#does nerd even make sense in this context

[mefjeff]

NNNNEEEEEEERRRRRRDDDDDD

[weaselandfriends]

Lucky☆Star (Anime)

How does art age?

There's a joke in Lucky☆Star where the four main characters fill out a questionnaire that asks them what they want to be when they grow up. Konata, the otaku, puts down "Brigade Leader," which draws as punchline an eyeroll from her sarcastic friend, Kagami.

The core of this joke is that Konata has taken a serious question and answered it with a fictional "occupation" from an anime she likes -- specifically, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which was monstrously popular at the time. Almost everyone watching Lucky☆Star in 2007, when it first aired, would understand this reference. That understanding would then foster a sense of kinship with the work, the feeling of "being seen," the long yearned-for ideal of niche nerd subcultures laughed at by society at large.

Despite its incredible influence on moe aesthetics and anime culture in 2006, Haruhi Suzumiya is virtually forgotten now, unwatched even by diehards and unrecommended by the old weebs who were around in its heyday. I've never seen it myself. It's my next watch, with another friend who is even more of an anime neophyte than I am; our third friend, who did watch it in 2006, refuses to rewatch with us. It's too cringe, she says. The suggestion I get is that, if we were to modernize the what-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up joke, Konata might instead put that she wants to become a Skibidi Toilet.

Haruhi Suzumiya haunts Lucky☆Star like a ghost. She is in almost every episode, as either a poster or figurine or manga cover or cosplay or karaoke rendition or even, once, a voiced commercial. She has more presence than most of the supporting cast, the majority of whom do not appear until the 14th episode (but who also haunt the show via their unexplained presence in the OP). Konata is voiced by the same actress who voiced Haruhi, a fact that launches an armada of arcane metafictional injokes, including a scene where Konata sees said voice actress in concert. The sheer magnitude of these references wash over the 2025 viewer. They are meaningless. Haruhi Suzumiya is dead and buried. She is seen more by the shadow she casts in this show than anywhere else.

The inscrutability of this massive swath of the show suggests that Lucky☆Star itself has not aged particularly well. Indeed, compared to its zenith in 2007, it's not faring much better than Haruhi today. The sole advantage Lucky☆Star has, in fact, might stem from the "Out Of Touch Thursday" meme, which keeps some small shard of it alive in the anime community's consciousness. Even if you take the time to research the references, needing to research them at all gives the ultimate impression is that Konata is no longer the trendy otaku she once was, but passe, lame, dated, cringe, Out Of Touch. It's only the thin line of competent verbal skills that keeps her from becoming her dark mirror, Tomoko Kuroki.

But Haruhi Suzumiya is by no means the only obscure reference the show flings out, and some of these references I can only imagine were unknown even to the teenage-skewing anglosphere anime culture of 2007. At one point, Konata makes a reference (Timotei, Timotei) to a Japanese commercial for a Finnish shampoo brand from the 1980s. Karaoke segments feature Japanese pop songs from the 70s (with Kagami sarcastically asking Konata "How old are you?" whenever she puts them on). The entire Lucky Channel bit that appears at the end of each episode is an extended reference to a Japanese-only radio show that ran concurrent to the original airing. Even within that context, the fact that Lucky Channel co-host Minoru Shiraishi is a real person playing himself (and the other co-host, Akira Kogami, is not) is lost on anyone without highly specialized knowledge. That the credits sequences of the show's second half feature the real Minoru Shiraishi in live action is equally easy to miss. The bleeding edge transience of the references culminates with the show recursively referring to its own fame. In one scene, Konata reads a fortune at a Kyoto temple that says "Konata is my wife"; this is a reference to real-life otaku going to a temple in Saitama, where Lucky☆Star is set, and leaving the same prayer.

The show requires footnotes. It had them, on the 2007 anime forums where the show accrued so much buzz, entire Bibles breaking down every reference; it truly wasn't understood even when it aired. It makes perfect sense why Lucky☆Star wouldn't age well.

Yet, watching the show for the first time in 2014, long after its cultural moment, and again in 2025, I have found it extraordinarily timeless. In fact, I liked it better in 2025 than 2014, despite an additional 11 years of watching anime that enabled me to understand exactly 0 things I didn't get the first time around. And there are a lot of things I didn't get. The references I detailed earlier are only the ones, in complete befuddlement, I bothered to look up; so many more continue to elude me.

In many ways, Lucky☆Star is aware of how inscrutable it is and compensates for itself. Wikipedia describes Konata as the "main character" of the show, and to the otaku audiences of 2007 she was the most relatable of the cast and by extension the most popular character by far (something outright stated in one of the Lucky Channel segments, which reveals the results of an actual character popularity poll), but in terms of screen time, she is not appreciably more present than either of the Hiiragi twins, Kagami and Tsukasa. It's not as though Lucky☆Star has anything resembling a plot, either, that would frame a particular character as the "protagonist"; at best the cast can be described as ensemble. This decentralization of perspective enables a wide variety of ways for the viewer to connect with the show. Konata's authentic (in 2007) otakuism made her the darling of that audience, but the show itself does not innately weigh her so highly. In fact, even when her references are inscrutable, it's the confused response of Tsukasa, or the sarcastic response of Kagami (who tends to call Konata the 2007 equivalent of "cringe"), that provide a contextual framework for what the joke is supposed to be. I don't need to know what the SOS Brigade is when Konata expresses her desire to grow up and become a Brigade Leader, because I can understand through Kagami's biting remark that it is some frivolous anime horseshit.

More importantly, the show's equivocation in terms of perspective makes it possible to empathize with Kagami's position over Konata's. The simplest comedy dynamic is the comedian/straight man, but the reliance of most narrative comedy on some form of social stakes -- either in the form of argument, humiliation, physical or psychological pain, or so on -- generally leads to empathy with one of the duo over the other. The straight man might be a put-upon everyman who is unfairly forced to deal with an obnoxious oaf, or a too-serious curmudgeon who is getting what they deserve from a guy who's just having a little fun. In the first case, the straight man is the point of audience empathy; in the second, the comedian is.

Konata and Kagami follow this comedy dynamic to a T, with Konata an aimless slacker and Kagami the uptight perfectionist. But in Lucky☆Star, divorced entirely from anything resembling a narrative -- episodic, situational, or otherwise -- there are zero social stakes to their conversations. Nobody ever "loses." Nobody is ever hurt. Nobody is wrong or right. Nothing happens at the expense of one character or another. As such, it is possible to watch the show and see the joke from the perspective of any given character at any time. If Konata says some arcane reference you don't get, Kagami's clapback becomes the joke. If Konata says something and you do understand it, the reference itself is the joke.

This comedic ambivalence is structurally remarkable (jokes typically have rigidly defined punchlines, moments you are "supposed" to laugh at), but comes with the price of the jokes not really being very funny. What it does do is create comprehensible and even "relatable" situations out of incomprehensible bits of referential information. Not understanding the reference is not an impediment to understanding Lucky☆Star. As such, Lucky☆Star functions as both a hyper-specific time capsule of 2007 anime subculture and a work that can be engaged with on its own terms even when completely divorced from that context.

The advent of the internet has led to an explosion in the spread of information and the ascendancy of the niche. It has also led to shorter shelf lives for information and an increased focus on the immediate. Memes burst into prominence, linger a month or two, vanish. Media is buzzed about in some section of society, is unknown everywhere else. A social media influencer has millions of followers and yet is a complete blank in the wider cultural eye. How can a work of art reflect this reality without rendering itself incomprehensible in a year, ten years, twenty? Is it possible to make timeless art in such a milieu, without stripping away as many signifiers of the world we live in to rely solely on "universal" and thus generic themes such as love, death, etc.?

I've seen many ways of attacking this problem. Infinite Jest's famous footnotes are one, as is the genre of "hysterical realism" itself, which attempts to create the suggestion of information density via massive novels with tons of characters spanning many countries and even time periods. Homestuck builds its own internal language of memes (I warned you about stairs bro!) that the reader will always understand no matter how many arcane applications those memes receive throughout the work. (Hence why an audience of teens in the 2010s were able to laugh uproariously at jokes about the 90s action flick Con Air that none of them had ever seen.) Multiverse movies, from Everything Everywhere All at Once to Into the Spider-Verse, depict the density of information horizontally rather than vertically, with unlimited variations on the same core theme. Even if you have never read whatever obscure comic run Noir Spider-Man comes from, you can understand him immediately based on his relationship to a sort of Platonic ideal of "Spider-Man".

These are all highly controlled forms of conveying the idea of "current day information density" without actually wallowing in actual current day information density. What's remarkable about Lucky☆Star is both that it actually does engage with the incredibly niche memes of its exact moment in time, but that it does so through the complete ceding of narrative control. Lucky☆Star functions because, not in spite of, the fact that it has no protagonist, no plot. It doesn't even have situations, like an episodic sitcom. It is not especially concerned with being funny, or dramatic, or heartwarming, or any particular emotion.

As a sort of thesis statement for the show, its first episode opens with a six-minute scene in which Konata, Tsukasa, and Miyuki discuss various ways of eating different types of food. There is no buildup, no joke, no emotional payoff, not even any of the references I've spent this entire essay talking about. There is no progression. The girls discuss how to eat one type of food, then move onto the next. In a way, this scene is a more aggressive challenge to the viewer than the niche references it employs later on. It is a complete surrender to banality.

Even within the context of the slice of life genre, which is full of comfy shows about Cute Girls Doing Cute Things, Lucky☆Star achieves phenomenal laxity. Other popular examples revolve around a specific theme that creates a sense of progression toward an ultimate goal; in K-On!, for instance, the girls are members of a band and work toward a successful performance, even if they spend a lot of their practices slacking off. Alternatively, without a clear theme, these shows might use surreal characters and situations to elevate the show above the mundane, such as in Azumanga Daioh, where a main character is a 10-year-old genius in high school. Or, in the case of Clannad, there might be a romantic angle to the laid-back character interactions.

