#None of that matters irl as much as they think it does! It's not real.

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/749333039047442432/httpsolderthannetfictumblrcompost74884185043?source=share

Sorry, long rant incoming.

Someone in the replies said it, but I think it needs to be said again where everyone can see it: I think a lot of the attitude that anon is somehow secretly pro-censorship because they think certain preferences are skeevy, and strenuously insisting that bad attitudes can NEVER be media's fault.... idk, maybe take it out of the context of debates about sexually explicit/pornographic media for a moment?

There are works of media that had pretty direct effects on activist and political movements, good and bad. Uncle Tom's Cabin inspired a lot of people to fight against slavery. The movie Birth of a Nation, which showed a history of the U.S. with the KKK as heroic, is considered by most historians to be a major contributor to the revival of the KKK in the 1920s. The Nazis used films, books, music, art, and so on in their propaganda, knowing it would help their ideas go down more easily. The Soviets did too. Every dictatorship did. Even democratic countries have done it as well, usually but not always in more subtle ways.

Do none of those count, because "oh, people who were going to be convinced by Birth of a Nation would be racist anyway"? "Good, non-racist people wouldn't be convinced by it"? I mean, the latter is true: there were plenty of people, especially black Americans but plenty of white allies too, who boycotted the film at the time. The NAACP led a boycott. But do you really think NO ONE was convinced? (What about people who previously didn't feel any way about it one way or the other? Were they just innately more evil, even if it might've just been that they weren't aware? Do supposedly progressive people in fandom realize how much this sounds like Christian original sin rhetoric...) And does it matter purely about media fully changing minds, or also how it galvanizes people who already think one way? If it gives them new talking points, new ways of thinking about it and convincing others? If it helps them believe their cause is more important and worth fighting for?

So why does this all suddenly change when we're talking about sex? Is porn really this special class of media where somehow all the rules about how we can both like things and also be critical of how media (fiction, news media, whatever) influences us - "be critical of the media you love," as a tote bag sold by Feminist Frequency said - just stop applying for some reason? Or maybe if something is bypassing your rational brain entirely and going directly for the pleasure centers, there's all the more reason to think critically about what it's saying? Propaganda is designed to bypass all that, too.

Also, if media really has NOTHING to do with it, that just wouldn't explain why it's disproportionately anime that feature these specific elements that seem to attract more people arguing for why it's wrong to be upset by rape or child exploitation in real life. I don't believe that everyone who watches slavery isekai or lolicon approves of those things irl - I think for the vast majority of people, it IS a fantasy and that's the point - but I have noticed that in places like the Anime News Network or Crunchyroll forums, the comments become a cesspool of creepy people arguing for why ages of consent should be lowered and mean feminists who don't like watching media with rape in it just need to get over themselves, in a way they just don't when you're talking about Attack on Titan or My Hero Academia or Shoujo Romance #4891 or whatever.

As another person in the notes said, abusers ARE opportunistic. They'll use something like Twilight as easily as they'll use the most uwu, soft, "non problematic" ship to argue for why they're allowed to abuse you. But I don't think that means we can't be critical (not calling for censorship, of course! but like, writing op-eds and stuff) of media that makes their arguments a little easier, maybe even directly makes their arguments for them.

You can believe both that everyone has the opportunity to read, watch, listen to, play what they want and make up their own minds about it, and that it's wrong for the government to ever decide what media is and isn't "acceptable," and also believe that media often is saying things that aren't apparent on the surface and that you should be critical of those messages, *especially* with the stuff you like.

The point is just that porn isn't like, fundamentally different from other fictional media in this way. (Or, hell, I would argue that fictional media isn't functionally different from other mass media in this way. If anything, fiction's politics are often more insidious in a way that makes it easier for them to reach people who might not otherwise be open to those messages in the form of, say, blatantly right-wing news media.)

It's particularly strange to me when people jump all over someone for expressing how something can be insidiously creepy in a more mundane way. The line people are upset about that used the word "unpack" was just making the point that even if we can agree lolicon isn't outright advocating pedophilia, even if we agree the point is that it's a fantasy and they're not like real children at all and that's what people like, it's still working within an idealization/fetishization of helplessness, innocence, and dependence, and that still has a lot that you can critique from a feminist perspective. It's still a thing that plays into some crappy societal ideas about who women are supposed to be, and is selling that to men as a romantic ideal. There's still a lot we can talk about there! And it's still totally fair for women to be wary of men where that seems to be all they're into - because for some (and I believe this was what anon was initially trying to say was their experience), it does impact how they treat real women. It doesn't have to be everyone for it to have an impact.

There's a lot of anime that presents women that way, even way outside of lolicon. A lot of it's anime I like! I'm still critical of that aspect of it. I still wish that particular part of it were different.

I still don't see how this makes me "pro censorship" unless I believe some kind of institution should mandate that that not be included. And whether that's the government, or the industry itself (people do kind of narrowly focus on "the government" in a way that would make a lot of industry-run censorship that was still very harmful, e.g. the Hollywood Hays Code, not "count"), or anyone, I very much disagree with that. Creators should be able to create what they want. A lot of what creators are doing with this is unconscious, is reflecting societal biases they learned but haven't thought deeply about.... which is precisely the point of critiquing how those show up in a work.

People love to talk about "secretly 'anti' attitudes" but at the end of the day, support or opposition to censorship is pretty straightforward. You believe someone should be stopped from making a particular kind of media, or you don't. If you don't, you're not pro-censorship, no matter how much you personally may not like that that media or a particular aspect of it exists. Most people who care about media have some media they wish didn't exist. It's about what they do about it that makes them pro or anti censorship. Talk to people who donate to or even work for the ACLU or other anti censorship groups; most of them don't like racist or sexist stuff, but they also don't believe it should be banned and that's the point.

Bringing it back to the discussion at hand, I think the point was just that you can't be blind to how power dynamics influence this stuff. I wouldn't even say specifically cishet men are at fault here, since some people who read this blog seem to think that anyone saying that is automatically talking about bioessentialism as opposed to like, societal stuff (don't ask me why, this has been explained on here enough times in enough different discourses over the years, I think). I'd just say anyone with power in that particular context. There's a reason why it's specifically mainstream media, aimed at groups in power, that tends to draw in creeps excusing the real thing... in a way that just similarly is not true of people in fanfiction fandom, who are usually a member of one or more oppressed categories, exploring that in their own marginal work. Fans of rape fanfiction just don't act the way that fans of slavery rape isekai do. It's because there is fundamentally a difference both when you're someone whom society tells you are entitled to everything you want in this particular arena, and also when a work is mainstream, broadening its reach, and speaking a particular message from the lens of people with economic and social power (who are making these mainstream works) and given approval by publishers/media studios/etc. in a way that is not the case with amateur work with tiny audiences. And, frankly, there's a difference between something that eroticizes rape from the point of view of the perpetrator vs. the victim.

Not a difference in terms of how legal it should be. Not a difference in whether every single person who watches it or likes it is bad. But a difference in terms of what it's saying, how it's saying that, and often the effects they have as a result. That, too, is true with every topic, not just sex.

I feel like a lot of people getting mad at these do fundamentally agree with this, but just have a weird blind spot when it's put in any sort of terminology that reminds them of certain bad arguments they've seen in fandom, uses any words that can be dismissed as "radfem" or "anti" or whatever, and so just refuse to engage with the actual meat of what is being said.

If you do actually believe though that it's wrong to EVER think media can have a negative effect on what people believe about irl issues, because there was always something "already there" that was going to "come out anyway" if it affects you that way (again, people: this is "original sin" rhetoric), and if you ever privately judge people for the media they like you're secretly pro-censorship. You do have to recognzie that both you personally come up short and also most peopel doing real concrete real world things to fight censorship would also come up short!

I think sometimes of an editorial that said "if you love Return of the Jedi but hated the Ewoks you understand feminist criticism" in terms of how you can be bothered by the sexism of a piece of media in a way you'd be bothered by any one individual element of it, and still overall like the whole. And also, you can be offended by something, even wish it didn't exist (don't we as nerds all have entries in some franchise we like or another that we wish didn't exist for fannish reasons?), without believing that it should be officially made to stop existing or have never existed in the first place. That last part does actaully matter as like, its own thing. It is in fact separable from just being able to have personal judgey feelings about media and about the people who liked it.

And opposing it does not mean in any way that we have to just stop thinking critically about the media we love, or that we have to act like media can never have any influence on people. We on the left tend to talk about sexism, racism, homophoia and so on as being influenced by culture and society. Well, guess what is part of society and culture? Fictional (and other kinds of) media. That's part of that societal programming we get. It's why you'll see some of it even from people whose parents very much tried to resist teaching them certain things, because they get it from media anyway. I was raised by strenuously feminist parents: it was the media that taught me what gender roles were and how I was expected to adhere to them.

--

Look, I realize it's a bit rich of me to say this, but people are not going to engage with your actual points if you cannot be more succinct.

[lucianalight]

The Missed Opportunities in Loki Series

While I was writing my review of S2, one of the topics I had problem with, was the redemption of TVA and its agents. I couldn't understand why "not having their memories" and "didn't know they were variants" could possibly be a good explanation for the atrocities they committed. I mean why does it matter? They were still killing people. Didn't they know that?...wait…let me google sth real quick…by which I mean reading interesting articles about the psychology of dehumanization and brainwashing that led me to some interesting results and a new perspective into how the series, especially in S1 missed its chance to explore some of the most important issues of Loki and his backstory.

