help I may have started reading dragon age fic

Post-post-post cannon Wangxian being completely in love in the cloud recessess as teenagers who time travelled back to their own 16-17 year old bodies on accident.

In love. Wangxian are in love. In love. Just smooph and fluff.

Like they're effortlessly in love. (No matter how much Jiang Cheng yells and ties to control Wei Wuxian, Wei Wuxian casually refuses to hear any of it, as he'd been ignoring Jiang Cheng's homophobia and hate forever by the time they both came back by accident. )

Also wwx doesn't hide his genius and every one around him is like senpai *heart eyes* (honestly he's almost forgotten how to hide his effortless genius.)

(Just FYI, don't have to include this: this Wei Wuxian has long since come to terms with all his war and Sunshot and Shiji related trauma— just FYI.)

I just want to read as much of the smooph, smushy fluff and love you can stomach writing please.

Extra points if you can show them both just effortlessly and absentmindedly flirting.

(You don't have to incude this, but: They just take like a weekend off and go raze the main Wen family to the ground casually— back late with Starbucks— "We were night hunting. What do you mean the Wen family died? So sad. We feel so bad. Don't we feel bad?" " Mm. Feel bad.")

Thank you so much for existing in this fandom. I love your fics. I love you. 💖

Xichen is proud of his brother but he can't deny that he is sometimes concerned for him as well. Wangji is a dedicated and accomplished disciple but he is isolated from his peers. Xichen has friends and confidants but Wangji is simply content to be by himself.

That is concerning, even for a Lan.

He had hopes that incoming disciples would manage to shake him up a little but that hope didn't last long. Year after year, Wangji continued to remain aloof, not expressing any interest in the disciples.

But something has changed this year. Xichen didn't even know what was going on until a few weeks into the introduction of the guest disciples.

He spots them by chance. Young Master Wei is cheerfully waving at a vendor, his smile wide and bright, ensnaring the old woman's entire attention.

Wangji is right by him, Bichen in one hand but the other…

The other is placed on the small of Wei-gongzi's back.

Xichen watches as they move on from the vendor. He sees how Wangji seems to shield Wei-gongzi from the crowd, angling his body slightly to ensure his companion can walk freely.

It is a gesture of protectiveness. It is a gesture of possession.

Xichen studies their body language carefully. Wangji seems content to follow Wei-gongzi around, his expression closed but gentle. There are no frosty glares or pursed lips. His brother, for once, looks entirely relaxed. Everything about him is loose and easy underneath all of his Lan elegance. His shoulders slope gently, his spine isn't as rigid, and his walk is steady.

The First Jade has never seen his brother look so settled.

Wei Wuxian seems happy too, his smile incandescent and lovely. Almost as tall as Wangji, the boy is the very antithesis of his brother. While Wangji is sedate and content, Wei Wuxian is nearly bursting with energy and joy. His silver eyes sparkle in the sunlight and his long hair sways with every movement of his body.

Xichen's heart softens at the glimpse of such open beauty. There's certainly something alluring about Young Master Wei. He seems to suffuse his surroundings with happiness.

There's something in the air around them.

Despite his lively mind wandering from one stall to another, Wei-gongzi always finds his way back to Wangji, looking at him with a hopeful smile and a cheerful comment.

His brother's expression is unfamiliar to him. Wangji looks like his entire world is smiling up at him.

'Is this love?' He wonders to himself as he watches his brother gently pull Wei-gongzi out of a running child's way. He doesn't miss how the touch lingers, fingers curling slightly around the slender wrist before pulling away.

There are many eyes following Wangji and his friend, and all of them have indulgent expressions. The people of Caiyi town have seen Wangji since he was a child. They know him and his nature well enough.

Xichen suspects they're just as happy to see Wangji roaming the markets leisurely as a pretty butterfly flutters around him.

"Is that Lan Wangji?" Nei Mingjue observes, stepping up beside him.

Xichen nods, "And his friend, Wei Wuxian."

"Hm," his friend says, "I've been hearing that name a lot recently. They say the only reason Jin Zuxian beat him in the rankings is because of his looks."

Xichen chuckles at Mingjue's tone, "Ah, Da-ge, you must hate that."

His friend rolls his eyes, taking a sip of his tea. "How do looks matter when you're facing down Fierce Corpses?"

"From what shufu says, Young Master Wei is Wangji's equal in many ways." Shufu had been wary at first, wondering what sort of chaos the son of Cangse Sanren would bring to Cloud Recesses. So far, Wei Wuxian has proven to be a mischievous but brilliant student. "He challenges shufu in class. They end up having loud, angry debates," Xichen chuckles because he knows his uncle, despite all appearances, loves being stimulated, "He mentions the boy often." There's a comment about Wei Wuxian almost every time he has tea with his uncle.

He looks at the two younger master's thoughtfully, "I didn't expect this."

"Are they courting?" Nei Mingjue asks bluntly, "Because your little brother is acting like a husband already."

Xichen stills and looks at the pair again. That is what's off about their body language. They move around each other confidently, not like a young couple in fresh blooms of love.

There are no tentative glances, awkward touches, and hyperawareness. Wangji touches Wei Wuxian like it is his right. Like he is confident that his touch is welcome and desired.

For a moment, he feels a pang of worry. Xichen looks at Wei Wuxian, studying him carefully to see if there's any sign of strain or distress.

He finds nothing. Wei-gongzi responds to every gesture of affection like a flower blooming under the Sun.

"Ah." He realizes, "You think…?"

"Strong bonds form quickly between cultivators with matching potential." Nei Mingjue observes, "It wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility. Your brother looks a little too enamored for this to be a teenage fancy."

Well, isn't this an interesting development?

---

"Your hair looks nice," Nie Huaisang says, hiding a smile behind his fan. Wei-xiong always looks good but there's something particularly radiant about him now. He seems to stand a bit taller, carry himself with a bit more confidence. His gestures seem stronger, somehow carrying more authority than before.

But the hair intrigues him. There's a glittering silver hairpiece in it and the strands of ebony are tied up in a neat style.

Neater than Wei-xiong's usual style. While Huaisang is certain Wei-xiong is perfectly capable of making himself as elegant as the Jades of Lan, he usually doesn't bother.

This was done by someone else's careful, loving, hand.

Jiang Yanli isn't at Cloud Recesses and Jiang Cheng would rather burn his own hands than show even an ounce of love towards his shixiong - something pricks when he thinks about that.

So there's someone else, someone willing to comb Wei-xiong's hair until every strand is glossy and straight, before tying it up with a silver and jade pin that looks expensive.

Wei-xiong is courting- no, he corrects himself, watching his friend wave enthusiastically at Lan Wangji, 'Wei-xiong is being courted.'

Wangji-xiong bows to his brother and walks towards Wei-xiong, his gaze softer than usual. His friend is smiling widely and immediately dissolves into excited chatter. Wangji-xiong doesn't seem bothered, just nodding occasionally and watching with indulgent patience.

There's something entirely lovely about the way Wangji-xiong's eyes remain fixed on Wei Wuxian's face. It is like nothing else is more important to him than Wei-xiong's smile and cheerful voice.

Standing together in the courtyard, both clad in white and glowing under the warm light of the morning sun, they look stunning. Huaisang's romantic heart sighs at the sight.

"What is he doing?" Jiang Wanyin hisses and Huaisang looks at him, startled by his icy tone, "I can't believe he's making a nuisance of himself again!"

"Jiang-gongzi-"

"Wei Wuxian! What are you doing, messing around?"

The loud voice catches almost everyone's attention. Wei-xiong looks over his shoulder and Wangji-xiong's expression turns frosty, all warmth draining from it immediately.

"Aiya, Jiang Cheng," Wei-xiong grins but it doesn't have that sheepish, placating quality that Huaisang had seen before, on those rare occasions he visited Lotus Pier with his da-ge. This grin was full of confidence and almost... dismissal. "Why are you angry now?"

Was that tone... mocking?

Huaisang's lips twitch as Jiang-gongzi swells further with rage, "Wei Wuxian! How can you be so shameless? Imposing yourself on Lan Wangji, always trying to distract him. Think of our sect's reputation for once!"

"Do not speak for me." Wangji-xiong's voice is icy and it cuts Jiang-gongzi's rant short immediately, "Wei Ying is free to seek me out whenever he wishes. No one may stop him."

And that seems to be that. Wei-xiong laughs and Wangji-xiong guides him away gently like he's someone delicate and not the strongest cultivator of their generation.

But, Huaisang muses, even strong people deserve gentleness.

---

"Da-shixiong! Show us that one again," A Jiang disciple demands and Wangji looks up from his work. He has clear sight of the training ground from where he's sitting. Wei Ying is standing in the middle, surrounded by a few Jiang and Lan disciples.

They're all looking at him in adoration.

Wangji feels a flood of amusement and sets his work aside, content to take a small break. It is always a treat to see his husband in his element; teaching people and nurturing young minds. They may be back in their teenage bodies, but their soul is much older.

Wei Ying, with his natural ability to charm juniors and his hard-earned wisdom, is the perfect teacher.

"It is amusing to see you so smitten," Wangji looks up to see his brother smiling at him, "Wei-gongzi must be very special, yes?"

His brother probably aims to fluster him, he is so fond of teasing Wangji. But Wangji had been Wei Ying's husband for more than a decade before an accident sent them back in time. He is no longer flustered or overwhelmed by his feelings. "Very special," He agrees, unable to help glancing back at his beloved, "Very lovely."

Xichen chuckles, "He is indeed lovely." His expression turns sly, "Do I need to speak with Uncle? Betrothal negotiations may be complicated in this case."

Wangji remains unphased, "You may," He says calmly, much to his brother's surprise, "Wei Ying will marry into the Lans. Give no concession to the Jiangs. He is just their Head Disciple, not the part of the family."

"Wangji," His brother breathes, "You're that invested?"

"Un. Will marry Wei Ying. Give him a better life. A life of dignity, freedom, and respect. Free of unnecessary debt that no one should foist on a child."

That is enough for Xichen to understand. His gaze turns solemn and he looks at Wei Ying carefully, "If that is what you wish, brother, you will have it."

---

Wangji feels his heart still when he steps into the library pavilion. He gazes at the scene before him, feeling the stiff formality of his expression melt away.

Wei Ying is beautiful, sitting there and reading peacefully. The evening sunlight envelopes him, giving him an ethereal glow. He traces his husband's features, feeling something akin to desperate love. It has been so since he saw this face and this body. Mo Xuanyu didn't lack beauty and Wei Ying's radiant personality had only added to it.

But this is Wei Ying's true body.

Helplessly drawn, he steps forward. "Xingan."

Wei Ying looks up, startled to hear such an endearment aloud. Immediately, his face is aglow with a pretty blush even as he laughs teasingly, "Lan Zhan! Don't be so bold!"

He walks towards Wei Ying and settles down by him, closer than truly appropriate but this is his husband. "Research?"

Wei Ying smiles, drawing Wangji's attention to his lips. There's no one in the library so Wangji permits himself the touch, reaching forward to gently caress them, "Such beauty." He whispers.

Wei Ying blushes again, "Er-gege," He protests, "Have mercy on my heart."

His fingers slide under Wei Ying's jaw, drawing him in gently. His husband is sweet and compliant as Wangji kisses him, an innocent brush of lips and nothing more. "My Wei Ying." His voice is low, heated in ways Wei Ying recognizes. He watches as those enchanting silver eyes brighten with passion.

His Wei Ying buries his warm face in his neck with a moan of protest, "Mercy, husband. You're so cruel to tease me like this when you can't take me to bed."

It is indeed a challenge to not have their 'everyday' but Wangji can be patient. Xiongzhang is already working on it.

For now, he is content.

They sit like that for a long time, Wei Ying leaning against him, trusting and calm. No one disturbs them and Xichen only stops by once, smiling knowingly in their direction and pointedly ignoring Wangji's restraining hand around Wei Ying's waist, stopping him from pulling away.

They spend the rest of the evening exchanging soft murmurs and softer kisses.

Nothing will stand in their way this time.

A preview for the Roman Neo book came out. Did you read it? I didn't but I want to hear your thoughts on it.

I just read it now!

The preview gave us the first chapter and the initial interaction of the second, flipflopping between Neo and Roman's stories, much like BTD. I think Neo's chapter has more to discuss in it, so I'll focus mostly on that.

We're not actually seeing things through her perspective (theoretically — more on that below), but rather Trivia's, a girl turning eight the next day. The chapter covers her playing a game of silent tag with Neo after her mom and dad have gone to bed, accidentally breaking a vase and getting in trouble for it. Some of it is cute — I like the image of a young Neo playing games, including the floor is lava, and that she's presented as Trivia's "imaginary friend" — but the rest is a pretty standard RWBY setup. Honestly, Trivia's life feels like a carbon copy of the Schnee's. Her family is clearly quite rich, what with the Mistral oriental rug they're jumping onto, the expensive vase she breaks, a mound of birthday presents waiting, etc. Her father is some kind of politician, a member of the Vale City Council, and he tries to justify his explosive anger with how hard his work is, things he puts up with for his family. Trivia sees his "barely controlled anger" that later turns to "rage." He holds her upside down after pulling her from beneath the couch (her first instinct is to hide) and shakes her a bit before dropping her. Then he vaguely orders one of the women in the room to clean the mess up before going back to bed. Trivia's mother, meanwhile, is the more nurturing figure, but who inevitably gives in to her husband's temper. Her pushes for leniency fall on deaf ears and later, when Trivia still won't speak when they're alone, she flinches, gets mad, and leaves Trivia alone, repeating her husband's order to clean up this mess. She's kinder, but isn't able to control her husband's cruelty and, inevitably, feeds into it.

Sound like any other family dynamics we've seen?

The father — Jimmy — gets a side of ableism with his generally implied abuse. Interestingly, Trivia is mute with her father telling her to "speak up for yourself" (implying she physically can speak, but struggles emotionally to do so) and her mom, as said, eventually grows frustrated too and leaves when Trivia won't talk to her. I will say that I like that the text includes a communication board, even if both parents clearly don't like Trivia using it, and her muteness certainly introduces an unexpected dynamic. It's unlikely that we have two mute characters who just happen to have become friends (with one sneaking into the house and managing to hide from the parents behind a pile of presents for this whole conversation), so my assumption is that Trivia is Neo. Neo, as a young girl, is born Trivia to rich parents (the family portrait on the book's cover) and imagines herself up a playmate named "Neopolitan." Neo is just like Trivia — they're both mute, the text describes them mirroring each other while playing, they're both wearing fancy dresses, Trivia instinctively knows what Neo is "saying" — but she's better, more acrobatic, more confident, more rebellious... everything a sheltered, probably abused girl would want to be. In time, Trivia gains that skill and confidence (floor is lava makes good acrobatic practice!) and rebrands herself as her own imaginary friend. Interestingly, her mother (with brown eyes) flinches when Trivia makes eye contact with her, which one might do if your kid has mismatched eyes and you dislike that for some reason, such as it not being "normal," as they discuss in regards to her muteness. Brown hair and eye, a pink eye... and the last name Vanille. Ta da, with brown, pink, and white — chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla —you get the name Neopolitan, which Trivia eventually takes on as her real name from then on. (The sweets based name might also be a subconscious homage to her kinder parent — the mom's name is Carmel). We see at the end of the chapter that Trivia is giving in to "Neopolitan's" rebellious nature, grounding the smashed vase into dust, smearing blood on the couch, and leaving the room without cleaning anything up as she was told. All of this makes far more sense if we don't read the girls as two people, but one, with Trivia slowing coming into the personality she's imagined for herself.

I like the setup so far. Yes, it has its potentials for pitfalls in how Neo's mutism and "imaginary friend" is handled, but so far the only thing I dislike is the Schnee 2.0 dynamic, which just feels redundant. I got excited for a moment when the communication board came out, thinking that these might be good parents (good adults!) helping their kid communicate however she's most comfortable... but no. Sigh.

Roman, meanwhile, is a lot more straightforward and... it's fine? Not as engaging as the questions that Neo's chapter raises, but solid. We learn that he's 18 (presumably making him a decade older than Neo then) and that he moved to Mistral about a year ago. He's living on the streets and trying not to freeze or starve to death, camping outside a nightclub to find drunk victims to rob. The part of his chapter we get shows him stealing a man's wallet, pretending to give it back, and then threatening him so he gives up his coat and gloves instead (since the guy blew all his money at the club — the main attraction apparently uses her semblance to lure people in). We end with Roman breaking the man's knee anyway, despite his cooperation. It's precisely the sort of ruthless, street-thug, but obsessed with looking good while he does it (the coat is apparently very fine) that we would expect of Roman.

Detail I really liked? Roman apparently spent a long time practicing twirling his cane in front of a mirror — lol. Detail I didn't like? The night club performer whose semblance was “one of those special abilities some people had that often seemed like magic." How does one semblance seem like magic compared to others that apparently don't? They're all insane abilities?? This franchise still has no good distinction between the two.

Myers also flipflops between strong and weak writing a lot. We've got the strong "[The wealthy] held their noses so high, they didn’t notice what was right under them” when Roman robs the guy of his wallet, followed by the terrible "Have you ever wondered what it feels like to be a punching bag?" when he's trying to threaten him. It's a mixed bag. But I will say that these excerpts feel far, far stronger than what I was reading in BTD. Honestly, reading that I kept wondering why so many in the fandom loved his work, but if what I've read of Roman Holiday is consistent across the book and if that's closer to the quality of ATF, I can much better understand the interest. BTD may have been the fluke among three novels, rather than the rule. Which is great!

28. ITALY

Diodato - “Fai Rumore”

And we’re back to our usual disconnect, where everyone pretends to love Italy and I don’t. I cannot wait for all the Italian crazies to be OUTRAGED by this ranking (28/41 is fine for an entry I don’t care about...?) and reblog this all over the tumblrverse and inflate my reader stats. 😈 but first, let’s discuss what we have on our hands here. 

Song Analysis

There’s no way this post *won’t* end up offensive to every Fai Rumore fan, so I will resort to brutal honesty. I never, ever, *ever* cared about “Fai rumore”. In fact, I’d even say it’s strongly overrated by the gross of the Eurovision fandom? 

Okay so here’s the deal. I will not deny that “Fai Rumore” has several things going for it. The song has emotional gravitas, Diodato has a great voice and acts very well. It’s technically precise and well produced. It is very competent at what it sets out to be, which is a very standard HQ Sanremo Power Ballad. 

But here’s where I feel like I deviate from the norm: You may think “wow Fai Rumore! How brilliant, meticulous and poised”, but I think “how expected, overtly earnest and unfun?” 

The problem is, this is Boris’s Bubble and Boris doesn’t enjoy songs that feel like they belong inside a trophy cupboard, and “Fai rumore” is exactly one of those songs, don’t lie. So “meticulous, poised and brilliant” you say, well *I* say “how overtly earnest, unfun and aloof”? I have a Spotify - if I wanted to listen to good music, I’d just use that? Or one of my like 15 Youtube Playlists containing non-ESC entries? Why would I watch Eurovision, or Sanremo for that matter, for the good music when there are so many other (and easier) options available for me that align better to my tastes?

