#like my guy. a) people don’t generally read things that obsessively and constantly

[autism-disco]

ffs tumblr why did you have to dig me into a pit of old interests i have a test in like eleven hours!!! i don’t have time for this!!

anyway if they ever do release tamsin and the days as a book like with deep + dark i will loose my absolute shit. yes it has been at least like 4 or 5 years. no i don’t care give it to me phoenix comics please i need to remember what the funny pumpkin man did

[kisseobie]

Hello🫣🫣 may I request p1harmony reaction to you wearing something short/revealing when going out clubbing? Thank youuu☺️☺️

p1harmony reacting to you wearing revealing clothes

pairings: ot6 p1harmony x reader

warnings: suggestive

tags: established relationships, clingy piwon, the boys are.. boys, clubbing, drinking (aged up for seobsoul), non idol au

a/n: it’s funny bc i was JUST reading an exact post like this a few minutes ago so anon if u were the same person who sent @ntoniac a request for the same thing i hope i can do it justice bc hers had me giggling and kicking my feet .. ANYWAYS! once again i apologize for slow updates i unfortunately am a student amidst a depressive episode soooooo it takes me a bit longer to write :( i hope u all can understand

𖧷 keeho

is honestly so cheesed. the type to insist to take pictures of you on his phone before you two actually make your way out, already mentally planning out which photo he’s gonna use in his next photo dump. is always super grabby with his hands, but its somehow amplified tonight. constantly has his arm lazily perched on your shoulder, and he often whispers cute little compliments into your ear every now and then. doesn’t really mind when people approach you to talk to you, doesn’t even necessarily care when said people make quick glances at your cleavage and the short length of your skirt. you two have an immense level of trust in your relationship, so he’s not one to feel insecure when people admire his girl. i can see kyo as the type to drag you onto the dance floor too, just so he can spin you around and feel your ass rub against the frontside of his jeans. eventually does end up posting those photos he took of you earlier on instagram, but not without captioning it something like “that’s all me”

𖧷 theo

doesn’t care about how short and tight your mini dress is, just wants it off of you by the end of the night. when you first skipped into the living room, beaming as you showed off your outfit of choice to him, theo had to hold himself back from kissing you silly. just like keeho, the simple concept of his girlfriend wearing a revealing outfit doesn’t make him super possessive, but he does make himself known to onlookers as your boyfriend in other ways, whether that be holding your drink and purse for you without you even asking him to, or sneaking up behind you to pepper kisses along your neck when your in the middle of conversation with someone. he makes his presence known but also wants to ensure that you have a carefree, enjoyable night without feeling like you have to tend to your boyfriend the entire time. taeyang definitely does admire your cleavage when he gets the chance too though, shamelessly stares at your chest and just giggles in reply when you scold him for doing so… loves to flirt with you even more than he usually does tbh

𖧷 jiung

is the overly possessive boyfriend that will whine and beg you to change. in reality, he doesn’t actually expect you to change your outfit, but lets you know (whilst pouting) that although you look hot and he wants to devour you, he also is very nervous about the unwanted attention you might get. it’s not a bad thing really! jiung just wants to be the only man that gets to see you in such a tiny top. although he might complain at first, you don’t miss the obvious blush on his face, silently signaling to you that he secretly loves when you dress this way. he’s not a very touchy person, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t interlock your fingers the entire night, even giving your hand gentle squeezes when you give someone else a little too much attention for his liking. glares at anyone who might whistle at you or even just look in your general vicinity for a bit too long. quickly shuts down offers himself from other guys that have the balls to ask you to dance. yeah, your not being let out of his sight looking that good. he’s just obsessed with you and wants you all to himself, sorry!

𖧷 intak

actually is the one who helps you pick out your outfit! tak himself wants to spend the night out showing off his beautiful girlfriend so he purposely convinces you to wear the shortest denim skirt you own, paired with an equally revealing spaghetti strap crop top. comes up behind you when your adjusting your outfit in the mirror to wrap his arms around your waist and perch his chin on your right shoulder, shooting down any concerns you might have about your outfit being kind of “whorish” (your words, not his!). is your personal hype man. you look good and he’s gonna make you feel good. loves to watch you on the dance floor from a nearby barstool, having the time of your life with your friends. after you’ve tired yourself out, you walk towards him to join him at the bar and he doesn’t miss the opportunity to eye your entire body from top to bottom and let out an obnoxious whistle. he’s sooooo sweet frat boy coded… definitely asks if he can take a body shot off of you whilst winking and you just roll your eyes in response. when he ends up drunk out of his mind and you have to drag him inside your shared cab, he’s mumbling the sweetest praises to you before he falls asleep against your shoulder

𖧷 soul

doesn’t really have much to say, but his body language speaks for itself. like most of piwon, his possessiveness is at a minimum, and like intak, he loves when you feel confident enough to dress this way. maybe it’s the introvert in him, but he lives vicariously through your bold outfit choices. loves to give you kisses on your exposed collarbone as he smoothens out a crease on your silk skirt. he also loves the way your stomach peeks out of your cropped top, and he holds onto your waist when kissing you to circle his thumbs on the area. stares at you lovingly the entire night, and doesn’t falter when your eyes meet every now and then. he comes up to you towards the end of the night and whispers into your ear about how he thinks you look so pretty and that he loves this outfit. you definitely end up seeing a more vocal side of him when the alcohol kicks in, and you swoon at how lovey dovey his words are. he just wants you to feel pretty and confident and he ends up succeeding in proving that to you! makes really bad attempts at flirting which ends up in the pair of you laughing your asses off. overall shota makes you feel beautiful and you make mental notes to bring him out wearing revealing clothes more often

𖧷 jongseob

djsjdkajdjsj i have to write my boyfriend as clingy as possible. he’s definitely the type of boyfriend to sit on the end of your bed, aimlessly scrolling on his phone and taking little peeks at you every now and then while your doing your makeup on your vanity. when you finish your makeup and go to your closet to change into the tiny little dress you’ve chosen for the evening, you’re honestly a bit nervous as to how your boyfriend will react to how bodycon and short the attire is, but you look and feel hot and that encourages you to step out in front of him. he notices your presence right away and looks up at your face, then chest, then thighs, and then turns off and tucks his phone into his back pocket and grabs at you to sit on his lap. gives you the sweetest kiss imaginable and pulls away to look at you with disbelief. asks you something along the lines of “how did i get so lucky?” and his hands run all over the material of your dress. his boldness is new but very welcome and he spends a good while complimenting you, asking you where you bought this dress, and playing with your hair with a smug grin on his face. gets soooo excited to take you out and wastes no time in calling an uber so he can show you off to the world. feels like he’s on cloud 9!

taglist: @woozixo @hearts4chanhee @kyokopi @astro-doll-the-star @soobiary @kyaaramello @t3ssamoodboard @angelcbf @idontknow-1s-world @vivienne-sim @elissasimp @imjustayapper @ihatewreckingballmains @theyluvsosa @seobing @www90kitsch @khfviq @barbiekh86t @bbyjjunie @taeyangi @fullsunstrawberry @jihnyah @intheemptymirror

© kisseobie, please do not repost my writing!

𖧷 ₊ ° .

[kinardsboy]

Prefacing this by saying i don’t hate Eddie or buddie in any way, im only tagging this as anti buddie so people can filter out criticism on a ship that they enjoy ❤️

This post doesnt really have a specific theme, I’m just kinda rambling here so bear with me lol

Something that has been bothering me for a while about the gay eddie hc, is that at least the canon basis/evidence for it, is honestly a little homophobic? Most often people claim he’s gay because of how he treats women poorly and how many failed relationships he’s been in and I just.. first off have you MET a straight man?? 😭 thats how they are..(For the most part). Secondly it’s a negative stereotype that gay men dont treat women well, so having that be one of your main points to make Eddie gay rubs me the wrong way, especially when it comes from non queer men. The other main point I see is the quote “it feels like a performance” but the thing about that quote is , its taken extremely out of context.

He was literally talking about being set up on dates, being FORCED to date instead of letting it happen naturally. Thats what feels like a performance.

I have never understood why Eddie also cant be bisexual if queer at all. he has been clearly shown to enjoy having sex with women.

And another thing that bothers me is that buddie fans shout all the time about wanting whats best for Buck, and then want him shoved in a relationship with a man that has never treated a romantic partner fairly. Again, this isnt Eddie hate but the guy needs serious therapy. He’s a good friend and a good dad, ultimately hes a good person too but he’s not a good partner and that wouldnt change just because he dates Buck.

