#i was obsessed with this series in middle school and i still love it despite its faults :))

[mishkinis]

so uhm. new season of kuroshitsuji announced

[sarnai4]

The Real Deal

The Penguins of Madagascar is a great show for many reasons, but I feel like one is very underrated. Despite being a comedy, it has good villains. I have seen series where the comedy becomes a bigger part, so villains are written as playful obstacles or too silly to really be taken seriously. That does not happen here.

Hans is a villain who not only acts as an antagonist for the show, but he also connects to Skipper's past, adding new layers to the already mysterious nature of the Denmark incident. Because of whatever happened, Hans is that type of villain who won't kill the heroes. He even mentions how he didn't want to fry Skipper in a real volcano. He just wants to make him miserable. These villains are so dangerous because death isn't their goal. In a sense, torture is.

Dr. Blowhole is on the other end of this. He makes it very clear that he wants Skipper dead. Between making him even "most importantly" forget how to swim (as he falls into the ocean, mind you), this dolphin has a penguin-seeking middle. He has plans to make the world suffer for his pain and will destroy anyone in his path.

Rat King is a surprisingly fun villain to me. He easily could have just been the dumb jock kind of enemy who's basically an older version of a high school bully. Despite that, he's pretty clever too, shown when he hustled the penguins out of their habitat. He's also way more ruthless than I gave him credit for being. He had a vat of acid somehow and was going to use it to kill them.

Kuchikukan was not a villain I ever expected to see in the series. Evil spirits weren't on my radar, but this is probably the only time I won't complain about their presence. He was so much fun! He mastered the combination of "light-hearted jokester who messes with the mere mortals" and "all-powerful being who can and will destroy the Earth." That's not an easy balance to strike. It's such a great time to watch him go from an almost laughable threat due to his host body, then show how much he can still do. By the time the episode is over, I know why he was able to destroy a world inside of a cheese loaf.

Blue Hen was a nice way to give the penguins a psychological threat. She knew how to come after them where it mattered most. Go after Kowalski's obsession with science and go after Skipper's position as leader. It's a shame that she only was in season 3 because it would have been fun to see what else she did with more time.

Last, but certainly not least, X. Just X because he's been an animal control officer, zookeeper, exterminator, fishmonger, storekeeper, and unemployed. Of them all, he is my favorite. I love this character so much. He's also got something going for him that I feel is unique to him. You can see the downward spiral of X throughout each episode he's in. Gradually, he becomes more and more unhinged. It makes sense that he's one of the only human villains because he's so competent that he doesn't even need to know what the penguins are saying in order to stop them from doing everything they want. He just was the pinnacle of competency to the point of even freaking Skipper out because he kept failing against him in the zookeeper episode. Through it all, we see X go from this super officer of animal control, then more and more, he loses it because of the penguins. He even gets a cameo in an episode where he's just throwing chopsticks of a poster with the penguins on it and is later shown to have bowling pins painted as penguins. I almost feel bad for him since he really did want to just do his job, but there comes a point when you have to relinquish your obsessions and he's an example of why.

The other villains were also fun to me, but these were my favorites. PoM didn't have to try hard with its villains, but they still did and I really appreciate that.

[buckrecs]

Hi Sera! I’ve been wanting to ask for recs for a while but every time I think of something you’ve already posted it, but I am a bit obsessed with this right now so I thought I’d ask anyways(you are a gem and do so much for the bucky girls on this hellsite and I love you for it!)

Have you got any Brother’s Bestfriend/Best Friend’s Brother Bucky recs?

Brother’s BFF / BFF’s Brother Bucky

masterlist | req masterlist

i follow you (pretend you want me to) by @buckys-black-dress

your best friend’s older brother who has never once given you a second glance finally does one day when he seems to be fond of your new tattoo. it throws you for quite the loop, to say the least.

The Number One Rule by @justkending

Y/N has always been seen as “Steve’s rambunctious sister.” However, she grew up, graduated, and moved to London to study abroad for 4 years and get her bachelor's degree. The girl that returns looks nothing like the teenager that left. But don’t worry, the attitude is still there and stronger than ever. What’s to come of the two grown adults that used to push each other's buttons, but now have a lot more in common than they’ve ever realized?

Untouched by @buckyalpine

A series of discovering all your firsts with your brothers hot best friend.

Save Me From Myself by @fatecantstopme

You and your boyfriend get into a fight and he beats you. You go to your brother’s house for support only to find his best friend and roommate, Bucky Barnes, instead. Bucky is furious when you tell him what happened and he takes care of you.

This Must Be A Dream by @lunarbuck

You've been best friends with Becca Barnes since third grade and have been pining over her older Bucky just as long.

super rich kids by @traitorjoelite

kids with too much money, parties every night, and an incident with your best friend's brother is just the norm on the upper east side.

The First Birthday by @eviesaurusrex

It’s not his first birthday after Hydra, but the first birthday he thinks he actually wants to celebrate—only because of YN.

it’s really you (that’s on my mind) by @heavysoldat

inseparable since middle school, it was no surprise that you ended up falling for your long-time best friend. what was surprising, was who you actually ended up with at the end of the day.

Miss America and the Heartbreak Prince by @fangirlovestuff

Your brother’s best friend, Bucky Barnes was a serious pain in your ass. Shame, since he used to be so nice when you were younger. Too bad he’s changed now in high school. Or has he? All it takes is some detective work, milkshakes and pranks for you to finally figure it out. 

Bucky Barnes x Rogers!Reader by @itsapeterthing

You’ve known your brother’s best friend Bucky Barnes since before you can even remember. As the two of you get older, your relationship grows from one of teasing friendship to an everlasting love. Despite all odds and decades apart, you never fail to find each other every time.

Not as Subtle as You Thought by @marvelousmarvelimagines

You and Bucky have been hiding a relationship from your brother successfully for several months now. Bucky’s getting tired of it though and wants to tell Steve. Are you willing to risk that? 

About Time by @vanillanaps

Coming clean about being in a relationship with your brothers best friend is never easy—or is it?

A Secret by @tweedlydumbtweedlydoo

You’re Steve’s younger sister and secretly dating Bucky and Steve finds out.

Brother vs Boyfriend by @marvelous-imagining

I Will Always Pick You Up by @eviesaurusrex

Usually, Bucky would pick her up wherever she is, but today, with a night out with some of her fellow Avengers (and her brother), it wasn’t possible that her secret boyfriend could come and pick her up, would it?

Hands Off by @buckysgoldenheart

You’re Steve’s cousin and he has some rules when it comes to you that Bucky isn’t a fan of. Mainly, that he can’t have you.

i wanna be yours by @noctumbra

you’d support him no matter what. he was yours at the very end. and you were his. 

On My Mind by @targaryenvampireslayer

You haven't seen your Brothers Best Friend in far too long. Neither of you can wait. Sexy challenges ensue.

[benkyoutobentou]

12 Books for 2024 (Japanese Edition)

You may have seen my post about the twelve books I read in 2023 (here), and I thought it would be fun to follow it up with a little tbr for 2024! Ideally, I'd like to read more than twelve books in 2024, but twelve is enough for now since I've got some series on this list that I'd like to either make some serious progress in or finish up completely. This list is in no particular order!

地球星人 - 村田沙耶香: I read コンビニ人間 by Murata a few years back and loved it, and this one has been high up on my tbr for a long time now. With how many people say they're completely traumatized by it, it sounds like the perfect book for me. The only reason I haven't read this yet is because I've hyped it up so much for myself.

生命式 - 村田沙耶香: A short story collection by Murata? Sign me up ten times over. This one sounds weird and gruesome and right up my alley.

本を守ろうとする猫の話 - 夏川草介: Another cat book, who can blame me? This was also touted as being perfect for book lovers, and I haven't heard a bad review yet.

吾輩は猫である - 夏目漱石: Keeping with the cat theme, this one I actually have planned in tandem with a challenge I have to read twelve big ass classics throughout the year. Between the sheer size of this and the fact that the text is so densely packed in, this book kinda scares me. I'm planning to read it in December of next year so that I have as much time as possible to prepare haha.

世界から猫が消えたなら - 川村元気: Last cat book, I promise, but I had to keep them all together (it's actually not about cats, though). I've had this one for a long time and just picked it up on a whim. I've heard a bit of mixed reviews, but the premise sounds interesting enough, and it seems to be pretty popular.

博士の愛した数式 - 小川洋子: This was one of the first books I bought in Japanese, so it's high time that I get it off my tbr. I've seen so many people love this, in and out of the language learning community. This author also has a bunch of other popular works, so I'd really like to jump into her books and experience the hype for myself.

告白 ‐ 湊かなえ: I've seen a bit of buzz about this book in the language learning community, but what really convinced me on it was seeing people outside of language learners also enjoying it. It sounds dark and mildly depressing, and I'm hoping that it'll have some interesting commentary as well.

独り舞 - 李琴峰: Somehow, I haven't read any queer literary fiction in Japanese yet, despite it being my favorite genre, so I'm so excited to jump into this one. For the life of me I can't remember where I heard about this, but I think it'll be one of my first reads in 2024.

デゥラララ！！- 成田良悟: I used to be obsessed with the anime adaptation in middle school but never revisited the series out of fear that it wouldn't stand the test of time. After seeing a fellow language learner gush about the series, I decided to give it a shot, managed to find it at a local used bookstore, and snatched up the first volume. Don't let me down, nostalgia!