The fact that “Fai Rumore” is *too* perfect for me (and therefore very hard to empathize with imo) is one thing, which leads to other thing I need to point out. I’ll let my friend Matthew take over here, who wrote this paragraph on ESCUnited right after Diodato’s selection: 

That final sentences is bone-chilling because it’s so, so true. “I AM A SOPHISTICATED MUSIC FAN BECAUSE I FOLLOW ~FESTIVALE DI SANREMO~” is such a common trope of elistism (like, replace “San Remo” with any quality newspaper, nobel prize winning author or classical music composer and you’ll find to be nearly universally applicable to snobs across the globe), but I find it specifically ugly in Eurovision.

You see, would the same courtesy be extended to a country of lower prestige if they got a Fai Rumore? Would the same courtesy be extended to a person of colour? or a woman? How about others songs that, like Fai Rumore, emulate their country’s musical traditions (Fai Rumore is SO italian you can smell the basil), except those traditions fall outside of the western European bubble? See, it doesn’t bother me that Italians like Fai Rumore and are proud of it. They’re Italians. Of course they are! I don’t judge them for it. I don’t rly care if the odd introvert finds solace in a song of this calibre. But as soon as Matthew made the aforementioned post, people who had previously rated Diodato as a 5/6 already started adjusting their scores to 10s and 12s and, well...

It bothers me that the same fanbase that DEMANDS cultural diversity (Diodato) and/or MOAR ETHNOBOPS (Efendi) refuse to accept a Solovey or an Origo -which are a thousandfold more layered, sophisticated and daring- as an equal. 

It bothers *even more* me that people are willing to immediately give Italy a plethora of chances (especially when they choose men! fuck institutionalised sexism!), while not doing the same for a Belarus. Belarus HAS no clear musical scene or funds to really produce good music, yet produced a ridiculously good NF (with a VERY righteous winner - yes, Chakras, but also: Chakras) I’ve seen snobs SLAM VAL, mercilessly despite being an excellent left-field pick (god imagine if Yan had won Eurofest for a sec. What a nightmare). Italy, otoh, also delivered a sterling NF, have *a VERY* rich musical tradition, tons of talent and money and production value... and they still went the lowest common denominator available, and yet they receive praise, without so much as a whisper of protest from our so-called “value seekers”. This level of hypocrisy and double standard wielding, all in the name of wishing to be taken seriously delivers *such* a toxic undercurrent to Eurovision and has absolutely soured me on Diodato. This isn’t his fault, but sadly he’s become a weapon of mass misconstruction and well just because I hate the guy who pressed the big red button more doesn’t mean I automatically like ICBMs. As we come near the songs I actually give a damn’ about, I will start calling the shitpociries out. Brace yourself for it, when I rank Solovey and Da Vidna inside my top five.

Want some examples specifically pertaining to the Diodato fandom? Sure, I’ll give you some:

EJEMPLO UNO: 

Diodato fanboys openly coddling him on social media post-lockdown all “PROTECT OUR POOR MUNCHKIN FROM THE CORONAVIRUS”. Like... he’s a *thirty-eight year old adult* he can take care of himself, BACK UP OFF HIM you freaks. 

EJEMPLO DOS: 

The relevant media having baptized Diodato as THE SAVING GRACE OF THE LOCKDOWN, ITALIANS SINGING ‘FAI RUMORE’ FROM THEIR BALCONIES IN DEFIANCE OF COVID-19, which is such a bullshit narrative it’s turned my hair from black to brown.  Yes, the Italians sang “Fai Rumore”. What they don’t tell you is that they also sang many other Italian and non-Italian songs, including humanitarian anthem “Roar” by Kety Perr (cue to Katy Perry being like “OMG I’M SO HONORED TO INSPIRE SO MANY ITALIANS ::hungarianflagemoji::” on twitter.). CNN Like, Eurovision related media LOVE portraying it as a ~life-chaning confort anthem~ - the reality is that “Fai rumore”, while playing its part, was merely a tiny spoke in a giant wheel. 

EJEMPLO QUATRO:

Well take a look at how many people will reblog this post and slam it for daring to point out, what I think are really obvious truths to anyone who doesn’t suffer from musical myopia. 

In the end, the song is okay and it’s okay to love it. But if you ‘love’ it because you’ve convinced yourself that you must, and not because it genuinely means something to you, I don’t think you have grounds to criticise to criticise anyone but yourself.

NF Corner

As I said, I didn’t follow San Remo live (I never do! *gasp* blasphemy, I know), but I did plan to check it for this write-up except RAI deleted every live performance? And they won’t let me embed the few remaining vids either? 

Anyway, this happened so right-click-open this a new tab and then return once you’ve finished it. 

Backstage feuds being fought out LIVE on the stage in front of millions of viewers 😍 Apparently Morgan and Bugo were at loggerheads for a while, and had a massive row RIGHT before their performance on the second night, which caused Morgan to stray from the script and sing all the insulting things Bugo told him *to Bugo* instead of the actual lyrics of their duet. 😍 😍 😍 Bugo IMMEDIATELY stormed off the stage to the point where Amadeus had to like... literally tell the gobsmacked audience that Bugo had left the building 😍 😍 😍. This is some god-tier pettiness and I’m completely in awe of it. DEITIES. 😍

aside from Sincerogate, I would’ve embedded vidoes that contained the DRAMA (Rancore), CAMP (Achille) and UNABASHED WEIRDNESS (Levante) of this year’s line-up, but I guess RAI really doesn’t like for people to have fun. Oh well. 

Italy 2020 vs Italy 2021

Diodato is male and Italian, so yeah, guaranteed top 10 in Rotterdam, no matter what happens. Search your feelings, you know it to be true. Cynicism aside, televoters WOULD have flocked to it without thinking twice (for exactly those two reasons), passing over many better entries in the process and well... I’m tired and exhausted and I think you can guess I am not very impressed by this likely outcome. 

Not sure what RAI’s strategy for 2021 is (lol it’s RAI - they don’t have a strategy. besides Italy have bigger fish to fry than the Eurovision Song Contest as you know), but I’m not very invested either way. I could imagine them internally selecting Diodato if he’s willing to do ESC in 2021, but if this was a one-off deal (which I think it was), they will probably select another plain white bloke for you to obsess over, so no worries :-) #TuttoVaPene

FREAKY! FRIDAY! FACTOR!

I’m sort of conflicted? On one hand, god Fai Ru*snore* is SO typical of “Italy in Eurovision”, not just from a musical perspective but from a point of reverence as well. On to the other hand, when are the fanbases *not* acting insane w/r/t Italy?

San Remo was  really crazy this year, enough for me to award Italy a couple Senheads. However... if I wanted to see nice and inoffensive triumph over a bunch of deranged, gimmicky, ott masterpieces, I’d just rewatch #London1977? (offensive take #16: “people that like Marie Myriam the most in 1977 do not understand Eurovision”) Ehhhh whatevs.

Score: 2 Senhits out of 5. 

Alias season one full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

Seventeen out of twenty-two (77.27%).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

25.08%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Zero.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Three: 1.09 – “Mea Culpa” (16.67%); 1.11 – “The Confession” (9.09%); and 1.14 – “The Coup” (17.65%)

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-two. Sixteen who appeared in more than one episode, two who appeared in at least half the episodes, and one who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Eighty. Thirty-one who appeared in more than one episode, seven who appeared in at least half the episodes, and four who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

While it could have done much worse, it could have also done considerably better. The white male perspective shines through in ways that are often individually minor but collectively major (average rating of 2.86).

General Season Quality: Mindless fun, at least the first time around. However, once subjected to scrutiny, only the performances save what is in many ways a mess.  

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Alias’ first season is often considered to be among the series’ best, and it’s not hard to see why: it’s the most confident (at least on the surface), it’s the one that is most distinct from other TV shows, and features level of extravagance that is not seen in many of the future seasons. It’s also the season most in control of its various elements: while not all of them are used to their best effect, we can at least understand why they are there, and they all have a role to play.  This is very often not the case with this series.

And yet, I find that season one, which I had once considered my favorite, is actually the one that stands up least well to rewatching. With the twists and turns that define its narrative having long since lost their bite, there is very little about it that is engaging in the way future seasons are. While it features elements which I wish had been kept and not abandoned, the more I rewatch, the more it becomes clear that these elements were often just not used well.  

Take Rambaldi. While a lot of the fandom would eventually lose patience with the device and blame it for the series’ flagging quality, it is clear, upon reconsideration, that it wasn’t a good idea from the start. Are Rambaldi missions marginally more interesting than those that don’t involve Rambaldi?  Sure—but that’s not exactly hard. The problem with those early non-Rambaldi missions wasn’t the absence of a mystery box featuring a Leonardo Da Vinci knock-off, it was that there was absolutely no resonance to them. They did not tell us anything about characters. They did not feature interesting elements. They did not further the stories that existed outside of them. However, none of these are actually inherent qualities of the stories. Having non-Rambaldi stories that did not feel as if they mattered was a choice. Furthermore, none of these problems with the early missions are actually fixed by having Rambaldi in them. Rambaldi stories are often exactly as hollow as the others—they just happen to also include The Tease, which is by definition attention-grabbing and helps make it easier to ignore other crucial things—like, for example, how meaningless it all is. 

“Meaningless,”  sadly, is a word that can be used to describe many of the stories this season, which could accurately be described as a twenty-two episode version of the first three quarters of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, also by J.J. Abrams—go to Place A to do Thing B, so you can then go to Place C and do Thing D, repeat ad nauseum.  What does Rambaldi tell us about anything? What did Charlie tell us about Francie? What makes the C.I.A. fundamentally different from SD-6?  What is the point of all this prophecy business?  What’s the red ball about, and why should we care, when the series is not giving us any reason to beyond “you should care”? What is the series saying?

The closest thing the season has to a theme, as mentioned in previous reviews, is the idea that people have different faces, many of which we choose to or are forced to keep hidden for one reason or another. It’s…fine, as themes go (although it’s worth noting that Rambaldi contributes nothing to that conversation), but the season is, at best, ambivalent about it. Given how universal the thesis is, it feels very much like it should be applied to everyone, and yet this is very clearly not the case, with a very clear line between characters who get to be multifaceted and those who don’t. Additionally, a robust exploration of the theme would require a greater interest in people than the show has demonstrated; that the standard mission features the barest amount of human interaction feels like a serious misstep, and is one of the reasons why large parts of this season feel unmemorable. As crucial as Sydney’s costumes are for the series’ brand identity, the missions that facilitate them are also often the least interesting part of any given episode.

(On a related note, it’s worth noting once again that the series is also not at all interested in the various places it takes its characters to. All the jet-setting the series does exists largely to provide the barest amount of local color, and nothing else—the philosophy behind Sydney’s costumes, applied to scenery.)  

One thing that is consistently interesting about season one, though, is the difference between the Sydney the writers thought they were writing and the Sydney they actually wrote.  I’ve mentioned multiple times that there is a consistent sense that the writers were afraid of making Sydney a character that could be considered objectionable, in a way that led them to strip away every bit of complexity from her situation, and undermining the show’s very premise. Yes, she worked for a terrorist group for seven years, but Alias is not a redemption story—Sydney is never shown to have done anything that could be considered immoral. Yes, she’s actually still working for them now, but none of her missions actually require her to consider compromising her beliefs. Yes, her job requires her to dress much more sexily than she does when she’s not playing a role, but never that she have sex —spysex is bad. Yes, SD-6 is the most formative experience of her life as a young adult, but that doesn’t mean she’s in any way ambivalent about it or has seven years of history to recontextualize. No, she has no reason why to trust the government, but that doesn’t mean she is anything other than completely loyal to U.S. intelligence interests.  A situation that is nothing but complicated edges—a woman who has turned against the institution that made her who she is because she realized it was evil and that she was facilitating that evil—is as toothless as Clifford the Big Red Ball.

(Making things worse still is that the writers don’t actually morally object to the things they contrive to prevent Sydney from doing. The scene where SpyDaddy tortures and kills Haladki is not meant to make viewers think worse of SpyDaddy—just the opposite, in fact. And this has very real implications: arguing that male characters like Jack or Sloane get to have edges and imperfections while female heroes only get to be worthwhile if they’re virginal is textbook sexism.)   

This, however, isn’t to say that Sydney is flawless—but rather, that Alias, having decided to leave the natural implications of its premise unexplored, has to look elsewhere to provide imperfections. The first of these imperfections, which feels like the show’s version of the clumsy female YA protagonist trope, is that Sydney…is not smart. She’s very clever in the moment, but she is consistently very bad at long-term thinking, or at dealing with people (Alias does not care about people). While she sometimes gets called out on this—such as when she’s told her impulsive plan to quit SD-6 and still keep her normal life is impulsive and had no chance of working—it still feels exceedingly odd for a veteran spy to be thinking this way, and inexplicable in one that has been in the business for seven years and is supposedly very good at her job. That characters like SpyDaddy are, in turn, allowed to be competent in ways she isn’t make things even more baffling: if you know well enough to make your characters tactically smart, then why not allow your supposedly-smart main character to actually make tactically smart decisions?

Sydney’s lack of critical thinking mixes with the aforementioned fear of allowing her to be morally compromised in ways that further serve to undermine the character. A person who has no need to make moral compromises is much more likely to not understand the concept of compromise or moral complexity, which is very often how Sydney is written—she just loves that high horse—in a way that actively harms the series, because the series then has to warp its universe in order to fit the narrative.  It makes no sense for Sydney to consider her mother to be evil for being a KGB assassin—not in light of Sydney’s own work for SD-6—unless one makes it so that her work for SD-6 was somehow not immoral or visibly harmful.  Similarly, it makes no sense for Sydney to consider being lied to for large parts of her life as indefensible, given her life and how much of it is lying to others. And while Sydney is free to have feelings that are logically inconsistent or even hypocritical, the fact that she is never seriously called out on these inconsistencies strongly suggests that the writers have not spotted them either. 

And so, we have a Sydney who can accurately be described as a Karen: someone who (often correctly) believes systems and rules and morals are only suggestions when they apply to her but unbreakable rules when used against those she doesn’t like,  and who uses her relatively minor oppression as a way to ignore her considerable privilege, which she consistently uses for her own personal benefit. Not only is her “original” sin—telling Danny about SD-6—borne from this belief, we see it consistently in ways both major (her belief that the anti-SD-6 effort should follow her lead, even after she’d just learned that she knew nothing about the group; her attempts to secure Vaughn as her handler; her general belief that only she gets to determine who and who does not get forgiven) and minor (her blithe attempts to get an extension on classwork she didn’t do). While she’s far from the worst example of a Karen—she lacks, for example, the cruelty that characterizes those who call cops to kill Black people—she nevertheless fits the profile with shocking exactness.  

And honestly, that’s fantastic.

One of the reasons I can still appreciate Alias, despite its multiple flaws, is because it’s part of a genre that is both fairly derivative and which gets a fair amount of play—the original Nikita (the 1990 Luc Besson film) begat La Femme Nikita (the 1997-2001 TV series) begat Alias (2001-2006) begat Nikita (the 2010-2013 series) and to a lesser extent Person of Interest (2011-2016)—which means that everything it’s done badly has probably been done well elsewhere. This, in turn, allows me to enjoy Alias on its own terms. I don’t really need to see Sydney the hypercompetent, empathetic super-spy—that’s what Nikita Mears is there for, and if Sydney were more like her, then she would not be nearly as memorable or fascinating.  

(It helps immeasurably that Jennifer Garner is fantastic at making Sydney feel fundamentally likeable. Were it not for that, the series would have been unbearable.)

That said, that doesn’t mean that Sydney doesn’t present a problem for the show. As fascinating as Hypocritical Entitled Princess SpyBarbie is, she would be even more so as the main character in a world that reacts to her idiosyncrasies in a way that makes sense. That this is not the case is one of the season’s biggest problems. To go back to Sydney Doesn’t Kill, even if one could justify it in-universe, one would still need to explain why it goes on completely unremarked by anyone. The only explanation for that is to argue that SD-6 just has a general non-killing policy, which makes absolutely no sense. More generally, keeping the show’s version of Sydney viable means breaking the series’ moral parameters—SD-6 is terrible except when it isn’t—which further hinders the season or its attempts to say anything worthwhile.   

On another note entirely, let’s talk about those Bechdel Test results. When I began working on this, I was honestly expecting this season to do far worse than it did, since I remembered the bulk of Sydney and Francie’s conversations being about the men in their lives.  While this turned out to be not the whole truth, it is still largely accurate in ways that do not speak well of the season.  

The Bechdel test presents, by design, a very low bar to clear. Passing is not hard to do, and it is even less hard when the main character of the work is female—you almost have to actively work at failing in order to consistently do so. And yet, this is what almost happens with Alias. Take away Francie from the main cast—which is actually shockingly easy to do, especially in the second half of the season—and the passing rate falls dramatically.

It’s also worth noting how few of the passes actually take place outside of Sydney’s domestic life. This is a serious problem! First of all, it means that the series is very often passing by the skin of its teeth, since Sydney’s domestic life is not often the focus of the series, especially as the season progresses. More importantly, it indicates that Sydney’s worlds outside the purely domestic realm are ones made up nearly entirely of men. 

Now, it’s bad enough that Sydney is very nearly the only female intelligence operative in the world, in a world where even the desk jockeys are overwhelmingly male. But this goes beyond that. It’s not just that Sydney does not interact with female agents. It’s that she very rarely interacts with female scientists, female doctors, female party hosts, female corporate bigwigs (or, in college, with female professors). Why has the world of the show been set up this way?    

Well, consider this: in a heteronormative world—which Alias very much is, no matter how much we all love Anna Espinosa and her no-heterosexual-explanation-for-this chemistry with Sydney—seduction is not a valid interaction between two women.

I’ve noted that Sydney’s aliases are almost never about adopting concrete personas, and instead about adopting particular aesthetics, which almost always accept the modifier “sexy”—sexy maid, sexy club-goer, sexy IT person—even when there’s no actual need for it, according to stated mission parameters.  While this is, to a degree, about genre convention (sexy spies gotta sexy) there is something deeper going on here. Sydney’s aliases tend to be about being sexy because it’s Sydney’s chief interaction (whenever interaction is needed—it often is not, as mentioned earlier)—or at the very least, the use of feminine wiles is. This, in turn, is only possible because Sydney’s spy work takes place in a world largely devoid of women. It’s a vicious circle: Sydney’s missions don’t have women because sexy costumes are not needed to interact with women. Sexy costumes are needed because Sydney is always interacting with men, and the only valid interactions with them involve the possibility of sex.

Consider, in contrast, what happens with Dixon. Sydney dons costumes; Dixon adopts personas. Given that seduction is not an option for Dixon in a world with almost no women, his interactions get to be more complex—the rich person lording his privilege over the people who want his money; the cocky poker player. Heck, even Vaughn, with his limited screen time, gets to have fairly complex interactions. His alias in “The Solution” involves a more complex interaction than Sydney has ever had in the whole season, with the possible exception of…sigh…her brownface alias (which note, is also one where seduction is not available to her).

In short: Alias’ mission sequences are often so samey and uninspired because writers cannot conceive of a world in which Sydney interacts with women, or one when she can have non-sexual interactions with men. One could hardly find a better example of how sexism actively makes works worse and is inextricably linked with quality.

I’ve been fairly negative during this review so far, so it’s important to note that Alias is far from all bad. In fact, part of the reason why this season is so frustrating is because what we actually got, as disappointing as it is, is still generally so enjoyable, and makes me want the series to be its best self.  So let’s talk about things I do like.

