#the fandom section

[mint-mango]

narumitsu x that one scene in sk8 the infinity

matchablossom x unnecessary feelings

[starcloudedsky]

[hailsatanacab]

A Persuasive Argument - dpxdc

"Great!" Danny says, clapping his hands together to get everyone's attention. The dinner table falls silent as everyone looks towards him. It's a full house today and, honestly, Danny's a little nervous. "I'm sure you're all wondering why I gathered you here today."

"It's dinnertime. In our house." Duke mutters, while doing a very bad job of concealing his yawn. He holds his fork poised over the braised beef, but, just like everyone else, still looks towards Danny before tucking in. It's intriguing enough to wait.

"Yeah, no one misses Alfie's dinner." Dick says, with a brilliant smile that Danny can't help but return.

"Precisely! What better time to talk to you all than when you're all actually here!"

"Wait, I thought you came round to work on our English essays?" Tim asks, blinking owlishly.

"I'm afraid I've lured you here under false pretences, Tim."

"This is where I live."

"I would still really appreciate help on that essay though, I mean, what the hell is Hamlet even about? I just don't get that old time-y language, like 'Hark! A ghost hath killed me!' - absolute rubbish, what does that even mean?"

"The ghost never kills anyone in Hamlet, he's there to tell Hamlet that he was murdered. Have you actually read it?"

"No, but it sounds like you have. Tim, I want this guy to help me with my essay instead. I know for a fact that you haven't read Hamlet, either."

"So? We don't need Jason, I've read the Sparknotes."

"Hi Jason, I'm Danny, pleasure to meet you, summarise Hamlet in three sentences or less."

"Am I auditioning to help you write your essays? I can't believe you’ve gone through your whole school life without reading it, it’s good!"

"Hamlet, along with a number of other classics, was banned in our house because it portrayed ghosts as intelligent and sympathetic beings rather than evil, animalistic beasts. I didn’t even get to see The Muppet's Christmas Carol until last year with Tim! It was surprisingly good, and I hate Christmas because everyone always argued and it sucked. But we're getting off topic. I—"

"No, no, please go back to that, because what the fu—"

"Boys, please." Bruce interrupts, looking to the world as if he wants to hang his head in his hands. "Danny, you were about to say something?"

"Oh, yeah, Mr. Wayne! Thanks!"

"Please, call me Bruce."

"Well, that very succinctly brings me to my point, because I'd actually really like to call you dad."

Nobody says a word. Nobody even blinks, all as shocked as the other, watching open-mouthed as Danny pulls his laptop out from beside his chair. Bruce can definitely feel a headache coming on.

"Before you say anything, I've prepared a 69 slide PowerPoint presentation on why you, Bruce Wayne, should adopt me, Danny Last-Name-Pending. Please save your questions, comments, and verdict until the end, thank you."

[cacaocheri]

hozier's song is killing me so have this quick doodle before i go crazy and make an entire animatic

[chaosfantasmic]

Yayyy Lu update!!!

[reallyunluckyrunaway]

Please SOMEBODY make it happen!!!!

[happypeachsludgeflower]

Modern day YouTube au where Xie Lian is infamous on the internet for his catastrophic cooking channel.

[wafflesrisa]

I find that the recent rise of black and white thinking on the internet has led to an interesting phenomenon in F1 fandom spaces.

Nowadays a famous person needs to unsullied in all respects (morally, ethically, performatively) in order to be deemed unproblematic and worthy of support. It’s become impossible to be a fan of a driver and to recognise faults them in any way, because surely if you’re a fan of a driver and they mess up, then their mess up taints you in the same way it taints them (morally, ethically, performatively).

Putting drivers’ ethical “bad takes” aside, this has impacted even how fans respond to their driver simply having a bad weekend. It’s odd when a driver makes a human error or has a (even slightly) less successful weekend, and a significant proportion of their fans go into a panic and start finger pointing at anyone and everyone - the track, the team, the teammate, the stewards.

The false dichotomy here seems to be that either the driver has “lost his touch” or the driver was unfairly sabotaged or disadvantaged in some way.

It’s so strange. In the guise of supporting their favourite driver, these fans hold them up to an impossible standard where they are either bullied or washed.

In reality, their favourite driver is a human being and he’s going to pick himself up and go again next week.