憎らしい彼 - 凪良ゆう: This is the second book in the 美しい彼 series, and even though I'd like to read the third one next year as well, I'm just combining them. Seeing this series next to series like No. 6 and キノの旅 I'm really grateful to have a trilogy on my tbr haha.

No. 6 - あさのあつこ: Saying that I would like to finish this series next year is a bit of a stretch, seeing as I have eight of ten volumes left, but I'd like to put a serious dent in it to be sure.

キノの旅 - 時雨沢恵一: This series is more of a read as I please type series for me, since there's not really any overarching plot. I'm also not racing to make progress, since there are over twenty volumes (and still going). I'm savoring this series and I'm okay with that.

[riddles-n-games]

You know what we’ve been really missing out on? A dance headcanon. It may have crossed your mind at some point or you have never thought of it, but trust me you actually have, so here you go and you’re welcome.

We’ve certainly gotten sprinkles (read: karaoke scene, I mean, we were about to get FED and bam Grayson pity party) of such things throughout the series but not in any outright way as is the case with many of the things that could give us more background on the Hawthorne brothers. (Why you holding out on us JLB??? Huh?!) Anyways, here. Read.

Nash-He does line dancing, I mean, you should have seen that one coming. He's basically the country star of his family and he owns it to the fullest; he's literally one of Taylor Swift's back up dancers for goodness' sake. Nash's favorite version of line dance is square dancing and being the sweetheart he is, he will go to retirement homes on dance nights and be one of the choreographers or partners to help the old folks who want to dance. Of course, when there's a festival, that's when he really gets down. But, this might surprise you; he's also had a stint with hip hop and he's pretty darn good at it. He can do the dougie for sure. In fact, he got so good at hip hop that he also started adding his own style to it and gave it his country flare at freestyle competitions (Jamie and Xander's minds were blown, at first, before the big brother cool wore off that is but they were still impressed🤭).

Grayson-All of them learned how to do ballroom dancing (mainly waltz) but someone had to be the best of them, too. Enter Grayson Hawthorne. He is certainly the go-to brother for these types of dances but he excels at tango and waltz which also give him his greatest enjoyment. Certainly, at school events, he was always sought after during the slow songs and was always leading man for the school's ballroom team. It was the one chance the ladies were allowed to swoon without a certain redhead ruining everything. Though he competed nationally and worldwide, he preferred the simple entry level competitions for the sake of the peace. It was also more fun. He also challenged himself by learning flamenco and he was enamored by it, loving the fast steps and quick changes from one thing to another. However, his grandfather wanted him to push it further since he was already pursuing the dance so he wanted him to do competitions and as much as he put his heart and soul into it, Gray hated doing competitions when he wanted to do this for fun. After his grandfather died, he quit comps and stopped dancing flamenco for a while but his brothers (read: Xander) have been encouraging him to take it up again as a fun hobby. He's been warming up to the idea.

Jameson-Should it really come as a surprise that this boy can tap dance? Because, yes, he can and he is damn proud of it. It’s a favorite party trick of his to pull on the dance floor or in the middle of the club and he’s always tearing it up. He also loves Irish stepdance and after watching the famous Riverdance live, Jameson was obsessed. That was how he and Xander ended up being trained by the very Riverdance company itself and they trained for two years until Xan no longer expressed interest but Jamie got good enough that he even went on tour with them. Also, he's been expanding his repertoire with street dancing, mambo, and most recently disco due to a certain someone's obsession with the 70s.

Xander-Despite Gray being the undisputed king of ballroom in the family, his youngest brother still takes to the swing better than anyone. He has been the most enthusiastic about it and loves the energy which matches him well in every aspect of the dance. Unlike his brother, competing never really bothered him and this is actually one of the things that he gets him into a perfectionist complex. He was a junior world champ on two occasions and now is teaching Max how to do it. On the more casual side of casual side of things, he also knows how to shag which is one of his favorite things to do on little dates with Maxine when they aren't going anywhere. And, of course, being the most sporadic of his brothers, Xander always shocks people when he tells them he also has done ballet. He never got to become a principal dancer as a junior dancer but he did get to do a few pas de deux and was a soloist when he was with the Texas Ballet Theater. His favorite ballets are The Nutcracker and Don Quixote; he appreciates Swan Lake but hates the unhappy versions.

[yepthatsacowalright]

Doctor Who, The Process Of Healing From Trauma, and Me: A Text Post Essay No One Asked For

Back in 2006ish, when I first started watching Doctor Who as a teenager in late high school/early college, it captivated me mind, body, and soul. I ate that early 2000s, broody-complex-hero shit up.

I loved that the Doctor grappled with the guilt and regret from some truly fucked up shit he did, and I loved that he gave the middle finger to it by going on wild, ridiculous-special-effects-ed adventures instead of attempting the mortifying ordeal of opening up about it.

I'm sure, judging by how popular the 2005 version of the show became, a lot of my generation felt similar. 9/11 hadn’t been that long ago. We were coming of age and starting to sense that the world kind of sucked major ass, and perhaps the older generations had been super lying to us about most things this whole time.

As such, Rose Tyler was living the dream as far as I was concerned. Abandoning her place in this bullshit society to go help people and save lives with someone who never settled, who always ran towards the darkness, who found ways to laugh and dance in it even…Rose's lifestyle was goals.

Not only did the Ninth and Tenth Doctor's struggle to opening up about what they'd been through or forgive themselves for it not bother teen me at all, I preferred it. It was understandable and relatable. I wasn't ready to actually look at and deal with any of my own problems either, I just didn't want to pretend like I had none. Admitting there's a problem is the first step, and that's where Nine, Ten, Rose, and me all hung out and had fun.

Rose’s "death" was when I started to feel differently. It wasn't that I didn't still enjoy the show - I kept watching through Martha and Donna's seasons, and also a little bit into Eleven's run - but it wasn't the same. I could never quite get over the loss of Rose, or how the Doctor chose to get over it by doing what he always did - ignore and repress.

It had been much easier to watch the Doctor do this with trauma when I didn't know much about what he'd been through, but every time he avoided the topic of Rose, or minimized who she was, it pissed me off. It felt bad to watch him do that to the memory of someone who mattered.

I was starting to realize that just admitting you had problems wasn't sustainable. I couldn't stay on that first step indefinitely, and Doctor Who didn't feel like it was my show anymore, which was fine. After all, it's a family-friendly series. An episode on intergalactic talk therapy is not going to be a hit with the kids.

I was off to have the one adventure the Doctor never could - to understand and manage my own mental health. Learning about psychology, learning about trauma, going to therapy. I processed, I surprised myself, I found new stories to obsess over that resonated with a different, older version of me.

Whenever I popped back into Doctor Who, it felt more nostalgic than anything else. It reminded me of how I used to feel, and how far I'd come. I had that bittersweet feeling of wishing I could connect with it the way I used to, but being grateful that the reason I couldn't was a positive, therapeutic one.

And then…the 60th Anniversary Specials.

David Tennant didn’t even do anything that different in his performance, and he admits as much in interviews. Trying to replicate what he did as the Tenth wouldn't make sense because he isn't the Tenth, and trying to do something completely new wouldn't make sense because then why bring back David at all?

He just played the role as an actor who's lived 10 more years since the last time he played the role, and brother that shit hit me hard.

All the natural, subtle, perhaps subconscious changes in him made me feel the weight of slightly too many years passing. Despite knowing I am relatively young, l’m at a point in my life where I, for the first time, feel old.

Gray hairs and smile lines that were only on the faces of grownups are now on the faces of me and my friends. I know I don't know it all, and also realize I know even less than I thought I did. Love feels deeper, loss feels heavier. I'm compelled to express feelings of gratitude and affection I used to always keep to myself. Oh, is that who I am now?

I love that the Doctor's body didn't just go back to Ten's face, but to an aged version of Ten's face. A version that would align with the aged version of Donna's. I know this was not a creative choice, it was literally just what David and Catherine look like now, but how perfect for time itself to play a role in the story, too.

I love that the Doctor, at last, had to catch up with what his body was telling him. To notice his feelings and learn what those feelings meant. Like the title of one of my favorite (and extremely relevant to this this post) books says, the body keeps the score.

And I loved the bi-generation.

I loved that Fourteen made the choice to stop and ask his friends to help him do it.

I know that RTD proposed a theory that in that moment all the previous regenerations became bi-generations as well, but I like the idea that all the others could have bi-generated, but didn't. They weren't ready to look at themselves, or ask for that help from anyone. Not until now.

And I love love LOVE Ncuti Gatwa as Fifteen. I love that the healed next Doctor is a millennial. That he is a Doctor who can freely say he loved his friends, he loved Rose, can tell his former self, "I love you."

The show's become such a beautiful portrayal of generational trauma and healing that did not know that's what it was until its end.

And now, it begins again.