The first and foremost element in Alias’ plus column is its excellent cast, which does an incredible job of elevating writing that, as we’ve established, often does not do them any favors. Usually, bad writing results in unlikeable characters, but not here; this is actually a supremely engaging group of people, which makes the series surprisingly easy to get through. There’s no character whose presence will stop me from enjoying an episode because of the haaaaate, and that’s a rare blessing. Even Will, who has the audacity to both date his twenty-year-old intern and then very visibly not appreciate her, even when she’s great and looks like Sarah Shahi (whose Sarah Shahi-ness is 98% of the reason why the character is great; it certainly isn’t because of the way she’s written), is someone I really, really like, which is a bona fide miracle.

(Also, shout out to unproblematic favorites Dixon and Francie, who are wonderful and don’t get nearly the development they deserve.) 

Something I also really enjoy about this season is its management of Sydney’s love life, which feels atypical for the genre in a way I appreciate. Both Will and Vaughn have really good chemistry with Sydney, and you could see her being happy with either. You can see why they all like each other. The pacing feels just right: neither Will nor Vaughn dither when it comes to expressing their feelings, and yet the evolution of said feelings and how they express them simmers at just the right speed. Will gets to have his feelings rebuffed and deal with them in exactly the right way (at least when it comes to his interactions with Sydney). None of their characters treat romance as the only worthwhile endgame of their relationships. It won’t last, but for now, this element of the series is very appreciated.  

Finally, there is something about this season’s expansive approach to world-building, which is very appealing for reasons I can’t quite describe. As someone who’s a big fan of narratives featuring tangential storylines running in tandem, I really appreciate just how many different social circles the series establishes in a very short amount of time. It could have done better by pretty much all of them, but ultimately, I am interested and invested in the world the show has established. 

In the end, though, season one’s chief asset may just be its ability to bluff, using the appearance of confidence, showmanship and excellent production values to make up for its various sins. It’s largely illusory, of course, but if you let yourself get caught up in the magicians’ misdirection, you end up with a propulsive fun experience that is also unlike anything that was going on at the time and which despite various imitators hasn’t quite been replicated since.  It may not always be great, but it’s never a slog.

Alias season 1 is not the best season of the show; it’s not even among the better ones. Still, despite it significant and arguably fatal flaws, I can’t hate it—just the opposite, really.  It’s a lot like Sydney Bristow that way.

I went off on a rant to a friend about things like Gamble Era, and miscellaneous idolized past authors, and you know what, fuck it. I'm going to say it out loud. And listen, listen this is NOT going to be my normal "Whatever you like :)" post like, this is literally an accumulation of horse shit I've seen talked about in any and all lanes for years that have been driving me fucking bananas for years. Don't just read this going HAHA I HATE GAMBLE TOO and then be shocked when I slap at inexplicably favorited authors in this fandom beyond that.

------

God how can anyone genuinely like Gamble, like, literally, legitimately and 1000%, not even about her killing Cas or whatever, what kind of pure trash TV do these people intake in mass that they think Gamble was good at her job I can not emphasize enough how cripplingly disappointing the shift from S4-5 to 6-7 was I know art is in the eye of the beholder or whatever but JESUS. FUCKING. CHRIST.

Fuck constructivist theory there's a point when things are just clearly trash Benefits S7 had: Just da bros uhhhh *flips through pages* Anything else? Are dick jokes art?

Her era was overrun by plot holes you could fly boeing jets through -- and I don’t mean shit like when fandom goddamn made up in their own damn head about an angelreaper retcon even though the reaper in the same episode they said was a retcon said the deadass opposite of what everybody fucking wound themselves up about, just deadass yawning voids -- it had unstable mechanics on previously established species shit, the villain plot was one giant monster of the week that tried desperately to go back to how they handled shit like Azazel as a threat but miserably failed, the monster had the dumbest weakness possible, the characters themselves were unstable in their characterizations and not even in that general "I don't like what the show is doing with them" but episode to episode Sam flipping from ripping Dean with laughter over gay jokes to woke-sounding sentiments

The cinematic style was gone and just vacant, it was neither the overexposed horror desaturated film nor the vivid fantasy of Carver, it just sat there like an unpolished lump

While later seasons also lost the classic rock vibe for budget reasons, that too disappeared in her era so we had no film energy, no story energy, no character energy, no villain energy, no structure energy, and we didn't even have the fucking cool tunez but we had dicks allergic to windex

It even lacked the elements that gave Kripke era value

Dusty americana died, all we had left was teenage girl fuckin emo sad boi drama And even that was miserably piss poor

I have never seen such a visionless fucking disaster successfully air an entire season on my fucking TV

I will never, EVER be able to outline what a fucking disappointment it was to go from S4-5 level show maturation into this negative embarrassment by season 7.

S6 Kripke was still around to some extent and that's the only reason I can deduce, S7 minded, there was any substance to it, even if her writing and editing crew at the time were a goddamn tire fire. And then people turn around and yell feminism if you criticise the giant fucking blazing slag heap that was her era and blame anyone and everyone but her and here you FUCKING go and she does half the shit all over again in the Magicians

(The friend replied: "The season only works in reverse, which is a crime on serialised TV (and just bad screenwriting)." )

That's just it though, it's like S7 we were suddenly back to fucking episodical TV like S1-2 because enough fuckbats yelled about Good Old Days. Only instead of ʷĤε𝕣є'𝓼 đα𝒹 or 𝐓Ħⓔ DεᗰＯᶰ 卄𝓐ｓ Ƥl𝓐𝓝Ş ℱⓞｒ Ⓜ𝔢 it was   ħ𝔞ⓗａ 𝓓ＩＣ𝐤ᔕ  🍆

I mean fucking sure this show started targeting late teenage women but Kripke had started maturing it forward and then Gamble fucking rolls along and it's like she's writing for 13 year old boys suddenly

Well I say that's what she seemed to be writing for but at the time the marketing was gross objectification going LOOK PRETTY BOYS WITH GUNS and that was it, that was the substance of what they gave a shit about and apparently the kind of demographic they thought constituted the sum of the SPN audience which, go get fucked guys, seriously. No fucking wonder the ratings got gouged in half over the course of a year. And fandom yells BUT FRIDAY DEATH SLOT but go sit and spin, S6 was friday deathslot too but before Kripke disappeared as the last thread holding SOME kind of cohesive value in the piece together in S6, that went to shitfuckhell in a handbag at light speed. People migrated to SPN Fridays S6 just fine. They LEFT season 7 and then people plug their ears if they don’t like that. And Carver had to fight all S8 to get it back, /but succeeded, and then-some./ 

oh and lemme head off fandom dumbfuck argument #72 about “well Dabb’s ratings are lower than Gamble’s were so he sucks and ruined it worse” go take your fucking ass and google “national primetime ratings decline” and enjoy exploring the last fucking 70 years of TV history. Pointing out a show crashes within a year because of massive failure is not the same as people being intentionally fucking daft sods to the TV universe’s decline over the last decade so like, don’t. Don’t be that person. Because you’re still embarrassingly wrong.

(The friend replied: "That's why I don't get why people care about what the vocal minority have to say. They *already* got what they wanted. It crashed and burned. Nobody in their right mind in corporate world is gonna be like, let's try that again, let's throw more money into that burning pit That's just not happening. Gay angels or no, it just ain't." )

I mean that should have been obvious when 1. Carver brought back Cas and pretty much immediately promoted him to Regular 2. Misha then got promoted to lead credits in S12, no matter what circles of intentional, willful ignorance fandom argues about what the credits mean for petty piss fights

"LOL & MEANS HE'S LESS IMPORTANT" Shut the fuck up and sit down you basement dwelling shitlord, go watch the A-Team, tell me how Mr T is the least important character

Also unpopular fuckin opinion Robbie Thompson and Ben Edlund are not That Great. Compared to what they were SURROUNDED with they were exceptional but Berens and Yockey could run circles around them both. They just happened to give fandom shit they liked during dark times so it made them fun. Robbie Thompson and Ben Edlund are basically the baseline value of our current writing team on random names. Give me Robbie Thompson and give me Davy Perez and I see no fucking difference. People compare Edlund to Yockey because of certain shit he pulled off but like, no? If there WAS a comparison it’d be like, Meredith, and even then I can’t see any way Edlund is substantially better than Meredith but could list the other in reverse?

But if we're talking about being able to write pieces with more than 1 or 2 layers of impact I'm sorry, it's rose colored glasses that makes people idolize them

Like if people seriously objectively fucking sat and reviewed the methodology and substance of their past idol authors to the demonstratable level of the current crew where I am DEAD ASS HAVING DISCOURSE WITH THE EXEC PRODUCER ABOUT BAUDRILLARDIAN CONCEPTS AND DELILLO in the middle of a hypercomplex postmodern two-directional commentary piece on some scaffolding of sociopolitical representation commentary that SAILS past the level the ‘activists’ in this fandom think about, literally, what people like is Gay Shit They Got lobbed at them or shiny visuals. And you know what, whatever, sure, like what you like IDGAF but don't sit here like Thompson was some fucking Shakespeare. No, your fucking "meta" you -- you, in any lane, anyone, any ship, anywhere, ever -- wrote by COMPLETELY randomly associating whatever storyline you could staple on to try to pretend the text was doing what you want at the time -- is not the same as author intent and actual weight and merit to the cohesive structure of what they build.

YES YES I KNOW, Death of the Author, someone just popped that up in their head, like the ten thousand posts I've made over the last 209349 years addressing how people abusive the fuck out of the term and that's fine, interpret shit however you wanna make it do jumping jacks but don't sit here entering the time you attached Little Bo Peep as some sort of intrinsic value to Dean trying to find Sam in 1492 and act like that's some deep critical shit the authors thoughtfully laced into the piece, these are not the same fucking conversation.

Big hollow voids of statements doesn’t make a better author, it makes you bust your ass harder to actually give any sort of consequential meaning to the piece, and that has nothing to do with the quality of the author or text themselves, that has to do with your interpretation in a piece devoid of genuine thematic subtext so people desperately try to bobby pin some bullshit together. Which also is probably why this fandom can’t tell the difference between coding, interpretation, subtext, and text for their fucking life anymore.

Protip the entire goddamn writing room is pouring that gay shit in your cup that's been triple brewed above Robbie or Edlund’s pots and people are still complaining it isn't enough

Another point that drives me up a wall, "LAZARUS RISING IS THE BEST EPISODE EVER" okay like lmaooooo what the fuck are you smoking Was it impressive as fuck at the time yes it was. But again, fucking perspective. I literally went back and watched it like a month ago and I realized it was a fucking void of content compared to our modern writing, it just had one of the most impressive entrances, it DID have good directing (YES MANNERS WAS GOOD, NO DISRESPECT), and it introduced a character everybody loved. Dean was still a halfass caricature

You wanna know why everybody made that shit gay right away Because there was no fucking substance around it it was a wallpaper of a cool looking episode that was otherwise blank space to run around in on dialogue they should have thought to construct better if they didn't want it to be gay

And sure since then the author room has picked up the big gay ball and started actually turning it into some shit which, great, but this is yet again a matter of structure and intent versus throwing rotten pasta at the wall and seeing if the mold makes it stick. I don't care if you have a vegan recipe that converts the fucking mold on the pasta into a healthy sauce base that isn't what it was thrown at the wall like, and no amount of complimenting the original chef's moldy pasta means it was some tasty shit before you added 10,000 ingredients they never fucking thought about or at least a second chef came along and figure out what to do with the pile of goo.

Fandom would stop being this miserable fucking putrid stinkhole if people would collectively apply some goddamn perspective to the content they argue about before even bothering to engage with uwustiel/cest dot tumblr dot com in irrelevant argument #9238428934 they use to fence off whether they should enjoy the content or try to explore it for its value or not because there is NO. MORE. PERSPECTIVE.

YOU KNOW WHAT? IT’S FINE TO EVEN ADMIT YOU LIKED THINKY-FREE TV, THAT’S FINE, THAT’S YOUR RIGHT.

But don’t SIT here acting like a lot of these former train wrecks were “better authors” or somehow objectively “better content.” No like, you like not thinking about shit that much and staring at pretty boys or whatever, good on you, but you literally like, objectively, some of the shit I’ve seen go down is like genuinely trying to compare a toddler’s fridge art to a Vasarely and hold them both up in front of people who do art for a living. They ain’t gonna shit on the kid’s fridge art, but they’re gonna go “awwwww she’s gonna grow up to be a great artist!” before breaking down on Vasarely’s vector illusion shit, sorry, that’s just how it be. I’m sure the kid had some sort of vision to drawing the triangle over the square that kinda looks like a house but the hypercomplex thought processes simply aren’t there. 

Just people STUCK in weird idolization of shit that is so far past irrelevant to the current piece in play and fighting to win arguments while trying to convince themselves they're right and secretly dreading how titanically failboat wrong they are ignoring the sound of the glacier having ripped through their hulls SEASONS ago. The ice water has already leaked onto the fucking DECK and people are still arguing about completely ridiculous shit or fancying things that were 1/10th of the value of the current content they're claiming isn't good or enough or valid compared to the shallow specters that birthed them out of old aeons. 

Dead-ASS Kripke picked shit because it “sounded cool.” I’m sorry if there weren’t some model guys fandom wanted to hump everybody would be making fun of the fedora-tipping mindset that probably is where the fucking trenchcoat came from and may have debated giving Cas -- sorry, “CASS” because “COOL” -- katanas. But sure. Way, way deeper and more intricate than the Jungian intertextual post modern piece that’s so tightly knit it’s making fandom unwittingly comment on themselves.

I thought people grew out of that shit when they were like 16 unless they were incels

(My spidey senses detected someone unironically preparing to inform me about stealing borrowing the imagery from Constantine on reflex, because you know, that’s some peak intertext right there.)

Dead ASS that writing logic is that motherfucker that wanders into your freeform RP server with Spawn knockoff miasma chainsaw arms under his leather trenchcoat shooting twin Deagles with a vague story of wanting to face his demon overlord father that’s written like a looney tunes villain, in the middle of you cowriting with your lit-savvy friends trying to make a fun fantasy adaptation rendering fascism and corporate america and then he gets upset when nobody wants him to shit lightning -- /fight me/.

SERIOUSLY FOLKS. WANNA ENJOY THE SHOW AGAIN? GET SOME PERSPECTIVE. LET GO OF FETISHIZING WEIRD WARPED MEMORIES AND LINES OF ARGUMENT INSIDE YOUR OWN HEADS ISTG IT'LL HELP.

The day I find an argument that makes season 7 legit good TV rather than, at very best, “fun junk TV I had a cool ride on”, that does NOT involve evoking arguments distinctly born out of petty shipping culture arguments and/or (generally the same) attaching their own shit with a stapler to MAKE it have some sort of meaning at the time it was airing (rather than later showrunners making it add up to something), I’ll eat my fucking arm.

𝓯𝓾𝓬𝓴. Carver era had already gone through dramatic changes that deepend the scope of the show and even then, 15.09 Bobo’s The Trap held more ACTUAL commentary on this fandom than Thompson’s Fanfiction episode did as a supposed fandom-commentary episode much LESS 15.04 as an actual meta framed episode. Fanfiction was like 4 years behind and completely fucking unplugged, whereas the base of the show itself is more integrated now in these dynamics than any attempt at meta episodes back then were.

old days it took one goddamn episode of dreaming for people to 1. start talking about Freud and 2. pretend the whole everything after that was some Freudian masterpiece even when, if it were, it would have been an entire avalanche of dropped balls. But two seasons of direct citations and literal manifest avatar-bodies of Jungian psychology elements and it’s hard to pull more than a peep out of the fandom about it because they’re too busy yelling about tulpas or sirens from before most of the people around here hit puberty.

𝓕 𝓤 𝓒 𝓚

furthermore why does anyone that idolize season 7 for what they think fits their bill think season 15 is gonna end how they want when they’ve been taking the piss out of season 7 over and over and over and over again IN THE TEXT as being dumb as SHIT

𝕀ℕ 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝔽𝕌ℂ𝕂𝕀ℕ𝔾 𝕋𝔼𝕏𝕋

WHY SET YOURSELF UP FOR DISAPPOINTMENT

TO WIN TEMPORARY ARGUMENTS? THAT YOU’RE ACTUALLY LOSING FROM START TO FINISH?

actually you know what

rolling back to the whole “empty/subtextless stuff making people bust their ass” seems to be what you miss. Saying, “I miss empty, shallow, shitty writing” doesn’t really sound as good though so we change “what I like” into “this is talentless trash” it postures better, but it seems to be the people who have objectively fucking refused core tenets the show has evolved over the last 7 years, most explicitly the last 3-4, and absolutely refused to soak them in the form they deliver in. And they’re mad. Because it isn’t hollow. They can’t run around in fucking blank space and plug absolute horse shit into the voids and then posture like they’re supreme in this noncommital wasteland. Because everything’s built out and structured in and loud as fuck and people are debating the actual installed and even dogmatically cited work of philosophers driving the ideology of the show now and they can’t get away from it, and/or actually have to pay attention to the whole show and think about it all as a picture instead of the parts they want, so it’s “bad.”

I just sensed like 50 readers shoving their foot into that shoe. Good.

Jesus christ I’m pretty sure that’s what it is in hindsight after yelling all of this. These characters can’t be used as sock puppets anymore that people can win bullshit arguments unless they literally delete the entire principle of the modern show -- and this goes for MULTIPLE lanes really, each in their own way -- so now it’s “bad.” And that’s just not how this works.

Im glad the asks helped! I have anxiety and depression and can understand what youre going through. My ask today is what are your thoughts on Bo Rhap as a movie?

Thanks! :) I’m above all extremely happy to see people on this site being so kind and supportive in time of need, it’s a human quality that will never get enough praise! I’m also really sorry to hear about your problems. :( I send you lots of love, I can imagine how difficult it must be for you, but I’m sure you're strong and coping❤️

As for your actual question - that’s some truly excellent and interesting timing, considering that I rewatched BoRhap (with @incblackbird) literally three days ago. :P It was already my third rewatch, and while I enjoyed the movie overall, I liked it quite significantly less than upon the last time I saw it. Of course, there��s been gazillion discourses about BoRhap, whether it’s genius, extremely evil, etc., but since it’s such a broad topic (and I think some of my opinions could potentially outrage certain parts of the fandom), this time I’m going to stick to purely cinematic terms.

Needless to say, the soundtrack is excellent - with music such as Queen’s you don’t really have to do much, but they made a good choice of songs, alternating between their best known hits (We Will Rock You, Somebody to Love, Bohemian Rhapsody) and songs to fit the narrative (Doing All Right, Now I’m Here, Who Wants to Live Forever, Love of my Life). It’s practically impossible to leave the screening of BoRhap without at least one Queen song stuck in your head.

The cast was overall very good, too. My personal favourites in terms of acting were Gwilym Lee (who I liked even more than Rami), Rami Malek, Lucy Boynton and Allen Leech - I think they did a great job with their roles as they were written (whether their characters were well written or not is a subject for a whole another discussion). All the side characters were well acted, too (Mike Myers, Meneka Das and Aaron McCusker, for instance, I found particularly memorable), but I must admit I wasn’t a big fan of Joe Mazzello and Ben Hardy, but even they weren’t bad. So, acting is definitely one of the strongest points of the film.

Moving on, I also think they did a great job when it comes to costumes (Brian lending some of his old clothing definitely helped) and make-up (except for Roger’s wigs, perhaps); the choreography and stage movement for the characters were super well done, too - and it definitely wasn’t an easy task!

