#and they're both incredibly emotionally taxing

[selfshipping-haven]

What are the top 5 shows you would recommend to people?

Okay that's an excellent question! Most if not all might be cartoons so brace yourself lmao.

Ever since I've watched Transformers Animated I've made it my mission to make as many people as possible get into it. It's like if Transformers mixed with Teen Titans. It's great! Maybe I'm biased because Prowl was my first f/o lol.

Someone I knew suggested I watch Tuca and Bertie, and I'm glad they did. It's a wonderful adult cartoon. It's hilarious and it makes a an excellent use of the adult medium to tackle serious subjects. I actually really relate to Birdie most of the time, and even Tuca in some ways.

Actually I'm rewatching Sonic X right now and it's so charming so far and I had to add it. It's corny, it makes great use of the Sonic Team, and it has a lot of Looney Tunes-esque gags. So many platonics in that show. I started for Shadow and so far my favorite is Amy. Unfortunately it hasn't aged the best in certain places

Oh my god. Now's my chance. Nobody talks about this but. Dr Katz Professional Therapist. It's an adult cartoon from MTV in the 90s and it's all on youtube for free. It's kind of unique in it's humor, much like Home Movies(which i couldn't actually bring myself to finish but that's another story), the characters don't really sound like they have much of a script and they stutter a lot and the dialogue just feels very natural and it's so charming. And his patients are basically popular comedians of the time doing their little stand up acts and it's super neat because my favorite comedian Brian Regan was in it!!! It even has a perfectly cut scream in one of the episodes. Got me to cackle on multiple occasions. Dr Katz is actually a parental f/o of mine too.

I had a couple of others I was indecisive about what to pick for the last one. But I had just remembered the Don't Hug Me I'm Scared show! I recommend this ONLY for people who are into horror though. It can get a little intense, albeit not as intense as the original shorts. And the humor keeps it from being too disturbing for sure. I found their situation to be strangely relatable, and I love the wacky humor and the dark spin on a children's media that isn't overly edgy and is genuinely fun. Besides I've had this scene stuck in my head.

Honorable mention: It wasn't a show so I couldn't really put this in anywhere, but I highly recommend the new Mickey Mouse shorts that began in 2013. It's a fresh spin on the Disney characters, has incredibly quotable humor on the level of that of Spongebob, and has so many loving obscure references to other Disney properties. Sometimes the shorts will be pretty standard but with this extremely out of pocket moment, but sometimes they'll just be entirely bizarre. My favorite is the one where Mickey and Donald construct and entire potato themed Disneyland for Goofy. I also have an f/o from there too but shhhhh

(Also you might also want to read the tags)

[runespoor7]

I mean obviously I’m am going to ask you about chengxian, for the ask meme

What made you ship it?

It was the most interesting relationship in the book. I'm a sucker for childhood friends with broken promises, for grief, for misunderstandings over loyalty and love, and for relationships whose resolution in canon is bittersweet.

It still took some time and effort before I started really shipping it. I was theoretically open to shipping it but I hadn't yet read fics that really sold me on it (this was in 2019, I think). Then as an experiment I put a WWX-inspired character in the setting I was GMing for the JC and JYL NPC stand-ins to have him to play off of. Turned out I did ship them.

What are your favorite things about the ship?

😬

*wide, helpless, expansive gesture*

It's never simple with them. It's always fraught. They love one another but they also resent one another. Hunting demonic cultivators is about WWX still maybe being alive. Maybe JC can bring himself to kill WWX this time, or maybe he can find a way to bring WWX back home and forgive him. WWX promises to be with JC but he ends up promising that he won't stay ("like my father served your father") but he didn't mean it with an end. the mess that is the fraughtness of WWX's liminal space when it comes to his social rank.

love hurts, what hurts is love.

the fact that the one 'leading' is WWX, not JC, going against the accepted social order. (tbh, if that wasn't the case, I probably wouldn't be into the ship.) it paints such a picture of WWX being so charismatic, and JC being so taken with him, that JC falls into being WWX's sidekick. no wonder YZY was awful about it.