Bob’s are constantly forcing a heteronormative role onto Buck, especially when it comes to taking care of Christopher and it just, thats not going to solve anything? Like at all? It really makes me feel like they dont understand mlm relationships at all, and what they look like and how they work, especially based on their reactions to how Tommy and Buck interact.

People probably arent going to like this take, but I see fics or posts that constantly put Christopher as Buck’s 1 priority and I just dont think its true. Dont get me wrong I really enjoy the relationship they have, but if any kid on the show has his highest priority, its Jee. Buck spends so much time with Chris because Eddie needs help, if Henren needed help or babysitting more often Buck would seem close to Denny and Mara as well. Im not saying Buck doesnt care or want to hang out with Chris of course, but I feel like people definitely overplay their relationship to an extreme extent. The same goes for buddie in general, especially these last few seasons I dont see buck and Eddie being any closer than eddie and hen or buck and hen or something. Especially considering in 704 Eddie literally didnt invite him to trivia which he knows (or should know) Buck likes lol

And another thing about Christopher is that they turn him into this buddie love child who is SO obsessed with his dad’s sexuality and its just so weird to me. They completely strip him of any independence and personality and turn him into this buddie advocate, and then put him away when he’s no longer useful or needed. Its ableism. Chris is his own character and his story shouldnt focus around Buddie or his dads romantic endeavors AT ALL.

Anyway if you read all of this thanks for indulging my rambling lol

[ragnarlothcat]

I know I’m a chronic overthinker but I’ve been in the same fandom for three years or so now and I was reflecting that writing seemed so much easier when I first started out. Just looking at my output since 2021 shows a clear trend: I’ve been writing much less and it’s been taking me way longer.

I figured that I’d gotten a little burned out and that three years is a long time to focus solely on the same two guys making out and that there’s a limit to the number of situations I can put them in before I start to get bored. But I don’t think that’s quite my problem because even now, a million years later, I have ideas for dozens of fics and AUs that would be interesting to explore or funny to write.

No, it’s that I’ve let the larger fandom overwhelm me and it’s left me constantly second-guessing my writing. And I don’t mean that I’ve gotten nasty comments or asks, because I haven’t! All the other fans have been consistently wonderful and fun people with really valuable insights. And it’s not that I’ve been obsessing over stats or comments or worrying about going against popular headcanons. I mean, I’m just as excited as anyone else to see an AO3 email in my inbox but I’m also perfectly happy posting niche fics for an audience of me and my three weirdest friends.

It’s more that after so long engaging with other fans and other fics and the general meta, I’ve ended up writing too self-consciously. I’ve read so many interpretations of canon events, analyses of characterization and comparisons between fiction and real-world politics over the years, and I’ve enjoyed them because I genuinely care about these stories and these characters! I like seeing what everyone else thinks and then considering their points of view, no matter how bewildering they might seem at first.

But now it feels like I’m writing almost defensively, like I have to justify every choice I’m making based on this enormous and contradictory body of information. Three years ago I’d have written a scene in a few thousand words and moved on to the next plot point with my momentum intact. Now I’m constantly wringing my hands over things like physical details (I guess he’s not exactly a redhead) or broader social implications (is this trope misogynistic?) or finicky logistics (these locations are too far apart for this scene to make sense) or controversial character nuance (does writing this guy as a kind, doting husband make me an abuse apologist???) and the result is that I’m paralyzed with indecision and a ridiculous need to support everything I write with a lot of context that isn’t especially fun to write or, I suspect, especially fun to read.

I’m aware that this problem is entirely in my own head and that no one has asked me for any of this. And it’s not that all those questions aren’t interesting and important things to contemplate. But I miss the days of sitting down at my laptop and going “wouldn’t it be funny if these dorks played a video game together?” and then writing exactly that.

I don’t know. Were my fics better three years ago? I kind of doubt it. I’ve looked back at some of them and if nothing else I now have a better grasp of what tense I’m supposed to be using. But I definitely had more fun writing those older stories, which maybe feels more important.

[artbyblastweave]

Let’s get some abandoned effortposts on disco Elysium in the list. Liked what analysis on it you had, would be great to see more, or fail to see as the case may be

Here’s one of the last insights on Disco Elysium I care to put to paper for a good long while; I really enjoy the nested futility and self-defeat of the central murder mystery, the way it structured to constantly raise the question of how anyone could possibly benefit from what you’re doing.

I mean off the bat the murder victim is a fascist stormtrooper, so there’s that. I personally maintain that it’s still good in a general sense to investigate murders regardless of the moral standing of the victim, but to get real, it’s a very convenient time for me to embrace universalist rhetoric given how little support the neighborhood receives with problems that don’t involve someone well connected. And then, over the course of the game, you can kill all four people left on the planet to whom the initial victim actually mattered on a personal level. Three in clear-cut self-defense, the fourth as an optional casualty to the same mindless, trusting proceduralism that’s admittedly and unfortunately intertwined with my “ no murder left unsolved” stance.

And then! You finally run down the murderer, and from a public safety perspective it turns out that if you’d just gone home after the mercenary tribunal, nothing would have changed; Dros is on his last legs, the odds he’s gonna kill anyone else are very very low.

The last redoubt is the ideological angle- there could be a narrative here about how you’re crushing the last vestige of the revolution, how the killing and the subsequent investigation was the last theatre of the old war- but I think the narrative resists even this attempt to read meaning into it. From an ideological perspective Dros committed the killing off the clock. It was spite, not praxis- informed in the moment by his misanthropy, his neuroses about women, and his obsession with Klaasje more than it was about striking a blow for communism. He killed Lely while Lely was doing probably the least objectionable thing he ever did. Obviously Dros’s neuroses and living situation were downstream of ideology, of material circumstances, in the way everything else is- but to try and elevate the killing by making it about that feels disingenuous.

And this is great, because Disco Elysium isn’t really about the murder mystery in the same way that Fallout: New Vegas isn’t really about finding the guy who shot you in the head-it’s an injection point, it’s a thread you pull for guidance, but the real meat is all the other stuff and people you encounter while poking around. The killing isn’t unimportant, per se, but the mystery surrounding it kinda is! Given the repeated anti-climax, it’s definitely *less* important than the harm you can cause to people in order to push the investigation forward, or the good you can do for the community by going off-script and helping people out with random bullshit. It’s neat!

[awesomeferret10]

I would like to talk about Ianthony as of post April 1st 2024. (With obvious parallels to both The Event and Dan and Phil)

1. I see a lot of people like obsessively combing over every glance and reading into every word which isn’t anything new but I feel has really kicked up a notch lately. My general response to this is the ianthony “relationship” label shouldn’t matter. They obviously love each other platonically or anything else and I think it’s important sometimes to take a step back from your theorizing and hyperventilating to just enjoy them as people and their friendship and how much they care

2. Keep in mind this isn’t like Dan and Phil. They aren’t young people who haven’t been given the opportunity to discover/express themselves. They both still confidently state they’re straight up to a couple of months ago. When they’ve actively been asked for over 10 years what their sexuality is constantly I feel as though maybe they would have done some internal exploration of their sexualities by now. Obviously sexualities aren’t static and labels don’t matter. Gender and sex is nothing compared to the connection of people and often sexuality labels can be completely overridden or thrown into question by one person. On top of the fact that Anthony has essentially stated this himself of “you never know 🤷‍♂️” but like. They still both are confident in the label of straight. So chill out a little.

3. The crew shipping them isn’t some like inside joke within the smoffice. It’s an inside joke within the community THAT WE ARE ALL INSIDE OF. It’s a joke built by years of Ian and Anthony playing into fans questions for views and the fact that many of their employees were previously Smosh fans. So although it’s funny that all the editors and cast and crew are playing into it more than Ian and Anthony themselves in the videos remember it’s not proof of anything. They’re just being silly goofy.

4. I get it. Because before The Event I was very dismissive of every shourtney shipper. I enjoyed their genuine connection as best friends and people who clearly loved each other. But every time I saw something pointing out “oh Courtney said this” “oh look how Shayne looked at them here” I had the “this isn’t 2010 guys when will you give it up they’re just besties” reaction. I never thought people were insane for noticing that possible connection but I also just thought people were driving themselves mad reading into stuff. Obviously a lot of the things people pointed out are still probably nothing because again people were analyzing literally every microsecond.