[habeascorpseus]

when i was in 7th grade, i had my first boyfriend. corny shit, i know. in many cases i dont think middle school relationships are enough to be classified as dating- but to this day, i do firmly believe our clumsy attempts at recreating the behavior of couples barely older than us did count. there was an emotional connection there. we had met in 6th grade and bonded over fnaf and minecraft 3 animations and all those other things that people still found found entertaining in 2014.

another notable thing in 7th grade that happened was that i had discovered i was transgender. well, i say "discovered", but it was honestly a long time coming. between my obsession with being seen as a "tomboy," my favorite song on the Kidz Bop 16 CD being Beyonce's "If I Were A Boy" (but sung in a way to make it so much less about cheating that it really became more of a call to action to imagine life as a man) to the point where i manually would loop it on my cd player for hours, and my growing love for mlm shipping— i had been a certified egg since i was in 4th grade. but despite being raised around and parented with about a dozen lesbian and gay couples since birth, i didnt know whether or not my parents were transphobic or not. so, after looking through a list of trans identities, i decided to just come out as genderfluid to my parents as sort of a compromise to the intimidating rigidity of being a trans boy. and even though it wasn't entirely fitting to what i'd ultimately figure out about myself, i grew pretty attached to it.

back to the middle school boyfriend.

at the end of 7th grade— like, a week before summer vacation— i publically came out as genderfluid. while my ex, who i will from now on refer to as Lou, had initially taken it well, albeit with some confusion, over the summer, a much different series of feelings began unfolding. unfortunately, as middle school boys are wont to do whenever one of them begins to act even slightly against the norm, his friends began asking him if he was gay. "if michael¹ is a boy sometimes, does that make you straight, or bisexual?" are some of the things i later heard them ask. and since i, phoneless till the age of 16, was unable to talk to him throughout this relentless picking apart of his own identity, by the time we got back to school, things were... different.

¹ Michael is the name i went by irl for 3 years from 7th-9th grade.

for one, there were the jokes. he was a big leafy fan (and i really did try even back then to steer him away from that but its hard when youre a cringe nerd middle schooler) and back then "attack helicopter" jokes were kind of all the rage, so he began jokingly identifying as a toaster. then he made a toaster mask out of a cardboard box, spray paint, and duct tape that he brought to school and began putting on whenever i walked by him in the hallway. and then, and possibly worst of all- a simple html website shared between his friends called "what gender is Michael today?" which lead to a random generator of options like, "boy", "girl", "toaster", and "attack helicopter." all of which is kind of a lot to deal with when youre a middle schooler with a pretty rough time of it already, and suddenly your main bully is the guy youve effectively been in a relationship with for 6 months.

and now you may be asking: hey habeas, why this sudden autobiographical deep dive into the most traumatic period of your life? what spawned this? how is this story relevant to literally anything going on? well, that's where the next part of the story comes in.

that year, our sex ed teacher was a 5ft transgender man named Mudd. Mudd had a buzzcut, and a higher pitched voice, and small hands, but beyond all of that, there was nothing visibly different about him than any other boy or man in the school. in fact, the boys thought he was cool as hell. they were fascinated by the idea of transformation of the self into an unrecognizable body. they never misgendered him, even after learning his status as a trans man. in fact, they were comfortable enough around him to be transphobic towards me. and Mudd, like a good trans mentor, told them to cut that shit out, and told me that regardless of how complicated and occasionally contradictory my identity was, it was still me, and i needed to stand up for who i was as a person.

a week later, Lou called me a tranny, and in response, i punched him in the nose and promptly stopped talking to him.

so again, why is this relevant? well, I'm not sure how terminally online (or specifically, on twitter) some of you are, but recently there's been a bit of a tiff in a certain fandom about bi lesbianism. specifically, how it, as an identity, is harmful to both the bisexual and lesbian communities. which, one: nooooo....??? bisexuality and lesbianism arent separate so much fraternal twins, and I've already talked too much to include further definitions to prove it. but my argument is really less about its validity as an identity and more about the principle of there being limits to acceptance, even within our community.

like with my experience, people were fine when they were faced with binary identities. a trans man like mudd is cool, or a trans girl like Jazz Jennings (we watched a lot of I Am Jazz in homeroom) could be seen as normal, and more so, inspiring. but when i came in with an identity people found to be contradictory or "too confusing," it resulted in backlash. the entire definition of being "queer" is to be abnormal to what general society finds acceptable, and even then, some things are "too weird" to be tolerated. even amongst "weird" people. which i find to be a pretty troubling trend amongst queer leftist young people who's only real experience with an "lgbt community" has been online. here, we prioritize and find catharsis in labels and categories to the point where the "queer community" has become instead split between identities- the gays, the lesbians, the bis, the transes, the aros and aces and the whatnot. in the real world, it doesnt matter what flavor of queer you are, nobody's going to stop and ask before they call you a groomer and then legislate your freedom away. which is why we, as an online queer community, have to get rid of the notion that some identities are "too contradictory" or "dont exist" enough to be worth giving support and love.

im saying all this here... because, well, one: nobody wants to read a 40+ tweet thread about my personal brush with irl homophobia and how that radicalized me against community separation in general, and two: i am deeply afraid of 14 year olds on twitter with too much time on their hands. but also im saying this because it was infuriating yesterday to watch my entire twitter feed suddenly turn into a puritanical campaign against the very concept of someones identity and have the ability to say nothing. it disgusted me how quickly we turn against our own simply because the way they are is confusing to our tiny fucking peanut brains. and i know none of those people who went on that tirade will read this, but i felt like it needed to be said anyways.

don't let society's impulse to ostracize the confusing and strange win out over human decency. don't do conservatives' strategy to divide and conquer us for them. a person's identity not being comprehensible to you is not inherently an attack on who you, yourself, are. you are your identity and you should stand up for it, and you should stand up for others' identities too. punch your bullies in the nose.

long live the confusing, the contradictory, and most importantly, the queer.

[cursedvibes]

Happy holiday.... What do you think that made Yuuji is so likeable as a character? I've only been in the JJK fandom for a year, and I've seen a lot of other JJK characters' stan. But one thing in common, they all love Yuuji and mostly will include him in their top 5 fav JJK charas (including me :D)...

Also, extra kudos cause your blog is anti-gojo. Most of my moots love him and can't stop talking about him. I already tell them that I don't really like him (actually I hate him), they're okay but still so into him. So I'm so happy when I found your blog.

What do you think that made gojo so famous? Is it the pretty face and bad personality (I'm still confused until now)....? I dislike gojo kinda like I dislike dazai from BSD. They're both called "The one who stole the spotlight from the protagonist" (by my animanga group)....

Happy holidays to you to, hope you had a good time

I think it's pretty hard not to like Yuuji. Even if you aren't that interested in his character, due to his friendly personality and plenty of cute moments it's hard to hate him. I think this Pure Sunshine Boy interpretation (that I don't entirely agree with) is the main reason fans are drawn to him. The suffering he has to endure and how he continues to grow from it is quite fascinating to witness as well. What I personally like about him is also how he has a darker side to him, that pure hatred he has reserved for Sukuna and Mahito, but which we also saw when he beat up bullies as a middle schooler. He's not just sunshine and rainbows, he has a quite serious and lonely side to him he often hides from others and that is the reason he used to not have many friends until recently. Fits with his morbid obsession with death and how he is prepared to die and wants to die to pay for everything he's done despite being so young.

Looking at fan interpretations of him, I'm not sure that's why he's in the top 3 of the popularity polls, but it's what I like about him. The main criticism I see of him is that people think he's too weak to be the main character of a shonen series and isn't the centre of attention enough, but I think that's pretty stupid and thankfully it's only a (loud) minority of people who think that. I'm glad he deviates from the shonen formula there.

Now for Gojo, I first have to say that I wouldn't consider myself "anti-Gojo". I often think he's annoying and recent developments in the manga led to me complaining about him a lot, but I don't actually hate him, not the way I do with Geto, Yuuta or at times Choso. His fans can get on my nerves a lot and I think he was written very badly after being released from the Prison Realm, but usually I don't care about him. I like his high school self actually, before he got so overpowered, his faults were more interesting there.

I think the majority of his popularity is because he's a pretty white-haired anime guy with cool powers and part of a popular yaoi couple, i.e. you got some dramatic feels mixed in there as well. That seems to be the gist of what I see online as reasoning for why people like him and what made him famous when the anime started airing. There are deeper reasons too (best ask a Gojo fan for those), but his looks, iconic blindfold design and relationship with Geto seem to be the main things people are drawn to. Things like that are often what's most important in making a character popular.

[apocalypticavolition]

Let's (re)Read The Eye of the World: Prologue

I haven't reread the whole of the series ever (my last reread was in preparation for the finale), so with the books getting more popular and the show simultaneously entertaining me and getting my goat I figured I'd jump onto the bandwagon and maybe get some validation from internet strangers. As the title states, this is a reread, so I will be spoilering the hell out of everything, so if you're a show only fan or still working your way through the books, please run away screaming (but tell your friends!).

...

Okay now that I can no longer hear any screams, let's get into things. I first started reading The Wheel of Time in 2003 in middle school, catching up in time to read New Spring when it debuted and the subsequent novels after (except oddly, Towers of Midnight, which I didn't get around to until the finale was right around the corner, so I guess my longest reread only goes up to book 12 technically). It's probably my outright favorite fantasy world and has a lot of characters I love - in fact, at times I feel I don't quite fit into the fandom because I don't have an irrational disdain of any of the common hate sinks bar maybe Gawyn, and even then some people are making me like him a little bit more so I don't know what I'm going to do then.

That said, like most readers who came of age in the 21st century, I do have a lot of problems with Jordan's worldview. It's a rather interesting friction: the man was definitely trying to write a world without the sexism of our modern era (and to a lesser extent other prejudices as well), and yet he could never rise above them himself. I'll probably spend a lot of time talking about this kind of stuff and what might have been done instead.

