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imaginesmai · 4 years

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Peter Parker - Fluff Alphabet

This was requested by so, so many people I lost count. After the last Tom Holland Fluff alphabet, you all wanted one about Peter, so here it is! I hope you like it, it’s been quite hard to do.

Affection (PDA, how they are in private…)

Peter isn’t too shy, neither a fan of PDA. At the beginning, he’s hesitant in what boundaries you have and what do you feel comfortable with, so he would let you start any kind of physical contact like taking hands or hugging in public.

He loves brushing his fingers against yours, not really touching but playing this game of who will give up first and take the others hand. If you’re on a date or just walking around, sometimes he just grabs it to pull you closer to him or farther from the driveway, and keeps them that way. He isn’t a huge fan of wrapping his arm around your shoulders, mainly because he isn’t that tall and it’s uncomfortable. Your waist feels too possessive to him, so he is happy with taking your hand.

In private, Peter has conflicted feelings. While in public he always enjoys having you around, because it gives him a sense of comfort, sometimes in private he needs his own space. Maybe that day you’re wearing too much perfume, or your sweater is too itchy on the outside. His senses dial up to eleven some days, and you know to give him his space.

You sit each other on one side of the bed, Peter with his earphones and his eyes closed. You entertain yourself with homework or some show until Peter feels better, trying to do as little noise as you can. Then, when he feels good enough, he’ll crawl closer until laying his head on your lap and burying his face on your stomach, hugging you close. You’ll run your fingers through his hair and, usually, he falls asleep for a while.

Baby (do they want a family?)

On the contrary of popular belief, Peter is mostly against having a family. He knows being Spiderman is hard, and from the relationship he had created with Tony knows that Pepper is constantly in danger.

The part that he hates the most about himself is the one he loves too; being Spiderman. If by any chance it puts you in danger, he will beat himself at night because of it, and will even try to break up with you for your own good.

So, when kids are on the table, he thinks he has his answer pretty clear. He loves you more than anything though, and if you ever bring up the conversation, he would present his hesitation about children as just an opinion, not something definitive. Peter is all about getting settled with you, and he’s not sure if once he has his life sorted out things won’t look different, so as a definitive answer, Peter isn’t sure about kids.

But family is not only about kids, right? Peter Parker likes to imagine himself with you for the long run, in a small but cozy apartment with maybe a cat and a big window to watch sunset together. When he talks about it with you, his eyes light up and his hands move around to motion his excitement.

He guesses he would like any kind of family, as long as you’re with him.

Cuddles (how and when)

Peter is really shy at the beginning, because he’s not sure you want to cuddle as much as he does. He’s kind of touch starved, and not by any means is May’s fault. She hugs him as much as he can – but she works a lot and for a long time, so sometimes he gets lonely and needs physical contact.

You notice how much he loves cuddles when he’s hugging you and rubs his nose in the crook of your neck, wrapping his arms around you for a long time. Or when he doesn’t hesitate to tangle around you when you’re standing close. Then, one day you’re making homework together and he’s so sleepy that he can barely hold his own head up. You’re both sitting on your bed, your back to the wall and him in front of you. When you notice his eyes dropping, you propose laying for a bit. And Peter doesn’t have self-control when he’s tired, so he just lays his head on your chest and snuggle you.

Since then, cuddles is a must do. Lazy make out sessions are his favourite part of you, when you’re just laying on him, lips locked together, and his arms around your waist. His favourite position is when he’s tired from patrolling or life in general and he lays on top with you, face hidden on your neck and one of his legs trapping yours.

Dates (what are dates with him like?)

Dates with Peter aren’t ‘couple dates’, as much as you try. He wants to make it romantic for you, to take you to fancy restaurants or strolls around the parks. But for such a smart boy, he’s sure clueless when it comes to date planning. It’s up to you to plan some cute, romantic dates, because the one he chooses are the chaotic.

One time, he took you to Central Park to eat ice cream, watch people fall with their skateboards and feed the ducks. He chose his cleanest white shirt and some trousers, wanting to impress you but also be comfortable. It went well, for the most part – until one of the ducks got too sassy with him and he decided to chase him away, which only got another ten ducks chasing him around the park. His shirt got ripped from one sleeve and one of the ducks actually rammed its beak on his forehead, which ended in you sitting with him in the hospital waiting room as May laughed from afar.

That’s why he lets you do all the planning, and won’t complain with anything. He loves to try new things – like couple workshop or a new sport. As long as you’re together and there aren’t any ducks around, he’s happy.

Entertainment (how do you spend your free time)

Memes.

There is no other way to describe how you spend your free time, because that’s the only thing you do. Besides doing what any teenager does – homework, endless time of phone and hanging around with his friends – Peter and you spend a lot of time watching shows and films that are interesting for, as Tony would have said, the pop culture.

Peter likes to listen to music while playing board games, and that turned out to be a game of your own. You put a random track on your phone and, just saying the decade of the song and letting him hear the first seconds, he has to guess. You’ll try to beat each other records all the time.

You’re used to doing your homework together. Actually, you have a schedule for it. After leaving high-school, you go to one of your apartments to do your homework or just make out in bed lazily while forgetting about last day assignments. If you’re hooked up to some show, you’ll see a few chapters and then, he’ll walk you home or walk around your apartment for a while, to clear your heads.

It’s not hard to entertain yourselves because Peter is always trying his best to make you happy.

Feelings (when did they know they loved you?) + Love (who says it first, how many times) + Romantic (little details or non-verbal ways of saying I love you)

Peter being Peter, he probably knew from the first moment he met you. He’s a boy who feels too much and too quickly, so he was sure he was in love with him as soon as the first word left your mouth. That didn’t mean he said it out loud, but he could always show you.

It started by simple things, like he waiting for you at the end of the day to walk you to your house, then walking back to his. His apartment was on the other side of Queens, but still he refused to let you walk alone and not hear of how your day had been. On your way, he makes sure you walk on the farther spot from the driveway and lets you talk about whatever you want to.

Peter is not the type of boyfriend who gets mad easily, but as everyone else, there are sometimes where misunderstanding happens and you argue. His only real rule about your relationship is that he won’t go to sleep until you’ve solved everything, even if it means walking to your apartment when you argue at night. He doesn’t have any problems apologising, so usually your arguments aren’t long.

Another little thing he does is to give you flowers every now and then. May raised no granted-idiot, so he’s always making sure you feel appreciated. Once in a month, on Ben’s anniversary, he’ll pick a rose from the flower shop and give it to you or leave it in your locket, with a cute note or just a heart.

So, when did Peter know he loved you? He hasn’t always been good with admitting things, but from the moment he looked into your eyes, he knew he had fallen for you.

Gentle (kind or rough)

So this is about to get a bit sexual, just a fair warning.

Peter Parker is the definition of kind and gentle, always making sure he’s holding back with you and treating you as if you were made of gold. He wouldn’t, by any means, try anything rough with you in bed, because he isn’t sure how good he can measure himself in bed.

But

He might not want to try it with you, but with him it’s a different story. It’s hard for him to say it out loud at first, because he has always heard that men are supposed to be the dominant ones and take control in bed. Besides, he’s a superhero; so he thought it would just be wrong to be a sub, because that’s what society tells him.

You learn it one day when you’re making out in the couch and, by pure chance, you grab the back of his hair – which you had been talking about before that was a bit too long – and pull it so that he get his face out of your neck and you can meet his lips again. The sound that leaves Peter’s lips shouldn’t be qualified as human, more like divine.

Since then, Peter is more open about it with you. He likes when you’re kind of rough with him, like straddling his hips and pinning his hands, or grabbing his hair when he’s eating you out. He feels like it’s from having so many responsibilities all the time; Spiderman, the avengers, the patrolling and living with just his aunt. That, sometimes, it’s fine to let someone carry the weight of the things.

But truth is Peter Parker is totally a sub. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

Holidays (favourite place)

Peter doesn’t have much money to go on expensive holidays, but he’s a simple guy when it comes to destinations. To him, wherever you can be together is fine; but if he can choose, he’s a montain type of person.

A cabin in the woods, a walk hearing the animals, or just laying in the middle of nowhere looking at the stars. The beach is great, but most of the times it means overcrowding and too much heat. Peter doesn’t do well with neither of those things, because he overwhelms easily and doesn’t like too much the heat. The mountain holidays are quiet and not too hot, and with the possibility of using a river or a pond.

That’s where his favourite part is. Your first holidays together were to a snowed mountain, where you spent a whole week. You skied together, made some snowmen, and drank hot chocolate. One day, you decided to explore on your own and discovered some thermal waters in a private property. After looking around for a bit, you discovered the place was empty and – for the first time in his life, he swears – you jumped over the fence and decided to try the thermal waters.

Since you were in the snow, you didn’t have any swimsuit with you, and when Peter realized he was ready to walk back to the hotel; but then, he looked behind him and saw you strapping off your bra, and he flew out of his clothes. You stayed there until your fingers wrinkled, your back against his chest and his arms around you. The memory was so good that he always forgot the part when the owner of the place appeared and you had to grab your clothes and run naked through the snow.

From that moment, Peter likes to make sure that wherever you’re going has close some safe river or pond to spend a few good hours relaxing there.

Impression (first impression)

Short imagine ahead!

Peter shifted, once more, in his seat. The coffee shop he had chosen to finish his essay was the less crowded in queens, and he knew well enough because it was the sixth coffee shop he tried that afternoon. The place, decorated as if you were in the fifties, wasn’t too big, just ten desks around the counter, which was in the middle of the room. When he had entered, he had thought the best place to concentrate was the corner of the coffee shop, just besides the window and behind the wall, so that no one would disturb him.

He had been working just fine, happy with his decision and with the result of his work; until, of course, he had finally looked away from the 10 pages essay to the lower bar on the screen, and discovered that he could barely see the white bar of the battery. He had blinked, trying to see where it had gone, and when he looked at the clock, he kind of understood.

For more than two hours, he had been camping there, with his creamed coffee and two brownie cookies. As much as he had carefully picked up the place, he hadn’t picked up a seat with a socket. That left him with short two minutes to find one before the computer shut down completely.

Panic rose to his throat when he discovered the coffee shop wasn’t empty anymore, but quite full. Peter emitted a small whine and gripped the end of his plug harder, trying to find a solution to his problem.

So, when he saw one, he didn’t stop to think; just grabbed his bag and ran towards the desk by the other window, where a socket peeked out. He almost crashed against a waitress and stumbled over a desk, and when he finally reached his destination, he was sure everyone was staring at him.

Peter all but threw himself to the ground, only being careful of leaving the computer on a steady surface before crawling under the desk and plugging in. He gave it a few tries until it finally clicked, and he heard the comforting noise of his computer charging.

“Uh, that was close”

The voice above him emitted a small chuckle that reminded Peter that he had sprinted across the coffee shop and that was sprawled in the floor, under a table which was occupied. He wondered if staying there forever, or until the stranger left, would only add to his embarrassment. Peter could already feel his cheeks heating up and a lump on his throat that mean stuttering. Gathering every inch of confidence Peter Parker ever held, he got on his knees and crawled back.

“Yeah, I was doing my last Spanish assignment, and I would have lost the whole thing if the computer shut down” Peter explained as he finally got on his knees. “Sorry for –“

The confidence left as a pile of dust in the wind when he finally saw who was sitting on the desk and where his computer had landed. You were already looking up at him with a small, shy smile, while holding his computer hands and trying not to let it touch your lap, which was covered in whatever was in the now turned over cup on the desk.

“I hope you get a good grade” you said when Peter maintained quiet.

Normally, Peter didn’t do good when a girl was in front of him, unless that girl was MJ or May. Even worse if that girl was cute and had a beautiful smile, that was making Peter’s stomach jump in circles and to his throat. If you add that to having thrown her cup on her lap, and having crawled under her table like a possessed demon, it meant that Peter was no longer a working human being but a ball of anxiety and awkwardness.

“I’m so sorry” Peter rushed suddenly, reaching for the box of napkins on the desk. “I’m so – damn, I didn’t look where I was throwing the computer. I thought – I thought there wasn’t, you know, anything there. This is –“

You barely had time to prop up the computer before Peter was shoving the napkins on your lap, bending down between apologies, and pressing them against the wet patch on your lap. It was hard to interrupt him when he looked at the verge of tears, so you decided to save him from a little embarrassment and said nothing as you held up his computer and he attempted to dry your pants.

Eventually, he decided to follow the wet path with the back lack of pressing his open palm to your right breast. You swore he almost stopped breathing, just looking at you with the most panicked eyes you had ever seen. Instead of throwing him off or screaming at him for being a perv, you just chuckled again.

“I’m Y/N”

Jealous (protective or overprotective)

Peter being Spiderman is protective of you, of course. He’s always worried about something happening because he hasn’t been careful enough into keeping his identity hidden. He makes sure to separate as much as he can his alter ego and you, not wanting you to be involved with anything he has to deal with.

But that’s not the kind of protectiveness we’re talking about.

On the contrary of what people think, Peter Parker is a bit jealous. He tries not to let it show, but he’s like an opening book. If someone gets too close to you, and he sees that they’re just a bit too nice, the pout appears on his mouth. He stares from afar with his arms crossed and furrowing his eyebrows, not doing anything. But no matter how many times he promises himself that you know how to handle things and that you love him; eventually, he just gravitates.

He appears by your side eventually, as if he was a magnet. He doesn’t touch you or say anything, just stands by you looking miserable. If anything, the only thing he manages to you is to grab the end of you tee or the hem of your trousers, listening to the stranger talk.

If they get too aggressive or it’s obvious that you’re not comfortable, he doesn’t have any problem is stepping in and walk away with you, giving glares to who he left behind. If not, Peter will just stay glued to you until they left. And then clingy Peter is awaiting with a whole lot of cuddles and kisses.

Kisses

Like, lot of cute kisses in the nose and small pecks when you’re together just SO CUTE CAN YOU IMAGINE

Love (who says it first, how many times)

Look into Feelings

Memory (favourite memory together)

Peter groaned deeply as the annoying sound of the alarm filled the peaceful silence of the morning. He had been awake for a while, just laying with his eyes closed and enjoying the only time of the day his senses were asleep. That was why, when he reached for the alarm clock, his finger didn’t made contact with the hard surface, but with soft skin.

He opened his eyes, startled for a moment, to be met with your scrunching face. You said something in your sleep and battled his hand away, turning your head towards him and relaxing your face again.

Memories of last night, when you had stayed over for the first time ever and he had, finally, taken the step, took over him. He made sure it hadn’t been all a dream by lifting the covers and looking at his naked body. A smug smile broke into his face and he had to press his hand against his mouth not to giggle out loud.

After almost a year of dating, he had gathered the courage to ask you to spend the night with him. May was out of town and you had been studying until late; with the excuse of being Friday, he had asked you to stay. And one thing had led to another, and now he was waking up with you by his side.

It felt as if his heart was finally mending itself, all the hurt he had received through the years disappearing, making room for the utter and pure love he felt for your sleeping form beside him.

“Stop staring” you muttered, and opened one eye. “It’s creepy”

“Oh” Peter felt his cheeks reddening. “Oh, I didn’t – I’m sorry, uh, I just… I’m sorry, I –“

“I was joking” you chuckled, and turned on your side so you were facing him. You smiled lazily, and he hesitantly returned it. “Mh”

“W-what?”

His insecurities rose up when you just stared at him, not saying anything. Even if you had assured him last night multiple times you wanted it too, he had a hard time believing it was really happening to him; so he was ready for rejection.

“Didn’t think someone could be so handsome in the morning” you said, already drifting off sleep again. You missed how Peter chocked on air and his eyes widened until they almost fell out of its pockets. But you weren’t finished. “Didn’ think I could love someone as much as I l’uv you”

You words were slurred and not even a second later you were asleep again, the morning sun that was seeping through the window not bothering you. Peter actually had to remind himself to breath. All the guilt he had felt for forgetting to turn off the daily alarm last night dissolved when he thought what he got in return. Without thinking much, he bent down and pressed his lips against your forehead.

Peter laid back and closed his eyes too, pulling you close with a smile on his face that wouldn’t go away soon.

NO (something they won’t do in your relationship)

There are the typical things we all know Peter Parker wouldn’t do in a relationship, because he’s a gentleman and a sweetheart. Wouldn’t do anything he thought you wouldn’t like, wouldn’t force you into doing anything he likes, or wouldn’t ever make you stay with him if you were uncomfortable with his identity.

But if there’s something he refuse to do, is to go to your apartment after Spiderman. Even though you understand you’re not equipped to take care of him if he’s hurt, as much as Tony is, there are times when patrol goes smoothly and still he doesn’t end in your apartment.

You face him a few times and the answer is always the same; that he left his backpack on alley that was too far from your home, that he was hurt and needed Tony to help him, or simply that he wanted to check the suit in the Stark Tower. The truth is, Peter is afraid of leading some bad guys to your place; and even when you live together, he makes sure to change in an alley on the other side of town and enter in a different building, in case he’s being followed.

It started when May’s apartment was broken into a few years ago, when neither of them were there. Someone destroyed almost all of their things and moved all the furniture, not stealing anything. Peter had been thankful that he had carried his suit on his backpack, but he still knew why it had happened. May knew it too, so she decided to let Tony take care of the security.

From then, he’s afraid that something bad will happen to you if Spiderman’s is seen in your block. He goes through great lengths to avoid it, and if it means keeping you safe, he’ll walk a few hours more.

Orange (favourite colour and why)

It’s quite obvious, but Peter has three favourite colours. Red and blue are the ones people think about when they ask him this question. But his other favourite colour, less known, is gold.

It reminds him of the day he was saved by Iron Man when he was a kid, how everything he saw was a flash of red and gold who praised him and left. Since then, he had had an obsession with shiny things, and when Tony gave him the new iron spider suit, he swore he could faint.

Gold is also the colour Queens has when the sun is going down, when he’s sitting in the tallest rooftop, watching the view above. It reminds him of happy places, where the world was safe and the only thing Spiderman was needs for was to walk old ladies across the street and rescue lost cats.

There is one special memory that he loves about this colour. When he came back from the snap, he felt like he wasn’t himself. He didn’t sleep, he couldn’t keep up with school and he was reckless when it came to patrolling. Tony’s death haunted him every step he took, so he turned away from everyone and everything.

After a heated argument with you, when you ambushed him in his apartment since he had been avoiding you for two weeks, you decided to take a break. He hadn’t expected it – and it left him crushed; but he didn’t do anything to solve it. For a few days, it was like that, until a patrol gone wrong put him into a hospital bed. He woke up with May, Pepper, Happy, Ned and you watching over him worriedly; so he broke. Peter told you everything he had felt since the snap, how he felt misplaced in a world that had gone without him – even though you were snapped too – and how he couldn’t sleep because he was afraid of the dark.

That night, he was released from the hospital, he went to his bedroom, ready for another sleepless night, when he found a box on the bed.

I’m sorry for not asking you how you were doing sooner. Call me when you’re ready to talk. Luv u.

Peter opened it with wet eyes and discovered a small, star-shaped night light that emitted a low gold glow when it was turned on. Peter didn’t make the same mistake twice – and when he recovered from the emotional tears, he called you and invited you over.

Since then, the gold light was resting on his nightstand, reminding him that no matter how dark the day was, you were there always.

Parents (how is their relationship with your parents)

At the beginning, is bad. Even though Peter tries his best to impress your parents, everything that can go wrong in the first meeting happens.

Your parents were waiting for you in your porch when Peter and you appeared in the driveway in his car. He had refused to take one of Tony’s care, wanting to show your parents how he was able to provide for himself; and it lead to a disaster. The boy was nervous enough to care about his strength, so when he stumbled to your door to open it for you, he ripped it off its hinges. Peter held the piece of metal for a few agonising seconds until your father asked if you had really travelled in that car. Peter tried to explain how it hadn’t been dangerous, with the door in his hand until you put a hand on his shoulder, and gave him a soft smile.

Once inside, Peter stuttered, sweat, and rambled during lunch, almost blurting out every secret he had. He threw his fork two times because of how bad his hands shook and called your mother ‘sir’ when he thanked her for the food. She ended up thinking he was adorable and chuckled, but your father was a different story.

It took him a few years to finally accept Peter, who every time he saw your father paled and searched for your hand.

Quirks (worst habit they have)

It doesn’t matter how many times you, May, Tony or even Ned tell him, Peter is unable to quit and you’re sure he doesn’t even try anymore.

You noticed for the first time when you were laying on his right, cuddling him as he tried to study. In an attempt to distract him, you grabbed his hand and started playing with him, and discovered that the skin around his fingers was raw. He tried to brush it off saying that it wasn’t that bad, but from that moment on you notice how Peter has too often one of his hands on his mouth, munching on his fingers as if they were a gum.

