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onbearfeet · 3 months

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Kat watches Moon Knight

Okay, so with the encouragement of several people on here and the emotional support of my roommate, I have finally (in February 2024) started watching Moon Knight, a show whose basic concept scares the shit out of me.

Context: I had an adopted older brother with DID. Note that I said "had". That's past tense because life treated him so appallingly poorly that he died (horribly, in prison) when I was 19. Part of that abuse was enabled by pop-culture depictions of DID in the 1980s and 90s that convinced everyone who knew about his condition (including the court system) that he was a walking time bomb.

One of my earliest memories is of my brother as a young adult, playing Super Mario Bros with my toddler self. Another is of him patiently teaching me how to make friends with a large dog. I never met any of his alters, afaik; I was small and cute and safe for him to be himself with, so he probably didn't need them around me. He was a profoundly gentle man when he was allowed, and it hurt like hell to see him turned into a monster in movies and on TV. I've turned off a lot of "psychological thrillers" in sorrow and disgust.

Ironically, I loved Moon Knight comics as a kid in the 90s, BEFORE he was retconned to have DID circa the mid-2000s. Because those comics came out right after my brother died in 2002 and leaned HARD into making people with DID seem like violently unstable monsters (for reference, see the cover of Moon Knight: God and Country), I stopped reading them around 2008, when I couldn't take being poked in the trauma by a comfort character anymore.

But I do love Werewolf By Night, and there's been a lot of good fic mashing Jack up with Moon Knight without dehumanizing anyone, and several people have encouraged me to try the show. So this post will be a place for my thoughts as I try to work my way through with my Essential Editions in one hand and my memories of my brother in the other. I'll add to it as I watch.

If this entertains the Moon Knight fandom or provides useful fic reference, so be it. Just don't be jerks on my post.

Also, anyone who chooses to be shitty about my brother will be eaten by bears. I don't make the rules.

Episode 1

Okay, we open with Steven as our POV character, and he's...convinced he's a sleepwalker. All right, not terrible. Steven is now a bumbling nerd, which is probably an improvement; good luck making a billionaire playboy sympathetic in the 2020s. Jake would be the logical everyman POV from the comics, but I understand from fic that he's got a different role now. I'm confused about the accent, but it's only episode 1, and Steven clearly doesn't yet know who Khonshu is, or that Marc exists, so obviously there's a ways to go here. (Is Marc ... undercover inside Steven? Ugh, this is a trope I have seen and do not like.)

Did Marc kill Steven's fish? Did Khonshu kill Steven's fish? I'm baffled by the fish. Which is a nice break from the larger anxiety. I'm gonna try to worry more about the fish.

The bits with Steven losing time and finding himself in odd situations were distressingly close to the old tropes, but both of those happened to my brother, so I'm not going to bitch about them quite yet. I want to be as fair as I can.

Oh, hey, I recognize Harrow from the comics. What up, dude. How's the cult biz treating you?

The end of the episode, with the jackal thing chasing Steven into the bathroom, came RIGHT up to the line for me. I realized that what I was most afraid of was that the story would assign "good" and "bad" labels to the alters--make Steven the sweet, innocent one and Marc (or maybe Jake, I guess) the monstrous killer. The early flashes of Steven covered in blood didn't really help allay that anxiety. And now Marc is demanding that Steven let him have control in a pretty threatening manner. But so far, it seems like the contrast between Marc and Steven is one of competence--Marc is better at fighting and Steven is better at ... panicking? Unclear. At least Oscar Isaac is playing the protagonist, so his character(s) might remain sympathetic. Nobody has been monsterized quite yet.

I finished the episode with every muscle in my body locked up, waiting for the emotional punch in the face. But I did finish it, and I think I'm gonna try episode two.

#kat watches moon knight #moon knight #marc spector #steven grant #i guess I'm processing trauma again #hello trauma my old friend

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bengiyo · 8 months

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Do you mind if I ask your top 10 favorite characters (can be male or female) from all of the media that you loved (can be anime/manga, books, movies or tv series)? And why do you love them? Sorry if you've answered this question before.....Thanks....

10 Favorite Characters

You asked a broad question, so I hope you’re okay with answers outside of my daily posting. I post a lot about BL on here, but this list is a mild reminder that I am Black. As I’m putting this list together, I’m recognizing a common thread of ruthlessness in these characters that I will have to unpack at some point.