JC keeping Chenqing like a mad dog and keeping Lotus Pier WWX-safe. I. god. JC rating WWX's attention >>>>>>>>>>>>> JC's self-respect every time, in every way. Amazing.

it's incredible to me how WWX asks JYL about love in a scene framed in a manner to make it subtextually point in the direction of LWJ (it's mdzs; the canon pair in mdzs is wgxn; there are no - explicit - love triangles in mdzs; and yet even WWX's original crush on LWJ is, uh. informed by JC and how WWX is with JC and the fact that LWJ is New and Not The Son of WWX's Benefactor. this is normal.), where it's apparent that WWX is scared of being in love because it changes how you act, it's a limit, it's a cage, you're limiting yourself for someone else - and then WWX does something for JC that is everything he was scared of.

and it does ruin him! it's terrible! so his romance with LWJ is everything his feelings for JC weren't. He's not the one doing the protecting. LWJ doesn't question him. There are no expectations of anything, no discussions of the future, no thoughts of society. LWJ is just such a comfort, just a good thing WWX gets because he wants it. Also LWJ isn't emotionally taxing af (this is a big one). (WWX kinda ends up YZY-ing himself at the end of the book but I'm not thinking about that.)

WWX's utter toxicity toward JC. not a iota of respect for either JC or JC's boundaries to be found, except when convenient for WWX.

they both really, really believe that WWX is better than JC in every way. it's very cool

look. i'm a simple person. arrogant genius jerk/grumpy dutiful tsundere otp.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

I love the joke that chengxian isn't incest but both of them wish it were, but I think the only time one of them wished they were brothers was JC when he decided to sacrifice himself for WWX and he was lying in bed making morbid jokes. At least sacrificing yourself for your brother who is the better cultivator and can lead the sect would be simple. Forgivable. Good.

I also think they might grow to think of one another as brothers at some point post-canon, that's a sort of reconciliation that might happen, but to me it's key that during canon they don't know what they are to one another, they just know they're scarily, terrifyingly important, and there's no word for what they are to one another.

JC refused shixiong-shidi (in a shocking reversal of their normal dynamic, I think he forgot he did that and spent roughly two decades feeling insecure and weird that WWX doesn't call him shidi) and they can be nothing else, socially speaking. The love that dare not speak its name, if you would. And at that same time post-canon they could also decide that what they're to each other is that WWX used to be in love with JC, and maybe JC still is, and they're not brothers. Or maybe both! The point is, the definition of their relationship is uncharted waters and they never thought of each other as 'brothers' (much less called each other that).

2) WWX is incredibly bitter and resentful of giving his core to JC and that colors everything he thinks and says about JC afterwards, including after he's returned to life. Basically, he gave, and gave, and gave, and felt there was no gratitude, and he's unable to live the life he wanted, unable to reap the promises life made him, and JC isn't any more agreeable or tractable than before (less so, in fact!). It's not fair.

[mxthbladed]

Vaggie, Mannerisms and PTSD

Fuck it, I'm gonna do the thing.

So, this is specific to my take on Vaggie but this will be integral to her reactions and the way she sees herself and the world.

First and foremost: as an exorcist, Vaggie was part of an army- a militaristic culture that has left a lasting impression on her. As such, Vaggie values the chain of command. During her time as an exorcist, she deferred to Lute and Adam, whether she liked them/their decisions or not because, at the time, she respected their authority. After falling, this extends to Charlie and, later, Lucifer and the others in the hotel.

As she stated in the show, "There is nothing stronger than the trust between comrades in arms!" Due to her militaristic lifestyle in Heaven, Vaggie learned how to trust through battle. The trust you gain in someone when you're on a battlefield, risking your lives for each other, is a completely different kind of bond. If she has fought beside someone and they defended one another, her trust in that person has been earned. In Hell, this begins to shift slightly towards the end of season 1 but not by much. Her trust is still hard to earn but she has a lot of respect for battle prowess and people who feel love and loyalty as deeply as she does.

Now then. Because of her militaristic background, her manner of speaking is blunt and honest, almost to a fault of being hurtful or rude. However, this does not mean that is how she intends her speech to be taken- it is just how her manner of speaking is. Likewise, she is unafraid to call out her superiors (or those that would be notably ranked higher than herself), even going so far as to swear at them to convey her message. If her respect is earned and the person is an authority figure, she's more likely to refer to them as "sir" or "ma'am."

