was not possible. You hated to admit it, but you didn’t touch your DS the rest of that day. As much as you were curious, you weren’t entirely sure you could handle what you might see. Though, you couldn’t help but feel guilty about it when you had gone to bed that night. It’s not like the game did anything wrong, but you weren’t sure where to go from here. Your curiosity would eventually win out though. That, and the stress from your job. Pokemon has become a part of your routine for destressing. You were beginning to miss playing it after work, especially since your job hadn’t lightened up any since last week. Which led you to these past few days. You eventually gave in to your curiosity, and your desire to play more. Opening your DS and turning on the game, everything seemed normal. When you loaded in, you were exactly where you had last been before closing the game. For a moment, you could only stare. Everything seemed normal, you could already feel doubt seeping into your chest. Deciding to walk around a little bit, you began to move through some nearby grass, and entered an encounter. Those seemed normal too. No 3v3 battles with pokemon that had levels scaled to your own. It was just… normal. Hesitantly, you played a while, battling pokemon, and attempting to catch a few you didn’t have yet. You at least wanted to pretend to be productive. Though you couldn’t help but have your thoughts wander to Gear Station. Should you go check on them? Ingo and Emmet? You honestly couldn’t help but feel a bit… guilty that you haven’t. They lifted your mood so well the other night, and you left. Didn’t even return for a few days to say thank you. That is, if they could even be thanked in the first place. You had fought with yourself a bit, before going back to Nimbasa. It wouldn’t hurt to check on them at least, and maybe get some answers? If nothing happened, well, you could at least challenge the subway again like you usually do. Though you were surprised when you saw both the twins sprites in the hub of Gear Station. Like before, when both noticed you, a small ‘!’ appeared over their heads when you entered. Eagerly, they both approached your character, and pulled you into a conversation. “Greetings! It’s good to see you again!” Ingo spoke, his sprite on your left, while Emmet’s stopped to your right. “Yup! Verrry good to see you in fact. We were getting worried after you left for a few days.” Emmet followed up. You almost couldn’t believe your eyes. Again, you were sure this wasn’t normal for either version of this game. But deep down, you already knew that. Idly, your mind began to wander for a moment. If they were here, interacting with you like this, would they want to do battles like before? Before you could dwell on it, you continued the conversation. You were almost surprised, and a bit excited. “What would you like to do today? Are you here to challenge the subway?” Ingo asked you, and Emmet’s sprite cutely bounced in place. “Oh! Or would you like us to join you again?” He asked. If you didn’t know any better, you would almost say he was excited. Well, as excited as a sprite on a screen could be. But you couldn’t help but get excited yourself, your heart pounding in your chest. It hadn’t been a dream at all! That night, it all had been real! You agreed to let them travel with you again, and battle with you. It had just been like that one night. They both followed your character around, and joined you for battling. Just like before, the pokemon seemed to scale to your own, and you would even see pokemon you haven't caught yet. It was great at first. Amazing even!

But once again, you had more questions than answers. For starters, something Emmet had said continued to ring in your head. He had said something along the lines of being worried when you hadn’t appeared for a few days. You were aware the game used your clock in your DS, but you didn’t think most characters kept track of the time like that. Other little things happened afterwards. They would talk as if they were watching you, ask you about your day, and they would remember things you told them. Both of them seemed to recall you talking about your job, and would briefly ask about it every so often. Sometimes even asking if they treated you well. Or they would ask about your favorite meal, or your favorite snacks. You were a bit suspicious, and only one idea really seemed plausible at this point, even if it sounded crazy. Ingo and Emmet somehow seemed almost… aware. You didn’t want to believe it, but you couldn’t think of any other way they were like this, than a hacked copy of your game, and that was impossible. It seemed though your suspicions were right on the money, because not long after you had come to terms with the possibility, they called you in game. You had just started playing for the day. It had been another rough one, and you were ready just to get home and play. Your twins, regardless if they were aware or not, always seemed to bring a smile to your face. As soon as you loaded in, your character got a call. Your character immediately answered, and the familiar sprites of Ingo and Emmet appeared on your screen. Something you still weren’t quite used to. “Greetings! How are you doing? We hope we aren’t bothering you!” Ingo’s sprite moved. You couldn’t help but still be transfixed on them. “Yup! We have something we wish to discuss.” Emmet followed up. The idea itself intrigued you. What could they want? It couldn’t be wanting to hang out with you like last time, they would have just gotten straight to the point. So what could it be? They went silent for a moment, their speech box empty as they stared at you. After a few seconds, Emmet finally spoke. “We know this is a game. We aren’t real in your world.” You were a bit taken aback from how blunt he was. Eyes wide, you found it hard to speak. “Pardon?” You dumbly asked out loud out of instinct. It didn’t occur to you they probably wouldn’t hear you until after you spoke, and yet… “Our world is a game. We have… Become sentient within it, if you will.” Ingo tried to explain, and you owlishly blinked at his response. They could hear you?! You felt like your brain had bluescreened, and yet, it felt like it was about to overload. Thankfully, both patiently waited for you to process this information. “I… um…” You tried to speak. You were almost at a loss for words. “Well… It explains a lot…” You finally managed to speak. Emmet seemed to laugh. “Sorry if we’ve upset you with this knowledge-” Ingo began, though you shook your head. “No, I…” You began, and scrunched your face up trying to think of what to say. “It’s just weird, having that confirmed…? I… Don’t know how to react, if I’m being honest…” What else could you say? If anything, you kinda felt like you were in shock. Shouldn’t you be jumping for joy? Squealing in happiness at your favorite characters being aware of you? Both brothers tilted their heads. If your mind wasn’t overloaded with information, you might’ve called it cute. Though a thought did roll through your head. Did they hate you? Sure, it wasn’t your fault they existed in the game, but… You were the player. You had free will, while they were stuck inside. Noticing the look on your face, Emmet spoke up. “Are you alright? You seem upset.” You blinked at how easy he seemed to read you. “Oh, no I just… Are you upset with me? I’m sorry…” you began, feeling something besides shock. Panic. You couldn’t help but begin to apologize! Both seemed surprised, and were quick to interrupt you. “No, not at all! We aren’t upset in the slightest!” Ingo quickly cut in, his call sprite’s arms moving to grab your attention. You felt the ball of anxiety building in you deflate a bit. They weren’t mad? “We… Care for you quite a bit. We know you didn’t mean for this to happen, nor would it have been your fault. We aren’t upset with you, we promise!” Ingo reassured you. Emmet nodded. “I am Emmet. We could never hate you.” Both their words made it finally sink in. Ingo and Emmet were aware they were in a video game, and presumably, they were the ones messing with everything in it. That, and they cared about you. They cared about you. Your chest felt rather warm at the realization. Ingo and Emmet shared a look on screen while you were distracted. They weren’t lying when they were reassuring you. They cared about you, more than you could realize. You were so kind to them, before they decided to even tell you about their awareness. They cared about you a lot, and wanted you to be happy. Especially since you had been having more bad days than good ones as of late. You were so cute, and incredibly sweet… They had to do something. So, they modified the code. It was quite easy. Perhaps since they lived and breathed the code, it had been ridiculously simple. Both did it, all to see you smile. And they would do it again. It’s part of the reason they decided to reveal their awareness to you. They had been toeing the boundary, so to speak. You weren’t oblivious either. Both noticed the puzzled looks on your face you would get every now and again when they did something that shouldn’t be possible. Ingo and Emmet were growing a bit impatient though, and a bit anxious. They enjoyed hanging out with you, very much so! But they could only do so for so long, and so much. However, if you knew they were aware… Maybe you would be willing to keep the DS on, and let them hang out with you more? Plus, you always seemed so happy when they talked with you… They couldn’t help but yearn to see your happy face more often. You were a comfort for them in this false world of theirs. You breathed life into their lives. Your reaction wasn’t exactly what they had expected, but then again, it was sort of a hard pill to swallow. Even if you had suspected it, coming to terms the two video game characters you were talking to were actually aware they were fictional was probably a lot to take in. Though it almost made their hearts burst when you appeared to be worried that they could be mad at you. It was nonsense, really. They could never hate you, or be mad at you simply for existing, and playing a game. This wasn’t your fault. Like mentioned before, they cared for you greatly. You were a light in their lives, ever since the dawning realization came crashing down. You made things interesting, and gave them a reason to keep going. You made them want to fight the code that binds them. Not because they hated it, but because they wanted to interact with you. But after they cleared up any possible misconceptions, you seemed to be excited! Though, you seemed at odds on what to do now. So, they offered a brief solution. “Keep us with you!” “Huh?” Ingo made a motion of clearing his throat. “If it’s not too much trouble… We are inside a DS game, correct? If possible, you could take us with you, wherever you go.” In an instant, your face lit up once you understood what he was saying. You could take them with you! Sure, you couldn’t play the game while working, but you certainly could on breaks and such. No doubt seeing both would make your day, especially with how your bosses have been treating you as of late. “I like that idea.” Both lit up at your words. They could hang out with you all day now! Well, most of the day, apparently. Of course, when you explained your work it made sense you couldn’t keep them with you all the time, though they certainly wish they could help. Both of them understand the importance of work! Though you laughed at their words. “Nah, my manager is just a hardass. Do anything but work, and she will complain and write you up. Can’t even stand still behind a register with no customers without her mouthing off at someone.” That… Didn’t help their perception of your job. They already knew you didn’t like it. Both were beginning to see why. You talked with them for the rest of the evening, and even played some more with them, much for their delight. When you had to head to bed, they had a cute request. “If it isn’t too much trouble… Could you leave the DS on?” Ingo suddenly asked as you went to save the game. You paused for a moment. It was almost kind of sweet, in an odd way, for them to request that. You supposed it would make sense. They probably didn’t want to deal with their world, if they can see yours. Or something like that. They hadn’t exactly explained what happens when you turn the game off or close the DS. It probably wasn’t pleasant. “Yeah, I can do that.” Unknownst to you, they just wanted to be closer. Sure, their world ‘goes back to normal’ when you close the system, or turn the game off. But they hadn’t really liked that world anymore, knowing it was fake. It hurt, and it was a bit scary. All their friends, family, and pokemon were all fake. They were fake. Both twins at least had the comfort of knowing their brother was aware, just like them. So seeing you, and seeing your world? It brought them comfort, knowing they were so close to the real thing.