Omar Little (The Wire)

Omar is one of my favorite characters of all time because he was the first sympathetic gay character I ever watched on TV with my dad. As I got older, my dad decided I was old enough and wanted me to watch what he considered to be one of the greatest shows ever made (NOTE: He is correct). I was obsessed with Omar because of his strict code and how gentle and loving he was with his boyfriends. It was amazing to me that we had this powerful gay character in the middle of a modern Greek tragedy and he is one of the most compelling characters ever created in American television.

Ender Wiggin (Ender’s Game)

One of the sad thing about growing up queer is the people who wrote a lot of your formative works hate queer people. Orson Scott Card was my first major disappointment in this regard. In the 7th grade, I discovered this book in our school library and ended up reading it and the related books multiple times throughout my adolescence. I was a weird kid who was too smart for my own good. In middle school I struggled with feeling out of place because I was relatively new compared to most of these kids, and my family had me on a specific life track that meant that I had to perform at a high level constantly. I connected with Ender’s isolation and his brilliance. I also connected to his ruthlessness.

Marco (Animorphs)

Animorphs is a pretty dark series for a bunch of elementary school kids to read, but that was K. A. Applegate’s point. War is horrible, and should be avoided. Reading this series is a reading the perspective of child soldiers. There was something about the way Marco always masked with jokes, but was quietly the most ruthless member of their group that means he’s always the one I remember first. There were also the ways he commented on Ax and Jake that just didn’t read straight, and I’ve been relieved that Applegate and the ghost writers have acknowledged the fan read on Marco’s bisexuality. I just love how from appearances at the end of the series Marco is actually okay after all the war, but he absolutely is not.

Benjamin Sisko (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)

He was our first Black captain in Star Trek and I will love him forever. He’s also from New Orleans and cooks our food. He’s a devoted father, which was something Avery Brooks requested for the role to make sure we had a positive depiction of Black fatherhood on TV in the 90s. He has an understated spirituality to him. He has grit from facing the ugly side of maintaining a utopia and has an incredible temper that he holds most of the time. He’s a nerd about baseball. He cares about his people and holds firm as their commander. This isn’t a committee for him. He can be so brutal. I love him.

Ghost Dog (Ghost Dog)

Ghost Dog (1999) is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I’ve always loved the version of masculinity Forest Whitaker put into this character. He has a sense of style and flair, and also follows a strict code of conduct. His adherence to his way earned him the respect of everyone in his community, and gangsters in his neighborhood show him admiration and respect. I loved his friendship with Raymond, in which neither knows what the other is saying and yet they are actually on the same page constantly.

Raymond Holt (Brooklyn Nine-Nine)

Yes, this show is copaganda, but I love Raymond Holt so much. I love that Andre Braugher played the Straight Man role in a comedy as a politically out gay man who has such a serious exterior. Holt was so gay in so many ways and I am obsessed with him. He is so deep into his niche interests (like me) and yet he was actually such a great mentor figure to everyone under him. I loved that he and his husband were so devoted to each other but were never depicted as the perfect couple. I love that he has a petty beef with another colleague. He’s just an incredible character.

Kiram Kir-zaki (Lord of the White Hell)

Kiram is the first time I ever realized how deep the programming in speculative fiction to read the protagonist as a white man with brown hair and brown eyes. Kiram is a dark-skinned Haldiim youth with curly gold hair and light eyes. It took me three readings of this book to perceive Kiram properly, and it’s something that has shaken me for a long time. Kiram is brilliant, snarky, and too gay for his own good. He’s also not stupid. I love reading a smart gay character who generally cannot hide who he is doing the work to blend in to a homophobic setting. Ginn Hale also writes gay sex better than some gay male authors.

Kakei Shiro (What Did You Eat Yesterday?)

Honestly, when am I ever not thinking about this man? I love how, even if he can’t immediately give Kenji everything he might want, he gives Kenji all that he can. He couldn’t say he loved Kenji for a long time, but you could feel the love in his cooking. I’m so happy to have this man and his partner back on my screen again. It is just so hard to be gay. I am so relieved that many of the folks reading my posts didn’t suffer The Knowing, because I know that Shiro and I will never be able to get away from what it did to us.

Chiron (Moonlight)

The terrible intersection of poverty, race, and sexuality has never been better exemplified for me than in this film that has no white people in it. There are just so many fewer choices for us, especially if you can’t hide who you are. I love Chiron so much because we see so much of what he was forced to be pushed onto him. There’s something heartbreaking and beautiful that as an adult he resembles Juan, and that he never got over Kevin. I find it hard to explain why Chiron means so much to me, but I’m black and gay so I don’t always feel like I have to.