Likewise, when we reach the inevitable Slog (and sorry people who didn't start reading until the series was finished, it's real), I'll be talking a lot about how the plot might be adjusted for brevity and, once we reach the Sanderson era virtually everything I want to talk about will be magnified tenfold because as much as I enjoyed his efforts at the time, I've greatly soured on him as an author in general and as Jordan's heir in specific since.

But for now, let's focus on what's important: The Eye of the World's first prologue: Dragonmount.

The palace still shook occasionally as the earth rumbled in memory, groaned as if it would deny what had happened.

As first sentences go, I'm not in love. It's not bad, but it's just a little too vague; "the palace" doesn't really give my mind's eye much to work with because they can vary so much depending on when and where they were built. It ends well though.

The dead lay everywhere, men and women and children, struck down in attempted flight by the lightnings that had flashed down every corridor, or seized by the fires that had stalked them, or sunken into stone of the palace, the stones that had flowed and sought, almost alive, before stillness came again.

Despite its length, a sentence like this would work better to me as the start. It's shocking and terrifying; this is a level of violence we won't see channelers pull off until much later in the series.

The mind-twisting had struck at the core, ignoring peripheral things.

This feels pretty on-theme for the story, really. The Shadow tries to subvert the major powers of the world but its defeat is primarily orchestrated by a bunch of farmers.

The edge of his pale gray cloak trailed through blood as he stepped across the body of a woman, her golden-haired beauty marred by the horror of her last moments, her still-open eyes frozen in disbelief.

Well I made it four quotations before we needed to talk about feminism so that's... more than I expected, really. Meet Ilyena, a character so posthumous that despite being part of a prologue 3,500 years before the main story she's still already dead by the time it starts! Obsessing over dead women is probably one of the biggest complaints this series gets and boy does it deserve it. Despite electricity being long gone, our characters have no shortage of fridges.

That said, I do want to note that as it stands in this book, things aren't that bad. In this book. See, in this book, Ilyena isn't the only victim - the children she and Lews had are also among the dead, as are quite a lot of other people who just happened to live or work in the palace or were visiting. Except for the use of LTT's title "Kinslayer", none of them will be mentioned again after this book - in fact, the non-family members are completely forgotten after the prologue. But again, that's jumping ahead. In this book, Ilyena is about providing a specific name and face to the tragedy, humanizing all of the victims by proxy in a way that, "Twelve hours after saving the world, Lews Therin went insane and killed two hundred and sixty-five people including all of his blood relatives," does not.

...brought by merchants from across the World Sea...

We talk a lot about how Jordan was too immersed in southern culture to understand how its gender roles were about as universal as Mongolian throat singing, but not enough about how he's too immersed in globalized petro-fascist markets based on maximizing inefficiencies for the global elite to use to extract wealth to understand why a real planetary utopia living in harmony with nature wouldn't be shipping luxury goods across the ocean when there's perfectly fancy fabrics to make at home and anyway the Green Men should be able to help silkworms thrive anywhere if you're that desperate for something breathable.

On the other hand, points to him for not going crazy about Gateways and assuming that all global trade could be handled by teleportation just because they're a fun tool. I will have a lot to say about Gateways as we approach the authorial transition.

For a moment he fingered the symbol on his cloak, a circle half white and half black, the colors separated by a sinuous line. It meant something, that symbol.

Even now though, it means something other than what it once meant (being the sign of the seals on the Dark One's prison) and before too much longer it will pick up two more meanings, one for each half. The Wheel turns and the world changes.

Behind him the air rippled, shimmered, solidified into a man who looked around, his mouth twisting briefly with distaste.

Props to Ishamael for clearly Traveling with the True Power even this early on in the series.

Not so tall as Lews Therin, he was clothed all in black, save for the snow-white lace at his throat and the silverwork on the turned-down tops of his thigh-high boots.

Thigh-high boots! <3 (Seriously Ishy how can you want to destroy the world you can express your fashion sense in?)

Also note how this contrasts the Aes Sedai symbol described earlier. There's a little bit of white though, because it can't be helped even by the Shadow.

It will soon be time for the Singing, and here all are welcome to take part.

One detail from the Sanderson novels whose origin I'm uncertain of but like regardless of who came up with it is Rand's claim that the AoL was NOT paradise and that it was rotting from within even before the Dark One got involved. The latter half of this sentence suggests one such flaw: having the Voice is a hell of a talent, but apparently there were places that did not welcome all potential Singers. This could just be a result of the War, but maybe it speaks to something deeper.

“Shai’tan take you, does the taint already have you so far in its grip?”

Ish here is mostly pissed that he doesn't get to enjoy his gloating, because for all his talk about nihilism, he is petty first and foremost.

Dangerous for you, fool, not for me.

Ironically, all things considered it's really the other way around - Shai'tan is no threat at all to the Dragon soul and will utterly ruin Ish by the end. Ish really isn't anywhere near as clever as he makes himself out to be, he just looks smart because he's the last survivor of Academia.

“So you do remember some things. Yes, Betrayer of Hope. So have men named me, just as they named you Dragon, but unlike you I embrace the name.

This is an odd detail, all things considered. LTT's fatal flaw was pride (this very prologue says as much), so why wouldn't he be proud of a flattering name? I wonder if we get any more details on this in the books or if it's just a little detail that was lost in the shuffle.

But it is not enough. You humbled me in the Hall of Servants. You defeated me at the Gates of Paaran Disen. But I am the greater, now. I will not let you die without knowing that. When you die, your last thought will be the full knowledge of your defeat, of how complete and utter it is. If I let you die at all

See what I mean about Ish? This is not the behavior of someone who is tired of existence and wants everything to end, it's the behavior of a dude with a petty grudge that he dresses up in fancy terms and fancier boots.

[Ilyena] will give me the rough side of her tongue if she thinks I have been hiding a guest from her. I hope you enjoy conversation, for she surely does. Be forewarned. Ilyena will ask you so many questions you may end up telling her everything you know.

Quick, name a female WoT character that Jordan doesn't think this description applies to! Can it be done? I doubt it. Another common criticism is that for all of his 3,000 characters, all of the women were just his wife. I don't think it's quite true, but I do think that the women he knew well were all cut from pretty much the same cloth.

“A pity for you,” he mused, “that one of your Sisters is not here.

This is another oddity. AoL healing required all five kinds of weaves and they didn't divide things up by gender anyway, so why wouldn't a Brother suffice? There's plenty of male Aes Sedai who haven't gone crazy at this point, and it's been only a couple days at most so you wouldn't think people would have time to reflexively assume men wouldn't be helpful. Is this another kind of healing that works better when you do it cross-gender? Maybe Towers of Midnight mentioned that?

Helplessly he convulsed, thrashing, his skull a sphere of purest agony on the point of bursting.

Good to know that every incarnation of the Dragon suffers horribly for no good reason, I guess. Rand's nihilism is a lot more understandable to me than Ish's is, considering how little suffering the latter actually endures.

“You can have her back, Kinslayer. The Great Lord of the Dark can make her live again, if you will serve him. If you will serve me.”

"Your kids are fucked though. We put their souls in vacuoles and then jettisoned them towards Sindhol, so we can't fix that even if we wanted to. Also you balefired half of them repeatedly, we think. Hard to be sure because there's no record of them left except some silhouettes on that doorway over there."

(More seriously, they're being left out right now because LTT isn't cognizant of their demise, making this the only excusable omission.)

“Ten years your foul master has wracked the world. And now this. I will. . . .”

Plus a whole century of societal collapse, but I guess RJ hadn't come up with that detail yet. Hell at this point maybe Shai'tan was still supposed to be ET's son.

You and I have fought a thousand battles with the turning of the Wheel, a thousand times a thousand, and we will fight until time dies and the Shadow is triumphant!

Ish says this and the fandom as a whole treats it as true but... we don't actually know this! Third Agers often state that they HOPE to be reborn, which suggests that's it's possible the Wheel stops reincarnating some souls (replacing them, presumably) - and who better to retire than the people who stop being grateful for existence and start actively trying to undermine you?

Further, Rand's epiphany is about how despite the crushing cycle of everything, anyone can still hope to live a better life - there's no guarantee that Ishamael falls to the shadow every time, or that he ever has before or will again! Hell, he could just repent even after he falls. Bro has choices, he just refuses to see them.

His own sons and daughters, sprawled like broken dolls, play stilled forever.

This is actually another odd detail. I don't know how Aes Sedai fertility works, but while it's not implausible that LTT & IS could have children who were of the age where their play is the most notable thing about them, they should also have kids old enough to have grandkids by now! Lews' murders could potentially number in the hundreds without starting on the servants and faithful companions.

Also note that while Ilyena's demise horrified LTT and left him with nothing to live for according to the narration, it isn't until he sees that he's killed all of these people he loved that he actually tries to commit suicide. This is the sort of thing that's completely neglected going forward, but it is nice that things were a little more complex than him finding his girlfriend in the fridge and his mom in the oven.

The land around him was flat and empty. A river flowed nearby, straight and broad, but he could sense there were no people within a hundred leagues.