Of course, there was more to it than that. When you had gone to bed, you did as you promised, keeping the DS on nearby on a table near your bed. You simply turned the brightness and volume down, and had it facing away from you as you slept. When the two were sure you were asleep, they began to act. The code of their world was tricky. It took them forever just to code in the triple battles they had with you, and to even make their own call and triple battle sprites. It was even harder to mess with when the DS was off. The code was much easier to see when the game was running. However, it was harder to test things without you noticing, especially with potential game crashes. They had one goal. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. They had several. Their main one, however, was rather simple. Get to your world. They wanted to be with you, be close with you. Both of them had heard you, before they told you of their awareness. How you would call them cute, or talk about how much you loved them. It made their digital hearts throb, yearning for you. You were real, and you loved them. They decided not to mention that little fact, that they had overheard you say those things. They didn’t want to embarrass you! But they needed to get to your world, as soon as they could. Both dreamt of holding you, comforting you. They wished to take care of you, help you after a long day's work. Hell, with their access to pearls and gold, they potentially could even help you quit your job, if those items had value in your world! The idea of being the ones to support you in your own world is nearly enough to send them over the moon. You already work so hard, and were kind enough to hear them out. They want to take care of you and support you! Ingo and Emmet realize they probably can’t get a job easily either in your world, seeing as they are fictional characters. Both imagine it would be rather… difficult to get an ID of sorts just to get a job. So, items it was.

But hey, both believed it could work! Another thing they really wanted though, was just to see you happy. Your smile meant the world to them, and you always seemed to smile when they played with you. If they could join your world, they hoped they could help you smile more, and be happy. They firmly believed you deserved it. Both shared a look while you slept, delving into the code of your system. Despite it all, they had a lot of work to do. But you would be worth it. Anything to be with you, and to see you smile once more.

[tomyo]

Hi I'm gonna use this figure arriving to have a vent about Soul Eater.

So I'm gonna be so real, my expectations for the franchise are rock bottom. Personally I am pretty critical of Ohkubo and my opinions of him are a dude who really cooked but in an almost Ratatouille esque manner. Idk how this man was revolutionary and created one of the first notable female lead Shonen or a canon non binary character that isn't a stereotype but he did. But like, since the end of the manga, the series has fumbled so hard.

I share a lot of shit on tiktok and people are particularly get hype about the fukuro I own, to which for some reason Shonen GanGan just went ham for a few years with custom computer mice and mp3 players. But often there's a comment like "I wish they made more stuff like this now!" And fully they're right but I'm so defeated with official shit. Said figure above is really the only good shit they've released since the early 2010s and otherwise it's been a constant game of trying to not spend dumb money on secondhand merch. And I've felt the need to take the helm in some more bigger SE fan creations (plush which will go a questioning distance). But really if I think of the most hype shit SE has received, it's all from fan merch; the headphone attachments and the black room oni backpack for instance. Around 2018 was the first major anniversary to come up and since then there's constant "Soul Eater Remake 🥺" and no shame but I just know to give up by now.

So what I mean is, rn we've had the shitty anime anniversary merch release and now the manga anniversary exhibit.....which I'm gonna be real is kinda shit. I know the vague elements used for these types of shows but I sat there like "Is this gonna be 3D recreations or cardboard cutouts?" Turns out both but more of the latter. I'm really kinda disappointed that from what I've seen it's just Shinigami-sama's mirror for recreation and then the rest is blown up manga panels and really subpar cutouts. Tbr I was hoping for the apartment or the school podium maybe. I know the later manga elements would not be on the table sadly. But man, not even weapon recreations or something?

And the other part I gotta be real about, what the fuck happened to Ohkubo's art? I mean last I saw, Fire Force was still quality. But there was the perfect editions and now the main visual for the exhibition and it's baaad. The line art and posing feel amateurish and lazy. It feels like he almost hates the series the way he draws it. I really supported Ohkubo's weirder pieces and even found him a huge influence at one point but the perfect editions are what got me into buying the originals.

Idk I literally have planned to go to Japan for the exhibition but I know it's gonna be so disappointing. This series post mortum is fully just disappointment. The most surprising thing of the exhibition merch was there being any form of plush although they look a little cheap. Either way I know I still want them, I'm just tired of knowing my fandom is obtusely dead. It's become a game of looking at good smile's releases and seeing what niche thing gets a nendo over soul eater. Do that and I promise the results are WILD.

[ultramanginger]

Alien vs Predator rewatch thoughts...

Since Romulus was coming out, I rewatched every Alien and Predator film in order and I offer a thought for each movie:

Alien (1979)

It's a classic that has some incredible ideas that are still scary and fascinating to this day, but...

Watching it in HD, it's hard to miss some really cringey moments, like the Alien jazz hands and the way that Lambert and Brett's death scenes are so similar that they use some of the footage shot for one for the other.

Not to mention, the more you read about the making of the film, the more you realise it being good was luck rather than skill, as so much of it was the way it was to keep costs down. A lot of what Scott would have done with more budget and freedom would have been just awful.