He does it because he’s always nervous, and because he used to do it with his lips and ended up with some serious problems. You try to stop him as much as you can, but he always manages to sneak a few seconds from your gaze and you catch him biting his thumb while looking into the nothing.

Romantic (little details or non-verbal ways of saying I love you)

Look into Feelings

Sad (how does he cheer you up)

Peter hurts with you. You remember how he told Tony that if May panics he freaks out too? Well, it’s the same.

Highschool can be stressing sometimes, and everyone breaks down because of it eventually. So when Peter opens the door of his apartment one day to you looking miserable, his day crumbles too. He looks at your wet eyes and the only thing he can think of is trying to get you not to cry, by repeating ‘please don’t, please don’t cry’ while tearing up himself. You end up breaking down on the door of his apartment and Peter hugs you without closing it, making some of the neighbours peek out of their own.

When you’re upset, he will cancel anything he has planned, even lab sessions with Iron Man. It’s not like he’ll just drop everything for you – but that’s exactly how it is.

About cheering you up, Peter tries his best to make you happy again with whatever you like, from watching a movie covered in blankets in the couch or dressing up and walking around the city.

Trickster (jokes, pranks…)

Pranks are not his style, because he always feels too bad about them after. Sometimes, he’ll pull a little one on you after overthinking for too long if you would be upset for it. Jokes, however, are a different story.

With just looking at him for more than two seconds, you already know Peter Parker is a dork. He wears t-shirts with science puns and tells the worst jokes on the world. He’ll be sitting in the canteen with Ned, MJ and you and he’ll just blurt something like ‘you know, I might make some horrible science puns, but only periodically’. There is a rank of Peter’s worst science puns that you’re doing with Ned, trying to figure out how long will it go until he stop.

Underestimated (what surprised him the most about you?)

- honestly, I can’t write about this because Peter Parker thinks you have put the sun on the sky and adores you for everything you do, no matter how small it is -

Vaunt (how much do they show you off?)

Too much, but no one can be angry at him, because he does it without noticing. It’s not the typical ‘hey look, that’s my girl and she’s the most beautiful one’. More like ‘I did a test today and Y/N smashed it’.

May had endured enough dinners with him to know he was whipped since the moment he crawled under your desk that day in the coffee shop. Even though he thought he would die while telling her, he spent a good hour describing every little detail of your face and admiring how nice and cool you were. Since always, Peter Parker has rambled his way out of conversations, so he keeps doing it; but just with you.

He could be talking about how he saw a shell at the beach and gave it to you for hours, explaining why and how. If you’re into some club – sports, robotics, decathlon – Peter will be always the first one to be there, on the first row with a bright smile and hands on his lap. Your classmates always tease you because he looks like a excited puppy watching his owner.

If there was a peak of Peter showing you off, was the day of homecoming. It didn’t matter if you wore a fancy dress or some plain pants; he’s shaking with excitement the whole way there, barely keeping his eyes off you. And when you’re in line for the photo, you bet he did the iconic Will Smith pose with his wife, opening his arms and just pointing at you, as if you were the most shinny star in the sky.

Wedding (do they want one and how they want it)

Peter’s decision to marry you wasn’t something planned, as mostly everything that happens on his life. Of course, he knew that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with you and that he loved you no matter what, but a wedding was something… not important for him.

That’s until you’re close to finishing college and Peter is hit by the idea of marrying you. Probably, it’s May who puts the idea there, after talking to him about it for ages; but he had always been good at ignoring her. Until you’re sitting on your shared apartment’s couch trying to find something appropriate to wear for your graduation. Peter still has another year in college, since the degree he’s in is a bit longer than yours, so he’s just sitting cross legged and looking at the options you’re showing him.

As much as it pains him, you don’t have enough money to afford a expensive dress, neither you want the help of Pepper Potts, who have threatened to leave an envelop with the money on your mailbox. That’s why you are looking in some second-hand online shop for something cute; and that’s why you see the weeding dress. There are a lot of clothes there, from pyjamas to some erotic underwear, but Peter only has eyes for the dress.

You click on it as a joke, telling him that if you find nothing you wouldn’t mind wearing it. From that moment, Peter can only imagine you wearing that dress and walking down the aisle, with a bouquet of flowers and probably sneakers. He can’t count how many nights he spent looking at the ceiling with a goofy smile on his face, imagining how all of it would be.

So, on the day of your graduation, without any more plans than just the ring on his left pocket, he bent down and popped the question, forgetting to give you the ring until a few hours later.

XX (something you’re the only one to know)

It hurts him to no end that you know it, but there is nothing he can do. You know about his weakness, about his nightmares and about how he can’t sleep when all the lights are out. You knew about his secret the first, about the real version of his trip to Germany and about everything he did on patrols. He had never kept secrets from you; except one, that got discovered on fateful day.

Peter, at your persistence, was teaching you how to put up a computer in his room, guiding you through the steps and not interfering unless it was necessary. He had been sitting on his bed while you were occupying the desk, casually scrolling through his phone while you worked.

It came one point when you needed a part that was on the other side of the room, and since you were holding the thing together, you couldn’t move. You asked Peter to bring it to you and he got up, not missing a beat. What he didn’t expect was the horrendous monster that was resting on it.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise – those things came from the trash, and in there animals were very common. But when Peter faced the spider, he was surprised. So surprised, that he screamed and jumped away, sticking itself to the ceiling in a second.

You turned around in time to see how the poor thing, scared by Peter’s noise, had crawled away. With the back luck to find the wall and deciding to move upwards. You almost laughed when Peter stumbled to the ground in his way away from the spider.

For a week, you kept reminding him how he didn’t hesitate in crawling out the window and leaving you there to kill the spider, finding him thirty minutes later on the top of the building. And he hates it, so much, that you know that Spiderman is afraid of spiders.

You (they talk about you)

Peter was sitting on the familiar grass like every Saturday of every month, his arms wrapped around his knees and a bouquet of flowers on his right. The chilly air of October made him look at the clock once more. Even though it was getting late, Peter looked back to the front and smiled again, returning his line of speech.

“Y/N is, uh – she is, everything you told me. When you talked about Mss Pott, you had this special look in your eyes, and I guess I have the same. You told me that… after Liz and I broke up, you told me that there was someone there for me. I think – Mr Stark, I know she’s the one. She has this – this laugh, it’s so, so beautiful. The best sound I’ve ever heard! She’s just, beautiful, and she’s with me, which is quite amazing. And, she isn’t freaked out by, you know, the whole spider thing – honestly, I think she would support me even if I quit, you know”

He stopped himself and wondered, once more, if the man in front of him would be disappointed with what he was about to say; but only found Mr Stark kind eyes and encouraging smile, and he knew he was taking the right decision.

“I’m thinking about quitting. For a while. I mean, Spiderman would still save the neighbours, you know? But just – sometimes. When needed, not on daily patrols” Peter explained, noticing how there was a familiar, circular weight on his pocket. “I’m gonna ask her to marry me. I know I said I didn’t want family, that we’re too young. But – we’re finishing college, and I don’t want to imagine a world where she’s not besides me… So, tonight, I have everything planned. I hope it goes better than the plan in Europe”

Peter knew his plans didn’t always go like planned. He had thought about it multiple times, and still he had his doubts if it was the right moment, or the right decision. The wind picked up in the lonely cemetery and Peter smiled, feeling as if Tony was really there with him.

“May says Ben would be proud of me, and Pepper says that the proposal would have been a disaster if you were alive, because you would have talked me into doing something really dumb” he chuckled, and looked at the flowers. It was time to go. “I hope she says yes, Mr Stark. I really hope so”

With a last, treacherous tear that always managed to escape, Peter got up and touched for the last time the cold stone of the grave.

Zzz (how do you sleep; probably include a visual)

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fjordfolk · 4 years

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anyway ive been thinking, and think pretty regularly about the ‘no shelters in iceland’ and ‘x days since last no-shelters-in-iceland incident’ memes we had going for a while (and norway for that matter, but iceland is better because it’s iceland). the ‘joke’ is that whenever you bring up getting a dog on tumblr you’ll be told - either as a gentle suggestion or aggressive beratement - to just go to a shelter, even though there are no shelters in your country.

and my issue isn’t that americans are undereducted on pet culture in iceland specifically. you dont have to know that there are no shelters in iceland. nobody is expecting anyone to just sit around on that sort of knowledge for every country on the map. that would be weird af.

my issue is that even if you’re not assumed american (and you are. if you write english on the internet, you will be) you’re still assumed... american. my issue is that so many go in to these discussions expecting iceland (or norway or hungary or fucking iceland) to have the same social and structural baseline as the usa and not approaching with an ‘is this a thing’ but a ‘this is a thing until disputed.’ it’s a culture and society you know next to nothing about because why would you, but rather than assuming it could be different you assume it’s the same.

and i know it’s a bias and a blind spot but like. its a pretty huge blind spot. so big one might as well be aware of it.

(and ofc its not just americans. but it also sometimes kind of is.)

#im not even convinced this standard american culture we’re assumed is...#actually an accaptable generalization of american culture #because we know american culture is multifaceted to an extent few other cultures are #but thats the irony of it i guess

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hermannsthumb · 5 years

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for the summer prompts if you want you could do family reunion. it could be a fun and interesting dynamic

YES i think id like to make this into a longer fic itd be so fun, so thats why it cuts off where it is and has the long setup hehehe

13: Family Reunion

from summer prompt memes here

---------------------------------------------

"I should probably warn you,” Newt says over breakfast, after a few minutes of poking his fork into his room service pancakes (which have been steadily growing soggier) and twirling his orange juice straw between his index finger and thumb.

Hermann sets down his own fork with a small sigh of relief, and Newt has a feeling it’s not just because the unusual (for them) silence was leaving him on edge. “Oh, good,” he says. “I was about to say the same thing. You first.”

"It’s just,” Newt continues, “well, my family’s...they’re kind of a lot.” It’s important to him they go over this now, before Hermann’s inevitable Geiszler Culture Shock during the actual reunion this coming Tuesday. Give him plenty of time to prepare himself.

“I’d be strange if they weren’t,” Hermann says. “I’ve met your father, you know.”

“I know,” Newt says. “They’re just...loud. And nosy. They’re going to ask a million questions about you, and us, and our--” He gestures between them. “--Thing.”

“Our thing,” Hermann repeats.

“Yeah,” Newt says. “Our--” He mimes something obscene. “You get me?”

There is a brief moment of uncomfortable silence. Newt would have liked to say relationship, because he was under the impression that’s what they have, and he doesn’t think it’s too much of a leap--they share a bed, after all, and occasionally get up to shenanigans in it--but they’ve never labeled it officially and he’s worried about unintentionally making Hermann uncomfortable. “I understand,” Hermann says. “My family is the opposite.”

This is the reason they’re all the way over here in some quaint little German bed and breakfast, after all, instead of going through paperwork or cleaning up old specimen tanks in their Hong Kong lab like they probably should be: Geiszler and Gottlieb family reunions, both scheduled, coincidentally, a week and a decent (but manageable) drive apart from each other. They made a two week long vacation out of it, with the first week--this past week--spent doing dumb touristy things and eating non-rationed food. They have the time to do fun shit like this these days, after all; no more impending doom, no more weight of the world on their shoulders, no more overworking themselves until they collapse into an insensible heap on the lab couch only to be discovered by the graveyard shift janitor at three in the morning. Besides. If Newt and Hermann intend to keep getting up to shenanigans in shared bed, they’ve got to Meet the Families eventually. This way is just tackling it all at once.

“No shit,” Newt says sarcastically. “I’ve met your father too.”

While their recent outing with Newt’s dad had been nice and fun and causal--he bought them dinner--their only run-in with Hermann’s, accidentally, at a banquet during the war had been anything but. Newt recalled a lot of shouting (on his own end), louder shouting (on Hermann’s father’s end), and mortified silence (on Hermann’s end). And that was before Newt and Hermann even started getting up to shenanigans together. “You certainly have,” Hermann says. “Er. Please don’t be too offended, but I don’t imagine most of them will be very polite to you. They’ll have heard about the incident in Anchorage with Father by now. And most of them--well. Most of them don’t approve of me.”

Newt’s face splits into a grin. “They don’t approve of you?”

The tips of Hermann’s ears go red. “Of my career,” he says, “my, er, lifestyle, the career of the man I’ve chosen to share it with...” This, considering what little Newt knows about the extended Gottlieb family, makes sense: Hermann continuing to work on the jaeger program even after his father publicly turned his back on it must’ve been a real shock, and Newt was, after all, Hermann’s research partner throughout it all. Hermann being gay is just the metaphorical cherry atop that. What he says next throws Newt for a loop anyway. “I was also a bit rebellious in my youth. I don’t imagine they’ll have forgotten that.”

This time, Newt full-on snorts in disbelief. “Rebellious?” he echoes. “Holy shit, what’d you do? Get straight A’s instead of A-pluses?”

Hermann’s blush spreads down to his neck. “Er. Something along those lines,” he says. “At any rate. I suppose I’m what you may deem the black sheep of the family.”

“No fucking way,” Newt says delightedly. “Man. I can’t fucking wait for this.”

They check out of the bed and breakfast the next morning and start the two hour ride to Hermann’s childhood home, where they’ll be spending the next few days. They could’ve spent the entire time in Hermann’s old bedroom if they wanted and bypassed paying for a hotel entirely, but Hermann was deeply opposed to it--his siblings would not be arriving until today either, and the thought of being alone in a house with his parents clearly made him uncomfortable. Newt didn’t even bother suggesting it as an option.

“I can’t believe you grew up on a farm,” Newt says when they finally begin to pull down Hermann’s long gravel driveway. Because it is totally a farm--huge property and rolling fields and all--and Hermann has, conveniently, neglected to tell Newt this.

“It’s not a farm,” Hermann says. “Er. It’s--farmland. There’s a difference.”

They drive past a cow.

“It’s totally a farm, dude,” Newt says, waving hello at the cow. It doesn’t acknowledge him. “Did you have chickens, too? Pigs?”

“I had a cat,” Hermann concedes, and then Newt forgets all about pestering Hermann about the cow because the farmhouse finally comes into view behind the tall trees, and wow. It’s big--at least enough for each of the Gottlieb kids to have their own bedroom, Newt’s sure--with a wrap-around porch and a spacious yard. After craning his neck around, Newt spots more cows meandering through a fenced-off meadow nearby, and more excitingly, a large pond a brief walk away. There are ducks on it.

“A farm,” Newt repeats. “You grew up on a farm. Wow.” He thinks he can be forgiven for being a little incredulous about it all: the little Hermann’s shared about his childhood made it seem like he lived out his days chained up in some sort of drafty gothic castle before he eventually fled in the dead of night for uni. This beats the first six years of existence Newt spent in a shitty Berlin apartment by a mile.

Hermann parks their rented car in an empty bit of grass further away from the patch of gravel where another half-dozen-odd cars are and switches off the engine. Then he stares at the windshield for a very long time.

“I haven’t been here since I was a teenager,” he finally says. His knuckles are white around the steering wheel. “Even before that--it was mostly only summers. I went off to a boarding school when I was quite young.”

“Summers must’ve been...nice here,” Newt says cautiously. He’s worried he might strike a nerve without meaning to; it’s very easy to do that with Hermann, after all, especially when it comes to talking about his childhood. Newt used to do it all the time without meaning to. And sometimes, when he was pissed at Hermann, he used to mean to do it. He doesn’t feel very good about that these days.

“I would take my telescope out to the field,” Hermann says, “or up to my brother’s treehouse, on days when I could manage the ladder.”

His eyes dart down to the keyless ignition, and his index finger twitches, as if he’d like nothing more than to press it; Newt reaches over and places his hand on Hermann’s arm in a way he hopes is soothing. “Hermann,” he says. “We can leave now if you want. We don’t have to go in.”

Hermann worries at his lower lip for a moment, then his whole body seems to sag. His hands drop into his lap. “No,” he says. He works his jaw. “We’re going in.”

Newt nods.

They go inside. Newt can tell, instantly, which of the people milling about are related to Hermann by blood as opposed to marriage: they have Hermann’s fine cheekbones, his funny stick-out ears, his dark hair, and some--only a handful--have eyes almost the same warm brown as his, though without the little crinkles at the corners and Hermann’s delicate, fanning eyelashes. Unless Newt’s just biased in Hermann’s favor. A few of them nod tersely in Hermann’s direction; one older-looking woman outright avoids eye contact and speeds up a little down the hall.

Newt shuts the door behind them and gives the foyer a brief once-over. High ceiling. Neutral-colored wallpaper dotted with small roses. Neutral-colored carpet. A single vase of flowers on a pristine wooden side table. “It’s nice in here,” Newt lies.

“Hm,” Hermann says with obvious distaste. Then a strange look flits across his face. “Bastien,” he says over Newt’s shoulder, slightly louder. “Hello.”

Newt turns. Walking stiffly towards them down the hallway is a guy who looks unsettlingly like a taller, less pointy, and far more stylish Hermann. He stops a good foot away from them and nods just as stiffly. “Hermann,” he says, and Newt half expects them to exchange a firm, professional handshake. He knows Hermann’s not big on hugs, and he must’ve gotten that from somewhere, but come on. “I’m surprised you came. It’s good to see you.” His eyes sweep over Newt once. “Are you Dr. Geiszler?”

“You can just, uh, call me Newt,” Newt says. His mouth feels weirdly dry. He didn’t expect to get this fucking nervous.

“I’ve seen your photograph online,” Bastien says. His accent is thick, thicker than Newt ever remembers Hermann’s being on the rare occasions his learned pretentious English one slips and gives way to his natural one. It makes sense. He never left the country like Hermann did. “Hermann has mentioned you once or twice in emails.”

“He has?” Newt says, because that’s news to him, but Bastien’s already turned his attention back to Hermann.

“Father is in the backyard,” he says in a low voice. “If you were wondering.”

Hermann’s visible distaste returns. “Ah. Thank you. I’ll be sure to avoid it then.” He allows himself a tiny fraction of a smile. “It is nice to see you.”

"Bastien is only two years younger than me,” Hermann explains once he and his brother have nodded at each other once more and Bastien’s retreated back down the hallway. “I was always closest to him, out of my siblings.”

“I can tell,” Newt says, and, probably lucky for him, Hermann doesn’t pick up on the sarcasm.

Hermann takes him on a brief tour of the lower level of the house. It’s weird; for all the charm the outside has--from the vines creeping up the sides, the ancient shutters, the sagging porch, the beautiful hills--the inside is pretty, well, bland. There’s a pristine dining room. A pristine kitchen. A pristine living room, with couches more out of fashion than Hermann’s sweatervest and a fucking gorgeous piano that looks practically untouched. (Newt whistles when he sees it; “I took lessons once,” Hermann says, “I wasn’t very good.”)

The main point of Newt’s interest, though, the thing that really makes him stop dead in his tracks, is the single family photo resting atop the fireplace mantle. All six Gottliebs are lined up in a row: Hermann’s father, a woman Newt takes to be Hermann’s mother (she has his eyelashes and his wide mouth), a teenage, and much shorter, Bastien, two twenty-somethings that must be Hermann’s older brother and sister (all three with Hermann’s ears), and--

“Holy shit, Hermann,” Newt says, snatching up the picture frame for a closer look. “Is this you?”

It is, which Newt is sure of even before Hermann flushes beautifully and turns his eyes to the ceiling--there’s no mistaking that scowl or cane. The Hermann in the photograph is leaning against a wall, a good foot away from the rest of his siblings, and can’t be any older than eighteen. He’s got an undercut twice as severe as his current one. A cigarette dangling from between two fingers. And--Newt realizes with a jolt of something that might be called elation, or it might be called horror--an earring in one ear. “Ah,” Hermann says. “I did say I was--”

“This is the best day of my life,” Newt says. “I want a copy. I want three copies. I want to carry one around in my wallet. I can’t believe you had an earring!”

“He did it himself,” a woman lurking near the doorway with a drink in hand and Hermann’s cheekbones says. “With a sewing needle, wasn’t it?”

“A safety pin,” Hermann says miserably. “Hello, Karla.”

“Hermann,” Karla says. They exchange stiff nods. (This family is fucking weird, Newt thinks. Maybe Hermann really is an alien. It would explain a lot.) “Who’s your friend?”

Hermann touches Newt’s arm. “This is my...” He trails off, and Newt starts to wonder if he should jump in with a lab partner when Hermann finally coughs and says, “My Newton.”

Newt gives Karla a nervous little wave. The once-over she’s giving him behind her wire-frame glasses is twice as severe and scrutinizing as the one Bastien gave him earlier--far more Hermann-esque. Specifically, Hermann when Newt’s fucked something up and is doing a very bad job of hiding it. “Your Newton,” she says. “The biologist?” Newt and Hermann both nod. She looks satisfied. And a little disapproving. “You didn’t say he was coming. You may have to make up the guest room bed for--”

“There’s no need,” Hermann says, and a small blush blooms on his cheeks. “Newton and I will be sharing my bed.”

