#tldr: jazz is best girl so far

[sanchoyo]

so I decided to watch danny phantom. I got 3 episodes in and I have Thoughts. im not going to liveblog it necessarily, but just, maybe post my thoughts every 3-5 episodes? because, I have thoughts. (which im sure are not NEW thoughts for dp fans, but, you know. new for me) Anyway. ep 1-3 Thoughts.

- the parents Suck. I love Jazz.

-dannys little 'actually i wanna be an astronaut :)' BABY. im adopting him and his sister. these parents suck so far lol jazz shouldnt have to deal with this and being the most responsible person in the house at age 16. HATE the 'absentminded idiot parents' trope SO much actually. it just makes me mad and makes me want to adopt these kids.

-sam...is so much like me at age 15. at least when I was having a vegan phase. not saying veganism isnt a legit thing or w/e but. my god. shes so Not Like Other Girls. lmfao. if she wanted to go to the dance, she shouldve just SAID so directly!! and I hated her just going up and being catty to Paulina for No Reason Other Than Jealousy UNPROVOKED!!! Like, if anything, the BOYS are the shallow ones, approaching Paulina based on nothing but her looks instead of getting to know her?? it would not have been shallow of her at all to turn them down, she has every right to.

-tbh the way the girls are written makes me cringe. they Deserve Better I think. anyway tbh if a girl came up to me being that rude,, im not saying paulina was RIGHT to lead danny on, but like. I can't be super mad at her for it...sam was bein. hm. rude. and in paulinas little teenager brain thought that was the fastest way to get back at her I guess, by taking the guy she may or may not be crushing on?? I just hate unnecessary rivalry between girls in shows. anyway. glad she did attempt to apologize near the end anyway. I do get that a lot of kids shows have the protags being shitty to teach a moral lesson later and show them apologizing. it still rubbed me the wrong way.

-Was also rolling my eyes at Sam's 'the gorilla needs to be FREE!!' like girl realistically if theres two left,, itll be a huge poaching target, its better to keep it with professionals so it can lead a long, healthy enriched life, and so we can have a lot of footage to teach future generations about so we at least have the memory/history preserved as well as possible! zoos and nature preserves and such can be good. focus on, idk, taking down sea world or smth. (also, the fact it turned out to be a girl gorilla,, and no one noticed until Danny got An Eyeful...of course it would have to be. you cant just tell kids watching this show that theres two male gorillas and theyll DIE FOREVER AND GO EXTINCT AFTER THAT. I GUESS??? but showing danny possessing people is fine. gotcha)

-I liked skulkers design A Lot. it (funnily enough with the episode involving an actual gorilla-) reminded me of the way the gorillaz band got drawn early on. I think its the eyes.

-the voice actor for the box ghost sounded SO familiar. so I went to his IMBD originally thinking he HAD to be a voice actor on ed edd n eddy. THIS GUY HAS VOICE ACTED IN EVERY CARTOON I GREW UP WITH. SO MANY CARTOONS AND ANIMATED MOVIES. funnily enough he was in ed edd n eddy like i thought but in a very very minor role of one of the parents?? I think I just assumed he had to have voiced something I used to watch a lot of. actually, hes voice acted everything, ever. and has been since the 80s, and still does today. Crazy. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0667326/ LOOK AT THIS MAN'S TALENT.

-box ghost has the right idea tho. I wanna haunt a fed ex truck and get that rush of Open Packages Serotonin for my whole afterlife. king shit. (I also just love very silly villains and this show is checking boxes for me. love the monster of the week format stuff)

-did valerie actually cancel on tucker,, or did the boys just lie to take sam to the dance. that seems so unfair to val but we never SAW unless I was looking away. valerie u deserve a date sweetie i am SO sorry. if u already made a commitment to valerie I think sam can take HERSELF TBH. she wanted to be passive aggressive about the dance, it couldve been a lesson in 'just say what you want and dont expect your friends to be mindreaders' lol

-'boys hugging makes every year book funny' TOP 10 SAM HOMOPHOBIC MOMENTS?? let them cuddle while they nap girl wtf. I KNOOOW I know this is how a lot of cartoons were written in the early 2000s but I hate it.