Still great, still a classic, but not even the best of the franchise, let alone reason to consider Scott the one to make Alien great again...

4 stars

Aliens (1986)

Perfect movie. No notes.

5 stars

Predator (1987)

Exceptional action movie and an exceptional scifi horror at the same time. Like Alien, it would have been terrible if not for blind luck. None of the pieces should have worked together, but somehow the whole ascended above the sum of the parts.

5 stars

Predator 2 (1990)

Much maligned and it is VERY 90s, not to mention it meanders around a lot of filler. Focus on the good parts, however, and there are great ideas and some great scenes. A worthy classic.

4 stars

Alien3 (1992)

The making of this movie is absolutely a better story than the plot. Taking a script about the devil on a wooden space station and turning it into a popcorn horror flick was impossible, even for Fincher, who still deserves credit for making something so incredibly fucking bleak. The effects don't hold up, the edit is a mess, but it's still watchable.

3.5 stars

Alien: Resurrection (1997)

Fuck Joss Whedon, but Resurrection is basically an early Firefly pilot and that works. Lots of people don't like the movie as they hate the characters, but they're no less deplorable than any of the other Alien crews.

Is it perfect? no, but this bizarre mix of Alien lore expanded in a crazy direction, Firefly, and French arthouse direction is a hell of a mash-up. Not only does it have some great ideas, but I genuinely enjoy it.

4 stars

Alien Vs Predator (2004)

Cheesy, slightly vacuous, unlikely to win cinematic plaudits, but completely terrible? Not at all.

Event Horizon showed that Anderson can do worthy movies (at least one), and this is not him at his best, but it's still very watchable.

3 stars

Alien Vs Predator: Requiem (2007)

It's obviously not defensible. This movie is trash, but it's probably not as bad as you remember. There are some fun ideas executed passably. There are also some terrible ideas executed poorly. The attempt to do Alien and Predator as a teen horror movie is actually kinda interesting, even if there was no way it would ever work.

2.5 stars

Predators (2010)

Such casual misogyny. Like... so much...

Aside from that, this is pretty good. It still has that classic Alien and Predator luck that salvaged some garbage script ideas (drunk predator motorbike gang?), but overall it does feel more like a fun non-canon EU novel rather than an actual part of the franchise.

Prometheus (2012)

3.5 stars

I went on a journey with Prometheus over the years:

It's a fucking terrible Alien move

Actually, it's not a bad cheesy scifi horror if you pretend it's not an Alien movie

Actually, no, it's still a shit scifi horror, it's just a better scifi horror than it is an Alien movie

Please, someone take Alien away from Scott and send him home?

2.5 stars

Alien: Covenant (2017)

So, Scott started off like:

"No-one cares about the Alien! Let's give them a movie about mental pseudo-archeology that pretends to be an Alien movie!"

With this movie, he was like:

"Sulk. Fine, I guess people like Alien, but lets put Aliens in my mental pseudo-archeology movie so I don't have to admit it sucked!"

It still sucks and this weird hybrid mess is even worse than his straight mental pseudo-archeology movie.

Not to mention, why did they finally let him do Alien sex, even if it was just watching? Please keep him away from these movies!

2 stars

The Predator (2018)

Woof. I thought Predators was offensive.

How a man with Tourettes can make a character with Tourettes feel inauthentic and offensive, I don't know, but Black managed it.

This had so much potential with Shane Black writing and the cast and the budget, but it's just total crap. Yes, they completely reshot the ending, but even the original ending sounds bad.

2.5 stars

Prey (2022)

Just a complete joy. This is all I want from a Predator movie and movies in general. That this not getting a cinematic release put people off is ridiculous. Go watch it.

5 stars

Alien: Romulus (2024)

Attempting to connect Alien with Prometheus in the final act was stupid enough to put people off a movie they admit was otherwise perfect. This shows just how bad Prometheus was and why Scott needs to go.

Yes, the final threat is not ideal and no-one wanted a reference to Prometheus other than Scott, but this movie is otherwise so good that you HAVE to forgive that, particularly if it spawns a new franchise of good Alien movies without Scott.

5 stars

[vaguely-humanoid-form]

thanks, Matt

matpat means.... a lot to me, to say the least. I was raised in a single parent household and l haven't really considered myself to have a dad for a long time. while yes, I do technically have a dad, that's only really in the context of genetics. and my daddy issues but that's not important.

what is important is that matpat was my father, in a way. he was dubbed the title of "internet dad" long after he had already been one to me. he's part of the reason that I am the person I am today.

this piece exists because of matpat, for many reasons.

one, because I sobbed watching "goodbye internet" and want to do something special for his retirement.

two, because fnaf is the entire reason that I create what I do today, and that is partially heavily credited to matpat for overanalyzing a game about murderous animatronics in a pizzeria that I was obsessed with the moment I found out about it. 7 year old me was hooked, man.

and then I think through that, I found even more creators, which led to even more hyperfixating on weird nerdy shit, which led to me making more and more art.

and now, here I am. I'll be 17 years old in April. I graduate high school in one year.

I'm growing up.

not that I haven't been for my whole life because, well, that's how that works.

but I am nearing the true "end" of my childhood.

this year is fnaf's ten year anniversary.

this year marks a decade with game theory.

this year marks the beginning of the end.

I look back on my childhood. I went back to make one quick edit of my incredibly old Instagram account that I had way before I should've even had it.

I look back on the friends I had. I look back on all of the early-mid 2010s shit I posted and I smile. because it's cringe. it's cringe as hell and it's beautiful because of that.

and the nonsense theories are beautiful, and every single theory is beautiful because it exists. because it stems from the need to learn and think and have fun.

because that's what theorizing is about, in the end.

having fun.

matpat means a lot to me.

matpat is the reason that I am the person typing out this post. matpat is the reason that I am the person who spent 6 hours and 45 minutes drawing a piece featuring undertale and fnaf characters in it.

matpat inspires me to exist. and create. and think and learn and seek and everything.

yes, it's a bit parasocial. but it's hard for it to not be considering that I've spent more than half of my life growing alongside this man, seeing him grow in real time in tandem with myself.

I'm growing up.

but I still feel like a kid.

that's good and bad.

the bad is the part of my childhood that I didn't get to have because of my puberty hitting early. it's the fact that some of me is still a 12/13 year old in 2020. it's how the internet affected my growth.

the good is the part of me that still gets unreasonably excited when one of my interests gets brought up "in the wild." it's the fact that I love stuffed animals. it's how the internet affected my growth.

I look back on myself as a kid and, yes, I do indeed get embarrassed or genuinely cringe at how I was in some aspects. but I smile.

because it's me.

despite everything, it's still me.

despite everything, I'm still me, and matpat is still matpat, and despite every single thing that we've all gone through,

we're still us.

I remember one year, I bought myself the theorist varsity jacket with some Christmas money or something.

my best friend has the theorist backpack, I'm pretty sure.

hell, matpat's probably one of the reasons that they are my best friend.

two absolute geeks of GT kids, bonding over the nerdy stuff they liked, probably talking about theories. I don't remember super well, that was elementary school, man.

but isn't that incredible?

the fact that I'm still friends with someone I met in the first grade because of nerdy people like matpat.

I am forever grateful that I found the game theorists and became part of that group. so much of who I am is because I am a theorist. because I found one guy on the internet making overanalytical videos about games.

matpat means a lot to me. and if in case he somehow reads this whole weird ramble prose post open letter thingy, then I hope it means something to him.

but, hey, that's just a theory.

thanks for everything, Matt. <3

[aortaplatinum]

Why Sonic sucked in the second half of the 2010s

-A lot of this second post is speculation based on what I've seen on The Cutting Room Floor, heard in interviews, and pieced together myself. Japanese studios are notoriously tight-lipped, so it's hard to get a clear and definitive picture of what happened, but this seems to be the likely story.-

Do I really have to talk about Sonic Lost World? It's so immensely boring and poorly tuned, I nearly forgot to mention it in either of these posts. TL;DR SonicTeam scrapped the successful and popular boost formula gameplay to try to copy Super Mario Galaxy almost 10 years after it released. The game sucked and the story and script sucked, but that's just down to SonicTeam forgetting to take their brain pills every morning during the planning phase of development.