5. Like no seriously I get it. On inspection Ian and Anthony make fuck me eyes at each other. Like constantly. They look at each other like there’s no one else in the world sometimes. The behind the scenes for my dead friend where they just spend 2 minutes with Ian trying to stick something in Anthony’s pocket while both of them are giggling is literally middle school flirting. Anthony tearing up at the story of best friends turned lovers. Little bit dramatic king. Like we all know why Shayne and Courtney love that story. But Anthony dude. After going through April 1st 2024 I totally understand not wanting to discard any of the shit these two idiots say. And it’s also really funny since they’ve proven they don’t care. Just want everyone to remember to be careful to just enjoy them soley as a duo without the conspiracy of a relationship on occasion.

[onlycosmere]

I wasn’t going to say anything about it because, frankly, I regularly read much better criticism of Brandon Sanderson on tumblr.

However, Brandon responded to that Wired article, so I’ll share his response with you all.

Brandon Sanderson:

All,

I appreciate the kind words and support.

Not sure how, or if, I should respond to the Wired article. I get that Jason, in writing it, felt incredibly conflicted about the fact that he finds me lame and boring. I’m baffled how he seemed to find every single person on his trip--my friends, my family, my fans--to be worthy of derision.

But he also feels sincere in his attempt to try to understand. While he legitimately seems to dislike me and my writing, I don't think that's why he came to see me. He wasn't looking for a hit piece--he was looking to explore the world through his writing. In that, he and I are the same, and I respect him for it, even if much of his tone seems quite dismissive of many people and ideas I care deeply about.

The strangest part for me is how Jason says he had trouble finding the real me. He says he wants something true or genuine. But he had the genuine me all that time. He really did. What I said, apparently, wasn't anything he found useful for writing an article. That doesn't make it not genuine or true.

I am not offended that the true me bores him. Honestly, I'm a guy who enjoys his job, loves his family, and is a little obsessive about his stories. There's no hidden trauma. No skeletons in my closet. Just a guy trying to understand the world through story. That IS kind of boring, from an outsider's perspective. I can see how it is difficult to write an article about me for that reason.

But at the same time, I’m worried about the way he treats our entire community. I understand that he didn’t just talk about me, but about you. As has been happening to fantasy fans for years, the general attitude of anyone writing about us is that we should be ashamed for enjoying what we enjoy. In that, the tone feels like it was written during the 80s. “Look at these silly nerds, liking things! How dare they like things! Don’t they know the thing they like is dumb?”

As a community, let’s take a deep breath. It’s all right. I appreciate you standing up for me, but please leave Jason alone. This might feel like an attack on us, on you, but it’s not. Jason wrote what he felt he needed--and as a writer, he is my colleague. Please show him respect. He should not be attacked for sharing his feelings. If we attack people for doing so, we make the world a worse place, because fewer people will be willing to be their authentic selves.

That said, let me say one thing. You, my friends, are not boring or lame. In Going Postal, one of my favorite novels, Sir Terry Pratchett has a character fascinated by collecting pins. Not pins like you might think--they aren't like Disney pins, or character pins. They are pins like tacks used to pin things to walls. Outsiders find it difficult to understand why he loves them so much. But he does.

In the book, pins are a stand-in for collecting stamps, but also a commentary on the way we as human beings are constantly finding wonder in the world around us. That is part of what makes us special. The man who collects those pins--Stanley Howler--IS special. In part BECAUSE of his passion. And the more you get to know him, or anyone, the more interesting you find them. This is a truism in life. People are interesting, every one of them--and being a writer is about finding out why.

In that way, the ability to make Stanley interesting is part of what makes Pratchett a genius, in my opinion. That's WRITING. Not merely using words. It’s what I aspire to be able to do. People are wonderful, fascinating, brilliant balls of walking contradiction, passion, and beauty. I find it an exciting challenge to make certain that the perspective of the washwoman or the monk sitting and reading a book is as interesting in a story as that of the king or the tech-mogul.

And I find value in you. Your passion for my work is a big part of why I write. You make my life special. Thank you.

(NOTE: I do want to make it clear, again that I bear Jason no ill will. I like him. Please leave him alone. He seems to be a sincere man who tried very hard to find a story, discovered that there wasn't one that interested him, then floundered in trying to figure out what he could say to make deadline. I respect him for trying his best to write what he obviously found a difficult article.

He’s a person, remember, just like each of us.)

[rumble-aint-a-rumble-without-me]

🪕 - 🅡🅘🅓🅘🅝🅖 - ships, tell me a little about yourself (personality, general description, likes/dislikes, gender preference) and i'll ship you with somebody from the outsiders!

i’m so curious to know who you’d ship me with, i’ve been reading your stuff for years so i know whoever you ship me with it’ll be good! 🎀

prepare yourself because this is gonna be detailed 🤭

i have long curly blonde hair (it’s nearly at my waist now and is blonder than normal because of the sun) i love it sm now it’s like princess hair 🤭 i have downturned doe eyes that are constantly switching between blue, green and grey. i always curl my lashes and wear mascara because sadly naturally i have very straight pale lashes. i have a slim, slight figure and am tanned because it’s summer!!! my face has a lot of freckles now and but so does my body. i have a small ring of freckles on my knuckle which i love!!! my cheeks are always flushed and i have baby blue braces. the way i dress is very coquette, girl next door chic. think white lace blouses paired with jean skirts or pretty floral dresses. simple, girly angelic and preppy. basically rory gilmore if she was one of the lisbon sisters.

i’m extremely physically affectionate. my friends irl will tell anyone that because i’m nearly always holding their hands or looping my arms with theirs. my love language is definitely physical touch. i’m an infp and a libra. i also get told that my personality reminds people of miss honey or cinderella. so i guess that means i’m pretty soft spoken and kind. i’m very quiet when i first meet people but once they probably know me i can ramble for ages about my hyper-fixations.i can be kinda naive but only because i always wanna see the good in people!!! i don’t really get angry or when i am angry i just end up crying.😔

i really love classic literature and vintage books!!! along with vintage movies (especially audrey hepburn movies, i’m literally obsessed with her) i love alternative music from the 80s. think the smiths, blondie, the cardigans + i know it’s not from the 80s but lana del ray <333 though to be fair i just adore anything from the past. but also i love listening to vintage love songs. i love pressed flowers and journaling! basically any hobby that is typically old fashioned is my kind of activity 😭

thank you ever so much for doing this, i’m genuinely so interested to see which one of them you ship me with and thank you so much!!! 

Oh my gosh! You sound so cool, and I'm so glad to hear that you've been a long time fan! It's kind of crazy to me still to hear things like that, I can't imagine anyone sticking around for my sub-par writings-

Anyway! My gut is really screaming Dallas for this one. I know you guys are like totally opposite, but I think you'd definitely catch his eye, and he'd be really into your vibe. He likes to kiss your freckles and doesn't mind how touchy you are <3 don't worry about the naivety thing, Dallas will totally take care of anyone who tries to mess with you :)

[drsteggy]

Can I get some DVD commentary on Uneasy Lies the Chosen of Farore? I know you have been in the process of rewriting the core fic and there are so many parts of it I love, so if you're able to talk about the rewriting aspect, that's a bonus!

I don't really have a specific section, more of a general point for discussion. Maybe less DVD commentary and more Farore interview exclusive!

One of the things I suspected on my first read through was that Twilight Princess really played a big part in furnishing the world. I went in to your fic having only played OOT and BOTW and there were some commonalities (though I think with OOT it might have been more of a general LOZ vibe because I'm not sure if you had played it at that point). Now that I've played TP and think back to Farore, I really feel its influence in the 'dungeon' design and some of the geography.

What parts do you think the games played in terms of influencing your worldbuilding on Farore?

Thanks so much for the ask, my god I love going on about this fic so much.

The rewrite has mostly been trying to bring it up to the level of how I write now vs how I did then. I lean into perfectionism (though I swear I’m much better than I was) and I will tweak things endlessly. There were a few things I felt were a little rough and never got smoothed the way I liked. The entire back half of the fic got pretty much written and published as I went week to week because I hit a spot where I just had to finish it- I knew how it would end, and I wanted to make sure it hit its marks. I wasn’t comfortable without having the safety net I had at the start, but the people who offered to beta at the start slowly shifted priorities and drifted…and man, if I could not keep a beta readers attention, how well I was doing here?