[mxtxfanatic]

What finally pushes Wei Wuxian into a qi deviation isn’t the fact that Jiang Cheng showed up to hate-crime him and Lan Wangji, but the fact that Wei Wuxian showed up with the best of intentions—informing his dead guardians of his intentions to marry—just to be goaded into attacking their son in front of their tablets, the highest form of disrespect he could’ve performed in front of them. That Jiang Cheng could drag him down to such a level as to engage in something so disrespectful when Wei Wuxian showed up specifically to pay his respects is why it should not surprise anyone that Wei Wuxian’s last thoughts on Lotus Pier is that he wants to leave and never return:

It was only proper to show respect for the deceased. After all, they were at an ancestral hall.

...

Jiang Cheng was exactly who Wei WuXian had wanted to avoid; the last person he wanted to be seen by. Now that Jiang Cheng had found him, he knew he probably couldn’t escape fast enough without having harsh words flung his way. Wei WuXian didn’t want to start any unnecessary conflict, so he said, “I didn’t bring HanGuang-Jun anywhere that contained the Lotus Pier’s secrets. I’m just here to offer a few incense sticks to Uncle Jiang and Madam Yu. We are just leaving.”

—Chapt. 87: Core (Part 9), boat-full-of-lotus-pods

He turned to Jiang Cheng and said, “Jiang Cheng, listen to yourself. Do you even hear what you’re saying? Don’t forget who you are. You’re the leader of a sect. To insult a fellow cultivator from one of the Four Great Sects in front of Uncle Jiang and everyone’s memorial tablets. Where are your manners?”

...

All three of them had weapons out in front of the ancestral hall now. Jiang Cheng’s eyes were bloodshot as he snarled, “Fine! If you want a fight, then let’s fight! You think I’m afraid of you two?!” But just a few strikes later, Wei WuXian remembered, startled, that they stood before the ancestral hall of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect. He had only just knelt and prayed in front of Uncle Jiang and Madam Yu for their protection a few moments ago. And now he was attacking their son with Lan WangJi right under their nose! As if a bucket of cold water had just been dumped over him, suddenly, spots appeared in front of Wei WuXian’s eyes and his vision darkened.

...

Wei WuXian did not answer him. Instead, he said, “Lan Zhan...... Let’s go.” Immediately. And never come back.

—Chapt. 88: Core (Part 10), boat-full-of-lotus-pods

Tellingly enough, Jiang Cheng does not hold the same sense of shame in the fact that he instigated a physical fight in the resting place of his ancestors nor that his intentions weren't to maintain decorum when he followed wangxian into the ancestral hall to begin with. In fact, he is fueled by rage to the point of irrationality before he even steps foot into the ancestral hall, so much so that he cannot even accept wangxian disengaging from the fight and attempting to leave on their own:

All the signs pointed to the same conclusion—there was now something more between Wei WuXian and Lan WangJi. Unable to make himself turn away or step forward to speak to them, Jiang Cheng had concealed himself and followed after them, reinterpreting their every exchange and gesture through a coloured lens. Feelings of disbelief, strangeness, and slight, mild disgust had momentarily been enough to overcome Jiang Cheng’s hatred. It was only when Wei WuXian had brought Lan WangJi into the ancestral hall that Jiang Cheng’s anger reawakened. The repressed, overwhelming rage consumed his rationality and manners.

...

Lan WangJi harbored no more desire to continue the fight with Jiang Cheng. Wordlessly, he pulled Wei WuXian onto his back and turned to leave. Jiang Cheng was plagued by alarm and suspicion. He was alarmed by the terrifying sight of blood suddenly oozing out of Wei WuXian’s qiqiao. Yet he was suspicious of whether the man was faking it for an excuse to run away. After all, it was a prank that Wei WuXian had pulled quite often in the past. At the sight of the two men leaving, Jiang Cheng called, “Stop!”

—Chapt. 88: Core (Part 10), boat-full-of-lotus-pods

[greentrickster]

Begging the Hazbin fandom to go read some wiki articles on garden of Eden-era biblical lore. Not because the Hazbin fandom's doing a bad job or uncreative or anything so much as because apparently some of the preexisting lore is absolutely buckwild.