“Sharing?” Karla echoes. She narrows her eyes at Newt again. “Hm. You are his type.”

“Karla,” Hermann hisses. He looks mortified.

“Hermann was always bringing home boys like you,” she says to Newt. “Dyed hair, piercings, tattoos--”

“Karla.”

“All because he knew our mother and father hated it, of course,” she says. “That’s also why he--” She tugs on her earlobe, the same earlobe Hermann has pierced in the photo, and takes a sip of her drink. “He was always so difficult. And now, a,” she says the next word like it leaves a bad taste in her mouth, “biologist.”

Newt feels, vaguely, like he’s entered in a parallel universe, where Hermann Gottlieb is apparently some sort of bad boy rebel without a cause and not, in fact, Newt’s stuffy, uptight, stick-up-his ass lab partner who one time yelled at Newt for being too cheerful at work. “Difficult?” he says faintly.

“She’s exaggerating,” Hermann jumps in quickly. He tugs frantically on the sleeve of Newt’s leather jacket. “Newton, we should--”

“He used to stay out until three in the morning,” Karla interrupts, with something akin to glee on her face, “and come roaring in on the back of some boy’s motorcycle--”

“Holy shit,” Newt says.

“Newton,” Hermann says. “Upstairs, please.”

Newt places the photograph back on the mantle and scurries after Hermann as he clacks, furiously, from the room and past his sister (who merely nods at both of them again). Hermann doesn’t stop his furious clacking until they make it all the way up the creaky staircase, down the upstairs hallway, and through a door that he shoves open unceremoniously.

This is where Newt stops. He’s not sure what he expected Hermann’s childhood bedroom to look like, but he wasn’t expecting this. It’s undoubtedly Hermann’s though. The bedspread is dark blue, patterned with little white spaceships and orange comets, but looks recently washed, at least. There’s a model of the solar system hanging in the corner, clearly homemade. A heavy layer of dust on a desk in front of a window, where several advanced mathematics texts are stacked up. More spaceships on the faded wallpaper. A few perfectly straight and even posters, one of the phases of the moon from 2006 tacked to the back of the door. A messy bookcase.

Newt was expecting--more neutral colors, maybe. An ancient-looking abacus. Victorian schoolhouse chalkboard slates. He smiles. “This is your old room?”

Hermann eases himself down onto the edge of the bed. “Yes,” he says, and pats the bedspread. “I imagine we’ll fit here together tonight without a problem.”

“Yeah,” Newt says, and sits down next to him. He has a million things he wants to say: your family is fucking weird, what’s so bad about being a biologist, you weren’t lying about being a black sheep, huh, but what comes out, along with a wide grin, is “So. I’m your type?”

“Oh, don’t start,” Hermann says. “Karla was only teasing. She always teases.”

“You used to ride around on motorcycles,” Newt says, “with boys. Plural.”

Hermann darts his tongue out, nervously, over his bottom lip. “With one boy in particular,” he concedes. “Ah. A friend from school.” His blush returns. “He had a tattoo of a sparrow on his shoulder. He was my first kiss.”

Inspired, Newt leans in and kisses Hermann’s cheek. “Dude. That’s adorable.”

Hermann hides his face in his hands. “He had freckles,” he says.

#newmann #maria's fanfiction tag #Anonymous

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purplesurveys · 5 years

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675

Are you more of a leader or a follower? It ultimately depends on who I’m grouped with, I guess? If I’m with a bunch of people that aren’t the type to initiate, I’m happy to volunteer to lead. But if I’m working with someone I know is capable of leading, then I’d let them take the lead. But I’d be like the second-tier leader, because I still want to keep things in control and still my way somehow haha. Do you know anyone with a profession in law? My relatives who are in the local government of our home province are all lawyers. I also have an aunt who’s a corporate lawyer; and one of my friend’s dad is both a lawyer and a law professor. Have you ever Googled yourself? When I was like 10 or 11 and curious to see what Google has of me. I generally avoid looking myself up because I did and posted embarrassing shit as a kid. Do you have a regular vacation spot, or do you always go somewhere new? We alllllways go somewhere new. We have never done a repeat vacation, or go to the same resort/hotel twice. For this reason my family has been to almost every region/province in the country, save for Mindanao haha. The one place we’ve gone to more than once is Baguio, and that’s only because we were having a trip in Sagada and needed a stopover because Sagada is way too damn far. Where were you working 10 years ago? I was 11 a decade ago, and hardly thinking of working.

... 5 years ago? Was in high school, and definitely not working. ... 1 year ago? I also wasn’t working, but I had a PR internship in 2019 which was a blast. Would you say you've had a good life so far? It hasn’t been nice to me for the most part, but the highs have been high enough and good enough for me to want to stay. What's the shortest amount of time you've had between relationships? I’ve only ever been with one person. We broke up at one point, which lasted for around seven months. As a child, what comfort foods did your parents make for you when you were sick with a cold or flu? I wasn’t made any comfort food because the adults at home were usually pretty busy. Which was ok with me, because I lose my appetite when I’m sick anyway. What's a movie series where the sequel was better than the original? Generally not a fan of series so I don’t know much about them lol. What's something you wish you could have delivered to your house? FRANKIE’S. Only Metro Manila gets Frankie’s deliveries, and it sucks. When I want to eat some for dinner at home, I have to have it delivered in school. What's your favorite art style? Whatever Monet was all about, as he’s my favorite painter. What time period is considered to be your country's 'golden age?' LMAO do we have any? Have we even reached it yet? I doubt it. The older generation would probably call the 60s and 70s our Golden Age because of the way Marcos ran the country during his first term – and to their credit, I wouldn’t doubt the economic boom we experienced, all the infra built during the time, and the fact that the Philippines was only second to Japan when it came to the richest Asian countries. But Marcos also drove the country to ruins, piled us with debt (that I’m part of paying off to this day, and that my future kids would have to pay as well), got consumed by greed, took part in corruption, killed his critics, and silenced the press by the 80s that it completely trashes the ‘Golden Age’ the Philippines went through just a decade before. He is the reason our economy eventually took one huge humiliating step backwards, and why we’re all struggling to catch up with our now-richer neighbor countries today. How many trees are there in your yard? We have a couple of big ones. What are some of your favorite ways to de-stress? Surveys, YouTube series that I like, serial killer documentaries, and Friends. Have you ever done LSD? No. What's currently on your grocery list? Nothing, really. We stocked up on everything before the city was put on lockdown so we’re doing okay right now. Are any of your coworkers currently out on maternity/paternity leave? No coworkers. And none of my school mates have kids. Would you be able to pinpoint Milwaukee on an unlabeled map? I don’t even know what region Wisconsin’s in. It’s a no-go for me. What is your favorite parody movie? The Scary Movie series is highkey the only set of parody movies I know, so I’ll just go with that. What kind of first impression do you hope others have of you? I’ve been told I seem intimidating at first, which I’m fine with lmao. Do you have a good sense of balance? Hell no. I can’t even ride a bike :( What is your least favorite ice cream flavor? Rocky road or double dutch. Does your car have heated seats? No. We barely need any kind of heater in this country. What's something that has been in your local news lately? Coronavirus, obviously. But more than the virus cases, the news has also been covering what’s been happening during and as a result of the ongoing lockdown. What's your favorite internet meme? I’m less into memes nowadays and more into Tiktok clips, honestly HAHAHA people can come up with really hilarious videos :(((( My favorite one right now is this person showing how they act when they have to walk alone at night, and it’s basically them checking their bag and saying out loud, “oh thank GOD I have a GUN in my bag...oh! Turns out I also have my KNIFE...so glad I bought my GUN and my KNIFE...hear that? My GUN and my KNIFE” lmaoooooooo might not sound so funny here but it’s just so hilarious on video. What hair length suits you the best? I love short hair on me these days. What is the strangest pizza topping you've ever eaten? I dunno, I’m pretty basic with my pizza topping preferences and am usually happy with just cheese. @justsurveys might have a better answer for this! ;) But in general though, though it doesn’t directly answer the question, I don’t like pepperoni on my pizza and always take it out. Do you live in a very racially and culturally diverse country? Not at all. We’re a homogenous group, and for the most part the diversity boils down to just the regions we’re a part of. Can you name any books or movies where all the main characters die? Hamlet? If I remember correctly? What was the last hotel you stayed at? Oh my, it’s been a while. It was somewhere in Bacoor. Do you live alone? Nope.

#survey #surveys

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revoevokukil · 6 years

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On the character writing of Captain Marvel’s antagonists

How is Captain Marvel’s villain game?

The MCU’s story of how Carol Danvers comes to realise what gives her the capacity to do heroic things is rooted in an intimate tale of self-discovery, knowing oneself, and embracing oneself as one is. It is not a classic story of confrontation between good and evil and therefore the classic hero’s journey formula does not apply. Carol is exactly the same personality at the end of the film as she is at the beginning of the film, with the crucial difference that by the end, she is in a position to control and honestly evaluate her own life narrative – she has regained solid ground under her feet without which no one can pass moral judgments or make decisions that affect the lives of other people.

Carol’s origin story is not about punching someone into remorse and submission, but about finding herself (almost literally) – which means that the antagonists of the film are the friends she makes along the way. The opposing force is a deeply personal one and climbs into the protagonist’s soul rather than threatens their life. That makes Yon-Rogg not as one-dimensional as people seem to think. He’s more of a foil than an outright antagonist to Carol on a personal level, but it’s hard to say whether he is overall meant to be represented as a misguided Kree patriot or a hammy villain because the former gets too vague a development and the latter just does not work – war is war, they’re all dirty, and Supreme Intelligence takes the cake here. Since Yon-Rogg’s motivations are strongly informed by his role as the poster boy of the Kree military, the Kree-Skrull plotline actually should be elaborated upon if they wanted to convey him as “the guilty party” in both storylines that push the story forward.

I’ve tried to identify with the villains of the film in order to write the following; consider that it is not a pleasant exercise but an intriguing one nonetheless.

Storylines

There are two storylines that intersect in the film and push the plot onwards: Carol’s unfolding quest to make sense of her past, and the Kree-Skrull war. The twist in Carol’s personal storyline results in a change up in regard to how to view the Kree-Skrull war, but it’s not ground-breakingly illuminating, since the war between these races is never sufficiently elaborated upon and it is not the main emotional centre of the film – how Carol feels about the Kree and her mentor is! Therefore, the antagonists’ character development unfolds in layers.

Consider for a minute, the Kree ideology. Collectivist, imperialist, hyper-militaristic, superior in technology and culture. Roman Empire seems like an appropriate comparison. They see themselves as the rightful rulers by conquest who have a duty to maintain order, safety, and stability within their empire. Realpolitiks of empires. Hyper-militaristic inclinations translate onto the individual level as well where the collective interest is set before one’s individual interests. And it translates into Yon-Rogg’s motivations and outlook very clearly, though with some interesting exceptions that add to his character writing.

· He is a devout warrior, unshakably loyal to the Kree’s cause and their claims of superiority.

Yet he is not fond of the scorched earth tactics of the overly zealous Accusers.

He avoids entangling civilians in the Kree-Skrull conflict to the very last second (he also avoids shooting Carol outright in their very first meeting).

He genuinely cares about his soldiers’ lives, and they trust him a lot in return, even when he is misleading other high-ranking officers in the Kree army (Ronan).

He prioritises the good of all Kree above all else (instead of, notably, personal power).

He genuinely believes in what he is trying to teach Vers (emotions should not rule your good judgment in a conflict situation; the Kree’s enlightened rule is for the better for all); it is not only part of their cover-up scheme.

He views the Skrulls’ means of fighting as dishonourable because of their penchant for subterfuge rather than direct combat. In another context that would be called being “honourable” in combat.

So, as a Kree, an authoritarian space fascist, he is pretty reasonable and a more rounded than your standard evil for evil’s sake goon.

What to make of him in relation to Carol?

It’s twisted from its very beginning, since Yon-Rogg effectively saves Carol’s life by stealing it from her. He hesitates to kill Carol outright by the lake. Then, ironically, saves her life by abducting her as she verges between life and death. And then, metaphorically, the Kree kill Carol Danvers anyway. Only to “bring her back to life” through the blood transfusion from Yon-Rogg and through the presumed genetic meddling to make it stick (her entire blood supply and blood reproduction has to get replaced). A “rebirth” with no memory of past life, but with cosmic powers and superior physiology to contain it. It’s as messy as they come.

That bit of writing also establishes how unnervingly intimate a bond they share (something that comes to underlie a sense of possessiveness and ownership on his part, and confirms that this is not healthy). To see Carol succeed strokes Yon-Rogg’s ego – he made the right call as a soldier, he is part of the origins of her powers, and he is a good teacher. It also makes you think, was it (stupid) curiosity, principles, or admiration that stopped him from shooting Carol? She had almost brought him down in a plane fight, after all. And while he acts under orders from SI, I doubt Yon-Rogg protests its wisdom too much – it is highly likely the Kree see themselves as genuinely benevolent for saving this human and giving her so much by making her one of them (see their sense of superiority, again). If anything, I would expect an AI (not Yon-Rogg) not to want to risk leaving Carol alive and liable to turn against them.

It is said in interviews that Yon-Rogg both appreciates and is irritated by Carol’s “humanity” and quirks. He also seems to me as perfectly aware that what he is doing is wrong on a personal level. Over six years, he and Carol grow close – he is her crutch in Kree culture, Carol trusts him a lot (coming to him after her nightmares) and looks up to him/wants to prove herself to him, and there is even some implicit flirtation between them at the beginning of the film (“it’s me you see, isn’t it?”). That level of friendship entails some empathy. He may be ruthless, but he is not a psychopath (or is only a psychopath to the extent all devout patriotic soldiers are). For despite all that happens to Carol, she is not aware of any of it, and she ends up liking her life with the Kree by the time the film starts. She has military background, she likes to prove herself and be good at things, and the Kree never treat her badly (minus the grand deception part, ofc). From Yon-Rogg’s perspective then, as long as the lie is not found out, it is not objectively a bad life, is it? He has a soft spot for his favourite student (their relationship has been described as “tender” among other things). He has faith in her (“She’s stronger than you think!”), is (over-)protective of her, but wants to genuinely see her succeed - albeit on the Kree’s terms and not her own. He is trying to do his best as a mentor to a soldier and as a soldier to his people, and sincerely believes it will make everything easier for Carol, but because of the manner in which Carol has come to be his pupil, all of what is happening here can only become one huge poisoned chalice. However, you can see how someone like him can justify lying to a person for 6 years - longer still, had Carol not happened to crash on C53.

The truth of the matter is, of course, that Carol due to her amnesia does not have a choice regarding the narrative into which she is thrust, and that is the inherent evil that she overcomes in the film – taking back control over her life’s narrative and thus also gaining the necessary faith in oneself that comes with knowing oneself. The Kree have given her plenty, making up a big part of her (literally), but by infringing on her right to self-determination most horribly in the process. “The best version she could be” can ever only be pushed upon her in this state, like it happens so often in overly controlling families and partnerships.

Consider seriously that while Yon-Rogg’s advice to “control emotions and not let them cloud your judgment” may echo the belittling gender dynamics of our world, it is only an analogy – the Kree are not putting Carol in this situation in the film because she is a woman (they’re arguably rather progressive about their gender and sexual politics by the looks of it). It is not inherently a wrong or bad advice to drill into a soldier, and that is what Carol is – a soldier. However, as it happens, autobiographical long term memory triggers most strongly based on emotions, so suppressing them also counteracts the possibility that Carol might regain her memories. The Kree may well not even know what Carol could do if she was more in touch with herself and her powers – their foremost concern is winning “her heart and mind” so that she doesn’t turn against them. Again, they are personal, psychological villains. So, by tying her more strongly to Kree culture and ways, as well as training her according to that dictum, Yon-Rogg’s hitting two birds with one stone, really. I do not doubt that his orders from SI were, and his mind is set on, ensuring her loyalty by any means necessary. However, in comparison to, for instance, Bucky, the Kree do not literally constantly torture and brainwash her to turn her into a vegetable. It’s a “golden cage” type situation from the perspective of these “benevolent” aliens.

In that sense, the ‘enemy’ of the film is not so much the meme of a “debate me guy” or your ordinary our world chauvinist, or patriarchy (they are analogies, but not inherent to the conflict of the film), but the insidious disregard the Kree show toward individuals and their right to self-determination. As a culture, that is not their thing. And as other cultures are seen as lesser than them, they see their ways as backwards. Arguably that disregard underlies and precedes gendered readings because it applies universally (would they have done anything differently if Carol had been a man? I don’t think so) (also, it underlies the war ideology behind subjugating other races). And war justifies everything, of course, which is the second strongest ‘evil’ motif in the film. That’s pretty good, layered writing, in truth.

Both ‘evils’ are represented in Yon-Rogg’s and Supreme Intelligence’s characterisations, but only the latter remains abstract enough to be the literal representation of it whereas Yon-Rogg is still written with some “humanity” for the lack of a better word. He is very much conveyed as a product of his society, but not even a one-dimensional caricature of that. Sure, we do not get any insight into his inner thoughts, but not once did the details I have written out here give me the impression that Carol is as upset as she is because of betrayal by a lump of evil with no moving parts inside. I can appreciate that in an antagonistic force, because it adds to the hero’s internal confusion if their starting out premise is “friends with my enemy”. There is extreme pragmatism more than there is cruelty in the villain’s intentions. But cruelty follows anyway, because freedom and predetermination cannot not be in conflict, and very rarely does cruelty not follow when ends justify the means quite as brutally as in the case of sacrificing someone’s freedoms for another’s greater cause.

For Yon-Rogg that is not an issue, though he himself is as deprived of freedom under this ideology as Carol is. But Carol’s moral system hails from a different place.

I can relate to it and find it interesting, and not at all one-dimensional. Best of all, it is possible to build upon it.

#captain marvel #carol danvers #yon-rogg #supreme intelligence #kree #character analysis #plot analysis #story deconstruction #brie larson #jude law

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writcraft · 6 years

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2018 Fandom Reflections

I’m going to do a year in review list of fics and answer tags on some of the memes floating around, but I’m waiting until January when a few anon fics in fests are revealed as I’d really like to include those in my ramblings. This is more a personal take on some reflections I’ve had on fandom - and my place and activity within it - over the course of this year.

On a personal level, real life work and fandom as a hobby have intersected this year for me like never before, and the combination of taking on multiple commitments to academic publishing, grappling with the demands of my thesis and moderating and participating in multiple fests has been a lot. I’ve had something of a rollercoaster year, but I’m ending 2018 feeling creatively inspired, happy, and energised for another active fandom year. Thank you to everyone who has been part of it and those friends new and old that have been instrumental to shaping my year and pulling me out of the funk I was in at the beginning of the year.

Some key lessons I’ve personally learned in 2018 below the cut to save your dash from my GIANT WALL OF TEXT.

All At Sea: I think of my relationship to fan spaces sometimes as a bit like being out at sea. It’s easy to get caught up in the current and drift along, but the tide is always turning and there are unexpected storms which make staying afloat more challenging at times. Sometimes it can be exhausting when you feel as though you’re swimming against a strong current and making no progress, but on other occasions you find a spot where you can swim, choose your own direction, do handstands in the water and it’s exhilarating. This year I learned it’s okay to get out of the sea sometimes, to push your toes in the sand, feel the sun on your face, and just enjoy watching the waves. Have a cocktail with friends at the beach bar, chill the fuck out, basically. From starting the year feeling in something of a fandom funk, I’ve got to a place at the end of this year where I feel very positive about fandom and grateful to share a space with so many brilliant, talented, supportive people.

Burnout and Information Overwhelm: This year, the burnout has been real and I’ve worked out that the platforms I’m operating on contribute a lot to that feeling of mental exhaustion. Using my mobile for fandom activity, having more time than ever at my personal laptop instead of an office computer which restricted me from accessing fan platforms and ramping up my use of Tumblr, Twitter, WhatsApp and Discord for fandom activity created a kind of information overwhelm that comes with high speed interactions and heightened the sense of needing to be present, or to offer opinions as part of fast-paced interactions requiring quick thinking, and sometimes knee-jerk responses. With this came the suspicion and bitter taste caused by anonymous messages cropping up in the inboxes of me and my friends, and it felt at times as though I was constantly logged on and in a state of hypersensitivity. I’ve learned that stepping back from things and learning to balance time spent online with time spent offline is an important part of self-care and it’s okay to be absent for a while. If conversations are draining, leave them. If you see opinions you don’t like, ignore them or try to understand them. They are just opinions - and I mean opinions on characters, canon, fandom and so on as opposed to political opinions that actively seek to harm people. Everyone has different perspectives on things. There really is room for everyone. Regarding anonymous messages, if the only way someone wants to interact with you is via crappy anonymous messages, I’ve learned they are not worth your time, effort or mental energy. Interacting only brings more attention to them. Delete, block, move on. Fuck ‘em. If you want to talk to me, do it off anon. If I’ve upset you with my actions, tell me. Let’s have a proper, adult conversation.