Other than her manner of speech, notable habits that she has and persist even years later: she has a higher than average tolerance for physical discomfort, wakes up quickly and ready for action, very detail-oriented, knows how to clean and organize living space, can sew basic repairs (can fix buttons, minor tears, patches, etc), is aware of political structure and information on important enemy figures, has a low tolerance for laziness or slacking, refuses to ask people to do things that she herself will not do, likes having clear orders, following chain of command and fair penalties, works efficiently and quickly, is very self-reliant and has a fairly high tolerance for work stress.

Her fall, however, created a stark change in some of Vaggie's behaviors. While she's incredibly loyal when someone proves themselves to her, due to her status being stripped by Lute and Adam, her trust in others was shaken deeply and she developed PTSD.

Vaggie's PTSD is something I wish to characterize as I, as the mun, have PTSD associated with the military and it's something that I feel Vaggie would also deal with.

Now, concerning her PTSD: Vaggie suffers from night terrors, insomnia, flash backs and depression. Her night terrors often deal directly with her fall, either making her relive the experience or an altered version in which she was not left alive or Charlie never found her. These usually cause her to wake suddenly, either screaming or in tears. She hates talking about her night terrors and, if touched immediately after, will pull away and begin to panic. Charlie is the only one canonically who can calm her down from these (unless plotted otherwise). Vaggie's insomnia regularly keeps her up quite late and she doesn't sleep particularly long. Flash backs can be triggered but they're much more rare. She has scars on her back from where her wings were initially torn and they are quite sensitive. Rough hits to this area run the possibility of triggering a flash back, which would cause a panic attack. Panic attacks, flash backs and night terrors are all incredibly taxing both physically and emotionally and Vaggie is usually exhausted after any of these. It's not uncommon for her to have a migraine after any of these. Her depression causes a lot of issues like a deep-seated self-loathing, abandonment issues and trust issues.

Aggie (my take on a transmasc Vaggie) would also have these issues but also compounded with other issues that I'm probably gonna cover in a different post because this is long enough already.

[ryansjane]

kind of related to the fetishization anon.

my unpopular opinion as a gay guy who's been watching and reading bl for a Long time is that one of the worst things the fetishizing part of the audience does is get the actors involved in their little game of who's fucking who. don't get me wrong, there's other uncomfortable stuff that makes my skin crawl but that is also relatively fair. It's inevitable that, if you like men, watching two men make out or have sex on screen is going to make you feel some type of way. I get it and it's normal and absolutely not my business how they react to it. but the actors are just doing their job.

It drives me insane when conversations about an actor's skill get twisted into like "yeah he was good in that role because his on screen boyfriend is actually his secret irl boyfriend and they're in love", it's both fetishizing and offensive to the actors themselves. Imagine putting effort into a performance and someone goes "he looks in love because he actually is in love and they're fucking tonight🥰".

The fact that is is such a widespread thing that some companies actively exploit it with fanservice makes me sick because they always fall for it. Then when an actor has a life outside the role he played it's all "bl ships we failed to protect" and "[actor] said he has a girlfriend I'm so sad". That hot and steamy bl show is not real life, let the fucking actors do their job.

I've literally made a full video on this exact topic so I'll just leave it here lol, but yes to everything you said! the bl industry is very special compared to practically all others bc it capitalizes on blurring the lines between acting & real life: the more people believe the ship they see on screen also exists irl, the more followers the actors will get, which will result in ads, events, lives, fanmeets, etc. in a way, these actors are selling their privacy & their right to a public love life in exchange for fame & money, and only very few have succeeded in transitioning away from that. and those who have all have entirely left bl so that's why the toxicity didn't follow them as much. ultimately, though, this inherent feeling that bl actors BELONG to their fans & also only to their one true pairing must be incredibly emotionally taxing. I also think these implications get worse if you're a closeted actor who's facing pressures to keep it under wraps yet still is being sexualized from their on-screen queer roles. that type of cognitive dissonance where people love gay you but they don't really LOVE the real gay you, just the puppet version that they can control, is so fucked up in my opinion. and I'm sure one day the bl industry will have to cut down on that shit bc there will be one incident where it WILL end badly.

xxx

[kuzann]

Would you say Ingo's a supernatural conductor of sorts in terms of your AU? He already guides people to their destinations in his regular job (either to physical locations or encouraging trainers in battling), so him guiding the displaced to where they belong makes a lot of sense.