This is a pretty subtle sign of just how much death the last ten years must have entailed: the Erinin is flowing through a temperate part of the planet (there being no indication that the Earth's axis was significantly affected by the Breaking) yet there are no cities nor farms within a hundred leagues. By all rights there should be, but now they're gone. One can see why balefire was banned.

He did not believe it could come, forgiveness. Not for what he had done.

Maybe it's just my own weird moral code speaking but I think stuff one does while literally and entirely involuntarily corrupted by the source of all evil shouldn't really count against them. Obviously he's in shock, but it seems like something that carries on into Rand's behavior as well and it's a little depressing that in a series about free will vs. determinism there's such a common attitude that the stuff you're doomed to do regardless counts against you more than the things you had a choice in.

Because in his pride he had believed that men could match the Creator, could mend what the Creator had made and they had broken. In his pride he had believed.

And he wasn't wrong to believe that, he just did it wrong and doesn't consider that there might be other approaches. Tunnel vision is a real affliction in this series.

Only a heartbeat did the shining bar exist, connecting ground and sky, but even after it vanished the earth yet heaved like the sea in a storm. Molten rock fountained five hundred feet into the air, and the groaning ground rose, thrusting the burning spray ever upward, ever higher.

No denial on the earth's part here, just straight up compliance.

Of Lewis Therin Telamon, no sign remained. Where he had stood a mountain now rose miles into the sky, molten lava still gushing from its broken peak.

Now imagine a million more dudes doing this and you start to see why the Breaking was as destructive as it was.

Then [Ishamael] was gone, and the mountain and the island stood alone. Waiting.

Presumably Ishamael went off and told someone about LTT's suicide before being vacuum sealed for a millennium and change, cuz otherwise there's no way people would know what Dragonmount was.

The oceans fled, and the mountains were swallowed up, and the nations were scattered to the eight corners of the World.

The west, the Waste, Shara, the sea, the Mad Lands, north Seanchan, southwest Seanchan, and southeast Seanchan. There, we've turned what was obviously an odd turn of phrase into a literal statement with all eight items acccounted for!

Let the Prince of the Morning sing to the land that green things will grow and the valleys give forth lambs. Let the arm of the Lord of the Dawn shelter us from the Dark, and the great sword of justice defend us. Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time.

Well Rand did most of those things, but I don't remember any lambs, so I guess really he lost the war and the whole of the epilogue was a taunting dream the Dark One wove for him to distract him.

(God I hate those kinds of theories. If your assumption is that nothing is true, your theory is dumb and you should feel bad.)

From Charal Drianaan te Calamon,The Cycle of the Dragon.

So a lot of people talk about the conlanging in this setting and I just want to point one thing out: the fact that we go from the Old Tongue in the AoL to this New Tongue in the Fourth Age suggests very, very strongly that Randlanders are not inexplicably speaking English or anything close to it but something in between the two fake Tongues. We have a clear transition from things like "Telamon" and "siswai'aman" to "Calamon" for example, that dragon doesn't really fit into except as a distant ancestor/descendant.

Anyway, that right there is the prologue! I would compare and contrast it to Amazon's adaptation, but I cannot because they have not adapted this sequence yet. It's something of a shame, because I think the prologue is very important for making it clear that we're not actually doing a Tolkien-esque story like the early chapters suggest, but after seeing Winter Dragon I can also sympathize with not wanting to lead with this. That said, I am deeply depressed we couldn't keep Billy Zane and hope against hope that Rafe will find a role for him to be crazy in.

The TV show does do a sequence set in the AoL, but it's closer to being an adaptation of part of The Strike at Shayol Ghul than anything else, so I will hold off until we get there after A Crown of Swords.

[faneliacosplay]

A yellow magical girl.💛

Let me tell you about my second favorite manga ever: Shugo Chara! I randomly picked up the first volume when I was 11 and fell in love with the series immediately! So much so, that all throughout middle school I recommend (more like forced) all of my friends to read the entire series, because I wanted to drag EVERYONE into this obsession!! Despite the series flaws, I still love Shugo Chara! I’m so excited for the sequel manga coming this summer and can’t wait to see Amu and her loved ones again!💕

Amulet Diamond made/worn by me

📸 by my mom, editing by me!

Wig: Chronos + 2 Curly Clips in Princess Pink Mix from @epiccosplaywigs

[milkbreadtoast]

Your ouran thoughts are so *chef's kiss* thank you for pointing out the whole haruhi gender thing bc as a trans person myself it always rubbed me the wrong way too how it got treated

🥹🥹🥹THANK U FOR READING MY OURAN THOUGHTS... this is 1 of the first animes ive ever watched so its rly formative/influential for me and ive rewatched it several times over the yrs and noticed more things and watched my opinions of the show and charas grow and change... Haruhi is 1 of my first encounters(actually i think the first) w a nonbinary chara in media and I love everything about their chara and the way they were written (and I love the whole concept of them being the protag of a shoujo harem anime despite being nonbinary and very aro/ace... a host who woos girls at that)... I especially love the way she doesnt change herself for anyone, keeps being authentically herself the entire anime in a way that touches and changes the rest of the cast too... like 1 little detail that symbolizes this well is the personal pronouns they use in jp... Altho they tried using "ore" a few times causing tamaki to freak out (HE SHOULDVE LET HER😒).. the main personal pronoun they use is "jibun"(lit: self, oneself), and it's a gender neutral pronoun... and importantly, they consistently use "jibun", whether it's before becoming a host(in middle school, when passing/being seen as a "girl"), as a host(while passing/being seen as a "boy"), and just out in daily life... Just as she doesnt change herself or act differently in all those contexts, and is just authentically herself, regardless of how people see her... and consistent with her belief that gender and outward appearance doesn't matter, it's one's personality/who they are underneath that does...

Haruhi and Tamaki form strong narrative parallels to each other because they both suddenly came into the lives of all the other host club members, were able to see them for who they really are (and not just the facade they put on for others), and just by being their genuine selves, touch and impact them deeply, even alter the course of their lives (some more than others, like tamaki for kyouya and haruhi being the first 1 to be able to differentiate the twins)..... And this is why I think it's... unfortunate that Tamaki was written the way he was, as so close-minded in his views on gender(and sexuality), bc 1 of the core traits of his character is being otherwise open minded and extremely empathetic... the dichotomy of his chara is despite being a "vain idiot" obsessed w looks and himself, he still shows this surprising depth and ability to read others... And of course I don't think it's surprising at all for him to have these transphobic and homophobic views, given he's a teen with a rich sheltered upbringing and all, so it was prob just. Sigh. ingrained in him bc thats how he was raised but.... narratively, with the way his character is otherwise so open (and bro is literally bi too😭) it really is unfortunate... Like his openmindedness is 1 of the strongpoints of his character (like how he wasn't put off at all when he saw Kyouya's "true face"...) And I think it goes against his nature, so I hope that once he gets older he starts to listen to the trans/nb/gnc ppl in his life and change his views... LIKE HARUHI... WHICH IS WHY ITS SO STRANGE. That he never once listens to them abt their gender the entire series... and he cares abt her sm YET doesnt listen and repeatedly, stubbornly tells her shes wrong and that she needs to be more feminine.... ugh. Yeah it's painful... And then with the way the manga ends with haruhi marrying tamaki and having babies and growing her hair out and becoming more feminine, as if it was all just a phase... *Agonized* ...Tbh I really do think. That this is the product of the (presumably cis) author not knowing enough abt the trans(/queer/lgbt) experience to know what to do with the amazing, nonconforming characters they created... I really do feel like if Ouran was an anime made today, and the author was more informed about LGBT issues and experiences, Tamaki could've been written differently and maybe more accepting and open toward's Haruhi's views on gender... Sigh... Anyway rip. Tfw a work so virulently transphobic and homophobic and a product of its time can also have some of the most compelling trans and gay characters and have sm poignant scenes that stand the test of time... Ouran my problematic beloved 🥲🥹

[distinguished-slacker]

I believe I am not speaking only for myself when I say this, but it gets annoying when people from Twitter take screenshots of the OnS posts here and bring the conversations to Twitter where they know they will get more visibility and shared opinions since most of the fandom is over there.

We are like, the same 20 people over here. We don’t bite. We may have different opinions but we are not irrational and unable to hold a civilised conversation. If you see a post you don’t like, you could try to chat with the one who posted it before jumping to conclusions and add fuel to the fire with your Twitter mutuals. You could at the very least be upfront about it instead of doing it behind our backs. Otherwise, we won’t know unless we happen to run into it on Twitter, which btw happens to me a lot because I follow people who in turn follow the kind of people who make these posts, so I get it recommended on my timeline.

Yes, I could just hit the ‘block’ button, but it doesn’t sit well with me to know we are just 20 people and the people over Twitter may be talking about the posts me or my friends made without knowing about it. What kind of defence we could have, being 20 people? On the other hand, there are lots of people who share the same opinions as you on Twitter. It won’t hurt you to hit the ‘block’ button here because at the end of the day, what we really say here won’t have a big effect on you. But what you and your numbers say about us will affect us. Especially if you already did this more than once, doesn’t it mean you are going into Tumblr and actively looking for posts which to rant about in your platform because you know you will find those kind of posts here?