Now, let’s discuss cinematography. I will talk about editing in a separate paragraph, so for now I’m gonna stick to other aspects. The composition of shots struck me as rather mediocre, nothing particularly exceptional in either good or bad way, it was pretty basic but rather correct. Of course, there were some shots I really liked, but if I were to start adding screenshots the post would become way too long. XD The colours I really liked, especially in the musical scenes - they were vivid and lovely, and they used a combination of colours that I tend to appreciate in cinema, like various shades of blue and red. Finally, the camerawork - for dialogue scenes it was correct; again, rather average with some use of handheld camera which served no particular dramatic purpose, but it wasn’t nowhere near very bad, also it’s quite a common thing in modern biopics I would say. Handheld camerawork isn’t bad in default, but my comment largely comes from my personal preferences: in most cases I don’t really like it, especially when it’s particularly shaky. Then, there are scenes in BoRhap which display excellent camerawork, namely Live Aid and We Will Rock You scenes. If most scenes were filmed like that, I would give the movie a higher rating.

Before I move to the worst (imo) cinematic aspects of the movie, let’s have a look at writing. It is probably the most divisive thing in the fandom - people seem to either adore or absolutely loathe it; my stance lies somewhere inbetween. The first time I saw the film (I’m gonna remind you that I’ve seen it four times), I had certain objections, but the script didn’t bother me all that much; I was mostly simply having fun in the cinema. With every next watching, the experience was getting gradually worse, but even now I don’t hate the movie. Yes, some of the dialogue is cheesy, trite and makes me cringe a bit - certain parts of the script definitely end on an “overly sentimental” territory, I can’t deny that. Knowing quite a lot about Freddie, Queen and their stories, I generally think they deserve a better script; some characterisation was a bit offputting and chronology was all over the place. Having said that, I understand where some of those narrative choices come from, as scripts for mainstream movies require oversimplification of events, archetypes, and patterns. And quite frankly, I don’t think BoRhap differs any drastically from most modern biopics; it’s not a masterpiece, but - in my opinion - it’s also not bad overall. Regardless the flaws of the script, the movie still managed to emotionally affect a huge, if not major, portion of viewers, entertain and move them, and honestly? I think that was pretty much the point. Btw, there were some lines that I really loved, like “Puritans in public, perverts in private”, and I still think that their decision to cut from Live Aid performance to Ray Foster’s grim face during We Are the Champions was the funniest shit ever. XD Would BoRhap’s script benefit from sticking to historical accuracy? I’m gonna say yes, I think so - the scenes that were the closest to actual events are definitely the strongest - but this approach would require tons of changes, including narrowing down the narrative scope and probably the characters, too. Also, a lot of people keep forgetting that this is not an arthouse, niche film and therefore resorts to narrative and cinematic choice that compromise between satisfying the fans and the newbies; it’s meant to tell a (simple) story and entertain, not educate and provoke existential and philosophical debates. Still, I think the script could have been done a bit better, because some scenes  (the tour “Now I’m Here” montage) feel a bit...random?

Finally, the infamous editing. I totally agree that it was one of the most undeserving Academy Awards that year, because some scenes were simply atrocious, with their unmotivated and overly fast cuts and unreasonably ridiculous face that doesn’t fit the dialogue scenes, and those are honestly the worst when it comes to pacing and editing. I think the editing is the worst aspect of BoRhap; but even here, I could point at some examples of pretty amazing editing (Oscar-worthy? Not necessarily, but definitely very good); again, I’m gonna bring up Live Aid and “We Will Rock You” scenes, especially the latter, because less people talk about it. I already mentioned that it has some really nice camerawork AND colours, but also the editing is actually really cool, because it’s cut to the music! Which makes me think: “what a shame!”, because if they went with different editing choices, the movie would be affected in a positive way. The way we have it, it’s either a hit or miss (sadly, mostly miss), and the badly edited scenes are pretty striking, so the ones that are done nicely are unfortunately a wasted potential.

Okay, this is already waaay too long, so I’m just gonna finish with a few general remarks. Well, despite BoRhap’s flaws, I still like and enjoy it. With every screening slightly less, but enjoy it anyway. I don’t think any amount of discourse will ever take away my positive experiences and memories from seeing it twice in cinema. It sparked my previously dormant love for Queen and united me with some people in the fandom and in real life; making this movie made Brian and Roger happy; as a result, I like this movie. It brings back a lot of positive recollections, which sometimes is more important than critical discussions. And boy, do I adore those - I’m often critical and I adore analysing stuff academically; but I think that not all daily interactions require those and depending on who’s asking and what about, I’m capable of switching between the two options. If somebody asks me in 25 years whether I remember the times of BoRhap’s release, I’ll be far less likely to say “yeah, the editing sucked and writing was cringy, I remember the discourse on tumblr and instagram” than “Yes, I remember that chilly evening in December when I had a really fun time and ended up with 10 Queen songs stuck in my head”, because the latter is the experience I want to remember.

Thank you for this ask! Hope it wasn’t overly exhausting to read, I didn’t proofread this, sorry! xx

hi! feel free to disregard but honestly yours is one of the most well put together rp blogs I’ve ever seen (plus all those scalding takes ofc) and I was wondering if you have any tips as to how to get one started on here? :)

dshgksdmghgh this is rly sweet! i guess i’d say

write about the thing YOU want to write about—don’t pick a character or a fandom because you’re trying to get in with a clique of rpers or provide a specific person with the connection they’re looking for. do the thing YOU’RE into, both for your own well being, and bc people can tell when your heart’s not in it

try to make your information—such as an about page for your blog, and a rules page—readily available and easy to read, so people have a quick and easy reference point when you follow them.

don’t stress about a cool url, nice theme, good graphics, etc. like those are peripheral to good writing and people who are actually interested in Actual Writing will find and connect with you, versus people who are primarily like “la dee da... time to make every other letter on my about page a different color and font”

reach out to people!! so many times i see people stressing about their new blog not getting off the ground when all they’ve done is sit and wait for others to come to them and send THEM memes and write THEM starters. you have to put yourself out there. when you start actually reaching out and saying, “hey, i’m interested in writing with you, i like your character, can we figure something out?” people will respond VERY positively.

don’t prioritize quantity over quality. there are people on here with beautiful graphics and thousands of followers who do absolutely no writing and contribute zilch. there are people with a handful of followers who are doing amazing work with niche characters and really like. Making Something Real. getting followers and notes feels really nice, but what’s the point if you’re not actually Doing The Thing?

off the top of my head pre-work that’s what i got. if you feel comfortable please feel free to im me from whatever blog you like and we can talk more about it!

HAPPY NEW YEAR (And rambling)

Howdy all!  It's been a while, I haven't been bouncing up on social media as much lately.  It feels like that bought of depression happened and the minute it was gone work picked up and people at my job quite etc.

So other than that what have I been up to?  Mostly art still.  Tried to up and quit several times under duress and stress but I keep coming back anyway.  At least things will be a lot chiller for a bit (Maybe) with my job going into 'dead hours'.

BUT A COOL THING!  I modded a fountain pen to use a Hunter dip pen nib!

No more dipping!   ------------------------

I wish I had more art to show, but this year I've been working on a lot of comic projects ^^

One of which is, of course, the Candle.  It's still getting worked on, but slower because of shared limited time with my other projects...

I mean... that and I got really burned out on it... and when I get burned out the quality drops really really bad...

And when the quality drops I don't get that juice back.  It's like... I don't have fun doing ANYTHING, I have fun FINISHING things and then it converts that into energy to work on the next thing to completion.  But when I don't feel like I completed something because it doesn't look decent then no energy return -_-.  I'm not going to lie, I much prefer getting things done in hyper bulk so I wish I had stopped weekly updates after chapter 1 and then completely finished chapter two and three before returning again.  It gives time for that break from creative burnout to recoup and by the time the pages need you again you've got the groove back or did something else and are ready to go again. In the meantime I have gotten pretty good practice at inking without pencils!

Yeah yeah this ain't a spoiler!  You've all seen the chapter art, you knew they'd be here!  God I love drawing them!  The Candle will eventually return.  Just... not until Chapter 3 is done on my end, which is a bit slow going because it's art priority #3. -------------------------

Art Priority #2 is my paid work commission comic I've been working on since around the summer!  It's also slow going because it's done completely by hand with pen and paper!  I can't say much about it because I promised not to spoil anything, but I did get Permission from my commissioner :iconLepouvoirduflan: to show off my favorite out of context panels XD! I love drawing Bowsers back~!

I'm really having fun working on this project with her!  Familiar characters with a breath of fresh air, being a different plot from the Candle and all!  Having more comics to do makes each one slower, but it keeps me from burning out without the weekly time limit and the constant change of scenery! ^_^  And Lepouvoirduflan has been helping me with Art Priority #1 as well! Speaking of that... ---------------------------

Art Priority #1 is a comic I've wanted to make for a long time, it even predates The Candle and I've been working on it more seriously for the last 5 years (It probably isn't 5 years worth of good but HEY my New Years resolution for 2020 is to be less critical of my work so I can get stuff done!) but it finally feels like it's gotten to a point that it's going to happen!  A few bits of it have popped up here and there on DA and Tumblr but I think it's far enough along that I'm ready to talk about this passion project as I think it'll be coming out sometime this year! (Not that any of you are here for that, you're all here for Mario stuff! ^^')

This passion project is called Faeredoux, a combination of the word "Fae" and the french word "Redoux".  Faeredoux is... basically the same stuff Disney does.  I like the fairy tale, I take the fairy tale, I tell my own version of the fairy tale.

 I had always been told "Write what you know" but I never felt like I knew really anything. That is until a friend said "....... Why don't you like... draw a comic about fairy tales?  That time you told me about the frog Prince was hilarious!  And the Nightingale and Cinderella!  Those were cool ideas!"  And that's when it hit me... I do really love fairy tales.  I own the Grimm and Andrew Lang collection, among others, I loved those old bargain bin Disney rip offs that stayed closer to the original tale (I loved Encyclopedia Britanicas Beauty and the Beast especially!!!) and, I had a love hate relationship with a fandom I was in in 2010 for all it's fairy tale AUs that just copy paste the transcript to the Disney film.

I at least want to do the first 3 stories I had planned because they fell into place so well (And one is a revamp of itself from 2006 so an oldie!)  The first one is what I've been working on a lot recently: "Faeredoux: Glass and Gold" (Name pending because I might have a better one in mind but haven't committed yet.)

Glass and Gold is the Story of Eloise Cendres, cursed by a fairy as a child to suffer 13 years of bad luck and, should she live that long, be destined to die on the anniversary of the thirteenth year... that is unless she marries the local prince (Fairies are weird).   Now in these kinda of stories usually a maiden in need would get a knight in shining armor or a fairy god mother, but with none to be seen she chooses to summon her own!  But wait!  You don't "Summon" a fairy like that! Eloise unknowingly summons the demon Francine, who luckily has a bone to pick with a certain fairy.  Together can they get Eloise to a happily ever after?  Or when the clock strikes midnight will her world come crumbling down?

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

I guess that's really all I have except some art (Not much) that I've done... but I don't have a scanner at the moment so I guess photos it'll be?  Sometime tomorrow or now-ish?  I dunno.  Typing all this sounded like a better idea when I started. Maybe I should just go play some more Digimon World... or use my badass custom pen...

aside from that, ur graphics must look incredible! i’ve seen some comparison pics and pc graphics are God Tier. help the second lowest being “high”... good riddance. 😶

summer 2016! it seems so long ago like a whole different universe. everything was so beautiful back then.. everybody was out and about hunting pokémon’s... that zine is so cute! i wouldn’t say main i actually only got into them a little while ago and i’m still mostly tddk and kiribaku but bkdk is interesting.. to say the least. i haven’t seen what happens in the manga (only a bit of spoilers especially that cover...) and s4 didn’t give us That many scenes with them but i’m keeping my eyes open... wbu?

IDK like their descriptions make it seem like they might help you find some specific treasures??? like the gold seelie giving you fortune aka mora? not sure tho hehe... YEAH THAT FANART!!! so cute i wanna eat them all.. forbidden snack. 🥺 omg funny you mention that... i met xiao just earlier for the first time and when i saw his entire outfit i was like.. hm i wonder what he would look like in darker clothing HAHA. but yeah skins would be awesome!!!! like a clothing shop or smth somewhere????? anyway when i saw him i was like HEY that’s cluna’s boy!

ALBEDO IS A BAD BITCH. his hair is perfect perfect perfect. actually everything about him is so perfect he’s just a delicate little guy... 🥺 dude us talking about albedo and opening up the game and seeing his banner is like... 👀 temptation.

with venti??? i’m not sure which quest you mean i did the archon one with him though and it was awesome. does he have more? I DID LOOK IT UP AND MURASE IS MAKING HIS VOICE EVEN HIGHER AND IT’S SO CUTE I WISH I KNEW IT BEFOREHAND SO I COULD’VE HEARD HIS VOICE WHILE DOING THE MISSION. 😭 oh well 😭

hopefully there are some good 4 stars too. who are you wishing for? anyone special? imagine having xingqiu and chongyun.... that’s like the dream. and bennett and razor and you have the boy scout party haha!! do you have mostly claymore users?

i remember you mentioning you don’t like book users but i’ve actually really grown to love them hehe. their long range attacks are so nice and handy! KAZE DA! 😭 bro stop i literally have a crush on venti it’s ridiculous.. imagine closing ur eyes and talking and it’s his voice.... (OR HINATA!!!) murase is so lucky... he seems like such a great guy too ajsksjdk..

ok friends to lovers goodness! 🥺 i’m considering getting twitter just to see fanart... maybe.. o.o

ooooo that’s so thorough! in all caps caught my attention, why do you do that? personally, if it’s something longer i write bulletpoints of the concept but never like... actual plot yk? i’ve tried before but i doesn’t work for me very well. so.. i wing it! and like you i just get inspired randomly, it could be from song lyrics or thinking about tropes i enjoy. 😜

loona is cool! they have this whole story about their group. i highly recommend checking them out! i wonder if they kept it up though lmao. oh yeah everyone loves hozier he just speaks to the soul.. LOVELY IS MY FAVORITE SONG!!!!! LIKE EASILY TOP SONGS OF MY LIFE!!! it makes me so happy that you like it even if you skip it lmaojsjdjsjsjdk and i like billie a lot!! ariana too she has great music.., idk if you’ve heard of the group the neighborhood but i like them too. lana del rey as well! haha guess it’s super basic stuff tbh. all of them with mostly slow songs.. sorry 😭

OK GOOD. all nighters are honestly horrible. i don’t get how people can pull them off and get things done... (hopefully you never have to either!) YEAH haha 8 am is my favorite hour i think... that and 9 pm. they’re just special. what’s your favorite time of day? listen if you stay up to read fics that’s valid. midnight up is like the perfect time to read fics it makes them appear more magical sjdkdhdk.

i hope i caught you today but if not, hope you’re sleeping well babe! ♥️

sorry i was playing genshin! JFKSNXKSNKSJ i started before 12am and before i knew it it was already 1am… my goodness

and yeah i watched this vid comparing the graphic quality settings (i play on the default one) and i was like??? people really be playing like this? LOL can’t relate

edit: missed this paragraph oops but yeah what a time 2016 was! (lmao voltron started that year iirc) i remember we had an athletics event and legit everyone was on their phones jfksnfksnd. oooo! nice tddk and krbk are very good very nice. and also yeah that cover lol i love that you didn’t even have to specify which one i just Know. hmm i think rn bkdk would be one of the top ships i’m interested in aside from todobaku? they just have so much history ya know? and they have a lot of moments in the second movie! oh wait did you know that there are movies? two of them in fact!! the kiribaku is pretty strong in the first one (but there are some todobaku moments too lol). and there are a few OVAs too. WAIT are you all caught up with the anime? can’t rmemeber if you’ve told me or not 😫

oooo if that were the case tho what would the others give? i did like the “sea blue” description or something of the blue one tho 😩 YOU WANNA EAT THEM FJDJCJSKNCSKJCKSNXJS NO!!! but i can understand.. they look very squishy. THAT’S MY BOY!!!!!! honoured you thought of me <33 yo i was also wondering what chongyun would look like in darker clothes too HDKSKDN see this is why i need to learn how to draw.… gotta put them in the clothes i want since we can’t do that in game!! but a shop would be so cute omg

JFKSKSKAKS i’ve legit been staying away from opening the wish menu as much as i can.… it’s too tempting i can’t!!

yeah the archon one is what i meant sorry! forgot the name for it lol. and yes there is! once you reach AR 35 or something you can unlock story quests and venti is one of them 👀👀 RIPPPP BUT AT LEAST YOU KNOW NOW 😭😭

i think just xingqiu rn!! i’ve been holding off ascending barbara in hopes of getting him, bc i grinded some oceanid (literally the worst fucking boss ever) before i ascended so i’m just hoarding those materials rn fjskdnd. yesss the boy scouts 😭🥺 but i heard chongyun and razor’s elemental skills cancel each other out so rip.. hmm i did a count and i think i have 3 each of claymore and catalyst users! hbu?

omg nooooo betrayal 😭 tho ngl i’m considering using ningguang bc i see people play her so well.. so i’m just carrying her around in my team hoping to passively level her up HAHAHA. i def appreciate their long range attacks too, lisa’s burst especially is quite nice. CHJDKSKD that’s so cute but also very relatable 😭😭😭🥺🥺🥺🥺 also did you know murase is like tall af it’s kinda crazy lol

there’s /so/ much good fanart!!! it’s where i’m getting a taste of all the ships too lol but yeah there’s angst and fluff and just charas looking s*xy they’ve got it all 😩 but that also reminds me, like most other big fandoms genshin fandom is kinda fkn shit 😔 once again i’m thankful to myself for keeping such a small circle lmaooooo

honestly i don’t know either?? i think it helps me distinguish between what i’m actually writing vs what i’m planning like if i do something like “JUMPS OFF PLATFORM, LANDS IN FRONT. so, are you going to introduce me or do i have to do it myself ETC THEN THEY TALK SUDDENLY there’s the sound of a windchime, and VILLAINS HERE GOTTA FIGHT” it’ll look something like that jdjsndkskd where the lowercase is exact dialogue I wanna write in but the caps is just planning

but winging it ey that’s hot of you 🤪 god do you ever just like thinking about potential ideas before falling asleep but then your phone is far away/you don’t wanna hurt your eyes looking at a screen but then you’re also afraid you’ll forget the idea DJKSXKSK

:o! i think i stayed away bc of the whole “stan loona” thing DHSKKS but i might give them another shot! therefore i am is one of my go to songs rn hehe i really like the beats she uses they’re so funky. i don’t really like ariana sorry FJDJKSKS but she does have a lot of bangers!! side to side… 😘👌 and i do know the neighbourhood! sweater weather is so iconic but lately i’ve been skipping that too aahah. but have you heard daddy issues slowed? oh my god. that singlehandedly started my obsession with slowed songs (ironic isn’t it when you consider i don’t listen to normal slow songs fjsjdj) i like summertime sadness from lana! and young and beautiful too (the radio songs AHAH) but yeah.. they’re slow fjdkksks. how do you feel about halsey + melanie martinez + bastille? (i’m always paranoid about listing artists bc so many get cancelled or what other and i feel like randos are gonna come for me too JDKSKSKA.) oh and troye sivan!! and pentatonix if you’ve heard of them? i was obsessed with those two back in 2015 ahaha

omg crazy.. how!! hm my favourite hour is maybe 12pm? or 2pm? just some time in the afternoon i like when it’s still light outside but it’s also like “after school” time kinda .. and yesss reading fic at late hours… gets me crying more easily 🤪

i don’t think i’ll catch your next reply so goodnight in advance!! hope your day is great <3