Max (Black Sails)

I love Max because she consistently chose to not be cruel when so many others would have. She is not accumulating power for her own ego or to punish those who wronged her. She holds power as a facilitator. History doesn’t remember the facilitators who keep the lights on and make sure the bread gets made every day, but you notice their absence within two days when they’re gone. Max is also funny to me because she and Flint almost never encounter each other, but have caused the other so much grief.

Thank you for the ask!

#answered #black sails #what did you eat yesterday?#star trek #deep space 9 #moonlight #animorphs #lord of the white hell #ginn hale #ender's game #ghost dog #brooklyn nine nine #the wire

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kyistell · 5 months

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What kinda headcanons do you have for California

I didn't think the list was going to be as long as it is but once I started thinking more and more I couldn't stop lol

California-

Wet cat

He/They and no he won’t stop reminding you

Was very obsessed with shiny things, especially gold, when he was younger, now he’s only a “normal” amount of obsessed

Very pretty, like the definition, like if you look up the definition of pretty in the dictionary he comes up

Has an obscene amount of stim/fidget toys, squishies, the poke ones, even fidget spinners, they have them all

Worked at the Berkeley laboratory in the 90s, specifically Berkeley’s element hunting team

Used to be obsessed with Creepypastas, however is now obsessed with cryptids (“They aren’t the same thing shut up *state name here*” has been said a lot)

Will slip into a southern accent without warning, has given multiple southern states heart attacks because of this on more than 10 occasions

Loves to write, especially fanfiction, however there is no way they would EVER willingly show anyone these, they did once when he was drunk but New York never mentioned it and Cali did not remember

Loves Stardew Valley and Minecraft, will play them both for hours without realizing

Has absolutely horrible time management, as well as their general perception of time is also atrocious

Loves podcasts, tends to listen to them more than YouTube videos

The times that Jersey dragged him to Action Park ended with hospital stays and praying that the doctors wouldn’t notice that he should definitely be dead

Been watching Smosh since it first started

Disney adult and proud

He started streaming on Twitch during the pandemic, occasionally being joined by Jersey, Nevada, or York, Florida joined stream once and has since been banned

Don’t listen to what York says, he definitely knows how to cook (re: he has no idea what they are doing in the kitchen without help)

Knows a handful of languages but only fully knows English and Spanish, though he can read and understand Russian, they just can’t speak it

Was forced to wear a dress once by Nevada and that’s how they realized he wasn’t fully male

He doesn’t actually mind feminine pronouns, just prefers He/They

Has a ridiculously long skincare routine, at least 2 hours at night and an hour in the morning

Used to be attached at the hip with Washington and Oregon, they are all still close in a similar but not as much way like the NE are

They and New Mexico go out with Arizona once every few weeks to different areas of their respective states, occasionally Texas will join

Cali and Texas aren’t related, they were both raised at one point by Mexico at the same time sure but they aren’t related

Loves to learn about different cultures, especially Asian cultures

Didn’t hate crowds until the pandemic, now can’t stand them

His room is extremely cluttered and disorganized, can’t even be considered organized chaos, their working on it (York had a stern talk with them about it)

They actually do understand Football, he just doesn’t like the sport all too much

Feel like this is obvious but he is a HUGE nerd, like a bigger nerd than New York not that Cali knows that of course

#welcome to the table #wttt #wttt california #wttsh california #wttt headcanons #now this is the longest one #haha oops #i dont even read stuff for cali wtf #wttt new jersey #wttt new york #kyi requests

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sca-nerd · 8 months

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renn fair tips!!!

yes bring water, but also figure out how you can bring that water, some places only let you bring in sealed, never opened, bottles (cause alcohol is a large part of event revenue)

CASH, most sellers have got a square card reader or paypal or something, but those work at the whims of cell service, and cell service tends to suck in parks

also with cash depending on the seller they might just wave the tax. things are priced to even dollars most of the time

the crafts people (leather, blacksmiths, silversmiths, glassblowers) are where you really want to "focus" your money, not because there's anything wrong with the clothing stalls, it's just that it's harder to get those items online, and you're helping a small business

also some of the clothing sellers just buy in bulk from a place like amazon and clip off the tag, "wevez" is where i get my skirts, and the price markup can be anywhere from 2 to 3 times what you'd pay if you bought from the seller directly

the end of the last day of the weekend you can get food for cheaper, so if you're staying until close and don't want to find a fast food joint, get a turkey leg

bed bugs, (SPRAYS DO NOT WORK ON THESE MOTHER FUCKERS) the horrible truth of the matter is, it is a valid concern, moreso since COVID. so if you do buy anything, im talking books, tunics, hair wraps, corsets, trousers, a kilt. anything a bed bug could be hanging out in, you put that in a seperate plastic bag, seal it, and stick it in the freezer when you get home. then you beat out the thing a few hours later.

