#its just like a constant cycle i see all the time yknow

[glsneeg-enthusiast]

do you have any writing tips? im trying to write this thing about sneeg/frank and i only have my incoherent thoughts in my notes app

sorry i just saw this uh. i dont have any like Actual advice but i can say to just write whatever you want forever. get freaky with it go into depth or dont if you want. make it as cringe as you want have fun with it. write it shitty or however you deem good it doesnt matter !! write whatever genre or ship or trope or whatever just have fun with it. you dont even have to like it after!! if you have fun and like it while writing it thats perfectly fine!!!! and dont feel pressured to write more or write something else because then youre not having fun anymore and it just makes this vicious cycle of hating writing and everything you write and thats not good!!!!

[helisol]

dude im not sure you will get it after reading this either, but you Can read it now

okay so first of all do not expect me to adhere to rules of grammar or Proper capitalisation, I am writing from the heart

so it’s been said before by other people but if Quark and Odo didnt look like the aliens that they are but instead like two regular prettybois the fandom would do cartwheels over their dynamic and Not call them a crack ship. because really, their dynamic fucking SLAPS and I’m here to tell you Why.

their surface-level dynamic is “Respected and Talented Security Chief and Cunning Immoral Businessman who are in Love but pretend not to be” and that's just an off-brand version of enemies to lovers! which is excellent and for some people that’s all you really need to get invested in a ship.

but some people look at it and go “Hm, no, that’s not enough. I mean, they work as friends but it doesn’t really have to be romantic.” and to that I say you are Absolutely Valid, not everything has to be romantic.

it just so happens that these two fuckers have one of the most compelling romance stories ever, and it’d be a shame not to explore it.

so before I dive into the internalised homophobia and repression, I’d like to take a moment to talk about Quark as a character.

because if you have brainworms like me you can kind of see that its an honest to god greek tragedy.

this guy comes from a race of people where being kind, ethical and fair is considered Abnormal and Horrifying. and I’m not gonna call Quark out of all people kind, ethical or fair but,,, 

you ever notice how he’s A Much Better Person Than Pretty Much All Other Ferengi?

dont get me wrong, Quark is still a bastard, but every once in a while his True Character shines through. and I say True Character because guys,,, the way he behaves around other people is an Act. he’s pretending to be something he’s not.

he has to try so hard to be a good ferengi it’s honestly painful to watch at times. because he is a SHIT ferengi! 

he loves his friends- because that's what the ds9 crew are. they’re his friends! and it makes him miserable because that's not! normal! for a ferengi!

let’s compare Quark and Rom for a second. 

Quark reeks of self loathing because a lot of the time he just Doesn’t act like a ferengi is supposed to, and this drives a lot of conflict in the show. he knows how a ferengi should act, it’s just that he can’t!! fucking!! do it!! but he still tries and tries to fit into that mold, which straight up ruins his life on multiple occasions.

Rom is also not a Model Ferengi, but he lives without hating himself. and it’s mostly because he doesn’t care about how a ferengi Should act, he’s loved and cared for even when everybody knows that he’s a shit ferengi! because his non-ferengi-ness works to his benefit. it encourages and highlights his abilities as an engineer. the success and love he finds make it easy for him to be content with his true self. Unlike Quark, who doesn’t get unconditional love from anyone.

its so!! tragic!! because you can see what Quark is really like!! his true self!! he’s a nice guy who cares for people!

its right there all the time and it's so blatantly obvious. especially in episodes like “Body Parts”, “Bar Association”, “The Way Of The Warrior” and “Ferengi Love Songs”

his own wiki page literally calls him “a compassionate and generous man by ferengi standards” which pretty much translates to “not really a good ferengi”.

anyway so Quark is a tragic figure or whatever but we’re actually here for the REPRESSED! HOMOSEXUAL! TENDENCIES! that he and Odo both exhibit.

with characters like garak you don’t really need to have brainrot to pick up on those tendencies, because that was something andrew robinson chose to do, on purpose. 

and to be fair, Quark wasn’t intended to be Any kind of representation, not even by the actor. I’m just pointing out that he Does look and act and talk like a little gayman.