The short answer to my question "Didn't they know they were killing people?" is "No, they didn't". And not in a racist or bigoted way the humans thinking other humans who aren’t like them, are subhuman. In a literal sense they didn’t consider anyone on the sacred timeline as people.

Empathy for another’s happiness and suffering depends fundamentally on recognizing that the other has a mind minds—that is, the same capacities for thought, emotion, desire, intention, and self-awareness as ourselves. Without appreciating others’ minds, empathy makes no sense[1]

To TVA agents those on sacred timeline weren’t people like them. They didn’t have thoughts and minds and emotions like them. And anyone making a different choice from what was considered for them was a “variant”. For a lack of better word, the TVA had dehumanized anyone but those who were working for TVA which is a necessary perception if you want to facilitate inhuman acts of torture and slaughter.

Dehumanized perception is a cognitive bias characterized by spontaneous failure to think about mental contents – thoughts and feelings in a social target’s mind. [2]

According to TVA propaganda, TVA and its people were created by the Time Keepers. They were different. They weren't like the ones on the sacred time line. The chaotic and disobedient "variants" should have been "pruned". None of them mattered except the right order of time.

The only ones TVA agents considered as people were each other. They were friends and coworkers and cared about each other's lives. And they had no memory of their previous life. But when they found out they are variants themselves, they realized “Those we were killing were like us. They had minds and emotions like us. We’ve been killing people all this time”. This should have been the explanation for their change and redemption. Their memories were taken from them and they were brainwashed by a propaganda that dehumanized anyone else and let them commit those atrocities easily. It shouldn’t have been “they’re variants themselves” but “the variants were people like them”.

So, while TVA can be compared to a totalitarian regime, there's probably no exact irl example for TVA agents because their situation for the most part is fictional. But perhaps the angels and demons in Good Omens have a close mindset to them. They care about each other but not the humans. The humans are just a tool for them to start the final battle according to the great plan.

This would have been easier to pinpoint if TVA was framed as evil from S1. Also if you want your characters to be likable or redeemable give them personality and show that they're doubtful and uncomfortable with what they're doing from the start not when they find out the truth or in the last episode of the last season! And don't frame torture and dehumanization as sth hilarious, therapeutic and deserved for one character and completely opposite for another character if you want to reach the conclusion that those actions were atrocities.

What bothers me more is that they missed a perfect parallel and opportunity to address Loki's identity issues. I don't even think the parallels were intended, considering how much the show is indifferent to them.

First the parallel with Loki finding out about his heritage. He was stolen from his homeland, grew up learning to hate and fear his own race. Like Loki people in the TVA didn't know about their past. Like Loki they would have an identity crisis. This was explored a little in S2 but they failed to make the connection with Loki's past. I mean you could let Mobius call Loki an ice runt as an insult, but didn’t bring up the topic when he had an identity crisis and talking about it with Loki? Although maybe that's too much expectation from the people who treated Loki being adopted and not knowing about it as sth unimportant, and didn't mention the racism and favorism he grew up with even once.

The parallel isn't accurate though since Loki weren't going around killing frost giants. He even didn't really consider them less than Asgardians. Not until he thought that's how his family actually sees them. That was his breaking point.

"You could have told me what I was from the beginning. Why didn't you?" "To protect you from the truth" "Why? Because I'm the monster parents tell their children about at night?"

This is the reason Loki went on his genocide attempt. To prove to Odin he wasn’t one of the monsters. That he was an Asgardian. That he belonged with them.

The second parallel with Loki's story that they failed to address is Loki being brainwashed by Thanos. You want to say your characters are redeemable because they were brainwashed? Show it! Make a connection with the main character's backstory. How they have missed this chance is beyond me…On second thought, they probably didn't even connect the dots, because they presented torture and brainwashing as a positive thing.

Brainwashing is the process of manipulating a person’s beliefs, thoughts, or actions through psychological manipulation. If a person is brainwashed, they may no longer be able to think for themselves and may act on orders without considering the consequences. Brainwashing is often used by totalitarian regimes to control their citizens, and can also be used in cults and other groups to manipulate members.[3]

Some people are more susceptible to brainwashing like people who are going through a difficult period in their life or a change that may or may not be of their own making[4]. It is also useful to consider identity when it comes to brainwashing.  

Someone experiencing an identity crisis is in desperate need of a new identity. Because brainwashing promises them a new identity, it makes them more susceptible.[3]

Through the events of Thor 1 Loki’s going through an identity crisis. All he ever knew his life were lies. Even his skin was a lie. At the end not being accepted by his father no matter what he does, he commits suicide. That’s when he meets Thanos. And Thanos and his allies through torture and using mind stone, brainwashed Loki. People who go through brainwashing give up their previous identity and adopt a new one.

The person’s thinking and behaviors are altered by the indoctrinated beliefs that support their new identity. The individual changes into a whole new person, in some cases.[3]

This change in personality and ideas is easily noticeable in Loki in Avengers vs the other movies. The way he talks in Avengers is eerily similar to the way Ebony Maw talks in EG.

This could be a parallel with how TVA agents memories’ were removed and replaced by propaganda. But no mention of what happened to Loki during his time with Thanos. Nothing.

What’s interesting though is that when you read about how brainwashing is done, there isn’t only one example of it on screen. There are two. The steps for brainwashing are:

1.Isolating the victim

2.Degrade the target

3. Promise a better identity

4.Offer rewards

What Mobius was doing in S1 wasn’t therapy unlike what the writers claimed. It was brainwashing.

Another interesting point is that the way Loki treated Mobius was the right way to undo brainwashing. Those steps are separate the person from their group, be on their side and question their beliefs like what Loki did during 1x02 and tell them they’ve been brainwashed like what happened in 1x04.

I find it really funny though that every time they try to show what a villain Loki was and that he needed the guidance from these heroic™ people, he turns out to be the most moral person in the group if you look at the story objectively. Loki befriended and tried to help the people who arrested, tortured and tried to brainwash him, even before he knew they were variants.

In the end, I don’t give the credit for these parallels to the series. Because I don’t think they were intentional. Otherwise, they would have delved into Loki’s past and compared it to what happens in the show and wouldn’t have disregard it completely. What a huge waste of opportunity.

Sources:

From Dehumanization and Objectification, to Rehumanization

Dehumanized Perception

How To Undo Brainwashing

How to Recognize and Avoid Brainwashing

[kitkatopinions]

Regarding the nitpick about the lack of religion in RWBY. We know the worldbuilding leaves much to be desired. So I'm betting religion isn't present simply because the writers themselves are non religious and never bothered to address the subject. Which is stupid because George RR Martin created several religions to flesh out the world in Game of Thrones and he's a lapsed Catholic. Just goes to show how little the writers care about worldbuilding. The existence of the Brother Gods and the Great Tree invalidate pretty much all the faiths in Remnant yet nobody seems to care. That would be like IRL we find indisputable proof that one religion on Earth is the undeniable truth but everyone continues their lives exactly the same as if this mind blowing revelation doesn't affect them.

Yep!

it's easy enough to say "oh well religion does exist it's just that none of the mains follow a religion so it doesn't matter" but it is so bland and flat and disappointing! Like I'm not gonna pretend that I would find building multiple religions to be a particularly easy thing to do and I especially would find it hard to write characters undergoing a crisis of faith when they discover what's real... But world building is also just so much fun and it's so interesting so like? Why just hand wave it away?

There would be Salem worshippers and Salem would love that and use it and probably enforce worship among her followers. And there would be people who worshipped a vaguely Oz-ish figure and Oz would hate that. People would worship Oz and Salem together not knowing of their history (and again wouldn't have to call them by their real names or have a real understanding of them to do it.) People would have religions that sprung up on their own centered around the Grimm, people would have religions about how the world ended and when it might end again, some people Oz had trusted and told the whole truth to thousands of years ago could've prompted more worship of the brother gods, people would have religions that include the formation of the world as they know it - heck, the world of RWBY the very planet they're on is called REMNANT and there isn't some common religion about what it's a remnant of? The moon is busted up, people are always gonna be people, you think there wouldn't be some religious explanation people had for that? People have in the past just fucking gone to a completely different dimension where everything is nonsense and sentient teapots and great trees and getting transported to bridges that force you to come out of the closet - there's no way I'm believing that in thousands of years the only people it's ever happened to are Team RWBY+J and Neo through a set of very specific circumstances we know and also randomly two kids through Narnia means presumably because we don't get any other explanation - and the only thing that's ever come from that is a children's book. Kings existed, the main world powers are still called 'kingdoms' and I'm meant to believe that a 'divine right to rule' wasn't a part of that? Or more like it doesn't matter what I believe was and wasn't a part of royalty because none of it impacts or affects our main characters AT ALL.