this doesn't kill them, but it does make them hibernate, which means you can shake them out then kill them or if youre feeling vindictive, pop them in the oven, a minimum of 120F for 90 mins gets all bugs and possible eggs. you could also put the things in your dryer on high for the longest setting, but i personally prefer the oven (and not just because i don't have a drier)

business cards! i personally collect business cards for convience and maybe one day i'll go back to pursuing graphic design, but having a designated pocket for business cards or pamphlets cause you may be grabbing a lot of them

the vibes: Its a bunch of weird nerds getting dressed up to play pretend and get drunk in the park. It can get weird, and it can get raunchy (not horny, just crass) i have witnessed several different parents huff off with their kid cause a performer made a low brow joke that was obvious enough that the kid knew smth dirty was said, MOST of the people are chill with boundries, but some never got out of that phase of being a dick cause they think it's funny

speaking of phases, renn faires are still the only place i have ever been where you've got the flagrantly queer and menanist douchebags bumping shoulders. like side eyes are made im sure, but you can walk down a path, past somebody in the loudest, most obviously gay garb you have seen outside of a drag show, then a few feet behind them is somebody else with a trump denim vest

also, back to the rauchy bit, there will likely be people there who are cool, but use outdated/offensive lingo. like I got called a fairy by a guy waiting in line for a kebob, he did try and backpedel, but im fine with being called that and his girlfriend (who obviously dragged him there) was dressed up like a fairy, so jokes were had and expensive kebab's purchased (idk what they used to season those things but they were so fkin good for just being some meat on a stick)

if you do a craft (knitting/crochet) check if you can bring your supplies in because some places don't let guest bring in knitting needles (they are often 11 in long pointy sticks so fair enough)

ASK QUESTIONS not just at the small semi educational areas they sometimes have, but also the people selling things, i love hearing people talk about their crafts (also renn faire drama is real and it is wild, and it's much more exciting because it's effect on you is almost null)

WATER WATER WATER

I KNOW I SAID THIS AT THE TOP BUT IM SAYING IT AGAIN

DRINK SOME FUCKING WATER

some faires have pub crawls and i have witnessed many a stumbling drunk get escorted out by EMTs cause he didn't pace himself and drank on an empty stomach

#renn fair tips #my mutuals rock #ask and you shall recieve

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magicmindless · 2 months

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Please please please! Taylor or chuck hcs if you havent yet <3

I’ll do Chuck another time but for now:

A HC List but it’s just Taylor

Gaymer/j

- A restless yet ambitious fellow. He likes keeping himself busy with fun events and hanging out with friends. Very extroverted

- Has ADHD and unfortunately went through the “gifted kid to burnout” phase in his life. He wasn’t diagnosed until he entered college

- Had strict parents who always expected him to do well in school and was seen as a remarkable student, but later got burnt out due to the pressure put on him

- Video games were always an escapism for him growing up. Though his free time was limited, gaming always helped him get through rough times and even make new friends

- Took care of a stray dog when he was little and called it Luigi. His parents didn’t let him have it but he secretly took care of it whenever he showed up at his house. He was an old stray so he died after a couple years. He really wants a dog but has yet to find the time to adopt one

- Had some online friends growing up. Most of them he’s lost touch with completely, but he has a select few he still talks to occasionally

- Cameo is one of his longest-lasting online friends. They friended each other in a gaming lobby in an MMO game when they were teens and later talked through other sites like Skype (or whatever it is in their world) and now they hang out irl

- Like any gamer Taylor has had his rage quitting moments. When he was younger, they were a lot tamer but only because his parents would get mad at him for being a nuisance but he lets it all out now. The worst thing he did was impailing the tv with a broom by throwing it like a javelin

- Met Chuck as his dorm mate when he was attending college as a computer science major. After they both graduated, they decided to still be roommates to save on rent