This is all gone in Lucky☆Star. It has been stripped down past the basics of storytelling, akin to an abstract work of art that is three colors on a canvas. (Or four, in this case.) In this context, even Konata's deep cut animanga references sink to the level of banality, their impenetrability both an abstract confusion and a level of verisimilitude that other works can usually only suggest or evoke when they attempt to grapple with the reality of subculture. (To this end, Lucky☆Star is massively advantaged by its adaptation, as studio Kyoto Animation also made Haruhi Suzumiya and was able to mine its cultural relevance without the usual fear of copyright reprisals, in a prognostication of Ready Player One/Space Jam 2-style pan-brand media crossovers.) Similar to the best abstract art, there is an odd, ungraspable power to the starkness of Lucky☆Star's composition; also similar, much of this power emerges out of the work's context. Not simply its hyper-specific 2007 cultural context, which I've already discussed, but also the way it contextualizes itself internally.

Because I lied when I said the first episode of Lucky☆Star opens with a scene of three girls talking about how they eat different types of food. I'm not even talking about the actual first scene, which is a 10-second quick gag where Konata tells Tsukasa she doesn't join a sports team because it would cut into her free time to watch anime. No, Lucky☆Star opens in episode 1 the same way it opens every episode, with this:

The ambiguous 3 cm? Does that mean it's plushy? Wait! The wrapping is a uniform, argh, it's not an act, pooh Gotta do your best, gotta just do it That's time to catch n' release, eek Between sweat (whoop) sweat (whoop) Darlin', darlin' FREEZE! Kinda lethargic, something's kinda comin' out I love you... oh wait, one of those was different Worrywarts, high metal bars Tasty thoughts... and that's enough! The heated body of that flying you-know-who It's what you'd call a normal girlie Am I the only one surprised? Seconds on pork-bone broth ramen with wire-hard noodles Da da da da da! [Several seconds of indistinguishable chatter] Pom-poms cheer squad Let's get cherry pie [this line is in English] Happy fun welcoming party Look up! Sensation [also English] Yeah! Feeling of existence, dot dot small planet Collided and it melted away, in total awe Go all out to sing, shi-ranger! Take it away! I should be the one who'll be laughing in the end Because I have the sailor suit ← This is my conclusion It's only Monday! Already in a bad mood? What to do? I really prefer the summer outfits ← kya! Wah! Good! (cute!) <3 Until we approach 3 pixels, no hesitations please ☆ Do your best, be energetic My darlin' darlin' please!

The lyrics of Lucky☆Star's OP are nonsense, both in translation and in the original Japanese (and if you don't believe that, the English line "Let's get cherry pie" should be evidence enough). At best, they are a mishmash of schoolgirl concepts and oblique anime references, which at the very least is an accurate reflection of the content of the show. But the presentation is frenetic, erratic, aggressively at odds with the show's lassitude, without any contextualizing remark from Kagami to make it make, even in the abstract, any sort of sense.

Likewise, on the opposite end of the show is its concluding bookend, the Lucky Channel segment. This segment also sharply juxtaposes the show's core content, first in tone -- being far more cynical and meanspirited -- but also in structure. Lucky Channel engages in the exact stakes-driven comedian/straight man dynamic that the show eschews. When the Lucky Channel co-hosts Akira Kogami and Minoru Shiraishi banter, the results are either Minoru's physical or emotional abuse at the hands of Akira, or Akira's humiliation as a failed but narcissistic idol constantly upstaged by the unassuming Minoru. Lucky Channel also has another concept anathema to Lucky☆Star: narrative progression. Minoru grows bolder as the episodes draw on, Akira more violent; in a late episode, a mental breakdown leads to the destruction of the set, which remains destroyed in the final few episodes as Minoru and Akira finally and without reconciliation descend into blistering hatred of one another. At the same time, these segments are the location of some of the show's most indecipherable and multilayered injokes, injokes almost defined by their transience as most stem from a real-life radio show lost to time if you weren't right there listening to them as they went live. This segment is probably the most consistently funny part of Lucky☆Star; that's not because its jokes make sense, but rather the blunt slapstick and Akira's dramatic shifts from ultra-cutesy child idol to chain-smoking world-weary industry cynic.

The effect of the OP and the Lucky Channel segment is to sandwich the sedate, relaxed, mundane central content of Lucky☆Star between chaos, nonsense, and irony. Thus, the inner show contextualizes itself as a retreat from the storm of information and self-reflexivity, despite the fact that it deals directly with these topics. The show's indolence renders them harmless, comprehensible, and nonthreatening. Lucky☆Star is a world where the unknown can be easily and pleasantly demystified; the show's fourth character, Miyuki -- sometimes nicknamed Miwiki -- is an encyclopedic fountain of knowledge whose primary role is to exhaustively explain oddities on the fringes of Japanese culture with a polite and friendly smile. Miyuki is clearly secondary to Konata and the Hiiragi twins in terms of screen time, which gives her the feel of a supporting character despite her main cast billing, with an emphasis on the word "supporting"; like a servant, the other three will, after a conversation among themselves, call her to define some term or idiom. (That this obliging sense of service comes from the richest and most aristocratic character of the cast is another matter.) In Lucky☆Star, information is not chaotic and confusing, the way it is at the show's fringes, or in the "real world", but something that stimulates curiosity and kinship. So many scenes begin with a character saying, "I wonder why...?" followed by speculation and finally an answer. In the absence of plot, progression, or even humor, it's this sense of curiosity that renders Lucky☆Star's mundane scenes compelling. And it is their tonal juxtaposition against chaos that renders them so comfortable, so soothing.

As the internet grows older and more central to everyone's lives, as the headlines everyone talked about last week are forgotten today, Lucky☆Star's expression of retreat and reorder will only continue to become more emotionally satisfying, even as its 2007 references become more dated. What I find most potent in Lucky☆Star, though, is the steadily growing sense of wistfulness it fosters, not through any one scene or tone shift, but through a collection of tiny ones. New cast members are introduced in the second half, which dilutes the presence of the main characters and thins the tight-knit sense of friendship that unified the work. The characters increasingly ruminate on their futures (despite the lack of progression, time does pass linearly, and the show ends with the end of high school on the horizon), always suggesting a "real world" of adulthood lurking behind the corner. The show's artifice is explicitly exposed by the Lucky Channel segments, which metafictionally describe the show as "the show" and the characters as "actors." ("They must all hate each other once the camera stops rolling," Akira cynically suggests.) The ED of the show's first half features the four main girls in a karaoke bar; in the second half, though, this is replaced with live-action footage of the real-life actor Minoru Shiraishi from the Lucky Channel segments. Reality infringes on Lucky☆Star at its corners, slowly creeping inward. Its calm fantasy, a fantasy founded on verisimilitude rather than imagination, is gradually exposed as fake, a production. (Which it always was, no matter how real, how relatable it felt. For all the verisimilitude in its tone, these are characters who are more moe than moe, blobs of cuteness and distorted proportions beyond even the average CGDCT anime.) It ends, in the final episode, as the characters diegetically recreate the frenetic nonsense OP, with them all arrayed on a stage, the curtain rising to white light. And even more ominously, its final ED ends with Minoru Shiraishi intoning a few plaintive notes as he faces a lone and level plain.

This is Lucky☆Star's final shot. This what awaits outside of the show's dewy comfort. Bye-ni.

[dufferpuffer]

Can you talk a little about Remus’ intelligence? Recently I’ve felt it’s been severely downplayed in fandom as a response to fanon depicting Sirius as “the dumb one” and Remus as “the smart one” in a wolfstar context. While obviously Sirius is extremely intelligent that doesn’t mean Remus has to be dumb in contrast? I also think they just have different types of intelligence, and I strongly believe that basing their intellect off of their achievements in school is limiting (also people don’t take into account that Remus was sick every month for at least 3 days, even if he was matched perfectly in intelligence with Sirius he’d still be doing worse in school). What’s your take on this my balanced remus lover friend?

I don't think Remus is a 'genius', like James and Sirius might be. But he's a bloody capable wizard - hard-earned, not talent.

The one flashback we get of him as a kid, we see him focusing hard on his OWL's, despite an upcoming Full Moon. He has his own methods for revision - when he asks Sirius if he would help him study, Sirius can't fathom why he should bother. Sirius doesn't need to revise or study - but Remus is good at it.

You're damn right that doesn't mean he is stupid compared to Sirius. There's nothing stupid about forming methods to help himself learn. Sirius and James are natural talents - Remus is a nerd.

By adulthood his work ethic has paid off: He has effortless confidence in his charms and conjuring - doing most of it without incantation. He's kind of a badass: He conjured fire and a non-corporeal Patronus without incantation - while exhausted and in the presence of a dementor. He could duel Lucius Malfoy, battled death eaters in the astronomy tower, dueled while flying and supporting an injured man on his broom - and disarmed multiple people in a row with enough accuracy to catch their wands. (tbf they were children)

Remus is a natural at teaching. First day on the job: he handles a room full of kids like he's been at it for years, even those with difficulties who need extra care and encouragement. He is patient with Harry learning to cast a Patronus, explaining things clearly to him - changing his explanation as Harry's needs change. This shows a deep understanding of both the material he is teaching... and what it is like to learn. Knowing how to struggle, how to adapt, how to learn, the validity of different perspectives - that's good wisdom.

His greatest strength is his Social Intelligence. Witty, astute, cunning, sly, persuasive… Sirius isn't socially inept but he is so honest and blunt he can come across as kicking the door down - rather than Remus' picking the lock and making it seem like a natural innocent behaviour. Does that make sense...? It was the entirety of his role in PoA: A murderer on the loose after Harry's blood - and yet through all the mysterious absences, sketchy evasiveness, superficial closeness with Harry, slightly slap-dash teaching methods and blatant distrust from Snape (who had been proven trustworthy - Harry just thought he was an arse)… Remus Lupin manages to charm his students, getting to know them without any of them knowing anything about him. He has Harry hanging off his every word, despite obvious apprehension to engage with him about his parents or needs. He effortlessly keeps Harry's trust even when he blatantly, skillfully lies in-front of him - and TO him! For his own gain!!! The scene of the Marauders Map is a brazen display of how quickly he can manipulate his way out of a complex situation. Even when he is with a murderer and they all know he will turn into a werewolf soon - he commands emotional focus. Ron is injured, a Murderer is present, they are supposed to be investigating a rat with haste... yet most of the time they are discussing HIM and why HE is 'not so scary, please don't hate me' in a long-winded fashion.