Look for the Rainbow: Fandom spaces are communities which form around peoples passions. They are places of brilliant creativity but the things we love have a tendency to give rise to extreme emotional responses. I’ve veered from extreme highs to extreme lows and this year I have learned the importance of finding a balance that works. I think a relentlessly positive, non-critical approach can be just as stifling as a culture of intense negativity and constant division, but having said that when I’m having my storm cloudy moments I’m trying to focus on the rainbow. Wallowing in bad feeling tends to nurture and cultivate that sense of dissatisfaction until it becomes suffocating. There’s a tremendous amount of good in fandom space. Good people, good ideas, tireless effort, incredible organisation, passion, creativity and vibrancy. There’s a huge amount to feel positively about and whilst I would never advocate for a laissez faire, entirely non-critical approach, I also think everyone has their own capacity for critical thinking and the way those thoughts can permeate and shape our whole experience of fandom and - by extension - influence our creative abilities. I’ve learned to focus more on the things I get out of fandom that make me happy, to retain a critical eye on things as I always will given the nature of my research, but not to allow the critical to obscure the many positive things about fandom.

Evaluating Self-Worth: I’ve really tried in the latter part of this year not to measure myself or my worth by external metrics of success. The kudos, the hits, the number of followers, the amount of positive interaction over anonymous messages, the posts I’m tagged in, the hype, the rec lists I’m on or not on, and so on. Comparing yourself to other people can lead to resentment and frustration or to an inflated sense of self-importance. It says a little something about how I started the year that I thought I want to grow my tumblr and write a really successful fic, and thought I would know if I had accomplished that by feedback and response. I’m actually quite embarrassed to admit that because I think it makes me look like a dick, and I’m super pleased with the support my fics get in any event, but I wanted to share it because I think it’s important in terms of this lesson I’ve learned this year. I went from a place of being very focused on external measures of success to ending this year realising that my most successful stories have been the ones I’m proudest of and they are not the ones with the most hits or kudos. Those are the stories that I enjoyed creating the most, and the ones that left me feeling incredibly positive and proud at the end of this year, looking forward to the next year in fandom and planning projects that I already know won’t be the most popular, but they are the ones I’m creatively excited about and inspired by, so those are the ones I should be focusing on. Despite its resistance to corporate structures, there’s something very capitalist about the way we can sometimes be lured into evaluating self-worth in fandom, and those structures are embedded within fandom itself. They won’t go away, but focusing on them doesn’t half make me unhappy.

Support Other Creators: It’s easy to let negative feelings overwhelm the way we interact with one another in fandom. One of the most important lessons I��ve learned this year is that you get back what you put in. Through supporting other creators you build friendships formed around shared creative passions and interests. You feel pride in your friends accomplishments. You improve your own work by reading widely, cheerleading, editing, beta reading, alpha reading, brit picking. Writing can be a lonely endeavour but it doesn’t have to be that way when you’re part of a community that uplifts others.

Treat People With Kindness: Not everybody has the same levels of confidence or the same energy for rigorous debate. We all have days where we feel like we could crack into pieces, where we feel lonely, invisible, anxious, excluded, unhappy or fragile. It’s easy to be brave behind a computer screen, but ultimately people on the other end are going through stuff in the same way we all are. I’m making a concerted effort in 2019 to engage patiently and respectfully with opinions I disagree with and to be open to anyone who wants to chat or talk through things. I want to work on building new friendships (yeah, I’m going to slide into your DMs, like hiiiii :D) and maintaining old ones, ensuring I give back the same energy and support I get from friends so they know how appreciated they are. I started this year thinking Tumblr required a level of saltiness and a dgaf attitude that’s never been me, honestly. The lesson I’ve learned this year is to resist going along with the pile and to stop and think before engaging. For some people that might seem like an annoying attempt to sit on the fence and please everyone which is never going to happen, but to be honest I think it’s all about finding what works for you in that regard. I’m here for the hot takes and the salt at times, but tbh it’s pretty much just not me. Even when I’ve responded heatedly to an anonymous message that thoroughly deserved it, it’s felt performative and weird and I’m just not going to do that anymore.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! If you ever want to chat fandom thoughts then I’m always open to that and hope everyone has a very happy 2019!

#fandom reflections #on fandom #waffling on #about me #2018 reflections

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skammovistarplus · 6 years

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Culture and Translation - S01 E01 C05-12

This post deals with cultural and translation concepts in clips 6 to 12, from episode 1. I also wrote about some things that I forgot to mention in the first post. I think this is it for the first episode, though. Let me know if there is stuff you’re still unclear about.

CLIP 5: Let us discuss ALEJANDRO

As I mentioned in the first post (just click the tag), in Spain groups are pretty stable through class periods. Therefore, and based on who we’ve seen in clip 3, Eva, Lara, Lucas, Amira, Viri and Alicia all go to class together. Amira may have met Nora in class, or during break. Cris may be part of the same group, since I gathered Viri is her class president as well.

Prior to the show airing, there was some discussion over what kind of vehicle Alejandro would drive. It is EXTREMELY unusual for a Spanish high schooler to drive a car.

You can only get a driver’s license when you turn 18.

It is a somewhat involved process.

A student turns 18 in his or her second year of Bachillerato, AFTER the New Year. This is similar to Norway. Chris Berg (born the 6th of January, 1999) and Sana (born the 24th of December, 1999) are in the same grade.

Even if Alejandro had the money and means to get a driver’s license and a car in as painless a process as possible, finding a parking spot in the heart of Madrid is a fucking nightmare. My high school teachers came to work via public transit.

We find out in clip 5 that Alejandro comes to school on a motorbike. This is fine; you can get a driver’s license for a motorbike when you turn 16. There are some limits on how powerful the engine can be, but it’s still a bike.

That said, when the profile for Alejandro went up, we found out he’s been held back a year (like Even) and he’s already 18. So he could theoretically show up with a car in the future. This factoid also implies things about Alejandro that weren’t a factor for the other Williams. All the other Williams haven’t had issues education-wise.

CLIP 6: In which Eva’s lineage is besmirched

Eva has already called Lucas a son of a bitch, but in this clip, we get the female form. Daughter of a bitch just doesn’t roll off the tongue as well as the male form, so I settled on fucking bastard.

I could’ve translated it as any number of slut-shaming slurs, but. Given the themes in Eva’s season, I think the actual slut shaming slurs will come out eventually, and I want to make a distinction between those and what Inés calls Eva in this specific clip. Right now, Inés isn’t making an issue of Eva’s sluttiness, but rather her mother’s. Who probably has no idea any of this is happening, but hey. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Inés also tells Eva, “Flipo contigo.” I translated this as the appalled, disbelieving, “I can’t believe you.” The literal translation would be “I’m tripping on [your attitude].” “Flipar” makes reference to the effects a drug has on your consciousness, mainly hallucinations. The construction “flipar contigo” can be positive or negative. They might be appalled with you, as is Inés, or they may think you’re amazing. They might think you’re boasting, or that you’re literally high! So many options!

CLIP 7: Jorge Is Concerned

Jorge has a Slytherin folder! I thought the snake was Lucas. Cute detail, though.

I know that shippers gonna ship, and you’re not going to want to warm up to a Jonas when Penetrator Chris is coming. Still, Jorge might be the most attuned to Eva’s emotions of all the Jonases. He knows something is wrong and insists that she tell him, over and over in this clip.

Hugo and Dilan are apparently doing some kind of Fortnite meme? They could be doing a Polish traditional dance for all I know.

Hugo congratulates Dilan on a dance well danced by calling him a “cabrón.” Literally, this word would mean that Dilan is being cuckolded. For a number of reasons, I will be translating “cabrón” as bastard or asshole, unless someone actually gets cuckolded.

You can check the shows happening in Madrid on the 14th of September, if you would like to make a guess as to where the boys went that was so packed: here.

CLIP 8: Endorphin hits

I already mentioned this on Twitter, but Eva taking off her jeans to put on pajama pants, yet keeping the top she wore to school, is peak relatable.

Eva ordered a pizza from Telepizza. I find them to be too greasy and prefer other chains, but it’s certainly Spanish as fuck.

Again, I can’t tell what she’s snacking on while she reheats the pizza. Some kind of squared-shaped crackers, yes, but the brand isn’t obvious. She also grabs a few ruffled chips.

CLIP 9: These three dumbasses

I’ve said elsewhere that my top 3 Skam characters are Eva, Isak and Sana. That said, I have a huge weak spot for the Eva/Isak/Jonas trio and their dynamic in season 1. It’s a friend group that starts out seemingly stable—a couple and their best friend—but one of the thorough-lines of season 1 is how it comes to disintegrate into lies, cheating and manipulation. All the ingredients for that eventual implosion are subtly interwoven in this clip, and deployed nicely for a wholly original clip.

Tomás Aguilera is doing some great work here, he genuinely looks and sounds like he’s exhausted. But it also means he’s slurring some of his lines. I have listened to them with headphones, had someone else listen to them with the speed slowed down . . . No dice. I tried for an approximation, instead. The lines that are giving me problems are, “el triunfo está siendo una puta ______ en el campo” and “_____ se lo compró sola, ¿eh?”

I love that both Lucas and Eva are wannabe football commentators.

Jorge calls himself “el puto amo,” an extremely common way of bragging. There are in fact og Skam parody subs kicking around on Twitter, where Eskild tells Isak to say that, “Eskild es el putísimo amo,” instead of a guru. A literal translation would be, “the fucking boss/master.” I think these are both valid translations, but I already used “master” for the first clip for a totally different word. “Boss” is good, but I find “badass” to be a much more common way to brag.

Jorge calls himself a badass, and Eva replies, “Te has flipado muchísimo.” This is, again, about “flipar” or tripping. Eva thinks Jorge’s bragging is so over the top that he’s actually tripping—on the drug that is his own ego. In this case, I did go for the literal translation. Their banter is fairly par for the course. Jorge wants to build Eva up, since he just bailed on her, and he succeeds at least at making her smile.

Lucas says of Eva’s hat that it “tiene estilo,” i.e. the hat is stylish. I translated it as, “the little hat is something.” I am aware that it loses some of the subtext about Lucas. I definitely wouldn’t fight a literal translation of the sentence. This is where I go full meta. Are the writers trying to say something about Lucas by having him say that? Or is that something any Spanish dude would say to be sarcastic? I’ve met a lot of straight guys who’d say something like that just to be funny, so I picked something that was a bit more subtle. Lucas is still commenting on Eva’s clothes, rather than Eva’s body or any number of things someone who was into girls would find attractive. He’s just doing it in a way an English-speaking straight dude would go about it. But this is a very personal take, so your mileage may vary. AM I STRAIGHT-WASHING LUCAS, especially since the people watching these subs will have probably watched all other remakes and know what’s coming? A question to ponder.

CLIP 10: Ye olde bait-and-switch pt. II

More thoughts on class trips. As I mentioned previously, I went to Majorca when I was 14. These girls will be turning 17 next year. Because of that, I find Majorca to be a bit of a destination for kiddies. When I did Baccalaureate, the class trip was to Prague, Czech Republic. This is still a thing. In fact, the high school where Skam España is filmed organizes a trip to Prague for Baccalaureate first years.

I’m not naming the school here because it took only a couple days for someone to learn where the show is shot, to go and crash the filming. Let’s avoid another Nissen situation, folks.

The fact that Viri wants to go to Majorca comes across, to me, as Viri being more immature than her peers. But, it might also be that she missed out on an earlier class trip at her former school. Or she knows that parents would absolutely not allow a bunch of high school girls to go to Prague without an adult to supervise them. Or that they won’t ever get enough money to subsidize an international trip, and she’s managing her expectations and ambitions. Or the trip is actually going to take place and it’s easier for the production team to film in Majorca.

At any rate, this trip, much like my trip to Majorca, is not supposed to entail any learning. They’re going to spend the whole day at the beach, and the whole night partying. As an aside, when Viri comments on how hot the guys are, she sounds like a divorcee ogling hot dudes. It’s hilarious because she’s so young. I tried to have that come across in translation.

There was some discussion about Cris in this trip. Og Chris Berg was someone who, while colorful in her own way, did her best to avoid confrontation. She’d much rather not say anything, rather than say something that could possibly offend someone. We see here that Cris Soto is a different kind of Chris. I could start rambling about the way the different remakes have adapted Chris, but I’ll keep this to Skam España. My impression is that, because Amira’s actress has been very vocal about the ignorance she encounters as a hijabi, Skam España is making more of an effort from the jump to show that ignorance. (In the og, we only really start to see this ignorance on the part of the whole girl squad when we get to Sana’s season. The previous impression was that only Vilde was ignorant.) I don’t feel that Cris is being intentionally rude, although Amira is certainly put off—and right to be, since Cris is making a joke about a piece of garment.

Cris just seems like she doesn’t know much about what Amira’s life is like. And although she doesn’t get it, particularly, she’s willing to go with whatever Amira feels is right for her.

As in the og, Cris brings Amira into the group. The difference is that it’s Amira who tips Nora. Of course, Noora only joined the bus group to get to know Eva, but also Sana. It works!

CLIP 11: Madison, Wisconsin

Mr. Wonderful is a Spanish enterprise that takes inspirational/cheesy/corny stuff you’d find on Instagram, puts them on all kinds of merchandise and sells them. As you might’ve gathered from previous clips, Spanish people are a bit more rough and tumble than the Mr. Wonderful products would suggest. So while popular among some, Mr. Wondeful stuff is also hugely backlashed. There’s an instagram account called puterful_es that takes demotivators and slaps them on merchandise, too. Hilariously, Eva follows both Mr. Wonderful and Puterful on Instagram.

I know that people who watched og Skam saw Ingrid and Sara as the popular girls. However, as the show goes on, we learn that Ingrid, Sara, and their crew, are first years, just like Eva. They’re only starting to build their rep at school. The truly popular and feared girls are Maria and her Rad Girls bus crew. This isn’t the case with Inés and Alicia (who earlier was a total idiot about Amira wearing a hijab). These girls are THE girls you want to have on your side, or your projects won’t ever get off the ground.

Amira thinks it’s notable that she was born in Spain, instead of being born somewhere else and moving to Spain. I guess that makes her identity more in turmoil, since she’s constantly moving between two worlds. I think all the Sanas were born in the cities the Skams are set.

Nora is from Madison! I know @lightsandlostbells finds it hugely amusing. So do I! You’d expect someone like the Noora expy to come from someplace glamorous or exotic. Noora, Manon and Mia came from Madrid. Who knows what red-lipped woman of mystery Eleonora has done with her life. Grace is from Dallas, so not that high in the exotic scale. So far, we don’t know whether Liv has spent time anywhere else. There’s some exotism to be mined just from the magic words “Estados Unidos,” but it’s clear the girls don’t find Madison hugely impressive. If Nora had come from New York or Los Angeles, the meeting would’ve gone off the rails because the girls would have so many questions.

In real life, Nora’s actress Nicole Wallace’s father is from the D.C. area, while her mom is Spanish.

Viri’s façade is torn to pieces when she sullenly mutters, “De puta madre.” This would be a sarcastic way of saying, “Fucking great.” I picked fucking hell, but in hindsight, I’d fix that. Subs are a continuous work in progress, I’ve found.

There has also been some discussion regarding house parties. House parties have not been part of my Spanish teenage experience. It is far, far more common to go to “botellones.” I know there’s some confusion over what a botellón is or isn’t, so I’ll explain. There are some public places in Spanish cities (parks, squares, basically any decently-lit place with space to accommodate hundreds of people) where teenies will gather every weekend. They will bring their own beverages and get drunk. They will mingle, perhaps meet someone new and hook up. Botellones are unofficial gatherings. You don’t need to get an invite. It’s a public place. You go there because you know other people are going to be there. You can hit botellones in other neighborhoods for a change of pace, and no one’s going to tell you to stay out.

It is much cheaper to buy some booze at a convenience store, than to buy a drink or several at a bar. Besides, the drinking age in Spain is 18, so the girls wouldn’t necessarily be able to get into a club, and they’d be carded.

I’m not sure whether we will see botellones in Skam España, simply because the logistics of filming one would be really complicated. You’d need about a hundred extras, each with an NDA, the willing participation and silence of a neighborhood, and to make sure no one’s going to wander in and find a camera crew filming everyone. That said, the trailer did contain some videos clearly shot at botellones. Possibly actual botellones, not ones for the show.

But back to the house parties. While they haven’t been part of my experience, I’m told they do happen, in neighborhoods that are way posher than mine. Alejandro and Cristián are implied to be that rich, so I guess it works. More on that in episode 2 commentary.

Amira implies she wouldn’t be successful at flirting, because her hijab would put guys off. This is a departure from the og, where the Penetrators were certainly into the idea of partying with Sana. I’m not sure I believe that plenty of Spanish guys wouldn’t want to hit that BECAUSE of the hijab, too. And let’s be clear, while Amira singles Eva and Nora out as pretty, none of these girls would have an issue getting hot dudes to consider them.

My parents wouldn’t have been happy to find I’ve been drinking their beer, while underage, and offering it to my similarly underage friends.

CLIP 12: Can’t miss that backpack

The microphones caught bits of a background conversation mentioning Ramadan, but I don’t think that was intentional. I didn’t include it in the subs. If a random conversation, such as the girl from the og that was hungover on Wednesday, seems relevant, I’ll include it.

Much like Jorge, Nora has caught on that there’s something wrong with Eva. She asks her if she’s fine several times. Also, I guess since Nora just came from MADISON, WISCONSIN, UNITED STATES, she’s still not great with the bus system. She did get to the meeting late, after all.

#skam españa #skam spain #skamesp #skames #culture and translation

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elegant-etienne · 6 years

Note

☮ - How much your muse worries about appearance + ‽ - Something your muse has problems understanding

Headcanon meme!

☮

Etienne might seem like the type to worry about it, and while they do have things they’re self-conscious about - their weight, their shape, their habits being deemed unattractive - I don’t think they worry as much as someone might expect them to considering the effort they put into their appearance. To them, being high femme is an act of joy and defiance, and it’s very deliberate. It gives them happiness and confidence to present themself this way. Since starting transition their dysphoria has eased a lot. There is, for better or worse, an element of self-consciousness in more casual situations, where ‘dressed down’ might make them appear more masculine, and they feel vulnerable in those situations and tend to avoid letting others they don’t know interact with them.

Adi is in a weird spot with that kind of thing. He’s lived most of his life only doing the bare minimum to care for himself, hygiene to be clean for healing and little else. Adornments and the like are just senseless as it’s “not useful”, but he’s found some happiness in wearing things he ‘likes’ and he wants to look nice on dates as Etienne has taught him if you think an occasion - or the company you’re meeting - is special - then you should dress accordingly, as a sign of respect and care. Similarly, Eti gifted him with a bit of makeup and nail polish since he expressed curiosity in them. However, Etienne is trying carefully to steer him in the direction of simply doing things that make him happy and comfortable rather than stressing him out about appearances, since Adi thinks of himself as extremely disgusting and unattractive so there’s no use in really even trying to ‘fix’ it.

Kadin doesn’t care about what other people think of him unless they condescend to him. This extends to his appearance as well. In the past he felt a bit self-conscious about his top surgery scars but because he’s got some other really really wicked ones he brags about (specifically where he got kicked in the face by a boar, and a huge starburst scar on his abdomen from a near-fatal arrow wound), cis people have literally never noticed it because they just figure it’s part of the whole adventuring package. These days he’d probably be happy to run around in aught else but a loincloth but he’s been warned that’s indecent.

Pelhi is butch. She has a very specific look in mind for herself, dress and hair and so on, and that is an expression of her identity. ICly and OOCly there was always an issue with her, being a small miqo’te, gaining attention from men in any populated areas when she had a ‘cuter’ look where she modeled off her own clothes. Chopped the hair off, got rid of the make up, wear nothing but strong, sensible, masc clothes, and voila, men never bother her. She doesn’t ‘worry’ about it but she does have a deliberate vision behind her presentation, not unlike Etienne, though in the opposite direction.

‽

Etienne nearly goes into meltdown mode when people aren’t charmed by them. They fall prey very easily to cultural misunderstandings even though they consider themself very openminded and sensitive toward others. In other words, they really have trouble letting go of ‘rudeness’. They don’t know how to handle people that can’t be ‘handled’. Also, they think everyone in their right mind should stay tf away from old magics and technologies because those clearly resulted in the downfall of prominent civilizations. If it didn’t work out very well the first time for the people who knew it well enough to event it, why do people think they’ll do better?

