🎶We're off to see the wizard!

The wonderful wizard of Oz!🎶

He stood in the center of a busy street surrounded by extravagant lights, reds, greens, and whites all shining down on him and lighting up the area despite the late hour. The snow that had begun was light enough to not obscure the view quite yet; merely a small scattering of flurries before a potentially bigger storm. He stood with an uneven but genuine little smile as Mikoto held up his phone, peeking around the edge of it for a moment to smile back before snapping a picture.

A little moment that stuck with me from @lostxmelody 's beautiful fic, Life's Reflection! There were so many amazing scenes, but of course a big sap like me would latch onto this one...

inspired by elli's poll lol cause this seems fun actually but if you guys have bad answers I'll kill myself on your doorstep or smth

Thank you for the tag @tonguetyd! My spoons are indeed low but my sleep schedule is GONE so. Random burst of energy let's go.

I didn't know what artist to pick because I didn't want an obvious (?) one, so I'm going super niche and choosing Bright Eyes because it's been a minute since I've talked about them, and they're one of my favourites 💙

Artist: Bright Eyes

How do you feel: Nothing Gets Crossed Out

What is your gender: Bowl Of Oranges (obviously funny but also it's a beautiful song! poetic storytelling!)

If you could go anywhere: Lua

Favorite mode of transportation: Driving Fast Through A Big City At Night (yes that is the title)

Your best friend: First Day Of My Life 🥹

Favorite time of day: Sunrise, Sunset

If your life was a tv show: A Line Allows Progress, A Circle Does Not

Relationship status: I Won't Ever Be Happy Again 🥲

Your fear: Waste Of Paint

Idk who made this or not so I'm tagging randomly, no pressure to do this whatsoever! @dearscone @corviisquire @hookedhobbies @politemagic (hi!) @leonsleftbicep @melit0n

Time for another Limited Life graph and data table! This time, I took the data from my previous graphs, which effectively had time stamps for every time someone changed colour, and added together the total time everyone was at a particular colour, and then graphed it. 

This data above shows everyone in order of most to least time total, and below the cut I also have this data as percentages, as well as ordered most to least time for each colour.

First, the data as percentages:

It’s fascinating that Skizz was the only person to spend a full 8 hours as a single colour - both times he dropped a colour was naturally and without death, and while he was yellow he only died once (falling down the elevator Impulse hadn’t finished making), and killed twice (Bdubs during the duel, and Tango as the final green sacrifice), which means they exactly evened out. This means he’s also the only person to have over 50% of his time in a single colour, and he is only one of two people to spend the greatest percentage of time in yellow rather than green.

The data in order of time spent green:

The data in order of time spent yellow:

The data in order of time spent red:

It’s fascinating that Martyn spent so long in red, though it makes sense - he was the third to fall red, and then won the whole thing. Impulse and Scott were the last to fall red (and indeed both accidentally became yellow again after everyone else was long red), so even though they survived as long as Martyn, they didn’t have nearly as much time on that final colour. 

Scar is also the only person in the top 7 (top half) of time spent red, who didn’t also make it to the top 7 of total time, which I also find interesting. Equally, this makes Scott the only top 7 total time person in the bottom 7 red time list... though he’s only red for ten fewer minutes than Impulse (lowest of the top 7 red time), so it’s less striking than Scar’s inclusion where he is.

There’s so much interesting to extract from this data, but I’ll leave this here for your perusal. If there’s anything else anyone would like to see graphed from my data, let me know!

soooo. that new big time rush album huh

A Biracial Reading of OFMD, ft. Iggy’s Revenge Izcourse

a.k.a. I typed out a sentence that turned into an accidental essay of meta, whoops!

Y’all…I love this fandom to pieces, but I don’t think some of you realize why not all of us love Izzy/may be critiquing him. And major disclaimer—I am in NO WAY telling anyone to stop enjoying him as a character. This is NOT an anti-Izzy post (I will go into more detail on why I in fact encourage you to keep doing so later, and to the people who are sending unsolicited hate mail to Izzy fans & haters alike: please don’t!)—I’m just tired of seeing vitriolic hate against the people writing about him as an antagonist, or critiquing his actions based on canon, or post after post of “why don’t people love Izzy like I do!!” and then aggression when people explain their honest opinions. Look: we all have our skrungly little bad guys. I get it!! I’ve got my own collection!! I too have become a consumer and enjoyer of the Izzy fanon!!! PLEASE don’t take this as an attack—I just want to provide some personal, potentially fresh context from at least one (obviously non-exhaustive) perspective for those who want to know why Izzy isn’t universally adored, and also to make a plea for a safer fandom space where we can talk about our perspectives on these fictional characters without escalating to unnecessary vitriol, especially as s2 be upon ye (bc holy shit fandom is supposed to be fun, we’re having fun and that’s an order 😤)

(Oh, and I know I’m potentially stirring the pot with this post, but this should go without saying: don’t send each other death threats. What the fuck. Nobody do this?!)