I mean, part of the fic is about imposter syndrome and learning who you are and all that and. Yeah. I half joke that Link is a self insert. I’m not the train wreck he is at the start of the fic by miles- but there are places where he is very much some hard projection. But by the second half of the fic he was getting his shit together, so I figured maybe I should try and follow that example.

So when I was first trying to deal with my Zelda brain rot, which was mostly Breath of the Wild brain rot, I ended up in a community of people who were very much Gamers who liked Zelda games. When I started Farore in its original six chapter form, I’d only played BOTW and the geography/map is 100% the BOTW map. The Zora’s Domain is differently laid out, but I think that’s it. I can show you where I decided specific things were otherwise.

What I learned from this was people who identify as gamers first don’t really gel well with people who identify as Zelda fans first. Like these guys liked to shit all over BOTW Zelda (a 16 year old girl in the game) and go on about how a non male hero should never be a thing and turned me into a defender of the princess (who I’d only experienced as her yelling at me to that point, and I wasn’t really a fan) Eventually I left because they decided to make fun of cosplay photos I shared.

But these guys were obsessed with Twilight Princess. Obsessed!!! In particular, they talked about the Arbiters Grounds constantly. They claimed, more than once, that it was the best dungeon in the series!! And this influenced me as I continued the fic.

I’m a Switch girl, though my Nintendo introduction involved a Wii in 2009- I was recently married and unable to work as I was trying to deal with state level bullshit about a professional license that ultimately kept me sidelined for 3 months. I was going stir crazy and spouse decided I should learn to play MarioKart. I still had this Wii and started to track down older games to play them.

I scored a copy of TP and had already decided the Arbiters Grounds was going to be the desert dungeon in the fic, but I wanted to play through it first. As it turned out, playing TP with a Wiimote was a bad combination for me and I kept slopping into lava before I even properly entered the Goron temple. I ended up watching someone do a let’s play of that dungeon before I wrote it.

Much, much later I learned my Wii could play GameCube games and I did eventually play TP via a GC disk. I remember getting a chill when I finally rocked up on the Arbiters Grounds, and I do not feel that I made that dungeon as scary as maybe I could have- I don’t think I changed a lot in the rewrite because there’s a lot in that chapter that I really love and thought came out well.

I had also played part of Skyward Sword as I was writing (and I feel that after BOTW, this game has the most influence on the fic, particularly over the Link/Zelda relationship) and I knew spiders were sort of a thing in Zelda games and that’s why I made the first dungeon boss sort of a spider (it only has six legs, so it isn’t a spider) I was unaware that there was a classic dungeon boss that had a spider form, so when people were going on about Lady Ghoma in my comments I was very what about that. I was super shocked when I hit that dungeon in TP lol.

I will say TP has some of my favorite dungeons and the most fun bosses. I kind of wish that I knew about Snowpeak Mansion and the City in the Sky as I was writing, but I think my Link would have had a mental breakdown at the very thought of that much hookshot. He probably would have been into making soup, though.

I tried to Easter egg as many games as I could as I wrote- except I decided this was before BOTW- so that game is not mentioned at all aside from the map. I think I did a pretty good job of it, considering I hadn’t played (and had not completed any) many as I was going. I definitely hit Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, Links Awakening, Wind Waker and the manga from Hyrule Historia. One comment I got on the fic - one that really touched me, too - referenced the Picori and the reader assured my Link that he wasn’t really alone. And like, I literally teared up reading that, because it was something my Link needed to hear but he also probably wasn’t open to hearing it at that moment. And I had no idea what Picori were…and now I’m sort of sad I didn’t think to go back and try and weave them in, but maybe I’ll do so as the edit goes on.

[anxiouspotatorants]

Hey I am trying to write a fanfic right now and I saw you had some Dave Rygalski headcanons before so... do you have any Dave headcanons about his home life and like him outside of the characters we see on the show?

Hey, I am so sorry for not replying sooner but how sweet of you to think of my headcanons! It really warms my heart to see people still actually interacting with those Dave posts. I’m guessing my input will be irrelevant for your fic by now but I still love this as a prompt so I figure it would be fun to still write and post a reply. Also if/when the fic is up and running please send me a link so I may devour it!!

I never thought all that much about Dave’s homelife. I assume he’s in a two-parent household, but unsure about siblings pets and general family dynamics. Now that I’m thinking about it Dave does seem like the type to have sisters, maybe two or three. He doesn’t strike me as someone with active drama going on with his family during the show (which would be a rare sight on Gilmore Girls), but then again that’s just my take. If I remember correctly he is canonically Jewish, but as a European gentile I don’t exactly find myself informed enough to make religious or too culturally specific headcanons for a Jewish US American boy in 2000s New England.

What I do headcanon is that Dave, Zack and possibly Brian all come from a neighbouring town instead of Stars Hollow. I know US small towns can be a lot bigger than what we define as small towns where I’m from, but Lane’s never met Dave before the band and Stars Hollow is a tiny town with presumably only one high school. They should’ve met by season 3 if Dave was a townie.

I also headcanon that he can’t wait to get out of small town life, which is why he applies to study in California. I don’t think he hates small towns (if he did he would spend a lot less time in ST and a lot more doing daytrips to NY) but he’s probably never truly felt at home and hopes to find that sense of belonging in a physically bigger place. Whether he’s right about that assessment or not is a whole ‘nother case though. I think he has a really tough first year in college getting used to a far noisier and busier city and not having that safe group to constantly fall back on like he would back in New England.

Another headcanon specifically about everyday homelife is that Dave is the technician of the family. Because of his audio-tech passion his parents and potential siblings just assume he’s great at all tech and electricity, forcing him to be the one who has to figure out how to fix a faulty satellite and learn the fuse box, and at some point just switch out all the lightbulbs in the house.

Other headcanons I have which have little to do with homelife include:

Dave’s more of a sci fi geek than fantasy geek (not that all fantasy fanboys know Tolkien inside out but in GG he would’ve picked up on Mrs Kim’s quote… also he’s big into sound tech and I headcanon him as eventually getting into tech period). The boy knows his Asimov, his Analog, his Star Trek, his battlestar Galactica and most definitely keeps tabs on the Syfy Channel.

Sci fi preference be damned that boy is doing something tabletop related and my money is on either Dungeons & Dragons (the guys is studious af and has Brian and Zach as friends) or Magic the Gathering (and yes he would spend all his lunch money and then his student loans on the damn cards)

He might have anxiety (not to do armchair psychology but there’s a vibe. The ones who know, know)

He could become a little tech broish while studying in California (I mean Silicon Valley is right there) but I think it would just be a phase and that he’s more obsessed with nerding out over how things work than spreading the Web3 gospel. And I still stand by my headcanon that he goes into sound engineering or sound related tech for work after college.

Tardiness be damned I hope this was a fun and somewhat insightful read, if only on how I tend to headcanon these folk!

[andro-dino]

ever since i got into sbr the bombermen now live in my brain..... maybe some domestic hcs for the bros and the dastardly bombers?? after the latter get redeemed im interested to know how you think they acclimated to being normal guys again

SBR IN MY INBOX FALLS TO MY KNEES AND SOBS I USED TO PRAY FOR TIMES LIKE THESE

There’s so many thoughts that have just been brewing around up there for ages. One that is like a suuuuuper old thought that’s been up there for years is the idea that Green hangs out with his sisters a lot and at some point gets really into painting nails and tries to get any and all of his siblings to let him paint their nails (ignore the fact that they don’t canonically have nails rn okay lets just pretend). It’s pretty hit and miss. I like to think that Yellow would be one of the most openly receptive to it but he cannot hold still for that long so his always end up really scuffed and messed up but he still loves them anyways. Also during this era I liked pairing up Green and Red as like, particularly close, and Red despite all his usual willpower is very weak to Greens manipulation and I just think it’s so silly. I drew a lil thing of him also ages ago beating up his training dummy while holding his hands out very carefully trying not to mess up his freshly painted nails and I just think that encompasses that whole thing.

SPEAKING OF RED AND DUO DYNAMICS I LIKE WITH HIM, him and black have a very stupid rivalry and constantly butting heads with each other is something that I hold very near and dear to my heart. It was a product of all the tiktok audios that were popular at the time that I had saved for hypothetical future cosplays I think (side note I need to get back to cosplaying (my magnet wig has been staring me down recently)). Their dynamic is very similar to dan and reiki to me if that makes sense. except they’re both better and worse. idk they’re just very dear to me <3 this one interaction in sbr2 genuinely made me like scream and cry and throw up it’s all 2018 axel ever could’ve wanted.