Only Snape seems immune. So he bullies him to shut him up. Without SEEMING like a bully. The kids think he is great, the way he can control the uncontrollable - Snape and Peeves.

Remus slips in and everyone is so taken with him they never notice the lock being picked. Their perception of him is on a tight leash. A magician’s sleight of hand and a silver tongue. Lockheart WISHES he could do this.

Remus is practical and practiced. He has the grit of someone who has fought for his life with both his wand and his tongue. He has lived a life of misdirection, gaslighting and manipulation - always subtle, always present. He reads others better than himself and moves through society with quiet ease, slipping in unnoticed and slipping out just as easily. No wonder he works as a spy.

He’s a top-class wizard - held back only by circumstance. Balancing his core needs, his interests and his health with no support network and poverty…? yeesh. In another life he may have been able to focus his efforts on a passion, rather than on topics that aid his survival in a harsh world.

As he is, though: he’s a formidable duelist and skilled charmer (magically and socially) - a survivalist, both in the wild and within society. An outcast who never seems like one. A wolf in sheep's clothing.

That's my take, as 'balanced remus lover friend' :^) Thanks - I needed to sit down and yap about Remus for a bit, had a shitty month

[urhoneycombwitch]

my baby puts his mouth on me

Eddie Munson x shy!Reader

foreword: okay this is kind of written as a bonus scene for i know what they call you bc that version of reader deals with being quiet, too! (not necessary to read that one first but does provide a bit of context as far as interpersonal setting.) sort-of AU that ignores most s4 events.

cw: discussions of college, shy!reader, oral + fingering (R receiving), R has breasts and a V, weed usage, softdom!Eddie, shifting POV a bit soz 

wc: 2.2k

___

Somewhere between Eddie’s late nights at band rehearsal and your early morning diner shifts, you’ve both been too exhausted to properly fuck when you do see each other, barely time for a spare handjob in the past week. You’re crawling out of your skin by the weekend, missing and craving Eddie in equal measure.

So when your Saturday off happens to line up with his, Eddie makes an afternoon of it- picnic lunch on the shore of Lover’s Lake, lazing around in the August sun while your food settles, then stripping down to your underclothes (even though the spot Eddie scored was totally isolated, you’re still leery about skinny dipping) and cooling off with a quick dip in the lake.

You’re both sprawled out in the blanketed back of Eddie’s van, sun-warmed bodies pressed together, legs dangling out of the open rear door; smoke hangs hazy in the air from the joint being shared. 

“Almost end of summer,” Eddie says, nestling his nose into your neck, arms wrapping around your middle. He can’t look at you, dread unfurling in his stomach but needing to ask, to clear the air, to prepare in case this is one of the last times he gets to touch you like this- “Thinkin’ of going to any colleges?”

”Maybe.” One of your hands slides into Eddie’s hair, scratching gently at his scalp while the other lifts the joint to your lips for a long drag. “They love me at the diner and I make good tips, so I’ll prob’ly keep doing that. Can’t afford anything fancy, anyways- I’ll likely just go to Hawkins Community.”

You still haven’t told him the full story of the mall fire, yet- or about the underground world simmering beneath the surface. He never pushes you to share more than you’re comfortable, which you’re grateful for, but he knows something happened: something that paints your sleep with dark night terrors, something that causes you to slip in the middle of conversations, mind spiraling where he can’t follow. 

For reasons you can’t fully explain to Eddie, college is real low on your priority list- you’ve dedicated this summer to reconnecting with base instincts (weed and Pretty Boy being at the top of the list).

Meanwhile, Eddie tries to still the vibrant thrum of his heart at the news of you staying local, possibly for the next few years; he lifts his head to press his lips against your collarbone. “You should go to college. Jus’ try it out, at least. You’re certainly smart enough.”

“Mmm-” you hum around the joint, another inhale-exhale of smoke before murmuring, “So are you. For the record. We could apply to be nerds together, if you want-”

With a sharp gasp, your sentence drops out of midair when Eddie kisses over your nipple, already peaking through the thin material of your bra. In his hair, your grip tightens, and Eddie groans.

In one fluid movement, he props himself into his elbows on either side of your torso, bottom half of his weight pinning you in place, plucking the smoldering joint from your grasp to dampen it into a nearby ashtray.

“Gonna be my little student,” Eddie says, wet kisses trailing down your neck, flash of teeth making you squirm. “Get you some academic… skirts. The ones with the pleats. Maybe some stockings…”

“You’re so- oh, fuck- dirty…” It’s hard to keep the admonishment in your voice as Eddie noses between your thighs, bumping at your clit through the thin cover of high-cut cotton.

“Mm-hmm.” He seems pleased with the already-visible wet patch, your core leaking steadily as he burrows deeper, until all his senses are blacked-out with nothing but the sharp tang of your honeyed arousal- who needs weed. He could get high off your smell alone.

Eddie suckles at your throbbing clit, purring encouragement low in his throat when your hips jolt forward. “And you love it."

He’s one deep inhale from being completely pussy-drunk, mouthing sloppily at the junction where thigh meets pelvis, nimble fingers toying at the band of your underwear. He slides them down and off your legs, and you let him, wiggling in anticipation against the pressure he’s keeping you pinned with.

“Could take an electrician course.” Well aware of how close to the wire this conversation is sliding, you let the crown of your head tip back, staring at the van’s ceiling, handfuls of the flannel floor blanket squeezed into fists as you try getting one last word in- “You’re good with your h- hands.”

Said hand is cupping your bare sex, warm and wide between the V of your legs, other hand pushing your thigh back to spread you wide, obscene and on display how Eddie likes; embarrassment blooms hot in your chest as he runs a finger through your folds, slick practically loud against the far-off backdrop of forest sounds.

“What was that about my hands?” He’s teasing now, can hear it in his voice even though you can’t see the lazy grin it’s paired with; a long middle finger breaches your entrance, wet warmth swallowing the length greedily.

Your eyes flutter shut, sighing. There will be a time for arguments again but right now, with a second finger addition and Eddie’s mouth working you up, there’s no room for speech.

On your end, at least- Eddie’s proven on multiple occasions to be a master at multitasking, talking you through it while managing your pleasure, and this afternoon is no exception. His fingers curl expertly into the gummy front wall of your cunt, mouth running every second it’s not latched on to your pulsing button, dirty talk smooth and easy in his low timbre.

“Yeah, honey, that’s it. Fuck, you’re so hot. Can feel you squeezin’ around my fingers, y’so tight, angel, shit… like that- there you go…”

Etcetera. Until he’s bullied his way completely into the cradle of your legs, lying flat on his stomach to get as close as possible; until your cunt is spasming around the push and pull of his fingers, wet dripping and pooling into his palm and down your ass to the blanket below.

There’s a familiar tightness coiling in your stomach, thighs bracing around Eddie’s ears in anticipation of the unraveling. A pleasure-soaked sob gets caught in your throat, dull whine escaping instead through clenched teeth, grip on the flannel doubling until your knuckles creak in protest.

“Hey.” 

There’s a confusing lack of authority or command in Eddie’s voice; you sift through the brain fog of arousal, propping your weight up into your elbows to look down at him.

Eddie looks crazy. Debauched. Lips pink and spit-soaked, chin shimmering, pupils blown out with lust as he presses a chaste kiss to the wiry curls at your mound. “Kinda quiet up there. Everything okay?”

His thumb sweeps a comforting path up the soft skin of your thigh, the abrupt switch from animal to gentleness making your head swim. He’s still looking at you with those puppy-brown eyes, fingers still buried to the hilt but unmoving; you stammer out an excuse.

“Um- yeah. M’sorry. It’s just been awhile, since you’ve had me… like this.”

It’s the truth; over the last busy week in your lives, time has eroded some of what Eddie’s been working on building with you, bravery at making noise faded with the lessened practice time.

“No one else out here, ‘cept you and me, sweetheart.” Eddie’s coaxing his fingers back into steady rhythm, watching your face carefully for any signs of withholding. “Can make as much noise as you want. Lemme hear. Please?”

Usually, Eddie’s not so soft- a sharp crack of palm to ass, flesh jiggling as he draws all the noises he wants from you- but here, in the back of the van, heady weed and warm sun an intoxicating mixture as he asks you to melt for him. 

You obey. Let the floor take your upper body’s weight again as you fuck yourself on his fingers, hips lifted and seeking release. His mouth seals over your clit again, tip of his tongue lashing quick and precise against it, frizz of his curls tickling the insides of your legs as he shakes his head.

The weed is certainly a help as trapped noises heave from your chest, mouth falling open, lax and pliant with moans. “Oh, my god, Eddie. Fuck. Holy shit. Hah- right there, please, don’t stop-”

As if he would. Eddie moans in tandem with you, his own hips chasing the maddening pressure of the floorboards against the hard jut of his cock, leaking through the front of his boxers as he adds a third finger, spurred on by the fountain of breathy words this pulls from you-

“Oh god, oh god- f-fuck- Eddie, Eddie Eddie Eddie-”

Your speech devolves into a mindless, babbling chant of his name. That coil pulls taut, has you crunching forward in a half sit-up, hands fisting at the roots of Eddie’s hair to hold him in place (perhaps harsher than you intend but based on the way his hips stutter and grind, you can safely hazard a guess that he’s into it). 

The pattern breaks when he grazes his teeth against the pulsing nub in his mouth; you have just enough time to gasp out, “I- I’m coming, Eddie, shit, m’gonna come-” before the orgasm hits you full-force.

There isn’t room in your brain to hide all the noise that threatens to suffocate, so you let them all out, muscles tightening and flexing around every bright point of pleasure that he fucks you through. High-pitched whines, panting that wracks your lungs, a moan to top it all off that feels like it comes from your toes. 