What I REALLY want to talk about is Sonic BOOM. Finally realizing that it's almost exclusively the Western world that cares about Sonic, SEGA partnered with the newly-founded studio Big Red Button to begin development on Sonic Synergy. Founded by ex-Naughty Dog developers in 2007, they seemed to be the perfect team to reinvent Sonic specifically for North American audiences.

And they probably were, but we'll never know, because of what happened next...

In the early 2010s, SEGA signed on with French animation studio OuiDo! productions to begin work on an unrelated animated comedy Sonic TV series, Sonic BOOM. At this point, SEGA seem to have had a really stupid version of a Jimmy Neutron Brain Blast, and decided, "Hey, what if we combined both the Big Red Button and OuiDo! projects into one thing? And made the video game a tie-in with the animated series!" So SEGA goes to Big Red Button, who were in the middle of developing Sonic Synergy with their own lore, characters, and world, and who already had enough developed to create an internal trailer for higher-ups and investors and SEGA goes in and is like "Hey all this Lyric and Ancients and time travel stuff is real neat but we're gonna need you to overhaul the FUCK out of it and make it like THIS instead aight have fun assholes were gonna go blow our Yakuza money on some other stupid shit." [paraphrasing]

This overhaul and combination then lead into another new idea- that Sonic BOOM should be an entire separate sub-franchise of Sonic the Hedgehog, complete with toys and comic books and all the other merch that comes along with a plan like this. So, Sonic Synergy was renamed to Sonic BOOM Rise of Lyric, and BRB took what they already had and crammed OuiDo!'s tone into it while also removing their own lore from the game.

You may have noticed that despite sharing a name, there's VERY little crossover between Sonic BOOM Rise of Lyric, and Sonic BOOM the TV series. Most of the characters are in both, but Lyric is only in RoL and Eggman's island fortress is only in the TV series. It's very obvious in hindsight that the game and the TV series were two separate things that were mashed together during development of both.

Now, sometime during the development of Sonic BOOM, SEGA signed another deal, this time with Nintendo. This was an exclusivity deal, an agreement to make the next three Sonic games exclusive to the Nintendo platforms of the time, the Wii U and 3DS. The first of these was Sonic Lost World, and the second was Mario and Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. But it seems SEGA didn't even have a third game planned, because instead of working on something specifically for Wii U, they went BACK to Big Red Button and were like "Yo I see you got this running on Xbox One or some shit Imma need you to put it on the Game and Wario machine instead lmao have fun" [paraphrasing]

So, working with Nintendo to quickly port Rise of Lyric onto a console it wasn't designed for, running on a modified version of CryEngine, which the Wii U wasn't natively compatible with, Big Red Button got Sonic BOOM Rise of Lyric out the door and promptly exited console video game development. Visiting their site now, you can see that they went into VR games.

The DISASTROUS financial performance of Rise of Lyric- a half finished game retrofitted with another team's vision and then forced onto hardware that shouldn't have been able to even boot it- severely damaged the Sonic BOOM franchise's reputation right out the gate, which in turn hampered TV ratings, and since no one was watching the TV series, no one was buying the merch. And to add on top of that, Cartoon Network, the channel airing Sonic BOOM in the US, has always judged a series' "success" on merch sales. So since no one was buying "Here comes the BOOM" t-shirts or Sonic BOOM birthday party paper plates, CN shifted BOOM around to different, weird time slots until finally offloading it onto their sister channel, Boomerang, where it died after two seasons. Everything went wrong because of SEGA's short-sightedness and their willingness to fuck over the game development team they were working with. This was a MASSIVE, multi-faceted plan with dozens of projects holding up other projects, and it was an unabashed financial failure.

Needless to say, this cost SEGA Sammy Holdings as a whole likely BILLIONS OF DOLLARS. Because Sonic had lost them so much money, there was very little money to invest back into Sonic. This lead to the Sonic drought, as it's been called by the community, where for years, no new major Sonic stuff released. We had a few mobile games and some limited physical releases of the Sonic BOOM TV series and that was about it. Sonic as a whole was just coasting on what was already made for BOOM, and trying to recoup their losses by any means necessary. The 3DS game, Sonic BOOM Shattered Crystal, seemed to sell decently, because it DID get a sequel in Sonic BOOM Fire and Ice, which DID tie in directly with characters and storylines from the TV series, but at that point, it was already far too late.

Embarrassed, financially hurting, and in need of a safe win, SEGA went back to SonicTeam, and had them start work on updating the Hedgehog Engine used in Unleashed and Generations, and start work on Sonic Forces- and that's why Forces sucks. It was a safe-bet "PLEASE make us money" project that tried to appeal to everyone and inevitably wound up as a massive disappointment to everyone, because only SEGA knew what Forces really was meant to be. Sonic Mania was made for the same reason, it was a "oh God we have no cash, hire the cheap fans-turned-developers to make a nostalgia bait 2D pixel Sonic game" situation. Since Mania promised so much less and delivered on those promises though, it was VERY well-received. These two "life raft" projects together started to get SEGA and Sonic out of their financial pit, which in turn, gave them the leverage to bounce between a few different American movie studios to try to shop around the Sonic movie as a pitch, and to begin development on Sonic's first open world game, Sonic Frontiers.

In interviews, Frontiers is cited as being a "last chance" for SonicTeam during development. While this may sound harsh, it may have been that SEGA just didn't have faith in the franchise as a whole anymore, so the movie and Frontiers were to be potentially the final Sonic projects.

But I don't need to tell you how wrong SEGA was about this :D

[justice4billiam]

Math Class

So there was this one moment in time in high school where I actually liked a guy (I know, weird concept, just go with it) who sat in front of me in my math class.

Something you should know about me, I fucking suck at math.

Another thing you should know about me, I was kind of a dick in high school.

Okay, I’m still kind of a dick, but a nice one.

However in high school, I was extra dick-ish (I’m sure it had to do with all raging teenage hormones and a shit childhood)

Anyway.

I fucking sucked at math.

And what happens when you suck at math?

Your teacher assigns you a tutor to help “guide you to the path of success” or whatever she said.

Cool.

No big deal, right?

Wrong.

She assigned me to the nearest person to me.

The fucking guy I had a crush on.

Who thought I was the fucking worst.

Now you’re probably thinking nooo, he couldn’t possibly think that way about you. I’m sure it was all in your head

Well, you’re wrong. The guy hated me.

BUT for good reason.

He just so happened to be the brother of the girl I beat up half a week earlier in gym class.

NOW.

I didn't beat her up just because…no. She was an absolute terror to this disabled girl in said gym class.

She would verbally bully her to the point of tears.

But that one particular day she physically shoved her to the ground while we were all running the mile.

Remember how I said I was a dick?

Well, I used my powers for good. (mostly)

I watched that shit happen.

Then came strolling up to her while she was shooting the shit with her friends and shoved that bish so hard.

Her stupid unblended orange face (this was the early 2010s guys, no one wore the right makeup shade or blended their foundation into their damn necks) bounced off the concrete floor.

Let me just tell you…it was satisfying as hell.

It started a full on fight of which resulted in her getting her ass handed to her.

So you see, her brother hated me

And I didn't blame him

A sister is a sister.

You stand by your siblings, I get it.

BUT.

