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vivwritesfics · 10 months

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Keep On Rolling - MV1

Chapter Ten

Summary: Lando's best friend having feelings for anyone on the grid? Impossible, right? She worked with them, sharing her friendship with the grid with the world via the FormulaY/N youtube channel.

After film a video including... spicy water (alcohol), everything changes between her and a certain world champion. Good thing she hasn't had a crush on him since his F1 debut, right?

Right?

1.5K words

Series Masterlist

The first race back after the summer break. It was the Dutch Grand prix, Max’s home race. It had been months since Y/N and Max had last spoken and she was finally ready to sort things out.

So, she made her way up to her hotel room, after getting the floor and room number from Charles. Her bag was stuffed full of…

The elevator dinged and she stepped out. His hotel room was just three doors away. Knocking quickly, Y/N stepped to the side and waited for Max to open the door.

He heard the knocks. Standing from the bed, he walked over to the door and looked through the peephole, at who was on the other side. They were standing just out of view, with him only able to see their arm. But their arm had no tattoos, no kind of identifying features. So, Max pulled open the door.

Y/N stepped out in front of it and Max went to push the door shut. But Y/N got inside before he could. “Max, wait,” she said, pulling her bag forward and reaching inside. She pulled out a small, white box full of Stroopwafels.

Pulling them out, Y/N placed them down onto the circular table in the middle of the hotel room. “Just hear me out, okay?”

Max looked at the stroopwafels, picked them up and sat back on the bed, the box cradled in his lap. “Fine,” he said, his voice cold as he pulled the box open and began eating them.

And so, Y/N talked. She talked for a full ten minutes before stopping to take a breath. The whole time Max listened, his eyes never leaving her as she paced about the hotel room.

As soon as she had finished with the body of her rant, Y/N took a seat at the round table and let out a sigh, her hands moving through her hair. “I feel like you hate me and I don’t understand what I’ve done.”

Quiet filled the hotel room. Max stared at her and Y/N stared at him. Say something, please! she thought as they stared. But Max was still quiet. “Max-”

“When those pictures of us got released, I got a call from my father,” he confessed before Y/N could say anything more. “He was so angry with me for letting myself be distracted by you.” His fingers drummed against the top of the box.

Before those pictures were leaked, Max had won almost every race. Red Bull certainly had won everything, and he’d been the one stood on the top of the podium more time than not. “But, you-”

“I know. Trust me, I know. He went on, threatened me, the usual dad stuff. And I was ready to ignore it, until Lando came knocking on my door.”

Y/N’s head shot up. Her eyes were wide, eyebrows scrunched together as she stared at him. Lando hadn’t mentioned this. He’d had plenty of opportunity to, but he had never told her about it. “What happened when Lando came knocking on your door?” She asked, somewhat timidly, almost like she was afraid of the answer.

There was a moment before Max answered. He hadn’t yet eaten her stroopwafels, still tapping away at the side of the box. “He asked me to stay away from you. Well, actually he told me I needed to stay away from you.”

“And you listened to that?”

He nodded his head. “I couldn’t concentrate on driving when I had my father calling me, telling me I needed to forget about you, when I had Lando threatening me to stay away from you and then I had you there at every single race. I couldn’t concentrate. My favourite part of the weekend used to be the racing, but it became filming your videos.” And Max hated his media duties. I had to get my mind back on racing, so I pulled away from you. But it didn’t help. Suddenly I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. Any time I was sim racing I was crashing because I was thinking about you.”

Y/N stood from the table. She took two strides and sat herself on the end of the bed, facing him. Y/N placed the stroopwafels down onto the small table beside the bed and looked at Max. “You’ve been thinking about me?”

“Obviously I’ve been thinking about you,” Max replied quickly. “I haven’t done anything but think of you.”

Her hand was on his face as she leaned forward. Max let his arms fall to her waist as she leaned forward onto the bed and shut her eyes. She pressed her lips to his, waiting a moment for Max to kiss her back.

It took Max a moment, surprise clear on his face. But he kissed her back, his fingers running through her hair. His hand quickly moved from her hair to her waist, pulling her closer as Y/N pulled her face away from his.

She stared at him. For a full minute Y/N stared at Max. She didn’t say anything as she pulled her hand away from his face and pushed herself away. “I’m sorry,” she said, standing up. “I’m so sorry.”

But Max had a grip on her waist still. He easily pulled her back down onto the bed, almost pulling her onto his lap. “Stay,” he said, and Y/N folded her leg under her body.

Y/N didn’t kiss him again. She stayed where she was, sitting on one side of the bed while Max leaned back against the headboard. He grabbed the box of stroopwafels, offering Y/N one. “You kissed me back,” she said as she took one. “I kissed you and you kissed me back.”

“Yeah, I did.”

Y/N let out a huff as she bit into the stroopwafel. Delicious, as always. “Want to tell me what that means for us?” She asked. “Like, are we friends again, or what?”

Why just be friends? Max wanted to say. Why can’t we be something more than friends? But he didn’t dare say it. Yes, she was the one that kissed him, but she’d regretted it instantly, it seemed. If she regretted just a kiss, what would she do if Max asked her to love him?

“Yeah, we’re friends again,” Max said, stopping himself from scoffing. Friends. He could live with being friends. It was going to be tough, but he could live with it. For the time being, at least.

Y/N pulled out her phone. “Lando and I are in the newest Quadrant video. Do you want to watch it with me?” She asked, opening up the Youtube app.

It was Y/N’s technical return to Youtube. She hadn’t posted a video in months, her summer break currently going through editing before it was uploaded.

Max nodded his head. He didn’t say anything as Y/N pulled up the video and propped the phone up in front of them.

It was strangely normal, something a two-time world champion didn’t get very often. He and Y/N sat together, closer than ordinary friends would, as they watched the video. It was funny, the Quadrant group and Y/N completing an obstacle course that ended in a karting track. Ria, Y/N and Max (Fewtrell) were on one team, and Lando, Aarav and Niran were on the other team.

Most of the obstacle course was inflatable. The video started with Y/N and Lando running towards the inflatable obstacle course, pushing each other as they went. Lando reached over and held Y/N pack as she tried to move through the inflatable poles. At the end of the inflatable obstacle course was a small bit they had to climb and then a slid that went down to karting track.

It really was good fun; Y/N couldn’t help but smile as she watched it. Quadrant videos were maybe one of Y/N’s favourite parts of being a Youtuber.

But Max (Verstappen) wasn’t laughing. Max wasn’t even watching the video. He couldn’t stop himself from staring at Y/N as she leaned against him. This. This was what he wanted. This was what he didn’t have.

She stayed for a little bit, but things were still not normal between them. She had kissed him, that was all Max could think about. He wanted to kiss her again, but it would only make things worse. She wanted to be friends, clearly, but then why did she kiss him.

Once the video ended, Y/N stretched her back and stood up. She grabbed her phone, slipped it into her pocket and grabbed her bag. “I better go,” she muttered and walked towards the door. Jumping up from the bed, Max followed her. He said nothing as he pulled open the door. Friends. They were just friends. That fucking sucked. Max let her out, watching her go as she headed towards the elevators.

As Y/N walked, she pulled out her phone.

Taglist (Open): @sticksdoesart @eviethetheatrefreak @eugene-emt-roe @glai1023-blog @mqcherie @itsjustkhaos @chonkybonky @arian-directioner @lazybot @lpab @princessria127 @fangirl125reader @honethatty12 @larastark3107 @urfavouritef1girly @cassiopeiia24 @callsign-scully @lexiecamposv @dl-yum @savagecelery @laneyspaulding19 @formulas-bitch @teenwolf01 @gayfrog29 @fictionalcomforts @avg-golden-retriever @pxppeypianotme @ruleroftheuniverse @ferrarisbitch @ashy-kit @dark-night-sky-99 @sadg3 @asmoothoperator @formula1mount @perfektpasta @redwolfxx

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designatedgrape · 1 year

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Uncle Wayne, How Do I?

I’ve never done a tumblr ficlet before, but @sullymygoodname mentioned older Steve having his own “Dad, How Do I” YouTube channel, and my brain immediately went off in its own direction.

Steddie modern AU, rated G, 700 words. Written in less than an hour, and not edited.

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It takes less than a day after Steve moves into his first apartment for him to realize that he’s in over his head. He’d thought the hardest part of moving out of his parents’ house was scraping together enough money for first month, last month, and the security deposit. But apparently, he was sorely mistaken. He looks helplessly between the picture frame in his hands and the large swath of empty wall above his thrift store sofa, and he realizes…he has no idea how to hang this thing.

So of course, he turns to YouTube.

The first suggested video for “how to hang a picture” is from a channel called “Uncle Wayne, How Do I?” Steve snorts. He wonders how many videos it would take to cover all of the knowledge that Richard Harrington failed to impart on his son.

He clicks on the thumbnail—and a man in his late 40s, looking stoic as he stands next to a picture frame on a wall—and turns up the volume on his phone.

“I’m Wayne Munson, and this is how you hang up a picture frame.”

Okay, good start.

Steve is expecting Wayne Munson to walk him through each step, describing what he’s doing as he goes, but…no. Wayne does something with a ruler, and something with a long yellow thing that might be a ruler, but has a bunch of clear tubes with greenish liquid inside? And then he uses a pencil to mark the wall, because he’s somehow figured out where he wants the picture to go. Steve must have missed that part. He’ll have to go back in a minute, but for now he just wants to see what comes next.

Wayne uses a hammer—Steve knows that tool!—and a nail… Wait, no. Not just a nail. There’s also a hook. But the nail goes through the hook? Did Wayne make a hole in it?

And then suddenly, the picture is hanging on the wall, and Wayne faces the camera, unsmiling. It’s the screenshot from the thumbnail. And that’s…it. What the fuck kind of how-to video was that?

Steve is just about to click away in annoyance, when the sound of a shrieking guitar comes through his phone’s speaker, and a black screen with “Eddie Translates for Uncle Wayne” in blood-red letters appears.

“All right, boys, girls and everyone in between, let’s go over that again, shall we?”

The voice is distinctly younger: low and mysterious, melodic and teasing. Steve waits for a face to appear to match it, but one never does. Instead, Eddie just talks over the same video that Steve watched a moment ago. This time, though, there are pauses and replays and slow-motion sections, all while Eddie says things like,

“So when I asked Wayne what he did here, he just grunted and gestured at the screen, which I’m pretty sure means that you need to measure from the top of the frame to the hanging wire or triangle ring or sawtooth hanger or whatever you’ve got.”

and

“Pop quiz from Uncle Wayne, little sheepies: why should you use a picture hanging hook on the wall instead of just a regular nail? If you guessed, ‘because it looks f-ing badass,’ you’re damn right it do— Ow, Wayne! Jesus! I’m getting to it!” Eddie clears his throat. “The correct answer, according to Uncle Wayne, is, quote, ’So that you don’t rip half the damn wallboard off when your picture falls down because you didn’t take ten seconds to find a damn stud.’ Cool. So there you go.”