- Knows how to rollerblade and is sometimes seen doing it on the sidewalks of Tastyville. He’s pretty good at it though he’d be lying if he said he hasn’t almost been run over in the street before because of it

- He can’t be productive unless he’s listening to music. In canon his favorite music artist is DJ Honey Buster (Hugo), but he’s not that picky. He’s even a longtime follower of Simone’s Lofi channel

- Has heavy footsteps whenever he walks or runs, and they’re so loud he’s gotten noise complaints from his neighbors, so he has to have carpet all over the floors to be quieter

- Good luck trying to get through to him whenever he’s listening to music. You’ll have to yank his earbuds to snap him out of it, which he hates people doing to him

- A horrible sleeper. He gets around like 5-6 hours of sleep at most every day and is fueled by energy drinks. Chuck has to be the one to get him to sleep sometimes

- Likes to do late-night convenience store runs to get snacks and instant ramen along with Chuck. It’s just fun and the town at night is very quiet and calm… unless Dynamoe is on the loose I guess

- After college Taylor and Chuck both had their own issues to work out which did affect their friendship for some time. This included the fact that they were crushing on each other but didn’t wanna ruin their friendship

- It was a hard thing to come to terms with, but one night alone in their apartment, Taylor took initiative and confessed and now they’re dating

- Huge retro nerd who loves collecting games and consoles from the 90s and such

- He’s the one guy at the arcade going absolutely ham on Dance Dance Revolution (or stomp stomp whatever it was called) and attracting a crowd because he’s that good at it

- Once got so many tickets playing arcade games that he got a roomba from the prize booth as a joke since he didn’t know what else to do with his tickets. Though later, him and Chuck grew attached to the Roomba and named it “Sir Robert the First”, even giving it a little top hat and putting googly eyes on it

- Not a content creator, but he’s a reoccurring person in Tohru’s gaming streams. It was totally on accident, they were playing a shooting game where people were in teams and he just happened to be in Tohru’s team. They made a pretty good duo so Tohru friend requested him and now he sometimes appears in her streams whenever he has time

- Used to be pretty hardcore into roleplaying back in the day. Especially loved DnD. The classes he usually gravitated towards was the bard or the sorcerer

- Used to have a side-hustle as a game tester for indie game creators. You wouldn’t think he’d quit doing something like this, but game-testing was too structured for him (it’s more about interacting with the game in super specific ways and stuff to make sure everything works out)

#papa louie #papa louie headcanons #flipline studios #asks #anon #papa louie taylor

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angelic-brutality · 2 years

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heyoooo ;-)

it's been a time i don't write anything, but i hope you like this thing!

i decided to make a "hanma / mitsuya / draken (separated) x nerd partner" bc- yes :>

some warnings: i'm brazilian, so there's probably some grammar error here. the characters might me ooc. i didn't used any pronouns here, so neutral reader.

here we go! hope you like this shitty thing <3

hanma

wouldn’t get why you’re ‘always’ studying

“why are you still studying? gosh, have you ever had fun in life?”

he would 100% hang out with you a lot, and whenever you laughed too much he would say “see? you don't have to study when you have me!”

this guy probably never frequented school, so he’ll probably never understand the things “you-study-but-won’t-use-in-your-life”

he’ll help when you need to research a lot of things tho, like when you have an assignment and don’t know the whole subject

there’s a research that says you learn 90% faster when you teach others, and if you go by that method, he’d be a volunteer to help you

“ok so i guess i explained all the important topics” you said after talking about the subject “wow, that was a lot” hanma replied, sighing “you didn’t understand nothing, right?” “you’re totally right.”

when he wants to hang out but you’re studying he’d turn on a random music and sing it really badly until you stop wherever you’re doing to look at him

and threats won’t work, he’ll stop doing that just when you stop studying so much

when you get a bad grade he’d react like “it was not that bad, you’re overreacting a bit. chill.” even if you’re having a breakdown for it. change my mind.

although he would try to cheer you up by distracting you

like going on a place you like and/or doing anything (or almost anything) you want

when you get a good grade on a test you were worried about and he notices how happy you get, he’d laugh and say “i don’t know why you’re so happy, it is impossible to get a bad grade with the amount of time you spend studying!”

mitsuya

you two would have study dates. often at a random cafeteria. change my mind.

he’d be the kind of person that would explain the same thing 10 times if you don’t understand it

sometimes you two would just sit on the floor of your/his bedroom while you do your homework and he sews something while talking about your/his day

when mana and luna get older and start seeing basic math problems on school, they would ask you to help them

and it would be cute as fuck

but also funny because of the faces they make when they understand everything

i feel like whenever you’re studying and he’s with you, he’d suddenly just start staring at you