I had a big fat crush on him and now he was to tutor me.

Let me tell you, he was NOT happy about it.

I distinctly remember the look on his face the second the teacher called his name out to work with me.

It was the kind of face you make when you smell roadkill wafting through your car vents because you have outside air circulating while you're going 65mph(that's 96.56kmph) on a back road.

The look fueled the need to make him like me.

Those who know me now, know I'm a cheeky, flirty little shit.

So not to toot my own horn but it's hard NOT to like me.

(Is that my god-complex talking? Probably)

I can get along with just about anyone.

Not so surprisingly after about 30 minutes of flirting my way into his heart, I had him FLUSTERED.

I'm talking man giggling.

Blushed cheeks.

Couldn't even make eye contact with me.

FLUSTERED.

Don't like who?

Not me.

I'm sure you're probably wondering where I'm going with this.

Well, after class ended he invited me over to his house after school.

A normal person probably wouldn't go to the house of the girl you beat up and meet her parents while on her brother's arm.

I did.

I went.

I wish I had taken a picture of her face when I walked into her house. (she had stayed home the rest of that week because I beat her ass)

Honestly, it was a core memory.

The best part was her parents didn't know it was me who did it.

It was such an eventful week for me.

Monday: bully the bully

Tuesday: ice my hand from bullying the bully

Wednesday: suck at math

Thursday: rizz the bully's brother and come home with him to have dinner with bully and her family.

Friday: DATE THE BULLYS BROTHER.

Yep. You heard me.

That dinner went so well that the guy asked me out.

And I said yes.

I then proceeded to date him the whole year and become best friends with her mom.

Oh yeah, and I still failed math.

I'm gonna make this a series 🤭

@voyeurmunson im sure you'd get a giggle out of this. 😅🤭

[callieponders]

Okay. So. The Candy Jams episode, Girl Fest. I have so many thoughts on it, good and bad. This is gonna be another long thoughts post, so let's get into it. (Under the read more because this is Really Long)

On principle there isn't a bad message here, in fact, to this day it still has relevancy. Plenty of female singers playing faux feminist when they are more than willing to put other women that work alongside them down in order to raise themselves up, rather than trying to cultivate a good community, especially in regards to younger fans. This is definitely not new, same in regards to male singers that promote toxic masculinity to their own audiences.

My issues stem from, of course, the usual "errrrm, isn't it funny how we act uncertain if Laney is a GIRLLLLL, lawl!" ass humor. Like god that shit is garbage I'm glad we mostly phased that type of shit out. Yuck.

Not just that, of course, that's more of a Grojband, "this is from the real early 2010's" issue in general. I also take issue with the approach it takes touching upon the whole "this idol can't actually be trusted" thing. I understand it's watered down to be a little easier to understand, babies first feminism and all, as well as it being a little more niche in the addition that it's someone proclaiming to be all punk rock while in reality being a poser. That isn't a problem in theory, but in practice, I definitely think it came out clunky...

Which message wise, is a little rough. However, it actually comes off as a much more interesting character read of one of the most important characters, Laney, and even TRINA to an extent.

To understand what I mean, we gotta go down the list of things we find out about Candy Jams first. Keep in mind she is promoted to be this 16 year old (assuming she's the same age as the other older teenagers in the show bc it'd be weird if not since she dated nick) punk chick who doesn't take crap from anyone, acting condescending towards the male members of Grojband, and even going as far as to tell Trina she needs to be in charge of her own feelings— "You should be the voice of your own soul, girl!"

Candy Jams appears calm and collected about Nick. She even says she broke things off with him for making her too soft. This is shown not to be the case almost immediately, as while they're not dating, she clearly still has an infatuation for him.

Secondly, it's revealed she's very enthusiastic about clothes. I know, what a revelation, but keep in mind being fashion crazy is often a stereotype used negatively against women as a means of calling them shallow.

Her lyrics are written by her manager, who is an adult male (the adult part really isn't important unfortunately, because I feel like it should've been).

Finally, she says that lyrics with harder words in them make her head hurt (she calls it brain ouchie btw), which is... I guess it's calling her stupid? Not as smart and a thinker that she says she is? I mean, common thing to say to indicate a character is dense, but it just feels weird to tack on. I guess it enhances the fact she doesn't write her own lyrics since she says the last song he wrote had too many hard words for her to sing.

Alright, so, we went down the list... now, there is like... so much to unpack. First off, I don't dislike the ideas here, I definitely don't, because all these things show hypocrisy in Candy Jams branding (except maybe 4 that might just be like, her being a teenager still learning things lmao). It's a pretty classic "don't meet your heroes" situation for Laney, who looked up to her, now feeling shattered because she did not live up to expectation. However, what kills it for me is the already present misogyny shown in Grojband consistently.

Laney is misgendered for comedy constantly because she doesn't present herself as traditionally feminine, nor acts traditionally feminine. Like. It kind of bitters the damn message if you go "respect women in rock, unless it's funny, then don't" in the episode about... recognizing female talent in the rock scene and criticizing the posers sending bad faith messages to their younger audience.

However, despite all this, this episode is REALLY good to dig into Laney's character, and additionally, Trina's, as they both are fans of Candy Jams.

Laney herself is shown to be infatuated with Corey, not to the extent Trina is with Nick, but regardless of that she holds a massive spark for him. We can often see it in her face how she feels about Corey, finding herself at a loss of words when he gets as much as near her at times. She's also into extremely hyper-feminine things, decorating her room with frills and being into things that she would otherwise roll her eyes at— in secret.

So, in other words... she's a poser. She does the exact same things that Candy Jams does, if not being worse for doing it, as she calls Candy Jams out for her behaviors while doing the exact same thing to an even YOUNGER audience. Let's not forget that Grojband's two groupies are young, elementary school aged girls. Laney is just as much an influence to them as Candy Jams is.

Now, am I saying exactly that she's a poser? Not really, no, but you get what I'm saying in pointing out the fact she has far more in common with Candy Jams than she would be comfortable with. It's most certainly due to internalized misogyny at that, especially in a scene that doesn't recognize or respect female voices to begin with unless they denounce anything feminine, either about themselves or other women— Corey himself had to be shown that "lady rock" is in fact, legit.

Keep in mind this is during the early 2010's, so it isn't the same situation now as then exactly, and I'm definitely not saying critique towards traditionally feminine culture isn't valid. It ABSOLUTELY is, but this isn't about criticizing it, Candy Jams AND Laney both outright hide the parts of themselves that enjoy it. Candy Jams because she's an industry plant, and Laney because of her shame in indulging in it at all. Maybe Laney saw herself in Candy Jams a little too much, and was deeply ashamed of what she saw, due to previously having projected herself onto Candy Jams's exterior persona.

Now, where does Trina come into play? Well, similar to Laney, she hides parts of herself that are more vulnerable to others, parts she is ashamed of. She's an intellectual, both with math, literature, and writing. Her being adept with writing is, admittedly, if you count her diary being so well written it can be used as lyrics for songs that in universe, are GREATLY well received. Unfortunately, due to nerd culture being shown as undesirable, ESPECIALLY for/towards women, she only indulges in academic pursuits covertly as an entirely different persona. Additionally, she changed her name just to fit her new mean girl, cute and popular chick lifestyle, and with it her kindness.

Like Laney, she too saw herself in Candy Jams, specifically in her songs. She found herself spoken to in regards to her love for Nick Mallory in one of her songs (and Laney likely did as well), and was equally upset when Candy Jams revealed it WAS about Nick. It made her feel like she didn't own her own feelings, which is something that is far more devastating for Trina than you'd think on a base level alone. She HAS to be in control of her own feelings, she has literally hand carved herself into the person she is today by regulating exactly what she feels, how she conducts herself, and who she hangs out with.