Steve is grinning so hard that it feels like his cheeks are getting a stretching workout. As soon as the video ends, he immediately clicks on the next one. Wayne—or more accurately, Eddie—is teaching him how to plant grass seed. Steve definitely won’t need this information for the foreseeable future, given that he doesn’t have any yard to speak of, but that’s neither here nor there.

He doesn’t notice how many videos he’s watched until he realizes the arm holding up his phone is starting to ache, he’s desperately thirsty and also has to pee, and the sun is starting to set. And he still hasn’t hung up the picture that started this all.

He might however, be a little bit in love with Eddie.

#steddie #steddie fic #stranger things #stranger things fic #my writing

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ingydar-phan · 4 months

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Happy birthday Dan. I found you at a very, very low point in my life. It’s funny, because that point was only a few months ago. March 3rd. March 3rd. Jesus Christ. I was dealing with severe bullying, depression, hopelessness, isolation, gender dysphoria (i have been out/socially transitioned for like 5 years), and most of all, loneliness. I had a circle of about 3 friends who i talked to regularly, but only 1 i even saw in person more than once per year. Then, two of those 3 people began having relationship issues and were on the verge of breaking up. I felt like i was a bother, a burden to their already existing issues. Every single day I’d walk into school, put my headphones on, and not talk to a single person. I’d read, sleep, listen to music, dissociate, and sleep some more throughout the day just to distract myself from everything. From class, from parents, from the outside, everything. I fully and truly believed everyone besides those 3 people hated me. They found me disgusting, annoying, taking up space, and simply didn’t want me there. I think that is true to an extent, but i don’t like how i was just letting that be how it is. My dad was genuinely hopeless, he told me to just ride it out and if i could try to be just a little bit normal-er, maybe i wouldn’t be ignored by every person every day. That didn’t work. Instead, i decided to do some self work. Or rather, my dad stopped intruding on my free time which allowed me to still be awake and do things i wanted to do in peace. I thought, “Dan and Phil….those two emo guys with the cat whiskers….i have such a vague memory of a friend mentioning them or scrolling across a post of them, who even are they?”. I typed into the YouTube search bar “Dan and Phil”. A gaming channel? Are these people streamers? Oh god (i did not know you were one of us 🏳️‍🌈….or british…..). I watched one video. Now, ACCORDING TO YOUTUBE HISTORY, i somehow watched What Dan And Phil Text Each Other 4 as my first video. Not even the gaming channel, i don’t know how this happened maybe YouTube is lying to me. Whatever. Ok so which ones Dan and which ones Phil? Why do they look SO different? They’re British? I started watching Dan and Phil edits on TikTok. Ok, i know who you are, i get the vibes. Oh, coming out timeline? Gaming channel timeline and hiatus? Reacting to PINOF? On March 13, i watched Basically I’m Gay and Coming Out To You. It took me an entire month from then to watch Why I Quit YouTube. By late April, i was in it. I was watching Dan or Phil every day. Before, during, and/or after school. Since then, I’ve purchased YWGTTN (limited edition signed updated paperback). It was 38 fucking dollars in USD but it was worth it. I also now own TATINOF and DAPGO, one of which is signed by Phil, i bought second hand. So yes, now this is my new thing. But you know what else? I was getting happier. I was going to more concerts. I was doing my schoolwork, or at least trying to. I was reading!!!! I’ve since finished The Secret History. I made a friend; reconnected with an old childhood friend and started eating lunch together and hanging out and having shared trauma dump sessions, and we are so so close now. My two friends broke up, but it’s ok. I’m best friends with one of them and he’s so much better off, and the other and i are still casual friends!! I value them both for the multiple years I’ve known them. I’ve taken family vacations and done religious holidays with genuine care while getting to reconnect with my family. I’ve very passionately finished acting in a musical that I’ve put so much care into for about 5 months. I’m graduating tomorrow!!! And me and my close friend will be going to a concert tomorrow night afterwards, and I’m going to have a great summer where i see my close friend who i haven’t seen IRL since March of 2023. I’m getting closer with my dad and seeing a new therapist. I am having medical problems as of right now, but i would 100% be lying in bed crying and skipping graduation had i not found a reason to enjoy my days.

Did i just take one sentence referencing Dan to write a whole autobiography on tumblr? Yes, but also no. Dan and Phil are real people. They really do rescue pigeons named Steve and getting 10 sauces for their pizza and say hi across the city with binoculars. But they also genuinely have an impact on people, and they see that, and they LIKE to see that. I don’t think Dan will see this post. But I’m making it anyway. For me.

I love Dan so much. I cried twice while watching We’re All Doomed in my kitchen. I have actively watched Dan and Phil videos while crying at school. Once, in my bedroom, i was having a panic attack. I had an overwhelming rush of thoughts around 10 or 11 at night about how worthless i am and how terrible everything was going. I opened my tiktok, and there was THE edit that saved me. It was a video of fetus Dan on YouNow talking about his dream home. And then it was cutting back and forth to the Phouse. Then, Dans hopeful monologue in Basically I’m Gay. Finally, Dans hopeful monologue in We’re All Doomed. All of this in a softly shaky screen with sad music behind it. I cried a lot. This aspect of my life means so much to me. I think about the Halloween 2023 baking video at least 5 times a day (and sister Daniel’s….uhm….legs…). I am still so mad i did not buy the satanic Craft shirts. I just rewatched Dans interview last year with Anthony Padilla just because of how goddamn much I’m obsessed with that angle of Dan with his cute chin and cheeks and fucking dimple. I think about Dans bluntness in his defined-self and truly feel inspired to be like him. I look at his change over the years, his comfortability in his body, seeing that his face and neck are shaped like my face and neck, and he’s fucking beautiful. I don’t think I’d feel comfortable in my weight if not for Dan Howell, and i mean that so insanely sincerely. I read Dans book whenever I’m feeling hopeless and need a soft sexy British man to tell me the scientific reasoning behind why i feel this way and to assure me he’s felt worse. I’m so serious when i say i cannot imagine a day of my life without Dan and Phil. I truly don’t understand how i lived before or how I’d expect to live without it. “Live”, in the sense of find a way of life, not as in “stay alive.” I can’t imagine a day without those big brown boba eyes and that cute dimple and mainly that calming voice that reminds me someone else has felt this way. That reminds me love is possible. That reminds me i have so much ahead of me, so much life and love and joy.

Phil’s birthday stream may be my favorite piece of Dan and Phil media, or at least one of them. I find it so comforting and wholesome and beautiful and hilarious. I have such high hopes for Dans birthday stream. Until then, I’ll be working on my long-awaited (still very very unfinished) 2009!Dan and Phil art piece within my art initiative (pinned on my profile) (just for funsies, no money or anything involved). I’m going to sit there at 3pm (my time) and watch with a huge smile on my face to see my amazing dads spend the time of their lives being sexy and old and happy and disgustingly homosexual while i just embrace all you’ve done for me.

Happy birthday Dan

@danielhowell

#dan and phil #daniel howell #dan howell #phan #amazingphil #dnp #dan and phil games #dans birthday #happy birthday #dnpgames #d&p #phil lester

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utopiassuck · 5 months

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I cannot support Smosh anymore

I think I have reached the end of my rope with Smosh and how they’ve been handling what is happening in Palestine. I’ve been watching Smosh since 2015 and to see everything they’ve been actively doing depite the situation makes me incredibly disappointed.

I understand as a small company that is responsible for the livelihoods of many people, you wouldn’t want to publicly take a stance which could jeopardise brand deals, collaborations etc. I don’t blame them for that. But to actively suppress any mention of Palestine from your comments is gross. I follow many YouTubers and TikTokers who haven’t taken a stance publicly but are also not suppressing comments. To go out of their way to censor people talking about the issue has made me feel sick. This combined with how prominently they are featuring Noah in their videos despite all the pro-Israel and Zionist tweets he’s made and liked is really making it hard to continue to support them. Noah is a contractor. They don’t have to be bring him back. That is an active choice that they are making despite knowing the controversy surrounding him. They have also not been featuring him in thumbnails so if you want to still watch their videos but just not the ones he is in, you have to click on the video, adding to the number of views the video gets. That is sick and twisted.

All their actions remind me of how big, shady corporations handle situations like this. You know the same corporations that Smosh has criticised countless times in their videos.

Smosh is a comedy channel and they don’t have to speak out about these kind of issues. But the problem with that statement is that they have in the past. They had a whole podcast episode dedicated to BLM as well as participated in the protests. They have spoken about homophobia, transphobia, racism and misogyny countless times and have made many comments about how awful the US government is. These are all great things and I am glad that they did them. But they really highlight that if Smosh wanted to, they would. I gave them the benefit of the doubt before, but all the things they have actively chosen to do are really beginning to make me question exactly why they don’t want to.

I know Damien, Angela and Mallory have made their pro-palestine stance very clear which I know is not something they have to do but I do appreciate. Shayne and Ian have liked pro-Palestine tweets which is cool but Ian co-owns the company. Liking these tweets while owning the company that is actively suppressing any mention of Palestine, actively supporting a known zionist as well as employing very shady techniques to make it difficult for anyone to not watch any videos with said zionist in them, means absolutely nothing.

Actions speak louder than words and right now their actions are really making me doubt whether they actually care about over 33,000 innocent people being killed within a matter of months. They are evidently aware of what is happening and are making choices that will obviously make people doubt where they stand.

They don’t have to publicly declare their opinions. They can stay neutral. The problem is that they are not taking a neutral stance. Their stance is beginning to lead more towards zionism and the support for the man-made starvation of innocent people. I can no longer watch their videos or see any of their content without feeling sick and so disappointed in the people I have watched and supported for nearly a decade.

#smosh #smoshblr #smosh games #smosh pit #smosh mouth #ian hecox #palestine #ceasefire #ceasfire now

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nina-rosa · 2 years

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I’m not sure about the exact definition, but a “hyperfixation” is a term used by neurodiverse people (ad(h)d or autism for exemple) for when they’re really passionate about something? Like for me it’s usually some kind of media like tv shows, animation, movies, video games, music bands… on a long time span (from 6 months to a couple of years). It’s a thing I don’t see a lot of people talking about, and I found out about it only recently (when I got diagnosed with add actually). Before that, I always thought I was a bit weird for being obsessed by something to the point where I’m thinking about it everyday all day long, but it’s actually pretty common and ok! :’D

I wrote this explanation based on my personal experience, so I could be wrong on the exact definition, please let me know if I said anything incorrect!