I will admit that he is Painfully Straight in the text of the show, but on a meta level he’s just. a dude who has a serious case of repressing his real personality. and taking it a step further- he also represses his feelings towards another man.

and that man is Odo.

a few things on him:

Odo is literally desperate to be a person. unlike Quark, who at least has the comfort of belonging to a society of people with a set of rules and expectations, Odo has never met anyone or anything like him in all his years of life.

like, we all know Odo basically grew up in a lab, right? 

with people who didn’t know anything about him. who he was so unalike that they literally called him “Nothing”

but he still learned to look and talk and act like them (because if he didn��t he’d feel *pain* which is very fucked up by the way?)

so we know for a fact that Odo wants to be recognised as a person- which is why he tries really hard to conform to the ideals of the society that raised him. instead of exploring his nature as a shape shifter he maintains a humanoid form, picks up a job and creates an entire personality around what he wants to be seen as. but not what he really is.

and that's the thing that causes all the conflict between Quark and Odo. the type of person odo wants to be seen as is the polar opposite of whatever the fuck quark wants to be seen as.

In the same way that Quark acts like a Normal Ferengi, Odo acts like a Normal Security Officer.  and in a cruel twist of fate, the Ferengi happens to be the antithesis of the Security Officer.

If you only look at them as the things they act like, and not the things they are, you might say they’re way too different to like each other, right? 

but,,, if you think about the fact that they’re both putting on this act,,, this performance of idealised versions of themselves,,, you can see that they are The Same. They Are Both Gay Repressed Loser Aliens Who Try To Act Like Things That They Aren’t!

Imagine you’re Odo. 

Imagine that you’re Nothing, because you’re not like anything anyone has ever seen- and because you are Nothing you don’t fall in love with anyone for years and years. since who could love something that isn’t like them at all?

But then one day this Thing shows up in your path and you just hate it. Because it’s not like anything *you* have ever seen. It’s disorderly and looks grotesque and it’s criminal to boot.

It’s all the things you learned would make a “Bad Person” It’s everything you aspire not to be, because if you were any of those things you would BE PUNISHED.

But the trouble is, eventually he’s not an “it” anymore, he’s “Quark” and you see him every day of your miserable little life because you live on the same damn station in space and it’s hard to avoid each other.

He also happens to be one of the only things in your life that are constant. He will never leave because he is stubborn and greedy and you just *hate him so much* that you’re convinced he must be doing all of it to spite you. And yet you also can’t seem to leave him alone.

So Odo Must Hate Quark. everything else is a non sequitur for him. he can’t not hate Quark.

because Quark is, and i’m sincerely sorry to apply christian fucking imagery to this, The Forbidden Fruit.

If he liked quark he’d admit some kind of moral failing. it would be the end of his act. but on the other hand...it might be a good thing, because at least he could have quark.

but Odo can never go through with biting into this apple because the consequences are horrifying to him. he could never have quark because, according to his performance, he would Never like quark to begin with.

and here’s a take for you: Odo's Brand Of Internalised Homophobia Doesn't Stem From Heteronormativity. It Stems From The Fact That He Was Kind Of Assigned Asexual At Birth.

and the show sort of alludes to this, for real! not just subtext! canon! except the writers used the wrong person. 

because instead of Odo having these Forbidden Feelings for Quark he has them for,,, Kira.

but since this is My Quodo Manifesto you’ll understand that i am 100% willing to just toss that part of canon out the airlock.

so Odo does canonically have that mindset of “no one could ever love me”  for decades he repressed any and all feelings of love to avoid getting hurt. in the show he breaks this cycle of repression when he takes a chance and enters a relationship with Kira. yay?

but we all know that aint it chief. and part of the reason why That Ship Ain’t It is the fact that Quark is Right There. and he is simply the more interesting choice for odo.

he and Odo literally share the same problem and have weird intertwined character arcs! they are both dreadfully afraid of not conforming to the ideal versions of themselves, so they reject everything that could challenge their Performance!

on some fucked up level they hate each other *and* themselves individually. and this hatred makes them reject parts of their real identities for the sake of protecting their image. which. yknow. in gay people. is internalised homophobia!

so you can see that they’re both repressing A Lot even if you view them as Friends, but the most important thing in this kind of romantic dynamic is usually,,, when the characters *stop* repressing.

and the thing is. the thing that Kills Me with these two. They Never Get That Moment. Thats Why You Need The Brainrot To See Them As Romantic.