“uhm why are you staring at me?” “beautiful things are made to be admired”

everyone needs a mitsuya in their life.

and whenever you compliment him, he’d get really flushed, like REALLY flushed

and if you’re the kind of person that like horrible pick up lines, don’t worry, he’ll laugh at all of them, even the ones that you need to know basic math/chemistry to understand

and sometimes he’d try those on you, you two would laugh A LOT

when you get a bad grade, at first he won’t say anything. he'll just hug you and even let you cry if you want. when you’re better, he’ll start to try to help you verbally

and it doesn’t matter if you pass 20 minutes venting, he’ll listen to it

and when you get really happy bc of a good grade, he would praise you a lot and just laugh when you have a ‘weird’ reaction (like start jumping bc of enthusiasm)

and even join you in those weird reactions

draken

i like to that if draken had a nerdy lover, they’d first met because of school

like you two got in the same group in an assignment or he just randomly sits beside you and starts to chat in a boring class

sometimes, he goes to school only to see you

and if you’re the type who likes to ramble about your day or a very specific topic, he’d listen to it 24/7

he just loves being with you, even if it’s just hearing you talk A LOT about said subject

ken would ask you to help him with some important tests if he decided to do them for a random reason

or just ask you to help him cheat in the middle of the test, that would be easier anyways

and if you two decided to have a study date, it would start with both of you focused on the subject and saying only important things, but it would end with you two talking about something really far from anything related to it

if you’re into rpg, i think he’d ask you to teach him how to play it, and believe my words, it would be fun as fuck

when you get a bad grade, i think he’d be a little like mitsuya

would ask “is there any way i can help?” and would do whatever you say that will make you feel better

and would let you cry, vent, sob and everything without saying a word if you need it to relieve the stress

when you get a good grade, he’d congrat you many many times

and would even buy something for you

it’d be something you like, maybe a bouquet, a stuffed animal, jewelry, anything that you want that he can buy

i just love this man so much <3 he deserves the word <33

--------

taglist; @rome-alone @shujisluvr @sleepy-b3rry

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darkcrowprincess · 4 months

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i saw this rec from the threads app on my insta and i just had to share 😭😭

i think it's fairly accurate considering everything HRJFKDKD

other than fighting rick on a daily basis i also dabble in shipping certain things out of spite which i love that you do as well HHAHA they can pry my ships and hcs from my cold, dead hands-

im curious! what's your go-to trope/au when it comes to your fave ships? im personally a sucker for soulmate aus or anything with angst FJGKDK

I'm going to separate my favorite tropes/aus into normal and problematic/unhingedv

Normal tropes : fake dating, soulmates, forbidden lovers, best friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, friends to enemies to lovers, 7 minutes in heaven, fake out makeouts, kissing to distract the other person and being into it, sword training, secret identities shenanigans, bad boy/punk and nerd/sunshine, friends with benefits that gets real real quick,hand holding(its more sexy that kissing at times), showering a person with kisses, taking your time kissing everywhere but the lips to build anticipation, girly girl characters, nerdy bookworm girl characters(not Bella Swan, hate her) weird girl characters. Rich person x broke person, meeting at a bookstore(hate coffeshop tropes). Couples who have the same humor. Using humor to cope. Found family(but no one calls each other siblings. Hate that new trend) squads, squad are idiots, hot boys, love letters, diary stories, texting fics(to a point, hate it when it gets dumb). Saving person from drowning/fire/falling to there death/just saving someone in general. Protectiveness. Battles couple, power couple.

Normal aus: Period drama aus, Fantasy aus, sci fi aus, pirate aus, fairy tale aus, cowboy aus, ancient times aus(Egypt, Greek, roman, China, Korea, Middle ages), mythology au, reincarnation aus, time travel au, time loop aus, fix it fics, 80s 90s au. Hate anything high school or modern times(unless it's teen wolf, or dear Evan Hansen), road trip aus, running away aus, royalty aus, multiverse aus

Ok now for my unhinged/problematic faves. Stop reading if this makes you uncomfortable