Adi doesn’t have a lot of use for things that exist to just be fun or pretty. This includes social interaction and niceties. He’s been isolated and abused for so long he simply doesn’t understand the ins and outs of a larger society or the concessions people make to get along, and until he actually made connections out of the tiny, cultlike family he was born into, he didn’t understand why anyone would bother to try. He’s learning, but he finds it very puzzling. When you care about someone you express it? You want people to be happy? You don’t yell at people when they’re wrong? What?

Kadin is shrewder than he appears. He generally understands society but prefers living on the edge of it or outside of it, because he doesn’t see the benefit in existing within a structure that’s harmed and oppressed him in the past, and he doesn’t wish to agree with it by taking part. He doesn’t ‘get’ why people stay involved with anything that keeps them miserable.

Pelhi struggles to understand her brother. She craves approval from authority and has chosen a life of industry (weaving) so that her art and talents will be eventually recognized. It blows her mind that Kadin genuinely does not seem to care about money, or like, pants.

Thanks for the ask, @sonderjack !

#asks #ic #writing #sonderjack

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jawnkeets · 7 years

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hello sorry to disturb you lovely person but i was wondering if you had some advices to have a better literary analysis, or a better culture well, i mean how can i improve my literary intelligence basically ? ( it may not be really clear but i hope you'll understand because i feel like i'm lost... )

hello anon! no need to be sorry, ur not disturbing me at all :+) feel free 2 send an ask at any time ✨✨✨

i’ll attempt to answer this by splitting ur ask into 2 parts. first i’ll try to give some tips on literary analysis, and then i’ll try to talk about the sort of wider awareness of lit (or the culture as you call it).

a little disclaimer: pls bear in mind that i am by no means qualified to speak about this in any way (i still very much consider myself a learner). i’ve generally been left alone throughout my education to do my own thing, which is a good thing in some respects and a bad thing in others; i don’t have the solid foundations that most ppl do, never following things like paragraph structures throughout lower school, and i didn’t know a thing about metre until the start of this month. however, because of my education i think i’ve managed to avoid a few conventional pitfalls. so, in short, you can take as much or as little of this advice as you like!

PART 1: literary analysis

• an excellent way to boost your analysis straight away, dull as it is, is to learn some literary devices beyond, say, alliteration and personification. being able to spot things like chiasmus and epiphora not only wows an examiner, but also enables you to talk about more things within a poem/ book/ play and thus broadens your literary scope in close reading.• remember that for each literary device you mention you should say what it REVEALS (DO NOT just list!!!). the best essays move from a literary device to an explanation of why this device is used - what does it reveal about a character, the speaker, or even the society that the poet or author was writing in?• rhythm and meter in a poem tick boxes in an exam, but can also lead to insightful analysis. how do the rhythm and meter add to the overall message of the poem? does, for example, the metre give a regularity to the poem? why might this be? is it broken at any point? how is this significant?• the above can be applied to rhyme scheme, too. look out for rhyming couplets at the end of a poem, which may give a sense of finality to the poem (or may seem to give a sense of finality when in actuality the speaker of the poem is far from decisive…).• it is important to remember that a particular rhyme scheme (or metre) doesn’t ALWAYS mean anything; it can mean different things in different poems, so instead of applying a ready-made formula, try to go into the exam knowing how to identify these aspects of a poem and then try to work out why you think the poet has used them in that particular poem. flexibility is key, which can be daunting but also somewhat liberating.• i personally find a ‘scribble method’ quite useful. this is where, when first approaching a piece of writing, you write down everything that comes into your head, regardless of how messy, or how basic. you then sort through your ideas, expanding upon what you think is worthwhile and discarding what you think is not. this method is generally more handy when not under time pressure, though, as it can get you into a muddle in the exam.• start simple and build up. it can be tempting to jump straight in but sometimes when you start simply new things can reveal themselves as you work your way up into more complex ideas! • perspective is extremely useful to consider. who is speaking and why? are they biased or objective? who are they speaking to and why?

unseen exam tips

• in an exam, i would approach a poetry or prose extract first by simply reading it, and trying to find out what it is about. then i would go through and highlight words/ phrases of interest, and label literary devices. finally, i would go through it again and build the main analysis. a brief paragraph plan can be useful before writing the essay.• acronyms can help sometimes as a go-to in an exam when you don’t have much time. for example, i use CFTTSOL - content (basic story, characters, who is speaking and why etc) form (poetry, prose, drama etc), tense (past/ present etc), tone (happy, sad, why? is the tone at odds with the subject matter? in emily dickinson’s ‘because i could not stop for death’, for example, the poem is about something dark but it is very jolly), structure/ syntax (rhyme, caesura, enjambment, any disrupted syntax, etc) other (anything not mentioned in the rest of the categories) and language (similes, metaphors, assonance, etc). i would recommend finding one that works for YOU and makes sense for YOU, because creating your own can really help to ease you into analysis.

PART 2: literary awareness

• read, read, read! i cannot stress the importance of wider reading enough, and also the importance of thinking whilst you read (making notes/ annotating books whilst you read is advisable). i am speaking from experience here - i didn’t read outside of the curriculum at all until the end of last year, and since i have started my literary analysis has increased tenfold. this is partly because practice is vital, but also because wider reading gave me an awareness that i could never have expected to gain. it enabled me to start making links between texts, genres, periods, etc – i began to see patterns and conventions in literature. for instance, a poem that breaks convention is easier to spot and talk about – to use a very basic example, a sonnet (usually a form of love poetry) about brutality/ violence toys with genre. if you had read some of shakespeare’s sonnets, you could then compare the violent poem with sonnet 18, to elucidate your point. this isn’t to say that you didn’t already know that sonnets were love poems, or that you wouldn’t have picked up on this without wider reading. but having read sonnets outside of class means that you can talk about this with greater clarity, authority and confidence.• i would also advise you to push yourself with the literary material you explore. it is difficult, but try to find nothing intimidating - read thick victorian novels, read modernist authors, read kant if you want, and even if the prospect of reading ‘harder’ texts doesn’t thrill you then try them anyway - you may be pleasantly surprised! part of the difficulty of studying this subject is that preconceived ideas can erect barriers and put you off. it is important to totally bulldoze these barriers and remind yourself that nothing is above you, and that you are capable. that’s not at all to say that you can’t read ‘simpler’ texts, and of course it is probably wise to admit to yourself when you perhaps need a greater literary background before you tackle a text (for example, i tried joyce’s ulysses, a modernist text full of allusion, when i have a barely working knowledge of greek mythology, and i admitted to myself that though it would not be impossible for me to read it, i would like to read more widely and then return to it in the future).• w i k i p e d i a. it’s often sniffed at but honestly don’t be afraid of using it! it’s an excellent way to absorb info fast. also don’t be ashamed of using websites like sparknotes if you don’t understand a poem to begin with! u shouldn’t rely on them for the crux of your analysis but they can be helpful to get started!• it’s perhaps obvious, but it helps to remind yourself that literature isn’t just fiction - try to read some critical essays if you can, and look at philosophy, history, psychology etc and how they relate to literature as studied in school. this is actually wayyyy more fun than it sounds (!) and will improve your general literary knowledge.• tumblr, whilst being a killer procrastination station, can also really help to broaden your knowledge. reblogged quotes from famous writers often stick around in your memory, and period moodboards can help you get a sense of different ages and help you to visualise what you’re studying. it’s also great to be in a community of passionate people - the passion of others on this site has definitely rubbed off on me!• make it relevant!! all of these texts and literary movements have shaped our society profoundly. as overdramatic as it sounds, look for the romanticism in a house party, or existentialism in internet memes, or hamlet in yourself. legacies are all around us, and seeing the world in this way can really bring literature to life.

literature is a subject where you get out what you put in. it’s relatively straightforward, if you work hard, to get very good grades in lit; if this is what you want, then having a solid knowledge of metre and literary terms, being able to spot them in texts, and then being able to describe what this reveals can get you top marks. but, in my opinion, to develop true literary intelligence you really have to let the subject permeate every aspect of your life. this is a subject where you really can take risks, be original and unique, and explore a huge amount of periods and ideas. if you see it reflected in the world around you, and think deeply and thoughtfully about everything you are reading, then the classwork honestly sorts itself out.

i hope this has been useful in some way and that it answers ur ask adequately!! if u have any further questions or require clarification please do not hesitate to let me know. i hope u have a wonderful day 💘

#sorry abt the length!!#this is longer than the essay i've been trying to write all day lol #asks #studyblr #litblr #english literature #literature

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sid-ash · 4 years

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Task 1- Group work- Q3

Can you think of any experiences you have had as an audience member that have engaged you deeply in a story? What worked for you? What kept your interest and made you want to find out more? How might some of these ideas work in your own transmedia storyworld?

The interaction with different stories is different; some draw you in; some engage you and some make sure to keep you engaged. Experience as an audience member varies from time to time, whether it’s a movie or a podcast or a docuseries, which ultimately captures interest are the characters involved. For Sidrah, the characters come before the plot and once one or two characters have grabbed her interest, she becomes invested in their lives, curious and keen to find out what happens mainly to them even if they’re not officially considered the main characters. Due to this attachment, in a way plot becomes secondary at times. It doesn’t lose its importance, but it simply means that how the certain characters’ lives are affected by the current and upcoming plotlines is what keeps her interested and one is hoping for everything to work out fine for their preferred characters.

As a group, we came up with multiple story experiences that we’d look up to for inspiration for our own Transmedia story.

For Shahd, taking a simple and personal approach is the way to go to in story delivery, because sometimes, we over complicate things when they can be done in a much simpler way. Taking a recent example, following the Coronavirus Outbreak globally (which led to huge financial losses for organizations worldwide), many companies took decisions to furlough employees. Shahd works in a hotel company and her job was put at risk too since most of the hotels have closed down. However, the company’s President released a video two weeks ago to share a State of the Business Address including an update on HR contingency measures.

Despite sharing negative news with the audience, the video stood out for a number of reasons. First, the President took a very transparent and authentic approach. He seemed very sincere and genuine in his message delivery. He also used personal information such as his hair loss due to Chemotherapy to create a sense of authenticity and vulnerability that cannot be accomplished in any other better way. Although the video was addressed to company employees only, many of the major international news outlets covered the video and used it as a best practice for company transparency during crises. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/marriott-ceo-sorenson-details-crisis-161524903.html

For Urvashi, the first look of a story is crucial. Earlier, trailers weren’t that big in terms of their power to pull in audiences. Now, people may reject or accept a movie/ TV series based on one trailer. Hence, the first look should intrigue the audience, given the sea of content surrounding us nowadays. Also, in Indian cinema, music has historically been the greatest tool of engagement. Indian films consist of many songs and choreographed dance sequences and Indian viewers have accepted the musical form of storytelling since long. Thus, music is often at the front and center of film promotions because a good album draws people in with ease and further pushes the film. So, music of the film too catches her attention (specifically in terms of Hindi movies), since there are certain musical numbers that are presented as spectacles and are best enjoyed on the big screen. For example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdk3brbEkPw&feature=emb_title

Also, pre-credit, mid-credit, post-credit scenes and Easter eggs in a story are really clever and exciting ways to keep the audience invested in a story post their engagement with the content. This is something that Taylor Swift is a master of; her fans are always coming up with theories and trying to guess the significance of clues in her music videos. Not only that, but a sneak peek also gives the audience something to look forward to as they wait for the next installment of a story. It is the gradual building up of an event that holds the audience interest. For example, when Marvel’s Endgame came out, the anticipation was so high that people were avoiding using any social media platforms because there were spoilers all around. For weeks on end, social media was bustling with news about the film, be it spoilers, memes or even emotional posts about it. This was the result of not just the film, but also the Marvel Franchise cementing its place in pop culture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4k_jUIZNfw&feature=emb_title

Talking about re-engaging with a story, studio tours do a great job, for example, Harry Potter World in England, which is an expansive space that houses authentic costumes, props and iconic sets used in Harry Potter. Re-creating such iconic cinematic worlds offers the fans an opportunity to physically be a part of it, renewing their love for a story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=c8bUr6L9AhQ&feature=emb_title

Mille talks about an engaging podcast she heard, which is run by two women in their 30s. They talk about their lives as mothers and moreover, they are trying to embrace the female body. They are doing it by focusing on different stories in which the moral is the fact that there is not one right way to be a woman.

In one specific episode, one woman spoke of a personality test that she had become obsessed with. She explained that there were 8 different kinds of personalities, but when you got your results, the test would not tell you: "You are a number 5 - go ahead and read what that means". No, It will end up saying "There is 68% chance that you are a number 5. There is 53% chance that you are a number 3". Of course all of the 8 personalities were explained in detail, but you were not reduced to one personality type. She explained how the test helped her understand most of her behavior, mechanisms and reactions and made her rethink her ways of life. When she told her story, she was passionate about it and divulged how her personal life had changed with this personality test. Listening to this personal account Mille was tempted to take the test herself.

However, the test results were a huge anticlimax. The test ended up being boring and business-related. Even though the results she got were quite spot on, they were very tedious to read and not as interesting. Thinking about this experience, Mille realized that it was the woman that made the story interesting. The woman she heard was extremely persuasive and could sell sand in the Red Dune Desert! Her compelling use of examples and amazing way of telling the story was very fascinating. She kept the listeners engaged throughout, which is important in building a transmedia storyworld. She took something really relatable and sold it well. Hence also proving that audio is a really effective and creative medium to tell a good story.

Eventually what works in favor of any story has to be the core: the plot, the characters and the world created. In the end, it boils down to personal preferences and what appeals to one’s sensibilities. But, generally speaking, what must work is a story’s ability to transport you to a different world. According to Sidrah, the kind of characters that garner her interest are the ones to whom she relates in some way. They might have several aspects in their lives, which would not share similarities with hers, but simply one of two personality traits or circumstances can spark that interest. Conversely, Urvashi believes that she doesn’t need to relate to a character or a story to enjoy it, what matters is how much the writer and filmmaker believed in it. There are negative characters that have garnered so much acclaim because they were written and performed with conviction and feeling.

So, we can safely say that ultimately what connects people to stories is the human emotion. Hence, even our Transmedia story, we would try to get that right and then use the different engagement methods mentioned above. We would try to make the characters intriguing enough to capture interest while the plot fully supports them without any loopholes so as to ensure that the audience will be able to relate to them in different ways.

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biofunmy · 5 years

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100 Best Memes Of The Decade

Debora Westra for BuzzFeed News

This decade, memes became something not just for a handful of internet nerds who lurked on message boards; memes are now for everyone. The online culture of this decade hasn’t just changed the words we use, it’s changed how we express ourselves. Huge technological shifts of the 2010s led to this: widespread smartphone adoption and the rise of newfangled social media platforms like Vine. Memes also became a business — brands used meme-speak and accounts like @fuckjerry made big bucks by reposting memes.

To determine the ranking of this list, we considered the overall popularity of a meme, its longevity, and historical importance — what kind of impact it had on other memes and internet culture. Here they are:

100.

Yodeling Walmart Kid

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

In 2018, 10-year-old Mason Ramsey sang a Hank Williams song in a Walmart, and the internet went nuts. But this time, the reaction to a precocious kid singing somewhat oddly (a sort of yodeling) was very different than it was in 2011 when Rebecca Black sang “Friday.” Instead of mocking the kid, the internet loved him, declaring the clip a “bop” that “slaps.” This is the change that happened over the decade: Instead of relishing cringe, the more memetic and ironic thing to do is embrace and love something like a child yodeling in a big-box store. Ramsey has gone on to have some version of mainstream success, performing country music to live crowds, and, well, good for him. —K.N.

99.

Moth Memes

Twitter: @thebobpalmer

Much like a moth is drawn to a flame, we were drawn to memes about moths and their unquenchable thirst for lamps in summer 2018. They got their start with a Reddit post that July, a close-up photo someone took of a moth, which people soon began captioning and photoshopping until it took on a life of its own as a meme. There’s really not much you can say about moth memes, besides that they are funny and good and I will love them until I die. —J.R.

Every generation has its subcultures, and in 2019, Gen Z’s was undoubtedly VSCO girls. The aesthetic comes with a number of signifiers: scrunchies (piled high on the wrist), Hydro Flask water bottles (covered in stickers), puka shell necklaces, oversized T-shirts, Crocs, Fjällräven backpacks, metal straws (save the turtles!), Carmex lip balm, and the ubiquitous catchphrases, “sksksk — and I oop.” The easy-breezy look, named for the photo editing app VSCO, was essentially “Tumblr girl” meets “basic white girl.” Though the style became trendy in earnest through Instagram and internet stars like Emma Chamberlain, it catapulted to popularity (and mockery) on TikTok. —J.R.

97.

Duck Army

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Kevin Innes, a Norwegian twentysomething, was in a store with his girlfriend one day when they came across a bin of squeaking duck-shaped (technically, the toy is a pelican) dog toys. To embarrass his girlfriend, he pressed down on the whole bin, and an unholy cacophony that sounds like the wheezing sum total of human misery was released. Innes posted to Facebook, then YouTube, and then someone else ripped his YouTube video and posted it to Vine, where it went viral. The beauty of this 2015 meme was a perfect Vine: absurd, easy to understand, surprising, and based on something that happened in real life. —K.N.

96.

Deep-Fried Memes

reddit.com

You might not even know what they’re called if you saw them, but a deep-fried meme is one of those pictures that has been screenshotted, edited, and reuploaded across Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit so many times that has started to degrade in quality. At first this deep-frying process was largely genuine, kids refiltering and remixing each other’s images. But as the phenomenon became more known, a second wave of ironically deep-fried images started to appear. It’s a fairly silly thing on its surface, but it also speaks to the innate desire for people to share stuff online. If Instagram had a share button, there’s a good chance this sort of thing would have never started happening in the first place. The walled culs-de-sac of proprietary platforms will never be able to stop the world’s teens from sharing a picture of Peter Griffin from Family Guy smoking a huge blunt. —R.B.

95.

Twitter Sign Bunny

|￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣| vaccines save lives you stupid motherfucker |＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿| (__/) || (•ㅅ•) || / 　づ

02:12 PM – 01 Dec 2019

A series of ASCII image memes popped up on Twitter this decade: “Howdy, I’m the sheriff of,” “In this house we…” “got dat” cat, a stick figure falling off a building, or even the simple ¯_(ツ)_/¯ or (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻. These work in part because they visually take up a lot of space on the Twitter timeline, making them stick out and be more likely to be interacted with or remembered. Plus, there implies some element that the poster has some technical abilities to be able to summon the ASCII. But it’s the bunny that’s had staying power over those other ones. —K.N.

94.

Doggos and Puppers

This is Rey. She’s a very puptective doggo mommo. Will grrbork bork at any potential threat. 13/10 heartwarming as h*ck

12:00 AM – 20 Oct 2017

Dogs have been man’s best friend for thousands of years, but only around 2015 did they evolve into “doggos” and “puppers.” “Doggo-speak,” as NPR called it, arose in Facebook groups like “Dogspotting” before exploding on Twitter with the @dog_rates Twitter account. The lingo is characterized by cutesy nicknames for dogs (Samoyeds are “floofs” or “clouds,” corgis are “loaves,” any huge fluffy dog is a big boofin’ woofer) and onomatopoeia (a doggo can “bork,” or stick their tongues out and do a “blep” or “mlem”). To me, it’s a fascinating as “h*ck” thing that an entire dialect, with all its own grammar and syntax and vocabulary rules, could spring up in an organic way online. —J.R.

93.

Planking

CC BY-SA 3.0 / Donkey100 / Via commons.wikimedia.org

In 2011, everyone was taking pictures lying facedown on the ground, rigid as a board. It was a thing, and that thing was called planking. Plankers would assume the pose in unexpected places — atop a car, inside a supermarket freezer, even across two camels — then get a buddy to snap a picture. The trend got so big The Office even did a cold open about it. Soon, it spun off into other photo pose trends, including owling and leisure diving, but it also sadly led to at least one death.

Eight years later, these photo memes can feel a bit old-school, but they represent a key moment when ready access to cameras (both the digital kind and iPhones, which were still pretty new) was still a novelty, and people were leaning into ways to use it creatively. —J.R.

The point of bros icing bros was simple: At any point during the day, present a warm bottle of Smirnoff Ice to your bro, and he has to get down on one knee and chug the cursed beverage. However, if he produces his own bottle immediately, he is exempted, and it is you who must chug. This prank was the peak of IRL-memeing in 2011. Smirnoff denied any sort of marketing stunt, which makes sense if you consider that the central conceit is that being forced to drink a Smirnoff Ice is a form of punishment. The meme threatened a resurgence in 2017, but never really caught on again. —K.N.

91.

Bone App The Teeth

In 2016, someone posted a pic of white bread just absolutely smothered in corn and captioned it with a phrase that ignited a million memes: “bone app the teeth.” Those four words — sometimes edited to “bone apple tea,” “bone ape tit,” or even more bonkers iterations — became the battle cry for shitty food porn posters everywhere. It’s a pretty simple meme, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at a picture of Goldfish sushi or a chicken noodle watermelon without completely losing it. —J.R.