I don’t want to be told by anyone to stop reading the manga I’ve invested 8 years of my life, basically my entire adolescence, just because I lost interest on Mika, Yuu and MikaYuu. Note that it’s “I lost interest on”, not “I am not interested on”. I am not a hater, what I say comes from a place of disappointment, and the disappointment comes from a place of love that used to be here. I loved Mika and Yuu. I even wrote fanfics of them in Wattpad back during my middle school years like the crazy teen super obsessed with these two boys I was, and I haven’t even taken them down because of the nostalgia despite my embarassing writing skills. I am actually jealous of others who despite the direction the story took, they still ship mikayuu hard as the first day, because they are able to enjoy what they get far more than me. But does it mean I am not enjoying the story at all? Of course that’s not the case. I love it a lot. It’s actually the only series where I actively involved myself this much. I may not have the same interest for the mcs’ love story and their antics, but I want to see the rest of the elements of the story and how it ends. “stop reading it” stop using that sentence when you barely know the person you are telling that to, whether it is someone who has been with OnS for 8 years or 1 year. It’s just harmful.

If you check old posts of the people here, you will see more than what meets the eye. If a post here had a sarcastic tone or something, it is probably not serious and you might actually have a nice, sensible chat with the OP. If you don’t get why we don’t like mikayuu, just ask. If you don’t get how we can still read this manga despite not liking mikayuu, just ignore us. I don’t want to start a fight. Just ignore us, please. I don’t want me or anyone in this small Tumblr OnS fandom be criticised every single time one of us displays discontent about an aspect of the story.

And just in case, I am not talking about the mikayuu fandom in general. Just some people.

[kaylinalexanderbooks]

Hello!! For the ask game: ✏️🖋️🖥️

(It’s nice to meet another sapphic aspec!)

Nice to meet another one too! Thanks for the ask!

I ended up writing A LOT about this ask! Super excited to share everything (thank you!!!) but it's super long so under the cut. But I did format a bit to make it hopefully easier to read.

✏️"what are your current WIPs about?"

The main WIPs that I'm currently focusing on are The Secret Portal and School of the Legends, the former of which with more focus.

The Secret Portal is about a group of preteens/teens who discover a portal to another dimension. This dimension is full of people with powers with a minority of those without. After decades of protests from the oppressed minority, tensions rose, and eventually turned into a war of two extremes.

Hard to explain how everything connects, but I appreciate the nuance and multi-perspective approach this needs, but man is it hard. So much brainpower to make this story work, but I'm proud of what I have.

Despite a young cast this is a YA series (think Stranger Things in terms of age of characters vs demographic. This is TV-14 so to speak). I focus heavily on young perspectives because a) I was a kid when writing this for the first time (see later this post) so it just happened but also b) it ended up working thematically with a level of innocence needed there. Bonus, c) being in education I'm fascinated with young minds.

Still a long way to go and currently in the beta reading stage (see pinned post), which is definitely needed given a wide range of topics and fully appreciated to those who have given me their advice.

Planned to be a five book series that's essentially a long continuation from each installment to the next.

School of the Legends is a much easier story to write even if I don't have everything planned yet. It deals with various legends, stories, fairy tales, nursery rhymes, etc. in the same universe, but My Version, aka, things are based on the above, but not a direct copy.

The titular school is an international school meant for those gifted (people born with powers), magicked (people learning magic as a skill), and cursed (people who have powers thrust upon them).

I have an outline for the overall plot of the series (four books are planned) but not super far into it.

Have more characters planned than I know what to do with but most will probably be in the background no matter how sad that makes me.

🖋️"what inspired you to write your WIPs?"

Hm... Sometimes it's just impulse but let's backtrack.

TSP was first conceived as a grade school creative writing project. I just went overboard. Let's get into it.

Went into more detail on my website and tiktok, but the short version is that it was loosely inspired by a stuffed animals game from when I was a little younger which was in turn was loosely inspired by (drumroll) The Rainbow Magic fairy series. Don't know how that happened, so I guess that was a huge influence despite no similarities now.

My friends all inspired parts of it, as most of the OCs have their roots being friend inserts (gone now but it's funny the fragments that are left over from this).

What inspired me to keep going, however, was actually a bit of pride. I was super proud of the original assignment (15 pages!!! Twice as much as the second longest!! I got a 100%!!) and was also super invested in the world I made.

Admittedly when middle school me decided to turn this into a more """"grown up"""" series, it go really cringe...but I was so ambitious this would be published some day (HA).

TSP became what it is today due to an obsessive amount of writing in eighth grade (age 14) and hitting a block in all projects and deciding to start it over, very different from previous drafts.

SOTL was a bit of a passion side project that wasn't meaning to be #2 in WIPs, but I like where we are and it has more broad areas of inspiration.

What started my love for fairy tale adaptations were the Whatever After series and The Land of Stories series, especially the latter. I wanted to make my own version, so had some ideas for characters once again based on my friends. No plot ideas.

In early seventh grade I wrote a dreadful draft that included a "princess school" which was inspired by...I don't actually know I think I read a lot of princess school books but I don't remember the titles. So inspiration from there of course.

Other fairy tale retellings just increased my love for the subgenre, and I got more passionate about making my own, though each draft is so different it's hard to draw connections. It was basically an idea I tried until it worked.

🖥️"what types of writing do you do?"

Well, there's the obvious novel writing.

I love it. It's so hard but I live for the thrill.

Novels are more my thing because I have Too Many Ideas. I wrote a lot of short stories in my creative writing class and found them too limiting. Some may become novels, some maybe novellas. We will have to see.

Fiction is my thing but especially fantasy (I'm using this as a broad term that means "not realistic fiction" including sci-fi and other branches - I'm actually bad at high fantasy).

TSP has annoying sci-fi elements (I walked into this as if this project needed to be harder!), but SOTL is a more relaxed fantasy.

I love reading realistic fiction, but for my writing RF is too real sometimes, if that makes sense. That's obvious...idk how to get across what I'm saying, but I find myself able to express myself through fantasy when I'm doing my own creative writing.

Even in my creative writing class, I'd always make a fantasy story, since we never were told anything had to be realistic fiction. Never intentionally, that's just where my brain defaulted to. I can't think of a single realistic fiction idea I haven't scrapped completely.

It's not that I don't like RF, I LOVE reading it. But it's not for me writing.

I also tend to write geared toward Young Adult. Maybe I'll go for MG or New Adult but I think YA is my ballpark.

Outside of fictional writing, I mainly write reviews or analyses of other media.

I don't post these anywhere attached to this pen name, they're mainly just for me and my friends.

I don't need the world to know my opinions, but I need my opinions on paper. I am a writer by nature, so I feel a compulsion, an itch, to write down my thoughts on everything and anything.

And when I have super strong opinions about X media...well I gotta write about it. Whether it's short form reviews of movies, complex reviews of TV shows, rants about X subject, I gotcha.

I'm working hard on a review/analysis right now, so haven't worked on TSP in over a month, which is awful, but I need to reach a stopping point for this project before going back to it. I do think it is a needed break, though, since I find marathoning writing for TSP before needing to take a step back before another marathon.

I also find analyzing media, why I like it, why I don't, what worked, what didn't, helps me in my writing. By examining other works, I realize how I can improve my craft, by either doing something or not doing something or learning from another media. They're intertwined, to me.

I do writing for school, too. Education major and am working on a case study. I actually like it?? Combining two interests is interesting who knew?

And that's the end of this super long post!! This was so much fun thank you for the ask and thank you and anyone who actually read this far!

[tomyo]

Oshi no Ko and Celebrity (more specifically child celebrity with a large tangent on being a public persona)

So in my seasonal anime catch up, I finally watched Oshi no Ko.

Admittedly I was kinda not expecting something that great after they kill off their best character right away. Ai is left to be this great discovering mystery of who was she really when she wasn't being the perfect idol. I can't say I found it extremely profound but if there's something I do like, it makes clear some aspect of the focus on youth in the idol industry.

So like, there's a little bit of ick at points in the series. We meet our adult main character obsessed and possibly in love with a 16 year old idol. Ai herself is quite off putting being treated with some sense of adulthood despite being a teen mom. I still don't know how I feel about Ai overall, she talks in her last moments about wanting to have her kids join her in the industry that quite literally killed her on the day she became an adult. Initially I didn't think much of that aspect until we start to see more characters get added.

We meet characters like the adultified Arima who's already gone through a career fallout by highschool, Minami who is a gravure model (more or less soft lewd photos) already by her freshman year of high school (therefore pressumably started in middle school), Akane who is partially a victim of evil editing, and Memcho pretending to be a teenager to be in the industry (The 20 year age cut off was up until recently the age of legal adulthood in Japan). We see these unusual circumstances where we are meant to recognize these characters as children in questionable situations.

The small arcs Aqua follows in this first season basically all cover where an adult has failed. Questionable agencies trying to hire Ruby, uncaring directors on a show Arima cares deeply about, Akane being unsupported by the adults when she's a victim on online harassment, and so forth.

Aqua is played off as a character with only one goal in mind, to find out who is his biological father so he can get revenge of Ai's death. He's already been long worn down by the industry possibly from a mix of being a reborn adult, growing up with an idol mother, and then after working is the industry in the background while trying to learn of it to find out how to find his father. In contrast to Ruby's eye spark of naive hope for the industry, his eye tends to be sullen and turn black, particularly when he is manipulating the industry for his results.