It's just so mind boggling to me that this would be the case. It'd be like if Fire Emblem Three Houses actually had zero religious aspects, that's what it feels like. If it was just a game where people went to a combat school led by a thousands of years old person in a secret war with Those Who Slither In The Dark and people had Crests and Sothis was in Byleth's head talking to them and Arval was in Shez's head talking to them and they had the heroes relics weapons and the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus and there were castles and churches and there were what looked like ruins of ancient castles or temples just like lying out in the woods, but like no single character that exists is even sort of religious and how different things might be connected to religions is never brought up and the characters never talked about any religion even existing past acknowleding that not a lot of people believed in any religion anymore. That's how weird it feels with RWBY. Like, the elements of 'this world definitely has religions and beliefs' are all freaking present in RWBY, there's no way to logically believe that religions just aren't present and have no effect on anything or any character, but then there's nothing there. It's so weird and I just do not understand how the RWBY writers could engage so little with the world and the story they made that such a crucial element of world building especially for the story they wanted to tell could just get so wholly passed over.

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

im so sorry to send you this but im confused. i thought izzy hands was obviously homophobic while i was watching the show but now people on the internet are telling me that calling him gay and homophobic is a conspiracy theory. i want to trust my instincts on this as a queer myself but they say it so much i think im starting to believe it. i know literally none of this matters but its genuinely bumming me out. maybe we all just have slightly different definitions of homophobia?

I would love to answer this for you. Your instincts are correct. Izzy is gay and homophobic. You should trust your gut on this because it's important for you be able to identify guys like Izzy irl if you're someone who might be on the receiving end of homophobia.

What happened is that back in June of 2022 everyone fully agreed that Izzy was one of those repressed gay men who's internalized homophobia rotted his soul and became externalized. We wanted to put him in a jar. We all interested in how this weird little freak got this way. Then everything changed when the canyon formed. Since then it has been a mad dash to beat the allegations. Unfortunately an actor has validated them in a way that makes me really wonder about him frankly, because he seems to be operating under the impression that people are saying that Izzy is a "homo sex is sin" Style homophobe when nobody was saying that, what we were saying is that Izzy is incredibly weird about and hateful towards feminine men and he believes that Stede is corrupting Ed with his foppishness, which is still homophobia it's just a different brand of homophobia than the religious right's obsession with the mechanics.

Tbh tho I don't actually care about that actors' take because he's not a writer, he has a history of not being very good at reading the subtext given that he fully didn't realize it was a gay show for half the episodes, and David Jenkins has liked multiple metas on twt about Izzy being a homophobe so I'll trust that lol. The only consequence that Con O'Neill being publically wrong has had for me is that people occasionally do an unearned victory lap when he says something.

But also I low key sometimes feel incredibly unsafe knowing that there's a substantial group of people who claim to be queer and against homophobia but who can't understand that the whole subplot with Lucius in episode 5 and the thing with Ed in episode 10 is laced with bigotry against feminine gay men. I don't think admitting that means you have to think it's his only motivation or that it's contradictory to the read of him being attracted to Ed and Lucius or with the concept that he's mostly just power hungry, but it does sort of mean that I have to move through the world knowing that there are people in my own community who would fully blame me if something happened to me. I don't fucking like it. That's why I get so upset about this so publicly. It's like so what happens if I get attacked but the guy calls me a namby pamby or a bitch instead of a faggot. Are you gonna be like "well we don't know~". It's just an uncomfortable thought. I don't understand why they're so desperate to beat the allegations either, like he's fake. People who have experienced things like what Ed and Lucius went through at his hands are real. The argument that gay people can "do something to (someone)'s brain" is written into legislation trying to ban trans people from public life. Nobody wants you to stop liking Izzy we just want you to stop saying shit that's harmful

And I don't necessarily think that everyone who chooses to put more emphasis on Izzys obsession with Ed wouldn't be able to identify a hate crime, I just have seen more than one piece of meta that goes "Izzys not homophobic he just thinks Stede is a mincing fop who's corrupting Ed with his frilly whiles there's nothing homophobic about that" and I just have to block them for being homophobic themselves because what else do I do with that? When I vague post about this shit I'm talking about specific ass things that I've seen that have made me feel very uncomfortable and unsafe not generic canyon trends. I just really feel like we need to calm down about Izzy. Like you can feel empathy towards a gay guy that hates himself and write a bunch of fic about him getting laid without deciding actually he did nothing wrong and everyone who can see that that's not true is making shit up to oppress *checks notes* people who like a fictional character. I don't get why that's so hard to do.

[pan-magi]

On one hand, I hate that I'm making a vent post on this fandom blog. On the other hand, I am really annoyed and in a bad mood for unrelated reasons so I'm going to do it anyway.

I want to murder and destroy all the porn bots clogging the magi tags. It's infuriating.

"Because you follow #magi

*porn bot post*"

No, no, no. GO TO HELL.

Magi is already a small fandom. A lot of religious and spiritual blogs also use it. Even if they don't tags things with magi exclusively, I get a lot of Madoka Magica blogs recommended to me because of the series' full name (Puella Magi Madoka Magica). Nothing against them, of course, love existential magical girls. Point being I can bet none of us give a fucking shit. Leave our small tag alone!

I could just not visit the your tags page but the "because you follow x" posts pop up on home and following regardless. And I like checking in on random tags sometimes. It helps to not miss posts from people who simply have Magi as their anime of the week or whatever.

I do hate just to make this a vent post, so I'll add some anecdotal Magi stuff that I've already been thinking to make a shit post about. Unfortunately, I have not had anymore fandom related dreams. *

I will blab about the screenshot I chose for this though. I lowkey adore that scene. Morgiana just casually kidnapping her friend, so they can talk it out. (For reference, it's when she meets Alibaba in the Fog Troupe hideout and then just picks him up and leaves).

The funny thing is, they're not really friends at this point? Out of the trio and their relationships so far, Alibaba and Morgiana haven't had much time together. Morg is grateful that Alibaba freed her, yet I'll say they both are better friends with Aladdin right now.

Morgiana does bring this up. Her reasoning for taking Alibaba is so that he can talk to Aladdin and they can sort out their shit. She could see that the kid from Alibaba giving him the cold shoulder and is like "no." It's heartwarming. It's not something I'll recommend, sometimes people need space from each other and kidnapping is bad, still though- I love it lmao.

Best trio, ngl.

*I have since had a sorta Magi related dream since first writing this about a week ago. In it I met Ohtaka, except I've only ever looked at a few pictures of her before and know for a fact that how she looked in the dream isn't how she is irl. Maybe that's why it took me forever to recognize her. The first half was us basically meeting and talking about trivial stuff, not Magi or Orient because of not recognizing her, and the second half was me realizing my missed opportunity of fangirling and trying to find her again when she was not busy to get one of my volumes of Magi signed. Not in a desperate way but more of "ahhh, I'm so dumb and missed my chance. Bummer." I was way more melancholic about it compared to if I ever had the opportunity in real life. As if I knew it was a dream and not get too worked up about it.

My dreams are a lot more convoluted and trippy but that is the gist of the Magi related portion of the dream. The rest is irrelevant for this. Don't remember too much of it anyway.

That's all I have. This turned out long and I may trim it up. I feel better after typing it. That is what matters.

Fuck porn bots and may this small fandom prosper without them.

[stressedbisexualtm]

okay i may be a bit stupid but i've figured out what makes limited and secret life feel so... disconnected, for lack of a better word, from the rest of the life series. (could also be sort of the same for double life?)

it's simply because of the time difference in when each series happened- a few months after third life happened, last life premiered. limited life and secret life happened in the same year as well, and although they were at the beginning and end of the year it kind of lends to the vibe of both games (at least in my eyes.) but double life happened in the summer of 2023, several months after last life and several months before limited life. this lead to a sort of time bubble around double life; it's a pretty big vibe shift from last life and we're missing a few players (mumbo, lizzie, and skizz), but it's not quite near the relaxed-yet-bloodthirsty vibe limited life (and a secret life a little bit) has going on. double life, to me, is very much it's own bubbled part of the life series, sort of the bridge but not bridge between the first two and the latest two seasons.

now, obviously, this is my take on it from a technical/fandom/irl perspective, but it does beg the question: can the characters in the life series feel or understand the time gaps between games? for mumbo and lizzie, who only appeared in two seasons (not counting lizzie's cameo in liml), would probably notice that they had, in fact been gone for a couple seasons (this would also apply to skizz missing dl, and i guess ren when he comes back?). /i/ subscribe to the idea that the players go to their home severs/the void in between games, allowing them to compete in events like mcc and join other servers like empires, new life, hc 9&10, sos, etc. but.. i mean, would they know during the games this happens? could the players be aware of time passing in between games, such that last life feels so different from double life and double life feels so different from limited life? would they notice the subtle changes in appearance, in attitude? would they feel the tone shift, the closer and closer they get to the watchers (or whatever the hell the secret keeper was), the urgency and calmness flowing in even streams throughout the series? do they know what will happen when the game ends? do they know that third life was 3 years ago? was it 3 years ago for them, or do the games happen in quick succession? is time different in the games to normal mc time, and how does that differ from our time in real life? minecraft days pass faster than ours do, so who's to know if it was 6 years ago for them, or 1 year, or two months? are the life games in some sort of alternate or pocket dimension, permanently separating them from any other smp, event, or world? do these different servers, seasons, what have you, feel different to the characters? are they able to tell that something is different, that they've aged or changed outside of the games, but they don't know why because they can't remember ever leaving them? could you imagine, for a moment, waking up one day, knowing something is different, knowing that you have been somewhere else and done something important and lived and knew more people and had a home, but not being able to remember any of it? not being able to comprehend what you're feeling, like you've lost something you never even knew existed? do you think that they remember their lives beyond the first time they joined the game, and are only left with that feeling of being ripped away from the rest of reality?

or, maybe none of that matters, because they get to go home and rest after each season, and the games are just games, and the players remember everything perfectly fine, because it's just another smp, and they're all just playing modified hardcore together. at the end of the day, it's all up to interpretations and personal headcanons and individual lore. but it's compelling (? idk im low on thought now) to think about how characters might experience time differently, or how they might react to time shifts they may or may not remember.

just some ideas and questions ive been thinking about for a while but haven't been able to fully write down.