The years that you’ll see mentioned on top of the titles are the years I got the hyperfixation in question (and not the date of release of the media).

I only put my main hyperfixations here, but there were also a few minor ones that I didn’t include like Harry Potter (around 2011), WTC and SLG (two YouTube channels that I watched a lot when I was like 14 or something, so around 2015), musicals (around 2021)…

I’ve always felt a bit embarrassed about my hyperfixations, because some of them can be a bit controversial or because I’m scared other people might find it weird or cringe to like something very passionately? But they also hold a special place in my heart as some of them helped to make me what I am today, or just made me feel very happy. 💖

I guess the reason why I’m making this post is to talk more about this thing that some brains do, so people like me who felt self-conscious and didn’t know about this can be passionate about what they love more freely, as the famous quote says: « I am cringe but I am free ».✨💫✨💫✨

(And also just for fun, I wanted to draw again all those things that inspired me a lot)

#hyperfixations #add #adhd #the princess and the frog #tangled #rio #adventure time #gorillaz #steven universe #voltron #undertale #city hunter #SpongeBob #spongebob squarepants the musical #spongebob squarepants #jojos bizarre adventure #Jojo #jjba

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palomahasenteredthechat · 25 days

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I was on here two weeks ago talking about taking a break and today something told me to look on these pages and I can see why.

I had a feeling that it would be at two week intervals due their big outings (Not saying it’s all fake just that they plan for a few things to get press).

If it helps anyone what I have done for the most part is I unfollowed a lot of pages and also muted his stuff on Instagram (not that he uses it much). For the past two weeks I pretty much blocked him and scrubbed him from my life. Because I knew that with this happening and depending on how long it lasts it will make things in his fandom very difficult.

If anyone wants to walk off or take time to reflect it does help believe me. I’ve started doing the stuff I enjoyed before getting into this fandom. I’m outside more, I’m engaging with topics I have been passionate about and I’m even thinking of starting a YouTube channel to get more involved in the stuff I love.

Honestly it beats sitting in my bed and looking at photos or videos of him; I needed something to free me and this was it. I know it’s not something many want to do or want to think about but if this hurts you have to ask yourself why a celebrity dating hurts when you can’t change the circumstances, change yours instead. I know for many it’s who he’s dating but as many said we can’t tell what happens behind the scenes; but you can take care of you.

If this helps in any way for you all I’m glad; don’t sit in agony over this guy for dating someone like her. You’re all wonderful and amazing people and you will get through this. Don’t dwell or pay him any mind. Take care. 👋

Oh, bravo Nonny! Good for you, and thank you so much for coming back to share these wise, wise words.

I forgot to mention exercise is really great too. Get outside!

Joe has been a massive time and attention drain, no doubt.

#anon asks #paloma answers

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kariskyline · 1 year

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Gunvolt’s treatment in cannon bothers me to an unreal degree aka I’m get to rant about this series because I’ve never seen a series treat it’s mc worse

Spoilers for literally the whole franchise

I’ve had some time to think about it and calm down since gv3’s story and come to terms with it and something never sat right with me. And then it hit me. Gunvolt is the most punished character in the series and there is no good justification for it.

Drama tracks pre asg1

The things we learn about gv in the drama tracks are depressing. For reference, I recommend you watch the translations provided on slider’s YouTube channel, since they’ll be my main source for this section.

From what we can tell in the tracks that gv’s childhood pre quill is for lack of better words, absolutely crap. He was one of the subjects of the gv project, and only two that were successful, the other being Asimov. As far as we know he never had a name or at least was never referred to as such only being called subject 78.

As far as we know (because gv cannon likes raising more questions than answers and you have to DIG to hell and back just to find some answers) Gv’s time in sumeragi was miserable until quill decided to make a surprise adoption.

Asg1: and now things get worse

Then asg1 happens and we meet Joule, the other most punished character . Things go well for the pair until the end of the game. There are two ending, the Asimov kills gv and we move to the ix timeline and the gv lives but now Joule lives in his head ending.

The ending where he lives end in the simplest of terms is Gv killing what his basically his father and basically has to leave his friends behind with out a word and now has Joule living in his head. There’s not much of a happy ending here, bittersweet at most but hey at least he gets to live.

Asg2: everyone say hello to Quinn and Xiao

In one of the drama tracks where Gv meets Quinn, Gv and Joule are not having the best time. Joule’s not having a great time considering that y’know she’s basically a ghost and gunvolt himself isn’t having it any better. Now is how he treats Joule here great?

However, keep in mind that he’s only a year older than she is and feels like he failed her and has to deal with quill and sumeragi being after him. Not to mention he killed his foster father in an act of revenge. So yeah everything kinda sucks.

Then Quinn happens and she fills the role the of the anchor to Gv’s mental state in a sense in that in order for him to get better he has to come to terms with what happens and let Joule go.

And that partially happens through Michiru (I can’t spell her eng name for some reason) since no matter who you play, Gv ultimately makes the choice to let her go. And it’s for the better because an argument can be made that Joule staying around in her current state isn’t healthy in the slightest. Not helping that before the prayer fight, he internalizes what happened as failure, that there was a failure on his part. Even though, he really didn’t have much control over Joule’s powers getting snatched and Copen wasn’t really helping matters much either.

By contrast Gv never seems to talk about what happened in the previous game, never even referring to Asimov by name only calling him “mentor”. Not helped by him having nightmares about his near-death experience and as far as we know is more content with just leaving it in the past. Which is fine but I wish it would have been brought up at some point.

Honestly, it feels kinda weird that we never get any sort of interaction with Joule that has him or Joule take a moment to talk about what happened. Neither of them talk about their experiences with sumeragi, or the whole Asimov situation. It also doesn’t seem like he ever got closer in that case and I don’t feel like he ever did.

Asg3: the reason this post exists

Now we get to asg3 which is the reason why I made this post, because it’s kinda frustrating in every way.

First we learn that gunvolt’s powers went out of control. One of the conversations have him point out that it could be due to the AB spirits. However due to this he ended up hurting Quinn, afterwards he turned himself in to sumeragi.

Now gv3 does make it a point to say that sumeragi isn’t that bad which is a problem due to all of the child experimentation. Gunvolt himself also makes it a point to bring up that the scientists don’t represent the whole of sumeragi, which while fair kinda feels weird because those scientists were part of a whole project that probably had the company’s ok.

Now gunvolt has been a dragon for decades, which is the story’s justification for abandoning every other plot line

Now we get to a frustrating part in the story which is the duo refights. The problem isn’t that it can be interpreted that they’re a personified version of his guilt. The problem is that because their so late in the story that it feels like the neither the story or characters really press on it. Which sucks because Gv never seems to get closer with Quinn.

Skipping to the end because Asimov and Nova deserve their own posts. Gunvolt’s story ends with him being turned into a baby and going … somewhere.

Now why is this all an issue?

The core of the issue stems from the fact that most of these events happen nearly every time we see him. Every time he gains something he’s forced to lose it. The only times he wasn’t was when he let Joule go.

Copen in the IX timeline at least gets to be able to have some sort of stability and despite having to kill his twin sister at least gains something in the same respect. Compare this to gv where it’s gut punch, gain something, then it’s gone. Gunvolt becoming a villain wouldn’t have been better either.

His story is doesn’t feel fun to go through it feels unreasonably depressing. His story could’ve been better if you just let him be happy for longer than the start or the end of a game.

#long post #rant post #azure striker gunvolt #gunvolt #negative posting

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pikmininaplane · 3 months

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Hello dear mutual LB lanuel Bals third of its name, i do not know a SINGLE thing abt d20 i only rbed because a mutual drew that and i thus extend the official invite to feel free to info dump to me abt it (PLEASE !!! only if u want ofc peeposhy) and also where should i start if i were to try to get into it (asking for me)

thank u and have a great ballsy day <33 uwu

Oh em gee it’s Moo Peng my beloved tumblr dot com mutual haiii ^w^ And thank you SO much for giving me an opportunity to talk about this >:D This might get long tho

D20, aka Dimension 20, is a RPG (mostly D&D) show that you can watch on Dropout (smaller American streaming service, but it has really good content <3), though some seasons are on Youtube!

There are 21 seasons in total so far, but each one is its own campaign (well, except for the 3-4 sequel seasons), which means you can absolutely jump right into a later season and still get what’s going on :] Also the seasons range from 20 episodes to 4, so you don’t always need to find the emotional resolve to sit through 20 2-hours long episodes lol

The fanart you reblogged is of Ayda, a character from Fantasy High, which is basically the poster child of D20 – it was the first season, and it later got two sequel seasons, Sophomore Year (which is the exact one Ayda is from) and Junior Year, the most recent season, as well as two spin-off seasons with locations/characters from its world (Pirates of Leviathan and The Seven (it’s kinda funny actually because I know you’re a PJO fan and, well, I often see posts about it in that season’s tag because of the name X))) Mostly it’s about a bunch of teenagers in a fantasy 80s-esque high school trying to solve mysteries and going on adventures!

Fantasy High is not my personal favorite, however – the medal of honor goes to A Court of Fey and Flowers and Mentopolis, respectively the "fey regency/romance" season and the "Inside Out but as a film noir" season <3 But there’s plenty I love!! There’s a space opera season, a "Game of Thrones but with food" season, a heist season, a furry murder mystery season, a fairytale horror season… the list goes on! It even featured a bunch of drag queens on a season :D

There’s only four seasons available on Youtube, unfortunately, but they’re all really good so here they are:

Fantasy High

I’ve mentioned it before, so I won’t elaborate, but I’ll add that it’s 17 episodes long!

Fantasy High: Sophomore Year

Also mentioned before, but I’ll add that this season was recorded live on Twitch so while it’s a lot of people’s favorite, it has occasional problems (especially audio-wise). 20 episodes long

Escape from the Bloodkeep

Lord of the Rings parody – the villain lords find themselves scrambling when not-Sauron suddenly dies and they’re forced to work together to bring him back :3c 6 episodes long, features Matt Mercer of Critical Role fame

The Unsleeping City

Urban fantasy, turns out there’s a whole magical side of New York that regular people can’t see, and a group of unlikely heroes band together to face the bad parts of that magical side >:3c 17 episodes long, there’s also a second season of it but it isn’t out on Youtube unfortunately :(

The next season, Never Stop Blowing Up, is coming out in like a week and a half, based on the trailer, it’s going to be a Jumanji-like 80s action movies parody and I am!! Very excited!! :D

#moo my beloved comment ça m’a fait trop plaisir de voir ça dans mon inbox <3 #also si ça t’intéresse… de temps en temps j’organise des watch parties des saisons pas sur Youtube dans un serveur Discord privé…#je pourrais t’inviter… just saying….. 😳#asks

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mellometal · 2 years

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Here we go again...Jesus tap-dancing Christ. This is a lot longer than I wanted it to be.