90.

Clowns

Instagram: @davie_dave

Remember that brief moment in fall 2016 when towns around the US were overtaken by mass hysteria over scary clowns being spotted in the woods (which then immediately stopped being a concern when Trump got elected and everyone suddenly had other stuff to worry about)? Yeah, that was a thing that happened. Clowns had quite a ~moment~ in the latter half of the 2010s. Less than a year after the clown sightings, a remake of the horror movie It came out, prompting a ton of memes of Pennywise in the sewer and dancing (and, of course, people wanting to fuck the It clown). The clown memes just kept going from there, with clown photos being used as reaction images to illustrate our most dumbass moments. Sometimes I wonder if those clowns are still in the woods. I hope they’re happy. —J.R.

89.

Kim Kardashian Breaks the Internet

Jean-Paul Goude / papermag.com

In November 2014, Kim Kardashian appeared on the cover of Paper magazine bearing her whole entire ass. It went massively viral, and people immediately got to work photoshopping it into a centaur, Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” (which had just come out), the turkey in a Norman Rockwell painting, you name it. The phrase on the cover “break the internet,” would go on to become timeworn, but it all started with Kim K and her big, glossy butt. —J.R.

88.

Bed Intruder

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

In July 2010, Antoine Dodson appeared on the local news in Alabama after a home invader attempted to assault his sister, saying: “He’s climbin’ in your windows, he’s snatchin’ your people up… So y’all need to hide your kids, hide your wife…” The news clip went viral, and a few days later, Dodson’s words were remixed into the Auto-Tuned “Bed Intruder Song,” which made it onto the Billboard 100 charts and become the most-viewed YouTube video of 2010.

“Bed Intruder Song” captured two powerful vectors that would come to define the rest of the decade: a normal person being propelled to some sort of viral fame, and a critical backlash over the exploitative race, gender, and class dynamics. At the time, some people pointed out that turning a video of poor black man expressing anguish over the attempted sexual assault of his sister was problematic. Years later, this feels even more true. Dodson went on to a strange post-virality career, with a reality show that never got off the ground, celebrity boxing matches, controversial statements about being gay, and a Trump endorsement. —K.N.

87.

Alex From Target

Alex LeBoeuf / Twitter: @auscalum (deleted)

In November 2014, a young woman tweeted a photo of a teenage checkout clerk at Target with Alex on the nametag. Her tweet was simply, “YOOOOOOOO,” signaling that, well, this teen boy was cute. The tweet went viral, and people fell in love with this mysterious Alex from Target, creating memes and tributes in his image, leading anyone over the age of 23 to wonder: What the fuck is happening here?

There was some legitimate confusion over how and why Alex’s photo blew up. An internet marketing company stepped forward, claiming that it had gotten the original girl to tweet the photo of Alex as a viral marketing stunt, and seeded the meme with inorganic retweets and promotion. But the woman who made the tweet (whose Twitter account is now suspended) said she had never heard of the marketing company, and that she just randomly found the photo on Tumblr and tweeted it out, and it seems that the marketing company was trying to claim stolen viral valor.

But the ending wasn’t so great for the guy at the center of it. Alex LaBeouf, who went by Alex Lee as a stage name, eventually dropped out of high school because he had missed so many days to fly to Los Angeles for appearances on talk shows. He was homeschooled and joined the 2015 DigiTour, a tour for social media stars, mainly Vine stars at the time. In a 2017 video, he said that his managers at the time had stolen $30,000 from him, and since then he’s abandoned his public social media accounts. —K.N.

86.

Insane Clown Posse’s “Miracles”

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The music video for “Miracles” debuted in April 2010. The song had been kicking around since 2009, but the video is what really did it. It’s been viewed 18 million times — and watching it back in 2019, it is still just as deranged as it was when it debuted. A lot of the meme songs on this list exist in that uncanny valley of like “misunderstood banger.” I want to be clear: “Miracles” is not that. It is a nonsense song. And while it’s best remembered for its “fuckin’ magnets, how do they work” and “Magic everywhere in this bitch” lines, I would argue the best part is the line about pelicans: “I fed a fish to a pelican at Frisco Bay / It tried to eat my cellphone, he ran away / And music is magic, pure and clean / You can feel it and hear it but it can’t be seen.” Damn, that’s real. —R.B.

85.

First-World Problems

Thinkstock / Twitter: @ughshaye

When you’re eating nachos and one stabs the roof of your mouth, when one pillow is too low but two pillows is too high; these sorts of issues — annoying, but generally indicating your life is pretty easy and privileged — were best summarized by the early-2010s macro image “First-World Problems.” A lot of things feel dated about “first-world problems” memes, ranging from the style of the image all the way to the use of the concept of countries being first world vs. third world. But the meme was also one of the first concerning social privilege, which many people would learn about for the first time in the 2010s. —J.R.

84.

Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge

vine.co

Kylie Jenner dominated the 2010s, particularly with the launch of her Kylie Lip Kits in 2015. The now-billionaire’s lips had been the subject of gossip and envy that year when she suddenly debuted thick, pillowy lips (the result of lip fillers, though she denied it until two years later). The star kicked off something of a lip-plumping craze, and teens starting trying to plump their own lips by sticking them in shot glasses and sucking till they swelled up. Needless to say, it did not come doctor-recommended.

The rise in popularity of injectable fillers and the instabaddie takeover are inextricably linked to the Kardashian/Jenner family’s influence. Each trend made way for the other, clearing the way for a bunch of teens to damage their faces to score Kylie-level lips. —J.R.

83.

Sad Keanu

nerdlikeyou.com

Keanu Reeves kickstarted the decade as a meme after a paparazzi photo of him eating a sandwich on a park bench was shared on 4chan. “Instead of Chuck Norris, let’s make Keanu Reeves a meme,” one redditor wrote as the image started to spread. Which is interesting to think about — that this particular decade, one so heavily shaped by increasingly radicalized social media platforms, began with users of heavily male communities like 4chan and Reddit deciding to abandon an aggressively masculine meme like Chuck Norris and instead embrace a picture of disheveled loneliness. Splash News, the agency behind the photo, has attempted to remove the picture from the internet via DMCA takedowns, but Reeves and his sandwich have proved too popular (and photoshoppable) to really scrub away. As for how Reeves feels about the whole thing, at the time he told the BBC, “Do I wish that I didn’t get my picture taken while I was eating a sandwich on the streets of New York? Yeah.” —R.B.

82.

“Haven’t Heard That Name in Years”

Twitter: @goIfkart

As you read this list, you’re probably at various points looking at a meme, taking a drag on a cigarette, and saying, “Gangnam Style? Haven’t heard that name in years.” —K.N.

If you dumped a bucket of ice over your head in summer 2014, it was probably to raise money for ALS research in the Ice Bucket Challenge. The challenge involved participants dousing themselves in ice water on video, then nominating others to either do the same or make a donation to fund ALS research. Many did both, using the viral videos to promote the cause, and the ALS Association wound up raising more than $100 million in a month. The rare meme that did demonstrable good. Sadly, the man who inspired the meme died in December 2019. —J.R.

80.

“I’m in Me Mum’s Car, Broom Broom”

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A Vine of a British girl in her mum’s car (broom broom) was a perfect Vine: It makes no sense, it doesn’t follow any known comedy format, it’s vaguely cringe, and yet it’s so silly it’s guaranteed to make you laugh. The brief and glorious life of Vine thrived on these moments of surprising and unexpected humor. TikTok is the closest thing we have now to Vine, and yet it requires a certain knowledge of its memes and tropes to “get” it. “I’m in me mum’s car, broom broom” only requires you to be a human with a pulse to find Tish Simmonds’ 2014 masterpiece funny. —K.N.

79.

The Rent Is Too Damn High

Kathy Kmonicek / AP

The thing about Jimmy McMillan’s slogan for the 2010 New York gubernatorial campaign is that he’s absolutely correct: The rent IS too damn high, and he was accurately predicting the coming housing market crisis in New York City. McMillan was a minor local politics figure, having run for mayor a few years earlier. But it was the televised debates for the governor’s race in 2010 that brought him national fame for his flamboyant facial hair, gloves, and his one-issue campaign platform. He was parodied on Saturday Night Live, and a meme was born. —K.N.

78.

“What Does the Fox Say?”

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Few music videos of 2010s hit it bigger than one by Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis, as they tried to answer a perplexing question: What does the fox say? The video — which featured a cast of people dressed up in animal costumes and a whole slew of sounds a fox might purportedly say — was named the top trending video on YouTube in 2013. It’s a video that feels definitively old, and it’s hard to imagine it coming out now and being earnestly enjoyed, but we were doing lots of things more earnestly back then. And I’d bet you anything you still know the words. —J.R.

77.

Hot Dogs or Legs

times-new-romann.tumblr.com

Showing off your tan in 2013? The trendiest vacation humblebrag in 2013 was snapping a pic of your thighs and captioning it “hot dogs or legs.” The meme first went viral on Tumblr but had a long life on Instagram afterward. This was mostly annoying, unless it was actually hot dogs, which was pretty funny. –J.R.

76.

Darude’s “Sandstorm”

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One of the bright spots about the 2010s is the way that young people immediately understood and identified the parts of shit culture of the ’90s and ’00s, and mercilessly mocked it. Guy Fieri, Shrek, Bee Movie, and the hit 1999 techno song “Sandstorm” by Darude. To be fair, “Sandstorm” is probably the best and most well-known trance song, but still, it’s incredible silly. It also became a huge meme to namedrop the song in the comment sections of random YouTube videos. What’s silliest about it is the idea that it has lyrics (it does not), and they’re simply dun dun dun dun dun dun DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN dun dun dun dun. —K.N.

75.

*Record Scratch*

*record scratch* *freeze frame* Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.

03:44 PM – 25 Aug 2016

*record scratch* *freeze frame* Yup, that’s me. I’m a meme you could not stop seeing all over your feed in 2016. The meme was based on the clichéd movie trope in which a protagonist would begin to explain how they got themself into a ~wacky situation~. The meme spread quickly, with Twitter users aligning the text with all sorts of images. This was not the first text-based Twitter meme, nor would it be the last, but its takeover was so big it eventually became a Twitter trope in and of itself. —J.R.

74.

Double Rainbow

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What makes Paul Vasquez’s effusive awe at seeing a double rainbow distinctly from 2010 as opposed to 2019 is how it’s barely what we’d call a “meme” now. It’s a viral video, sure, and it was one of the first truly huge and popular ones. In many ways, even though it happened in 2010, it resembled the memes of the 2000s more: It went viral after Jimmy Kimmel’s show account tweeted it, and it spread over email and Gchat from person to person.

The things we think of as memes now are mostly defined by being iterative: a photo you can write new captions over and over ad nauseum and can mean a million different things. But “Double Rainbow” is just a funny video – you watch it once, you laugh, and that’s it. It’s more of the Tosh.0 version of the internet where there are funny things to be found than the Distracted Boyfriend or Pepe the frog version where there are existing memes that we make our own meaning out of. The monetization of the video was also (by current standards) primitive: He appeared in a Microsoft ad. —K.N.

73.

Mannequin Challenge

There were a lot of dance crazes and video fads in the 2010s — the suddenly widespread use of phones with cameras made it possible — but few grew as big as the Mannequin Challenge of 2016. The videos involved standing as still as a statue, usually with the song “Black Beatles” by Rae Sremmurd playing. The meme’s origins lie with a group of Florida high schoolers, and within just a few weeks there were Mannequin Challenge videos from pro sports teams, then– presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and quite possibly your family on Thanksgiving. The Mannequin Challenge went viral because it was the stationary dance craze version of the “Cha Cha Slide” — it was family-friendly, everyone could catch on pretty quickly, and it was something that could bring everyone together. —J.R.

72.

“Harlem Shake”

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In early 2013, a dance meme was born. Set to the techno song “Harlem Shake” by Baauer, the premise was to start off dancing very mildly, and when the beat drops, all hell breaks loose and a large group of people dance wildly. It’s stupid, I know. As quickly as the meme came to life, it died: A few days after the first few videos went viral, BuzzFeed’s office did a version (Ryan is in the horse mask; I run and hide into a conference room), and six days after that, the Today show anchors did one, which seemed to everyone to signal the end of the meme. But the real nail in the coffin was in 2017 when FCC chair Ajit Pai did a video to help explain the end of Net Neutrality. —K.N.

71.

Bottle Flipping

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If you were a teen in 2016, you probably flipped a bottle or two. The trend really took off when high school student Mike Senatore executed a flawless flip at his school talent show to rapturous applause. After that, everyone was flipping bottles, and a “replica bottle” signed by Senatore himself fetched over $11,000 on eBay. Teens do all sorts of kooky things, but to this day, it’s hard to watch a video of a perfect bottle flip and NOT feel unbridled joy and triumph. —J.R.

70.

Bronies

Katie Notopoulos / BuzzFeed News

The world first learned of bronies when in 2011 Wired wrote about the adult men who loved the rebooted My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic show. For the next five years, bronies seemed to dominate every aspect of internet culture — they were rampant on Reddit, 4chan, DeviantArt, Twitter, Tumblr, and even IRL conventions (and of course, horrible, horrible version of pony porn, known as “clop”). The fandom morphed through every phase of an online community, including a small faction of fascist bronies, creating fan art of the colorful horses in Nazi uniforms.

No group since furries has been as routinely mocked as the bronies. And yet, now that they’ve sort of faded away slightly, we sort of miss them. —K.N.

68.

Bee Movie

quilavastudy.tumblr.com

According to all known laws of memes, there is no way Bee Movie should have been able to go viral. And yet, posting the entire script to the 2007 movie somehow became a big Tumblr meme. The reasons for this semi-flop movie becoming a meme aren’t totally clear. Perhaps it was the realization of how grotesque the plot is (a bee and a human woman fall in love), perhaps it was that star Jerry Seinfeld was having a moment. Or maybe because it was just because it’s random and shitty movie, which is inherently funny. Unlike beloved childhood characters Shrek or SpongeBob, Bee Movie’s mediocrity is what makes it memeable. The crummier, the more nonsensical the meme, the better. The layers of ironic detachment have to be so thick that to pretend to love Bee Movie and post its entire script is something only someone with a truly online brain in 2015 could be capable of. —K.N.

67.

¯_(ツ)_/¯ (Shruggie)

Fun fact: The symbol in the center of the shruggie is a Japanese Katakana character called “Tsu.” It’s commonly used in Japanese fiction to represent the end of a line of dialogue. Kind of perfect right? Nothing left to say? Shruggie time. The shruggie was the perfect emoticon of the Obama era: a slightly worried-looking, yet pleasantly numb smirk, throwing its hands up at everything’s lack of meaning. Also, it just looks really cool! Things are going to probably only get worse over the next decade, so I say we bring the shruggie back. Let’s all really get into casual nihilism. I mean, everything’s fucked, so why not, right? ¯_(ツ)_/¯ —R.B.

66.

Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe”

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The infectious pop song became a hit in early 2012, and by late spring, the distinctive rhyme scheme of the chorus had become a meme. Example: This still of Marty McFly and his mom in Back to the Future: “Hey I just met you / and this is crazy / but I’m from the future / and I’m your baby.” Or a tweet by @jwherrman: “HEY, I JUST MET YOU / AND MY DOG IS CRAZY / WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF / HE HAS RABIES.” —K.N.

65.

Dashcon

notsafeforweabs.tumblr.com

There was a time right around the middle of this last decade where the internet was a largely more innocent place. Nerdy fandom subcultures built around TV shows like My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Sherlock, Doctor Who, and Supernatural weren’t quite in the mainstream yet, nor did people fully understand the realities of what happens when you bring a bunch of people from the internet together in real life. That giddy naivete died with Dashcon. The unofficial Tumblr-based convention wasn’t quite a Fyre Festival–level disaster, but the level of secondhand embarrassment it generated seems to have killed an entire mode of internet use. One could even argue that Tumblr — the little social network that could — lost its last bit of grip on the larger culture of the internet. From the sad photos of cosplayers sitting in a weird ball pit to the haunting photos of empty of showrooms to accusations later of fraud, for fandom internet there was a before and after Dashcon. Based on things like Tanacon and Fyre Festival, though, it seems like those who do not learn from Dashcon are doomed to repeat Dashcon. —R.B.

64.

Galaxy Brain

reddit.com

This 2017 meme has staying power because it’s so simple and applies to so many things. The format shows several different concepts in increasing order of brainpower, culminating with something ridiculous. It speaks so perfectly to how we argue and discuss any topic online: a basic idea, a smarter take, slowly devolving into anarchy. —K.N.

63.

Loss.JPG

cad-comic.com

There’s really no way to sugarcoat what loss.JPG is. It’s a four-panel web comic about a miscarriage that has evolved into some weird Where’s Waldo? game played on social media. The story behind the infamous comic is that Ctrl-Alt-Del creator Tim Buckley wanted to make his series more mature. His audience recoiled at the mature storyline and found the whole thing incredibly lame. To make matters worse, the text-less comic was uploaded to the site with the filename loss.JPG. There’s a good chance you’ve come across loss.JPG parodies and never even realized that’s what they were. Buckley has spoken a bit about the meme over the years. “Perhaps I had miscalculated my demographic’s ability/willingness to approach such a sensitive subject matter,” he said. “As much as I hate to admit it because I certainly don’t want to make light of the subject matter itself, I found them quite amusing.”

But still the meme remains. And there’s a good possibility it will continue to stick around well into the next decade, if only because it’s too tasteless to ever really address directly. —R.B.

62.

Baby Shark

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The origins of why a techno version of a public domain campfire song became accurately described as “‘Sicko Mode’ for babies” isn’t totally clear. Normally, internet culture has no interest in what the parents of young infants and toddlers are doing (gross, old people). And yet somehow the catchy story of a multigenerational shark family (doo doo doo doo) meant for babies became inescapable. In a review for the live stage show of Baby Shark, the New Yorker wrote, “It wasn’t Disney or Nickelodeon executives who plucked it from among the millions of other videos on YouTube. Instead, babies themselves made it a juggernaut, by relentlessly clicking Play on their parents’ phones. It might be the first genuine example of baby pop culture.” —K.N.

61.

Infinity War Memes

yoongis-home-moved.tumblr.com

TV shows and movies that become their own sort of visual meme language all tend to come from the same place emotionally. There seems to be a certain secret sauce for cracking through the zeitgeist, and it largely comes down to particular kind of glee people get from taking the piss out of something serious. Avengers: Infinity War wasn’t the first Marvel film to get memed (Bruce Banner’s “That’s my secret, Cap” line from The Avengers was the first big one), but Infinity War hit in a big way. I’d argue that all came down to its shocking ending where literally half of everyone’s favorite superheroes all died horribly. First were the Infinity War spoilers-without-context posts, followed by the “I don’t feel so good, Mr. Stark” memes, and then there were even thicc Thanos memes. Ultimately, Infinity War memes didn’t have a huge staying power, but it seems to have rewired the way audiences digest big blockbuster movies; if you jump on Twitter right as you get out of the theater and start retweeting memes, you suddenly don’t feel so silly for crying when Spider-Man dies. To be honest, thicc Thanos is much more traumatizing. —R.B.

60.

Binders Full of Women

bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com

Mitt Romney made a truly weird gaffe in a 2012 debate when he answered a question about pay equality — describing how, as governor, he asked to see more women candidates for Cabinet positions and was shown “binders full of women.” Twitter, in peak parody account mode, immediately latched onto this weird and vaguely sexist turn of phrase. A parody Tumblr was made that posted photos of binders. People flocked to Amazon listings of binders to write funny reviews.

Now it seems laughable that this was the biggest gaffe of the election, the most shocking thing a politician said. Yet in the 2012 internet ecosystem, this perfectly played out a cycle of political memes that we don’t really have the stomach for anymore. No one’s making a “grab them by the pussy” Tumblr. —K.N.

59.

“Gangnam Style”

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Here’s the thing about Psy’s 2012 hit: It’s extremely good. The song is catchy, but it’s the visuals in the music video that propelled it to an international hit and the most-viewed YouTube video for years. It’s a video you want to watch more than once, one you want to show it to your friends. The fact that it was by an artist unfamiliar to most people outside of South Korea didn’t matter. The videos that would later best its YouTube record — “Despacito,” “See You Again” — did so more because of how long their respective songs stayed at the top of music charts than the nature of the video itself.

But “Gangnam Style” is a wildly entertaining as a video. The sets and backup characters change constantly, Psy’s style of deadpan serious rapping while lying on an elevator floor with a man in a cowboy hate gyrating over him is funny. Psy’s pony-riding dance is funny. It was the dance, of course, that people did at weddings and high school dances and flash mobs. —K.N.

58.