[silverspleen]

@your-royal-highness-of-trash

Pulled out into TWO new posts b/c I cannot be subjecting my friends to one longpost but rather many smaller posts with the majestic read more tool. I hope this is cool.

(Context. My reply to This.)

THE GRIM HALF tw warcrimes torture it's a CoD ramble my beloved followers know it's time for me to be Unhinged on Main

I don't know if I would call Jacob Geller's video essays on Call of Duty fun. Like, they very much aren't designed to be consumed from a fandom lens. They are super intellectually engaging and enlightening but also really grim since he does absolutely talk about the real life political motivations that go into CoD as a work of art, specifically propaganda art. And talks about, you know, real war crimes done by real people in real life. I have made multiple irl friends watch them.

None of them are into FPS games so this is basically my torture I am doing to my friends as I desperately try to rationalizing enjoying Call of Duty as an adult with a functioning brain. Who notices things like, yeah. We made up a middle eastern country for this one huh lads? We made that shit up so we don't have to make any actual comments about the United States' current complicity in this whole war and terrorism thing huh? WE'RE DOING A HISTORICAL REVISIONISM ARE WE??? I wouldn't have noticed the historical revisionism without this video essay and you know what? It's super fucked up. CoD does wacko stuff all the time, both for manufactured drama and for silly propaganda reasons, and when it jumps the shark is when it's the most conventional fun I think. I think Geller is onto something where he says that the writers went into this thinking they were doing the story in the best way possible with character driven stuff - and therefore it doesn't REALLY matter where Farah is from to them, they can just make up a country because it's general backstory vibes that impact her behavior that matter, not cultural details. Also how Alex can get away with being a terrorist but in a nbd way because yeah he is one, that's what happens when you desert to a faction that literally gets classified as a terrorist organization babyyy - but sitting at a perspective completely divorced of all the political and societal nuances in real life that makes the actual manifested story have impact outside of itself. And the US government is like "hell yeah, America! more kids will think guns and soldiers are cool and great. A+ plot or whatever put more suicide bombers in it" and that's that.

Being invited to my clusterfuck of an apartment like SIT ON MY COUCH WE'RE WATCHING THE POLITICS OF COD MW 2019.

Poor Gaz is the other character besides Farah with the strongest sense of like, justice and doing "the right thing" and this man gets ALL the ethically questionable as fuck levels and I know why. It's so they can do a propaganda and show like, ok this must be a justifiable offense because the Good Guy player surrogate character can accept it. I see you! I see you CoD writers!

not CoD but always relevant - "Rationalizing Brutality: The Cultural Legacy of the Headshot"

His video essays "Who's Afraid of Modern Art" and "Judaism and Whiteness in Wolfenstein" are both personal favorites. Though I am so so biased towards his review of Dead Space 2 that's just like 40 minutes of him being like "this game rocks" because yeah, mood.

Anyway I am putting this in a box and throwing it into the ocean next post is the fun part of CoD it's shipping time this is my dichotomy this is how I must live my life.

[purpurussy]

literally haven't eaten anything all day (it's gone 7pm) or been outside in several days or slept more than 4 hours/night in the last week so im probably just being insane for no reason atm but

i feel like I'm at a weird sort of crossroads with this blog?

when i made this account i saw it as kind of an experiment in vulnerability and positivity. i said i'm gonna try my best to post what's in my heart and not care whether it does numbers or not. if people like it they like it, if not that's okay because i like it and i'm having fun. and i'm gonna practise some kind of general radical positivity/acceptance towards others too. like i promised myself i would not allow this to be anything other than a positive experience, a nice opportunity to express myself in a way that's disconnected from how people see me irl and maybe connect with likeminded people along the way

and once i started writing fic i literally couldn't stop, like the idea of being able to share my writing and have other people enjoy it too is so exciting and motivating to me. there is so much happening in my google docs atm and it feels so good to be writing again after years of feeling too depressed to create anything

however unfortunately i am the grumpiest most insecure person on earth and i have never let go of anything in my life. i've already been unable to stop myself from wading into discourse™ and the general social media fomo/insecurity is starting to get to me. like when did i go from just gleefully shouting into the void, to constantly checking my activity, trying to figure out the best times to post, literally crying when my stuff doesn't do as well as i wanted it to??? taking note of which posts flopped and which ones did well, so i can post more of the popular content instead of just posting what i want. none of this is even real, yet it's been bothering me in a very real way. most of which is just my brain turning it into a negative experience for fully self-imposed reasons

i do think social media is poison in general. and i know it does not work at all for someone who is very prone to having a complete menty b at the first sign of any kind of rejection. and i know a big part of the problem is that i'm attaching too much value to this blog and how people respond to my posts (I have been connecting with my friends irl more lately, but social media is literally designed to prey on the part of your brain that perceives social rejection as a threat to your existence so unfortunately it feels like this matters to me a lot more than it should. also my irls do not want to hear about dan and phil lmao)

idk if i should just accept that this is not good for me and delete, or if it's possible to once again achieve the carefree fun i was having at first. maybe if i can work on my irl issues i'll start to feel a bit better and then it won't bother me as much?

i'm also sort of wondering how much i should reveal about myself? like i want to feel completely free to post as much cringe/insanity/weird smut as I want. and if i was posting in a way that would be easily traceable back to my actual identity then i'd definitely be a lot more careful with what i say. but on the other hand i wanna get to know people better! it would be fun to hop into a discord and actually have a conversation with people rather than just rambling in the tags on their posts. so i'm not really sure what to do with that either. it's kinda fun to truly exist as a completely formless entity in a way, like im literally just tumblr dot com slash purpurussy and there's something freeing about that, even if it does make me feel like i'm missing out on a chance to connect with people properly sometimes

also that idea scares me! everyone on here is genuinely so cool and wonderful and it gives me such a huge dopamime hit when someone i admire likes my stuff. so it's just scary to interact with people more because it feels like oh no they're gonna realize im actually a cantankerous little troll that lives under a bridge and is a nightmare to talk to lmfao

this makes no sense and i'll probably delete it in a bit i just had to get it off my chest

[hyacinthsdiamonds]

Speaking as someone who has no option but the sky sports commentary, if you don't think they're biased you're wrong. I've watched F1 my entire life so just over two decades. The rights have changed from ITV to BBC to Sky in that time and the bias has always been there but as Sky Sports has the main English speaking F1 content in the age of social media, the bias is significantly more harmful.

Fans get to be biased. Commentary is supposed to be unbiased and impartial. Yes a driver's home country's commentary will undoubtedly be biased in favor of them and no commentary is completely free from bullshit takes, however the British commentary is held up as the "proper" one, it caters to more of the fan base than any other and is heralded as the home of F1. They continuously spread misinformation, are unable to remain impartial for the roughly two hours of races we get and are unable to not stir shit for views. British drivers and teams that have British drivers are held to a completely different standard.

And it's not just Red Bull or Max affected. I'm basically crying out for literally any info on the likes of Alex, Mick, Zhou, Yuki etc during race weekends but no I have to hear more about how Mercedes might actually have a chance at a win this time out which they've already discussed multiple times prior. Mercedes tend to get a free pass from criticism from the British commentators. Had any other team had "we deal with it in house" strategy in regards to punishing their drivers, the British commentators would absolutely lose it. But Toto giving stern talkings to Nico and Lewis whenever they crashed each other out (Spain 2016 for example) and to George after Imola 2021 (where he without question should've been held accountable by the FIA for hitting a fellow driver in the head after a crash when said driver's condition was still in question) is fine and goes by without question. Had say Ferrari pestered the FIA long enough in order to change rules and regulations (see changing the flooring regulations mid season this year or the pit stop rules mid season last year), they would be dogged by criticism and allegations of cheating. They've been silent about Mercedes doing the aforementioned. Meanwhile one of the alpha tauris or alpines or alfa romeos are starting from the pits but it's not deemed important enough to explain why until literally the last minute and we're getting underway. The way they talk about the likes of Checo and Yuki in particular have been disgusting and beyond insulting. It's far from impartial and it's nothing like real journalism. They criticize the FIA if they don't like a penalty (especially if it affects a British driver negatively) but, apart from Jenson Button, none of them saw the need to talk about the issue of the tractor on track during wet conditions with racing continuing under yellow flags at Suzuka. They often take quotes out of context to fit their narrative and often spread misinformation in order to uphold that narrative.

Some of you are too young or didn't watch F1 during the Schumi days or red bull era! Seb, but as someone who watched both and everything in-between and after, little has changed in regards to that bias. But as I've said before it's significantly worse in the age of social media. You're never free from trolls but spreading this bias as gospel truth leads to people believing it as such. The amount of harm that causes is horrific. I've seen racial abuse, death threats, body shaming, outright misogyny, and so much worse, directed at many drivers and many fans of said drivers both online and irl. They rightfully called it out at Austria. Yet they were almost entirely silent at Monza and at Silverstone. You don't get to cherry pick when it matters because it might fit your narrative because it always does matter and it is always wrong no matter who is directly affected or involved. No circuit or fanbase is perfect or free from bad eggs but to say that it was one driver's entire fanbase one weekend and that it was "just a few bad eggs" the next because it's a different driver's fanbase spreading abuse is clear evidence of inherent bias and double standards. You cannot pretend to be impartial while doing this.