Like, I gave the wikipedia entry on Adam a poke, just 'cause curious, not at all expecting a "Lol yeah, he and Eve both lived for almost a thousand years after getting kicked out of Eden, and for the first hundred and thirty they just fucked off to separate sections of the world because they were mad at each other and both had a lot of sex with demons before getting back together, having Cain and Abel, and then presumably getting to question whether they shouldn't have just stuck with the demon sex when their firstborn killed their second-born."

It just feels like there's apparently a lot of stuff the Hazbin fandom could have a lot of fun with, you know?

[beannoss]

Something I think about a lot and wonder if maybe gets overlooked in Twilight’s story and as vitally indicative of his character is actually in the very first chapter:

Anya isn’t needed for Strix. Twilight decides to adopt her anyway.

[Spoiler warning: Mostly this post deals with early chapters already in the anime but there is reference to chapter 62, which has not yet been animated and will be in season 3]

Twilight decides it — “I’m going to rework the mission so it doesn’t involve a child because that’s too dangerous” and he’s 100% right! Donovan Desmond is canonically a far right warmonger with fascistic authoritarian aims. His government made liberal use of the SSS — a group to mirror the Stasi — who continue to operate in morally dubious ways (much more likely they’re actively morally reprehensible, though we’ve mostly only had rumours of that so far). From what we can tell, Desmond is at best an absent father and likely actually worse than that: if that's how he treats his own children, imagine how he might treat others. And the timeline seems to indicate that the experimentation performed on Anya was done under Desmond's government — even if Twilight isn't aware of experimentation on children, he is aware of both human and animal experimentation under Desmond's government. Taking all that and also the complexity of Strix's aims, undoubtedly there were other things that could be done, more straightforward if not necessarily easier.

So. Why? Why entertain the change at all? And then, having entertained it, why go back when the reasoning is indisputable?

On the Doylist level, I think Endo wanted to ensure that Anya had some agency within the set up — Endo also does this with Yor. It would be much harder to be on Twilight’s side fully, or to trust him on an ethical level/take him as any sort of moral authority, if he were just straightforwardly using these two people. To have them be active and consenting participants (arguably to actually be affirming the arrangement: Twilight sets it up, but Anya and Yor actually make it happen) even if the audience only knows the depth of their knowledge/motivations/etc currently, shifts the power dynamic in important ways.

But it also the set up tells us important things about Twilight. He is largely impatient, cold, detached in chapter one. His overarching feelings towards Anya are, I think, real annoyance, real confusion, and real impatience. He just doesn’t understand this damn kid and it turns out she’s a person which is frankly unacceptable — he’d needed and anticipated an automaton, ideally of himself in miniature form. (Though I think one could ponder whether Twilight was, in many ways, an automaton himself at this point, but that's maybe for another meta 🙃)

He’s not entirely unmoved of course — we're given to understand he’s affected when Franky tells him how many times Anya’s been adopted and returned, and isn't amused by Franky's joke about names. Franky's comment — "Just don't get attached" — reinforces this. The prospect of “the future” perturbs Twilight when he’s reading the parenting books. His initial reaction to Anya’s kidnap is horror. All these are true too.

Then there’s also this, from earlier in the chapter:

It’s exposition, yeah, and it’s also exposing. "Hopes" and "joys" are very specific words to describe those events. It could simply have been "A marriage? An ordinary life?" but describing them as such — hope for marriage; joy in ordinary life — expose something of what Twilight feels about those two experiences and, on the flipside, they expose what he deems he's lacking. No hopes of intimacy; no joy in (an ordinary) life. There's an argument as well, of course, that he's being ironic but I don't think that actually invalidates the above analysis. Drawing attention to 'hope' and 'joy' at all are revealing, regardless of Twilight's tone in thinking of them. I think it's also interesting this panel, taken in conjunction with a pair of panels in chapter 62, Twilight's backstory. The above is almost a pulled out version of this below panel of Twilight's recollection of his childhood, and of course the returning image of not just a rubbish bin but a rubbish bin on fire when it comes to disposing of his identity:

Back to Strix. Both his final interaction with Karen and the whole everything of the framing of Strix is making Twilight think (and feel, ahem) things that he hasn't for some time. Twilight decides, I’m reworking this. It can’t proceed this way. Not because Anya is a pain in his ass, not because she’s not as (apparently) intellectually advanced as he’d originally thought, not even because he thinks he can find another child who would better be exactly what mission parameters called for. No:

And what changes his mind is Anya asking to come home.