So now that the legalize is out of the way: I want to share that the reason I initially imprinted on this show—and on Ed specifically—was because I’d never seen an explicitly biracial character treated with such complexity, nuance, and grace. While our ethnic makeups are vastly different, I too am half-white & half-brown—which means we’re absolutely nothing culturally alike, but our worlds view and treat us as pretty much the same regardless. And like Ed, my dad resents my mom and my racial makeup, and is prone to what I like to call “white violence.” Not going to overshare on the internet, but let’s just say that all this compounded makes Ed feel highly relatable to me (although for legal purposes I promise I have not krakened my dad 🙃).

When I first watched the show (and honestly also until my 3rd or 4th rewatch), Izzy IMMEDIATELY made me think of my dad. He also immediately made me think of Ed’s dad. Their mannerisms, word choices, and tones of voice; the obsessive need for control; the default of violence; the gradual dehumanization until an ultimate kraken-ifying breaking point—it all read to me like an intentional parallel. A shadow of white violence following Ed around that he hasn’t been able to shake, and mirroring to him the things he fears the most, including the things he fears within himself and feels forced to become (he is half-white after all, and this is a whole other post, but tl;dr there can be a lot of baggage that comes with being half-white/half-poc in regards to grappling with your toxic relationship to that white side of yourself, and especially if your white parent was racist and/or violent). And you can claim a different reading of all of this if you want (I genuinely mean that, like I’m in favor of meta & I think it’s great to analyze these things) BUT. that does not change the fact that I felt what I felt as a result of what was portrayed on screen and combined with my lived experience. Because fictional characters are just that—fictional—and are vessels by which you can process the world; we will always bring our personal lived experiences to anything we consume, and that’s okay—that can be the point, even. Art imitates life imitates art. Interpretation is the name of the game!

(more under the cut)

So when I watch this show, it���s a helpful tool for me to process my own feelings of being victimized by the white violence that’s followed me around my whole life, as well as the ways in which I’ve rebelled against it/tried to make peace with a non-toxic version of whiteness (in parallel to the more overt theme of masculinity, which is—ding ding—inexplicably tied to whiteness and western colonialism) via chaos, love, hurt, and sometimes giving up and giving in—and in this process, Izzy is a safe target. And you know why that is? Because he’s FICTIONAL. I can feel rage towards him because he’s NOT REAL. I can better understand and process the pain I’ve felt and rarely seen societally acknowledged by watching it paralleled on screen via actors and writers who have likely also grappled with similar feelings (I mean, I genuinely have made more progress with my personal biracial trauma via this show vs. years of therapy), and if I want to assume the worst of Izzy based on my interpretation of canon to help me through this? That’s fine! Because I can’t hurt his feelings and he can’t hurt mine!! Because he’s not real!!!

And here’s why I still support the Izzy-enjoyment: I am sure that many of the people who love Izzy and defend him to the ends of the earth probably feel a similar way that I do about Ed. It’s why we get all riled up and protective of these characters, why we might take attacks on them as attacks on ourselves; recognition of the self in the form of the other, and all that. Izzy is a vessel by which to safely work through the dark feelings and the pain you’ve bottled up—and he’s a safe way to do that because he’s FICTIONAL. And that’s a beautiful thing imo!! That’s truly the beauty of art—it is what we make of it, and what we make of it helps make ourselves better. It’s good to be open to interpretation.

HOWEVER: that does not give you permission to discount my relationship to this show (as I will not discount yours), and more importantly: that does NOT give you permission to reject the notion that canonically in s1, Izzy is literally and thematically (emphasis on thematically) an antagonist who is purposefully written to cause harm that can be interpreted as a hate crime, especially to those with lived experience of homophobia/racism/ableism/bullying/etc.—and you cannot harass people about this when conversing about theories of canon. If someone sees Izzy’s dialogue as cutting, degrading, and even triggering, that’s extremely fair of them to do so—clearly Ed was written to feel it that way! Con himself has paralleled Izzy with Judas! And can interpret it all differently? Sure! But you CANNOT assume that everyone else will, and then get upset when people don’t. I can’t believe I need to spell this out about an angry white guy in a show about toxic masculinity, but if someone does not like Izzy, it is likely due to a personal history of harassment (or worse) that he is reminiscent of; by making a point to defend him to someone—even if you are well-intentioned—you are very much putting salt in a wound.