-tucker being freaked out by the cute ghost girl wanting to dance with him at the dance?? no sir. you WANTED A GIRL TO WANT TO DANCE WITH YOU!! and your best friend is half ghost!! tucker top ten ghostphobic moments!!! (also, her having a dragon amulet is a BONUS. coward)

-danny can just. possess people. ALRIGHT! casually terrifying. love that.

[fmdjoosungarchive]

location: gold star studio, choi family home

dates: july 29th to august 5th more or less

word count: 844

tldr; sung writes smile for our songs. time with his family during vacation makes him think about the person he truly is versus what the world had expected of him thus far. def part of sung’s 2020 self growth arc

identity was a troubled concept, in its theory, for an idol. was the question to introduce element’s sun, or choi joosung? as a songwriter, it became more confusing. if it was up to him, his accreditation on komca would have choi joosung, but as it was, as marketing was, he was referred to as sun.

in sung, the thoughts didn’t stay long. despite whatever might have been expected, sung knew that what he wanted was to express himself as choi joosung, the songwriter.

that meant going back to his roots, and his comfort zone. as someone who spent most of his free time dancing, listening to music, or writing music, his taste was eclectic. sung always wanted to push himself out of the box he’d started in, to become as well-rounded as he could be. yet here, that comfortable spot was where he was asked to sit. and so, he started where he did most often, with composition.

turning on his computer, and settling down in front of his keyboard, a sense of comfort filled the space, a warmth in the space between his fingers and the keys. natural as it felt by that point, sung’s fingers slid onto the cool material of the keys, and pressed. rarely did sung have ideas in mind when he sat down at the piano. part of songwriting was accepting that nothing was new, anymore. after thousands of years of music-making, nothing he thought up could be entirely original. in a way, it was a thought that calmed him, as it left him worrying less over being different. he could focus on putting together sounds that simply sounded good to him.

recently, the sounds sung found himself drawn to most were jazzy. not jazz specifically. most anything he would be allowed to release needed some kind of pop, or hip-hop, element to them. his troves of unreleased songs were proof enough of that. eventually, he’d have to please gold star with what he wrote. but for then, he could do as he pleased. to sung, rap didn’t need to have only one kind of sound. he couldn’t ever say he was very knowledgable about the history of rap, considering he had only been made a rapper for his deeper voice and lack of strong vocals, however, sung didn’t see why he needed to pretend he was a hard lined rapper with a trap sound, if it wasn’t what suited him best.

and sung was a soft man. he ran a nightly radio show where he spoke in a gentle tone, gave advice, and talked about his favorite books. sun performing body wasn’t choi joosung, the songwriter. choi joosung plucked strings, until he’d muddled about a line with a pep to it, one cracked with an almost sorrowful nostalgia. on the tip of his brain, memories sat, fuzzy in what he might have wanted.

they didn’t become more clear, despite wanting them to. and so, sung moved on. upsettingly enough, the rest of his first pass lacked energy. sung was tired by the time he’d recorded the piano section he’d written on his computer. he’d added in electronically created violin and trumpet lines, with a constant backline of the piano. and when he had his first draft, it was... fine.

despite what was asked of him, sung couldn’t bring himself to come back to the composition properly. he’d tried, several times, but nothing he came up with ended up sounding good. the composition sounded lifeless, one spark quickly burning out.

it wasn’t until element’s appointed vacation that the flame ignited again. in the smallest of moments, it started again as he asked his mother if he could help the girls in the kitchen. considering he’d never done that before, even as a kid, he expected at least his father to be surprised. rather than right then, though, when sung felt the cogs turning, was about half an hour later. his sister-in-law occupied the stove, while his mother, her mother before her, and himself stood assembly line along the counter, cutting and rolling out dough. his grandmother reached over, to show him how to more evenly and thinly roll the dough out, and sung thought that this was the man he’d always wanted to be. right then, even her next quips sounded more like jokes than usual.

who choi joosung was most was that. he was the man whose eyes sparkled as he waited for his picky father’s approval over his dumpling dough, the man that dutifully picked up tossed away toys for every game of his spoiled nephew’s, and the man that opened the car door for his grandma so he could make sure she got easily. choi joosung was a man who didn’t want to pretend to be someone else any longer.

by the time the family had decided to retire to their own spaces, sung was thrumming with new energy, and by the time sung slipped under the covers of his bed, he had a real first draft of a song that truly exemplified who he was.