The Ascent gives us an example of what happens when they both take their act too far. I mean, who could forget “Fascist!” and “Fraud!” That is what odo thinks of quark’s performance and vice versa, but we don’t really hear them adress the fact that they *are* playing these roles to a ridiculous extent.

We also never get an example of what would happen if they dropped their act instead of over-performing it. or rather we don’t get to see both of them drop it.

And the reason why we never get that moment is because there’s this one key difference between Quark and Odo. 

Quark knows that he’s constantly repressing his true nature and his feelings for odo. We pretty much hear him say so in the iconic root beer scene in Way Of The Warrior. he knows that he’s not a good ferengi but he keeps up his act.

So quark is aware enough to feel that sweet sweet self loathing. But Odo isnt self loathing as much as he is just self sabotaging.

and this subtle difference between them is why, at the very end of the show, we get “That man loves me, can’t you see? It was written all over his back!”

this moment is quark dropping his act and asking odo to do the same. he wants to hear a genuine Goodbye from him because they have known each other for Decades and they are Friends. but odo is so unable to express the feelings he’s been repressing all these years. that he self sabotages again and just walks away.

even though this is like. very anticlimactic. considering I just spent 2000 words talking about how Odo and Quark are Most Certainly Gay For Each Other.

The fact that their ending is so Weird is the reason why quodo is so engaging and appealing to me? especially post-canon quodo.

like, the amount of “what if’s” this ship has are Astounding.

What if either of them had dropped their act a little sooner? What if they both did, for just a moment, and it was the straw that breaks the camels back?

What if Odo comes back after a few years? What if Quark comes to get him?

What if, in that moment in the finale where Quark drops his act, Odo had returned the gesture? What if Gag-Reel Quodo Kiss.gif Real?

with the depth that I read into their relationship, those what ifs are really fun to think about.

anyway its 1 am and i’m not an english major so literary analysis is not like, my strong suit. plus most of this was written in a late night screaming session with a friend who has the exact same opinions as me. i just think aliens hot and in love. thats all.

[kataracy]

What's up with people just disliking Aang anyway? He's completely fine as a character, you don't have to like him and not everyone needs to know that you don't (though maybe you should try to understand him however as the protagonist). Also, criticism and nitpicking that could be easily construed as hate is not the same thing, hence the still very weird and redundant anti Aang posts that are being tossed around instead of posts like, "respectfully, this aspect could've been improved if this, this, and that happened instead." etc, etc. Hence "Aang stans" complaining about this occurence. How was Aang's treatment in fandom pre-resurgence? I find solace in that it definitely didn't feel as awful since not every person who took a minimum of one course in social sciences/women's history/"the west is just awful" had full, easy and free access to ATLA, but they do now and are making this fandom tragic to be apart of. Don't even get me started on Instagram and Twitter, which consists of irritating vibes everywhere. And for what reason other than us being trapped at homes during a pandemic? Don't you guys want to be healthy?

What's up with people just disliking Aang anyway?

So what had happened was from my recollection, what usually makes fandoms spiral out of control: shipping.