Forever Alone

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Constructing a linear narrative out of internet content is extremely complicated — things connect across time and space in ways that make a traditional retelling almost impossible. That said, if there is a story of the internet in the 2010s, I’d argue it’s about loneliness and the bizarre and surreal ways people try to overcome it. So perhaps it’s fitting that this decade started with FunnyJunk user Azuul’s May 2010 rage comic “April Fools” — the first appearance of the phrase “forever alone.” Azuul’s swollen-faced character has more or less gone extinct, but the phrase, and more importantly, the meaning behind the phrase, have gone on to define the core irony of the internet: We are deeply isolated, yet connected enough to each other to commiserate about it. —R.B.

57.

Wholesome Memes

Twitter: @tenderfiresign

Ah, wholesome memes. In a decade in which things online (and offline!) tended to be pretty bleak, wholesome memes were a salve. In these memes, the punchline lies in the genuine surprise of an online joke actually being pure and good — particularly about “loving and supporting” one’s friends, significant other, or yourself. —J.R.

56.

There’s Always a @dril Tweet

Without a doubt, @dril is the most important person on Twitter of the 2010s. He has a specific absurdist take on living in some modern digital hellworld where his boss doesn’t let him kiss his ferrets at work, people keep asking him about fucking the Betsy Ross flag, and his candle budget is out of control. He never breaks character — there’s never a “but seriously folks, I’m sorry about that last tweet” — and has, miraculously, nearly maintained his anonymity.

@dril’s fans have taken some of his tweets and turned them into specific terms for online existence: “Corncobbing” is when someone has been owned and refuses to admit it; “help my family is dying” is a reference to the candle budget tweet.

During and after the election, people noticed that often there was an old Trump tweet that said something almost the opposite of what he had just said, coining the phrase “there’s always a tweet.” Soon people started to notice that Trump’s tweets had an odd similarity to @dril tweets and that you could often find an old @dril tweet with a parallel message. —K.N.

55.

Game of Thrones Memes

reddit.com

Like Infinity War, Game of Thrones became its own genre of meme. It wasn’t the first peak TV drama to do so — I’d argue Breaking Bad set the stage for it — but GoT did something both Breaking Bad and movies like Infinity War didn’t: It got much worse over time. Game of Thrones, especially in its early seasons, was an outrageously grim, dark show full of sex and violence, which made the memes it generated feel even more fun and risqué to share. But as the show’s ratings increased and its digital footprint became nearly unavoidable, it also became a much stupider show. Somewhere in that uncanny valley of extremely serious and incredibly stupid was the perfect breeding ground for memes. Much like the army of White Walkers pouring into Winterfell in an episode shot so dark people had to desperately try to readjust their TV settings, once internet users smell blood in the water, they’re going to swarm. —R.B.

54.

You Know I Had to Do It to Em

Twitter: @LuckyLuciano17k (deleted)

There’s something so visceral about the YKIHTDITE photo. You either get why it’s funny, or it’s just a random photo. I also think people notice things about this photo in different orders. For instance, I notice the sock tan lines and the diamond earrings first. The tweet also begs us to answer the question of what exactly “it” is that he had to do to ‘em. Luciano’s pose — hand in hand, loafered power stance — has evolved into something akin to an internet-wide Where’s Waldo? with people photoshopping him into anything they can. People even go on pilgrimages to where the photo was taken (it’s in Florida, obviously). Like I said, I can’t explain why it’s funny, but it is. Maybe that’s the “it” that he’s doing to ‘em. —R.B.

For a brief time in early 2017, people were transfixed by Turkish chef Nusret Gökçe, who would slice steak and sprinkle salt on it, but, like, in a sexy way? (See #13) A still image of “Salt Bae” tossing on the salt like it’s fairy dust became a meme representing any time we’re being our most extra selves. (Oh yeah, and then he hugged Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro at his restaurant and Marco Rubio doxed him for it. Becoming a meme is a rich tapestry.) —J.R.

52.

Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams

timmie-cee.tumblr.com

The theory that 9/11 was an inside job, as evidenced by the fact that jet fuel can’t melt steel beams, was floated in the 2005 documentary Loose Change, which, despite being Alex Jones–level conspiracy theory, became incredibly popular on YouTube. It takes countless levels of irony to use the phrase (along with “Bush did 9/11”) as a joke. On some level, it’s not unlikely that a young person has been exposed to Loose Change or some other truther and perhaps believes it a little bit. On another level, they’re making fun of boomers and truthers who actually believe it. And then there’s the gallows humor of laughing at a tragic event that only those too young to remember could exhibit. It’s not callousness that made this a meme; it’s a reaction to the noxious conspiracy theories that flourish online and the disillusionment of an event that led to a war that’s lasted the entire lifetime of the young people who make the joke. —K.N.

51.

Cringe

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True cringe is something posted in earnest, and being earnest is the enemy of internet culture in the 2010s. Irony is the online currency. Cringe as a concept started on Reddit, where r/cringepics and a YouTube-focused version posted awkward and embarrassing earnest photos and videos taken from social media. R/CringeAnarchy, a more cruel board that tended to make fun of women and minorities, was banned in 2019 by Reddit (other forms of cringe boards are still active).

“Cringe” became a catchall for something embarrassing and uncool. Hillary Clinton tweeting in meme-speak was cringe. Your old LiveJournal is cringe. BuzzFeed is cringe. Everyone has posted cringe; it’s universal, and that’s why we’re so obsessed with it. —K.N.

49.

Drake/”Hotline Bling”

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Drake has been a massively popular and famous rapper for the entire decade, and there’s always been memes about pop stars. But Drake has managed to be more memeable than his musical peers, except for maybe Kanye West. There’s been the “In My Feelings” dance challenge, where people dance out the side of a moving car to his 2018 hit, the “hope no one heard that” lyric from “Marvins Room,” Drake’s myriad of faces and expressions while he watches basketball games, images of his character from Degrassi: The Next Generation, and the handwritten scrawl of the cover art for his album If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late.

But it’s the video for “Hotline Bling” that was memed a million times. The Day-Glo colors and goofy dancing made for perfect GIFable moments. The meme was nearly killed when Donald Trump danced to it on Saturday Night Live, but a version managed to live on: Drake shaking his finger to one thing, and smiling in acceptance to another thing. —K.N.

48.

Evanescence’s “Bring Me to Life”

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“Bring Me to Life” is like the goth cousin of “All Star.” It works for the same reason. It’s from that ridiculous Ben Affleck Daredevil movie. It has a call and response. Its sadder lyrics definitely fit my general mood about all of life right now. Also, Amy Lee can sing! This song is a genuine banger. When is the Evanescaissance coming? —R.B.

47.

Ryan Gosling

feministryangosling.tumblr.com

Hey, girl. Ryan Gosling was more than just a Hollywood heartthrob in the 2010s — he was also the basis of multiple memes. First came the Tumblr “Feminist Ryan Gosling,” in which photos of the actor were superimposed with quotes that mixed feminist texts with shit your imaginary hot-yet-sensitive boyfriend might say (this was 2011, so the sheer concept of a man openly calling himself a feminist was still a Big Deal and kind of a pantydropper, which is bleak in retrospect!!).

On a completely different note, the actor became an online sensation again in 2013. In the Vine series “Ryan Gosling Won’t Eat His Cereal,” creator Ryan McHenry would feed real-life spoonfuls of cereal to an onscreen Gosling, who would “reject” the bite by turning away or appearing to slap away the spoon during intense movie moments. In 2015, McHenry died of cancer when he was just 27 — and in his memory, Gosling made a Vine of himself actually eating cereal. —J.R.

46.

ASMR

me drinking iced coffee on an empty stomach knowing it’s going to make me feel like shit

05:00 PM – 11 Aug 2018

One of the decade’s hottest trends was getting a bunch of tingles down your spine. Among the biggest genres on Youtube, “autonomous sensory meridian response” videos usually involve people whispering, tapping on a glass, or even crunching on pickles straight from the jar. For some, the sounds provoke a sensory response that feels extremely calming and euphoric, and may help listeners go to sleep. Though many had long experienced the strange tingly feeling, it wasn’t until recently that people knew what to call it. Following conversations on message boards about the nameless sensation, a woman named Jennifer Allen coined the term in 2010 and made a Facebook group in its name.

From there, it entered the popular consciousness, becoming gradually more well-known over the decade. Many enjoyed it in earnest, but it also was widely parodied. There were celebrity ASMR videos, and ASMR creators became YouTube celebs in their own right. One of the biggest ones, a teen girl named Makenna Kelly, became the basis for a ton of memes. Some of these YouTubers became famous for their funnier themed ASMR videos, such as “1300s A.D. ASMR: Nun Takes Care of You in Bed (You Have the Plague).”

Self-care and wellness were major buzzwords in the 2010s, which helped popularize the relaxing videos. But perhaps the most interesting part is how social media helped many people name the bizarre neurological phenomenon they’d experienced their whole lives and find out they weren’t alone. —J.R.

45.

Cropped Gay Porn

Instagram: @http://bit.ly/2ElyLuw

Porn! It’s the central driving force of the internet (see #13). So much of the web culture created in this last decade has been defined by an explosion of diverse and global points of view suddenly entering the mainstream (and the conflicts that sometimes rise up when that happens). So it makes sense that most defining porn meme of the 2010s is cropped gay porn. It’s cheeky, it’s wildly inappropriate, and, fuck, it was so big. The meme really climaxed with the “Right in front of my salad” clip, where two adult film actors interrupt a woman peacefully eating her salad by having sex behind the kitchen counter. It’s sort of nice to think that no matter how crazy things get, there’s one thing that can still bring us all together online, and that’s porn. —R.B.

44.

Cash Me Ousside

View this video on YouTube

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Imagine you’re Dr. Phil. Having helped families and individuals through countless crises on your television show, you’re feeling pretty good about your abilities. There is nothing you, a couch, and a camera can’t fix. Then one day, a 13-year-old Floridian named Danielle Bregoli comes on set and rocks your world. After she calls your audience a bunch of hoes, you repeat the accusation, just making sure you heard right. When she confirms, the audience goes berserk, and Bregoli gets upset. You hear her say “Cash me ousside, howbow dah?” five magical words used to challenge the audience to a fight. The phrase lives on in infamy. And now you, Dr. Phil, are part of one of the decade’s greatest memes. —Alex Kantrowitz

43.

Spider-Man Pointing at Spider-Man

ABC / MARVEL

It’s simple: Spider-Man points at another Spider-Man. What’s not to get. It’s us, looking at ourselves. Iconic. —K.N.

42.

Nickelback

youtube.com

The Canadian band has miraculously remained untouched by the trend of critical reassessment and appreciation of pop music. They occupy an uncanny valley of being wildly popular AND wildly reviled by anyone who considers themselves a person of taste. For a while, they occupied a space as the punchline to something bad (there was a time in 2014 where you could use a Facebook graph search to find which of your friends “liked” Nickelback and unfriend them).

But it was the still from the video for “Photograph” where singer Chad Kroeger holds up a photo, along with the memorable lyric “look at this photograph,” that blew up in the second half of the decade. The meme ultimately died when President Donald Trump tweeted a version where the photo Kroeger holds is of Joe Biden golfing with his son and another American who also served on the board of a Ukrainian company at the center of the impeachment inquiry. Nickelback’s label filed a copyright claim, and the video has been removed from Trump’s tweet. —K.N.

41.

Rebecca Black

View this video on YouTube

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It’s Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday! In 2011, then–13-year-old Rebecca Black made her debut with “Friday,” and looking forward to the weekend was never again the same. The music video went enormously viral, but it was widely dubbed the “worst song ever.”

Still, it was also a hit, and the song debuted at No. 72 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was covered on Glee, and Black even appeared as herself in Katy Perry’s music video for “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.).” Two years later, Black got in on the joke, releasing a sequel to “Friday” — named, of course, “Saturday.” Whether you think “Friday” slaps or is a nightmare, I’d bet you anything you’ll know all the words until you die. —J.R.

40.

“Come to Brazil”

diorc.tumblr.com

If you’ve ever clicked through on a tweet from any sort of celebrity, chances are you’ve seen the phrase “come to Brazil” written over and over in the replies. According to Know Your Meme, the first time the phrase was tweeted at a celebrity was April 2008. Then, when Justin Beieber joined Twitter in 2009, it exploded in popularity. I once asked some members of BuzzFeed Brazil why exactly it was such a common occurrence among Brazilian internet users. I was told the answer is actually pretty simple — American musicians rarely tour Brazil. But to really best understand why Brazilians mass-send it though, on a deeper level, you probably need to know the concept of “zuera,” Brazilian slang for “zoeira” which means “heavy fun.” It basically means that moment when a meme becomes a meme and spirals completely out of control. COME TO BRAZIL, MIGAAA. —R.B.

Guns or glitter? Touchdowns or tutus? One of the most inescapable party themes of the 2010s was that of the gender reveal. At gender-reveal parties, expecting parents and their loved ones gather to find out what kind of genitals their unborn child will have. This is often accomplished by cutting a cake, with pink or blue frosting revealing whether it was a boy or a girl.

Party planners tried to one-up each other, sometimes executing the big reveal using explosives — which, as you might guess, often had disastrous results. In 2018, a father-to-be accidentally ignited a wildfire in Arizona. The following year, a grandmother was killed in an explosion, and there was even a gender-reveal plane crash.

As our understanding of gender (and how it was not the same thing as sex) evolved over the decade, so did criticism and mockery of gender-reveal parties. And some people had changes of heart; in 2019, Jenna Karvunidis, the lifestyle blogger who had the first viral gender reveal in 2008, criticized the parties, which she said put “more emphasis on gender than has ever been necessary for a baby.” She added, “PLOT TWIST, the world’s first gender-reveal party baby is a girl who wears suits!” —J.R.

38.

*tips fedora*

Twitter: @MoonOverlord

One of the most magical things about the internet is when we all collectively realize something is a thing. For instance, sometime between 2010 and 2012, everyone on the internet realized that every town has a couple weird guys who wear fedoras, trench coats, fingerless gloves, have terrible facial hair, and talk to women like they’re 12th-century knights. Long before these dudes turned into violent incels, there was just a really nice moment where we could all agree that these dudes were goofy and awful and fun to rag on. Swag is for boys; class is for gentlesirs, m’lady. —R.B.

37.

This Is the Future Liberals Want

36.

Ted Cruz, the Zodiac Killer

During his run for president in 2015 and 2016, a widely circulated, joking conspiracy theory accused Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of being the Zodiac Killer, the unidentified serial killer who murdered at least seven people in California between the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Cruz was born in 1970 — after the first killings — so he is probably not the Zodiac Killer, in my expert journalistic opinion. But for many people he just…seems like kind of a weird dude, right? He pretty much made the perfect candidate for a bonkers conspiracy theory about a decades-old serial killer.

It seems like Cruz got a kick out of it eventually, though. He later acknowledged the meme, tweeting an image of the Zodiac Killer’s cypher on two separate occasions. —J.R.

35.

Confused Math Lady

TV Globo

If there was one dominant theme in the 2010s, it was “I have no idea what’s going on right now.” This was expressed in a bunch of different ways, from the fact that teens and the internet curled up with increasingly obscure memes and terms meant to confuse the Olds (the boomers don’t know what “sksksksk” is) to the rise of explainer journalism like Vox or email newsletters/catch-you-up-quick news like the Skimm. We are all confused. We have no idea what’s going on. If you take the time to catch up on one story, you’ll miss what’s happening elsewhere.

Hence, Confused Math Lady, a meme featuring an actor in a Brazilan soap opera looking confused, spread on Brazilian internet. By 2016, the GIF of the confused woman became a four-panel comic with various math symbols over it, suggesting she’s trying to solve some complex calculus problem. Confused Math Lady is us, trying to understand it all. —K.N.

34.

“Old Town Road”

youtube.com

Country music fandom went mainstream in the 2010s, and with it came the rise of the “yeehaw agenda” at the end of the decade. The term described a reclamation of country aesthetics among black Americans, who have long been erased from extremely white cultural depictions of the Wild West (despite the fact that 1 in 4 cowboys were black).

The concept exploded in popularity at the end of 2018 when rapper Lil Nas X released his breakout hit “Old Town Road,” a country rap song that became one of the biggest singles of the year — only getting bigger after being disqualified from the Billboard Hot Country chart over claims that it did “not embrace enough elements of today’s country music.” In response, the artist released a remix featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, practically daring critics to say it wasn’t country enough.

The song was a viral hit, and videos featuring it — particularly one of Lil Nas X surprising a bunch of elementary school superfans, and countless transformation TikToks — only boosted it more. The song broke records as the longest-running No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100, and Lil Nas X became the first openly gay black artist to win at the Country Music Awards. —J.R.

33.

American Chopper Yelling

vox.com

Paul Teutul Sr. and his son, Paulie, were the stars of American Chopper, a 2000s reality show about their custom motorcycle shop. Not infrequently, they argued. The show was popular at the time, but not particularly cool or internet-y during its run. So it was slightly surprising when in 2018, stills of a scene of an argument between father and son became a meme. The more esoteric the argument — the role of media communication in science, Lord of the Rings plot holes, linguistics — the better. Part of the joy of the meme was seeing macho men argue about anime, but also acknowledging that a lot of our online lives is over-the-top screaming arguments about trivial things. —K.N.

32.

Brands Acting Like People

At the end of the day, consumers are people. And people crave authenticity. It’s what they look for in their relationships, their entertainment, and, yes, their brands. Which is why the orange juice account pretends to have depression now, and everyone likes it, and it’s good.

05:06 PM – 04 Feb 2019

Largely inspired by the Denny’s Tumblr in 2013, brands’ tweets over the decade have steadily grown to become surreal, humanoid, and Extremely Online. As the companies tried to figure out how to navigate their role in online spaces, there were missteps (who could forget the SpaghettiOs tweet about Pearl Harbor, or the time DiGiorno used a hashtag about domestic violence to make a pizza joke?). Eventually, many came into their own with genuinely fun and bonkers tweets, with MoonPie, Steak-umm, and Wendy’s being standouts. But in early 2019, things kind of jumped the shark when SunnyD just really went for it with a full-on depression tweet.

“I can’t do this anymore,” SunnyD tweeted in February. Immediately, all the other memey brand accounts got in on it, basically staging an intervention for the orange drink brand in crisis. “Hey sunny can I please offer you a hug we are gonna get through this together my friend,” Pop-Tarts tweeted. “Buddy come hangout,” tweeted Corn Nuts. It was pretty bleak, and many saw it as making light of mental illness and suicide. Most recently, brands started, uh, acting horny, in a nightmare Twitter thread started by Netflix. Who knows what other horros we’ll see in 2020? Brands! —J.R.

31.

Arthur’s Fist

The children’s show Arthur turned 20 in 2016, and with it came a ton of Arthur memes. But none had nearly as much staying power as a still image of Arthur’s clenched fist. Just a flat cartoon image of an aardvark’s curled-up hand, it somehow embodied such passion, such fury, that the meme became instantly relatable. —J.R.

30.

Florida Man

Florid Man Charged With Assault With a Deadly Weapon After Throwing Alligator Through Wendy’s Drive-Thru Window http://bit.ly/2Ppcn9P

11:48 PM – 08 Feb 2016

A meme that mocks someone’s shoes might seem to be more mean-spirited than other memes of the decade. It’s a catchphrase to laugh at someone for wearing ugly footwear, after all. But the most effective examples of the meme, including the Instagram video (and then Vine) that started it all, are always about punching up — taking a small shot at someone more powerful, like a teacher, a celebrity, or even Jesus.

But like “on fleek” and other viral catchphrases and memes, the “what are those” meme spread without any control from its creator, Brandon Moore. In a 2018 interview with HuffPost, Moore said that he “felt sick” when he heard his catchphrase in the movie Black Panther, because it was a reminder of how he had missed a chance to copyright or watermark his video and had seen his creative work monetized by others without him benefitting at all. Six months after the interview, Moore died in his sleep at age 31. —K.N.

28.

Kanye West

Twitter: @kanyewest (deleted)

Is Kanye West a meme? Is he a collection of memes? Is he the original material that gets remixed into memes? Is he all of these things? Perhaps. Kanye’s “Imma Let You Finish” moment happened in September 2009, but was still humming along by the time the decade started (the internet was slower then). For a while, his Twitter account was an endless source of internet content: “I hate when I’m on a flight and I wake up with a water bottle next to me like oh great now I gotta be responsible for this water bottle.” Damn. Huge mood. And then, of course, like many memes, he went full MAGA after the election of Donald Trump. For much of the decade, it seemed like all of culture either flowed from or through West. Based on the reviews for his newest album, Jesus Is King, and the general lack of buzz around his Sunday Service project, that might be something we’re leaving in 2010s. Although, he did just bless us with Silver Kanye, so who knows really. —R.B.

27.