I want to take this opportunity to further emphasize some tenets of fandom in general:

you can like characters who do horrible things without needing to jump hoops to argue their morals as pure 👏

conversely, you can critique their actions and still like them (encouraged, even) 👏

you can like characters who do horrible things simply because they’re cool and hot and interesting—don’t worry, we know it’s not the same as liking people like them irl 👏

your liking a villain archetype says nothing about your own moral virtue 👏

you can like horrible characters and see reasons for why they are the way they are/view them as tragic/note sympathetic dimensions of their personality/root for them to have redemption arcs while acknowledging that said redemption arc may not have happened in canon yet and that these are implicit, not explicit, readings of canon 👏

and you can also reimagine canon and change their contexts in fan works so that they ARE morally virtuous 👏 but PLEASE just be mindful and accountable when you do this in a context where not everyone will see a character the same way as you, and where multiple of people of marginalized identities have spoken out about the harm not doing so can cause. Just be honest, sincere, and kind, listen and learn, and don’t harass people for understandably needing space from a character that symbolizes something different to them than it does to you.

Also: blocking tags or people just because they have character opinions different than yours is totally okay and does not mean anything other than “I am curating my online space to have a better time,” it’s NOT personal

And most importantly: FANDOM IS FOR FUN! This isn’t our day job! We come to fandom to decompress. Don’t ruin people’s safe spaces!!!

Like I said, I’ve grown to enjoy Izzy over time thanks to fandom and fanon, and I think it’s fantastic that fandom can have such diversity in the way it interprets canon. I can’t wait for his probable redemption arc (it will likely be a healing thing to witness for many of us) and I’m truly glad that we can all have different relationships to the same characters. But please—when some of us need Izzy to be a punching bag, just let him be a punching bag. No, it’s not homophobic and DEFINTELY not misogynistic to view him as an obstacle in Ed and Stede’s relationship (baffled by the amount of times I’ve seen this take—it’s a funny joke but if you actually think Izzy is treated the way female characters related to other mlm ships have been treated, the point is very much going whoosh). You don’t have to engage; it’s not personal. It’s not about YOUR relationship with him—it’s about MINE. Please let me feel and even discuss rage towards him when I think about episode 10. Please let me throw as many sandwiches at his head as I need to. Because I PROMISE, it won’t hurt him—because he, and none of these characters, are real; and yet we, the fans, very much are.

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH THE DNDADS CHARACTER BLOGS RN. WHAT. HELLO. GUYS. WHAT.

always think its funny when people are into a particular rpf ship but get antagonistic/hostile/morally superior towards other rpf ships like girl we are all in the same house here

{Time to post old edits i've been holding onto for ages? yep iss time for that--}

well, at least the one edit anyways lol-- which, this one was sparked thanks to past chatter with @acrueldevotion (prev: @savedestroy), and jokes about her boi Cicero getting to have some fun with makeup/hair dye on Micchan here lmao-- and honestly, i still enjoy how this silly little edit XD

oooo you care about my scp self insert you care about my scp self insert so bad

man you ever wanna die just so you don't have to deal with the shit that is real life

Wee ha

so you’ve got your murder husbands wires crossed... aka a comprehensive method to our madness @lewistan

you know what it's Homestuck day fuck it Check Out My Cool Fantroll Doodles. i am so very normal about them (some of them have different designs now and updated signs but still LMAO)

mini scene idea that idk is ever going to get into an actual fic of mine but i wanna share it somehow so have an outline thing:

the da gets phantom pains in their stomach from where they’ve been shot sometimes. normally, it’s not too bad, and they can let it fade into the background as they go about their day. it’s not comfortable, but it’s manageable.

but some days the pain gets pretty damn bad. so bad they can barely get out of bed bad. normally, they hunker down in their room, send actor away telling him they’re not feeling well (which is technically true, just…..not the full truth of it. like hell they’re going to be fully vulnerable around that man, even if they are starting to warm up to each other), and try to bear it out as best they can.

it’s all fine and dandy until one day, the mild pain they’d felt all day suddenly intensifies to “i need to be in bed today” levels, which is something that it’s never done before. usually, the da knows how bad their pain levels are gonna be in the morning, it hasn’t ever changed on them before.

they immediately sink to their knees, hands clutching their stomach and forehead pressed against the cool wood of the floorboards. they’re struggling not to cry, trying to muster the energy to get back to their room, when suddenly footsteps approach them from behind. shit.

“are you…are you okay?”

mark’s question is so fucking ridiculous the da can’t help but laugh, which only ends up making them grimace at the way it makes their pain worse. “yeah, dickhead, what do you think? you think i’m down here for fun?” they say, trying to sound snarky, but it comes out strained.

mark is quiet for a moment, seemingly thinking something over. then, he kneels down and puts the most awkward hand on their back the da has ever felt.

a half laugh, half sob bubbles up in their throat, tears leaking out of their eyes, and it hurts, god, it hurts. they don’t know how long they stay there, crying like an idiot on the floor with their not-quite-enemy, not-quite-friend-yet rubbing their back, but eventually they manage to pull themself together enough to speak.

“just…..help me back to my room. please.”