“Jesus christ.” Eddie swipes the back of his hand over his mouth, sounding wrecked himself as he climbs back over your body, silver chain necklace and dark curls swinging in front of your blissed-out face. “Fuck, princess. That was so hot.”

“Yeah?” Bashfulness hasn’t fully settled in yet, you’re still loopy from the force of your pleasure, arms slipping over the boy’s freckled shoulders as he leans down to kiss you.

His tongue has a bright tang of you, as you lick into his mouth, one hand leaving his shoulder to trail down his chest. Dark ink whorls beneath your fingertips as you reach the scratchy trail of hair just before his boxers-

“Shit.” Eddie hisses, forehead thunking into yours when you palm the hard length of him, precum soaking through the fabric, softness of your palm contrasting with the damp and rough drag of cotton. His long lashes tickle your cheek, eyes fluttering closed, soft exhale magnified by close proximity as he slowly pushes into your hand. 

You’re mildly surprised he hasn’t come, yet- usually Eddie gets off on getting you off, then uses the rest of his energy to make you both come again, together. 

What Eddie hasn’t told you yet is that he’s done some prep of his own, this week: every night you haven’t spent in his bed, his own spit-slicked fist has taken him right to the edge, stopping just short of coming with a choking grip at the base. The idea was to build up his stamina a bit, to take advantage of lonely evenings in service to a future you.

A very noble cause that is quickly being forgotten as your hand moves with more intent and pressure against his aching cock- the drug haze is almost enough to have him completely at your mercy, to tuck his nose into the curve of your neck and find sweet release by way of your pretty palm.

But he recovers. Get just enough distance from the warmth of you to clear his mind and snake his own hand down between your bodies to capture your twisting wrist. 

The protest dies on your lips when Eddie brings your hand to his mouth, sucking your middle and index finger against the pad of his tongue, saturating your digits in spit.

“Here’s what you’re gonna do.” His eyes stay locked on yours, even as he guides your newly-wet fingers back down your bodies to rest atop your cunt. “You’re gonna touch yourself until you come. Again. And if I feel like you’re holding out on me with your noises, I’m gonna make it real difficult for you to make any noise. At all.”

A thrilling shiver races up your spine, goosebumps prickling in response to the shift in Eddie’s tone. His eyes flick to your lower lip, which he bites, unable to help himself, before following the path of your hand south.

There will be time for unwinding the past, for dreaming about the future. For now, there’s a boy between your legs and the feverish glow of summer calling your name. 

___

for more shy!Reader content: masterlist

[anghraine]

I know this has been noticed before, but Glorfindel delivering a prophecy about the Witch-king's destruction does not mean that Glorfindel is laying down the law about the Witch-king's vulnerability. Glorfindel in no way has that ability. He's struck by foresight about how the Witch-king will eventually fall and knows it won't be by the hand of "man." This doesn't mean any non-man/Man on the battlefield could have done it, or that Merry or Éowyn have some special "not a man" powers or abilities vs the Witch-king, but that Glorfindel prophetically knows the person/people who are going to end up doing it will not be men in any sense.

The ambiguity of Glorfindel's use of "man" here works really well for the English text, I'd say. In Tolkien's usage especially, "man" can mean "the species of humanity" or "adult male person," allowing for Glorfindel's prophecy to refer to Merry or Éowyn or both, but definitely not to Eärnur (an adult male and a human, however special).

BUT ALSO to be a pedantic nerd (when am I not?):

In-story the direct context of Glorfindel's prophecy is Glorfindel trying to convince Eärnur of Gondor not to pursue the Witch-king in Gondor's campaign against Angmar after the destruction of Arthedain. Glorfindel held him back at the time by telling him that he wasn't destined to defeat the Witch-king. But Glorfindel is a High Elf out of Valinor and Eärnur is a Númenórean prince of Gondor. Even by the end of the age, it's still very likely that a conversation between two such people would be in Sindarin or Quenya, and this interaction happens long before then.

This matters because, while the man/Man ambiguity works really well on a literary/meta level in English with what ends up happening, in the world of the story it wouldn't have been delivered in a language that actually contains that ambiguity (even Common may not, for all we know, but is unlikely to have been used here anyway). So, for instance, if Glorfindel was speaking to Eärnur in Quenya, he would have likely used either nér (adult male) or atan (human being), depending on which he actually meant.

From everything I've read of Tolkien's thoughts on the defeat of the Witch-king, I personally think it's likely that the prophecy would have referred to Éowyn rather than Merry, instrumental as he was.

But weirdly, this actually makes a lot of sense for the characters as well, IMO. Given how extremely unusual it appears to be for women of any species to be in direct combat in the regions where the Nazgûl are mainly active in the Third Age, it fits the Witch-king's overconfidence if he understood it to refer to gender and regarded himself as no more likely to be slain by a male Elf or dwarf or wizard than by Eärnur. And that would also fit with the uncertainty that strikes him when Éowyn declares that she's a woman.

So, in-story, I think the prophecy actually is about her and, more broadly, about gender.

[germesthegenie]

Seriously what was this guy’s problem

Been wanting to do a drawing with how I imagine Victoria’s fear aura to look like and this arc gave a good opportunity for that. Thoughts on the arc itself below

Ended up with a lot of thoughts this arc so doing this now rather than waiting for Arc 9. Also started writing more of these comments as I read rather than after the chapter/arc.

Arc 8

Looking at the audiobook and thought, Chapters at a reasonable length? Maybe?

Yay Defiant and Dragon!

I liked the little scene of Victoria asking about Armsmaster’s plan during the Leviathan fight in the context of her family’s deaths. Usually thought about if Aegis got killed as collateral damage from the luring plan and how Defiant felt about that now, kinda forgot Manpower was also there

Huh yeah kinda funny how tinker personalities divide like that. Some of these segments of Victoria’s narration do feel a bit rambly or tangential (sometimes kinda feels like WB taking any opportunity to expand the worldbuilding on powers) but at the same time can be fun and highlight how Victoria’s more of a cape nerd to Taylor’s power munchkin

“Wow Kenzie you sure know a lot about lead poisoning!” “Thanks I researched it a lot” … :(

More things building up for Capricorn’s story. Guessing he’s our next focus this arc or the next? Having to timeshare a body with contrasting personalities does sound like it’d suck, even moreso with the sexuality stuff

Damn Monokeros is creepy. Casually having Birdcage tier capes sitting in the same prison as lesser criminals, especially ones with that strong of a Master power, is probably the biggest flaw of the prison system here. Not to mention it being accessible enough to be the target of any capable masterminds in need of minions it seems. I forget, did Khepri or Scion collapse the Birdcage or something to that effect? Or is it just because it’s on Earth Bet that they don’t use it anymore?

Kenzie highlighted the main theme of Breakthrough’s powers: They almost all have incredibly strong and potentially deadly powers, but for one reason or another they hold back, for the most part because they’re heroes. It’s interesting, but also makes me wonder how things will go when they face a threat they can go all out on (like an Endbringer tier or someone with a kill order)

Finally got to see the whole “everyone jumps the rulebreakers” thing Tattletale talked about in the whole cops and robbers talk way back in Worm, at least for smaller time rulebreakers and not S Class threats.

Also still reinforces my thought that Prancer is essentially a more villainous Skitter from an outside perspective. The Undersiders were playing pretty loose with the Unwritten Rules as well by the end of things

Cryptid continues to get weirder and more horrifying what do you mean he has a form that gives birth

(8.7) Wretch, kill Monokeros with hammers please. And Kenzie please don’t internalize what the creepy child killer thinks.

I’ve only had the Major Malfunctions for 1 chapter and if anything happened to them I would kill everyone in this room and then Carol

Ok actually Carol is being kinda cool here… how is she gonna mess this up? Aside from the probably unintentional bit where she assumed Tristan was straight

(8.9) The little secret the group’s keeping from Victoria… I’m guessing its Wretch related or Amy related

“We’re gonna show everyone we can handle PR” ok cool how will you do that Vic- “by telling everyone what happened in Gold Morning” what

(8.11) This is feeling like a high stakes version of 25.4… This won’t end with a 7th Endbringer, right? /j

(8.11) These hosts could never be O, J, and Koffi like they are just all kinds of awful.

That said, it makes sense Victoria is better with PR than Taylor, given New Wave basically depends on PR

Speaking of, Taylor mention! Love the ascension of her rep to “traumatized literally everyone”, and not even using bugs to do it. Wonder how she’d react to that if she somehow learned about it on Aleph.

(8.12) Actually can a 7th Endbringer show up and kill Hamza and John Combs? What the hell is their problem

Between these guys and the Martins, by comparison Carol might actually not be that bad- wait Carol what are you doing

(8.12) Oh ok that’s where Carol messes it all up. Sees Victoria forced to confront her trauma in front of thousands and went “How can I make this about Amy 😈”

Granted, Amy was kinda dragged into the spotlight as well with all that. Fuck Hamza, seriously. Still, not now Carol.

(8.12)…Speaking of. Well damn Amy didn’t realize you had game like that.

(8.x) Please take all of Kenzie’s suffering and give it to Hamza and John Combs

Awkward girl who thinks of herself as weird? Surprising calm confidence in dangerous situations? Incredibly down bad narration around a specific guy? Close enough, Natalie. Welcome back Arc 1-7 Taylor /j

Hookline and Kitchen Sink losing to an untrained civilian and a mostly techless Tinker they are never living this down 😭

(8.y) Every fanfic with Scapegoat in it should have him just randomly keel over with injuries from another Scapegoat’s healing (ik thats not how it works but it’d be funny)

Gotta love power synergies, even if it’s Teacher exploiting them. Also Valefor really does just keep winning (in terms of getting to use his power, probably not gonna be winning as Teacher’s thrall)

Dinah mention?? What’s she up to now?

And a Contessa mention. Not liking that Teacher has plans for her.