One of the important parts of this to me is this:

He seeks consent.

This moment is a keystone, I think, to understanding Twilight. It’s also more telling than he maybe realises. Twilight is decisive — we all laugh because he spirals at the drop of a hat when his daughter or wife look even mildly upset but outside those (also very telling) scenarios, he makes decisions and he pursues them. Often he makes decisions quickly. He’s a dab hand at it; it’s a large part of why he’s as good a spy as he is.

He’d decided to change Strix.

Anya asks him, in essence, not to.

So, he doesn't.

But it's wild that he entertains keeping her request at all — why? Why even entertain it? It’s dangerous; it’s impractical; there are too many moving parts outside his direct control; Anya isn’t the sort of child he’d wanted for the mission if he’d spent any time thinking about what a child might actually be like; Strix is in many ways an extremely long shot anyway, Desmond could just stop attending for reasons unknown and unrelated; etc.

So, yeah, why? Maybe because of this —

In conjunction, I often think of this moment in the cruise arc:

Twilight first naming the feeling as lonesome, and secondly tacitly conceding that he perceives Yor as a companion and that that relationship is important to him, something to be missed. What makes this for me though is that Anya calls this out "Papa's you're so sappy" and Twilight's reaction is that of someone caught-out. He doesn’t say “nuh-uh!” but he may as well have. Essentially, something landed a bit close to home, hm? Maybe some of that hope for marriage? A soupçon of joy of an ordinary life?

Twilight’s loneliness underpins many of his decisions with his family — probably without him being fully conscious of it. I think he is at least somewhat conscious of it, but also if he looks too closely... Well, best not to. I could fill this post, I think, with images that demonstrate his loneliness throughout the series; that sorrowful/pensive close-up of his eye(s) is one of the abiding motifs for Twilight throughout. I'd probably start with this one from Twilight's backstory arc:

Anya's request plays directly off his loneliness. Still though, he doesn’t immediately capitulate — he emphasises Anya’s choice. Is she sure? The last day has been scary for a child (and for him, but he's ignoring that part) and Twilight, in his increasing recognition that Anya is a person, is probably aware in the back of his mind that he hasn’t exactly been warm or welcoming or at all patient with her. Things that people respond to — he's otherwise excellent at manipulating people, so of course he understands this. So. Given she'd just had this scary experience, given he hasn't exactly been great with her: Is she sure? She wants to come home — with him?

I think the moment may get a little lost because Anya says something riffing off his own earlier thoughts and self-revelation (featuring that shadowed, lonely eye motif again!)

Were this a post about Anya, I’d talk about how it’s an important character moment for her as well by way both of demonstrating her agency/choice and also that she isn’t nearly as dumb as Twilight thinks (and the audience, maybe, also thinks).

But in my view, she didn’t actually need to say anything about it making her cry. I think she could simply have said yes in that moment and Twilight would have agreed.

Twilight’s an unreliable narrator; he’s disconnected from his heart and that shrouds his own motivations from himself — something he actually also concedes in this chapter!

And it shrouds from us just how much he actually understands himself. He’s also a master of deflection. Easy to assume or say that bringing Anya home is just to align with Strix. Nothing more to see here; nothing else going on. But also that ripping off of the mask in the panel above — and the literal 'riiip' sound effects — also indicate to us that this is an unveiling to himself.

In my view, Twilight agreeing to Anya's request, deciding to go back to original mission parameters, actually shifts his motivations, subtly. Now he’s committed not only to the original mission goals, but also to Anya. He needs Anya to succeed at Strix, not only for Strix's sake, but also because otherwise the mission will end and she’ll have to go back to the orphanage, and he’s just agreed with her not to do that (not right away, in any case). I don’t think at this point he’s thinking it’s forever — his thoughts throughout the manga indicate he still expects the Forgers to be temporary. I don't think the shift in motivation is necessarily even conscious, but given the set up, I think something inside Twilight recognises that agreeing to bring Anya home is a compact, jointly engaged. Mostly all this has become subsumed into Strix: he makes decisions. He pursues them. He deflects, even from himself. Of course it's just for the mission; this saved him the trouble of reworking it, of figuring out something else. Nothing more to see; no need to think any more on it. And to be fair to him, Strix is very high stakes, resting pretty solely on his shoulders, so of course that is, objectively, motivation enough. Why even consider beyond that?