Hey. I haven’t been able to make any posts related to Dhar Mann over the past several months. I needed to make my mental health a priority over a guy whose presence literally makes my blood boil. (Also...side note: I have said this multiple times before, I don’t always want to discuss this individual or anyone associated with him. I don’t want to be restricted to talking about one topic. /notmad) I’ve also been going through a lot, as a lot of you know. You’re probably not here for me to tell you about why the posts about this individual and anyone related to him have halted, so I’m gonna cut to the chase.

This is an important topic, as almost every single actor who has worked under Dhar Mann is protesting against him due to him not paying them a liveable wage. Y’know, despite racking in a shit ton of ad revenue that’s around $25k or something like that. Hey, aren’t you a multimillionaire? I know damn well you can afford to pay the actors a liveable wage for their time and ensure they can pay for essentials, like I don’t know, A ROOF OVER THEIR HEADS! I’ll be linking as many videos talking about this subject from some of the actors themselves and through YouTube commentators as Tumblr will let me link. As I’ve mentioned in passing, I haven’t watched any videos Dhar Dhar Binks has made in the past few months because hate watching his videos will only line his pockets and hurt the actors. Especially now.

Dhar Mann has been firing people for speaking negatively about the conditions of the studio and the pay. This has been through emails (a few people’s emails have been put up on social media, which is super unprofessional and can be dangerous for the people whose emails were posted online). Instead of taking criticism and actually trying to make things right for the people who have made his channels successful, he doubles down on all the “positive” experiences that some of the actors have had with him. One of them notably being Katherine Norland, which considering how problematic she is outside of working for Dhar Mann, I’m not at all surprised. Two birds of the same feather flock together. She talked about how her experience working with Dhar Mann has been great. Hey, Katherine, not everyone has the same experience as you. But I bet you like playing the bigoted Karen roles you get, huh? Figures.

Here’s a five minute clip of a FORTY-FIVE MINUTE VIDEO she made. I already have a headache listening to her spew typical Boomer/Boomer 2.0 (A LOT of Gen X...mainly elder Gen X) bullshit.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnqHuvd/

All I gotta say is: Okay, Boomer. Lay off the Kool-aid. (She probably isn’t a Boomer, but she sure talks like one.)

Another actor I’ve seen speaking more on neutral ground, but still defending Dhar Mann low-key is Melvin. To sum up what Melvin said, he basically said that Dhar Mann’s “a good guy (to him)”, DM “shouldn’t be canceled”, he saw where the actors who were protesting were coming from, and “everything’s gonna get solved”. The clip where he talks about this is below:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnqD1pv/

According to Colin A. Borden, who has worked with Dhar Mann as an actor for the past few years, he stated on his social media platforms that a lot of the actors, himself included (most likely, I’m not sure), can’t even afford rent with how little Dhar Mann pays the actors. This was when he was talking about why actors are protesting at the moment. He’s not the only actor I’m going to be naming. A few other notable actors protesting are Mair Mulroney, Rachel, and a couple others. I linked a few of their videos below.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnVcm4A/ (Colin's video)

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnVvEK5/ (One of Mair's videos)

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnVGLaB/ (Nathan's video, where he talks about why the contracts and payments are bad.)

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnqNyPd/ (A compilation of actors protesting.) (TW: There are whistles being blown.)

According to other actors who have come forward with their experiences with this individual (Rachel being one of them), they would work twelve to fifteen hour days for the wage of eighteen dollars per hour (for non-speaking roles) or thirty-three to forty-four dollars per hour (for speaking roles). To my understanding, this was a few times a week. This kind of schedule is not sustainable. These actors can’t even afford to pay their rent, like I have mentioned before. Dhar Mann can lie his ass off about how he pays everyone fairly all he wants, but you know I’m going to believe the actors over him any day.

Clip from a livestream where Rachel is talking about pay:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnqBSrF/

“Eighteen dollars an hour for a non-speaking role? Thirty-three to forty-four dollars an hour for a speaking role? That sounds great! What’s the problem with that?”

Getting paid eighteen dollars an hour (for non-speaking roles), or getting paid thirty-three dollars to forty-four dollars (for speaking roles) for twelve to fifteen hours a day a few times a week sounds like a lot of money, but that’s further from the truth. Let me explain.

If they’re only there for twelve to fifteen hours a few times a week, to paint a better picture, and they’re paid semi-monthly, the people with non-speaking roles would only get around $1,440 every two weeks, and the people with speaking roles would get around $2,640 - $3,520 every two weeks. (NOTE: These are only estimated amounts. I used 80 hours here in total for the two weeks, and used a tax calculator based in California, where they work. This is given that their hours actually equal forty hours per week. The hours are variable, as Nathan has said in his video talking about this subject. The actors could actually be getting paid less than the estimated amounts I put up.) This is before taxes are taken out, hypothetically, if Dhar Mann or anyone who handles payroll is actually doing their job. After taxes are taken out, the extras would only be getting $1,132 every two weeks, and actors in speaking roles would be getting $1,923 - $2,456 every two weeks. He pays everyone out through PayPal…instead of at least giving them a pay card where he can put their paychecks onto or letting them use their banks through direct deposit, or giving them paper checks so they can deposit their earnings into their bank accounts.

The average person’s rent in all of California was around $1,818 back in 2021. That’s not including utilities, insurance, and other bills. They’re pretty much scraping by to survive if they’re living on their own. Those are some “competitive wages”, huh? Get over yourself, Dhar. You’re fucking cheap and you can’t manage to pay the people who made your shitty channel huge fairly. Just admit that.

Another thing that I need to mention is them painting a mural to honor an actor who passed away, then taking it down a few days later. The reason for this wasn’t really made clear. Something about the landlord saying to take it down, or they needed that space for a video. Whatever the reason is, it’s not cool to paint a mural dedicated to an actor that you’re not even gonna keep up. It gives off the impression that you only did it for clout. Just saying.

ETA: This is new information that I found from doing more research. Carl Judie, according to Riki (who was close to him), was actually planning on leaving before his death due to how he was being treated. His loved ones do not want Carl’s face to be anywhere in Dhar Mann’s studios. This is the video where Riki discussed Carl:

Another actor came forward to speak about how Dhar Mann was practicing a scene with her for a TikTok and he was chasing after her with a real knife instead of a prop knife.

Clip from a livestream:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnqPsCm/

A child actor (Brianni) talked about how she was fired because she has medical issues THAT DHAR MANN WAS WELL AWARE OF. Her video is below:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnqmUTd/

Riki, one of the major actors in his shitty videos refused to do any more videos that have to do with race and she got less work as a result. A black woman not wanting to do videos about race? *gasp* How will Dhar Mann ever recover from this? /s Oh, I wonder…I will be linking her video where she explains why she stopped doing any more videos that have to do with race. She explains it a lot better than I can. Her video is linked below:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnqRnSn/

Actors are generally unionized to prevent this kind of thing from happening (i.e., paying dramatically low wages and an overall unhealthy work environment), but the way Dhar Mann runs shit, it’s not unionized. Fearing that you will lose your job if you’re critical of the boss in any capacity or you speak out about work conditions is not a healthy work environment. Nobody should be having to walk on eggshells and be afraid of losing their job if they say anything. There’s a thing called the whistleblower act, which is there to protect employees from being attacked by their superiors for speaking out about what is wrong with the workplace. Dhar Mann has apparently been threatening actors who have spoken out against him with lawsuits on top of all this. So that’s cool. /s

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnVTBkV/ (A video of actors protesting that Mair recorded talking about what/why they're protesting.) (TW: There are whistles being blown.)

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRnqPWbV/ (Protest video Nick recorded.) (TW: There are whistles being blown.)

I’ve seen people write off Dhar Mann literally breaking labor laws as his actions simply being ‘show business’, as well as invalidate the actors coming forward to talk about their experiences all because they’re independent contractors who Dhar Mann calls every now and then. “Every now and then”, MORE LIKE EVERY DAY. You do realize there aren’t just adult actors working in his studios, right? There are child actors who are working under Dhar Mann too, and they should be getting paid fairly for their work. Or else Dhar Mann’s gonna get into legal trouble again. Either with a series of lawsuits involving the actors he fired suing his ass, the IRS coming after him, or he’s gonna serve jail time. Either way, he’s in deep shit. The reason why I say he’s breaking labor laws is because he’s (probably) not paying the kids who work for him fairly either. Quite a few of them appear to be elementary school age or middle school age, around maybe eight years old to possibly thirteen or fourteen years old. Maybe he shows the literal children working for him some mercy...because most of the people who watch his videos are children. I don’t know. Apparently they were supposed to stop casting actors who are minors (under eighteen years old), but there are QUITE a few kids working under this cringe ass nae-nae baby. So...that’s pretty fishy.

According to sources from commentators like AugustTheDuck and Jarvis Johnson, none of the actors who have worked under Dhar Mann have ever (allegedly) received a 1099 form for their tax returns from DM.

Both videos AugustTheDuck made:

First one

youtube

Second one

youtube

The video Jarvis Johnson made:

youtube

A 1099 form, for anyone who has never heard of it before, is a form that independent contractors receive by the end of the year usually. In this case, DM has (allegedly) not given any of his actors their 1099 forms, and it is mid-February (as I was typing this...it is now the end of February). With independent contractors, which is what the actors who work under Dhar Mann are classified as, the maximum they can be paid without getting a 1099 form (1099-NEC, formerly known as 1099-MISC, and/or a 1099-K) is about six hundred dollars a year. This was before the IRS changed the rules about that. Clearly they are making WELL over $600 a year. You know what Dhar Mann had to say about that? PAYPAL should’ve given out 1099 forms to his actors, not HIM. The payer (Dhar Mann, or anyone who handles payroll) is responsible for sending out 1099-NEC forms to his actors and the IRS. PayPal is only responsible for sending out 1099-K forms to people using PayPal for business as well as the IRS if you made over $20,000 that year, or you made over 200 transactions. Dhar Mann has made well over $20,000, and he has made well over 200 transactions. Clearly. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but shouldn’t the actors be getting both forms? I feel like they should be getting both of those forms.