[olderthannetfic]

Hi, I wasn't that anon but I have a PhD in music history and these responses to that Spotify post (much as I don't understand why that was sent to you) are hurting me. All I'm going to say is that if you're responding with "why is it always black people?" please take a history of popular music class if you genuinely do not understand why it is black people who get the focus when it comes to POPULAR MUSIC. (to be clear, this in this sense does not mean just "pop," but any genre that is not classical music or traditional folk music - so, rock, country, metal, R&B, hip hop, jazz all fall here, too)

Anon's whole point was that this is not a typical "minority representation" discussion, but one where the minority in question has always been dominant in this particular art form, in these particular genres, including being the majority in some of the ones Tumblr as a whole (maybe not the readership here specifically) really likes. You can't just import what you'd say about representation in any other medium. "Great black popular music artists" is not like, say, "great black filmmakers," it's more like "great female romance novelists." I don't even have to go out of my way to include black artists when I teach about American or British popular music, the way I do somewhat when I'm teaching about classical music. Yes, even from eras where the US popular music industry did their best to segregate them - you still had black artists who were influential and popular enough that they had lots of white audiences. Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole come to mind.

I agree that just looking at people's Spotify Wrapped is not the greatest metric - as you said, what if someone was just listening to songs on there by a few artists. I use my Spotify mostly for playlists for my college classes I teach, so this particular year I was teaching a lot of Japanese popular music courses, and so they ended up being disproportionately Japanese. (I still had some black artists I was listening to in other contexts, though.) So my results tend to be odd and not very representative of their point. But I think I agree with the general point of why Black Tumblr users do this. Regardless, when people are responding to this with the same old discourse they use for every other discussion like this with something where black people (or whichever group) are UNDERrepresented, then they need to know that they missed the central point.

--

I get it, but truly, the number of weird nerds who don't listen to popular music from the Anglophone world in any kind of normal pattern is really, really high, and the amount that people get attacked even when it doesn't make sense is also very high. I know you and others are like "Well, we weren't talking about you", but when it comes to getting yelled at, they're quite right in thinking it is about them. That is how this nonsense always plays out, and it isn't necessarily black users spearheading it either.

This is US centrism wank boiling over, among other factors. The number of fans from outside the anglophone world coming at fandom from an all Asian media all the time place was high on my tumblr even during the years when I was completely out of Asian media fandoms. Now that I'm back in an Asian media phase, it's even higher. And that's just one cultural group that's going to be pissed about this kind of topic.

A couple of people have made stupidass comments, including about rap (quelle surprise), but the anger at being expected to know or care who Kendrick Lamar et al. are is not surprising.

Nobody should be looking at spotify wrapped this way in the first place.

In fact, nobody should be looking at spotify wrapped this year at all.

The real conversation should be about firing programmers and replacing them with incompetent AI.

[hyenabeanz]

At the risk of having the fire of a thousand angry hockey nerds upon me, I'm going to share the deep dive I did today. I'm going to preface this with this is driven by me being curious about rule and game mechanics, and wondering why reffing sometimes does what it do, especially when incomprehensible on first glance to me. (Translation: this is a hyperfocus neurospicy dive, not a "my blorbo did nothing wrong." My blorbo did do wrong.)

I was pissed at The Hit. It looked really bad. And then I also was wondering WTF the refs were on.

So I found a gif and broke it down into individual frames.

And: I think they were right. Müller's stick is what hit her head, and Flaherty herself didn't, and it was weird flukey shit that made it happen as bad as it did.

PAUSE. I ask you please not come at me without at least reading the whole post. And it's long.

First: I really hope Muller is not too badly hurt, and I am worried, and it was/is upsetting she got clocked so hard. I shit talk Boston because historical MN Boston woho rivalry, but omg I don't want to see anyone hurt. Ever. Especially head injuries. I've had multiple concussions, it makes me ill to watch.

Second: The hit Flaherty delivered was illegal. Period. Yes. Their bodies were not going the same direction. That is against the clarified body rules, and is normally a two minute minor. A penalty was absolutely warranted.

But. Frames and further dissection below the cut. Be mindful they're just as ugly and scary to look at in still frame as in action if not more so. That was your content warning, and please regulate yourself accordingly; I'm not accepting abuse here.

so, chronological key frames from the impact. Hopefully Tumblr don't fuck these up

Looking at the frames, Flaherty never touches Müller's head. She kicks her elbow up to deflect Müller's stick, which is headed straight for her throat because Müller is holding it high, but drops her elbow right before contact. The result is still ugly as it hits in the collarbone region which is so not a nice place to get hit, but it is not a major penalty the way a check to the head is.

The high stick catches on Flaherty, and Flaherty's directional momentum whips it up into Müller's head. Müller's head doesn't move until Flaherty is past her.

The collision is still on Flaherty because she initiated the illegal contact which started the whole thing. But the call was an illegal check to the head, which is a specific thing. And that rule reads:

Rule 48 – Illegal Check to the Head will automatically initiate a further review with the PWHL Central Situation Room, by which referees may confirm their original call, reduce the penalty to a minor if the hit was accidental, or rescind it entirely if the review determines the head was not the main point of contact.

In this case it was pretty clearly accidental since I don't think Flaherty was out there doing the physics of how to get the stick to whip. Her head wasn't the main point of contact *at all.* So them going in between the two extremes of the rule feels appropriate imo since the fallout was so bad even though the head wasn't a point of contact between players.

(As an aside, I was curious if they could change the penalty to "illegal body checking" and assess it as a major, because I could be sold on that being potentially could be appropriate, that it was a bad body check that resulted in injury, but if I'm understanding rule 20.6 correctly, the answer seems to be no:

"The Referee shall have the following options following such review: (i) confirming their original Match Penalty call; or (ii) reducing her original Match Penalty call to a lesser penalty for the same infraction."

If I'm wrong pls lmk!)

So with all that context... It makes much more sense how that shook out imo. Or at the very least I see how someone(s) could legitimately arrive at the conclusion they did.

I don't say this all to say what happened was ok, or that it wasn't bad, because obviously minor shit can escalate bad. I'm not even super interested in convincing people a suspension or major isn't/wasn't warranted though I'm uncertain how they would've managed it with not making a body check call in the first place.

I say all this because a)I do think sometimes refs see stuff we don't. (Was a ref looking right at them at an angle we don't have and can't recreate that was compelling? Did the ref hear the damn stick thwack into the helmet?) b) the conviction that the refs are rigging shit is utterly ridiculous and c) the vitriol I am seeing is unnerving and gross. Wishing injury on anyone sucks. Casting people/entire damn teams as evil and willfully trying to cause severe injury sucks, and the evidence isn't there imo when you put the bits together.

If the stick hadn't been there, it would've probably been a garden variety thuggy hit that absolutely warranted a penalty but would not have been so catastrophic. The kind of play we expect from a physical game.

But nasty unexpected hits are gonna happen. It's fast, it's rough. I'm glad the league is putting stuff in place to try and keep those moments down. But they're still going to happen, even with no evil intent or even overly egregious carelessness.

And again, I really, really hope Müller is ok and recovers well. I do expect her to be out a while (THAT will tell me more about the PWHL's commitment to player safety than anything,) but I hope it's as short as possible. It absolutely was scary and I get why people are upset; it is upsetting that it happened, regardless of how the rules shake out.

[opal-kitty333]

So, I like Horror Sans, and being a nerd, I've been thinking about him a lot during my recovery with brain damage. A lot of people treat his wounds like brain damage, giving him memory problems, chronic headaches/migraines, speaking difficulties, fugue states, just issues collecting his thoughts. All understandable and reasonable symptoms, but there's something about just what truly horrific, completely life altering, brain damage to such an extent can do to a person that hasn't been explored very much. Yes, he doesn’t technically have a brain, but considering someone with head trauma like him would be in a comatose like start for weeks to a month, we can choke up him taking that hit like he did and being able to walk and talk to that. Plus, we can take inspiration from real injury and science and have wiggle room for it to not be 100% accurate. Anyway-

This is Phineas Gage.

It is one of the earliest extreme cases of brain damage where the patient survived while psychology as a scientific practice was getting on it's feet. If you've taken a psychology class, you've heard of him. He was a railroad worker foreman who had a rod blown through his skull in an accident, destroy most of his frontal lobe.

If you don’t know what the frontal lobe is it's where your ability to reason and make decisions, the ability to control your muscles voluntarily, and your ability to process knew information and recall old information. It's well known for being the part of your brain that inputs logic, the part gives you the ability to remember what happened last time you picked a fight with someone, so instead you choose to walk away despite how much your want to punch them for being a prick.

As I stated before, this man was a foreman, well known for keeping a level head, being responsible, and hard working. After the injury, that completely changed. Everyone agreed he was barely recognizable as himself. He was impulsive, prone to extreme mood swings, impatient, making massive plans only to almost immediately abandon them, and generally seemed to have no control over his desires or ability to distinguish between a want or a need.

Now, let's look at Horror.

I'd say it's safe to say his frontal lobe but also part of his parietal lobe would be utterly fucked. Your parietal lobe controls your ability to process sensory information (mostly touch) and to understand not only where you and your body is, but to process the world around you. You see a massive enough tent, some clowns running around, the right music, and your parietal lobe is what does the work to label that as a circus.

To have these two structures damaged, or the closest equivalent in a monster, would radically alter Sans' personality, his ability to move, his understanding of the context around him, and connect with others.

He'd become rather self centered on his own desires and beliefs, struggling to even have the patients let alone the want to give other people the time of day. His actions would be impulsive, made on his emotions in the present moment and with little concerns other than the immediate consequences. He'd be prone to loud outbursts, not just rage, but any other emotions like sadness or glee with little ability to realize how he's acting may be overblown or inappropriate. Not only could his ability to put his thoughts into words be a struggle, but his ability to say those words could be affected as well. He'd be very present focused, with pass relations or responsibility mattering little as he keeps marching to the beat of his own drum.

That is, if he could march. He'd not only struggle to know where his limbs are or what he's touching, but his sense of balance would be awful. He'd likely have a constant wobble, having to go slowly and potentially hold onto or lean on things if he wanted to move quickly. God forbid how much he'd bump into furniture or trip and struggle actually grab onto something to catch himself. It's entirely possible he'd have difficulty reading and writing or confusing his left and right regularly. He'd need more time to process a situation and could very easily misidentify what's actually going on could likely lead to him acting even more unpredictable as the world around him is so much more dangerous and he's struggling to fully understand what everyone is doing and trying to keep two steps ahead of everyone around him.