But I personally think that to the extent he's aware of it at all, there is something else going on, that he wants to have Anya for as long as it takes him to work something else out for her. If that's the case, then of course, we have Occam’s razor: the simplest solution may be the best one.

Maybe Twilight should just keep Anya himself, eh?

[Image description: gif from Spy x Family season 1, episode 1. Twilight and Anya have just found out Anya passed her entrance exam and are overjoyed. Celebratory, Twilight picks Anya up and swoops her into the air as they smile at one another. End image description]

[overly-dramatic-artist]

Being a DCA fan but not knowing ANYTHING about the sun and moon show on YouTube is so wild

[moon-buggg]

Here's my lovely science edutainment bot Sun! I'm not. going to be focusing on this au until after Halloween at least, but I am in love with it

you know the drill more details under the cut!

The Pizzaplex is now a Kids Science Centre! Chock full of fun, interactive, learn-through-play exhibits designed to get kids interested in science! With their main sponsor being Fazco, they have a pretty big emphasis on robotics and computers, though they have a wide range of exhibits to appeal to interests of all kinds of interests

Each main exhibit has its own animatronic mascot, with Freddy being the main mascot of the whole centre. I haven't decided on specifics for the glamrocks just yet-

As for the boys, Moon runs shows in the planetarium while Sun does science experiment demonstrations like elephant tooth paste. Since they're mostly for shows and demonstrations, the boys don't interact with guests nearly as much as the glamrocks do.

Either they both used to run the planetarium (possibly in one body? I haven't decided) until the higher ups decided to replace the humans running the experiment shows with an animatronic, OR it was always like this I'm still deciding because it WILL change how I characterize them

Anyways I have the most info about Sun because he was just going to be an oc before this au was revealed to me in a vision so-

He has a bit of a stutter problem after an ill-advised tesla coil demonstration fried his circuits just a touch. It's not bad enough to be fixed but he is self conscious about it.

He makes his demonstrations into performances! Telling little stories about how he used to work at a zoo and really DID need to make elephant toothpaste while mixing everything together to draw out the big fun expansion of foam, before going into an age appropriate explanation of the chemistry involved. If asked to explain some science thing that isn't part of his scripts, he can struggle with keeping it child-friendly, going into too far much detail. He's just full of information!

the 'glass' part of his glasses are actually screens! Allowing his eyes to move around and emote. the little dots in the corners are the cameras he sees out of.

He's mildly less distressed by mess than his canon counterpart. As long as its part of the show (and doesn't get on HIM), messes are part of the fun! Extremely sensitive to his things being moved, however. It stems from his safety protocol, some of the chemicals he works with are legitimately dangerous, like liquid nitrogen, and so it could be bad news if somethings out of its place!

[horsechestnut]

Anyway, if you're a fan of Bruce and Steph having a father/daughter relationship you should probably go read about Oliver and Mia.

[shirozora-draws]

I wanted to try some processes I watched on some artists' reels over at the Insta, and practice designing and coloring manmade/artifiical environments for future projects in particular.

Deep winter also always makes me moody and nostalgic, and I start looking back. I know this is just a consequence of time and technology, but I don't have any of my old Tron art files saved on my laptop. It's so strange considering how much of an impact Tron Legacy and the fandom has had on my life on and off-line. I listened to the ficmix I made for that old fic of mine the other day, and man, I felt so unwell and unhinged. That movie, that OST, that fandom, that fic, that ship, still has such a stranglehold on me years after the fact.

Anyway, if you haven't done so already, go give this beautifully made extended Daft Punk music video a watch.

[endivinity]

i think the most bizarre reaction to seeing fanart (other than going "i thought this was [totally unrelated thing that it doesnt even look like]') is to go 'this isn't canon'. like.... yeah it's not supposed to be?

people have headcanons! there are also different interpretations of unclear or hard-to-quantify-exact-meaning canon!

but it doesn't even have to be a headcanon. art is an exploration of thoughts and concepts. it's an expression of creativity. sometimes it's just a fun exercise. for fun. any time i see someone go 'thats not what really happened' i dont think 'aw shit i got it so wrong', i think: wheres your joie de vivre. your whimsy. embrace things that arent real