However, Aqua tends to have a secret secondary goal that he himself isn't fully conscious of which is to not let someone else fall into the situation Ai found herself in. He will avoid connection while also leading change when something harms the other youth talent around him such as flipping the script to give Arima the performance she wanted for her favourite scene or organizing Akane's redemption PR with her castmates. Side note, plenty of talent industry stories tend to focus on ideas that performers hold beef and rivalry with each other all the time where thus far, Oshi no Ko has made that more of an outlier rather having cast members being extremely supportive of each other's work while the higher up are more so the problem. Even things like the maybe one good adult, Yoriko (the mangaka) still wanting to appreciate the adaptation of her series even if it was a subpar production shows how meaningful these relationships tend to be on a human level. Either way, it is always satisfying to see how Aqua try to foster a healthier industry with his more mature understanding.

So manga spoilers from here on out.

Akane's analysis of Ai was the first moment it occurred to me that Oshi no Ko had anything decent to say about the entertainment industry. Ai always gave off the energy of an unrestrained child which is actually what she turns out to be. She is a product of parental abuse who was scouted at the vulnerable age of 12 and quickly was hailed as a major success in that industry, certainly nothing short due to the fact she puts on an excitable and childish personality. She treats her pregnancy with coy jovialness as being described that she might be too small to naturally birth children. She has to be taught concepts like it's okay to say "I Love You" even if you don't mean it. When I play through her scenes, all I can feel is this weird contradiction of childish naivety mixed with disciplined skill. At home she dresses in this motherly way while acting very ditsy while being fully in control as an idol. She somewhat reminds me of the weathernews idol Saya Hiyama, ironically who is in her own scandal right now. If I were to picture Ai's smile in real life, I would imagine it the same as Saya Hiyama's with the always perfectly v like smile showing off her yaeba teeth. Giving this false sense of vulnerability with the watcher when she makes a mistake when she makes a mistake on the weather is somewhat I see Ai to be like except with a more mischievous air.

For another [long] side tangent, being in a personality industry, its interesting to see how fans fail to recognize a curated persona. Back when I spent more time as a cosplayer, I had learned how to act out a persona not only to be in character but also to attract others to you. Maybe the slight ill feeling this series gives me is the reminder of my own experiences as a teen to early adult delicately balancing a believable relatable image while showing only part of myself. There was some sense of that emptiness I felt like Ai's where there was disconnect between the loving emotions I would portray to reality of how unattached I felt (now I know I have BPD though). My relation to the characters lies somewhere between Ai and Memcho. Ai being more like my younger self where as Memcho hits pretty close with her tomboyish look, the bleached hair with the roots growing in, and the bubbly personality and bone structure that helps you get away with appearing younger. It's been a joke among my friends the last few years that I get mistaken for still being in my early to mid 20's despite nearing 30 in a few months and moreso, as an underweight 20 year old, I had experienced a lot of leering eyes determined to believe I was as young as 14 for bizarre and creepy reasons. Some aspect of that perceived youth gives me haunting memories and frustration of arrested development where I struggle to be treated as an adult while on the other side it is in fact part of my current business. One thing that is less thought about artist alley is that you do in fact make choices weather to buy or not based on the seller as well. It's not too rare to see kawaii artists invoking the same energy their art gives in how the present themselves. It's come to the point where I tend to spend a few hundred on a dye and cut right before a new show as well as there being a select wardrobe I pick from every trip I go on. I have a makeup bag always on the ready of some easy to put on products I rarely use outside of events and often a much more larger amount of hair tools to get something of a proper styling. These are things I wear because I love them but they are also almost exclusively used to match the appearance of my booth. Likewise, there is a semi exaggerated persona put on to create a welcoming air to my customers that is tweaked to match the energy of different types. Over Sakuracon, there was an embarrassing moment where I called out to a tiktoker while still switched into a more boisterous energy from a previous customer that I had yet to switch out off and horribly scared them off. It also tends to be easier to pull of this energy during or right after talking to fellow artists as it helps build up the approachable personality, its like we are all doing warm ups together. When I see people like Saya Hiyama pull off multiple instances of being so embarassed that she trips over her words with a big giggly smile, I truly admire the persona but am a bit shocked how much people have bought into it being fully real. Especially in the internet age, its very interesting to watch the gap between the viewpoint of creators and fans/consumers. While I'm much more of a smaller niche online personality, I do have behind the scenes experience with instragrammers in the 70k-160k range and the various parasocial experiences they have gone through. It's also a space where you get so accustomed to the mentality of an influencer (for lack of a better word) that it's hard to deal with someone not versed in that space; either from people who take internet clout as a vanity hobby or those who are actively seeking online privacy. Ai's double nature of being seen as the genius idol while feeling like a deceiving liar resonates pretty deeply on this front. There is a lot of sacrifice in identity that you give your fans in order to in return earn their respect and by extension business. Like Ai, I try to keep some note of regulars I meet at events but with going to multiple back to back events, it can get hard to keep hold of all that information.

Tumblr told me enough of this tangent so we'll move onto the short manga talk I meant to give.

From reading the wiki, It turns out that the twin's father is another actor who was molested in his childhood and in fact birthed a child at 11 as a result of that rape. Seeing as he is also the big bad, it points to the fact the focus on the story is not just the trauma industry workers go through but more specifically the abuse of power younger workers tend to face. While Aqua at current seeks revenge, I would not be surprised if the end goal is to process the line of trauma that has been dealt through out the show. Even if Aqua is a teenager, his previous life is thus far the oldest in terms of lived experience and possibly even older than Aqua's father at the present. He's had the most lived experience and the most chance to also live outside of entertainment that others have more so grown up in. The twin's father is currently an abuser most likely from the result of his own unprocessed abuse and to allow a new generation to grow up in a better industry than he or Ai did, it starts with stopping the past from repeating. Ultimately I think the best end state for Aqua is likely going to be some form of Manager or talent public relations keeper. The show doesn't necessarily show any sign of something like that but that would be the best route for such things.

Ultimately Japan's idol culture in reality needs to change as well as checking our parasocial expectations of celebrities. It's fair to have some critical views on celebrities in terms of say ethics but it's also important to keep in mind that anything put out in the world has some biased narrative, especially if its any form of production. The reality Ai portrayed as a dedicated idol was a lie, the reality LoveNow showed of Akane being a selfish girl was a lie. Maybe the most important lesson I've learned is not to put stock in anything that revolves around the presentation of a real person. Often I will admire and adore fictional creations but not it's creator for this reason. Those images of people you've never met on a personal level never hold up to the truth and can be hurtful on both ends. People are not myths, they are humans.

[raidenfanclub]

Here's a list of things I've been obsessed with at one point or another/still am obsessed with

inspired by a post made by my bitc*-as*s-sister @deargodhelpmeaaaaaaaaa

this is like in order of when I was obsessed, going from elementary school to today (late high school)

There's so many lmao- the ones showed above are like the most impactful interests I've had- I've liked other things, they just didn't rewrite my goofy brain like all these did

ok explanation time

Pokemon- absolutely loved these games as a kid. I gaslit my older sister into thinking pokemon were real when we were really young. Almost my entire elementary school life was defined by this series and I adore all my pokemon plushies.

FNAF- ok so my sister liked it, so then I liked it. Our neighborhood friend and us had a whole club centered around the characters and we kinned assigned ourselves with all the animatronics. I was Mangle/Foxy btw.

Zelda- Probably one of the most influential games of my entire life. I played through so many of them in the later part of my elementary school years and cherished my toon Link plushie. I literally considered myself ThE gIrL lInK and pretended I was him. Breath of the Wild came out when I was deeply obsessed with the games and also when I was having an extremely awful time in my life. Botw may have unironically saved me. This series is a cornerstone to my identity.

Undertale- My sister liked it, so then I did too. Me, her, and her best friend, kin assigned ourselves characters without knowing what kinning was. I was temmie and muffet btw. I loved this game- then hated it because thats what was considered cool. But nowadays I just love it because its truly an amazing game and I dont care about its fandom reputation anymore.

(ima mention mincraft- even tho its not listed- minecraft was another cornerstone of my happiness and identity)

Hatsune Miku (and just vocaloid in general)- another "my sister liked it, so then I did" i liked the characters and the music. Me and my sister went to an event for the Miku expo one time, and it was so much fun. (it was an event where everybody drew miku and itd be scanned for the "Blue Star" music video, i remember it vividly) was an amazing time. I still like some vocaloid songs and love miku. Some of my school friends say I'm the real hatsune miku because I own a miku cosplay lol.

Splatoon- Everybody in middle school knew me as the girl with the squid bag and zelda jacket. I adored splatoon with the release of splatoon 2. I played it with my friends, I played it on my own, I made big deals out of splatfest (to the point where my parents were like "oh its splatfest? that's ur favorite!!) this game also really pushed me into becoming an artist. I would spend hours trying to recreate the artstyle and for like 2 years, all i ever drew was splatoon art. Another cornerstone series like Zelda.

Persona- oh no another cornerstone of my identity series... I look back at these games very critically and nowadays am not a huge fan of the writing choices. But in middle school, when I first played these games- omg they made me a better person because of how much I wanted to be like the protagonists. I wanted to be a reliable friend like them, so I worked really hard to try and become a better person. Despite the problems in the writing, these games really did help me- also they were my introduction to shin megami tensei) I should also note, THE ART! Playing persona encouraged me to shift my cartoony splatoon style into a more semi-realistic anime style like persona. My art improved monumentally from how much I studied Soejima's illustrations. It really inspired me.