But here's the thing. The brain is also incredibly adaptable in ways your wouldn't believe. Phineas Gage slowly recovered over time. He died twelve years after the incident from epilepsy but over time he slowly regaining his social skills and general functionality. He picked up a job as a stage coach four years after the indecent even. He was never quite the same person he was before, but he wasn't doomed to be what he first was after the indecent.

Imagine what this kind of thing could mean for Sans. Not only would the betrayal cut deep enough and the world falling apart put him through trauma that would shred the soul, but people he trust literally damaged his ability to think logically and control his impulses. Of course he's going to lash out, focus on doing anything he can to survive with little respect for what anyone else thinks. Even forcing his brother to do things and refusing to listen to him unless given no other option. All while he thinks the biggest problems after the indecent is how much his head hurts, how his memory is shot, that it's harder or even down right painful to think, and how he's struggling to cling to his independence while never having the patience or resources to give himself the ability to heal. He doesn't even realize how much he's changed. If you point it out Sans would likely get defensive and aggressive, or brush it off as everyone underground being awful people out to eat each other alive.

But then he gets out to the surface. He gets stable food, a safe place to live. His brother is recovering and as the years pass his mind can finally start pulling itself together and healing, finally. Sans begins to regain his ability to think critically on his own actions and others, his emotional outburst and vindictive behavior start to wind down and fade. He's able to think and start sifting through all the shit he remembers.

The guilt of what he did, the people he hurt for no reason other than pettiness. The stupid decisions he made that hurt himself and/or Papyrus in the long run. All the hindsight he has now. Imagine how much he would bury those memories and thoughts. Justifying everything he could and insisting he had reasons, or that it's just how it was and that everyone was as awful and cruel he was. Or just accepting that what Undyne had done to him and the famine after had ruined him, broken and rotted all the good he had and left him vile and malicious. That he'll never have a chance to truly be who he was before.

[jeizet]

Do you have the post you mentioned being 3 pages long defending IchiHime?? I wanna read it-

LMAO

Yea sure let me give context first. So it makes more sense when I share it.

So I was having a discussion in r/bleach subreddit regarding a comment one dude said.

Talking about ichihime they said "dude it is literally a gooner ship. There would like be 3 ichih*me fans if Kubo hadn't decided on it". To which I replied "You mean if Kubo didn't decide for Orihime to have a crush on Ichigo or for Ichihime to be canon? (Genuine question I didn't understand your comment)" after they clarified about it being IchiHime being canon I gave a long text with a meme even:

thank you now I can properly disagree. WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY WOULDN'T HAVE FANS. The love confession is absolutely lovely. The amount of passion and care they have for eachother (even if it were fully platonically) is so deep. They undestand eachother, lived through similar experiences in their childhood and share a sense of grief and one-way sympathy. EVEN WITHOUT ALL THAT FEEDING INTO WHY THIS SHIPS IS GREAT. THE AESTHETICS, THE THOPES!! - Sword x Shield - Knight x Princess - Sunshine Protector x Sunshine - Badboy x Softie - Secret Nerd x Secret Freak - Mama's boy x Mom friend - Idiot x Idiot - Besties to Lovers - Idiots to Lovers - Requited Unrequired Love - Miscommunication - First Love!!! I MEAN THERE'S JUST SO MUCH, THEY ARE SO SHOUJO CODED and don't even get me STARTED with the amount of romance AUs you can make with these badboys

And I got a long reply from another user where they disagreed with most of what I said... Understandable... But their answer made me a little mad because I basically said "This is why I love this ship" and felt like they replied with "nuh-uh"

To summarize what they said:

Ichihime is a lot of unrequired love

Ichigo is NOT passionate when it comes to Orihime

Ichigo is closer to Rukia and Tatsuki than Orihime

Their lived experiences are not exactly the same

The thropes don't make sense or work better for other ships (this person looked like they liked IchiTatsu and IchiRuki)

And then I went bombastic:

Okay first of all all ships in bleach  have either one-sided or non-existent explicitly romantic development, Kubo did this because he didn’t want to write romance and for such reason I very actively rely on what a possible subtext in actions. The only couple that we see very actively into each other (that I currently remember of) are Masaki and Isshin. Also my list is reasons why IchiHime is a couple that people WOULD ship even if they weren’t canon, not why Ichigo is in love with Orihime, at the end of the day we have no clue why or when that happened, we can only speculate.

Done from Orihime while Ichigo is asleep. So, while yes, it is nice and heartwarming. It's also sad as it's pining, considering how hopelessly one-sided it is.

*True, we don’t see this from Ichigo’s side because he is asleep, but it’s intended to be pining, sad and most of all hopeless and lonely, more than a “confession” perse, we can call this scene more of an acknowledgement of the depths of her feelings, an acceptance that she might not be coming back as an ally or alive.

As beyond protecting her, which he does for everyone. There was zero passion from Ichigo that amounts to anything that was remotely romantic. Albeit you did say this so fair. But even passion in general is sparse from Ichigo regarding Orihime outside of protecting her. Which is what Ichigo does.

**I agree that Ichigo protects everyone, “everyone” includes Orihime. And he shows this passion over and over, bowing to her to protect her, going into depression when he sees her hurt, going into depression when she is kidnapped, going against the soul society and risking his life over and over to save her. He does this for Rukia in the Soul Society arc too, so If those are good arguments to ship Ichiruki, they are good to ship IchiHime as well.

Also, Ichigo shows he cares by treating delicately, something that EVERYONE does might I add. Everyone treats Orihime differently, they speak gently to her, they look at her softly, Uryuu does this, Urahara does this, Rukia does this, and Ichigo does as well, because they all care about her.

All of those actions are passionate, passionate platonic love, and that’s okay, it’s very him.

As does literally everyone who's close to Ichigo. Heck, Rukia understands Ichigo better. Tatsuki understands Ichigo better.

***Once again “Everyone” includes Orihime. And I agree Rukia understands Ichigo’s desire to fight and protect considering she is a damn warrior and an adult, she is going to understand a child soldier whose friends got blasted and feel powerless.

Also Tatsuki does NOT know Ichigo better, she literally tells Orihime in the grand fisher chapter that she has better eye than her about Ichigo's tells, that it took her 9 years to notice the happy smile was fake while Orihime was able to see through him instantly, and considering she is a girl that hides her sorrows surrounding herself with people and over-positivism, makes sense.

They objectively did not. Orihimes' parents were scum. The father was an alcoholic and the mother a prostitute. They beat Orihime and Sora. Sora, when he turned 18, fled with Orihime. Sora died…

***I’m not saying they lived the SAME life, I’m saying they live through some similar experiences in life, bullying over the color of their hair, losing the family member they were closer to, losing them bloody in their arms; we can argue they were even raised by single parents (Ichigo was raised by Isshin alone after his mother died when he was 9, and Orihime was raised by her brother until she was 12 and then he died.). Of course their lives are not the same nor I said they were, I’m saying they were similar enough that canonically both Orihime and Ichigo share a “one-way sympathy” (Orihime feeling this way is canonized at the end of the grand fisher chapter when she learns about Ichigo’s mom, and Ichigo’s feelings are canonized in a Klub Outside question if I find the number I will edit this.)

So, none of that actually fed into the ship being great…

Nuh-uh, first of all ALL ships are great, as poorly written, boring or straight up fucked up it might be for someone, they are another person’s OTP. And since this is MY OTP, I will explain why all of these points feed into why I believe IchiHime is great.

* The scene allows us to understand fully that Orihime matches Ichigo’s desire to protect and altruistic tendencies, the girl grabs his hand, fails to do the one selfish act she could do (kissing him) before she is off to get herself killed, cries with a smile on her face accepting that she is not coming back and hopes that maybe in another life they could fall in love.

** I already said it, If it’s enough to ship IchiRuki, It’s enough to ship IchiHime. But to add to this it’s also really nice to see Ichigo’s gentler side that we mostly see with Orihime, softer looks, softer answers, even the playful banter that he has with everyone is less aggressive with her making it look like it’s more teasing and wanting to get a reaction out of her than actually trying to start a dispute, things that a teenager that tries hard to act cool would definitely do and I think it’s cute as hell.

*** It’s nice and I enjoy dynamics where the characters have a trauma that they can share and bear together, it allows for a better mutual understanding and Orihime already understands Ichigo pretty well, seeing through his fake smiles and subtle shivers the fact that he is bearing something he is not open to share, and I think that’s nice and one of the reasons I’m so happy Ichihime it’s canon, since Ichigo has lived through SHIT and deserves someone that is gentle, caring and understanding.

About the tropes:

note: The list given before is reasons why someone could be interested in IchiHime, for that reason some of the thropes follow canon before the timeskip, and other brings a light of what current fans of IchiHime are interested in when thinking about the possibility of their romantic relationship, thing that although it’s canon, doesn’t have canon content or is properly portrait so any idea on how their romantic life works it’s still not canon content, some of this thropes are followed and agreed enough to be fanon (meaning big part of the IchiHime fandom has agreed that it’s most probably how their relationship worked)

TL;DR: The trope list doesn’t follow canon, just what IchiHime fans usually enjoy of the couple.

Sword x Shield: Since at the moment the fight was happening the ship wasn’t canon still, it’s a trope that counts for IchiHime.

Knight x Princess: True, it can also be considered protector x damsel, I just thought “princess” would be better since Ori”Hime”.

Sunshine Protector x Sunshine: yes, Rukia is definitely sunshine, but Orihime is a ray of sunshine as well and Ichigo does protect her. It works for IchiRuki too I guess (although personally I don’t really like labeling Rukia as a protected character, I think she is badass, but If you like “Sunshine Protector x Sunshine” for IchiRuki, Pop off dude!)

Badboy x Softie: Overdone trope but still correct! Ichigo is super punk and Orihime likes dressing up with long skirts and flowers!