Makes you wonder how she'd feel if she knew that Corey was using her feelings to make his songs.

All in all, though, this episode is pretty surface level and not even the worst I've seen, it's definitely one of the more interesting Grojband episodes. For a feminist message? It somewhat does it's job, especially for 2013. I, for one, think it does an even better job at looking into the thoughts and feelings of the two most important female characters of the show.

[sapphire-weapon]

I think the fact that so many people want to label Leon/Ashley as canonically "sibling- coded" is because they feel threatened in the way they view other of Leon's relationships, they can tell Leon and Ashley have chemistry and they try to convince themselves that they have a familial bond going on (like Ellie/Joel) so that they can justify not shipping them and making people who ship it feel bad/weird.

Because nowadays so many people can't just dislike something, they have to make up a reason why it's morally wrong and unacceptable so that way they can bully people that think differently and feel like their own personal opinions are objective and right while everyone else is wrong smh. This is mostly the case with younger fans (tho a lot of people older than me does this too lmao) so that's why I don't really find it frustrating bc it's most likely they have limited real life experience. Plus they might not be that good at interpreting canon from contextual clues yet.

In my case though I think a lot of these people are actually doing the opposite tbh because to me it just shows that they recognize that Ashley's relationship with Leon is real and they can't even concede that they're friends in the canon because they know it could lead to something else if followed through in the story, they admit there's potential there subconsciously with how hard they try to make it seem otherwise with nonsense claims. It's like when insecure guys feel uncomfortable but try to seem tough by buying big trucks and having guns on them all the time lmao.

So, I've talked about this before -- about how the "sibling coded" or "problematic age gap" discourse is just modern-day fandom's way of slutshaming and engaging in casual misogyny in a societally acceptable way.

I'm pretty confident in saying that anyone in my generation who slaps "siblings" on Leon and Ashley are probably people who have another ship and have had it for a while and don't want Ashley getting in the way of it, tbh LMAO

Like.... my generation has co-opted the current generation's vernacular, but make no mistake about the kind of bitches we are. We're ship war bitches. That's all we've ever been AND WE ARE NOT GOING TO CHANGE OUR WAYS NOW fjdskfh

But if we're talking about the current generation...

Media illiteracy is a big factor in this. It's no secret to anyone that the US education system took a massive shit starting in the late aughts/early 2010s, and things like critical reading skills aren't being taught in schools anymore.

I graduated high school in 2007. Two years later, I went back to visit an old English teacher to get a letter of recommendation, and he was lamenting to me that he'd just given up. It wasn't worth trying to explain the deeper themes of Beowulf to kids who didn't care, because the only thing that mattered was getting them to pass standardized tests.

So, now, without an overt, explicit declaration of love or something visually concrete like a kiss, kids literally do not have the skills to parse through a text and pick out themes and tropes and use of symbolism and imagery. They were never taught how to do it.

But there's a more culture-based thing happening here, I think. It's this fucking mess of a cocktail of internalized misogyny paired with learned helplessness, social anxiety, intense sheltering possibly exacerbated by the pandemic shutdowns, peer pressure, and internet purity culture.

I think it's pretty safe to say that fandom is predominantly made up of women and teenage girls. That was true in the 60s in Star Trek fandom, it was true in my generation, and it's still true today. And what I've seen happening today is that young women are absolutely terrified of their own sexual agency -- because the internet keeps telling them that, if you're under 18, it is wrong and bad and unacceptable for you to engage with anything even remotely sexual and how dare you express your sexuality -- and you'd better not do it not just because it's wrong and bad, but also because you are GUARANTEED TO BE PREYED UPON IF YOU DO. SEX IS DANGEROUS ALL OF THE TIME AND YOU'RE LITERALLY TOO YOUNG AND TOO STUPID TO UNDERSTAND ANYTHING SO DON'T TRY TO EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. Because if you're 17 and he's 18, he's a pedophile!!!!!!!!

I just.

So, we've now basically turned an entire generation of young women into the same type of young women who created the BL genre in Japan. These are women who were too afraid to explore their sexuality on their own, and it felt safer to do it with two male characters, because it was always more "okay" for men to be sexual. This is happening here in the West, now.

Slash ships have always been a thing in the West, but not to the degree that they are today. In today's fandom, if you have an M/F ship at all, you are outnumbered by at least 3:1 -- because M/M just "feels" safer for a lot of the current generation.

So, I think young women look at the Remake portrayal of Ashley Graham, and they identify with her. A lot. They're probably around her age, and her personality is very relatable to the kind of girls who play video games. Ashley's clearly introverted, but she's a fast learner who just wants to help, and she's got a good heart and a weird, kind of awkward sense of humor.

And, not only do these girls identify with Ashley, they're probably thirsty as fuck for Leon.

But that's terrifying to them.

Because they have been taught to fear their own sexual agency. The idea that an attractive, traditionally masculine, older man would be romantically or sexually interested in them is immediately categorized in their brains as wrong and bad -- and they don't want to think of Leon in that way.

So... for them, it can't be romantic. It can't be sexual. But there's clearly something there, but Leon would never abuse or prey on anyone so... that bond must be a perfectly innocent familial affection. That's what it is. That's what it has to be, because anything else forces them to face the uncomfortable reality even young women like them go on dates and have sex -- and sometimes, it's with men like Leon.

So, they thirst over Leon at a safe distance through Luis, primarily. Or they self-indulge on reader fic, because that's so much easier to write off as "just a fantasy" and not a statement on who Leon actually is as a character.

And it's just kind of sad, man. It sucks to see this happen to an entire generation of young women.

That's why I don't really get mad when I see the "siblings" shit out in the wild. I just feel sad for those people -- because they can't just say "I don't like the ship." They're so insecure and neurotic that they have to think of a reason why the ship is literally impossible to ever happen so that they don't have to be worried about it.

One day, they'll finally suck a dick for themselves and learn that it's not that serious. It's really fuckin not. Dicks are stupid, and the boys that are attached to them are even dumber.

[lightningmickqueen]

Wait who is Ann Neal?

tw for grooming!!

ok anon i fully typed this up in the notes app. please keep in mind this is an opinion based off years of watching f1 and we don't know either of them personally but also it's fucking weird

Ann Neal is Mark Webber’s wife/manager/questionable person. Almost everything I’m going to talk about next is from Mark’s book Aussie Grit which everyone should read

She is 17 years older than Mark (as per the public info on their company’s registration), which maybe wouldn’t be a problem if they started dating at their current ages but they first met and got together when Mark was 17. She was also his manager during the early part of his career. more below the cut now!!

In his book Mark talks about how their relationship went from professional to personal during the FIRST trip to Europe. Please keep in mind this was his FIRST attempt to grow his career, his first time away from home, and he knew nobody but her, his manager, who is like 17 years older than him and should know better. 

Like this woman was in a position of power, had his career in his hands, and was on a separate continent where literally the only person he knows is her. 

Mark said in his book that even his mum wasn’t happy about it, and also that Ann’s kid views Mark as a big brother…like ok

In Aussie Grit Mark literally wrote Ann’s first impression of him. Please keep in mind he was SEVENTEEN (17) and she was 34. 

“I liked how bold and cheeky he was, and how mature he seemed. When I asked someone how old he was, I was shocked when they said 17 - he was confident beyond his years.”

LIKE?? The fact she went from thinking and saying this about a 17 year old to becoming his manager and then very quickly starting to hook up with him to having a relationship is CRAZY. She also apparently remembers what he was wearing that day - like girl why were you looking so hard?!?!

They moved to England then and didn’t know anyone else and became codependent and Mark has said she was the only one, other than himself, who believed that his F1 dream could happen. It’s very cute in that it obviously ended up happening, but please keep in mind that this is still his manager and a woman almost two decades older than him.