Evangelion- I actually read the manga first. I reread it a bunch because covid started up and I had it checked out from the library. We couldnt return them with covid restrictions so I just reread them a bunch. Then I eventually watched the show and just loved it. I got my sister into it a year after I did, and we made a tradition of watching End of Evangelion once a month. Also a major influence on how I view writing and my artstyle.

Shin Megami Tensei- OK ANOTHER CORNERSTONE BUT these games made me realize the depth video games can have. Even though some of the games are really on the noise with their themes- games like Nocturne and Strange Journey blew me away with their creativity. I have so much to say about this series but I will keep it concise and say that this may be my all time favorite series (though its a close contender with Metal Gear)

JoJo- First off, I adore the art so much. But my friend encouraged me and my sister to watch it, we really enjoyed binging the series- and then I read the rest of the manga (SBR MY BELOVED). But i think why i especially love jojo is the friends I made from it, I joined the Fandom wiki community (and although it had its toxicity) I met one of my best friends there and had so much fun drawing things for my online buddies and chatting. Im not on the wiki anymore, but i still talk to some friends from it- and I still really enjoy the series itself PART 9 IS SO FUN SO FAR!!

Monster Hunter- really mh rise, I havent gotten to playing the other games (YET) but me and my sister play thsi game together, its awesome, I love the monsters, I got really good at drawing dragons because I would constantly draw the creatures from this series. I own the mh world artbook and that thing has got to be the best artbook ever- its my bible.

NieR/Drakengard- the same friend who recommended jojo to me recommended nier to me (he's such a real one, absolute bestie) We were gonna play replicant together but he got grounded so he let me experience it on my own. And I adored replicant, it was so fun to play with zero expectation of what it was. the Nier games may have my favorite sort of aesthetic but also I love its characters and its writing. Of course, when I got into Nier I went and played Drakengard also!!! Me and my sister played all these games together (tho she didnt play replicant with me, she just walked in on the most crucial plot points) But we played Drakengard 3 together, (ultimate sister bonding experience) and even though drakengard 3 IS SO FLAWED, we had a lot of fun. The Final Boss (which took me 3 weeks to beat btw) was so much fun for us (i still refight it sometimes) ... We of course played Drakengard 1, we spent $130 to get it actually, played it all (i suffered thru obtaining ending E) and we though it was awesome. Still havent played Drakengard 2 yet, but one day. I love this series for its writing, characters, aesthetics, and being able to discuss it with my evil sister.

Genshin- i dont wanna talk about it. I played it with friends, made me happy to become closer to ppl by playing it. I like some of the characters. ok bye...

Metal Gear Solid- My sister says I had the ultimate character arc by going from being obsessed with Genshin to being a die-hard Metal Gear Fan. I played all the games in late 2022, and it's probably the most brainrot I have ever experienced for a series- absolutely a cornerstone series. Everything about it is just awesome. I could go on for hours. I HAVE GONE ON FOR HOURS (to my poor friends) I literally made my tumblr just to look at metal gear fanart. The games inspired me to finally get better at drawing realism, and some of my most iconic art has come from my fanart for the games. I love my friends in the fanbase too, its awesome. I think about Metal Gear every single day. Never missed a dose of my metal gear fangirlling pills.

Silent Hill- My sister and I were playing sh2 together, then didnt play it for 6 months, and then I played the entire game without her (sorry maddy) Im still going through the 1st game and have the 3rd one in my backlog- but the atmosphere and psycological horror in these games is everything to me. The creature design and lighting choices have inspired my art, and I think about these games all the time. The latter half of sh2 actually terrified me a bit, and horror games dont really scare me.

Resident Evil- I have no idea how I got into the games but I played re4 over winter break this year, and realllly liked it- I adore Leon and I don't care what anybody else claims, HE IS MY MAN. But after re4 I played re2r and re7, and I just love the gameplay and the characters. Even if the games are really goofy and not really scary (I have balls of steel, re7 didnt scare me, but i loved the tension) But i love the goofiness and how campy they are. Me and my sister played re5 together and made a bunch of silly jokes- making resident evil multiplayer was the best decision ever. I can't wait to play the rest of the series.

Trigun- My most recent obsession (although it coincides with my silent hill and resident evil hyperfixations), I had first watched the show like 3 years ago- REALLLY LIKED IT- but didnt finish the anime. And then never touched it until I saw stampede's first episode. I went a watched the 1998 anime and read the manga. I can't describe how much this series has come to mean to me and it literally won't leave my head. I don't like stampede. I love the animation but I just can't. It's a-ok if your a fan, i genuinely see the appeal but you'll only catch me talking about it if its either about peak quality animation or a 3-hour rant about my problems with the writing. THE ORIGINAL SERIES HOWEVER! means the world to me. I reread volume 10 like 6 times and cried eachtime. My friend explains things to me in "trigun" terminology" as a joke when we have personal conversations. I love trigun so much.

Ok there's def more things I really enjoy, like Nijisanji, Ghost-n-pals, Chainsaw man, Death Stranding, Honkai Impact, Sailor Moon,,, the list goes on. But Everything I wrote essays about are my most physically obvious obsessions

Nijisanji actually deserves its own paragraph but im tired lol.

[hyrule-kingdom-updates]

Cozy wooden chairs are currently bare of customers during this time of day—when afternoon soon crumples into dusk. 

Hello. The person typing these words is called Quill. Please allow me to indulge in the sin of pride for a moment. Above is my favourite line from last night’s chapter of HKU. I would like to quickly analysis/demonstrate why for two reasons. 1) It would relate to weekly assignments for my writing class in which my professor does not know that my submissions of self reflection are actually just renamed works of disgusting, childish, fanfiction about Zelda characters, for I am also a sinner in sloth. 2) I want to.

The following analysis has a pretentious rating of 16.8:

My current venture in Ao3 has one goal: to experiment and write with voice. Perspective. Narration. I have a bit of an obsession with unreliable narrators, irresponsible personalities. Put simply: I love lying.

I’ve sort of grown accustomed to my experiment with the blog--html, colors, asks, tags, codes. I can’t say I’m satisfied, but I can say I’m happy. I did it because I was bored of Ao3, but now time passed and the pattern switches.

Of course, I am still going to continue the original tumblr blog style updates as we are so very close to my favourite part of the story, and if I had to wait another 2 years to get the Ao3 chapters up to speed before I can share the ending, I might frankly kill myself. That Masterlist takes a good 30 seconds to load for me on my Lenovo Legion 5 Nvidia Geforce RTX 32gb AMD Ryzen 5000 series 7 and iphone 5. I shiver at the thought of doing all the work again, and then twice over.

Anyhow: Voice. It’s the constant, the bread and butter of HKU. Long have I dabbled between the realms of writing with intricate, sentimental description, and writing like a loser pissboy. Even now, the certain voice that I concoct for “Quill,” is not how I talk in real life. Of course this choice of style is forced in order to attempt to exude an aura of mystery and intelligence, but it’s not something I truly say “on da casual.” In fact, I’d say this voice of Quill is how I normally think. In real life I talk something more similar to Asivus Hartell. I look at the world of Breath of the Wild, and think to myself how it is a world of splendor and grief, a testament to the act of creation and growth despite life’s repeated tragedies, despite life’s repeated deaths. I think it is a masterpiece that sits in a corner of my soul forever. Outloud, I say: noice. And now you know why I am forever stuck in insatiable madness.

Therefore, I not only write and read sentences in my head, but I like to say them outloud, as is the case for:

Cozy wooden chairs are currently bare of customers during this time of day—when afternoon soon crumples into dusk.

It is very important to me that a sentence feels nice to say. In middle school, I was bored by Shakespeare, but now I understand his obsession with rhythm, syllables, and meter. Don’t you think this is a nice/noice sentence? Perhaps it seems a bit forced at times, particularly in the middle of it, but I like the slight disruption it gives.

There is a heartbeat present in the natural emphasis of the words: CO-zy, WOOD-en, CHAIRS-are. I try to highlight it further with the alliteration: cozy, chairs, currently, customers.

The meter is not perfect, “currently” shakes up the rhythm by an odd number of syllables so it forces a sort hiccup or inverse in the pattern. And “during this time of day” loses the alliteration of “c” that I’ve set up, trailing off the momentum. The reason? I just like the way it sounds, I like the way it transitions.

When AFT-er-NOON soon CRUM-ples IN-to DUSK. A perfect iambic pentameter. My bestie. My beloved, even. It’s a description that I like, even without the meter, but is further enjoyable(at least in my opinion) when juxtaposed with the different weird meter/alliteration in the chairs part of the sentence. It’s two different types of word-feel(there’s probably a word for that) that merge together through the shared interest in the time of day.

It’s also a sentence that I think has decent voice. It’s not something Siv would say, or Zelda or Link. It’s very flowery, passionate or pretentious depending on who you ask, perfect for something like Arcadius or ???(depending on who you ask). I never care about meter when writing for Siv, I pretty much just talk out loud about the topic ‘til it sounds good and then I write it down and edit.

This? I write out the single, favourite sentence first, and then I make a scene as an excuse to use it.

As thank you for reading this, here is another of said “excuse sentences” as I’ll call them. I am finishing up editing its accompanied scene in an update coming sooner than you think.

And they had a long, constructive dialogue much like that between a jellyfish and a ghost—bereft in true transparency.