Every time the actors would band together to try having a meeting with Dhar Mann to discuss their grievances with their work environment as well as their pay, he’s nowhere to be found and he tells them to forward their grievances with HR. They have sent Dhar Mann letters through hard copies and emails directly to him, which were forwarded over to HR. HR scheduled a meeting for the actors to discuss their grievances and they wanted Dhar Mann to be present, as he was the person they were having issues with. The meeting kept being postponed multiple times. By the time the meeting came, Dhar Mann was nowhere to be seen. He was obviously not present for the meeting he was supposed to attend. Why? HE WAS CONVENIENTLY ON VACATION. Wooooowwww. Your company is not big enough to where you can’t realistically be reached.

You think you’re too good to show your face to people who have worked for you for years, listen to their grievances, and try to come up with a solution, don’t you, Dhar? If you’re such a big, important man, why can’t you be an actual boss and show up to meetings that you’re supposed to attend? Oh, is it because the vast majority of the actors (former and current) are understandably pissed about how little they’re being paid by you? Is it because the vast majority of the actors are sick of your shit? Sounds like you can’t handle any sort of criticism from people who have worked for you for so long. You know, I had an inkling that this kind of thing was happening behind the scenes before ANY of the actors came forward. Then to find out that inkling I had was right all along…that’s not a good thing, Dhar Mann! I thought you learned your lesson from getting in trouble for committing fraud almost ten years ago! GUESS NOT. It’s all come full circle.

You paint yourself as a good guy, but you treat the people who have made your sorry excuses for channels huge like shit. How the fuck do you sleep at night? How do you think this is okay to do to people? Do they not deserve to have enough money to be able to live somewhat comfortably with the means to pay for essentials? Hmm…let’s talk more about how you fired one of your actors for having medical issues that you were made aware of. That’s against the law, under the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). In California, the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) protects disabled workers. But you’re all about supporting disabled people! That’s what you preach, right? You know…until you have to work alongside them or you have to accommodate them in some way. Then disabled people are just a huge inconvenience for you. It’s too much to ask for you to properly accommodate anyone with medical issues, apparently. It’s such a hassle to check on anyone with medical issues that work under you and make sure they’re okay. Gotcha. /s

Summary:

Dhar Mann, multimillionaire, doesn’t pay his employees fairly!

Dhar Mann, Big Boss™️, gets all butthurt because his employees are speaking out against him! He fires everyone who speaks poorly about him and/or about the work environment instead of putting in the effort to come up with solutions! That’s just TOO MUCH to ask out of The Big Boss™️! /s

He will live to regret his decision.

#tw dhar mann #dhar mann talk #protestdharmann #i stand with the actors #the actors deserve better #this just in...dhar mann is STILL a piece of shit #dhar mann will live to regret his decision uwu #anti dhar mann #dhar mann fam dni #dhar mann is a fraud #this is very long #fuck dhar mann #Youtube

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badluvkii · 6 months

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late night with the devil review

just to note : i am reviewing this movie , from the mind of a young woman who doesn’t have any critique qualifications but just someone who loves horror movies . also to note that i have experienced MANY deaths to cancer in my life and it really affected me i’ve had years of grief therapy and counselling to make me feel better about it but it still can’t heal the trauma i’ve experienced by it . the word of the illness makes me shiver and i can’t walk into hospitals , every time i see breathing masks in movies i have to look away . it’s my weak spot . i’ve watched countless gore movies and it’s fine to me but any mention of that illness makes me react

i overall really liked the movie , i liked the old tv channel theme and i loved the way the whole movie was shot like that , i think the fact they could make a good disturbing feeling without relying on cliches like jumpscares and it had very little overuse of dark lighting and loud noises . before starting the movie i talked about how i hope it doesn’t rely on cheap cliches like that and it met up to my expectations! i really liked that . anyway i liked how the breaks (adverts for england) were called in different parts of the show when tension was building so it creates more tension in the long run for when the next part is shown . i think a lot of people don’t like this but i like how everything was crammed in the end . i have critiqued some things for this like the tangi virus on youtube . but i think this movie did it in a good way , tangi virus fully changed pacing and format but this movie did it in an amazing way and i have adhd and i feel like it helped me focus very well where i usually cant focus . it showed his state of mind , that’s what i mean , it showed his thoughts and memories which fit the story whereas tangi virus was a cheap way to cram everything into the end . i have the exact opposite critique for late night with the devil

as i mentioned before i’ve experienced a huge amount of loss from cancer , the worst case being a loved one with lung cancer . the type that was used in this film . everyone in my account who follows me know that saw is my all time favorite series , i’ve watched all of the movies countless times and i love to analyse everything about all the movies , but there is a strong theme of cancer in the franchise with john kramer . i can sit through movies with these themes although i’ll always cry just a little bit . i mean saw 3 and x are my drawn favourites in the whole of the franchise because i think they portray the reality well and saw 3 shows accurate themes of grief and survivors guilt . i think the use of cancer in this movie however was borderline exploitative . his wife’s lung cancer didn’t really come into the story at any point other than giving a reason for jack to kill lilly . the intense monologue of jack talking to his wife before killing her was extremely upsetting to me , it was also very very long , it felt like the longest time for me , i couldn’t look at the screen either i was just crying , heavily , you could hear me loudly though i was trying really hard to stop it was really embarrassing because i hate to cry in public and always avoid it (i was in a cinema with my family) . i feel like there could’ve been another way to kill off lilly [for anyone reading that hasn’t watched , lilly isn’t his wife he hallucinated his wife when killing lilly] . i also didn’t like that the cancer was being used as the horror , when they used the flashes of his wife’s face on the swirly wheel and on the side of lilly’s face it felt like it was being a little bit exploitative and using the face of a person with a life ruining terminal illness as a scare . the use of his wife to kill lilly was more understandable though i didn’t like it but when that was used i couldn’t understand that .

in terms of gore , everyone knows i am basically a queen of gore , i have a strong stomach . i work at a vets . i have watched movies a lot lower than saw on an iceburg because i know i can handle it and extreme horror is my interest . i was expecting more of the gore when i saw it on the warnings but i think it was done creatively . i liked the worms thing it was interesting,.,,,, everyone knows on this account my soft spot is eyes , i think the vaccuum , venus flytrap and impalement wheel are the most disturbing traps in saw . i didn’t like the eye parts of terrifier it’s the only gore that will make me cringe . when the worms came out his eye i cringed from my fear of eyes but it was a lot tamer than i thought so i managed to sit through an eye gore scene comfortably finally , i really liked it though . i think the worms scene was the coolest . (i mean if you wanna know how bad my eye fear is sometimes i get nervous if i remember i have eyes and one time i was paranoid i popped one of my eyes out even though i could see i still have two eyes , that’s how bad my fear is haha) . i think the head snapping was a little goofy , i think the neck slit was also goofy and the burning? melting? thing was cool although it looked a bit off like way too cool toned (he so deserved that i hated him) . and the lilly electric glitch was cool . the gore was off in a way like the worms was the most realistic although that still had flaws . i loved that though it added to the theme , everything was slightly uncanny valley . going back to cancer , the spx didn’t match how someone with late stage looks like in the scene when he killed his wife it looked way too clean and smooth , i have flashbacks and trauma from seeing people i love in the late stages and the affects of chemotherapy as well as the illness . it doesn’t really match at all , they definitely don’t look as healthy as his wife (sorry to keep dickriding saw but it’s so much more accurate in saw) . i couldn’t watch a lot i just kept glancing to still get the story but when she pulled out a breathing mask at some point i couldn’t do it anymore so i can’t remember very well but it didn’t match . the scene of his wife with the hypnotism screen behind her sticks with me though , that was a lot .

i watched this with some older members of my family (i’m the youngest in the family and i was affected most with the trauma , they didn’t cry but i did a lot and the even word makes me upset so ,,) and they all agreed this would be one of their favorite movies if it weren’t for the fact that topic was kind of dragged in . i said i think they used it as a time filler with the extended monologue with his wife especially. they agreed after i said that . overall i’m not gonna let that affect my review as me using my trauma as a reason to dislike something is kind of unfair . not everyone was experienced loss to cancer especially not as bad as i’ve experienced it so they don’t understand . i think it was a really good movie so i’m going to ignore that whole theme and review everything else , i honestly think it was really good !! i loved how everyone was displayed, a fake (who turned out to actually contact a spirit) , a critic , the tv presenter trying to save his career , a girl possessed by a demon and her carer. it showed all sides and jack’s show partner (i can’t remember his name) was really good and likeable .

i honestly feel like ignoring the upsetting topic that would’ve been one of my favourite movies ever “but the topic is in saw too , i know , i said it’s bc they approached it differently . overall it’s just below my top 5 (saw franchise , terrifier movies , martyrs , pearl , texas chainsaw masacre (bc it’s funny))

i feel like using the theme was ok but using it for scares was mean and the extended dialogue was for burning time . i liked how they used a bright cheery setting for a movie meant to scare you!!! great watch if you’re not crying haha

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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 1 year

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I normally have a strong and probably unfair bias against anyone who gets described with the word “YouTuber”, but I like the Contrapoints channel, and I just watched her new video. It’s very good, really worth watching if you want an educated and nuanced and just good take on the hellfire that is the current “cultural debate”. Seriously, go watch that video, says lot of things that are much more worth saying than anything I have ever written down.

That video made a brief allusion to the “transphobes are just protecting women’s sports from evil trans women” argument, which reminded me of how much I fucking hate that argument, and that reminded me that I’d been meaning for a while to a post about culture war-related questions that I’ve been asked repeatedly in my ten-ish years of coaching and twenty-ish years of being involved in a sport. These are questions that I get asked a lot by people who aren’t involved in sports, who don’t know what it’s like from firsthand experience, but who have heard about issues in sports via public discourse, and wants to know how that lines up with reality. Sometimes this discourse is overtly political, sometimes it doesn’t seem to be political at all. Sometimes people ask these questions in good faith and out of genuine curiosity, sometimes they use curiosity to disingenuously disguise their hope that I’ll validate their shitty beliefs. Every question in this post is one I’ve been asked multiple times, by multiple people, so as a PSA, here are my answers:

[Note: Most of this post will have nothing to do with the Contrapoints video or anything about it, I only mentioned it because that’s what reminded me that I wanted to write this post, and because I want to tell people to watch it, it’s very good.]

Is it weird to be a woman who coaches male athletes? [For context, my team, like almost every team in this sport, is co-ed, but has more male athletes than female ones just because there are more boys in this sport than girls overall – male and female athletes train together in the practice room and go to the same tournaments, but those tournaments have separate male and female divisions so they don’t compete against each other.]