Another individual duo dynamic between the bros I am obsessed with is blue and pink bc I hc them as twins and they r so important to me. Blue in general I like to think of as really good at reading people (even if he doesn’t usually make that super obvious) and he tends to notice when Pink is overly stressed out and putting too much pressure on herself. When this happens, he’s usually able to bring her back down to earth by smacking her upside the head with a pillow and telling her to take a break. I like to think that if she’s stressing out abt like having to look after their other siblings or whatever, Blues like “I’ll handle it” and it’s very ominous and pink does not fully know what that entails but she does know that she really wants to take a nap so she lets him handle it. I think you give that man a monster energy or two and he could do anything.

I was also recently thinking abt the respective eldest four/youngest four quartets of the Bomberman bros and they just. mean so much to me. I like to think that they hold like their own respective council meeting to discuss the current state of affairs and stuff they’ve noticed about the other half. THEYRE JUST VERU IMPORTANT TO ME. with the older bros, again with blue being the most observant, I like to think that he tends to bring up stuff that none of the others have noticed yet and it always catches everyone off guard. The younger half are extremely silly with it. Like I don’t know how to describe it but they are the most functionally dysfunctional group imaginable and it’s both horribly chaotic but surprisingly organized. Yellow is the minutes man. he does keep track of everything in crayon. Half of the time he does get distracted drawing flowers and butterflies instead. there’s no one else they would trust with the job. Red thinks he’s the leader since he’s the oldest of the four. Aqua and Green have not broken the news to him that he is not. It’s okay he doesn’t need to know.

As for the dastardlys, I don’t have a lot of specific ideas for them as far as like, re becoming parts of society goes (though most of the ones I do have are mostly whiteplasma focused (and none of them are very coherent bc thinking about them together just makes me sob violently)), though I’ve honestly always liked the idea of them forming their own sort of ragtag sibling kind of bond. It’s very strange and weird and none of them are really fully used to it but they find comfort in each other methinks. Pretty serves as the main bridge between them and the main eight. I like to think that even after buggler n everything, she still dresses up and keeps Karaoke around as like, a sort of drag persona. It’s very important to me that for both groups, she is both very sisterly and mature but also incredibly silly to degrees unheard of. I’ve always liked the idea of her and magnet being especially close. They r. insane together. sometimes pretty is able to ground him and give him good advice and other times they bring out the worst (best) in each other and it ends about as well as you’d expect, but they r like besties in my head.

Plasma I’ve always thought of as just having a natural protective/big brother kind of instinct to him. It’s funny bc half of the dastardlies are older or roughly the same age as him but he still just like instinctually pulls out a lot of the big brother talk with them. One interaction I’ve thought abt is between him and golem where they’re kinda just hangin out and whatever and he brings up how golem and yellow are getting along and plasma’s like “it’s nice that you’re making friends I’m very happy for you” and golem (in his own vocabulary obviously) is like “yk you don’t have to talk to me like I’m a child, I am like thousands of years older than you” and plasmas like “right my b force of habit.” (I do think plasma is still like mentally older than golem iykwim but yk, golems not like green little either). It’s funny I actually used to not really like/care about plasma that much (I honestly think it was just his English voice acting like it really just does not do it for me dawg) but now I love him so dearly. His and white’s dynamic is especially important to me (if that wasn’t already clear) and like. augh. aughhh <333 they’re so incredibly similar in so many ways and just the thought of them consistently being together and training and hanging out with each other and bringing out the best in each other is so important to me. They keep up their friendly rivalry while helping each other out, white especially helping plasma and the others get reacclimated to everything and supporting them along the way (and maybe he and plasma smooch a little too idk the world is a beautiful place). I think White also gets along with Golem pretty well. mostly just bc white supervises golem and yellows hangouts/dates for a while just to make sure yellow is really fine without him keeping his eye on him all the time and in the process, grows really fond of golem.

I think as far as the other dastardlies and the bros go, I also like red and magnet together a lot just like generally. they r so incredibly silly I just think they should not be separated (even though only bad things happen when they’re together /silly). I also obviously am obsessed with phantom and blue together. extremely over dramatic guy who still thinks they have an intense rivalry x guy who goes “lol” and does not feed into it at all is the best ever in the world. Also, just bc of that one image from the sbr credits, him and black together I think would be great. They both have such a flair for the dramatics that I think it’d work. You’d think they’d be a mess just with how different their usual personalities tend to be but I think it cancels out and both of them think they just kinda get each other (they do not)(they don’t need to know that they’re happy anyways).

[hologramcowboy]

https://at.tumblr.com/hologramcowboy/httpstwittercomditchlilytigerstatus162733189/wnyptttbl66d

I saw this photographer complaining about your use of the picture, too. Reading the comments was just …

Instead of calling someone a creepy conspiracy theorist because they interpret a photo (and real life comments and actions) differently than themselves, maybe they should try looking at things from another angel. This obsession with seeing Jensen as perfect and constantly having the time of his life is ridiculous and points to a huge bias. I’ll be honest, the particular picture in question, where Jensen looks in pain, could be him "living the music" but to me, he does not look like he’s just grooving. Also, there is video of the concert, so it’s not like people’s opinions are only based on photos.

The last time Jensen performed at a con, he was yelling, not singing, and yet they praise his amazing performance. Jensen has a lovely voice when he isn’t straining it, and is a good performer (usually), but that doesn’t actually mean he is an amazing, Uber talented singer. He was very good as Dean, but to say he never had over the top moments or ones that didn’t quite connect, is just not true. Saying he’s liberal and a huge ally is a huge stretch seeing as he is very closed mouthed on politics in general (I don’t actually blame him there, as if I were famous I’d want to appeal to the widest audience and would stick to discussing my art). Saying he likes Destiel now because he learned the hard way that criticizing the stupid ship gets him outright hate and death threats, is embracing willful ignorance. Jensen and Danneel can only be viewed as couples goals, despite the fact that their body language screens anything but affection. Jared is the bad guy because he cracked the illusion that Jensen is a perfect friend, professional and gentleman, and had a "tantrum" on Twitter because he didn’t let Jebsen off the hook or bail him out, for once, for his shitty actions around the prequel. Jensen supports Ukrainian and really cares about the issue, despite the fact that he starred in a commercial promoting Atomic Heart. Anyway, my point is the man is not perfect, no one is, but as soon as they see any criticism, they call the person delivering it crazy, a hater, or a miserable person who is just projecting.

I love my family, but that doesn’t mean I think it or each family member (myself included) is without flaws.

I started watching Supernatural as a Dean and Jensen fan. I was crazy about Dean until later seasons when he just got angrier and more hypocritical. At first, I admired Ackles for his love for Jared and humility, but his behavior (his inconsistency at cons, and how he talked about Jared lovingly one minute, then criticizing him at JIB or joking at his expense when he’s not there, while calling him brother in the next breath) would not allow me to keep blindly sighing over him. Not to mention, I noticed how his stories were always humble (or not so humble) brags. He isn’t consistent and changes for the crowd he’s in.

I’m sorry, but if you are the one who only sees someone as perfect and can’t acknowledge any flaws to the point that you need to attack anyone who dares mention one, then you are the one without a balanced view. Our observation are subjective, obviously, and you don’t have to agree with how someone elde interprets something, but to instantly write them off as just a hater or lying (unless it’s a provable lie, or delusion with no proof like hellers and cockles shippers) maybe take a look at your own objectivity and need to go to battle for someone you don’t actually know.

It saddens me that Jensen has such judgemental, toxic fans that only care about fetishiz*ing him. Then I remember there are also fans like you, who are able to see him as a real and complex person. Thank you for this beautiful post! 💕💕💕

I think the reason why they immediately resort to bullying and gaslighting is because they know they stand no chance of making eloquent, balanced arguments because they lack objectivity. I mean all they do is project, not only on others but on Jensen especially, he needs to be the fantasy they created and is not allowed to stray from that perfect image. I cannot imagine how painful that must be to him. No human is perfect and we all just want to be loved for who we are, not for some false image others build in their attempt to exploit our beauty, like in his case.

[nocturnalazure]

Today is World Autism Awareness Day. Incidentally, two days ago, the therapist whom I’ve been seeing since December last year has strongly implied that he was leaning towards an autism diagnosis.