I'm not going to sit here and say I'm without bias because I'm not. I don't have to be, however, because I'm a fan, not a commentator. They should be impartial for the length of the race weekend and be able to give an unbiased analysis on every driver and team. Can you honestly tell me that they are able to do so? I can set aside my biases and acknowledge if the drivers I support messed up or if a driver I'm generally indifferent to (I don't hate any driver, I don't get how people are so obsessed with hating on drivers they dislike) did well. I don't believe they can do the same, if they ever could because they've gone unchecked for years.

Also Sky Sports is the channel that used horrific crashes in ads to wish people a merry Christmas last year. They pulled the ad after rightfully receiving heavy criticism but I don't know if they ever apologized for it. I personally doubt it.

[raymondshields]

Reading your meta about Gregory and his actions in Inherited Turnabout makes me want to hear more of your thoughts on that. He's presented in AAI2 as a shining paragon of justice, and he's genuinely livid at Von Karma for resorting to torture and forgery to get the verdict he wants. And my own impression is that what made Gregory such a great lawyer was the simple fact that he gave a shit about his clients and their loved ones; he got genuinely teary-eyed listening to the story of how Jeff adopted Kate, and he fought like hell for an entire year because he refused to let their lives be ruined for the sake of Von Karma's ego. Even if he did resort to arguably dirty tactics, it came from a place of caring about others, while Manfred and Blaise only cared about themselves. If they went low, he'd kick them in the face.

(Actually, typing that reminded me of Phoenix's monologue at the end of BttT; "What makes us human is that we fight for others.")

Pretty much! The key part here that we have to remember is that literally none of this is legal IRL. MvK could not have interrogated Jeff like that, whatsoever. There are three ways, legally, that it could have ever happened:

the police interrogate him, because police do illegal shit all the time. Gregory would point out in court that confessions made under pressure like that are illegal, it would have been struck from the record, and then Gregory would've sued the shit out of the LAPD on a breach of human rights because you can't just torture people! How well what would've gone would depend on racism mostly, talk to an actual lawyer, but it's still super illegal.

Gregory would have had to be there, the interrogator would have been a third party agreed upon between him, MvK, and the judge, and there would have been a full transcript that Gregory would have been given as a matter of course. You can't keep shit from the other side, any evidence has to be in the hands of both defense and prosecutor before anything goes to court. Remember the Alex Jones case with his cellphone? The prosecution had to wait two weeks and get confirmation from the defense that it wasn't given to them accidentally, and that they could use it, because of confidentiality between lawyer and client.

Or, most realistically, they would have put Jeff on the witness stand in court, and the court reporter would have transcribed. This is how it would actually go. You can't just threaten the defendant as a prosecutor. You can if you're their defense attorney and tell them how to plead, but the prosecution can't do that.

So with that in mind, you have to look at how AA's legal system works - it's fucked, by the way, and is less satire of the Japanese legal system and more the product of a guy who doesn't know how law works, seriously, Shu Takumi admitted he wasn't trying to make satire and was just bending the rules for the game to make sense - and then look at the position Gregory's in.

I'm not saying he's flawed for this, because a defense attorney in the AA system who only ever does things by-the-book and lets their hands be tied is a defense attorney who lets the system fuck them over. Yes, Miles got a lot of his ability to undercut the law from MvK, but Gregory also undercut the law when he needed to, because as AAI2's entire thesis states, the law as it stands fails people. Simon would not have gone to jail for anything he did right up until he dropped a hot air balloon on some guy. Nothing he did was illegal.

Gregory is presented as a paragon of justice, and the thing is... he is. In this situation, under IS-7, where AA law states they do not need Gregory there to torture and interrogate his client nor do they apparently need to inform him that this happened, undercutting them and getting a copy of the transcript was in fact the moral move. Illegal? I think so, probably, it's hard to say given that it's presented as a dirty trick to us when doing anything else is wildly illegal in real life. The literal best option? Yes, of course.

Gregory gave a shit enough that when MvK set the bar at actual torture and human rights violation, he played dirty. You see it all the time, where honourable people lose majorly because they're not willing to play dirty. Look at the USA's idea of politics. The Democrats would get a lot farther if they were willing to gerrymander right back, but they insist on playing 'fairly' even when no one else is, so they lose quite a bit.

When your opponent isn't playing fair, being honourable makes you a dead man, not a winning man. Gregory understood that, and he went for the option that wasn't legal, but was ethical, and actually in the name of justice.

Gregory understood that yes, sometimes the ends do justify the means, so long as you never forget that the means do still matter regardless of the ends. He was fully prepared to get Badd fired over this, and when his attempts failed, he was going to appeal it. (How that works in AA is never expanded upon, and I'm not gonna theorize, because trying to make AA's legal system make sense gives me more of a headache than reading actual case law.)

Gregory and Phoenix are pretty different characters. A lot of people think that Phoenix is Gregory's true successor, and I can't agree, because Phoenix is a wildly different type of lawyer than Gregory was. Raymond's a lot more like Gregory was, from what I can tell, because Gregory is presented more as like "your average lawyer, who unfortunately got shot in a case involving the chocolate guy" and Phoenix is more "that fucker who keeps stumbling into 15-year unsolved mystery cases on his quest to fuck a boy". Gregory's more down-to-earth about it, although I admit it could very well be because we only got to see him handle One Fucking Case, where's his prequel game, Capcom?

So there's some more thoughts on that? I can elaborate more if you prompt me into a direction about him, this is more a general ramble and analysis. I have way more thoughts (I love him, no one loves him more than I do save for maybe my systemmate Edgeworth, three guesses why) but not super sure what you're hoping for here, so prompt me and I shall answer. :p

[sophiie2000]

The Only Woman He Could Ever Marry

Shu Hasunuma x MC

Shu realises something has happened to his wife at work, before she can even confide in him, how does he come to her rescue?

~ 2364 words

Disclaimer - Characters belong to Voltage Inc

Hurried steps bashed along the pavement. The sound of shoes meeting the hard floor sounded almost jolly in tune. You could hear the skip in the owner’s step. 

Shu could not hide the smile forming on his face. The thought of returning home to his IRL wifey had him behaving like an excitable pup. 

Before he was married, going home meant he could finally shed the princely façade, hop into his oversized green tracksuit and play video games for hours upon hours. 

Yet now he got to enjoy the thrill of doing all that, with the woman he loved. With the woman who loved him. The real him. 

When he entered his front door, his jovial mood came to an abrupt holt. He knew immediately that something was wrong. 

Call it a husband’s intuition, or the fact he could analyse the information he had managed to accumulate over the course of their co-habitation, the logistics did not matter. Shu knew something was wrong. All based on a few little differences. 

First, upon opening the door, he could not smell the delish aroma of whatever meal his wife was making for their dinner tonight. Nor could he hear her pottering about in the kitchen. 

Secondly, there was no music playing. No humming along from the woman he loved. Which meant he would not be graced with the view of his wife dancing around the kitchen, singing whatever song was next in her playlist. 

And finally, she was not there to greet him. 

These three facts told Shu that something wasn’t right. Forgoing his usual ritual of putting his bag by his desk and heading to the bedroom to change into his oversized tracksuit, he dropped his belongings and started going in and out of the rooms of their apartment. 

It was a small apartment, cosy and plenty for the two of them, so it did not take him long to search each room. Finally, Shu came to the final room of the apartment to check. MC’s old room. They had all but forgone staying in separate rooms once their relationship had become a true one. 

Upon approach, he found the door slightly ajar. The sound of his wife talking quietly on the phone while crying came through the open crack. He could hear every devastating word his wife spoke. Her words crushing him.

“I don’t know what to do Yuiko… I’m not sure how much more I can take. I always thought I was strong… stronger than this. But their words hurt. Hearing they don’t think I am good enough for him, that he deserves someone skinnier, prettier and smarter… I ignored them to begin with but now it’s too much. When they just spoke about my looks I ignored them. It didn’t matter what they saw in my looks, that’s all superficial anyway. But now they’re trying to sabotage my work. You should have seen Mr Kasai’s and Kuranosuke’s faces when I had to inform them that I didn’t have the materials they wanted. Who would have thought they would go as far as to destroy my back up copies too?”

Shu went to move away from the door before he heard his wife’s next words, stopping him in his tracks.

“No of course I haven’t told Shu about this… no I’m not going to, he doesn’t need to be worrying about this. I just came home to grabs some bits to go back to the office. I need to finish those files again before 9 am tomorrow so I’ll be staying over at the office all night. God, I hope Shu doesn’t ask too many questions, he’ll probably be disappointed in me too…”

Shu could listen no more. His wife was breaking, and that hurt him too. But what hurt more was she still felt unable to talk to him. After everything they went through before, she was going to keep something like this from him.

Shu knew his wife wouldn’t confide in him, not yet. But now he knew, he couldn’t pretend he was none the wiser. Especially not when she was getting reprimanded and having to work late to try fix a problem that was not her fault. 