Problematic tropes: Kidnapping, Monster fucking, age difference, student teacher/mentor and mentie romance, sugar daddy and sugar baby, ice play, knife play, some pain play, bdsm but not too much hate name calling, choking kink, prasie kink, possessiveness to the point of craziness, finding someone killing for you hot, abo, bandage, rape fantasy, dubious consent, extremely dubious consent, captor and captive, stolchm syndrome, secret relationships, dark romance to a point, villians getting the girl/guy, hot villians, evil female villians, evil queen, evil female characters, evil female characters winning, bad guys kidnapping kids and being good parents(but they were still kidnapped) evil found family, villian x female character, villian x hero, villans winning, killing abusers,killing horrible guys, gray mentality

Unhinged aus: beauty and the beasts au emphasize on the beast and kidnapping and captor and captive au, the lives and drama of the rich, dirty secrets(pretty little liars level, vc andrews level), arranged marriage, monsters, falling in love with monsters,evil queens conquering and being happy and in love,royals conquering, daddy issues, abusive parents, abo au, war bride/husband, men(mainly straight) being evil and getting what the deserve, werewolves, mates, gothic romance aus, gothic horror au, teacher and student/mentor and mentie. Gotham like or purge like world aus. Zombie world aus where there's just no laws. Supernatural type au with emphasis of the monster and dark. Romeo and Juliet aus. Jail aus.

#my thoughts #favorite tropes #Favorite aus

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lithiag · 3 days

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Drawn Together - Part 4

Hey, long time no see. So sorry it's been so long since I last posted. I've been really busy with things going on in my personal life. I've also started watching SWAT, so I also started writing fanfic for that... so I kinda forgot about this for a while. I looked it up the other day though and I saw I have already written over 100 pages for this fanfic (though not everything is ready to upload yet), so yeah... I should probably get back to it.

Hope you enjoy! Again, so sorry for the wait.

Also, if anyone is interested in a Hondo fanfic, lmk, the first two chapters are almost done (and I have close to 90 pages written in total already, oops).

Anyway, here is the next part of this fanfic. Once I know how to make a masterlist, I'll make one.

CW: Nothing special in this one, just normal CM content. So: Violence, child endangerment, Spencer being a nerd, Hotch being bossy, Derek kicking down doors, you know the drill.

Drawn Together - Chapter 4

Everyone was working on the profile the next morning. Hotch had given them all orders, and they worked on narrowing down a suspect pool, when Derek came in, much later than the others.

"Sorry, slept through my alarm." He said and quickly got to work and helped Reid with the geographical profile with what he and Melony found out the night before.

"Didn't someone try to wake you?" Spencer asked him,

"Pearson did try to shake me awake, but I guess I fell asleep again." Derek shrugged.

"You really went in there?" JJ asked Melony, a slight look of disgust on her face. Melony looked at her, confused at her disgust,

"Ehm, yes? He wasn't there for breakfast, I told you I was going to try to wake him up."

"I know, but I thought you were just going to knock on his door."

"That didn't work, so I went in to give him a shake."

JJ blinked a few times, "Wow, I can't believe you managed to even get to him."

Melony frowned, "What do you mean?"

"Morgan smells horrible in the morning. You didn't notice?"

Melony chuckled slightly, "it's not that bad, right? Sure, he doesn't smell good, but it's not that terrible."

"Do you even have a sense of smell?" JJ asked, half joking.

"Actually, it could make perfect sense that he smells differently to each of you." Spencer interjected, "Your nose is able to pick up a lot, and whether or not someone smells really bad can be an indication who is or isn't a good partner. If someone's natural smell smells horrible to you, it is possible you have similar immune systems, and your body is telling you your offspring together would be less healthy. If you don't really mind the smell, you could have very different immune systems, which would mean your offspring would be a lot healthier." He explained. They all looked at him, not sure what to do with this information.

"It's really interesting how much your body can pick up." Spencer said, hoping to alleviate some of the awkwardness.

Derek looked at Melony,

"You heard the man," he said jokingly, "we gotta make some babies."

Melony forced a slight chuckle, "In your dreams, big guy." She joked back and turned back to her paperwork, wanting to forget about the conversation as soon as possible, even though she couldn't help but imagine having a child with Derek. Not because she actually wanted it, but hearing Reid talk like that painted quite a picture. She really did her best to focus on the profile, but part of her mind wandered to what it would mean. It went back to the night before, and that it would mean sleeping together more often, and that he...

She tried to stop herself, but she couldn't help but wonder what it would feel like to fully be with him, not a single barrier between them.

Fortunately for her, Garcia interrupted her thoughts with a call. Derek answered the call and put her on speaker,

“Hey, Baby girl, what ya got? You are on speaker.” He said.