One time in 2013 I had an athlete go into the change room to cry after he lost a match, but his next match was up pretty soon so I really needed to get on with the process of comfort crying athlete/get them back in the right headspace to fight again before the next match, and I ended up having to do that process through a change room door. I’m pretty proud of that one, because I had to talk him out of his decision to forfeit the whole tournament because he was so upset about losing, and then motivate him to go warm up again, and I did it all with a door between us.

So that one time, being a woman who coaches male athletes was a problem. Other than that it’s fine.

Question I got a lot around 2016: I hear Canada has a massive influx of Syrian refugees and they’re taking over everything, has that affected you guys?

It has, actually, since it’s a popular sport in Syria so we got a lot of new athletes and one new coach who came over as refugees. They were, in their own separate and varied ways, all great additions to the team.

By far the biggest issue with that was the language barrier, because a lot of the Syrians spoke almost no English when they first got here. But that wasn’t a big problem, because we already had a bunch of athletes who spoke Arabic and could translate. We quickly learned that different dialects of Arabic are very different from each other, and in some cases the kids who spoke Arabic from other countries spoke almost a different language from the Syrian kids, but there was enough crossover so they could manage to understand each other. Also, the Syrian kids picked up English once they’d been here for a while; now a few of the Syrians who started with us in 2016 with only a few words of English are still on the team and communicate fluently.

Incidentally, this year we’ve again had a few new athletes all join the team around the same time because they recently arrived here as refugees, but they’re white and they speak Ukrainian. One of them speaks English as well, and he translates for the others, who don’t speak English at all. When he’s not around, we just sort of gesture at each other and it works basically fine.

Surely there were other problems with them fitting in, though. Did they cost the club money?

As it happens, most of them did not come over here with enough money to spend on non-essentials like sports fees, due to their country blowing up. But their fucking country blew up; by comparison I don’t consider it a huge sacrifice for the club to waive some membership fees and cover some tournament costs. It’s not a big deal.

Did you have difficulty integrating them socially into the team?

No.

But wasn’t there also an issue with them not fitting in culturally, like coming in with backwards social values and not understanding basic aspects of civilization?

No, you fucking racist.

With the rise of all these new-fangled diagnoses in youth, have you had any kids with autism on the team? How does that work in a sport with physical contact? Aren’t they unable to do that?

We haven’t any autistic young kids on the team that I know of, but we’ve had a few autistic teenagers, none of whom liked being called “people with autism”. One of them absolutely loved physical contact, he was a large – as in tall with big muscles and athletic looking – 17-year-old boy who’s one of the cuddliest people I’ve ever met. He gave giant hugs to anyone would let him, any time he wasn’t actively trying to beat someone up on the mat, he was sitting on the sidelines with his arms and legs wrapped around whatever teammate he could find. When he won the provincial championships, he came back to his corner, lifted me into the air, squeezed me so tightly that it was like a hug wasn’t close enough and he could only get enough physical contact by breaking my ribs, and my neck got wet with his tears of happiness. So it turns out that autism works differently for every person, and some autistic people love physical contact and emotional expression.

Another teenage autistic athlete I worked with hated most physical contact, but it was never a problem in the sport. On the mat, he did all the moves and had no problem with the contact, but off the mat he’d flinch if anyone touched him. I quickly learned to adapt to that as a coach, never shaking his hand or patting him on the back or anything like that that I’d do with other athletes, but if we were on the mat and I was showing him a move, I’d touch him with no problem. It’s something about context. He was able to accept physical contact in the context of the sport, to compartmentalize and not process it the same way that he did in other contexts.

He lived outside the city limits, so was the only athlete on our team to go to the provincial qualifiers for the rural areas, instead of for our city. I went out there with him, just him and me and his mother as the only people there from our team. It was a great day, he performed really well and won all five of his matches to get a gold medal and a spot at the provincial championships. He and I really bonded throughout that day, I think he benefitted from getting one-on-one attention from the coach since I had no other athletes there, and that may have affected his strong performance. After he won his last match, he came back to the corner and surprised me by throwing his arms around me in a tight hug. I later found his mother with tears in her eyes, telling me she’d accepted that her son didn’t like physical affection and never tried to push it on him, but she still loved that the sport had made him so comfortable in his body that he'd started actually seeking physical contact out. So that was a fucking good day.

I’m sure there are many autistic people in the world who hate physical contact so much that it would be a problem if they did a contact sport, and many autistic people who will never want to hug anyone no matter how many gold medals they’ve just won. That is absolutely fine and does not make them broken or whatever. They just don’t do contact sports, which is fine. There are also many autistic people who are neutral about physical contact, or who love it, or who are fine with it in the right context. Including, for that matter, me. Everyone’s different.

Is it weird that boys and girls train with each other in a sport with close physical contact?

Honestly, not at all. I see why you’d think it would be, why you’d think it would at least be weird at first when they’re maybe not used to it, but it really, really isn’t. As soon as you’re on the mat you just stop thinking that way. When I was in high school, I had a massive crush on this one girl for three years, if her hand brushed against my arm in class I’d get all those exciting butterfly-like feelings that occur with high school crushes. But then she joined our school team, and I worked with her at times during practice, and I didn’t feel anything like that when I touched her while we were on the mat. It’s like the autism thing, I guess – it’s contextual. Physical contact in that context doesn’t feel the same as it does in other contexts, it’s honestly not weird at all to put boys and girls together for that reason.

Sometimes having a co-ed team is an issue outside of the actual practice room, when athletes date and/or just sleep together and the ensuing drama creates problems. Some teams have actual rules against athletes dating their teammates; our team has never created a rule like that because it just leads to them doing it in secret, but we do try to discourage it. When it happens, we deal with it. Try to keep certain athletes apart in the interest of team cohesion.

I once had to spend several months very carefully watching every time two training partners did a match together, because one had recently started sleeping with the other’s ex-girlfriend (she was also an athlete on the team), and they’d started pretty much trying to tear each other’s heads off any chance they got. They were only allowed to do matches with close supervision, so the supervising coach could instantly step in and separate them if they started actually hurting each other. So, you know, that wasn’t fun. But that’s life. Drama like that will happen anywhere.

Is it a problem that you have so many Muslims and immigrants on the team? [for context, our sport in general and our team in particular has a lot of Muslim athletes, for a bunch of reasons, including it being a popular sport in Muslim countries, and it being a very low-cost sport]

I mean, it does affect things in various ways, but I’ve been asked this question in various ways by various well-meaning people, and I’ve never heard it phrased in a way that doesn’t sound racist.

The actual answer to the racist question is obviously it’s fine, people being Muslim or immigrants is not inherently a problem. It does make them statistically more likely to not have much money, obviously not in every case, but they are a statistical majority of the athletes for whom we waive fees and cover costs. Those statistics work out that way for a variety of reasons, some of which involve their countries of origin getting blown up, and none of which involve them being inherently less good at making money than white people. It’s fine, we budget to cover for low-income athletes, we’re able to do it.

The truth is that yes, we have, across many years, had one or two problems with Muslim athletes bringing in sexist attitudes (none of those problems were from any of the Syrian refugees). We have also, many times, had problems with non-Muslim athletes bringing in sexist attitudes. The biggest problem we’ve had was a male Muslim athlete who refused to work with female athletes, but I’ve also seen him drink alcohol and try to pick up a waitress when we went to a bar together (he’s in his twenties, I wasn’t out at a bar with a teenage athlete). He blamed his sexism on religion, but it wasn’t about that, because he broke religious tenants when doing so suited him. He just had some misogynist views and religion was a convenient excuse to not treat his female teammates as equals.

I’ve coached a huge number of male Muslim athletes over the years, and from very nearly all of them – all but a couple – this was never an issue. They took direction from me as a female coach with no problem, they worked with their female teammates with no problem, it’s fine. Some of their parents took issue with it. One time a teenage male Muslim athlete won a tournament, and a picture of me hugging him went up on social media, and his parents saw it and he got in trouble with them for touching a woman. His mother came into practice one day the next month, and he told us that none of the girls were allowed to touch him during that practice, or he’d get in trouble. So that was a bit awkward, but by the next day he was back to helping out his female teammates and training with me, and it was fine.

Six months later, a different Muslim athlete had his mother come in to watch practice. He didn’t ask to be treated any differently that night, so I didn’t treat him differently, though I was a bit paranoid about getting him in trouble. I did a match with him at the end of practice, and I kept looking over at his mother, paranoid that she’d be upset. She wore a full Niquab, so I couldn’t see her expression, I could only see her eyes and see that she was watching us very closely and intensely. I was scared that she’d be angry at me for touching her son.

That night, the athlete messaged the coaches to say his mom wanted us to know she’d really enjoyed watching practice and appreciates what we do for her son. I asked him if she was okay with our match at the end, and he said she loved watching it, and “roasted [him] all the way home” for how he got beaten up by his female coach. Which is problematic in its own way, but I’ll accept it. So that’s what I get for assuming something about one Muslim parent based on another, instead of keeping in mind that all Muslim parents are different, just like all Muslim teenagers are.

I’ve coached a few female Muslim athletes as well, and the biggest issues that’s ever created are making sure they get a sport-specific hijab that won’t fall off while they’re training, and getting them accommodation so they can compete in tournaments in modest dress. This is only for a couple of them; I’ve also coached female Muslim athletes who don’t wear hijabs and have no problem wearing the regular outfits. They are, in fact, also all different from each other.

But surely a team that’s mixed Muslims and non-Muslims would have cultural issues, even if they’re not all the misogynists I’ve learned about in stereotypes? [I really have had this as a follow-up question after I explain the other stuff, some people cannot believe that it’s not a big deal.]

If we’re having a team party or hanging out in the hotel at a tournament or something, and we order pizza, we have to make sure that half the pizzas don’t have any pork toppings on them. During Ramadan, half the team gets really sluggish because they haven’t eaten since sunrise and can’t eat until the sun sets, which is usually not until after practice. A couple of them disappear to spend five minutes praying in the back of the room when the sun sets during practice; the other Muslim athletes either don’t do the five-a-day prayers, or don’t feel the need to stick to the schedule perfectly. And those are genuinely all the issues it causes. It’s fucking fine.

Do you have problems with sexism and racism in a sport that’s co-ed and has a mix of races?

Yes, sometimes, obviously. Not most of the time, but sometimes. This sport also has problems with predatory coaches who try to fuck their athletes, creepy referees who harass younger coaches, casual racism and misogyny, athletes who listen to too much Joe Rogan/Jordan Peterson and it starts showing in their fucked up attitudes, and all kinds systemic physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. Just like every other aspect of life. Every problem that exists in the real world exists here too. We deal with it on a case-by-case basis while also trying for whatever systemic change we can manage.