This is a multiday post, under the cut are my entries for Day 1 - 8

Day 1 Why you're participating in Snowflake

Day 2 Favourite memory about fandom (Legend of the Seeker, People's Palace, landcomms)

Day 3 Rec fanworks you did not create (5 x au fics in 5 fandoms)

Day 4 Create a fannish wishlist (more comments for everyone, be nicer, create more, I can haz art pls)

Day 5 Rec a fannish or creative resource (scripts, screencaps and promo pics, image hosting)

Day 6 Leave feedback (I'm always doing the thing)

Day 7 Create a love meme (please leave comments/gifs)

Day 8 Share a piece of canon (Starz shows and how I fell truly in love during S2 moments, Da vinci's Demons, Black Sails)

  Day 1 In your own space, talk about why you're participating in Snowflake and, if you’ve participated in the past, how the challenge has affected you. What drew you to it? What did you take away from it? I'm assisting with mod duties this year and this is what I wrote for my introduction there: I've been in fandom a long time. I've seen some good changes and some not so good. Lately in some places there's been a lot of negativity in fandom and overall it seems there's been a steady decline in interaction. For me fandom is about the joy of connecting with other fans, discussing, creating, consuming - and also commenting on fanworks of all kinds. I'm hoping Snowflake Challenge will give us all a positive boost and encourage us to focus on the good and to rediscover the community side of fandom. And because I'm assisting with mod duties I'm seeing a lot more of the content being produced and its amazing and heartwarming to see people sharing their personal stories and how fandom has helped them, talking about their passions, sharing their favourite fandoms and resources and fanworks. It's wonderful to see so many journal entries and activity! Day 2 In your own space, share a favorite memory about fandom: the first time you got into fandom, the last time a fanwork touched your heart, crazy times with fellow fans (whether on-line or off-line), a lovely comment you’ve received or have left for someone. Legend of the Seeker. This is one of my longer and more active fandoms. The peoplespalace was where I felt very welcomed and encouraged and I wrote a lot of fanworks and participated in a lot of the activities there. I miss the Darken/Cara/Rahl family side of the fandom a lot. There was also legendland a landcomm which ran for many years – we even had a reunion battle last year which was nice! I wrote so much fic, made icons and other graphics, even fanvids. I tried to do every challenge where possible. I was on Team Cara for the longest time. Cara, Darken, Zedd were always my favourites ;) Before legendland there was whedonland and again I felt part of something there. It pretty much saved my life a couple of times. These days there's gameofcards and it's fun and I encourage everyone to check it out, but the more specific fandom landcomms seemed to make for more tight-knit teams and I miss them. Day 3 In your own space, post recs for at least three fanworks that you did not create. There are so many things I could rec! But I'll pick 5 AU fics from 5 different fandoms to spread the love a little Side by Side – Cormoran Strike http://archiveofourown.org/works/12036537 Fantasy au that ends in Strike/Robin, highly recommended. Murder – Dark Matter http://archiveofourown.org/works/12000579 College au based around an actual tradition of a game called "murder". As Glory Turns to Dust – Hamilton http://archiveofourown.org/works/11359656 Modern au with magic. Hamilton is cursed to be forgotten, leaving him alone in the world except, briefly, for Jefferson. Warning this is a fantastic fic but a sad ending. There is however a linked sequel by another author to put things right :) Skin Full of Lies – Black Sails http://archiveofourown.org/works/7570540 Soulmate au Silverflint "Every lie your soulmate tells you appears on your skin. Between outward lies, manipulations and stories told the crew John Silver's ink quite quickly takes over most of James' body." a gift fic for me, The Princess' Bodyguard – The Shannara Chronicles http://archiveofourown.org/works/13113129 pre-canon au in which Eretria is Amberle's bodyguard. One-shot but with potential for more, strong hints of Eretria/Amberle Day 4 In your own space, create a fannish wishlist. No limits on size or type of fanwork; just tell us what you’d like to see. Can we please do as most people asked on their fannish wishlist for day 4 and leave more comments? Can we journal more and create more? Can we rediscover the joy of fandom and stop with the "anti" behaviour? Please. More specifically for me, art for fics is always welcome. (I have a transformative work statement at LJ/DW and AO3 and have had translations of my work and podfic which are lovely!) In particular for my sfbb fic Bad Case of Loving You. I've got beautiful artwork for most of my sfbb fics, the DvD fics in particular. For sfbb I provide pinterest boards to help with resources and generally try to help artists out, as I did here. This is a Black Sails modern au medical drama with Silver/Flint/Miranda and Silver&Max and it was a labour of love and I'm still amazed I managed to write the thing. However it seemed to be cursed. My first beta dropped out. My first artist dropped out. My second artist swore they were ready to go then didn't post, then after the fest posted a basic stock photo+text "cover". *sigh* I made my own art in the end, banner and mini picspam for the tumblr promo post but I'm an amateur artist. Day 5 Recommend a fannish or creative resource. Springfield!Springfield! has movie and tv episode scripts. kiss them goodbye has a huge amount of screencap galleries. farfarawaysite has a smaller amount of pictures but tends to have high quality promotional pictures. Cloudinary is the site I'm using for image hosting since the photobucket debacle. Day 6 Leave feedback for a fanwork. Or multiple fanworks. It can be as simple as I liked this to a detailed list of all the things you loved about the fanwork. The key is to leave some sort of feedback. If you've already left feedback in the course of a previous challenge, it totally counts. But you're free to leave more feedback. My new year's resolution last year was to leave a comment on every fanfic, hosted on AO3, over 100 words, that I finished reading. (I needed some parameters; this doesn't mean I didn't leave comments at LJ/DW or on drabbles because I did, on occasion). I did the thing. I read a little less than usual. I noped out of more fics. But the fics I read and finished got a comment. I'm going to try and keep doing that. I've already left comments on some fics this year. My additional resolution for this year is to write down more of my ideas. Having plot ideas or dialogues while showering or in bed is one thing, but if I don't write/type at least the basics up, I forget them partially or entirely when I try to write the thing weeks or months later. Day 7: In your own space, create a love meme for yourself. Let people tell you how amazing and awesome and loveable you really are Come and tell me how amazing I am ;) Seriously though, I'm working on being more positive and telling myself I'm worthwhile, I deserve more, I am achieving more. But it always helps when other people are backing that up. Drop me a gif in the comments if that's easier, gifs are like greeting cards for saying the things we don't know how to otherwise express. Day 8 In your own space, share a favourite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favourite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much. My love of Starz shows seems to kick off in second seasons. For Da Vinci's Demons in S2e04 – starts around here: https://youtu.be/cQi4xjrBmgI?t=11m27s This is the moment I fell in love with younger!hotter!Riario, aka Blake Ritson in a wig, because hair kink. But also the moment I finally liked Lucrezia too, seeing her devotion to her sister. If you want me to like a character, have them adore and protect their little sister, if you want me to hate them, have them throw little sis under the bus. Riario tries to spare both girls, succeeds in saving only one, and his grief is evident as he speaks with a heartbroken Lucrezia. This scene changed how I felt about both Riario and Lucrezia and thus about the show and my fannish involvement. Similarly this humorous moment changed my feelings about Silver and SilverFlint in the opening episode of S2 Black Sails : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIt9u7CkBf0 when Silver completely misunderstands the plan and volunteers for a risky mission. This tumblr post shows what happens next: http://alightabovethearbys.tumblr.com/post/168194826519 It's even better later when they get on board, leading to Flint's exasperated "Well what the fuck did you think was going to happen?" You can see some gifs from all those Silverflint moments in S2 here: http://jolinarofmalkshur.tumblr.com/post/168381696381/john-silver-appreciation-week-day-6-favorite

A Decade in Review

I actually wrote this at the beginning of the New Year--and, technically, New Deacade--, but I figured I’d also have it here for those who follow me on Tumblr and not on DeviantART

So, heads up, this is going to be a super long post, so I will put the extent of everything under “Read More” below, if you’d like to continue.

Thanks for your time

A Decade In Review

Well, the more I think about it... the title should be: "The deterioration of an individual through their slow painful spiral into the fiery pit of failure". Anyway... I don't really do the "Art Progress" meme things that people make for New Years Eve/Day, mainly because, for me, there wouldn't be a point. For other artists, yes, I'm sure it helps very much to show where they started off and where they are now. (Though, I did make this one way back in the day, but haven't made any since then). But, for someone like me, whose had a stagnant art quality for half of this decade now, all the pieces I would put together would just look exactly the same quality-wise xD So, I just like to take the time and write out everything together in a Journal. All in one go; no drafting or edits (unless, of course, there's grammatical errors that I spot after posting). I don't have any Resolutions for this upcoming year, especially since I didn't complete any of my resolutions from last year (except for the "save your money" one). But, very rarely do people follow through with their Resolutions--and, of course, it's awesome when they do. But, since a decade has passed... and since I've been a figure on the internet for a decade now, I'd just like to take the time and reflect on everything that has occurred since 2010:

~

2010

I actually wouldn't exist on DeviantART for another year (and wouldn’t be on Tumblr for another year after that). However, I got my start on Ye Ole FanFiction.Net. Yes, I was a writer before I was an artist. In fact, even before our home was wired with the internet (which was around 2008/2009), I would do nothing but stay up late and write. Before I got my first computer, I would have tons of notebooks with nothing but fan-fictions written in them. And, after getting my computer, I would transfer those written works to be a little more polished in a Word Document; and, from there, I would continue on with the story I was working on. You don't have to worry about killing trees when everything is on a file xD Of course, dumb little me didn't think to separate each chapter into different Documents. So, now there is a 800+ page document still on my computer of a "saga" of a Pokemon Mary Sue. That story was never posted, and will never see the light of day, unless, of course, I hit some special Milestone (probably a YouTube Subscriber because me going through it could only properly be done in video format--with my commentary and cringe over top of course xD). But, you know what was posted? My Ouran Host Club fan-fiction: "Fitting In". Still in that "Mary-Sue"-ish OC, phase, but I wanted to make this character more interesting and believable. So, with my anime crush, Kyoya, paired up with my Ouran OC, I set out to form my story. Completely unbeknownst to my parents, because they (specifically Mom--go figure) frowned upon me just reading fan-fictions. Because, in my mother's own words: "It's other people's fantasies". (Looking back on that now, her reason makes absolutely no sense). But, I enjoyed writing and enjoyed the series. So, after my parents had fallen asleep, I would write a chapter through the night and then posted it. Somehow, after a few chapters... my story got pretty big: tons of faves, followers and reviews--it was insane! Here I was, just being a geek, like everyone else, and enjoying the fandom. And yet, for the first time in my life... I felt what it was like to be truly supported. It wasn't support for something I didn't have interest in or was coaxed into doing (like with my parents). This was something that I enjoyed, even if it was just for fun. And people actually liked it. They actually supported me for what I liked. From there, it just continued to help me press on and keep moving forward. So, while balancing out my last year and a half of high school, I challenged myself to upload a chapter every week. And, I succeeded. I remember one Review from a user that said: "I literally got home from school and rushed over to my computer, because I knew there would be a new chapter!" Little did they all know that I actually would write the chapter all in one sitting. Yep, pulled an all-nighter the day before just to write out the chapter and then post it. I eventually did tell my parents. This was after my story had gotten a pretty good amount of following and faves to be considered--in the Fanfiction.net society--a Fanfiction worth the time to read. Dad was actually really happy and proud, even going to tell my mother about it just to "show me off". It felt nice to have his support--awkward, yes, but still nice. Mom, of course, didn't care; not that I was surprised in the slightest. But, even if I had one parent's support, the whole mass of support for individuals over the internet was able to compensate for the lack of support I received from my maternal unit.

~

2011:

Still writing early into the following year. I had attended my first anime convention at the beginning. mostly because J. Michael Tatum--the English voice for Kyoya--was a guest, but also other Ouran English DUB actors, including Vic Mignogna. While I was aware he played Tamaki, it wasn't until I sat in on one of his panels that I realized how popular he was among the anime community. He got many questions regarding this series called Fullmetal Alchemist. Because of how everyone seemed to know of this series (except me, of course), that was the first thing I would look into after crashing at home at the end of that weekend. Like with everyone starting out, the search results provided me with the original Fullmetal Alchemist series from 2003, so I started with that. Needless to say... it was definitely a 180 turn from Ouran, with how dark and depressing that it seemed. By the time I got to the episode with Lab 5, I didn't watch another episode for months. Long story short: Chimera!Tucker scared the absolute sh*t out of me--didn't help that I was watching the episode at night either. Parallel to those months, however... I was writing my newest Fan-Fiction, "Fire and Ice". Completely taken full interest in the Fullmetal Alchemist series, I created my newest OC, Danielle. Now, I made the mistake of jumping the gun with her creation as well as her story. Because I was still very very new to the series, and didn’t quite get a grasp on the canon character's personalities to be able to portray them In-Character well enough. Not to mention that I didn't quite understand the "Rules" of the FMA universe when it comes to creating an OC. But that's where DeviantART comes in. I made an account in the fall of that year and would post every so often. I used dA more as a secondary account just for the more visual references of my stories. So, in other words, I was promoting my main account (FF.net) by broadening expanding myself to other sites. dA being more visually oriented for creators, while FF.net was more for the story/world-building end. So, with two accounts on opposite spectrums of one another, I continued to create my stories and characters. Of course, Fullmetal Alchemist was a very popular fandom, and with the Brotherhood series being new, the fandom was more hyped up than ever. I kept to myself mostly, because I was more on FF.net than dA. However, after a while, I wanted to interact with the audience I had gained from being on dA. So, I would draw my characters and scenes from my story more often. Granted, I didn't have a tablet at the time, and would scan my sketchbook drawings in to post them. I would even try to go the extra mile to scan them in and re-purpose them digitally with GIMP (the only program I had at the time); again, though, no tablet, just a mouse. I started talking with other newbie artists and writers in the fandom, and we all started to become really good friends. The majority of us, of course (even myself at the time), looked up to the "FMA OC Matriarchy". Not naming names, but I'm sure a lot of you know the individuals I'm talking about. Inspired by their own detailed digital works, my fan-fiction was put on a hold as I began to become engrossed in drawing. 

~

2012:

The year that marks my actual start as an artist here on dA. Or, if you want my actual take on it: The year that marks the beginning of my "downward spiral into the pit of no return or reformation". At the beginning of the year, I had purchased my tablet with my own money: A WACOM Bamboo Connect. In fact, it's the same tablet I use to this day, even though I have downsized to a much smaller version. Because my mindset at the time (and, to this day, still is): "You can have the most expensive equipment, but it's the artist themselves that makes the quality of the work." From there, along with a pirated version of Easy Paint Tool SAI, I was ready to take the next step into improving myself as an artist. (If anyone is curious... THIS was the first thing that I drew with my tablet). But, despite all that.. 2012 was rough. I picked A LOT of fights, even having the audacity to stand up to the "FMA OC Matriarchy" when there was a fight between the FMA OC groups. I saw their leader and the rest of them for who they truly were. Individuals, who still to this day (based on what I've seen from the 2nd-in-Command), that put on an act to make themselves appealing, welcoming, and "friendly" to their audience, while they're actually nothing more than self-entitled individuals who get upset because someone so dares to not like the pairing between their figment of their imagination and a fictional character. And that's when I vowed: "I will knock [her] off her throne." This said in regards to the leader of the Matriarchy. Because people, who are looked up to, shouldn’t be behaving in that sort of way! They shouldn't be acting like their word is law and whoever goes against them or disagrees with them should get their head chopped off, metaphorically speaking. Outside of the internet, they're nobodies. They don't have power over anyone when they're no longer hidden behind a keyboard and screen. The number on their profile is just that--just a number. It doesn't mean anything. And, in my mind, they all needed to be taken down a peg and realize that OCs, art, fandoms--whatever--should NOT be taken so seriously! We were all here to enjoy the same thing as them, and they had no right to treat themselves like they were queens, who governed what went on in the fandom. Of course, being a petty teenager... I did (and even drew) some things that I shouldn't have (i.e. making a satire of the Matriarchy as "Mean Girls" at the lunch table). And, I didn't really explain myself to anyone when said: "I'll knock [her] off her throne." I wasn't (and still am not) very good at explaining myself or feeling (or even understanding other's feelings and social cues). All in all that entire year was a roller coaster with on and off fights between myself and the Matriarchy--namely their leader. By the end of it all, I just wanted to quit and give up drawing all together. All I could think about was "There's no way I'll be able to surpass them and knock them off their thrones..." I always have, and still do, believe that I'm not one to be worshiped or put on a pedestal. I make it a habit to tell others that when they gush over me or my art: "I'm just a geek like you ^u^ There's no difference between us." Because I don't want to be treated the same way the Matriarchy was/is treated. I don't want to be seen like them at all, because I was nothing like them. I didn't take things seriously, I didn't treat others like they were lower than dirt to me--I wasn't an "Art Thot". I wanted to be the person that could actually BE A PERSON to my audience; not some high-and-mighty white-tower dwelling jerk like the Matriarchy. But, yet, there I was... dragging out the last of the year; trying to figure out how to not be like any of them, when it seemed like the only way to take them down a peg was to be like them. At least, to be able to surpass them. My mental state took a drastic turn for the worst as I began to become obsessed with these girls. I couldn't stand seeing them. I couldn't stand my friends talking to them (and I still can’t), because I felt like they had no idea what the Matriarchy was like--the way I knew them to truly be. I would constantly tear apart my art and look on it with disgust, because all I could see was just a big comparison between my work and theirs. I wanted to give up. "There's no way I'll pass them". I wanted to show everyone else so badly that there's someone out there that they could truly look up too. Not just as an inspiration for art, but as someone who actually cares about them and others. The days were so bleak, hopeless, endless... ending it all would have been too easy, and giving up seemed too cowardly. I was stuck. ...But, then I met AAV-sama. I had never seen them before at all. They weren't a watcher, didn't fave my works, didn't comment--nothing! It was just an out-of-the-blue comment on my profile: "Hey, wanna RP?" Now... I hadn't RPed on dA for a long while since then. But, I figured that getting back into writing would help take my mind off of everything art-related. So, we talked over what to RP, and they sent the starter. Little did I know that the beginning of that RP would be the start of something amazing.

~

2013:

The start of my last year in high school (graduated that spring), and would start my first year of Community College for an Art degree. I knew what I wanted to do with my life going from there. It's just, when you have little to no support system in real life, it's very very difficult to get on your feet from there and keep moving forward. Meanwhile, in the world here on DeviantART, I was still drawing little things here and there; working more on improving my ability to draw backgrounds as well as composition. I would still only post occasionally--about once a month or so--, because I was completely engulfed in the world of writing in the Notes section of dA. :devaav-sama: and I were still acquaintances and nothing more than RP Partners at the time. But, she would often share what was going on in her personal life, and, eventually, I would open up as well. From there, our acquaintanceship took a turn into friendship. She helped me find inspiration and creativity, and helped me remind myself of the love for the Fullmetal Alchemist fandom. And that would come the start of our little passion project: The Mustang Conspiracy. New OCs were made and had their own story in Next Gen of the FMA03/Shamballa universe.  All the while, AAV, and I became closer and closer while excitedly gushing over scenes we made and even episodes and characters in the FMA series itself. A year after we started creating out series, I created the first picture of our own "Golden Trio". And, with the creation of these new OCs, I met other individuals, who I would become friends with. With these new friends, we all cooed and gushed over our OCs, and even made AUs of our OCs interacting with one another. Like with my Ouran story, I once again felt that love and support--support I knew I would never be able to have outside of the internet (parents/mother). I didn't (still don't) have any friends outside of the internet, so I would often have a tendency to be possessive or overprotective of my friends here online. I liked the feeling of being loved and having friends, and I didn't want it to go away. ...But, ultimately, it did.