Secret Nerd x Secret Freak: this is crack because I’ve seen many IchiHime fans enjoying the idea that Ori is a freak in the sheets, personally I don’t I think they are cuter being “looks like a bad boy and secretly a nerd” x “the nerd they can ramble to” but hey, I am trying to show what the community and myself are into. Also Ichigo is definitely a nerd. His Idol is Shakespeare ffs.

Mama's boy x Mom friend: I fully disagree, Ichigo is a mama’s boy, he just doesn’t have a mom to be a mama’s boy, I don’t mean it in a derogatory sense, but the dude DOES rely on his little sister to do the cooking because at 17 he still doesn’t know how to cook. Also Orihime IS a mom, she is gentle, understanding, caring, and has a lot of emotional intelligence.

Idiot x Idiot: I corrected myself in the comments “dumb x dumber” fits them better and NO I won’t be convinced that are not silly, foolish, reckless, FATUOUS EVEN, taking nonsensical decisions for the sake of the protecting the other, their desire to sacrifice themselves and save the other makes that when they are together they rarely make 2 brain cells. And it’s okay they are teenagers, they are allowed to be infantile from time to time.

Besties to Lovers: One CAN have multiple best friends. After Ichigo lost his powers he still hangs out with Hime, he knows his apartment number when Chad didn’t, she went to his house unprompted with bread multiple times to the point they have inside jokes, they care for each other to the point that is suicidal, they trust the other with theit lives too, THEY HAVE BEEN IN 2 WARS TOGETHER. I’m sorry but I can’t call someone my best friend after all that because there’s a secret rule that I’m allowed to have 1 singular female best friend, let me just call them my lover.

Idiots to Lovers (not that canon-compliant but the IH fandom likes it): A mixture of “idiot x idiot” and “Besties to lovers”, I also like referring to this trope as “idiots in love” . The community of IchiHime really likes the potential of them being pathetic while dating, meaning scenarios where they don’t really know how to do romantic stuff like holding hands, kissing, preparing dates; OR go too overboard and the fact that they are atrociously down bad for each other makes their scenes cringey and disgustingly sweet (basically just makes you want to scream “just kiss already!!”). 

Requited Unrequited Love (fanon): Maybe you didn’t understand this one. “Requited Unrequited Love” is a trope where one or both characters are sure that their romantic feelings are not reciprocated, making for scenarios like: Orihime being unaware that Ichigo asked her on a date because he didn’t asked directly enough (this is a scenario that I see written SO often and I can’t get tired of it). Most of the time the portrait is humoristic but yes, most if not ALL of the ideas that follow this trope go hand in hand with “mutual pining” that sometimes gets sad, and other times is just silly scenes of Orihime inviting their friends to a hang out that was supposed to be a date (fking favorite of mine)

Miscommunication:Miscommunication doesn’t have to be necessarily love related, a clear example of this is the whole fullbringer arc that was filled with miscommunication since they don’t tell eachother stuff in order to protect the other or are not ready to share and ends up coming to bite their ass later.

First Love!(Very probably canon but there’s no confirmation if Hime had a crush on someone before Ichigo): If it works because of Orihime, the trope is correct, they don’t need to be each other’s first love, they just had to be at some point or another the first love for one or both of the characters, there are some stories that are actually both Orihime and Ichigo moving to different places and/or just falling in love with other people and then meet again as adults now single with experiences and decide to date! It still follows the first love trope because Ichigo being Orihime’s first love.

To finish it all, the “Shoujo coded” comment was more of a joke because it’s something that we talk a bunch in the IchiHime tumblr, Orihime does act like a lot of shoujo protagonists like Shirayuki (Akagami no Shirayuki-hime), Nanami (Kamisama Hajimemashita) or Sakura (Sakura card captor) and Ichigo feeling a little bit too perfect for the role of Male Lead in an Otome Isekai, ofc this last part is absolutely biased because it’s my opinion, Shipping will never be something that I can speak in a non-personal way.

Thank you for the interesting debate!

[charcubed]

Saw a post on the dash I so strongly disagree with I have to make my own post without interacting with OP... but if this makes it back to OP or anyone who agreed with their take, know this wasn't meant as hate or shade

I do genuinely think that in 15x11 when Dean says "Lady, I'm Tolstoy" to Fortuna he means it and believes it, and I think that's also important to the themes of the episode overall in the thematic context of the season.

Dean certainly has some semblance of self-worth by season 15 and it's kind of a misread of him and his character development to say he doesn't ("I’m good with who I am. I’m good with who you are" in season 14 weren't empty words). But aside from that, Fortuna calling him "sexy, but skimmable" and a "beach read" was about her saying he's simple and that there are no further depths to who he is. Therefore he's uninteresting to her and not a fun challenge. But Dean knows that's not true because he knows himself and his own complexities. He's well aware that he's deeper than people sometimes assume at first glance in several senses.

Which brings us to this: what Fortuna says to Dean acts as commentary on what people often assume about Dean's character in-universe and out of it. How often throughout the course of the show do villains hit on Dean and underestimate him because he's hot? And how often do parts of fandom paint Dean as simply sexy, the womanizer jokester, and/or the dumb one in comparison to Sam (in a well-meaning way or otherwise) when Dean's actually well-read, has a wide range of knowledge from pop culture to survival skills, and is extremely clever plus emotionally intelligent? Some of those misconceptions stem from earlier seasons when Dean's self-worth was lower, and/or just when he'd make jokes about Sammy being ~the smart one~ since he went to college and tends to be the research nerd. Y'know, the classic shit from when they were younger that people took at face value or didn't realize their characters shifted away from. But we're not in the earlier seasons anymore, and all of those old assumptions about who Dean and Sam are as people or how they see themselves don't apply in the narrative by season 15. They hadn't for years.

The reason why Fortuna's comments are also meta commentary is that nearly all of season 15 is. That's the nature of the overarching plot of Chuck as villain and the fight for free will. And that's extra true in 15x11, which deals with a god who steals luck (as Chuck stole their luck), misunderstands them, and therefore underestimates them. Sam wins his first game against Fortuna because she was distracted by the conversation, and as she says to Sam, "You got me talking. You're good." But Dean's the one who primarily distracts her while she's playing by asking her the questions; Sam even catches on to what Dean's doing in the middle of it (they exchange a glance) but he barely says anything. Which is why Sam pointedly replies to Fortuna, "I learned from my brother."

Dean knows ~he's Tolstoy,~ and he demonstrates how he got a read on Fortuna by cleverly playing the fuck out of her as Sam's backup in the first game. Because he knows it'll work, and it literally does. She loses because he distracts her!

Beyond characterizations, the importance of this is that the entire situation in Fortuna's pool hall is structured to reflect the rigged "game" of Chuck's narrative that Sam and Dean are trapped in. In regards to the importance of Dean saying "I'm Tolstoy" specifically... Again, there's more to Dean as a person and he's being underestimated. That's key in the context of their fight against gods, aka both Fortuna and Chuck. Dean further proves this by calling bullshit on Fortuna's "double or nothing" offer: "That's how the cowboy died." The cowboy challenged Dean to double or nothing and Dean took that bet because importantly he knew he had what it took to win it, but with Fortuna, he hesitates because he's astute. Plus, there's the fact that he and Sam are true "heroes" and the importance of that.

The takeaway for them and for us is that Sam and Dean had what it took to defeat Chuck. (Especially Dean, who Chuck is now obsessed with vs how Sam was originally the chosen one, just like with Fortuna.) They won a game against a goddess! But the key? Don't get baited into continuing to play.

Metanarratively, Dean is also the "cowboy." Going double or nothing in the overarching story – Sam and Dean not walking away when they get the win of having Jack back, but instead still playing Chuck's game and going up against him in a way he ultimately orchestrated rather than changing the game (with Cas' help) – is how/why they lose and Dean dies in 15x20. If Sam and Dean had taken Fortuna's advice of "Don't play his game. Make him play yours." – if they hadn't challenged Chuck within "his own joint" aka the confines of his storytelling Framework – then they wouldn't have lost. But they didn't do that, and so they didn't win.

"Lady, I'm Tolstoy" -> Dean's underestimated -> Dean and Sam have what it takes to defeat a god.

They didn't quite manage it with Chuck, but they (initially) did with Fortuna to win both their luck and her advice, and that still counts for something.

[windvexer]

On what I'm going to call "peer positioning" in witchcraft, and the scary empowerment it can bring you

I think a lot of people who get into witchcraft have a problem with being able to see themselves as peers & equals to the powers they cultivate around them.

I see this most often discussed when it comes to gods. "Just because your god asks you for something doesn't mean you need to do it!" Etc. I think we've all heard that.

But today my thoughts are on the tarot, and how some people seem to treat tarot readings as "the truth" or "the answer" that then must be followed, even if they (the living, breathing, human practitioner) don't really agree or don't really want to do that.

I'm really big on the analogy of a witch as a monarch, and the concept of various powers (like gods, spirits, tools, and spells) being counselors in the throne room.

In this context, it's easier to adopt the mindset that all of these powers have their own personalities, abilities, and goals - and that they can & will provide conflicting information when you ask for advice. (Especially ancestors - so opinionated!)

Imagine Captain Picard sitting in the meeting room with Geordi, Riker, and the rest of the space nerds.

Captain Picard is like, "the power core is failing and the away team is stranded on the planet. I think we should use the nebula to hide until the Gromflomites stop searching for us." And then Geordi is like, "but Captain, the engines would never make it! We have to go rescue the away team immediately!" And Captain Picard is like, "damn... Wow. I really wanted to go to the nebula, I thought it was the best choice :/ but if you're saying we literally don't have to worry about the Gromflomites..." Then Riker is like, "Captain, no. Geordi isn't saying the Gromflomites aren't a problem, he's just expressing his top concerns as Chief Engineer." And then Picard is all, "oh, so... this is conflicting information? Did that mean I did a bad reading on Geordi, or that negative spirits are stopping me from being able to communicate? Is Riker possibly a trickster?"

If you're captain of the ship, monarch of the kingdom, (etc.), then it might be important to ask yourself:

Am asking for input from my counsel of allied powers, and then making choices for myself?