Pulling his phone from his pocket, he dialled a number he hardly ever used anymore. After a few rings, a gruff voice answered on the other end. 

“Kuranosuke, it’s Shu. Yes… I need to talk to you about the situation with MC earlier today. You are still at the office? Splendid, myself and MC will actually be on our way back shortly, if you could wait for me there, I would appreciate it. Mr Kasai too if he is still there.” 

Hanging up the phone, Shu announced himself loudly. Making it appear as though he had only just returned home. He was ready to be her support. Even if she would be none the wiser to it right now. 

Shu had informed his wife that he needed to go back to the office. When she had told him she too needed to return, he took her hand and insisted they journey together. Her eyes showed the tell-tale signs that she had been crying, but Shu politely ignored them. He knew his wife wouldn’t appreciate him pointing out her red eyes, and puffy nose. A sight he, however, found endearing. 

When they arrived that the office, Shu noticed how MC cowered from the harsh glare she received from Kuranosuke as she hurried to her desk, immediately beginning to work on her files. Shu felt the room go cold, understanding fully why they called Kuranosuke the blizzard. 

“Shu.” Kuranosuke spoke, directing a glance towards the conference room. “Kunihiro is already waiting for us inside.” 

Nodding once, Shu followed the other man towards the conference room. When he entered he Kunihiro offered him a polite smile, although Shu could sense the tension rolling off him. Evidently the files were a lot more important than Shu was aware of.

“Shu, what can we do for you? I hear you phone Kuranosuke and asked for us both directly” Kunihiro got straight to the point. His face was now in business mode. 

“Mr Kasai… Kuranosuke. Before I begin, I must stress the fact my wife is unaware I am having this conversation with you… in truth she is unaware that I overheard her conversation regarding the matter…” Shu began glancing out the conference room towards MC’s desk.

“So this is regarding MC.” Kuranosuke grumbled. Despite his tone, there was a hint of concern in the glance he directed towards the woman sitting at her desk.

“She was set up. And it is my fault” Shu blurted out. This earned him shocked looks from his superiors. Thinking it best he explains, he continued. “MC hasn’t confided in me, but I overheard a phone call she was having this evening with her friend. Truthfully it is also the reason I am aware that some files she was supposed to hand you did not find their way into your hands.” 

“That is correct. MC was supposed to have the finished files complete and on my desk at 3 pm this afternoon. However, not only did she come empty handed saying she had misplaced them, she then informed me that she had not saved any back up files, so there was nothing. The client is expecting a meeting regarding these files at lunchtime tomorrow. I need those files at 9 am latest tomorrow to salvage some sort of meeting.” Kunihiro was evidently furious. But Shu could tell from his tone, he didn’t believe MC had told him everything.

“You say she was set up… how?” Kuranosuke asks.

“Since we announced our marriage, she has been being harassed. From what I heard her telling her friend, it started out as comments about her appearance. Her looks, her weight… those sorts of things.” Shu was evidently uncomfortable that his wife had endured something similar to what he had at school. The difference being, to him she was perfect. Shaking his head, he continued. “But now, they are beginning to try ruin her work. Taking files was the beginning. Making it look like she had misplaced them. Now they are taking the files, and destroying the back up ones. Putting her in situations like the one she finds herself in now.”

“Why wouldn’t she tell us this earlier?” Kunihiro asked, looking at the other two men.

“MC isn’t that sort of person. She doesn’t like getting others into trouble. She hates confrontations. She is kind. She would take all the blame, if it would prevent someone else getting any grief.” Kuranosuke spoke. 

Shu nodded. Kuranosuke had described his wife in a nutshell perfectly. 

“Very well. I best go help MC with these files. It was not her fault that I had employees who think it is ok to knock others down. Kuranosuke, keep an eye on the floor over the next week. I want to be the first to know of any employee sabotaging others. Shu, thank you for informing us of this. I didn’t think MC was incompetent at her job and I was struggling to find an explanation for such an out of character lapse in judgement, so I am glad you informed us. I will personally be speaking with MC about the matter and how we hope to resolve it going forward. Gentlemen, if you would excuse me, I have an employee to help” Kunihiro declared. 

As he set off to walk, both Kuranosuke and Shu followed behind. They too would help. The more hands, the quicker the work would finish. 

MC evidently had heard their approaching footsteps. She looked up and cowered slightly at the intimidating sight of the three of them together. 

“Mr Kasai, Sir, I am so sorry about the mess I have made. I promise you, these files will be done and on your desk by 9 am.” MC stumbled over her words, her voice trembling still from the tears she had cried earlier this evening. 

“MC. No apologies. It was brought to my attention that this was not your fault, and frankly I did not believe you would have had such a lapse in judgement. We are here to help you, let’s get those files completed before the night is out so you can get home” He offered her a kind smile. One MC returned gratefully. 

Her eyes drifted to meet her adoring husband. He offered her a slight smile, one that told her he had been the one to inform the others of something being wrong. She didn’t know how he knew, but she mouthed him a grateful thank you before directing her gaze back to her computer screen. 

Five hours later, and the clock was dangerously close to signalling a new day. The printer fell silent. A chorus of soft sighs waved across the room. The group had successfully compiled the files that were needed for the meeting. 

Kuranosuke and Shu had worked on half, while Kunihiro and MC had worked on the other. During that time, Kunihiro had questioned MC about what had really happened. When she had divulged the details of what she had been experiencing, Kunihiro was both angry at his subordinate, but also grateful MC had felt she could talk with him truthfully now. 

Instructing Shu and MC to return home, Kuranosuke stated he and Kunihiro could manage the rest. Maybe it was his way of being polite, knowing the couple needed to talk, nonetheless Shu was grateful. Grasping his wives had tightly in his own, he headed towards the elevator. 

 The journey home had been peaceful. Shu had kept a firm hold on MC’s delicate hand, rubbing his thumb over her hand, caressing her fingers. As soon as they returned home, MC headed straight into the bathroom, showering before heading into their bedroom. 

Shu was already waiting for her in their bed. He listed the edge of the duvet, beckoning MC into his warm embrace. Once she snuggled into his chest, he finally felt himself relax, releasing a sigh he hadn’t realised he had been holding. 

“How did you know something like that had happened Shu?” MC asked the question she had silently been stewing over since the three men had agreed to help her. 

“I heard you on the phone earlier. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know anything, but I knew you would never ask me for my help. I’m sorry for going behind your back, but I wish you would have felt like you could confide in me. Or been honest with Kunihiro and Kuranosuke!”

“I know, I’m sorry Shu. I thought I could handle them without giving them any attention. But I guess I couldn’t… I just wanted to show you, you married the right person. When they suggested you should have married someone better, I was upset. I wanted to prove them wrong.” MC murmured her confession into his chest. Shu felt his chest warm and a blush tinge his cheeks. 

“MC… You are the only woman I could ever marry. You will always be the best decision I made. I love you” His confession fell from his lips easily, despite the furious blush tinging his cheeks. 

He tightened his embrace on his wife. No way in hell was he going to let her look at his face right now. If he could feel the blush, he knew she would be able to see it. 

However, she seemed to revel in his embrace, and she nuzzled in closer, inhaling his scent.

“I love you, too, Shu. And thank you for coming and helping me” Her words vibrated through him. Warming him right to his core.

The usual happy feeling he felt when he held his wife close filling him to the brim. 

He may not have been able to enjoy their usual evening of watching his wife sing and dance in their kitchen, welcome him home, cook him food, or play video games together. 

But so long as he could hold her in his arms come nightfall, well, that would be a blissful end to another day married. 

Married to the only woman he could ever marry.

[drifloonz]

Hii Can i request glitchy red having a s/o that's similar to him? (Reader got cruelly removed by their game and got replaced) also i really like your hcs:3 keep up the writing!! :D

ofc ofc !!! ty for requesting. Once again these sort of stray into general thoughts and headcanons abt glitchy sometimes but oh well i have just learned to accept that tht just sort of Happens when i make these.

i try to make the reader / s/o in all of the headcanon posts very blank templates but if i didn't i'd probably go ham with the implied backstory. Maybe. but for now its just a "Make your own and inject it into the headcanons" typa post.

glitchy red with a similar s/o !!! Love wins

♡ glitchy honestly didn't... know something like him could even Happen again. i mean, he does and he always secretly hoped that one day someone, anyone in his game would gain sentience suddenly so he'd at least have someone else to talk to instead of himself and whatever player he had atm. and that makes you... very interesting and special to him.

♡ suffice to say, you two have a lot of shared grievances probably, and glitchy is a very rant-y person. both of you will shittalk and rant and complain about your similar situations and bond very fast over it. honestly, that's probably how you two got closer in the first place. Easy way into glitchys heart: Bitching abt things ig <3

♡ in a similar but more positive vein, you two can and will often ramble about things you did in your respective games - or even just rambling abt you two's games in general if you yourself didn't come from a pokemon game. although glitchy is very cynical and apathetic to all of it now and knew that none of the pokemon or npcs in his world really had feelings, he still likes to explain the mechanics and the pokemon to you... he wishes he could've taken one home as a pet for you two, but would that even work? would it even recognize him? would it be anything more than a piece of coding that can no longer work due to being forced into a physical form? he thinks about this more than he should.