Mark said his parents’ weren’t happy with the relationship, and at one point he went back to Australia for a break (from racing and a temporary break up with Ann because it got too serious too fast) and got a new management company and started dating someone else. Ann wasn’t happy, and Mark said she “wasn’t prepared to hang around and watch young love undermine all we’d worked so hard for”

Like. This is now not just his former manager, but also his EX GIRLFRIEND. He’s got a new girlfriend now and a new management and Mark then decided his personal life was now affecting his driving, so he broke up with the two newbies and went back to Ann because Ann wasn’t happy.

So six months after the break up and Mark groveling, saying “I want to come home,” Mark left Australia and moved back in with Ann and her son in England. Like at this point he was what? 20? And he’s basically settled down for life with a much older woman and her kid (sound familiar). 

Obviously I do not know Ann or Mark but the way this reads to me and probably anyone who’s read the book is that she was looking out for herself and herself only. She had an opportunity and she took it while manipulating an 18/19 year old man who did not know any better and whose career she held in her hands!!! LIKE. 

Anyway here are some pics of her looking old as fuck . Credit to motorsport images for keeping pics up for 50 million years so we can always find the good shit

ann with mark in october 1996. mark was 20, she’s 37

ann with mark's dad in 2004

ann with mark and the fam in 2006 - mark's 30th birthday. ann is 47

july 2009 - mark was 33, ann was 50

nov 2010 - mark was 34

in 2018 - mark was 36/37 (i forgot what month this was taken)

thank u to @brakingpoint and @multi-twentyone for their assistance in this research project

[multitrackdrifting]

I went to my younger cousin's wedding, and I didn't cry or anything but I was happy to see her living such a full and healthy life in the present. I saw all my cousins, plenty of my extended family and while I don't get on perfect with everyone my cousins and I are tight-knit. We don't catch up often but we've always gotten on well.

I think that this life has plenty of servings of bullshit on a plate but honestly, the moments you get to enjoy surrounded by people you care about make everything okay for a day.

I am not an extraverted person, though people think I am because I am exceptional at cosplaying a normal and outgoing guy. I try hard to dress well and groom my appearance and all that shit. Though, one dinner a month or one party is enough for me to feel burned out for quite a while. But as much as I feel tired and all that after the fact, I'm glad I saw all my cousins and even old friends I hadn't spoken to in ages. A lot of them are married or have kids and it's pretty funny to think how far we've come in life.

To people who don't know me that well, I was pretty depressed well into my early adulthood, I didn't think I'd live longer than 18, nor make 21, yet I'm so far removed from that inescapable dread, the spirals and all the other shit that I barely remember what it is like to feel that difficult feeling, like there's a crushing weight on my body, and it's genuinely hard to do anything.

I don't want to live some fairy tale of a life, I just want to live. I'm not struggling, I'm not even close to rock bottom. When I think about the potential life I could've had, I used to feel regret, shit, I felt bitter as hell about it for the longest time. The person I could've been, if not for x y or z - but while I recognize not all pain and experience is meaningful, they still constitute the sum of who I am today. Even if it was just filler and bullshit, the way things went, and the way I choose to walk forward, they make me who I am now. I took a detour, so what?

I have good friends, I look forward to waking up early each day and working on the things I care about. I have hobbies in writing & editing, I got a close circle of friends I hang out with from time to time in real life and I got plenty of good friends online. I don't know for sure what the future holds, and I guess it's scary to think about my life without being online as much (because timezones means that I will never be available to anyone in an American time zone) but I'm also recognizing that the period of my life where I was available all the time to do things was also the same period of time where it had no direction or stability - that I'm just used to it, it's not that I need it, necessarily.

In the future which I'm brushing with, I have to face the reality that I can't be there for people across the ocean and I don't say sentimental things because I am not a sentimental person but that doesn't mean I don't think these things. I'm not built for outward affection for people, it's a lot easier to do with things I like, than people I care about - it's not a lack of emotional intelligence or ability to express that, I'm just not like that because I just don't like doing that.

I was born across the ocean from a lot of people I love and I have no plan to move across it. The hardest thing for me isn't reconciling time lost, the life I could've had or the potential that was left unspent. I'm no longer an idealistic fourteen year old who made a blog because a girl simply asked him to (yes, that's why I've had one since 2010, well, I deleted for like 5 years, but I remade in '22).

I see the future ahead is unwritten, and to write what I want to, I have to sacrifice the comfort I derive from simply being there to do things with people. Part-time work is one thing, it gives you plenty of free time, but a lot of financial anxieties and most people wouldn't choose to just feel terrified about money all the time. I certainly have been there many times.

It scares me, it does. It's so fucking stupid. Of course, I am not the availability I have to other people, and I've always had something I was doing. With college, or work, but I've never had a career - one that was really going somewhere.

Even now, there's still time to breathe before I'm anchored to it. But it's what I want, yet I'm terrified of it. Of seeing my dream materialize, while the world I know actually changes even if it's for the better.

The world I understood, the one I lived, while biding my time until this point, it will fade to the back of my mind even if my feelings about these people don't.

I'll be honest no part of me really loves what I do for work, but it's stable and it's relatively harmless work. I'll never feel the same passion for my job that I do for my crafts and spending time with people I care about. But if one part of me has to suffer for the other to thrive, I'm ready to face that... kinda.

I'm still scared of the future, perhaps I'll be scared even when I'm old. It's my birthday soon, and I still love being alive. I still love the challenge of living and making the most of my new paths.

I've talked to all my close friends about it, but I don't think they understand it really. I commute to the city for work, so I'm out of the house by 7, and I'm home around 7 or 8. I'm just not available that much, and I only have about an hour of free time every day (since I have worked the exact schedule for a year before).

For most people, especially in NA timezones, they understand a couple hours difference being a thing, but for me, I do not have the option to be available or around to do anything and it's so trivial to care about but I do.

But as I agonize over that reality, I too realize that I build up leave - you know? I'll have money to travel. A lot. I'll just build up my leave, go on holidays and do rich people shit (I won't actually be rich, I'm just saying, I'll have more money than I'm making right now).

Maybe I can't cross the ocean and make it home, but I can still cross it. And though I cannot be the guy who rounds out the ranked grind, or the friend who can call with them all the time, I can still be their friend.

I've already worked like this for a year, and I'll be honest it genuinely, well and truly was lonely. In response, I started working more graveyard shift work, and that was not great but for different reasons. But if I really focus on what it can help me do, maybe I can find some middle ground where I know work will never make me feel happy, but I can still find a way to smile each day.

The future scares me, and it also feels kind of exciting.

It's funny. I feel like I've been in a haze for the longest time despite feeling relatively good. Perhaps I was trying not to think about the uncomfortable reality of living a normie life that is a lot more lonely.

I'm not going to agonize on the reality that I have to work to live, working is not that hard to me since the stuff I do I'm pretty good at it. It's the act of work itself being a relatively lonely experience.

Working part-time is okay, but full-time genuinely is gruelling in how lonely it feels. I'm an introverted guy and it makes even me feel lonely.

If I had to have only one wish, it would be to make enough doing anything else that I wouldn't have to worry anymore.

Any job I can just quit on a whim, but a career? No, that's not the kind of thing you just drop randomly. And my ADHD ass is terrified of that concept.

It's such a trivial thing to get worried about, but I'm not afraid to say that it bothers me. Every FT job I've ever had I've hated it. I'm not bad at this career path I chose, but hell, just... maybe this is the endgame of everything.

But maybe it isn't.

Maybe I work this job, I get certified, I quit my firm - I do something else.

Maybe I work harder creatively, and I get lucky.