I’ve had that questioning for 3 years now. Hearing it from the mouth of someone who is specialized in such matters was... liberating. For 3 years, I’ve been reading and gathering information about autism, trying to see why I related so much to autistic people’s statements but all the while feeling like a self-diagnosed impostor. I needed to be sure. So I went and tried to find a therapist whose diagnosis I could trust. It wasn’t easy. Besides the fact that I felt like a fraud who had no right to seek out a diagnosis, the situation for autistic adults in my country is dreadful. There is only ONE center for autism in my language. And they have recently decided to focus on children only. Adults are just left to their own devices, trying to find a therapist that may or may not be able to help. There is this one therapist who dissociated himself from above-mentioned center and developed his own practice. It’s very far from my home, but I went anyway because if that guy says I’m not autistic, I’ll believe him.

And now, one interview ahead of the final one, he’s telling me that he’s leaning towards an autism diagnosis. Maybe he’s getting ahead of himself but I mean, he wouldn’t say that now if he were to take it back later, right?...

It’s not that I want a label. I generally don’t like labels, they’re limiting and narrow. But I do want the authorization to just FEEL. That it’s okay to feel how I feel. That I don’t constantly have to see myself as a work-in-progress. That there are some things that will always be difficult but at least I will know why.

Maybe I can finally understand why I’m so obsessed with my silly little story when everyone seems to see it as just a hobby. 

Of course, if I had known earlier, in my childhood or even in my teens, so many tears, so much guilt and self-hate could have been avoided. I don’t think a diagnosis could’ve been possible at the time, not in my country and not in those days. A diagnosis, even now, would help me finally have words to comfort that neglected inner child. I dare not fully hope yet, but at last I feel like I have the right to think myself as being autistic.

[hxhhasmysoul]

Is Jujutsu Kaisen feminism for 15yo boys?

The short answer is yes, so you can skip the rest of this ridiculously long post.

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Disclaimers:

If you haven’t read the manga up until chapter 204 you’ll see spoilers here, also you probably won’t know what/who I’m talking about at times.

I have adhd, this is rambly af, this post is actually for me to organise my thoughts and not a hot take I want to convince others to buy into. but anyone is welcome to read if they have the patience.

They/them pronouns for Akutami because if the cursed cat isn’t explicitly assigning a gender to themself, hell if I will. 

They/them pronouns for Kenny. 

Now let’s watch this post age like dairy. I so hope it won’t, Gege please don’t disappoint me.

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Let’s go. 

There are a few things that make me obsessed with juju. 

1. The fact that its plot and story structure are my wet dream - all these factions and individuals who are doing their own thing. All of these plots intertwining and coming together.

2. My sweet child Yuuji. *coughs* I mean, juju’s focus on characters. I’m very normal about Yuuji, I fucking swear. 

3. The art, it’s simply beautiful but I also have thoughts.

4. The bs power system, I live for that stuff.

5. It’s aggressively progressive. 

So lets focus on point 5.

Is juju as politically left as I am? Fuck no, not even close. There are things I wish it was braver on, like for instance the queerness. Fuck, braver on its leftism and feminism too. Is it very current and openly and aggressively progressive? Very much so.

If we look at the biggest antagonists of juju we get:

1. Toxic masculinity personified. A hyper-individualist. A 1000yo manosphere youtuber. A guy who thinks that strength should dictate hierarchy. A man who thinks he can hurt whomever he wants for his own pleasure and amusement because everyone is beneath him. A man who doesn’t care for anyone else but himself. A mass murderer and nihilist. 

2. A 1000yo person of unknown gender who presents most often as a man. An eugenicist. Someone entitled to women’s bodies and their reproductive rights. Someone who thinks their own children are only as valuable as they fulfil their ambitions. Someone who thinks they can hurt anyone because their goals are superior, because people are instrumental to them. And also a fucking classist piece of shit. (honestly idk why half of the fandom reacted surprised to the hyper capitalist moment in the recent chapters, as if in their first scene in the entire manga they didn’t say: this is a nuisance but at least it’s the poors that are being burnt to death before my eyes. - Gege didn’t need to add this line there, it’s not relevant to the conversation that is happening then but the line is there anyway.)

3. Two awfully sexist clans which have huge superiority complexes and are built on bloodlines and traditions and breeding for power. 

4. A bunch of mostly faceless old people who pull the strings from the shadows and do everything in the name of the status quo, constantly using tradition as an excuse. Who are afraid of the new, of the changes in society of new technologies. They won’t even accept them when they create powerful sorcerers. 

5. A male presenting personification of human hate and fear of one another. Who again, feels entitled to the bodies of others and doesn’t respect the bodily autonomy of others. Who’s a destructive and cruel nihilist. 

6. A young man who got radicalised into fascism because he was faced with the horrors of the status quo, of toxic tradition and backwater thinking and drew the wrong conclusions as to how to fix it.

On the other side we get kids and tired and/or silly millennials. And isn’t that just like real life, where the inaction and misdeeds of the previous generations blows up in the faces of today’s teens.

1. Teenagers. Teenagers who either don’t have family connections and come from lower classes. Or outcasts from their rich and powerful families. Children betrayed by traditions and the status quo. Children used or targeted by old people, ostracised, disrespected and violated. Children who have to suffer and die because the old people are only concentrating on maintaining the status quo. 

2. Gojou, this ex edgy teen who saw his bf (I won’t police how you read that) get redpilled and radicalised into fascism. It was all fun and games, stanning the joker and tyler durden until Getou decided to seriously go full on fasc with it and Gojou was like: man for real? I thought we were memeing here. So then Gojou turned into one of those “this is how I got off the far right pipeline” videos. Gojou is actually this rich privileged boy but he’s trying, he really is taking his best shot at progressivism. (sealed)

3. A feminist who’s calling out and fighting worthless old farts who feel entitled to women’s bodies. And who wants to change the world to make life better for everyone. 

4. A socially conscious man disillusioned with capitalism who takes a lot of responsibility for other people. (deceased)

5. A victim of eugenics who tries to be a good older brother to his brothers, also victims of eugenics. (the only one here who’s actually over 30)

6. Some other, less important, decent people in their twenties.

There are few people over 30 in juju that deserve any respect.

1. Headmaster Yaga, single dad. Does felting as a hobby. (deceased)

2. Yoshino Nagi, good single mum. (deceased)

3. Iori Utahime, a woman trying her best to do right by the teens despite having to work with Gojou.

4. Higuruma Hiromi, an idealist, mentally broken by the realities of the criminal justice system. Hobby: 5 min therapy sessions. 

____________________

Juju isn’t in any way shy about the fact that we should not respect elders when they fucking destroy everything. It’s established very early on that regressive traditionalists suck. That passive adults suck. That the status quo sux. That it should be the duty of adults to protect the children and not to make the world worse for everyone. That educating the youth and instilling different values in them is what can save us all, if we’re not beyond saving. That we need social change. We even get teen Noritoshi’s story, a cautionary tale about respectability, about trying to satisfy the requirements of the system to protect your own and how that is doomed to fail. And my leftist soul resonates with all that. 

____________________

So in this clear leftist propaganda there is also feminism.

And Gege does their best feminism when they aren’t trying, especially when they aren’t trying to verbalise it. My suspicion is that with this much internalised leftism Gege has internalised a lot of feminism but at a  conscious level the fact that Gege was most likely socialised male takes its toll. 

What I mean by that is that Nobara’s girlboss rant at Momo is weak. But I will give it a pass because Nobara is 16 and nothing about her screams discourse junkie so you know, it fits her character. Because even at it its least inspired the feminism in juju deserves a passing grade. Gege is trying.

There’s also the sad truth of shounen that women just aren’t meant to be prioritised in it, that it’s not the genre expectation. The fact that Maki gets so much focus and page time, that she has her own fucking arc, it’s already a lot for shounen. The fact that she’s built and now also permanently disfigured and the dudebros and weebs still worship the ground she walks on is a fucking achievement in itself. Proof that if you write a female character well you can take away her standard beauty and not tank her popularity. It’d be still much harder to make her not typically pretty from the start and achieve this but culture changes one step at a time. I wish we were there but we aren’t so I’m going to appreciate what I can get.

Maki is both verbalised and implicit feminism. Verbalised because she fucking slaughters a whole fucking clan of misogynists. It’s not subtle. Implicit because of her appearance and personality. She’s written like a male character but not meaning that she’s masculine or that she could be replaced in the narrative by a man. No, she has a narrative arc of her own, she’s written with agency and with no regard for making her personality be pleasing or oriented towards others. And her story is specifically a story of a woman in the world of jujutsu. 