In this fandom, every resurgence, we get lovely new people with their inclusive art, personal cultural takes and honest improvements to the treatment and understanding of characters who otherwise weren’t prominent talking points at the time (for example: Toph being a cop. Everybody was too busy wondering who her 2 baby daddy’s were and why Toph was written as a absentee mom so, we half the new people get to debate that it makes no sense for her to grow up to be a cop while others of us who understand white passing can kind of see how the daughter of a prominent background and impressive fighting career and sticky fingers managed to quickly place herself as head of authority) like Ty Lee being an Air descendant or Sokka being hot. We were all kinda trying to make sense of Korra back then my g

But its tumblr yknow so we have conflict and the quickest conflict to join, the quickest way to interact if you aren’t skilled in long dissertations or gif making, is probably shipping? In my diagram that I made up while typing this I explain: Artists and writers need new fans to boost morale, it fuels the creative process creates amazing art, that art is seen by even more because its being shared around the fans, people form friendships, get inspired - the whole fandom gets nourished.

The problem is somebody starts liking how somebody look wit somebody else, they get mad that you don’t, somebody shouts ‘You silly new fans fighting about this new ship. I was here for Zu-‘ and really that’s where you should stop its going to be an actively bad time if you let it.

Aang for a long time was kind of safe? So, you could say it was his turn to get hate because maybe some fans see things in Aang they somehow disagree with and you can’t fault them for that. One problem is everything starts getting cross tagged bc now everyone wants to find people with the same opinions as them and have the same fun they see everyone having in a fandom and a lot of fans think yelling at each other every day is the fun part.

Aang is an easy target for a “hero wins trophy” debate but it falls short when you realize at no point was said girl treated as a trophy and if they see her as that, its not the shows fault? Some people don’t see the strength in knowledge, and I mean hey, its just fiction at the end of the day. There’s plenty of this same story told in different ways on other platforms to slap an element bending AU on.  

Aang is a nonviolent character introduced as an innocent child and some people cannot see through such a perspective, especially for their hero (there’s also certain people who already had the experiences new fans are getting and don’t know how to be happy for the new demographic target). But Aang’s nonviolence is a constant struggle for him; Aang is a more subtle character when it comes to his redemption arc and a lot of viewers miss it, don’t care about or think its poorly executed.

Simply put idk don’t listen to me I’m just sayin fandoms cycle through character hate like seasons. I personally suggest you spread positivity about Aang, as its incredibly easy find. On twitter especially please remember that those are the same freaks that would yell over here, and we all ended up ignoring it, that’s why they’re twitters problem now. A more proactive approach I find, is to make fun of it- child have you seen their material? They call the boy abusive I mean you have to laugh, meanwhile artists are making Aang brown like baby we’ve progressed past the need

[melto]

hey!! I just wanna say you're probably one of the most handsome guys i've seen? honestly amazing and i'm living for your hcs about jake being a 1D fan omg, i'm just imaging him having one of those life size cut outs of his fave boy (it's nice to see another face in his house yknow) and he's probably far enough in denial about them going solo that he still wears his 1D pin on his jacket

UH FIRST OF ALL THANK U IM BLUSHIN MAD HARD AND UH SECOND OF ALL !!!!!

jake 100% as every one direction cardboard cutout in his house and he has them in different rooms so he always has someone to talk to like harry isr in the kitchen, louis in the main hall way, liam is in the basement, niall is in the living room and zayn is in like his study area. every month they have dinner togther like h sits them at the table and makes them dinner plates and its really. fucking sad. and one time chloe tells him and she gets banned from his house for a week and his 1d dinner parties forever. he’s just tryin to live his life and he thought 1d would always be a constant in his life (at least he still has carly rae jepsen) so he’s gotta be in denial abt the break up or he’s gonna lose it. he never throws out all of his 1d merch (he still wears it all even if its like super tight) and he cycles thru his 1d different pins and if he’s feeling rly emo and gay abt 1d he wears all of them it’s a total overload but he’s gotta rep his boys lmao,,,