~

2014:

Like with the other years, this was no different of a roller coaster. In the real world, I was passing with 90s and A's in my classes. Of course, Mom's response to my Math final grade, which was a 92%, was a big: "You can do better". (Mother, we're not an Asian family, could you PLEASE let up on the high standards...? -___- ). Anyway... Like always, I found my escape from my toxic family life to the love and support from people who liked me for who I was online. Of course... There were the same emotional disputes between I and the Matriarchy, mostly brought up because I couldn't stand to see my friends interacting with them. What took me by surprise and baffled me the most is that one of my friends became friends (and still is to this day) with the Matriarchy's "2nd in Command". My friend's art was less to be desired, and was far from being among the ranks of the Matriarchy because of it. So, needless to say, I couldn't wrap my head around the reason why the Matriarchy would allow someone like her to be friends with them when they were out of her league art-wise. The Matriarchy didn't ever do that. it was just them, and if you're not in their league, then you're not one of them. There was only one logical conclusion to all of this... They were taking my friends by lulling them into a false sense of security and making them their "friends" just so that they could turn my friends against me. Ultimately, planning to leave me in abandonment and cutting off my support system online so that I would be left with nothing. My friends didn't know them the way I did. I KNEW those people weren't to be trusted, they never were, but I didn't want to make my friends up-happy. Yeah, I can be possessive because of my over-protectiveness for my friends, but... I didn't want to be the one to make them feel upset. So, I kept to myself the majority of the time and bottled it in. And we all know what happens when you bottle things in.... you become a ticking time bomb until you eventually explode, even on the smallest of things. Sometimes, like how it was with me, the bouts of intense anger were in scattered spurts. Now, many of you may remember the time over the summer of the Ferguson shooting, which lasted until the end of the year. Being raised by an extremist (mostly the maternal side) Conservative/Republicans, my family, of course sided with the Cop. Me, not wanting to be kicked out on the streets, I did what I always did when politics came up in my family--which is 90% of the time. I agreed with them and let it absorb me to the point that I had to be like that and think that way to appease them. Clearly, the internet didn't seem to agree, and I was called a "racist" and all but one friend left. She wouldn't last long, but I cherished the fleeting moments we had together. Meanwhile, I continued to draw FanART, OCs, and such for the rest of the year, as well as continue working on The Mustang Conspiracy.

~

2015:

AAV was all I had during this year. Our friendship had grown to the point that I couldn't imagine a day where I don't talk to her. We had gotten to the stage where we exchanged personal contact info, and have messaged each other little "Good Morning" messages every since day since then. She was my everything. She made me feel like I was everything. If I didn't have her, I probably would find the nearest overpass to jump off of, or work on finding a good sturdy tree in the middle of the woods to tie a noose to. All in all, life wasn't worth living anymore without her. After everyone else had left, she became my one and only, and... it got to the points where I would unhealthily obsess over our friendship because of the constant fear of abandonment nagging the back of my head every single day. Even while working on our story, we took the time to set up a separate Note just for a "Creative Workshop" to further build our characters and make them more well-rounded. Now, during one of my "bleak" moments, I recall the very first time I came across the a certain Community on YouTube (not naming what kind, because I would like to keep myself and my family safe). No joke, I had searched "terrible people on DeviantART", not because I want to find other people deemed "terrible" just to laugh at, but because I was feeling like I was the terrible one. The Community was still in it's early days with only a few channels that would talk about pedos and bullies on the internet--though most of the videos at the time were just talking about pedos. Seeing those videos and watching these users deliver calm and collected speeches about users committing crimes towards children on DeviatnART, among others just laughing at lol-cows doing dumb things, it gave me a light of confidence and inspiration. They handled themselves so well, and were well respected within the Community. So, I made my first videos--not the best, just screenshots of anime characters used as expressions set to my voice reading from a script along with music, all thrown together and edited on Windows Movie Maker. Like how I got big trying something new to a new audience the last few times... this was no different. Except, well, I didn't really feel the love and support as much. However, I did start to realize that the majority of my audience really enjoyed my jokes and the way I handled situations. And, it made me reflect to the days where I would do theater. Being on stage and performing for an audience, making them laugh or impacting their lives just because a character I played happen to inspire them... it was the best feeling in the world. Up there in front of hundreds of eyes watching you, and entertaining them... it's the greatest feeling in the world. Performing was my life, it was (and still is) where my heart is and what makes me truly happy. So, while I couldn't do theater as often, making YouTube videos was close enough, and I could work on those and post them at any time; not having to worry abut a weekend-only schedule or any other time constraints. So, I started small by making jokes about bratty teenagers stirring up trouble on DeviantART, and even clicked with some of the minor channels; doing some collaboration videos with them as well. Of course, there was a group on YouTube called the YTTrollPolice. In reality, they were just kids stirring up trouble, but they would go far beyond random trolling to DoX threats. I was their first target, and, through the collabs with the others, they went after them. I shut my channel down--the others in the community did as well--, just to avoid the target and threat to our personal safety. Kids or not, we couldn't take any risks. The YYTP kid eventually found me dA and stalked me there, even after his account was banned. Taking my mind off of everything, I went back to drawing and interacting with AAV. Then... I met another user in the FMA fandom. It was a rarity these days, especially since the FMA fandom was slowly starting to die out (mostly because of me, since I was the one who made everyone--including the FMA OC Matriarchy--leave the fandom, never to return again). While I was still hesitant, as well as having those "abandonment fears", I decided "What the heck? It could just be a one-time conversation." Well... it wasn't a one-time conversation. We started talking and chatting on and off from there, and even became friends. I did my best to encourage her, because, well, I was just like her starting out. And, with practice and effort, she'd be flying on her own. Seeing every new piece she made--a HUGE improvement in such a short amount of time--, I felt what I believed to be pride. Not the selfish kind. No, I was proud of her. She looked up to the Matriarchy just like I once did. But... instead of saying anything against them around her, I encouraged her. I made sure that she didn't follow the same path that I did. And, one day, she sends me this excitement-filled note about how the Matriarchy's 2nd-in-Command +watched her and they started getting close. She had done it, and with my recommendations, she became friends with my former friends. Because despite what had happened, they were good people (or so I thought until 2016). Not only that... she also gave me hope. By giving me the name "Saki", she helped me find hope that I could turn around and become better. And, with that hope, we became closer and our friendship grew from there. Of course, with that fear of abandonment still at the back of my mind, I enjoyed our friendship for as long as the amount of time the bomb had on it. Because, at that point, my mind always saw all friendships that way--they were all the same and ended the same. So, it was best to enjoy the present until the inevitable moment when that bomb would go off. Near the end of the year, I received a Note on dA from a user I had never met, seen, or interacted with before. They and their friend had a Joined-channel that talked about brats on DeviantART and made fun of them. This user said that I was one of the ones, who inspired them to get in to the community. I let them know about the situation and why I left; they understood, but we started to chat, and they welcomed me into their group of friends. (For the sake of continuity through this journal, we'll call them "The Group"--Again, keeping it vague for my and my family's safety). We would just have fun chatting, geeking-out, and having streams reading bad fanfictions. During one of those streams, I got a message from a user, who was helping me with updates from the YTTP. According to them, the kid that made the DoX threats and stalked me and the other old users form the Community had the real police called to their house, and they ceased all intent with their "Troll Police" habits. And, like I said in that stream: "Now that they're gone, I think I'm going to start making videos again."

~

2016:

The beginning marked the year of when the story of The Mustang Conspiracy was put on a hiatus. I had finished Community College with an Associates in Arts and was working on where to go from there, and AAV was in the process of going back to school for her own degree. So, with personal life taking up a bit more of our time, we put the story on the shelf; however, we still worked in our "Creative Workshop" for our characters, for when they would eventually come back. Aside from that, I was working on starting up again on YouTube. I had made two accounts this time: one for my Art/Speedpaints, and the other strictly for "those videos". Posting my drawings, as well as the quality of my art, was an an all-time low; and it would be that way for another year and a half. Had I known that becoming absorbed in the Community at the time would take a huge strike to your art, I wouldn't have thought twice about going back. But, I felt like I could be someone within that Community. After every video, I felt just absolutely amazing. It was like everything I had bottled up for years could all come out full force just in one video. People liked me and supported me, that's what mattered the most. Sure, it wasn't the same like and support I used to feel, but it was support regardless, right? It was best not to complain and be happy with what I had. So, from there, I continued on with making videos. Meanwhile, on DeviantART, I decided to open up commissions. I had only done so here and there when people asked about how much I would charge for (X kind of picture) back in 2013. I wanted to make it more like a professional info sheet, since I was nearing the point where I would be seen as a "professional" (quote unquote; because I didn't--still don't--see my art anywhere close to be seen as "professional" ^^; ). But, I digress... I set up my sheet, and some people from The Group even commissioned art from me. Until mid-May when one of my former friends (one of the ones that left in 2014) began going to my commissioners and saying that I "traced" my commissions. How did I find out about this? One of my "friends" form The Group sent me a message asking if I could get in a call, and she laid out what was going on. My "friend" from The Group was also friends with my commissioner, and they (my "friend" from The Group) was in a message with my former friend via Notes. I explained to my "friend" from The Group about the situation from a few year ago, and (during this time) they had my back (note from present me, this was a bad mistake to do. You DO NOT divulge any information like this to people from The Community. This reason will be explained in the later in this section as well as the 2019 section). Of course, what was I to do? I was a small DeviantArtist with an even smaller YouTube following on both channels. But, I had enough of being treated this way and made a video about my former friend and what was going on presently. To my surprise... the video blew up in just a short amount of months. Many of my other friends came out to say that they agreed with me and had disliked this individual's behavior even before this occurrence. Though, had I known about it at the time, I wouldn't have made a video, I would have filed a lawsuit. Because, in terms of legal definitions, what my former friend was doing was a form of Tortious Interference. Of course, that was a term I didn't know about until early 2019, so there was no way for me to know that what my former friend was doing was a liable court of law offense. But, what was done was done. Of course the Matriarchy found out (go figure; they're all connected to each other). But, regardless of what happened to my former friend, I didn't care. At the time, I felt like she deserved it. Little did I know that that unsympathetic callous feelings was just the beginnings of the toxic environment of the Community getting to me. My channel started to get big really quick, and, looking back now, I see that many of The Group were more than likely upset or jealous of this. Because, in August of that year, they were quick to turn on me instead of sit down and talk things out like friends are supposed to do. They quickly dropped me, started spreading rumors, even went so far as to tell my former friend that I was going to make another video on them. I was labeled as "toxic", had hate-art made of me defaming my character, and they even made an alt account to spam my name in the comments and notes of one of their former friend (because "Saki" is such a "mean-sounding word" apparently...). The time bomb had gone off, but, unlike the other times, I wasn't even ready for it. And, up until the end of the year, I was a mixture of mad an upset, going through all sorts of emotions on the spectrum. How stupid I was to not see that I was falling in with the "Wrong Crowd". How I shouldn't have even attempted to restart my channel. How I shouldn't even have grown close to these groups of people. It would all end the same. It always did. Yet... I wasn't ready for it. Now... 2016 is a year that the majority of people despite, mostly for the results of the USA's Presidential election. Personally, I don't care for politics, but there were other things on my mind that day. See, that morning, the very same day as the election results, I had received a call from my doctor about my recent biopsy's results: Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma--Thyroid Cancer. Sure, it's not as serious a cancer like Breast or Brain, but it was cancer nonetheless. So, I was scheduled to have a total thyroid removal at the end of November, and would be put on a super restricting "iodine diet" for the majority of December that would last through the entire holidays. Christmas Dinner was torture; only able to eat a very small selection of things, while watching my family eat such amazing and delicious foods. The following week, I was quarantined in my room because I was completely radioactive. Despite craving that delicious food from Christmas, I felt like I would throw up if I ate just a cracker. My week of quarantine was was literally nauseating, completely miserable, and, above all else, absolutely boring. I could only entertain myself with my phone, because I didn't want to touch anything else--it would just be more to thoroughly clean immediately after use. January 1st Midnight of 2017 was spent in my room listening to my family excitedly cheer "Happy New Year". Needless to say, out of all the years this decade, 2016 was the worst.

~

2017:

With the residuals of what occurred between The Group and I gradually sputtered to stop, I took the time to stay off the internet a little and focus on my real life. I had to do something with my life. I know what I wanted to do with it. But, the thought of my parents not agreeing with my decision and not being proud of me held me back far too much. Despite having an Associates in Arts and wanting to go in a field that was about The Arts, my parents' (mother's) constant comments of: "Digital Art Degrees are a hit or miss when it comes to getting a job", "You'll never make it out in the Art field", "They're called 'starving artists' for a reason", and then she would proceed to offer ideas for jobs that required either a Science degree or a Medical degree. And... I believed her. Through her constant comments, she had coaxed me to reluctantly work to something she wanted me to be. I mean, she was right: I needed to find a job that would support myself financially, and if getting a Graphic Arts Degree wouldn't do that, then, well, I wasted 4 years of my life in Community College. So, with my mind thinking "Back to Square One", I set out to look for a part-time job. And, in February, I did. It was a short-shift job, but it paid a decent amount to get by for a while. Meanwhile, I paid less time online; only making a few videos for my channel now and then, but also wanting to get my Art/Speedpaint Channel off the ground with videos that are years old (and videos that, to this day, I still have yet to edit and post), as well as posting art when I could (once or twice a month). There wasn't much else that was eventful for the rest of the year; not until a week before Christmas. On our home's doorstep was a package from Amazon that contained an "Adult Coloring Book" titled: Calm the F*ck Down and a pack of Prisma Coloring pencils (which, by the way are not a cheap brand of pencils). Who had sent it, we weren't sure. I know I hadn't ordered it, and I didn't have an Amazon account at the time, so the assumption of it being on my "Wish-list" was out of the question. But, it was a week before Christmas, so it was probably from an out-of-state relative. Little did I know that the individual, who sent it was not either of the two, but someone who I had known, yet hadn't met in real life. And their reasons for sending me the package? Malicious, devious, and text-book level of a psycho. I wouldn't know the identity of said person for another two years. All in all, this year brought new people for me to befriend and meet as well. Of course, after everything that happened, I was very very hesitant to pursue friendships with them. What was the point anyway? They would all end the same. At this point, I had already begun to accept who I was: A narcissistic, selfish, heartless, backstabbing, toxic, indifferent annoyance, harassing, ungrateful, apathetic, hurtful, manipulative, bullying, dramatic, sensitive, arrogant, petty, spiteful, over dramatic, drama whore, lying, shady, sociopathic bitch. People don’t change. I can't change no matter what. But, that’s okay. I’ve come to accept it. And I'll keep doing my best to protect everyone else that I care about—those very VERY small few that are left. The more I can protect from getting close and affected by the monster, the better. Nobody in this world deserves more of that. I tossed those Placebo-Effect pills away, so I could stop lying to myself once and for all that "I changed" and "I'm a better person now". There was no way that, after all that happened, that was true. There's no point in denying it or hiding anymore. I am who I am. I don't like it, but that's just the way things are, and I will forever be that person--No. I'm not even human after all that I've done. I'm a monster, and I'll be that way forever. My Cancer wasn't able to get rid of everyone else's suffering--suffering by the fact that I exist--, and I wouldn't be able to give them that release and make things right once and for all.

~

2018:

At the cusp of this year around January-February, I had noticed that the friend in the FMA fandom (the one who had given me my new name as well as hope to become better), hadn't been interacting with much as she used to. I found it strange, and I didn't want to assume anything, so I messaged her via Tumblr and asked if I did anything to upset her. Because, after the knee-jerk reactions of the Community, I had come to prefer talking things out with an individual and fix problems in a civil manner. Well, we did talk things out in a civil manner. But, long story short, she didn't want to be friends with my anymore. Her reason: Because she didn't want me to make a Video about her. Where did she come up with that reason? I never made any mention of it to her, and the only reason why I made the videos on my former friends because they actually did something to me and were going out of their way to commit Defamation per Se and Tortious Interference--among basic libel and slander. She had done nothing to me that would make me want to even consider making a video on her. However, despite my best efforts of trying to reassure her, I eventually had to reluctantly respect her wishes and let her go. We un-watched each other, and that was that. But, something was odd... Not only did he un-watch me, but also blocked me. Un-watching, I could understand. But blocking as well? That didn't make any sense... After months of having the worry drive me insane, I eventually came to the realization that tore my apart. I didn't want to believe it, but, after analyzing everything that occurred, nothing else made sense except what I had realized. She was USING me. She was only friends (and "litter sister" to the 2nd-in-Command) with the entire Matriarchy because of me. And what thanks did I get? NOTHING! She gave me false hope that I could change and be better--lying through her teeth the entire time. Not only that... she PRETENDED to be my friend. Like everyone else, she knew my weak spot: Friendship. All that mattered to me. Having the support group to escape to when my parents (mother) didn't give me any and tried to drag me away from the things I loved and enjoyed. They knew it. She knew it--it was her plan all along, wasn't it?! She used me. She. USED. Me. Slept her way to the top, so to speak, without any effort; just rode along on my coat tails until she had no use for me anymore. ...And I was stupid to fall for her feigned innocence and let her get away with it. I stupidly turned around, thinking nothing of the situation until she plunged her knife deep enough to the hilt right through me. ...I know that's an extreme jump to conclusions, but what else was I supposed to think? I thought I was numb after all the other things I had to go through in the previous years. But, after what she did... I couldn't remember a time where I went through that much pain; pain that lasted for months afterwards. Meanwhile, in the real world, I was taking each day by day and doing my best to act as normal as I could around family, despite everything that occurred/was occurring online. I quite my part-time job, and spent the summer looking for a better one; eventually landing a full-time job (my current one) that paid really well and had good benefits. Sure, it took a lot of time away from working on art, especially when the Holidays came around and there was so much overtime I was working between 55 and 60 hours per week. I tried to manage as much as I could with my online status and stay as active as I could though, even if my quality of art never increased because of the lack of motivation and little time I had in between with work in order to put some art together.