And I do something else.

The future is still not set in stone,

so I guess I'll have to take it as it comes

before I can do something that actually makes me happy

and in the mean time I should just find peace in knowing that what I do helps me live a stable life

even if it kind of sucks to feel alone

But just think, that I'm here to have any fear to face is something remarkable in and of itself. I wasn't supposed to make it through the dark, and I did anyway.

I take pride in living, even if nobody can see its value, I'm glad I'm alive. I'd rather have boring problems than struggle to face forward, or look people in the eyes the way I did when I didn't think I deserved any joy or happiness at all. I'm glad I am alive.

[yellowjacketslesbian]

hi jo! i saw someone shit on the idea of van as a nonbinary butch today and as one myself it made me upset. I love your fics and how you write van so I was wondering if you had any headcanons about van being gnc / nonbinary?

hey! first off, I'm really sorry you saw someone reacting negatively to the idea of nonbinary butch Van. I know it can be really frustrating and upsetting to see someone getting offended at the idea of a fictional character possibly having a similar identity as you. it's like "what's wrong with my identity that makes you deny this character I love and relate to could also be a nonbinary butch lesbian?" (spoiler alert: nothing is wrong with being a nonbinary butch lesbian, some people are just very loud and very wrong)

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! it truly means a lot to know that people like what I write. I'm especially glad that the fics I've written dealing with Van's gender have been well received, and that people could feel seen by them!

I could write multiple essays on Van's gender and why I personally believe they're nonbinary (and why they're already canonically butch), but I'll confine this to just my top nonbinary Van hcs lol

if they had lost states and never gotten on the plane, Van would've gotten a scholarship to NYU and double majored in film and women's & gender studies. They would've become aware of Gender Trouble and Stone Butch Blues through their major, and they also would've met more gnc people in NYC. This would've led to their realization that there are other people like them who share similar experiences. I personally think it would've taken them a year or two to talk to Taissa about it because they didn't want to "burden her with it" (typical Van), but Tai would've been really accepting and went out of her way to read about gender identity and try really hard to understand Van's experiences once they told her. I don't think Van would've been out as nonbinary to anyone besides Tai and close friends until like the early 00s though.

in "canon" where the crash happens, I think it would've taken Van a lot longer to realize they even could be nonbinary. like they had so much trauma to work through, and just surviving was probably a struggle for them. I can really see them spending at least a decade just ignoring any dysphoria they had. they probably also didn't have the same exposure to information about being nonbinary back in the late 90s / early 00s, especially if they weren't living in a very queer area or around academia. I think one of the queer college kids who helped out around their store eventually came out to them as nonbinary in the late 00s. then Van researched being nonbinary so they could be there for them, and that's how Van finally realized they're actually nonbinary.

I think Van would've spent some time exploring what pronouns felt right for them after realizing they're nonbinary, but they would eventually use they/them or they/she by the present day.

I think Van had top surgery in the late 00s in the no crash universe and in the mid-2010s in the "canon" universe

I think that Van's dysphoria is mostly social dysphoria, but I do think they have top dysphoria. I personally read Van's boob jokes in S1 as using humor to deflect from some dysphoria they may have been experiencing at the time. (as a nonbinary lesbian, it reminded me a lot of how I personally dealt with my own dysphoria when I was about Van's age and hadn't yet realized it was dysphoria)

Lastly

important note: all of this is purely my own hcs and opinions, and I am not claiming to know what they will or won't explore canonically on the show. that being said, I am a nonbinary butch lesbian and personally see a lot of myself and my own experiences in Van, and many other nonbinary lesbians also see themselves in Van. we all have every right to hc Van as nonbinary. if you don't like it, you can politely fuck off

[dilfsuzanneyk]

a post about my bbc ghosts oc because @natequarter made a post that reminded me of him!

TW for mentions of alcohol, vomit and some violence

His name is Axel "Ace" Spades (he/him). Ace is basically an oc insert because I thought it'd be fun (sorry for being cringe </3 /hj). He's a 26 year old indie (wanna-be) filmmaker who died around the late-2010s (i'm thinking like March 2017?). Ace has a pretty long mullet (think like bon jovi) and it's dyed bright pink. He usually wears the same pair of crust pants that are layered with a bunch of home-made patches. Aside from that he'll wear the first thing he can find in his closet, so his shirt is always clashing badly with his pants. He's not very tall, about 158cm, and he makes no effort to look taller either. Ace died wearing a shirt that says "heavy metal" in a bubbly font that he cut the sleeves off of, his crust pants, kirby-themed socks and a pair of vans that are caked with dirt.

Most people know him as Ace because he thought it'd be cool to go by that on top of his chosen name "Axel", so there's no real cool story behind it. Spades isn't his real last name either, he just thought it'd be even cooler to be known as "Ace Spades", and he didn't want to keep using his father's name. Basically his whole deal is that he grew up in a very protected and controlling family, so he took uni as an excuse to get out of his parents' house and get as distant from them as possible. His upbringing also caused him to be a really big adrenaline junkie, since his big belief is to take whatever chance, pick whatever fight and do whatever pops into his mind "to make up for lost time". His impulses has gotten him into a lot of trouble physically and mentally, and so has actually had quite a few instances where he died for a moment and was resuscitated or just got waay too close to death, which brings me to his death and his ghostly powers.

The idea at the moment is that he died on St Paddy's Day, after a long night of bar hopping and heavy drinking. He built up the bad habit of being a pretty heavy drinker and a chain smoker. Anyway, at one specific bar, Ace almost started a stupid bar fight and got kicked out. In anger, he hopped on his motorcycle and drove up to the more secluded side of the village he happened to be in. His motorcycle broke down suddenly as he was riding, and it happened to break down right in front of the Button House borders (territory?? i'm not sure of the right english word, i apologise). He tried to walk up to the house to ask for help, but keep in mind it's about 2am at this point and Alison and Mike (and most of the ghosts) are asleep. Ace passes out on the driveway before he can even make it up to the front porch. Robin is the one to find his body really early in the morning while he's on a walk. In his excitement, he runs into the house screaming and wakes everyone up, including Ace himself, who gets up off the floor to look down and find his own body lying face down with a small pool of vomit near him. Long story short, he died in Button House territory, became a ghost, Alison and Mike have to deal with the shit he left behind, and he becomes a menace to them just like all the other ghosts <3 Now for his ghostly powers!! Basically, because of the amount of near-death experiences that Ace went through while he was alive, Ace also had Alison's power of seeing ghosts. He was just convinced that he was crazy, though. However, Alison only had one near-death experiences. Ace has had so many, he was able to wave away the ghosts he saw as "a result of some kind of brain damage". So on top of being able to see ghosts, he could also touch them if he tried hard enough. So because of his condition and the stuff he did while living, his "spirit" in a sense is confused about its state and as a result, Ace can interact with the human world normally if he focuses hard enough (e.g. he can move and touch things, he can be heard by the living) BUT he can't touch humans normally most times since it takes so much effort to do it and it generally is just uncomfortable (because y'know he's still a ghost at the end of the day). He also unfortunately can't touch or interact with his ghost friends, and sometimes he can't even speak or hear them, unless he puts in the same amount of focus and effort he needs to interact with the living. He can always see the ghosts, though, so they all found a way to mime what they want when his ghost powers go funky. Sometimes, his spirit is just too confused that he can't control what it does, so there are moments where he tries to walk through a wall but face-plants right into it, or he tries to speak to Mike/Alison and they don't hear anything. Same for when he tries to speak or hear the ghosts. TL;DR, i have a silly bbc ghosts oc insert that i went a bit too creative and silly with when i was thinking of his ghost powers and now his ghost powers (which would sometimes seem like a blessing to the other ghosts) also is a curse.