Is it true that hotels at tournaments are a hotbed of athletes having sex with each other? [Not exactly a political question, but it’s one I get asked weirdly often, especially around the Olympics when there are all those news stories about everyone fucking the Olympic village, and people want to know if it applies on smaller scales too]

Yep. It’s a good system. It’s hard to date if you’re seriously involved in a sport, because that sport becomes your whole life, and dating someone who’s not part of that sport is difficult when they don’t share something that takes up so much of your time and emotional investment. Dating, or even just sleeping with someone from your own team is a great way to ruin your team. Doesn’t mean people don’t do it, but everyone at least knows they shouldn’t.

But you know what’s great? Sleeping with people from other teams. Once every week or two, you’re in the same city for some tournament or other, you can kick your roommate out of the hotel room for a few hours and hook up. And then they’re gone again so it doesn’t need to interfere with the rest of your life, or have someone be upset that you spend all your time training and don’t have time for them, because they’re not even in your city and they’re also very busy training. It happens frequently.

I’m making myself sound way cooler than I actually am by telling this story, as I never hooked up with people from other teams at tournaments. Back when I was competing in high school and then in university, however, I was sometimes the roommate who sat in the hotel lobby playing Pokemon on my Nintendo DS while waiting for my roommate to be done fucking a guy from a rival team. A service I was happy to provide in the name of making sure she didn’t start fucking guys on our own team, inevitably causing the team to implode.

Most male coaches and referees who are married to people outside the sport cheat on their wives at tournaments. This is a well-known open secret. I know several referees who pretty much only do the job because it gives them an excuse to travel every weekend and cheat on their wives in hotels.

What do female athletes do if they have their period during a tournament?

Complain about how annoying it is, especially if they have to cut weight because it messes that right up. But otherwise, deal with it. It’s not that big a deal. Not as big a deal as some people who’ve asked me that question seem to think it is.

I hear weight cutting is a big problem in sports like this, that separate people by weight classes. Is that true?

Yep, massive. However bad you’ve heard it is, the reality’s probably worse. The stuff I did to cut weight as a teenager has left me with a messed up relationship with food to this day, and some of my teammates did worse than what I did. I know some people who are shorter than they should be, having stunted their growth from cutting weight when they were young. As a coach, I discourage significant weight cuts, and very closely monitor any cutting that does happen to make sure it’s done safely. Sometimes athletes do stupid things to cut weight anyway, and lie to hide it from me. I’ve gotten better, over the years, and spotting signs of that and stopping it.

So what about this massive influx of trans people everywhere, and how all the youth are trans these days and trans women are taking over women’s sports and ruining them?

That is not happening, and none of the people who say it is give one fuck about women’s sports. I say this as someone who has been fighting for more than half my life, in one way or another, for the betterment of women’s sports. I have seen what type of people are ruining women’s sports and what types of people are fighting to make them better, and the sorts of people who become transphobic assholes are not my fucking allies.

Come on, it’s never come up at all?

We have one trans kid on our team, at first we were a bit concerned about the gendered divisions at tournaments and where to put them, but we solved that by having one conversation with them. Another athlete I used to coach has recently come out as trans and will be starting testosterone soon, is a bit sad that this means they won’t be able to compete for their university team anymore, but overall they decided it was worth that sacrifice. In a couple of years, once their body has fully adjusted to testosterone, they might compete in the men’s division, if they decide they still want to.

Those are literally the only two trans athletes I’ve ever met. Even if the existence of trans athletes were inherently a problem, which it fucking isn’t, there would not be enough of them to be “taking over” sports and ruining them. There are so few of them, and the rhetoric is so overblown by comparison to their actual numbers. And even if there were more of them, that would also be fine. We would have some more conversations, put them in the division that makes sense according to where they’re at physically, and figure it out. It’s fucking fine.

What’s the biggest thing you’ve noticed about the way this generation of teenagers differs from previous generations of teenagers, as someone who sees a lot of teenagers?

1) They’re all on fucking Tik-Tok, and 2) We’re having a lot more issues than we had pre-COVID with casually sexist and other bad attitudes from boys, often quoting Joe Rogan and/or Jordan Peterson almost word for word. I genuinely think everyone being locked in their houses and listening to Joe Rogan for a couple of years has fucked up a generation more than most people realize.

That’s the real plague that’s taking over the youths right now. Do you know what’s threatening women’s sports? The myriad cultural factors that mean girls have returned to sports at far lower rates than boys after lockdowns ended, causing normally co-ed sports rooms to be much more male-dominated than they were a few years ago (this applies to my own team, but I’ve talked to people from a lot of other teams and have heard it’s the same story everywhere). When girls enter a sport room, they aren’t faced with a plague of transgenders taking over their space. They’re faced with a toxic environment created by boys who used the lockdown time to get on the Joe-Rogan-to-Andrew-Tate pipeline, which makes those girls less likely to come back, and that makes the culture harder to change. And if you have never said one word about that sweeping issue, much less tried to do anything to counter it, then you have no fucking right to pretend to give a shit about female athletes when it’s an excuse to use them to hate a different vulnerable minority.

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dolorum-magne · 2 years

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*slides into DM's*

So I see you reblog a lot of Marble Hornet stuff

What's it about?

👀

OH BOY IM SO GLAD YOU ASKED! :D

Marble hornets is a found footage horror arg and widely regarded the original slenderverse series (if you don’t know what that is either I’ll explain it later on in the post) And part of what brought slenderman into the public eye. If I remember correctly the first video in the series was released just a few weeks after the original photoshop contest the slenderman was created for, predates slender:the eight pages and is what started some things that it will stereotypically do, such as cameras going to static when looking at it.

It started on YouTube (and like most args was cross platform, I believe it part of it was also on Twitter) back on June 20th of 2009 and the original series spanned a full 5 years, ending on it’s anniversary in 2014.

I’ll avoid spoilers but I’ll give a summary of the the beginning of the series and some plot below

the series mainly follows the main protagonist Jay Merrick. In the introduction it’s explained that back in college his friend Alex had started a student film called “Marble hornets” but after a while of filming he started acting strange and eventually ended the project before completion. Jay had talked to Alex about the project and he gave Jay the tapes on the condition that this was the last time he mentions it, and when asked what he should do with the tapes, Alex told him to “burn them.”

The tapes remained in the back of Jays closet for a couple years and he ended up loosing contact with Alex during this time. He started the channel to try and compile the footage they had of the film to share what his friend had made on YouTube but shortly after he started he realised not all the tapes were of the film. At some point Alex had started filming himself and had become increasingly paranoid of something following him. A tall humanoid monster with no face that is later named “The Operator”.

He starts to worry about what happened to his old friend and wants to help, and thus begins his investigation. Jay starts becoming paranoid and begins recording himself in much the same way we see Alex do on the tapes as the same thing that had been following Alex around begins to follow him as well. throughout the series he finds more tapes, records footage of his own, which he combs through and posts as entries, and a few other characters (Namely Tim Wright the secondary protagonist, and Jessica Locke) are dragged into it along the way as the story progresses and things get continuously worse-from a strange sickness that seems to come from the monster tormenting them that makes them cough up blood, missing chunks of time, people going missing, ending up on the run from the thing in the woods as well as an old friend trying to kill them, and the appearance of some strange masked stalkers that in ways help the protagonists, and occasionally reach out with cryptic codes and ciphers in videos from another channel called ToTheArk.- and get more and more complicated.

I would explain more about the plot but I’m trying hard to avoid spoiling too much!

(the ToTheArk videos and marble hornets entries and responses to them were originally linked via YouTube’s old reply feature but obviously as that doesn’t exist anymore that’s no longer the case)

it’s honestly probably my most favourite thing of all time if you couldn’t tell

The series is technically still going, as there’s an ongoing sequel comic to the original series, set a few years after the events that happened in the main series and following one of the characters from it, Jessica! (If you’ve seen some of the stuff I’ve posted and reblogged, Skully also comes from the comic though he does appear once in the series in a ToTheArk video! During the series the concept they planned for them was scrapped so we only saw them once in the series, but it’s still cool)

Incase you need an explanation for what a slenderverse series is, it’s a genre of horror arg, mainly on YouTube, most being inspired by marble hornets and as the name suggests, follows characters who get involved with a slenderman type monster. Like marble hornets, they’re often called by different names (I don’t actually know of one that actually calls it slenderman but there might be, idk) but are essentially the same or very similar entities. Some even have crossovers with eachother as well! Some of the more popular ones (though never getting has popular as the original) are EverymanHYBRID, TribeTwelve(I don’t recommend tribetwelve. The story was good but the creator is an awful human being), DarkHarvest00, MlAndersen0 and WhisperedFaith.

If you have any other questions (or if anyone else sees this and I’ve gotten something wrong) please let me know and I’ll try to answer them as best I can!

thank you so much for asking, had a lot of fun with that info dump :)

#Watch it watch it watch it-#marble hornets #Thanks for the ask!#I really hope I didn’t get anything wrong but it has been a while since I’ve watched it #Mh

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astorinx-writes · 2 years

Text

Describing and Reflecting On My (Almost) 11 Years As An AB Fan

Like most times in my life, I find myself lost in thought about the many things that make me who I am. All the special interests I’ve picked up over the years, many of which have come and gone. But at least one of them has stayed: my ever present love for Astro Boy. So, I thought, as I turn a year older, I would talk a bit about what’s brought me here today as an AB fan, and get a little introspective.

It’s funny when I mention my beginnings as a fan because I wasn’t initially much of a fan at all. I remember coming off the heels of what was arguably the most confusing time of my life: my parent's divorce, and being relegated to only seeing my dad a couple of times a week. In October, one of those days was spent heading to the local movie theater to watch the 2009 movie. Before this, I had no exposure to AB. But if my memory serves me right, I think our whole reason for going had more to do with my dad’s nostalgia for (presumably) the 80s series than anything else.

Again, there wasn’t anything that stood out to me in particular about the film. But I should say for the record, if you read my first-ever blog post here wherein I reviewed the 09 movie, you’ll know it’s grown on me quite a bit. Not to the point where I would ever consider it a favorite of mines, but certainly enough to respect it for what it was, and what it served in my journey as an AB fan. No matter what I think about the film now, or what I thought about it back then, it was truly at the time my only exposure to the franchise.

So, I leave the film and think it’s okay, I move on with my life and sink my teeth in other things. But my brother, on the other hand, seems to like this far more than I probably thought I ever would. I mean the amount of AB merch that had come out at the time! You had the toys at McDonald’s, I believe some toys at Toys-R-Us… I mean the movie bombed, don’t get me wrong, but for a split second, I was seeing AB everywhere in my house, and it was a nonstop talking point between us and my dad. I have to give him credit, though, if it weren’t for his persistence in finding out more about the franchise, I might’ve just shrugged at the movie and called it a day. But sadly, when I say “he found out more about the franchise” I really mean is “he saw YTPs of the 80s series on YouTube.”