____________________

Generally, in most cases, if you try to apply the feminist lens to a shounen manga you’ll just make yourself sad. You can do it for some shounen characters or plotlines and get something nice but you need to be very careful not to try to generalise that onto the whole work. My enjoyment of a lot of titles is dependant on my very conscious choice to rein in my feminism and leftism. 

With juju, though, with juju you’re safe. You can do it. You can go for it. It’s not going to be the most radical and mind-blowing experience ever but it’s possible.

Because the female characters aren’t where the most of the feminism is. They can’t be, it’s a shounen and they don’t get enough pagetime. The verbalised feminism is very clear in how the villains are framed, how much misogyny you can find among the evil characters. The implicit feminism, the better one, is very strong in the young male characters. 

Unlike in a lot of hyper violent media targeted at boys, in juju you never have these lines about what a man should be. Or what it means to be a man, especially a true man. What is most important is that nothing like that is ever said to a teenage boy. On the side we’re meant to root for we get a lot of different men and none of them are labelled as “true”. They are there for readers to identify with, to model behaviour after. And because no teen in the manga has his masculinity questioned then no reader will have to question his. Juju won’t contribute to such insecurity for anyone, an insecurity that can turn violent irl. 

____________________

Girls in juju are people.

What’s more, all the teen guys in juju have extremely normal relationships with the girls around them. They just interact with them without any exaggerated awkwardness or this “girls are strange, we can’t bond with them unless we want to date them”. Among the teens, the new generation, the hope for the future, there’s no separation built between men and women. Not through words and not through actions.  

The nonsexual, organic friendship, built on idiot to idiot communication, Yuuji and Nobara have, gives me life. And it happens despite Yuuji not understanding Nobara at first. Because it doesn’t matter that she’s different from him, they don’t dwell on it, they don’t try to make the differences into a big thing, into a rift. There’s no big arc of them working out their differences because these differences aren’t artificially blown up to underline some core differences between men and women. They can fail to understand each other totally but they can still be friends, they can still vibe with one another, care for one another. Femininity and masculinity don’t need to be some issues to deal with while forming a friendship between a guy and a girl. 

It’s fascinating how Yuuji fighting together with Megumi isn’t half as exciting and organic as when he fights together with Nobara. Their strengths and powers compliment each other so well. I’m actually angry that Gege didn’t let them fight Mahito together longer. Even if they would’ve done to Nobara the same thing they did. Why not let them be epic together again? (I’m also super angry at what they did to Nobara, she better come back, fucking hell)

And it’s a pattern too. Despite Yuuji being very much socialised as a guy in a very patriarchal and sexist society, so much so that he has a type at 15 and hangs bikini posters on his walls, he hasn't turned girls into aliens in his mind. They are still just people in his head. When Yuuji interacts with a real woman the male socialisation isn’t deeply rooted enough to hinder him. It’s never an issue.

____________________

Toudou

Toudou tries to do this very masculine bonding thing with Yuuji and Yuuji is super confused by it. Because Yuuji’s relationships aren’t built on the concept of masculinity. And I mean Yuuji bonds with Toudou eventually because it’s Yuuji but we are shown the struggle when with Nobara or Megumi or Junpei it just happens. Also Yuuji is the only one who bonds with Toudou but that’s because Yuuji is compassion. 

Toudou is generally disliked and his dumb male posturing contributes to that. Also in the Japanese context it’s very clear that Toudou is an unserious person and that’s how he’s meant to be perceived. If you have any doubt about that, the juju fanbook is there for you where Gege is very clear about that. Basically the idol thing is there to paint Toudou as immature. The whole conversation Megumi has with Toudou is a very clear lesson for teen boys. Be like Megumi and girls will like you, if you are a Toudou you’re a joke. You can be built and powerful and clever and still be a joke and girls won’t like you.

I like Toudou a lot btw, I actually think it’s funny that an 18yo boy thinks he reached some deeper truth about people because he knows what a fetish or kink is and he’s tactless enough to ask openly about it. It’s fucking hilarious but also some teen boys just be like that unironically. But I also like him because of how his character is framed and how he functions in the story. Because Toudou gives another important lesson to teen boys. A lesson about rejection. In the story he makes up in his head we see him confessing his feelings to Takada and she turns him down. And he just takes it. This is such an important message. In Japan stalking is a huge problem, stalkers murdering their victims is a problem. Men who feel entitled to women in such a violent way. And here we have a guy who gets rejected and takes the L with grace. And all he wants is for his best friend to console him. 

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I’m very normal about Yuuji.

So the balls on Gege to name their typically shounen protag “calm compassion”, or maybe “endless humanity”, “endless compassion”, “quiet humanity”, all of the above? More?

Gojou says that to be a sorcerer one needs to be crazy. And he says that Yuuji has a few screws loose from the start. The thing is that yes, Yuuji is odd but not in the way the rest of the sorcerers are. So far in the manga Yuuji has never entered the state of mind that to my understanding Gojou is thinking about when he talks about being crazy. What I think Gojou means is this state of unhinged glee during the fight. And the ability to compartmentalise the fights and the kills. 

So far in his fights Yuuji has been neutral, proud of himself when he was doing well, hyper focused, frustrated, desperate, depressed and filled with all-consuming rage. Never filled with unhinged glee. And he hasn’t compartmentalised any fight, any failure or any kill, not one, they all seep into a huge ball of guilt inside him. And it’s his kills and Sukuna’s together. Yuuji’s compassion is actively destroying him from the inside. Yuuji can’t disconnect from his humanity and that’s a basic job requirement for a sorcerer. 

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Yuuji constantly shows how much emotional intelligence he has. When he defuses the situation with Junpei at the school. When Megumi finds out about Tsumiki going under the bridge. When he’s with Chousou. When he puts his depression on hold to help Megumi during the culling game. He shows understanding, emotional support, physical contact and prioritises the emotions of others over his own. 

Compassion, empathy, responsiveness towards others, willingness to adjust and accommodate aren’t stereotypically masculine traits. No, they are culturally feminine in many places around the world, including Japan. 

Yuuji is also passive and reactive despite being stronger than normal people, and that too is culturally more feminine than masculine. Yuuji doesn’t really have much of the shounen protag drive. It can be lit in him in the form of resilience or determination or rage but it’s not self-sustaining, reactive not proactive

And speaking of Japan and East Asia, what Yuuji is displaying can’t be written off as collectivism either. Because these reactions are personal, they aren’t towards the society at large. They aren’t giri aka a specifically culturally Japanese sense of duty, or any other of several similar concepts. There is no sense of duty or obligation in what Yuuji does, not on a group level. Yuuji says that he wouldn't be able to forgive himself if people got hurt because he didn’t try to get rid of Sukuna. For him it’s not because it’s the moral thing to do, or the right thing to do but because he’s concerned about the suffering of those people on this very empathetic level. As Nanami says: he genuinely gets upset on behalf of others. 

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That might be why Yuuji isn’t really that popular as a character. Maybe that’s why people prefer Megumi who’s more typically masculine, stoic, distant, intellectual but also proactive and not reactive in his violence and values.

A lot of people consider Yuuji weak. They complain about how much he loses and how in most of his fights he gets carried by other characters, how they are actually the winning factor and not him. 

I actually like that a lot. I think it makes the story interesting, it makes Yuuji interesting that he’s at his best when he’s not alone, that he’s actually doing best when he’s support. That his strength is in how he compliments others. I honestly don’t want him to change into a more typical shounen protagonist. Thematically the way his fights go suits him perfectly because humans are a social species, we thrive on cooperation. And if Yuuji is boundless humanity he shouldn’t stand alone. 

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I’m very normal about Yuuji so it turned into a post about him. I swear this wasn’t the plan. The plan was to write about leftist propaganda. The other guys in juju are actually really cool too. Like Megumi, him constantly trying to figure out his values and reconcile what’s happening around him with them is great. Yuuta with his need to belong and justify himself is amazing. Chousou the family oriented sap (please survive baby). Hakari who said fuck you to the conservatives even though he wasn’t so well positioned as Gojou and it resulted in him getting ostracised. I’m not going to shout out everyone or go deeper into these characters but I really like how there isn’t one type of masculinity in juju. 