[thesanguinecrow]

just gonna vent about my day under here

ive already vague posted about it but i kinda just wanna get it all clear n out

lowkey thinkin of making a personal journal blog thang cuz i like posting into the void as an outlet

and of course you dont have to read this if you dont want to (its hella long too though i put a tldr). i wish you well regardless <3 

again its entirely up to you if you wanna read this. im not in any grand detriment and will be able to handle my situations just wanna express some stuff in words, release some pressure to not have it all be inside

tldr: romantic dullness/exhaustion, cant use the parking pass i bought today bc step dads truck broke down so he using my moms car shes using mine i have to walk to school n being able to go to work/interviews is looking impossible, money is tight, changing coins into cash was difficult (heavy, took a long time, spilled some coins, lost like 36 in service fee), stomach bein sensitive

ok so this kinda starts off from my train of thought from yesterday n i felt that feel where its like am i rly gonna find anyone i can genuinely vibe with and feel like !!<3 all that love stuff and when i opened myself to see how i felt towards people in that sense it all kinda felt dull and cardboard-y.

i feel like ive put out too much romantic interest and im cycling back into a low period and having more disinterest

in my french class ive moved my seat to sit next to a guy i think is cute. 

ever since the first time we spoke when we had to pair up with someone we never talked to yet in the class the vibe was v chill n like we were already buds and my aries mars is becoming bolder and i was like okay why not lez go. its been cool sitting next to him and we have our meme moments and our laughs.

today my fiend sat next to me and i could just bee insecure and jealous but the guy, who sat on my other side, complimented on her eyelashes and yeah (ik ik its like \__!__/ and i have no control over other ppl free will but yknow i gotta fancy on this guy

though today the luster has faded from him pretty hard

we were talking about french terms for family members and like widow and stuff was one of the terms (i dont remember exactly as it came up but) and he was putting out that lmao im single and lookin for some nice nice ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) and the whole vibe was just off putting

when class ends we usually talk a little bit till a couple steps out of the door and we go our separate ways but today i had to go to the cashiers to buy a parking pass so i walked with him more

when we left the building he like projectile spits into the dirt and for me the whole like idk what to call it but the sound of gathering the spit n stuff y’know like that absolutely makes me cringe so i was just there like

so any way i go to the cashiers to (finally) buy my parking pass

thankfully since we moved im now within walking distance of my school but its like ide rather not. i sweat easily, a lot, and its so cal sunny weather is almost constant. for the past like 2 weeks ive been parking as close as i can to the school in the residential area and walked the rest. (you still need permit like 4 blocks from the school) so i was glad to finally get my pass to park across the street.

until my mom told me this night that my step dads truck broke down (its an old used car with a lot of miles on it the engine wasnt actin right) so now he has to take my moms car and shes gonna take my car. thus i gotta walk all the way from home to school. im mad that like the day i buy my pass is the day i loose the ability to take my car to school. tomorrow imma see if i can still refund my pass.

this is throwing a wrench into my activities bc ive been riding on three job interviews and now idek if i can make it to work especially on a basically on demand basis (bc part time seasonal work be like that) i already interviewed for two and canceled the third

over all losing the functionality of one of our vehicles, work not being ideal, and me losing my mobility has thrown me back into financial anxiety and put a damper on my mood.

other unfortunate events today have been my stomach being sensitive to most anything and having to go exchange my step dads coins into cash

at some stores (like vons, ralphs, cvs) they got this machine called a coin star. you feed in your coins, they take a processing fee, you get a cash voucher, and cash it at the register to get your bills. 

my step dad had $300+ worth in coins and it was heavy.

part one of this poor experience: there was some random stuff up in the coins like safety pins so the machine jams i needa call the manager he clears it up we good

then i spill some of the fucking coins and i loose some under the machine. two other employees helped me pick up the coins thankfully

then i just was standing there for hella long and my hands got dirty from handing all the coins. i was probably there for almost an hour. my feet were starting to swell up n turn red from standing in place for that long. the wait then continued as i waited in the register line to cash the vouchers (one from the jam, one from the machine auto stopping bc we had to pick up the coins, and the final voucher after feeding everything in) and i waited for another while in the line at starbucks for my reward drink. 

also like coinstar takes like 11.5% fee and like oof with what i had it took like 36 dollars in fee

so like yeah that was my day