Speaking of the 80s series, this is actually where his door closes, and mines opens up just ever so slightly to test the waters. I can’t say exactly how it all panned out because my memory is far too spotty for that. But, to make a long story short, I found myself curious about the AB world again and, after having seen the 80s series, I wanted to give it another try. Now, at the time, there wasn’t really any “way” in and of itself to watch the 80s series, unless you owned physical media. It was a weird time because streaming was in this sort of infancy stage where nobody pirated anything because Netflix was king. But if you wanted anime… well… you’d have to watch every episode in 3 parts on YouTube like everyone else, bud.

Funny enough, during that endeavor, I managed to watch just about every 80s episode, and I have not seen the 80s series since. I’m not sure when I’m going to break the streak and rewatch it, but I see it as more of an internal joke that I perpetually keep up for the lolz. At the time, though, my reasoning for not going back was actually because the channel I was watching from got taken down, and nobody else seemed to have an archive. Certainly though in the year of our lord 2022, where even the 60s series can be watched on streaming services, I think I’m just purposely skipping out.

That was back in 2012, a year later, I had an exposure to something a little different. You see at the time, I was in 6th grade, and I had a homeroom teacher who was a stickler for us reading during homeroom time. Now, when I was younger, I did read a lot, but by 6th grade I had mostly stopped (probably due to IRL stuff, but who knows?). So, I was basically relegated to reading almost anything from way back when that I could get my hands on at home. In comes my local library to the rescue! When I went over there for the first time, I was curious as to what the odds would be that any Manga volume was there. And luck be damned, I found a couple at the last minute. Now, I didn’t want to completely suck them dry of their manga supply, so I only checked out 2. But I soon realized that was a bad idea, since it turned out that I read graphic novels at lightning speed. I finished both of them rather quickly and had to read them over and over again for both homeroom and during P.E. attendance for a few weeks.

Briefly, I’ll talk about how I got into the 03 series. Initially, the 03 series was available on Netflix, and despite my initial thoughts on its art style, I decided to give it a try. Again, I wasn’t thinking too much of it at the time, but after the 2nd re-watch, I was sold. And when I mean sold, I mean I dropped every other rendition for that one. I also mean when I refer to or speak of anything AB related, I am 10 times out of 10 talking about the 03 English dub, and nothing else (except any of my fan fics or AUs). Nowadays, though, when I want to watch the 03 series, I have the dubbed version on DVDs that I’ve backed up digitally onto an external drive, so I just plug the drive in and go from there. This is also where I get all my screenshots for edits, and for my screenshot archive.

You’ll notice that for the most part, I’ve been talking about more IRL events rather than online stuff. And that’s mostly because me becoming the AB fan I am today didn’t really kick into gear until around 2015/2016-ish when I joined Tumblr. But before that, I did something a little similar… I wrote fan fiction. Or rather, my now partner and I did. But before she jumped on board, it was just me. Again, with no one to look after me or express any concern, I found myself on FFN reading… well… let’s just say… things someone at the age of 12… probably shouldn’t have. I read plenty of problematic works by problematic writers, and it inspired me to want to give it a try myself. After all, I did like writing— though like reading, I did give it up. I think at that point; however, I was so enamored and inspired, I let it all go and just jumped right into it.

The first fic I wrote, “Zoran vs. Uran,” served (technically) as the starting point to what would become my fan fic series Vivid Insomnia. But at the time was an arguably silly fic that never got finished because even past Sage knew it was horrible. The basic premise was based on the fact that in the 03 dub, Uran’s name was changed to Zoran, but I thought it would be interesting to write a fic in which Uran and Zoran are 2 separate characters. So, the plot basically surrounds Tenma creating Zoran and sending her off to live with O’shay. It was called “Zoran vs. Uran” (simply) because the “major bombshell” to be revealed was that Zoran and Astro are related (a shocker, I know /s). So, apparently Astro was supposed to finally gave a shit about her, which pisses Uran off and makes her incredibly jealous (something we can all relate to, I’m sure /s). Therefore, as a result, Uran and Zoran were gonna duke it out WWE style.

I legitimately have no words.

I’ll spare you all the tiny details, and move on to the short stories I did. After attempting to write a couple of fics and letting my anxiety consume me, I took a break from writing for a while, but found a way back in through writing short stories. Again, if V.I. was clay, then these short stories were helping it be molded into the shape it was set to become. Some of this information does overlap with my last post, so if you would like to learn more about the fan fictions I’ve written, you can check that out. The only thing you need to know is that after those short stories, I wrote my first long fiction in a while, called “Astro, Oh Astro, Where Did You Go?” It was by far my most em tonally gruesome fic at the time. It really paved the way for where I wanted to take V.I. and I think ultimately made me realize that I like writing about the emotional and mental perils of life, and what it takes to dig oneself out.

The entire premise was that after sleeping over at a friend's house, Astro decides to run away, leaving everyone to wonder where they went. By modern standards, this fic is a hot steaming plate of garbage, but at the time it was (again) the deepest thing I had ever written. Mostly with Astro’s portrayal-—I know many associate them with being childish and happy-go-lucky, and I do still agree with that sentiment. But during that fic, and certainly now, I find myself seeing them as a much sadder character. I won’t get into why exactly right now, so we’ll leave it at that. But in this fic, it should be noted that Astro’s entire persona surrounded how utterly depressed they were.

Moving on from fan fictions, I’m a freshman in high school who just left Google + because Tumblr lets you customize your desktop blog, and G+ doesn’t. This is also around the time that I had given up on my dream of being an animator because I would’ve honestly rather shot myself in the foot than do any sort of sketchbook doodle ever. You’ll notice I haven’t spoken about any fan art I’ve done, and that’s mostly because I feel it would be pointless, since it didn’t lead to anything but heartache and irrational anger on my part. Instead, I decided to be a graphic designer because at the time, I liked downloading fonts from dafont.com and making fan works for Vivid Insomnia in a way that didn't involve drawing. Funny how everything that makes me a modern-day AB fan comes back more to V.I. than anything else… haha.

So with my Shadows Into The Light II, and Bebas Neue, I slapped the worlds #edgiest quotes (or song lyrics!) onto 03 series screenshots in Photoshop. And that’s basically how my design hobby (as it pertains to AB) started. I dabbled in other mediums, like videos and GIFs, but I would wager that today, design is my strongest suit, and it’s what I do the most of.

Years went by, I wrote more, designed more, started uploading videos a tiny bit more. And since I want to keep this post lighthearted and less focused on psychoanalyzing myself, we're going to skip over the many times I said something stupid and let my jealousy and low emotional intelligence get the best of me. Let’s just say… I learned a bit more about my place as a fan in this fandom, and also how not to interact with people, basically.

By the time I graduated from high school, I was ready to move on from this fandom, actually. Impostor syndrome ever so fragrant, I thought “AB isn’t serious?! I need to be serious now! I’m a real designer!” So, I gave it up for exactly a couple of months before I went back to my shipping retro bullshit, and before I knew it, I was essentially back where I started: An Astro Boy Fan on Tungle Dot Org. It was at this point though that I realized, if I wasn’t going to quit being in the AB fandom, the least I can do is polish myself up a bit. I haven’t mentioned any of my past usernames, but when this was all happening, I was Astro.png- a name I made as an inside joke because I export all of my static designs as PNGs. When I decided to “get serious”, I changed my name to Astorinx (yes, ASTORinx, not ASTROrinx, common mistake, I understand). This coincided with the change of my main design brand to Thylio Design, and also a personal change of name too (don’t you just love when your personal branding finally catches up to your gender changes too?)

Here, to close this out, I can finally touch on my “Astro is a sad character” point I was making earlier. Originally, when I switched to being Astorinx, I hadn’t intended for the blog to take a mental health/psychology skew topic wise. You’ll notice a lot of my works throughout the years have mostly been observational. I am simply making works based on how I interpret Astro’s character. But even then, as I look back, I realize that even then, my works weren’t taking place within canon. Rather, they were post canon. Because I’ve always found myself to think and believe that while Astro canonically was quite happy-go-lucky, their circumstances and life events told an entirely different story. No matter what you assume, at some point, you’re bound to realize that those events and whatnot, are going to catch up to them. I think in my personal quest to learn more about myself through the world of psychology, it has led me to look into the minds of some of these characters to ask an ample number of questions: What does it look like when this character is at their best? What does it take to get there? Or what about their worst— where are their faults, and why?

As time went on, I started to embrace a story line that was beginning to come about in my works, most exemplified by my “I Need To Forgive My Inner Child And Tell Them It’s Okay” piece. The story is this: Astro is an older and wiser adult whom, after going through and making great strides in therapy, looks back at the actions/thoughts/feelings of their younger self. Contrary to feeling regret, anger, or embarrassment for whom they once were, they look at their younger self with an immense sense of compassion. Like a warm blanket on a frigid night, they give their younger self a hug and say, “It’s okay. I totally get you, and I wish you well.”

Though not all of my works fit this narrative, especially when I make designs for characters besides Astro, for the most part, you can assume in some way, shape, or form, it’s relevant. What I’ve also realized, too, is that there’s a lot of people who find solace in my designs messaging. I recently even got asked to do a design supporting neurodivergency! While I will never claim to be a psych or mental health expert in any way unless or until I get an actual degree, it does make me happy that people are taking to my works in such a way. Over the years, I’ve become such a proponent for seeing people be the best version of themselves as possible. And while I wasn’t initially intending for my posts to be for the masses (thematically speaking), I’m glad Astro’s introspection's about who they were canonically have helped others do some reflecting of their own.

So, that’s now, but what’s next? Well, as I mentioned in my fan fiction post, I still have a lot more to write. And of course, I will always have plenty to design, even if there are considerable breaks in between due to burnout. In terms of videos, I have a few AMV ideas cooking currently, it’s just a matter of when I’m going to shake off the nerves and get started on them. I also still plan to run the AstroBoyFanWorks blog and its Discord server companion for as long as possible. I think when I look back at just how long it’s been- I mean 11 years is so wild! It’s almost unbelievable! But, I find myself in a place where I’m just happy to be here. I could go on and lament about so many things, but the truth of the matter is that after this many years, you either shit or get off the pot, as they say. You don’t second guess, you don’t make assumptions, you decide: Am I going to stick around for at least another year? And personally, I think yes.

#astro boy #tezuka #anime #blog post #fandom

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