~

2019:

And, now we come to the final year of the decade. I focused more and more on my art and developing it enough to where I became a better Mimicker Artist. Even though there have been many more times where I had to politely put others down when they remarked about "[my] style"; it was a similar reply I would have to make to comments like those before. Other than  that, though, there were many ups and downs, like there were every year. Midway through 2019, I met some new individuals, who had left when the Community became too toxic, and got in a call with one of the former friends of The Group (We'll call this individual "J"). Through the call, which lasted about 3-4 hours--there was a lot they had to unpack and let me know--, J informed me of everything The Group was saying and doing behind closed doors on Discord. Even going so far as to get their (former) connection, who had easy access to the Deep and Dark Web, to go after people they they didn't like. One of those people, included myself. Remember when I mentioned that Amazon package I received during Christmas of 2017? It was them. Their reason: "Make [me] so stressed out to the point that [my] cancer comes back in a more severe case and kills [me]." The moment J told me that, I let everyone in the call know that I had to step away for a minute. Then, I muted my mic, and promptly went to the bathroom to throw up. Even if it was way passed midnight after the call ended, I couldn't get any sleep because I was shaking so bad. These people--people, who third-party viewers call "drama whores"--, were more than just that. "Drama whore" was a huge understatement. These people... were psychos. Thankfully, they hadn't done anything else since then (Especially since their little Deep Web friend stopped interacting with them and The Group is against him now). But even so, the fact that these people went out of their way to have me killed just because I was making fun of them for being immature and stupid... it was more than just the epitome of "insane". Who does something like that? Who thinks that the way to "get back" at someone for making fun of you on the internet is to have them killed? Again, thankfully, nothing else has happened since then; but, of course, if it does, I'm calling the police. Back in the real world, I managed to sway my parents to let me go to an Art-Collage. Sure, had I let in on the fact that I wanted to go into Theater or Graphic Arts, they (Mom) would have shot it down immediately and gave me the speech I always got. So, I managed to settle on a Film Degree, which was more like my Plan C (a field that still interested me, but not 100% what I loved), still mostly out of the fear that they wouldn't accept me for a field that I actually wanted to go into. And, for the majority of 2020, I'll be working on saving up to attend that school; hopefully able to get some grants or scholarships so that I won't have to worry about paying the rest of my share after the FAFSA amount is taken out. At the end of the day, and year, at least AAV and I are still as close as ever, and I wouldn't trade her for anything else in the world. I've said it before and I'll say it again: life isn't worth living without her. She's all that I have left in this world that matters. She's the only one I can trust that won't leave or abandon me. To this day, it still baffles me that she didn't drop me and leave, like the others had, when we had our first petty spat. So, if anyone could be considered a "true friend", it would be her. Of course, I still can't get close to others, and I wouldn't even dare try to attempt a new friendship. I try to be nice and civil when others ask: "Can we be friends?" I give them the short explanation of why I can't get close to others anymore, and, luckily, they understand. I know it's wrong, and I should give people a chance, but, after all that's happened, I can't risk anything.

~

Anyway, so that's my entire Decade in review. It's crazy to think how long it's been since then and how much has happened... The years and events may have changed, but I and everyone else haven't. I know I certainly haven't. Like I mentioned in 2017, I began to accept who I was, and eventually fully accepted it through the entirety of the next year. And, like they have been for almost 10 years, my thoughts never changed on the Matriarchy, and it absolutely disgusts me whenever they (especially the 2nd-in-Command) acts mature and friendly for "brownie points", and saying lies like: "...inspiring others from a healthy approach to pursue whatever they aim for, because it can definitely be achieved. ..." (Not to mention that she has no idea what having an actual reason for anxiety feels like). Well, there's one thing I can agree with her on...  there's people that I used to look up to that I shouldn't have. That includes her and the rest of the FMA OC Matriarchs. Because those people are nothing more than self-entitled, immature, holier-than-thou individuals, who act like their word is law, everyone else is lower than dirt underneath them, and use their mob mentality on others for some stupid petty "block brigade" on Tumblr just because someone doesn't like their OC with Ed. Even when I was a small barely-100-watcher DeviantArtist, I saw them all and their true colors and thought that way of them. 10 years later, and my mind still hasn't changed. Because people don't change, no matter how badly they want to--I'm a bright and shining example of that. My goal concerning them is the same that it's always been: "Knock [them] off their thrones." My mind hasn't changed about them. And I still wholeheartedly believe that what they did, have done, are doing is NOT the right thing to do. And I will keep working my tail off until I surpass them and take them down a peg. No one that "looks up to" you should be treated in the ways that they have done over the years. If you're looked up to, be an actual adult for once as well as a good role model. Of course, I am far from being the latter. Little me from 2010 might look at my art and say: "Wow!" But, I just have to say in response: "Kid... forget all you know about art. Go get a degree in the medical or science field. You don't want to go down the path I had to take." Present-Day "Me" isn't someone that 2010 "Me"--or anyone else for that matter--should look up to. I'm not worth anyone's time. I'm a "lost cause" after all, and I'm not someone that should be seen as "inspirational". Not after the things I've done and said over the years. And, through this entire decade, I began to see that the world is nothing more than a dark and cruel place full of people, who will turn against you the moment you disagree with them or abandon you when they have no use for you anymore. (That's not me being "edgy" -__- That's me being realistic). But, then again... had I not pursued this path and found the FMA fandom, I never would have met my best friend, AAV. She's the highlight of every New Year in my life, and, while the world may seem bleak to me the majority of the time... she finds a way to light it up in her own special way. So, even through these ups and downs, I'm happy to have her in my life. She means everything to me, and I wouldn't trade anything else in the world for her. No, we're not a couple--like many have assumed and publicly stated on that rumor--, she and I are just friends. Best friends, yes, but friends nonetheless. But, other than that, I'm going to keep working on art here on dA, because, with this new decade, there will be a new batch of up-and-coming artists. And, while I don't really think I'm someone worth looking up to, I still want to help them work on their craft and make something of themselves. Even if that one former friend used me for her personal benefit... I still enjoyed seeing how happy she was once she was able to start flying on her own, so to speak. It was an amazing feeling, and, knowing that I helped someone achieve that, I just can't help but feel so proud of them. And, I really want to help other beginner artists out and climb up their own mountain. It's okay if some aren't as fast learners as the others; it's the lessons we learn along the way and the mistakes we make to learn from. Anyway... here's to 2020 everyone!

I really have no excuse for this, I just wanted to see if I could brighten up the days of people who really brighten up mine

@crowndefiant cassie, you are literally my best friend in the entire world and i love you a lot. thank you so much for always being there for me, even when i probably didn’t deserve it, and for brightening up my day by literally just putting up with me. i love you so so much and you mean the entire world to me.  as for your writing, you already know i think it’s phenomenal. be it some dumb crack on this hell site, or your gorgeous novel that’s going to turn you into a new york times best selling author, you could write about a cardboard box and i would die for it <3 your dumb jokes, your kindness, your willingness to always be there for me by my side all makes me so happy to have you in my life, and i want you to know that i’m always going to be here for you no matter what.

@anorablespark josie!! you’re about 95% of the reason why this blog exists and probably why i still roleplay at all. you following me all the way back on p//bg was a shock because you seemed like such a high quality blogs and back then i was a total mess (i still am. that is beside the point). despite my total lack of confidence in any of my abilities, you were nothing but kind and caring to me in a time where i was considering giving up writing all together, and you made me a lot less nervous joining this fandom by introducing me to some of the most amazing people here that i love and admire, you are one of them. you’re nora is one of my favourite muses ever on this fucking hellsite, and even though we say we have to plot and we never do, what little we’ve done with nora and pyrrha’s relationship makes me smile, and your nora makes pyrrha smile a lot too. your backstory for her has so much though, love and care put into it, and i want you to know that i love it, and i love you, and all of your muses and headcanons. don’t forget that.

@starsetdiva maaaaaayyyy~ as someone who has tried, struggled, and failed to take a background character with like five lines of dialogue, and turn them into my own, let me tell you this, you have done a phenomenal job, with both neon and arslan. the care and effort into everything you do for your muses makes me so happy that there are people like you, who are willing to do all that for a character they love, and i respect you so so much for that. you’re always there to make me laugh, be it ooc or ic, and i’m glad we live in the land of fucked up timezones, because being able to see you on my dash, and talk to you, makes me so happy. i know how self-conscious you are about your writing, and i know exactly how you feel, but i want you to know that i genuinely love and enjoy all of your writing, and i would so so so so soooo love to write/plot with you some more, i just,,,, need to come up with some plot ideas <3 i’d follow you on any muse to the end of the fucking earth, and rest assured, i will always be around to icon whoever or whatever you need lmao

@mirrornium chloe, you’re pretty okay for someone who shits on my lawn. nO BUT REALLY, in all seriousness, i was really sad when you just sort of disappeared off my dash a while back, because you always made me laugh a lot with your drake bell icons buT NOW YOU AND YOUR DRAKE AND JOSH SHITPOSTING IS BACK AS WELL, and i could not be happier. we haven’t talked a lot one on one but everytime we speak, be in privately or in a group of people, you never fail to make me laugh until i’m in tears, and i couldn’t ask for anything more from you. 

@bloomess stELLA WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU SO NICE TO ME. you’re literally the best, like god damn woman, you are so kind and funny and you’re always doing nice things for me and saying nice things to me, which i don’t???? deserve??????? like dang man what’d i do to deserve you, like, what the fuck. ad you!!!! put up with me sending you memes that make me think of you/ur ruby, who is the absolute cutest think i lov okay. i lov you, and uhhh i love ur ruby, and pyrr lovse rooby 2, her lil cowgirl gf yeehaw. wE HAVEN’T HAD A PROPER THREAD YET BUT UHH I RLLY WANT 2 WRITE WITH YOU BECAUSE I LOVE HOW YOU WRITE RUBY IT GIVES ME A REASON TO LIVE LIKE DAMN WOMAN. but yes i love you a lot and i would die 4 u but u already know that so okAY BYE NOW Y’ALL

@saecris meh.  NO I’M KIDDING I LIKE YOU A LOT MORE THAN JUST meh. you better full well know how much i love you and how much i love your ren. you are so kind and funny that it like genuinely confuses me like how is??? that possible like dang. i really really really enjoy talking to you ooc so much, and our ic interactions are a lot of fun too, even if it’s just pyrrha and ren acting like children and also that one time they were being nerds about books or something. speaking of, i love your ren. so so so sos os sosososoooos o soooooo sooooooo much. your headcanons and backstory are so well thought out and genuinely interesting and make me want to care about him so much more and i just  👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏

@nctdamsel how and why do you even put up with me mack. you let me yell at you about greek fire and it means so much to me that you care about these two nerds as much as i do lmA O. all of your headcanons and oc’s are so well thought out and all the care and detail you put into them shines through and makes me smile. you’re always kind and sweet and just in general way too good to me???? i love all the cute threads we do together and it makes me so happy to see you on my dash, to talk to you, write with you, plot with you, waTCH YOUR FUCKING SNAPCHAT STORY I’M LOV U MAC K

@kingdommark helL O HUSBAND <3 we’ve known each other like what, two weeks and we’re already married. i haven’t known you for nearly as long as a lot of other people, but you’ve never been anything but kind and caring to me, and it really means a lot to me that you take time out of your day to talk to me and be a nice person???? and seeing you be a nice person to other people makes me so happy, because i think we both know that this website is a place filled with unnecessary toxicity, so to see people like you who are always doing their best to be kind is so heartwarming to me. obviously i don’t know shit about KH but your sora is a massive cutie who i love a lot and enjoy seeing on my dash so much, and you can bet your ass i cannot wait for sora/pyrrha interactions

@saintlyhilt aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA??????? hello yes, shi did you know that you’re an absolute blessing and idk how we haven’t interacted much outside of crack/dash comm, because i’m pretty sure our first ooc interaction was just me telling you how thirsty i am for jaune so. i lov seeing u be gay on my dash and the rare times we talk make me happy because you’re so kind and caring and i don’t know if you know it but you never fail to make me smile all the gosh darn time, and i literally cannot thank you enough. your writing and headcanons for both sun and jaune are so well thought out, interesting, and so much fun to read. i just want you to know that you’re really important to me and i appreciate you a lot.

@adornedscars jhuwan, you may be one sassy fucking piece of shit, but you know what? i wouldn’t have it any other way, because you make me laugh and smile a lot, especially when i need it most, and our stupid running joke of fox calling pyrrha a bitch is one of my favourite stupid thing to happen on this blog. you’ve literally taken a character with nothing and made him your own in a way that literally just???? makes me forget that he doesn’t even have a canon fucking voice actor. you are one of the most important people i see on my dash, and one of the funniest too, and even though we don’t talk a lot, i’m glad we’re friends.

@baddrunkcharm hEY ASHE DID U KNOW THAT UR LIKE MY FAVOURITE QROW AND I’M LOV U AND THE WAY U WRITE SO MUCH AND U HAVE TO SHARE THOSE COOKIES WITH ME. no but seriously you’re another person who i just??? haven’t talked to a lot because i’m a nervous bean and you’re just super cool and i love your writing and characterization so fucking much man like dang. and!!! i super hope we can interact more, both ic and ooc, because!!! i’m going to fight you either way!!! but with hugs, and puppies, and love, because,,,, i love seeing you on my dash, and talking to you, and just knowing that you exist.

@miragesque heLLO YES WE HAVE LIKE NEVER SPOKEN BEFORE BUT LIKEDANG SEEING YOU ON MY DASH MAKES ME REALLY HAPPY DA N G. seeing how much you love and care about blake makes me so happy because i 101% absolutely know how you feel to be absolutely in love with your muse, and to see other people that just care so much makes me get all emotional, and it all really shows through in your writing because like????? you’re probably one of the most stand out blakes i’ve ever seen on this god forsaken hell site and it makes me all giddy and smiley and happy to see on my dash because you’re an amazing writer, and i am just a small bean, hoping that one day i’ll build up some more courage to sAY HE L L O.

11 questions tag

I was tagged by a lot of people, I kept this in the drafts for weeks and just kept adding questions since they’re always different, so thank you for tagging me and sorry if this post is long (I’ll just put it under keep reading).

Also it might be that I forgot or missed someone who tagged me so if that’s the case I’m sorry I’m not ignoring you I promise!

Rules: 1. Always post the rules 2. Answer the questions given by the person who tagged you 3. Write 11 questions of your own 4. Tag 11 people

Questions by @severeminx

You are hosting a dinner party and can invite 5 historical figures. Who would they be? Mozart, Da Ponte, Aristotle, Lucretius, Marie Skłodowska

What was your favorite cartoon as a kid? probably Pokémon!

What’s your signature drink when going out? Japanese ice tea

Do you have any tattoos? If not, would you like to? i don’t have any and i also don’t think i’ll ever find something that i want on my skin permanently, but we’ll see if we get there i guess

Who was your favourite classmate when you were 16? oh god...thank god this didn’t ask when i was 17 lmao...anyway my fav classmate was my then-BFF. there were also a couple of girls i really found interesting but i guess it wasn’t reciprocated so they always only hung out with a bigger group and being the shy person i am i couldn’t let myself try to be friends with them

How did you meet your best friend? we were in kindergarten together lol, but we didn’t talk (play??) much. then we were in different classes during elementary school but we got in the same class again in middle school and that’s where we became friends

Do you like going to museums? What is the art style you want to check out the most? okay i’m going to admit this here. i like museums, okay? but i’d rather see something like a natural history museum or something like that, honestly i’m a big science nerd and i don’t get as excited about art i guess. but i do go to art museums when visiting cities and i actually find them really interesting, but if i’m just in my town and there’s some temporary art exhibition i just don’t really care about going unless it’s something suuuuper famous :/// i feel like a lot of people will hate me for this buT LISTEN SCIENCE IS IMPORTANT GUYS

What feature or quality do you get complimented on the most? are we talking physically?? people like my hair and my nails I guess. If we’re talking personality-wise then idk, they tell me I’m good at listening (which I admit) and my bff told me he thinks I’m brave and I guess I understand why he said it but honestly I still don’t believe it

What is the most romantic place you have ever visited? I’m not sure because since watching YOI the only romantic place on earth for me is Barcelona and I haven’t been there yet lmao. The places I’ve been to aren’t exactly romantic so I don’t know

What would you define as ‘magical’? That thing that your mind does after 1 or 2am when it becomes more loose without needing drugs but it just gets high on lack of sleep and you’re suddenly really talkative and funny and you can have really deep conversations with people and your jokes are honestly on fucking point and you wish you were like that during the day

What is the most expensive item of clothing you have ever bought and was it worth it? I honestly don’t know oh my god. Probably the suit (pants + blazer) I bought a few years ago and that’s still good and whenever I have to be dressed in a “serious and elegant” way that’s what I go for. So yeah it was worth it.

Questions by @yakoucchu

 The piece of makeup that you always wear. i don’t always wear it but if i wanna put on a bit of something then it’s definitely gonna be mascara + lipstick (or colored lip balm) because I think they both make a ton of difference. Actually now in summer I almost always have colored lip balm from Lush because it’s too humid to be wearing mascara and I don’t feel like wearing a waterproof one lol

If you’re gonna be the author of your favorite series, what are you gonna change in it? well that would be a spoiler lmao but i guess i’d make someone who died in it live

There’s a fact that is happened to you and it makes you heart warming a lil bit when you think about it? you mean besides YOI and captive prince? cuz that’s all i can think about lol (there’s more but i’m being lazy with my answer sorry)

 Someone have ever done something that we can define crazy for you? yeah when my bf first came to visit me and we met for the first time (because we met online)

Do you like your current occupation? i’m unemployed but i’m “working” on being able to find a job soon but tbh i have food and a roof on my head and i’m needing this time of doing nothing but trying to take care of myself so i wouldn’t say i like this but it’s all i can do now

Smoothies, or Milkshakes? smoothies

What’s the thing that you love the most about yourself? hsrghsghshgshgsh most difficult question ever tbh. i like that i’m...rational? yeah rational 

The most strange thing that you ever tried to eat grossed you out? ummmmmmmmmm watch me get a lot of hate for this but....................................................sushi grosses me out and i almost puked when i tried it

Are you ever tried to write something, and after a while giving it up? Why? i did, a lot of things actually. i had an idea for a fic that i realized was going to do me more harm than good so i had to ditch the idea. there are things i know i could write but they’re too personal and still too raw so idk if i ever will write them. other WIPs are just there in my folder for no other reason that I either lost inspiration or that they’re honestly fucking hard to write and I still don’t have all the plot 

How do you feel right not? If I said to you “you’re doing great” it can change something? i’m struggling to keep my shit together. and yes, it changes something so thank you a lot for telling me that :) <3

What’s your favorite movie? idkkkkkk i rarely watch movies but of the latest ones i guess interstellar

Questions by @crescendotayuri 

1. what’s one thing you could never live without? my phone lmaoooooo so cliche

2. what’s your favorite part of your daily routine? probably right after managing to get out of bed, the moment i finally sit down for breakfast with a croissant and a cappuccino (typical italian breakfastTM)

3. what are you most passionate about? ...yuri on ice and captive prince and lgbt+ rights and the environment

4. what’s the best dream you’ve ever had? I don’t really know but sometimes I dream that I become internet-famous and it’s really sad that this is literally one of the best dreams I have lmao

5. happiest memory? I have a few but one of them is seeing Florence and the Machine live (i have others but they’re a bit too personal so idk)

6. are there any videos/jokes/etc that never fail to make you laugh? oh god yes........i’m so lame but like any meme will have me laugh tbh. kermit meme? i laugh. dude blinking meme? i laugh. spongebob meme? i laugh. i could go on lmao but i’ll stop embarrassing myself. there’s also a few comics that I have saved on my phone and they never fail to make me laugh but it’d be hard to explain them here

7. one talent you with you had/could perfect? it’s never been my wish to be able to draw but now that i’m into fandom i guess i would like to be able to do it at least a little. and i wish i could perfect my writing (or at least perfect my English at a native speaker level so it’d be easier)

8. a song you relate to the most? Help I’m alive - Metric

9. how do you take your coffee/tea? i only have cappuccino or latte macchiato and only rarely espresso. get american coffee out of my sight. tea is earl grey usually without milk bc i mostly use tea (without sugar) to stop me from wanting dessert lmao but if i’m feeling like it i’ll take it with milk bc it’s too good

10. what do you do to make yourself feel better when you’re sad or upset? i rewatch yoi or go on twitter and hope there’s some good memes but i trust my squad so yeah usually there’s something

11. what makes you proud of yourself? being a decent person despite everything

Questions by @pllsetskyonice:

1. What’s a song you can’t get enough of at the moment? AAAA it’s too hard to choose one! Just one yesterday by Fall Out Boy and literally every song from Lorde’s Melodrama

2. If someone asked you for a book recommendation, what’s the one book you would recommend? The question is trickyyyy because obviously not all books are for everyone especially if we’re talking about stuff with major trigger warnings etc etc but if I have to say I’ll just go with my fav trilogy Captive Prince (granted I’m talking to an adult) but I’ll leave it to them to decide if they’re up to reading it or not

3. Do you play any musical instruments? Nope :( used to play the piano and then stopped like the idiot I am, but I sing

4. Book or movie? Book

5. Do you ever wish you could turn back time? Eh. I guess.

6. Favourite subject in school? Science in whatever form it came (it was different things every school year but it doesn’t matter if it’s geology chemistry or w/e I’m just a huge science kid)

7. You’ve been given tickets to a concert for an artist you’ve always wanted to see live but never had the chance to. Who are you seeing? Maybe Marina and the Diamonds but there’s so many oh my god I also wouldn’t mind seeing Florence again but I’ve already seen her.......oh wait LORDE YES LORDE probably if I had to choose right at this very moment

8. Is there an accessory you don’t feel dressed without? Not really

9. Have you ever been to a festival? I’m not sure what kinda festival you mean but I think not

10. Have you read all of the original seven Harry Potter books? Yeah but still not in English oops

11. What’s the last film/TV show you watched? Last film was Beauty and the Beast when it came out lmao I’m not a huge movie person, last TV show mmmh let’s say that YOI counts for this yes? because it’s always YOI and I don’t feel like watching anything else rip

My questions:

If you were a character in the last book you’ve read, what would be your role? Protagonist, side kick, villain...?