Yeah yeah! You got it! That's the task Arceus meant for him to carry out when it gave him the Arc Watch. It allows Ingo to see natural weak points in the dimensions where he can then use it to open up routes to send extradimensional entities home(like Ultra Beasts, and things that are sort of proto-Pokemon in nature--they're moving toward becoming Pokemon but they aren't there yet, so they lack a stable "real" form and come off as incredibly unnerving to both humans and Pokemon. Mushi from Mushi-shi vibes). After a while he even develops the skill of being able to see these spots without assistance(due to the influence of his traveling through time and from the Arc Watch itself). He also eventually teaches Emmet how to carry out these duties as well, once Emmet has recovered enough. c:

And of course, yeah, sometimes his supernatural conductor duties involve moonlighting as a psychopomp. :( Those missions are the most emotionally-taxing for him.

Maybe it would be fun to add a dusknoir to his team to help with that part eventually... Hmmm...

[crab-withaknife]

Amphibia and Fatshaming/Fatphobia

Starting off with a disclaimer, I think Amphibia is AMAZING and absolutely worth the watch, please support it as the 3rd season comes out. And it is not a bad thing to watch and enjoy this show in spite of these issues I wanted to address. Also, I am a fat person. Just so you know.

But basically, after rewatching the 1st and 2nd season for the third time through and having watched my favorite eps A BUNCH of times on top of that, I recognized some spots where there are jokes that arent respectful and play off the age old unsavory "fat character has a one liner about needing to lose weight" humor, as well as the poor treatment of a character that has gained weight due to emotional and mental distress.

To start out, I want to talk about Mayor Toadstool real quick. I would say that from my watching experience, Mayor Toadstool doesn't have much physical humor making his fatness into a punchline, thankfully, and is design is so similar to the other toads in terms of body shape that it could be written off as him just being shaped like a usual toad. However, Mayor Toadstool is one of the first season's antagonists(ish) and he is definitely portrayed as being greedy, and this can absolutely play into a fatphobic trope of "big fat rich guy, this is a negative trait" as fat stereotypes are often associated with greed and gluttony of some kind.

The fact that all of the toads are fat or in general larger and how they're treated in the show could be seen as an issue as well. Toads are naturally a bit bulkier than frogs in real life, and the toads are portrayed as more muscular as some of the kingdom's soldiers and enforcers, so there's definitely a design and narrative aspect to the choice to make the toads larger. However, the potential for harm in "the larger characters are treated as distasteful and they're called smelly multiple times in the show" is still there.

But basically, Mayor Toadstool's line in "Toad Tax" about needing to cut back on cricket nuggets and panting after chasing after Sprig (and this applies to Hop Pop's line about needing to cut back on beetle burgers in "Sprig Gets Schooled"), as well as Anne's line in "New Wartwood" about Mayor Toadstool being a cross between the monopoly man and a piece of fried chicken are both unsavory in my opinion. Mayor Toadstool gasping for breath and Hop Pop getting stuck in a gate is a moment of "its funny because theyre in a situation due to their fatness so they joke about how they shouldn't have let themselves get to this state." With the case of Anne's description of Toadstool, it's a moment of "Anne is saying a line you are meant to laugh at because she's comparing this fat character to a commonly-considered-unhealthy food item." Both of these scenarios suck. This kind of falling back onto humor involving fat characters loving food and it being seen as a gross obsession or a funny character quirk, or the characters or those around them joking about how they need to stop eating so much and the butt of the joke being their fatness (while blaming the character for basically "allowing" themself to become fat), is really harmful.

But the biggest issue for me is Grime in the episode "Toadcatcher". Like, Grime is my favorite, I think his design is wonderful, he's such a fun and charming character, and I love all the episodes he gets to star in. His treatment in "Toadcatcher" sucked actually.