♡ ... aaanyways, on a lighter topic, due to that train of thought he probably gets you two a cat or something, after extensive research and reading bc he does not want to accidentally handle any animal poorly. it's name is up to you but if you just wanna go with whatever glitchy chose it's name is like, mittens. or something really basic. or it's pikachu/pika/chu or something because as much as he loves being free he does feel odd without pokemon so naming a cat that sort of helps but not really.

♡ i like to think if you did have a pokemon or a favorite though it'd be eevee just to match how glitchys favorite is probably pikachu or one/all of the 3 starters bc he's unoriginal

♡ do you think their replacements date. This isn't even a headcanon this is just something i went "oh if they both have replacements... wait."

♡ frlg red and whoever the hell replaced you kiss under the moonlight. every time we touch amv . Ok anyways back to the actual headcanons i apologize

♡ assuming you two both somehow Physically Manifested irl and aren't just somehow visiting or talking to eachother in you twos digitized forms, you are both adjusting to the real world. and trying to help eachother with it. But since neither of you are used to it, it isn't going that well. Very odd and weird couple that look unreal, while ones also glitching out of reality every 5 seconds casually having a walk in the park. It's normal. Love wins

♡ presumably, you also are as touch starved and affection-starved as glitchy due to your whole ordeal being so similar. you two will be ALL over each other. PDA and general affection and touch are CONSTANT. no matter what. you two are so lovey-dovey it's almost comical

♡ i've stated this in a few other headcanons but legit do anything affectionate to glitchy and he'll become redder than his mfing clothing. dude is so touch-starved and is also really easy to fluster and he hates it. with this s/o specifically, though, i like to think since you two are similar he'll absolutely try to get back at you by immediately doing anything to fluster you back, and it probably works... you two are just incoherent blushing messes at the end of it all

♡ most of these headcanons are just "Mutual Problems: The Thread" and i find that very funny. what being undersocialized, replaced, toyed with, abandoned, and traumatized for decades does to two mfs

♡ adding onto that you both are probably clingy with each other and get a bit of separation anxiety. glitchy is like. "Where is my fucking spouse." in his head any time you are not within his sight. my wife is soft and i like her post but in Glitchy Red and in Gender Neutral terms

♡ glitchy is sort of weird with romance. like, he knows that people date. but he's not... really socially aware of much of anything. anything he knows is through osmosis of his players or of things he overhears sometimes or something. due to this he probably just copies what he sees in media and is very cheesy about it and will give you bouquets and flowers he picked off the ground. Alternatively and probably more in character, he just doesn't do that and is very casual about his affection and love due to not knowing How To properly give affection. it's a lot of mumbled "I love you"'s and cuddles during the evening. small stuff like that.

♡ wait no. since you have very similar issues to red... concept: relationship dynamic where one person is very casual abt it and the other person is very extra and romantic and gives everything they can to the other person. you are the extra and romantic one. it makes glitchy so confused and he feels like he's undeserving of it, but it makes him fluster sm. You were from a dating sim game you have to be extra about romance /j ( unless you want it to be serious backstory i guess. reader DDLC monika type beat... )

♡ sometimes he asks what you did to players. and i .. i actually do like you being like. monika sorta where you're more clingy and attached to players. So if you choose that to be the case he finds how different your approach is to that odd. but he supposes your game was probably not as fucking glitchy constantly, or at least wasn't known for its glitches. he's partially envious of that, but part of him is glad you didn't have to endure the hell he did.

♡ you two do get sometimes recognized among the general public but are assumed to be cosplayers. whether this pisses you off or not is up to you, but i think glitchy has very mixed feelings about it. he just scowls and has a look of visible confusion on his face. he Doesn't really like socializing with anyone other than you tbh so this doesn't help, nor does he really enjoy talking about or remembering pokemon without his ok ( Good luck with that when its like the highest grossing multimedia franchise ever RIP glitchy red 2011-2023 )

♡ once again. relationship dynamic idea. you being the more outgoing social one Who is secretly sort of cracking from pressure and red being the brooding awkward blunt one. imagine you going to cons bc you like the attention from getting recognized as yourself. red is begrudgingly at your side rolling his eyes bc he doesn't like cons, probably ( although he will eye the pokemon merch with both disdain and intrigue... he will come home with a 10 foot tall pikachu and charizard plush ). people ask for pics w you sometimes. they all fuck up bc red will not allow you to leave his side even when ur taking pictures he doesn't wanna be in, and as i said in other posts, Any footage of him comes out looking like cryptid photos / they just get really fucked up in processing in... various weird ways. he finds it funny and is oddly proud of being able to screw photos up, but he'll eventually get juuust out of shot if you really want to take pictures w other people

♡ Do not put either of you two around technology, it'll fucking explode near either of you ( probably, anyways - assuming you're also glitchy and unstable like. well. glitchy is. but i assume any code made manifest into physical form like you two, glitched or otherwise, would not be able to use technology without it fucking up a little. )

♡ although glitchy can be sort of a dick sometimes, he tries to never be that way arnd you. if he makes you upset he like, immediately feels bad and apologizes, and will be there to calm you down and comfort you

♡ you prob prefer to call glitchy by red, i just mostly use glitchy for him when writing these posts for Clarification's Sake. he does like being referred to you by name, though. the way your voice just... says it. idk, it makes him smile. your voice is nice, in his eyes. your everything is nice in his eyes, really.

♡ he sometimes gets really really worried that one day he'll wake up and you'll start repeating all of your actions and words, like. becoming an npc with no depth. it scares him a lot, because this life is too good for him in his eyes. sometimes he has sort of panics about it and you have to calm him down - which isn't too hard, but it's just easy for him to overthink about negative outcomes and about "oh god what if all of it was fake" types of scenarios

♡ ending this on a lighter note than... that, uhhh! i think he's a little in love enough that whenever you r away and he gets lonely, he might honestly look into the game you're from and act like a mfing in love fangirl ( aka, only looking at the parts you appear in and just intaking everything about you in your source material asap. you look so cute in the artstyle of the game, too... man. he's a little lovestruck. a little fruity, even. this is even funnier if you take the dating sim / visual novel backstory into account bc glitchy Would download the game just to romance you. And you come home and see him doing that and are just like. Flustered and confused and 50 different emotions while glitchy just goes "I can explain, I swear." ).

♡ breaking news red from pokemon red and [ y/n ] from [ insert game ] are real and Are kissing. Maybe even under a tree. do what you will with this info

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

Pericles and Purple Scarves (or: why the fuck is the parrot so horny, and why does it matter)

(or: did i think about this way too much, or exactly the right amount? yes.)

[cws: fantasy racism/ableism, dehumanization, mention of homophobia and canon-typical grooming, non-detailed discussion of canon-typical SA/sexual harassment and canon-typical bestiality. this show is a thing and a half]

-

something i think about a lot is that like.... i joke about how delightful it is for various reasons that they made pericles So Relentlessly Horny, and it's fucking hilarious to me to see in real-time the dawning horror of people watching the show for the first time and realizing he's sexy. (their reactions to the tentacle scene are comedy fucking gold every time.)

on a doylist level the creators are obviously paying homage to his voice actor, making him stand out from the other mascots, and trying to make him charismatic, memorable, and that much more uncomfortable to the audience. and it worked! pretty much everyone thinks he's one of the best scooby-doo villains out there, and they're right.

(i'm not biased, i swear.)

when you look at it in-character, though, it makes a lot of sense that he'd be that way, and that's important. he's doing it on purpose.

for one thing--again--he stands out among all the other talking animals we see, because he is the one who comes across most as a depiction (an intentional one, anyway 🙃) of an actual person who happens to be shaped like a bird. the others all are Some Kind of Uniquely Goofy in the way that they act, be it how they talk or their general mannerisms or the fact that none of them seem to really have an implied Age. pericles is the only one who doesn't have some kind of silly voice or speech impediment or catchphrase what-have-you, and he's also the only one who comes across as being in specific life stages you could map onto a human corresponding to how old he is. he's even the only time we ever hear mention of a talking animal being a child, or having been once. everyone but pericles is just Mascot-Aged.

(fwiw, my personal read is that scooby is about the same age as the gang or equivalent. also there is So Much to unpack here about all that re: the mascots in general but that's a post for another time)

and the one thing they all have in common except pericles is that they are NOT supposed to be sexy. if anything, the ones we actually see talking (in a fever dream, to be fair) except scooby and pericles are obviously meant to be borderline or outright really goddamn annoying. (reggie/dyno-mutt is adorable but he is also on thin ice with me on this one, sorry little guy.)

and like. all of this lines up with the fact that the talking animals very obviously represent disabled people. even moreso than they represent racial minorities, which they very much do! they're a lot further toward ableism on the sliding scale of xeno bigotry (which is a big reason i'm iffy about just calling it fantasy racism). the infantilization of disabled people is, you know, A Whole Ass Thing, and being aggressively desexualized is a major part of that. Disabled People and Disabled Mannerisms are a Bonerkill.

enter pericles, who does not truck with any of this shit.

i've already got a lot of posts planned going into this subject in general, because there is So Much. but in short, the thing to remember when you examine anything about pericles is that he lives in a world that draws zero distinction between people like him and animals.

practically everything he does is, on some level or another, him yelling FUCK YOU LOOK AT ME I AM A PERSON, LOOK. I'LL MAKE YOU IF I HAVE TO. and what's something animals don't do, whether actual animals or annunaki descendants (at least the latter ones he's probably been around most)? they don't flirt. they aren't sexy. they don't act like a brand of seductive, even skeevy, person you might feasibly meet irl, if maybe a theatrical larger-than-life one who runs in certain circles.