Dat Boi

ppt.wz51z.com

In the same way that a bunch of the X-Men are all blue for some reason, the internet really likes green frogs. Sadly for Dat Boi, he hasn’t had the same staying power as Pepe or Kermit. The version of Dat Boi that we all know was first posted in April 2016. In many ways, he’s the last meme specifically from Tumblr — a nice, wholesome shitpost featuring a picture stolen from an AP physics textbook that doesn’t really make any sense but is just kind of funny. Dat Boi, in my opinion, is the platonic ideal of a meme: It’s funny, it works as a cute little wink for superusers, it doesn’t make a lot sense, and it disappears before getting turned into some dumb brand tweet. —R.B.

26.

Harambe

On May 28, 2016, a gorilla who went by Harambe was fatally shot at the Cincinnati Zoo after attacking a 3-year-old boy who had climbed into the enclosure.

The incident absolutely dominated the news cycle, and it quickly spawned a ton of memes. People made videos of Harambe’s banger of a funeral, paid homage in their yearbook photos, and even painted street art in his memory. All across the land, dicks were out for Harambe.

It’s more than a little dark for a dead gorilla and an injured toddler to become meme fodder, but that’s exactly what happened. Harambe memes should not be funny, which means they totally, always will be. —J.R.

25.

Damn Daniel

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High schooler Josh Holz loved taunting his friend Daniel Lara by following him around, filming him, and commenting on his sneakers. When he compiled the videos and tweeted it, the world loved hearing a creepy voice saying “Damn, Daniel, back at it again with the white Vans.” The teens boys went on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and received a lifetime supply of Vans. In 2019, both Daniel and Josh are in college. Josh is studying fashion and works for, you guessed it, Vans. —K.N.

24.

Tiffany Pollard

Vh1

A still of Tiffany Pollard, best known as New York from the VH1 dating show Flavor of Love, lying on a bed in her clothes, hands folded in her lap, sunglasses on, seeming to stew in quiet anger, became a meme in 2015 and continued for the rest of the decade. In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Pollard described what she was actually feeling in that moment: “I just remember being so alone, so pissed off; I wanted to get away from those girls … I was really having a rough time in that moment and I think me sitting there was actually me just trying to center myself, centering myself through this bad energy I was dealing with.”

Pollard’s memeability goes beyond that one image of her lying on the bed. Her over-the-top personality is what made her a standout reality star in the ’00s, and that same quality made her perfect for reaction GIFs in the ’10s. —K.N.

22.

Blinking White Guy

Drew Scalon / giantbomb.com

One of the biggest reaction memes of the decade, the “blinking white guy” perfectly summed up when you truly just could not believe what you were seeing. The man is Drew Scanlon, and the specific blink came from a gaming video he appeared in in 2013, though it wouldn’t become a meme until early 2017. It’s a simple reaction, but it seemed to say it all at a time when the world was a confusing mess and people were feeling pretty dang incredulous a lot of the time.

“As long as they’re not mean, I don’t have a problem with the tweets,” Scanlon told BuzzFeed News in 2017. “I think we need more positivity on the internet these days.” —J.R.

21.

Minions

Universal Pictures

Ah, yes, the official mascots of every boomer’s divorce announcement Facebook post. These little bastards took over the internet with a speed that was honestly unparalleled. Their disgusting yellow bodies flooded news feeds like a DDoS attack. I think to understand exactly how the great Minionfication of the internet happened you have to separate it out into two movements. First, there were people genuinely posting Minion memes. Then came the second wave, where people started using Minion memes to make fun of the people who posted Minion memes. I’d love to say that we’re in the clear now and we can leave these beasts in the 2010s, but Minions: The Rise of Gru is coming out on July 3, 2020, so get ready, everyone. —R.B.

20.

Milkshake Duck

The whole internet loves Milkshake Duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes! *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you the duck is racist

08:07 AM – 12 Jun 2016

Coined by @pixelatedboat, a milkshake duck is some person or entity that enjoys a viral moment and then is swiftly exposed as problematic. The ultimate example was Ken Bone, a man in a distinctive red sweater and mustache who asked a question during a presidential town hall debate in 2016 — who after becoming the meme of the night, was discovered to have a spicy sexual Reddit user history. Cancel culture may not be real, but milkshake ducking certainly is. —K.N.

19.

Gavin

Twitter: @gavinthomas

There’s a good chance you know Gavin’s face even if you don’t know Gavin’s name. It’s sort of incredible to include Gavin Thomas on this list because he was literally born in 2010 at the start of the decade. He first went viral when his uncle Nick Mastodon started putting him in Vines. Gavin really solidified himself as a meme when he turned 5 years old. Suddenly, he was everywhere. He had this extremely relatable confused grimace that really seemed to capture the zeitgeist in 2015 and 2016 (not totally sure what was going on at the time that would explain why). He’s 9 years old now and has a million followers on Instagram. For all the cautionary tales out there about what life after being a meme is like, so far it seems like Gavin’s doing all right. His family seems to be looking after him and, more bizarrely, it also feels like the internet at large is looking after him. He grew up on social media, and it does feel like we’re all invested in making sure he ends up OK. —R.B.

18.

Shrek

Dreamworks / reddit.com

Even though the first Shrek came out in 2001, it took a few years for the internet to really embrace the green Scottish ogre. Ever since, it feels like he’s buzzed just below the surface of mainstream internet culture — always there, always talking about onions. My theory as to why he’s stayed so popular? Aside from maybe a postmodern riff on the extreme overcommercialization of children’s entertainment (see Minions), I think there’s actually something really relatable about a big, fat ogre who doesn’t want to leave his swamp. It’s the perfect metaphor for being online. —R.B.

17.

“Do It for the Vine”

View this video on YouTube

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Vine shut down on my birthday, and because of that, I’ve always felt a weirdly intimate connection to Vine. A good friend once told me he thought of a Vine as one sentence in the visual grammar of video. Everything you need to convey one idea in a video you could do in a six-second Vine. It was a revolution and you could argue it has had a more profound legacy on how we create and share videos than bigger platforms like YouTube or Netflix. For a long time, I, like many people, believed that Vine was shut down too soon. Now, I think it actually shut down exactly when it should. Social networks probably shouldn’t last! It’s weird that we still use Twitter.

The phrase “do it for the Vine” comes from a song created by YouTuber Kaye Trill and it immediately became the anthem of a summer full of people doing extremely outrageous things. Many of the original great “do it for the Vine” posts have been deleted, sadly. But, luckily, we’ll always have the YouTube compilations. —R.B.

16.

Real Housewives

Bravo / Instagram: @smudge_lord

Memes are often tied to some technological advance, such as the six-second looping video or the quote-tweet format. At the start of the decade, animated GIFs were actually hard to make. You needed Photoshop, which is expensive and hard to use. Sourcing high-quality video to turn into a GIF was also harder. In a pre-Giphy world, truly good animated GIFs were prized and hoarded, saved in folders on a desktop to use in reactions. On Tumblr, the main source of GIFs, there was a vast gulf between the number of users actually making GIFs and the amount of people reposting them. One of the early and prolific makers of high-quality reaction GIFs was the RealityTVGIFS.tumblr.com, made by a man named T. Kyle McMahon (who now works for Bravo), who pumped out GIF after GIF from the Bravo universe, particularly the Real Housewives series. Because of the format of the show, where the women were literally asked to react directly to the camera, the Housewives were perfect for emotional reaction GIFs.

The enduring power of the Real Housewives through the decades was proven in 2019 by the popularity of an image of an early season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, where one Housewife is yelling while another holds her back, juxtaposed with a white cat named Smudge scowling at a dinner table. —K.N.

15.

The Joker

The Joker obviously existed long before social media, but the character’s glee-filled take on chaotic nihilism has, for better or worse, become inseparable from how we imagine a very specific kind of kind internet user: angry, insular, often violent, male.

Over the last decade, a symbiotic relationship has evolved between new Hollywood iterations of the Joker and the internet’s digital underbelly. Starting in 2008, Heath Ledger’s anarchist, anti-capitalist Joker became the unofficial mascot of 4chan’s Anonymous hacktivist movement. The idea of a nameless grungy psychopath burning piles of dirty money, throwing a city into chaos to satisfy his twisted rage, was a perfect avatar for a generation of Occupy-adjacent millennials graduating into a global economic recession and harnessing technology to claw back control of their own lives. Jared Leto’s 2016 take on the Joker, even though none of them would ever admit it, mirrored the rise of Gamergate somewhat perfectly, giving the world a sniveling misogynist covered in face tattoos, singularly focused on controlling the anatomy of Suicide Squad’s standout woman character Harley Quinn. All the clown prince was missing was a vape to better embody late millennial toxic masculinity. So it’s fitting, then, that we close out the decade with Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, a chain-smoking, self-described mentally ill loner who hijacks mainstream media via an act of extreme violence and sets off a reactionary protest movement.

The Joker isn’t always a serious meme, like with the most recent Joker film giving us the scene of Phoenix dancing down a flight of stairs in Harlem. Instead, it’s something closer to SpongeBob, a visual and emotional language we use to express a part of ourselves online. As for whether the Joker will continue to evolve alongside social media, well, there are rumors already circulating of another Phoenix-led Joker film, so it’s likely he’s not going away anytime soon. —R.B.

14.

Why You Lyin’

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

The beauty of Nicholas Fraser’s Vine in his backyard singing “Why you always lyin’” over the music of “Too Close” by Next is that it makes no sense for why it exists. Why is his shirt open? Why is there a toilet in the yard? Who is lying and why is he so seemingly happy about accusing someone of lying? And yet, it turns out 2015 was the right moment for this meme to exist and serve as the perfect totem for the impending post-truth internet. Now, replying with a screenshot of Fraser’s smiling face is internet shorthand for “this is a lie.” —K.N.

13.

Being Horny

.@tedcruz my young daughters and sons follow you for good wholesome content can you please explain this???

04:40 AM – 12 Sep 2017

If you think about it, being horny is like when content trends before it becomes a meme (sex is the meme). And whether it’s Ted Cruz faving a porn tweet on 9/11 or Kurt Eichenwald screenshotting Chrome tabs full of hentai, if someone is online long enough, they will be caught being horny and it will be embarrassing. The only silver lining is that it can happen to any of us. My hope for the next decade is that we all just accept that most of the time people are online, they’re also probably looking at pornography or sexting with each other. That’s what this whole thing was made for! Horny users of the web, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains! —R.B.

12.

Distracted Boyfriend

Stock photo memes had a moment in 2017, but none became as big or enduring as the one that became known as “Distracted Boyfriend.” The photo depicted a man checking out a woman while his own girlfriend glared at him with disgust. It quickly became a meme, though photographer Antonio Guillem told the Guardian at the time he “didn’t even know what a meme [was] until recently.” The photo has now been around a few years, but it’s still a classic, popping up as a meme pretty often and perfectly embodying so many emotions: deception, distraction, heartbreak, loss, and hope. —J.R.

11.

Doge

shibaconfessions.tumblr.com

The only meme of the decade to inspire an actually used form of blockchain currency, Doge was a breath of fresh air in 2013 when people were starting to feel burned out about what the first iteration of what “memes” were. “Memes” now means something different — funny tweets screenshotted and posted to Instagram, or absurd teen humor. But in a darker, earlier time, “memes” were something like rage comics or the Forever Alone Guy. They took themselves seriously in a sense, and were the domain of redditors or angry 4chan guys, or something a brand used in a Super Bowl ad to seem relevant. Then, a friendly Shiba Inu appeared with funny language and words around him, just being amused and delighted by the world. This wasn’t FFFFUUUUUUU, it was such wow. Doge was here to make us happy. Of course by now, the phrase “such wow” is cringey and outdated, but it had a good long run. —K.N.

10.

Kermit

Lipton Tea

The lovable green amphibian became one of the most memeable nonhuman characters of the decade, next to perhaps only SpongeBob and Shrek. Two massive memes, Kermit sipping tea and Evil Kermit, earned the Muppet his place in meme Valhalla, and made a bunch of smaller memes (Sad Kermit puppet, Kermit in the car) take off. There’s something deeply funny about children’s characters behaving like naughty adults, by the idea of Kermit having shady opinions about others while he sips his tea or encouraging you to do something dangerous or sexual or drug-related. Part of the joy of Kermit memes is that everyone knows Kermit; he’s not obscure or niche. And yet someone, the official Twitter account for Good Morning America to be precise, called the Kermit-sipping-tea meme “tea lizard.” —K.N.

Reaction GIFs

NBC / Via giphy.com

It’s hard to remember a time when reaction GIFs weren’t ubiquitous, but they really rose to prominence in 2012 with the launch of the Tumblr blog #whatshouldwecallme. The blog posted GIFs paired with ~relatable~ captions — for example, the GIF of Homer Simpson disappearing into the bushes, captioned, “When I’m in an argument with someone and realize I’m completely wrong.” This blog was a huge deal at the time, inspiring countless spinoffs, particularly at colleges. Though it was a pretty fresh meme format at the time, #whatshouldwecallme posts just look a lot like the way we communicate online today. —J.R.

Guy Fieri

Fun fact: Guy Fieri is so ubiquitous and embedded in the language of American social media that we basically got to the very end of making this list and realized he didn’t have his own entry, even though he’s referenced throughout. Becoming a meme these days is pretty easy: You do something or appear in a piece of media, people latch onto it because of some innate and relatable reason, and voilà, you’re viral. But to stay a meme is a much harder feat. Usually it involves a bizarre and inexplicable alchemy of having chaotic high/low culture energy and a total lack of self-awareness. Memes can’t know they’re memes. Guy Fieri is embodiment of this. He looks like a failed ‘90s energy drink marketing campaign, he drives around in convertibles eating absolute garbage (he literally has a recipe for nachos made in a trash can) and seemingly cannot fathom that his entire persona is ridiculous. Even when he does lean into his memeness, he still doesn’t really seem to get it, like with his recent Baby Yoda photoshop. Whether Gen Z continues to latch on to the Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives host is unclear. Only time will tell whether or not Flavortown can survive the ages. —R.B.

The Dress

Cecilia Bleasdale

“Black and blue or white and gold?” was the question that seemingly everyone on earth was asking on one day in early 2015. A woman in Scotland showed her friends a photo her mother took of a dress she planned to wear to a wedding, and a friend of the woman posted it to Tumblr, asking for help — “what colors are this dress?” She submitted it as a question to BuzzFeed’s Tumblr, and former BuzzFeed employee Cates Holderness reposted it to our account. From there, it blew up as a fun visual gag that was infuriating and odd.

The Dress was posted to BuzzFeed the same day two llamas escaped in Arizona, and a live TV police chase of the two animals enthralled the internet as adorable mayhem broke out. In retrospect, that two such happy, carefree, unproblematic things took over the internet on the same day seems like wild serendipity. It also feels like the last day the internet felt purely joyful, before the onslaught of the 2016 election took place and things took a darker turn.

The dress is, indeed, black and blue, even though over two thirds of the millions of BuzzFeed readers who voted said they thought it was white and gold. In 2018, a similar sensory illusion, this time auditory, went viral over whether a voice was saying “yanny” or “laurel.” But somehow, the special feeling just wasn’t there again; it felt like trying to recreate some old magic that was lost, like kids who have graduated hanging back at high school. —K.N.

“This Is Fine” Dog

K.C. Green / Via kcgreendotcom.com

The dog engulfed in flames, denying that anything is wrong, is from a 2013 webcomic Gunshow by K.C. Green. In the full comic, the dog’s face eventually melts, while he continues to drink his coffee and insist he’s OK, but the version that became a symbol of the decade is just the first two panels where he says “this is fine.”

The meme has been used a lot to describe various political situations: The official @GOP Twitter used it once, and a senator even described the comic on the House floor while describing how Russian election interference was not fine. But the staying power of the dog is about how we all grin and bear it through everything that’s happened over this decade that feels like the house is on fire — the climate crisis, elections, the disappointing last season of Game of Thrones. There is nothing that captures the 2010s more than “this is fine” dog. —K.N.

Smash Mouth’s “All Star”

me.me

Like Shrek, Smash Mouth’s “All Star” is another one of those millennial nostalgia points that has evolved into something bigger than itself thanks to the internet. It’s lasted for several reasons: One, it’s just a damn good song; two, the lead singer of Smash Mouth looks like Guy Fieri; three, it was on the Shrek soundtrack; four, it’s a cheery song about how shit everything is — which is exactly how it feels to be online. —R.B.

What makes “on fleek” a crucial meme for understanding the 2010s is not simply why the meme was catchy, but what happened to the meme after it left the hands of its creator and what that says about the commercialization and monetization of memes — i.e., who gets paid and who gets credit. Kayla Newman, who goes by Peaches Monroee online, was a teen when she posted a Vine musing that her eyebrows were “on fleek” because she thought she looked good. The Vine caught on because it’s simple and fun and enjoyable. Soon, brands were using the phrase on their social media. IHOP tweeted “pancakes on fleek.” Denny’s tweeted “Hashbrowns on fleek.” JetBlue and Taco Bell also used it, and the phrase all of a sudden seemed inescapable in marketing. Corporations were using Newman’s invention of a phrase without giving her any credit or compensation.

In the Fader, Doreen St. Félix wrote how “on fleek” is an example of an endless trend of black teenagers creating the memes, lingo, and jokes that make up internet culture, and how those black teens are often uncredited and don’t profit when brands use their creative works. This is in contradiction to a handful of white teens who also went viral around the same time: The “Damn, Daniel” boys got free Vans and appearances on talk shows; the Walmart yodeling boy got a record deal, as did Danielle Bregoli, the “cash me ousside” girl.

In 2017, Newman started a GoFundMe campaign to launch a beauty line, but it only raised around $17,000 of the $100,000 she was hoping for. In a 2017 interview with Teen Vogue, Newman said if she had known the phrase would catch on like it did, she would’ve been more aggressive about it, adding that she was trying to trademark the phrase. —K.N.

Pepe the Frog

Matt Furie

None of us wanted to write about Pepe. What’s even left to be said about him that hasn’t been said already? He started as a chill frog in a 2008 comic by artist Matt Furie. He then became a consistent, but largely forgettable fixture of 4chan in the early part of the decade. The first time I saw him was in a meme that read, “We are the middle children of history. Born too late to explore Earth, born too early to explore space.” I thought it was pretty funny. Sometimes he’d be in memes about blasting the toilet bowl with piss to clean it. He’s something different now — a literal hate symbol that is still being used by far-right extremists and white nationalists.

In the course of his transition from slacker goof to hate symbol, he’s taught us a lot about symbols — not just how the internet works — but he’s also maybe revealed something deeper about how symbols work. Furie has famously tried to litigate Pepe away from fascists, but it hasn’t really worked. Pepe’s effectively theirs now. It’s a grim, but important reminder that all culture can be hacked and warped and poisoned. All speech, online and off, is political. And all symbols, even chill frogs, require protection and upkeep. Feels bad, man. —R.B.

Crying Jordan

Stephan Savoia / AP

Michael Jordan wept during his 2009 induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame, but it wasn’t until at least 2012 that the still of his face, red-eyed with tears streaming down both cheeks, became a meme. It started with sports fans but soon spread to become an enduring and universal image for faux sadness. It’s a bit of an anomaly for a celebrity photo meme; Michael Jordan isn’t particularly memey otherwise, and although he was one of the biggest celebrities in the world in the ’90s, he hasn’t been in the spotlight this decade. Perhaps his role in the movie Space Jam has lent him some level of internet irony that makes the meme so satisfying. Jordan has said through a spokesperson that he doesn’t mind the popularity of the meme, so long as it’s not used for commercial purposes. However, his former teammate and friend Charles Oakley did tell TMZ that Jordan actually isn’t amused. That feeling Jordan may have — a moment of vulnerable emotion being plastered all over the internet for laughs — of course would be best depicted by, well, the Crying Jordan meme. —K.N.

SpongeBob

Nickelodeon / dearnville.tumblr.com

Did anything result in as many memes in the 2010s as SpongeBob? The show, which started in 1999 and is still going 20 years later, is so deeply entrenched in pop culture it would be hard to count how many memes have come out of it. But let’s try: There’s been caveman SpongeBob, mocking SpongeBob, tired naked SpongeBob, “ight Imma head out” SpongeBob, traveling SpongeBob, Krusty Krabs vs. Chum Bucket, evil Patrick, blurry Mr. Krabs, sleeping Squidward, and so many more.

The meme’s staying power can be attributed to a few things. It was an enormously popular show with a nearly universal sense of nostalgia for millennials and Gen Z’ers, who are the most prolific of meme creators. The simple art and animation style also beget some of the most instantly understandable reaction memes. May SpongeBob memes continue to prosper until [SpongeBob narrator voice] one eternity later. —J.R.

CORRECTION

Dec. 14, 2019, at 19:59 PM

T. Kyle MacMahon’s name was misstated in an earlier version of this post.

Drake starred in Degrassi: The Next Generation. An earlier version of this post misstated which Degrassi series he was on.

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