I hate to bring up Marvel, but Thor in Avengers Endgame, with a lot of gross potbelly shots and being insulted for his condition and experiencing a total lack of compassion for his situation, is the closest example I can think of to compare this to with "A character loses their purpose, their people, and their home, and they gain weight, lose their edge, eat less healthy, and begin drinking because of this. It is played as a joke." Grime really suffers in this episode at the hands of Sasha, Yunan, and the episode’s writing as a whole. His reaction to the loss of Toad Tower is more extreme than Sasha's and his feelings of hopelessness and loss cause him to stress eat, to gain weight, to feel unmotivated and become less active, and to drink (bog grog seems like its basically toad beer). Braddock addresses this as "a rut" and is comforting to Grime when she explains that they all wanted to try and help him get off his feet with some action, but this isn’t what he needs; Grime is not receiving emotional support from the people around him, just attempts at reviving the old motivation he had before losing his purpose and his soldiers.

Sasha, Yunan, and the episode's writing are overall really unkind towards Grime's character regarding his weight gain and inactivity. Sasha makes fun of him and berates him, Yunan's shock at his condition is played for a joke because of how much he has "deteriorated", and Grime is written as a belching, sloppy, lazy, unmotivated (in a negative way) mess who lost sight of who he really is ("what happened to the Grime I used to know" from Sasha). All of this is either comedically written to mock how he has "let himself go" (blaming him for his current condition as well as implying that him being fat in general is a bad thing) or, in serious moments, the characters' reactions aren't ever proven to be coming from an unkind and incorrect mindset during the episode, so the audience is meant to take Sasha and Yunan's reactions as the guideline for their own reaction to Grime's physical and emotional state.

The episode uses physical comedy to show Grime panting, falling down, and running into things as he and Sasha run from Yunan, and his current condition is never shown any compassion outside of Braddock’s one line, though Sasha’s plan that they carried out was not coming from an emotionally understanding and supportive mindset that one in Grime’s emotionally compromised position would need. His fatness is treated as an obstacle to their escape and something to make fun of, and Sasha is never proven wrong for her anger and frustration with Grime for not training and for being unmotivated. Sasha's reaction to the events of Toad Tower is discussed and addressed between the two of them, but Grime never gets a sympathetic gaze on his side of things and instead his condition is mocked until he regains his motivation and trains to regain his strength.

TLDR, Grime's fatness and his physical mental and emotional state are all treated so poorly in "Toadcatcher" in terms of how the other characters react to him and how the show portrays him. Outside of this episode, Toadstool has some potential for uncomfortable underlying negative implications in his design with the whole fat rich person issue, and his and Hop Pop's lines about food are unsavory and fall into a gross stereotype of fatness coming from overeating and being the fat person's responsibility to fix by eating less. Amphibia has some incredible writing and characters, but the use of fatshaming and fatphobic and unkind humor is something that's important to recognize and be critical of.

[surrealsunday]

i used to think that maxence wasnt that good of an actor and he continues to prove me wrong. I was pretty sure that he managed to pull eliott off because they're so similar but that's so untrue. they share some characteristics, but when you watch a clip with him, you simply know its eliott and not maxence even though theyre so similar. i think its really impressive bc sometimes its difficult to get there when you 'know' the actor as much as we know maxence and the actor overshadows the character

(x2)  i never had any doubts about axel being a phenomenal actor, but same goes for him - its lucas on the screen, even though they're both chaotic af

What an interesting comment! I was a bit the opposite. I had doubts about Axel after s1, but I felt confident in Maxence’s abilities almost immediately. Thankfully they both completely proved themselves to me in s3. They have different styles but honestly I thought they complimented one another incredibly well and it just... worked. They blew me away. 

You’re so right that both Axel and Maxence bring their own personality quirks to the characters and yet it doesn’t overpower the characters themselves. In fact, if anything it makes the characters of Lucas and Eliott even more effective and real. It’s like Axel and Maxence bring more truth to the characters by inserting parts of themselves into them. I can’t imagine how emotionally taxing that must be as an actor. And here we get to sit back as an audience and just reap the benefits. There are a lot of truly incredible young actors in the skam-verse. And yes, no doubt about it, we’re lucky to have Axel and Maxence playing these characters. There is no way for me to see Lucas or Eliott as anyone else at this point.