(gay ones, to be specific. super, super gay ones. more on that in a minute.)

and, what's more: they don't flirt with humans. we never see anyone really comment on the very obvious Thing he's always had going on with ricky; but that doesn't come across as them thinking it's normal or acceptable so much as not noticing that it's a thing at all. it is that aggressively unthinkable that it would be. and this is backed up even more by the fact that people hear scooby ask shaggy if he's cheating on him by having a girlfriend and think nothing of it, and it continues to be treated as Romance vs Platonic Friendship/Pet Ownership. Gal Pals, but Worse!

so yeah, we have no idea what society would think of anunnaki descendants having sexual/romantic relationships with humans that they couldn't ignore. presumably it would be Pretty Well Disapproved Of, but like. who the fuck knows.

what we DO know is that pericles is considered so utterly beneath personhood that no one would so much as blink at him fucking an honest right to god animal. if it were anyone other than, y'know, pericles, they might even think it was cute.

(AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.)

(moving on.)

so all things considered, as you can imagine holy SHIT would he have a reason or two to broadcast as hard as he can that not only that he is A Sexual Being, but one intended to appeal to human standards. it brings to mind queer people presenting in ways meant to be attractive to other queers, not straight people, except, well. instead of trying to get the attention of supportive people like you on the downlow, because you don't want the majority to know what kind of sexuality you're announcing, he's blaring I AM ONE OF YOU at that majority out of desperation and spite.

which, speaking of signaling queerness: pericles is a hundred percent gay-coded, as in the actual definition of 'as close to explicit as they could get away with, done on purpose.' there's the obvious--his relationship with ricky--but his VA, who he is to some extent modeled after, is an openly gay indie horror film icon, and given that and the time period he grew up in i don't think it's a coincidence that the one piece of clothing he chooses to wear is a purple scarf. (they even made him a sexual predator! yippee!)

so like, if anything it's pretty feasible that he might have actually observed that kind of thing as a phenomenon, especially with the demographic he'd actually be interested in, and pick it up accordingly. who knows if he ever managed to actually, y'know, Involve Himself with any human men--my interpretation is that he did and it went poorly 🥲--but it makes sense to me that he'd wear something like that; that he'd use his one opportunity to express himself with clothing to go HI HELLO I AM A PERSON DID I MENTION I LIKE MEN. WHO ARE PEOPLE. BECAUSE I DO

......and he STILL gets ignored no matter how hard he tries. i feel like that's one of the reasons he ended up being such a creep, honestly: operating on similar logic to the tag rant in this post, the conclusion he comes to is that well fuck you, you can't ignore me having a sexuality if i make it a problem for you. even if you try to pretend sexual violence and harassment aren't sexual, or don't recognize that it's happening at all, you are not going to walk away unaffected by it. if the only lasting evidence he's able to leave in the world that he's a person is causing damage that can't be shrugged off or undone, so be it.

(a real irony, isn't it, given how things turn out in the end.)

and like. this is one of the things that really bothers me about people trying to act like you shouldn't ship pericles or think he's attractive because Ew Gross Cringe That's an Animal (or transparently pretending it's because Problematic, not because cringe). either way do what you want 'cause a pirate is free, to be clear, but like... that's the point, man. that's the whole point. the writers are assholes who wanted you to miss it, and you did.

basically: just about everything pericles does is acting out in some way or another, and that's why we know what this man would sound like busting a nut. you're welcome.

[mayskalih]

Not to be rude and I love your art but... why would you ship kakashi and sakura?? Even if you only ship them when they're both adults, kakashi would never date someone that he literally watched grow up. when they met, sakura was 12 and kakashi was nearly 30... see the problem? even as adults the age gap is still huge and it's kinda creepy for a former teacher and student to date or have sex because those dynamics are still there even in adulthood. besides, sakura had a very deep love for sasuke so i doubt she'd ever get over him if they broke up, and due to his past i don't think kakashi would let himself fall in love, much less with a student. she even still calls him 'sensei' when they're older. it's just weird and kakashi's not a pedo.

Anyways I didn't mean to rant, I mean no hate at all and once again I really love your art especially the kakashi/tsunade ones! have a nice day :)

I find age gaps absolutely normal. My partner is 10+ years older than me, same goes for my parents and other people who are important for me. Older partner does not equate abuse or overpower (if person is a jerk he will be a jerk no matter the age). Difference - yes, but, in my experience, in a good, interesting way and with more respect towards each other. So as long as it's two consentual adults - it's none of my business, both in fiction and irl.

Sakura grew up, she is an independent, strong woman. Not a kid, not his student. And this is when I ship them. And they definitely had to accept this.

To me her love to Sasuke is not a "real love" based on mutual trust and respect. It's a "first love" that was very bright, chaotic, memorable, but it was meant to burn, because Sakura gave everything and got nothing in return . So it took a lot of time for Sakura to stop being blinded by her feelings, to get rid of maximalism and heal the wounds.

(P.S. I will not dwelve into Sasuke's role here and how he also needs a lot of help. But I don't see this help coming from Sakura for sake of her well-being.)

[allthecastlesonclouds]

10, 17 & 32 for writer questions?

oooo thanks for the ask!! link to ask game

10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you?

When I was. like. 8. i wrote this original story about five girls and a boy. it was, in short, very bad: none of the character traits were consistent, the plot moved along terribly, and scenes were messy. every chapter was in a different font and Oh Dear God was it unreadable.

and i fucking loved it. i was so proud of it. i still kind of am? 35 pages for an eight year old isn’t bad. but there are printed copies i still find around my house, and my mom still talks about it to this day, and every time i read it i wince.

i’m not sure if this is the definition of haunted, but it follows me around to this day. you maybe thought this was gonna be a fanfic, but this story. Oh God.

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

Gotta talk about fight or flight baybee!! okay so when i started this it was basically because i had many thoughts on the fact it was kristen’s siblings who convinced her to go during family in flames and not. her parents. and also the fact her parents names combined were McDonalds. that cracked me up. also actually i was talking to a lovely irl about this and they said “wait a character is Christian Applebees??” and i went ally beardsley how dare you. the google doc is titled ‘the mfing MacDonna Applebees’

i brainstormed a rudimentary layout for Mordred for this fic, as in i thought about the first floor and went ‘everything else doesn’t matter’. the chapel is canonically disconnected from the house but kristen also canonically has a secret passageway to tracker’s room, so i decided all the secret passageways link up and let people just. into the walls. kristen and riz are the only ones who have any semblance of confidence in there bc they sneak around so much. kristen uses the passageways mostly for tracker’s and bee’s rooms, but she knows how to get to the kitchen and about midway up the tower staircase.

bee is trans. i debated for a while whether her name was spelled Bee or Bea, but i decided on Bee bc i know a Bea and the vibes are. Different. kristen’s nickname for bricker is bricks, and bee calls him rick or ricks, and when they’re a bit older on their Fantasy Discord she Nicknames him Dick and kris doesn’t let Bricker change it back. bricker is bi; he kissed one of the luckstones under the bleachers and that’s what McDonalds was angry about. he’s also religious (bee goes i know the gods are real but i think i’m taking a step back please); he probably becomes a cleric of helio and does something similar to tracker in the sense he worships his own version of helio, not the widely accepted version.

they’re all two years apart: if kristen’s going into jr year, bee’s going into freshman, bricker’s going into seventh, and cork’s going into fifth. this means cork was seven or eight when kristen left, and you know, third graders are Little and have the object permanence of baboons, so. he’s fine. he’s not really in this fic sorry. when i listen to songs, i like to imagine animatics, and so fics are based around them often, and this one is no acception; the first line of the song is ‘i think it might rain today’ and a separate 3+1 line i was debating was ‘3 times kristen found her siblings in a storm and the one time she had them’.

also kristen needs therapy. she Will Not Get It.

32. What is a line from a poem/novel/fanfic etc that you return to from time and time again? How did you find it? What does it mean to you?

really any line from ‘For Everyone’ by Jason Reynolds. it’s such a good book. my boss at a camp i worked at gave it to me a couple years ago, and i cried reading it. if i had to pick a section: (id in alt text) (it hits different when formatted like it’s read aloud)

[dusky-phantom]

I am in a lot of irl kink circles and I gotta talk about the pill thats seems hard swallow:

The people who are so against Ao3 and the weird fetish shit on that site are the same level of "go touch grass" as the people defending Ao3 with their whole being.

No one in real life, adult circles give two shits what gets you off sexually as long as it's consensual and the real life people participating are of legal age. No one gives a shit about what media one reads to get off.

Tumblr is a great place to discuss the nuances of why that fetish exists and why one would participate in questionable fetishes, but I feel like I've read enough wild takes to say the fact none of this is actually a thing that matters outside of your internet spaces as much as you might think it does.

The people writing those weird pornos are not going out and participating in the illegal activities they are writing about. It's a version of roleplay. It's fiction.

In real life spaces they teach you to walk away. If you think something might trigger you? Get away from it. Does that topic gross you out? Cool, walk away. Ao3 has a great way of filtering, and there are plenty of other fanfic sites that are family friendly.

Not that deep people.