I don’t know how much these are conscious choices by Gege, or how much it’s just their internalised leftism seeping through. But it’s nice. It feels good to read. And I hope that because the messaging isn’t always as didactic as with the Zen’in or the Kamo clans, that it’ll go down well and actually be this tiny crumb of feminism in the minds of 15yo boys who read it. And with how hype juju is atm, I hope that overt leftism will strengthen in the pop cultural mainstream directed at boys. And with it feminism.  

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Could juju be better?

Of course, there’s no perfect work of art. No author is perfect and perfectly enlightened. No work is ever going to 100% match with anyone’s politics, sensibilities or expectations. etc etc. But I really think juju already does a lot. The fact that it’s open to a feminist reading is a lot. And I appreciate it for it.

I really wish juju was better on the queer stuff but I’m wary of assigning blame here. Idk if it’s Gege who misunderstands stuff and is uninformed and crude. Or is it because they write a shounen series for Shounen Jump a corporation which is averse to risk. 

I really wish Kirara had a canon gender and identity. I wish Gege made an official call on Kenny’s gender as they did with Tengen. I wish Gege also clearly stated that Kenny is Yuuji’s mum because the fandom cishets are really twisting themselves into pretzels trying to come up with theories that the mum is actually some woman controlled by Kenny and not Kenny. I wish Gege made NobaMaki canon instead of drawing fanart of the ship and pretending it’s not what it looks like. And even though ItaFushi leaves me mostly cold I wish Megumi’s answer proved to be what all the itafushis headcanon it to be, even if it was to prove to be one sided. I wish I wish I wish.

[virgils-muse]

Ranking All The Greco-Roman Retellings I’ve Read! For Fun! Please Don’t Kill Me For Not Putting TSOA At #1!!! With Little To No Explanation.

1.) A Thousand Ships - Natalie Haynes

This is literally one of my fav books ever all time. The fact that we get retellings from so many of the women’s perspectives in one book, and not just the captive women, but the goddesses, AND EVEN THE MUSE TOO? Superb. I’m obsessed. I’ve read it three times over, which says a lot because I’ve only ever chosen to reread one other book. My fav chapters are the Calliope chapters, the Thetis chapter (so upset there was only one), the Cassandra chapters, and the Hekabe chapters!

2.) Stone Blind - Natalie Haynes & Silence Of The Girls - Pat Barker

I’m rereading Silence Of The Girls as I type this actually. It’s couldn’t choose between the two.. they were both so incredible. Similar to A Thousand Ships, Stone Blind takes on MANY different perspectives, including Medusa ofc. My fav was the Unnamed Neried chapter, that and the Panopeia chapters. And Silence Of The Girls.. oh my gods it such a guy wrenching retelling from Briseis’s perspective, and what day to day life must’ve been like on the camp. Also? Actually Accurate Patrochilles, finally.

3.) Wake, Siren - Nina MacLaughlin

First off, Roman Mythos retelling? Already in love. It’s just.. so gut wrenching. Every chapter makes you wanna scream. In the best way possible. I just,, I can’t put it into words how this books made me feel. The Thetis chapter hit me the hardest, obvi. But the Arachne chapter? Oh my gods I wanted to cry.

4.) Circe - Madeleine Miller

It was good. It was actually quite good, very good, even. But where it wasn’t good, it was.. questionable. Can we as a society stop trying to constantly villainize all the deities? Like, and before you say “biased perspective!!! Unreliable narrator!!” Which, yes, I love narrators that have a thing against the deities and emphasize the worst of what they’ve done, but there are certain parts in there where I’m like.. hello? Specifically when Hermes was saying that the Gods want mortals to be miserable bc a miserable mortal will give you more offerings then a happy one,,,, which like???? Hello??? When was that EVER the case ever?? I liked the ending.

5.) The Song Of Achilles - Madeleine Miller

Yeah I have a vendetta against this book. If you wanna read it, go for it, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, read the Iliad first. And maybe Silence of The Girls first too. Were Patroclus and Achilles in love? And probably kissing it sloppy style? Yeah. BUT WE CAN’T ERASE THE FACT THAT THEY WERE SLEEPING WITH WAR CAPTIVE WOMEN. And also, to not only ignore that, but then make it seem like they were treating Briseis well???? When she was literally A WAR CAPTIVE??? Also, I will never, EVER, forgive this book for demonizing Thetis. They made her seem like some homophobic mom as if she didn’t do EVERYTHING FOR HER SON. Idk. I also hate that this book bought on a whole new generation of people who think Patroclus was Achilles gay little twink boy. Like.. are we forgetting they were literally out committing war crimes probably.

Anyways that’s my list rn!!!! I wanna read Jennifer Saint’s books next.

[ohworm-writes]

I posted 380 times in 2022

205 posts created (54%)

175 posts reblogged (46%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@makesuretoloveyourself

@dreamwvrld

@fangirlingcentral

@sardonic-the-writer

@ohworm-writes

I tagged 238 of my posts in 2022

Only 37% of my posts had no tags

#worm.txt - 145 posts

#worm.answ - 103 posts

#worm.rbs - 31 posts

#anon.com/🐍 - 23 posts

#1000 follower event - 14 posts

#wilcza.com/my-dear - 13 posts

#one year event - 13 posts

#1 year event - 13 posts

#navigation - 12 posts

#navi - 12 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#if you have a different idea for the personalized little tag i do then you can dm it to me so i can have that unique tag all set for you :)

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Just saw the movie about- what, 30 minutes ago? Oh. My. Gods. Above. This is the only thing I will be talking about for the next 3 weeks.

I’m already in the middle of planning a fic (read: I’m insane). HOWEVER, this being said, the fic will be posted within the next few days.

Someone has to help feed this fandom as it grows. ;-) See you soon, and remember! Don’t talk to strangers…

178 notes - Posted June 25, 2022

#4

See the full post

295 notes - Posted April 25, 2022

#3

▬ LOVERS ROCK PT. 1 ▬

Pairing: Jschlatt x Gn!Reader

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: Minimal cursing

Synopsis: Fall is in full swing in you and your boyfriend’s shared home. So, that means some baking is in order, yes?

Word Count: 1.3k

Author’s Note: Miss me? Here’s a little something to give you a taste. I’m back.

See the full post

419 notes - Posted November 1, 2022

#2

This whole situation is almost ironic to me. See, a few days ago I was sitting in my room and the thought of Techno came to mind. It was random, I’ll be honest, as I haven’t thought about him since April. But anyways, I wondered, you know, “How long has it been since he uploaded?” “I wonder where he is/ what’s he doing now”.

But, most importantly: “I hope he’s okay.”

I was at a party yesterday when I got the news. We were watching some movie and I wasn’t at all paying attention to it, so I went to TikTok to pass the time. And then I saw it. Someone uploaded a video saying something along the lines of “I hope this isn’t real”.

So, I checked what happened, and there it was.

My friend came over to talk and checked his phone and then he saw it and we were just speechless. I couldn’t process it until the car ride back, where I started tearing up and then fully sobbing when I got home.

I started rewatching videos as I cried myself to sleep, and then I woke up this morning and it started all over again. And while it hasn’t stopped, I have to continue to remind myself to be strong because this goofball was my inspiration! So much of myself is taken from him and I constantly have to remind myself that “It’ll be fineeee.”

I’m not okay, but really nobody else within this fandom is right now, I know that. But we have to be strong, as much time as it’ll take.

Cancer dies with the person it takes, so even here he didn’t lose: a draw, if you will. We’ll learn to be okay, however long it’ll take. And it’ll take a lot of time, believe me, but we’ll be okay.

Everything is within his calculations.

683 notes - Posted July 1, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I need more people to write for The Black Phone like- I’m at the point where if nobody will do it in the next 5 seconds, I will.

There are 2 fics over the course of any website I can find for it, and I swear to the gods above I KNOW the movies doesn’t come out for another few weeks but PLEASE!

Like- we can all agree that he’s hot, right? It’s not just a small group of people, right?

You guys get it, right?

Edit: Let’s acknowledge this character was based off of John Wayne Gacy and it has been stated in interviews that this character would be a pedophile. I can’t tell you who you can’t and can simp or obsess over, but I’d like anyone reading this to take in these facts. This post was made before the film debuted and before I knew who this character was based off of, and in no way do I support or condone it. I’ve since left this fandom of sorts, and while I do find Ethan Hawke attractive, I can no longer say the same for this character.

843 notes - Posted June 13, 2022

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