What’s your biggest pet peeve when reading a book or watching a show/anime/movie? (if you can’t only name one feel free to name a few)

Do you consider yourself to be a creative person?

Describe one person in your life you admire without mentioning the type of relationship you have with them

What’s one personality trait you’d give up immediately if you could?

Think of the farthest place you’ve traveled to and describe one culture shock you had while there (even something small)

What’s the one thing that always manages to motivate you?

What would you tell your 10 year old self?

What’s your favorite trope?

If your BFF tells you (lovingly) “why are you like this?” what are they referring to?

Are you scared of something right now? If you are, what’s one sentence you wish someone would tell you about the thing that scares you?

I tag: @betelxeuse @ilgattopatata @ehsocietypretendstoomuch @otayurl @argentoheart @nerily @janiedean @robb-greyjoy @laurent-rose @dotingdamen @venenix but obviously feel free not to do it (but if you do tag me bc I love reading your answers) fdklahrgag I hope I don’t get annoying with all these tags

The way I ship Bethyl

abelinajt

replied to your post:

“I’m bethyl trash. I never thought I would be, but I am. I’m not...”

:

It's not problematic, though? Other than an age gap, the two characters themselves are actually quite equally balanced. The age gap itself is only problematic if there's a large imbalance of power, which there really isn't for these specific characters.

I... I... I don’t know what to think. And I’m sorry for all of you, who are reading this, cause I pretend to discover it as I write this response.

If I would see this exact dynamic in real life, like a daughter of mine would like to date a man who’s 15-20 years older than her and similar to Daryl, i would go all:

“NO WAY, young lady. You’re waaaaay too emotionally immature for this, You really, REALLY lack the emotional and even cognitive equipment for this quest. Your brain will still be changing until you’re 27, please walk that way with someone of your own generation.

You think you can handle this, but you can’t, because he has obviously seen loads and loads of shit you haven’t, and that will always weight against you. He will always have this power imbalance over you, even if he doesn’t want to use it against you. It’ll show, just give it time. You two won’t have a common ground to even talk. And don’t get me started with sex. Remember those loads of shit I said he has seen? Yeah... well, THAT.

And don’t get me started with his life story, or his physique. My girl, this man could tear you apart with his bare hands if he want. Or even if he doesn’t want. For what you’re telling me, there is a lot of unlived pain there, and for God sake I don’t want you near him when it explodes. I know you can handle yourself, but let’s face it: against him, against his rage you wouldn’t stand a chance. You are not his equal in that either.

He should be seeing you for what you are: still a girl. If he doesn’t, there’s something wrong with him, like, sorry I have to break this for you, but really... He shouldn’t be attracted to you. He can find you beautiful, and even attractive, but his soul is old, and shouldn’t romantically love yours, unless there’s some secret desire to compensate for something, to... I don’t know, suck that young energy from you, or even avenge his sufferings on you. And maybe he doesn’t even know about these desires.

I know you’ll say you have seen some happy couples with age gaps this big. Yeah, maybe. But 18 vs 40 is not the same than 40 vs 62, even when the gap is equal. I heard this rule, one time, to calculate if you are in the same generation with your partner. Take your age, substract 7, then multiply it by 2, that’s the oldest man who could be with you. You’re 18, you could be with a 22 yo. Or take his age, 40: half his age plus 7 is 27. And, if you have seen happy couples with big age gaps, I have seen many unhappy ones.

It has been such a struggle for women over the centuries to overcome shit like this, mature man with way too young girls. And this still exist in some countries, cause mature men have always have this privilege of lying in bed beside a young girl who would never be his equal... Please don’t do this to yourself, my girl. Please don’t”.

...

Man, poor daughter of mine, seems like I would eat her alive. And then God help him, cause I would really try to discover what’s wrong with him, and I would hope to leave him all fucked up, and seeking for help, or I would go all Killer Peletier on his ass. And then I would be seeking help for me, cause I obviously did something wrong as a mother for my girl to not see this. At that age, all her mistakes are still my mistakes. 

...

But that would be in real life. This other thing is fiction. And, thank God, it even didn’t happen in said fiction. It could have been starting to happen, from his side, but it never bloomed, and it never will, cause she was killed. I’m not a part of team delusional, though I won’t tell them what to think. To each, his own, or like we say in Chile: Cada loco con su cuento. 

It didn’t happen. But for some of us, this is still appealing, hence the fanfiction, and the canon divergence, and the AU’s. From my point of view, this is the closest thing to a romantic connection we have seen for Daryl, and Daryl is one hell of a character. I have to confess I don’t see anything that great in Beth, but I do love her faith, her resilience, her kindness, her deep insight. And I’m grateful for everything she did for Daryl, even being that young, and... Ok, fuck it, Beth is great too, and that’s why I find this ship appealing.

But I still think it is a problematic ship. These are my reasons:

We are assuming Beth is 18 by the time they leave the prison, but maybe she wasn’t, and we would be wanting to see Daryl commit a statutory rape crime. Jesus Christ. 

For all the reasons I mentioned before, I think this kind of age gap DOES MATTER. Call me ageist, if you want. I won’t fight you, and I can take it, cause it’s for a good cause, like defending a young girl’s bodily and emotional integrity.

I’ve ranted a lot about shipping and about shippers’ morals. There are problematic and more than problematic ships everywhere. Incestuous ships, abusive ships (like when you ship a character WITH his/her abuser), pedophilic ships. I’ve always thought it’s at least problematic to ship a problematic couple. Why do you like it? Why doesn’t it make you cringe? But now I’m, more or less, shipping something that is problematic, so I need to, at least, acknowledge it. Like for a “don’t do this at home, kids”.

...

All that being said... Still...

*Deep, heartfelt sigh*

Daryl is Daryl. One of the things I like of Carol, is that she low key thinks Daryl is the best man in the world. And she’s not completely wrong. Daryl is some quality dude.

He would be aware of the power imbalance in a relationship with an 18 year old girl. Even when I don’t actually think he is as old as the fandom says. I have my reasons, and I’ll make my own calculations. Anyway, he would be aware of the problematic nature of his feelings, and he would fight them. He would feel awful for them. He would doubt himself, cause he has been doubting himself, and his worth his entire life. 

He’s sexy as hell. I wouldn’t be writing this if he wasn’t (Lets be honest). But I’m pretty convinced he’s at least demisexual. I haven’t seen him spotting some booty in 6 seasons. I can’t picture him drooling for anybody, and I definitely don’t see him preying on young girls, just for kicks. 

Yes he has seen loads of shit. But it’s not his fault. And I hope he finds someone emotionally healthy to help him heal. In fact, Beth did that.

Yes he could tear apart a girl like Beth. And sometimes, he can snap very violently. He’s scary. What happened with Carol in that barn, and with Beth outside tha shack was scary. But he hasn’t done it again. And we know him. He would never hurt a women he loved. He has healed a lot, he has lived a lot of his own pain. All abuser were victims, but not all victims become abusers. That’s why we love Daryl.

So, knowing and feeling all this, I ship Bethyl, but in a very special way. I’ve read like three fanfictions about it, and they all rush into the sexual aspect of the relationship. But I know it would take a long time to get to crack Daryl open enough to get into his pants. And it would take a long time for him to overcome his shame about his feelings. And then, I think there would be some opposition among the group: Maggie, Glenn, Rick. 

It would be complicated as hell.

And complicated means slow burn. Very slow burn. And some sublime platonic unconfessed, and even unrequited love in the meanwhile. I find it wonderful for DA FEELZ, and for the writing craft that it would require.

I don’t even know if I would be able to write it. My english is limited for writing creatively, and MAN, I can’t grasp the way Daryl talks. It’s too... regional, or something. If I write something, I would probably do it in spanish. I have been writing this post for like 3 hours, and it’s not even right.

I’m very sorry for using your reply to write this very very long rambling. But I needed to get it off my chest, cause I’ve been questioning myself about this ship. Like, how did I, over my high moral horse, ended up shipping a ship all people depict as ephebophilic, or something. 

This is how. Someone with me?

Snk Positivity Day 6: Love Your Series

Im gonna put this under a read more because I cant think of express my feelings on something without turning it into a full length incoherent ass essay so!!

I’ve been in the snk fandom since I was like 12 lol - Im 16 now so that’s like, five years?? I can still remember like I’d see a lot of gifs n stuff of it going around tumblr and for some reason I just really felt I wouldn’t like it like I had smthing lowkey against it?? But then I decided to watch it one day, n i still remember, I was just chilling on my laptop watching it in the sitting room, my family around me and stuff and goddd it was soo good... but it made me tear up... n bITCH I was NOT! about to cry in the sitting room around my family. I was not! prepared for that. That night I stayed up till possibly 1 or 3am just watching it, I must’ve gotten to like around episode 6 I think? I loved it so much I rlly fell in love, I finished it all in just three days.... three days of which I also went to school and stuff and had to go to my friends party.... bitch i was pissed i didnt even like that person....i just wanted to finish snk lmaooo 😭

Im pretty sure Id spend sm of my time invested in snk and looking through snk tumblrs and stuff and other fandom stuff of it, I loved it so much!!! like!! thats all I did and even then I was still forcing my friends to read/watch it. I was really cringey in 6th class wow lmaoo I would literally go around during break with the snk manga like xD!!! eren is my baby!!! saying shit like that yikes.... bitch first of all hes 4 years older than you...your literally 12.....

Especially then, when I was younger it brought me sm happiness like when little me was going through shit then little insecure young me, you know how people say u use entertainment to escape or whatever, a distraction, idk.... like that was rlly it man idk ho to describe it without sounding weird i swear it was like my main source of happiness omg lol

Almost always, its very rare like I’ll be watching a movie, listening to music, anything like that just consuming some piece of media or literally just like. living my life and I see something and im like. omg snk au in which.... or I just somehow relate it back to snk or some of its characters lol. Like even when I was on holiday in Venice last year I was literally like thinking of a fanfic of like, the 104th on holidays in Venice like how wholesome...

Like I really do love snk I think about it every day without fail, and I honestly think I’ll always always always love it, and even if I don’t, it’s always gonna have a special place in my heart. Like, I liked it since i was literally 12 years old and it helped my through shit and I just have so much good memories associated with it. I honestly rlly do picture myself being like a 40 year old woman and still loving snk but like the fandom is dead or something... 😭 I rlly hope that never happens.....bc that will happen my 40 year old ass will b like boiis whens season 10 coming out ? Like I really hope snk is one of those series that kind of just lives on forever, or atleast for a very long time - Like Harry Potter for example

Okay, all that was really personal and I’d be surprised if anyone is reading this anyway, but I love looking back on it and talking about snk like this, I love it :) Butttt, getting to one of the reasons why I think I might love snk so much, and I mean, I can’t really pin it down why I love it so much, I dont think anyone can pin down EXACTLY why they love something, especially a series, but I think one thing I really like, and it becomes really apparent when I look at other series is like, they have a good balance between male and female characters if that makes sense. Like theres not way more men in the show than there is women, like how it is in some series or like, theres not way more men in the show than there is women, and the female characters in the show aren’t just like background characters pretty much, and they’re all good fleshed out and developed characters n shit. I think people have talked about this before but yeah.. And the female characters aren’t sexualised or anything like that and like, theres basically little to no fanservice at all which is nice. Supereyepatchwolf said something about it in his video about snk, how it can appeal to everyone because anyone of any age and gender and such can be in the survey corps n stuff... :P

And the characters just in general of course :) I honestly think the characters is one of snks strongest points, like... im not about to do a full on character analysis on anyone here lol but they’re just so amazing. Like I think on first glance it can probably be easy for people to sort most of them into like a trope or something or just write them off as cliche - mostly eren is victim to this bc people are like typical shounen boy !!! but like. you know anyway. I wish I was better at expressing my feelings and thoughts lol. Like god idk i feel like its so easy for someone who idk might just be a casual fan or smthing to just kinda see the characters on their more surface level without seeing how much depth they actually have - and I feel like that could also easily happen with anime only ppl. Like snk really does have so much great n complex n developed characters, especiallyyy now with the timeskip, more so now than ever. Like you know when you love something so much that you cant just pin point one thing about it... because its like.... everything about it i love n everything within it works to like compliment everything in it if that makes sense u get me?? like i cant just pinpoint ONE THING its the whole thing.... why i love snk? *directs u to link of readsnkmanga.com* or something lol

as for the characters themselves, obviously u can tell, with my url, u can take a guess at who my favourite is :) since the timeskip, i dont like him as much - not that i dislike him, i could literally never - but timeskip eren is basically a whole new person - and im not saying that in a bitter tone or anything, if anything its cool and i appreciate it and i understand why eren is like this now, all the shit hes been through- stuff so singular that barely anyone else would be able to understand, no one, if anything. So i understand why hes like this, and as i said earlier, this’ one of snks strong points its complex and rlly developed characters... The things I admired about Eren is just like... his good and bad, everything. How passionate he is, how he wears his heart on his sleeve - that of which being his most notable quality imo, and he expresses himself in an unapologetic manner like.... the courtroom scene... he rlly shouted that in front of all those people... how headstrong, stubborn and impulsive he is. I relate to Eren alot, thats part of the reason why I love him so much because I think I can kinda see myself in him.. but on the same hand, I think it’s also because he possesses a lot of traits I admire. Eren never backs down even when the whole world seems to be against him. He holds on firmly to what he believes in and never gives in, even when literal guns or canons are being pointed towards him. He’s full of determination and will power and he knows what he wants, and he’s also not afraid to express his opinion, even if he knows that he’ll be laughed at or be largely disagreed with.. And I admire his impulsiveness too. Those are all things I admire and other things I didn’t mention.. like me, I’m a very non confrontational person, I always feel things out before getting to it, and even then a lot of the time I just don’t at all. I might second guess my emotions and feelings when it comes to relationships with people especially, and I can a lot of the time stifle or keep quiet about my own beliefs, not completely keeping quiet, but not speaking them out as firmly as I believe them in my own mind, yielding? more I guess, if people disagree with me, I might step down a little - Which isn’t a completely bad thing, it’s good to be openminded and to see other sides, but when it’s coming from a place of embarassment or insecurity, not so much. So I really admire those traits in Eren :) I relate to him a lot, but I also know that in a lot of ways too, we are veryy different. I’ve even thought before, if I knew someone like Eren irl would I even like them lol?? Who knows lol. But as a character, I love him :) My other two favourtie characters after Eren, Levi and Jean, I won’t go into them as much as I did Eren but with them, and not just that, all of the other reasons they’re my faves.. I have like more of a ‘crush’ on them lmaooo like with them i could read so much /reader fanfic lol... but even though Eren is my #1 I could nEVER...god NO lol. And I think thats also down to the fact, as I’ve been saying I seen myself in Eren... rather than the other way around :))))))))

Like god there have been so many times I’ve laughed, cried at stuff in this fandom, made good memories as a result of it irl too... bullied my friends into watching it.... Like I have nothing but good memories. I really can’t express enough how positively snk has impacted my life like I genuinely can’t, it’d be impossible.. I seriously love it :) I’ve made friends bc of it, gotten closer to friends bc of our mutual interest in it, stuff like that...:) And even if those things didn’t happen, I’d still love the series and its fandom itself. :) I seriously can’t thank enough, the ppl that contribute to this fandom, I really can’t. Everything, and everyone to small and big creators, thank you so much. Well known and lesser known creators, like just everything and everyone, seriously. Everyone is just why this fandom is so great and!! Like I just think how lucky am I to have smthing like snk have such a big fandom and stuff and so many great people in it. Like y’know when you see your favourite fanfic update, you see your favourite artist has put out smthing new, even just see a funny snk text post or something, it all can really brighten and even make your day, and its so good :) There are so many amazing creators in this fandom, fanfics that are honestly better than published books I’ve read - like seriously, some of this stuff seriously deserves to e published or something!! And the fact that so much of these creators are putting their work out there and sharing with us for free, is just so great, and I’ll never not be grateful for it :)

Like seriously, returning back to when I was like 12-14, some days back then when I was younger it really felt like y’know the only things I could take comfort in was this series and its characters and stuff yknow.... and maybe im just being and emo teen but im getting kinda emotional thinking about it just now :’) Like seriously... I feel like im maybe being too much in this post lol but seriously this series means a lot to me.. as I said, I can honestly really picture myself being like 40 and still rlly loving snk like no matter what, whatever happens, wherever the series goes, whatever the hell, it’ll always hold a special place in my heart, because its helped me through a lot, a lot of bad days, I have nothing but good memories associated with it, made friends, seen some of the most beautiful art and read rlly great writing!! Just like yeah. Thank u Isayama and this entire fandom.....

and I was gonna peace out but I also want to appreciate and throw some love @ Isayamas art and art style. Obviously, Isayama was a bit infamous in the earlier days for his art not looking so great (Which also is amazing bc like a manga with not so great art like his in the beginning... grew to become so BIG!! like who would’ve thought) - even so the character design and stuff was all really good?? Like I also think thats a strong point he has too!! And all those years of practicing really shows, because damn!! look at his art now!! It’s really damn nice and im not just saying that lol :P

Anyway!! :) Thats all lol