Or, have I inadvertently signed over my decision-making process to these powers?

And I think it all kind of comes back to "peer positioning," or, witches being able to develop a spiritual framework within which they are equals to the powers around them.

Since beginning practicing witchcraft in earnest, I have often demanded a course of direction. Instead of asking, "how do I accomplish this?" I would ask, "what do I do?"

And the answer was the same every time, deeply infuriating, but also very scary: "Do whatever you think is best."

I think that's the problem of being the captain of the ship. Once your counselors are done giving their input, you are the one who has to make the final call.

Lately I've really been on a kick about witchcraft as a path of empowerment, and I think that viewing spiritual input as just that - input - is a vital part of the process.

Even if you are a true-blue believer in the magical power of tarot, tarot is still just one counselor sitting in your throne room.

Even if you have tutelary spirits, guardians and guides, gods and angels, providing blessings and support - they are not sitting at the head of the table.

You are.

I think that a framework of allied powers as peers and equals is relatively basic, and does have its flaws. But I also think it can be helpful in a variety of ways:

It can provide a system of understanding why allied powers can give conflicting advice, or even seemingly bad advice that doesn't align with our personal desires.

It can provide a tool for processing spiritual input.

It helps restore a sense of personal authority to a practitioner.

It can help a practitioner reclaim control of a path that's grown a mind of its own.

It aids in practicing that most oppressive of skills - liberated autonomy.

I just think it's something to consider. At the end of the day, most of us have probably got to make our own calls.

[I'm making this post because in the past few months I've been helping witches consult the tarot, and they've been giving feedback like, "so this is what I should do, right?" or, "what is it telling me to do?"

I can basically see the huge reblogs where people are explaining that a period of time where they signed complete personal autonomy over to their god was the most empowering and spiritually electric time in their lives,

and I want you to know, I'm not speaking about vows and oaths made to entities that gives them control over your life. I'm talking about situations where witches put down their autonomy so they can have both hands free to shuffle tarot.]

[beefscrap]

Hello. Real talk, pretty sensitive, and political. I need help I’ve been keeping it to myself but it doesn’t do anything. I am scared that Sheephead is a Jewish stereotype and I don’t really know what to do about it

I’ve been keeping it to myself partially because idk if it sounds crazy. I get super paranoid about stuff like that - or at least, I have in the past. Maybe TMI but I also experience psychosis which heightens this paranoia at times. Big cycle of being terrified and not sharing. Anyways, please be honest and tell me if I’m being paranoid. But also be honest and PLEASE tell me if my fears are ACCURATE. Mostly asking Jewish followers and people / educated people. I will block any antisemites instantly.

I know he’s a dragon. We are in wings of fire and Judaism does not exist here. My reasoning is 1. His appearance. Like, his design is meant to be an overbite. I just give him the nose when I draw him becuz that’s how I’ve been styling it. But even look at like. Mort from family guy. He has those exact teeth (terrible Jewish stereotype character. Yk family guy). Second reasoning is his personality. There is that “anxious Jewish person” stereotype and as we know, Sheephead is meant to be pathetic and anxious because of the role he plays in the story. I’m pretty sure Mort is actually again a perfect example of that.

Please, please be honest. And I won’t force the responsibility upon anyone else, but if you’re willing I’d GREATLY appreciate it if anyone has advice on how to fix it at this point. Especially if you’ve read my story and have that added context. Again, mainly looking for Jewish people’s voices here.

I don’t know if it was subconscious or something, but I had no intention of making Sheephead a nasty stereotype. That’s never my intention. My intention was to literally make him a nerd, but ofc add depth to that. No matter what though, intention doesn’t matter in the end. The impact matters

So yeah hello everyone lmk if I’m being insane or if I make sense. You won’t hurt my feelings and all that yeah

[ran-orimoto]

There is a weird habit in the fandom to give the other kids attributes Junpei has got removing them from him. How do you feel about this?

You mean in their fanworks or something else?

Tbh the thing I dislike the most from the fandom, which is something I have metabolized from some interactions I’ve had, is that whenever Junpei gets something new to add to his personality, most people will go “It doesn’t fit him!” ;“He was different in the anime etc…” , because they’re so obsessed about collocating him in the field of the techno nerds due to the Bolgmon scene (be that scene damned without context).

And it’s not really just about the tenor carreer I might be one of the few rejoicing about, but, like, even the detective stories passion. I met some people who rewrote Kouichi and basically rewrote him as Junpei, making him learn about Italy to make Izumi feel less lonely, acting chivalrous, having a passion for detective novels etc…

Now, I can’t care less about what other people do in the fanworlds, but I’m saying this because in some sort of sense I do understand the sentiment and where it comes from. It might bug me sometimes…It does when these people discredit whatever Junpei gets because they are openly antis, but at the same time show they are just “jealous” of his character. But again, I’m not one to pay mind to these details. If I don’t like how you treat my son, I will block you and go on with my life.

However, I will still greet my teeth and fight in official discussions about him, in which they complain about ANYTHING he receives. Junpei (and Izumi) are such strangers to us we don’t even know who their parents are. Let us be happy about the crumbs they serve us wtf.

[lonelywretchjervistetch]

...You ever see something in media that pissed you off so much, you were tempted to make a YouTube video about it? An adaptation of something you love that's been SO BADLY fucked over, you need to scream it into a screen to get your feelings out? A show that you had your hope up for, something that would inform your opinion of future media, then dashed that hope against the rocks like a god callously discarding a deformed child? YOU EVER SEE SOMETHING THAT MAKES YOU SO MAD, YOU MAKE HALF-BAKED REFERENCES TO GREEK MYTHOLOGY THAT MAKE NO SENSE, EVEN IN CONTEXT???

...

Creature Commandos really pissed me off.

The finale of Creature Commandos came out today, so I watched it and the previous episode (which I missed), only to turn out enraged, disappointed, and really worried about the DCU going forward. And yeah, I know, I'm a sad comic book nerd crying into the cybernetic void, as a percentage of us always does when the badaptation comes a-calling, but I'm normally a VERY positive person, and this show...this show.

This series stood on a cliff overlooking a vast ocean of possibilities, dove off with a beautiful arc, twisted and turned in the air gracefully and poetically, and as it approached the surface of the water, SMASHED INTO A ROCK FACE-FUCKING-FIRST, AND IT WASN'T PRETTY!!! Ugh. I hate complaining like this, because I know it's cringe, I know it doesn't matter, I know that most people don't care, and I'm sure a lot of people disagree with me. But this made me so upset. I'm tempted to write a whole goddamn essay about it, honestly. I just had to get SOMETHING out to vent, because...I hated this. I really goddamn hated this, and I may not have felt this way if not for the ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT ENDING that we got.

Jesus tap-dancing Christ. I'm probably gonna write that essay.

[mk-wizard]

What Sailor Moon Taught Me About Femininity and it's Importance to Feminism

Since I did one of Elita-One, I decided to also do one of another influential female heroine who helped me get through high school and revisiting her in university helped me find myself again. The queen of all magical girls in my opinion: Sailor Moon. Specifically, the 80s anime version which is the best one.

As stated in my last post, in my very late teenage years, I went through a dark period where I began to resent my own womanhood, convinced myself that pink was dumb and gave in to the propaganda that it was all Barbie's fault that I had a weight problem and that she was problematic. Elita-One broke the trance I was in and gave me the kick in the pants (or skirt rather) to learn to love myself again as a woman, but revisiting Sailor Moon helped me decide what kind of woman I wanted to be.

For context, Sailor Moon and the other four Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus are and at the same time not what you would expect in a team full of girls. Sure they are diverse in that one is the awkward girl, one is the dreamer, one is the strong yet gentle one, one is the forward one and one was the nerd, but here's the thing... ALL of them are feminine, dress cute and are open to meeting a great guy. On top of that, Sailor Moon herself is the main character and SHE is the awkward girl, she is very flawed, had growing up to do and makes bad decisions yet she is STILL a good role model for girls.

Sailor Moon the characters shows girls that you don't need to be perfect to be a good person or even a successful person. It's ok to have flaws, to have feelings, to be afraid in dangerous in situations and even ask for help as long as you keep going, improve and learn from your mistakes. And I have to give credit where credit is due, Sailor Moon does mature over the course of the series, she tries new things and even becomes good at cooking which is something that meant a lot to her. Moreover, the series Sailor Moon showed that all of the cast had flaws they needed to work on and quirks. Like Elita-One, these girls were not man haters and even called out the toxicity in that mentality, they were deep, had backstories and most importantly, they were happy and loved themselves as they were and loved each other as sisters. There were no misery chicks, no cattiness and no frenemies. Sure, at times Moon and Mars would bicker, but that was just more out of friendly rivalry.

In short, Sailor Moon taught me that femininity is nuanced and expresses itself in different ways. It's not a hive mind where everyone is the same. You can be girly, happy, fun and cute, AND do you. Moreover, femininity has a way of bringing women together and uniting them as a team rather than pitting them against each other. And that is one of the core values of feminism which is that women should support other women even when they are different from each other.

In today's day and age especially, we need to recall the wisdom of Sailor Moon in how none of the girls expect each other to be the same or even have the same goals, and unconditionally support each other. And a lot of it is due to their femininity and the common ground they have thanks to it.

Bottom line is that Sailor Moon taught me that femininity is love which extends to the sense of sisterhood we take for granted in our fellow woman. She stands as a reminder that we are a team and while each of us can do it on our own, we can do it even better together. After all, working together is how we got equal pay, two income homes and the right to vote. Imagine what else we can do if we put aside our differences and worked together?

Also, you don't have to be perfect to be great. In fact, you don't have to be the best at everything. You don't have to be the smartest, prettiest or the most popular girl in the room just as long as you are doing your best, you're getting better and most importantly, you love yourself the way you are.

We girls can make it together, be great together and be beautiful together.

@blade-liger-4ever @vitamaeternum @guardiandua @chaoticcreatorgardendean @sassycandypoetry @iloveyoulinpeckettcomic