“Well, my delicious bundle of muscles, I looked into what you sent me last night and I tried to find twins in the area that looked a lot alike, but I found ziltch, nada.” Garcia started, “I then expanded my search to include any brothers or cousins, or any other family relation where two men would come up as potentials in a facial recognition search.”

“Did you find anything?” Spencer asked.

“Well, smarty pants, the only two pairs of men I found look nothing like the sketch, and their records are squeaky clean, only, like, 2 parking tickets between the four of them.”

Melony sighed, frustrated their theory seemed to be false. She really thought Derek and her had broken the case wide open.

“But,” Garcia said a bit peppier, “Rest assured, my heroes and sheroes, I did find a potential suspect for you.” She said and all of their phones pinged, signalling they got a message.

“Meet Larry Winscott. 36, single, owns a farm just outside of town.” Garcia continued while everyone opened the file they were just sent, the man looked quite like the sketch Melony had made,

“What about this guy?” JJ asked, “All you sent us was a picture, an address and age.”

“Well, aside from looking quite like Mel’s sketch being what is up with him, what I just sent you is all I could find on him. There is no record of this guy. Not even a birth certificate. He just appeared one day, then disappeared again. I can’t even find a water bill. Nothing.”

“How did you find him?”

“Like I said, he did appear somewhere at some point, so he is registered. I just did a standard facial recognition search on the sketch, not family or other lookalikes to narrow it down. A couple of guys popped up and this one is the most suspicious. I will send you the other results I got as well so you can have a look.”

“Thanks, Doll.” Derek said.

“Go get them, Tigers.” Garcia replied and hung up.

Once they got the other files, they took a look at them to see if there was anything suspicious about any of the other potential suspects. Melony quickly went to visit some of the people they had spoken to and showed them the picture of Larry they had. People confirmed that was the man they saw, but he was a bit younger in the picture, and was missing his scar. She told the rest of the team what the people told her, and they got ready to pay Larry a visit.

As they were about to walk out, one of the cops who worked with them came in,

“We have 2 new abductions.”

~*~

The team arrived at the property and parked their cars somewhere they wouldn’t be very noticeable. It was still early, and they hoped they could catch Larry and his partner before they could harm the children they took. They split up into small groups and spread across the property. JJ and Spencer noticed the van next to a shed and approached it. Larry’s brother was cleaning it and making some preparations for the next round. He noticed the FBI agents and tried to make a run for it, but tripped over some roots and the duo cuffed the man and took him in.

Hotch, Melony and Derek went into the big house on the property, where they heard some screaming come from the basement. Derek kicked in the front door and they cleared the ground floor. They found the stairs leading to the basement, and the trio went down. There Larry was, tying up one of the little boys they had taken to a chair in the corner of the dark room, the other already tied to a table. Larry heard people come in and looked behind him. When he saw it wasn’t his brother, he grabbed a knife from his pocket and sat down behind the little boy’s chair and held it to the kid’s throat.

“Get outta ‘ere!” He yelled.

“We can’t do that, Larry.” Melony said. She looked at her two male colleagues, who were aiming their guns at the man and thus the kid, before she put her own gun down.

“Just GO!”

“I can’t, Larry. Those boys need to go back to their moms.”

“They were abandoned. I’s just puttin’ them outta their misery.” Larry pressed the knife closer to the child’s throat.

“They were not abandoned.” Melony said calmly.

“They was. If they ain’t, they wouldn’t be ‘ere now.”

“They have families, Larry. A mother, a father, siblings.”

“They don’t got no father. They moms took them. I was gonna be their family, their father.... Them punks don’t wanna listen.” Larry said, angry. Derek Shot Melony a look that they needed to hurry up. She looked back at him and gave him a little nod,

“You feel lonely, right?”

Larry looked up at her, “You don’t know me.”

“Did your parents leave you and your brother?” Melony asked and took a little step closer to him. Hotch whisper yelled her last name to tell her not to do that, but she ignored him. Larry pointed the knife at her now, as he did notice her take a step closer.

“I know what that’s like. My dad abandoned me too.” Melony explained and took another step closer before moving closer to the ground and crouching slightly so she would look less intimidating to Larry.

“They just left us.” Larry said through gritted teeth.

“And it’s not fair. You didn’t deserve that.”

“We’d been better dead.”

“You wouldn’t be.”

“The hurt don’t stop. We is protecting them from hurt.” Larry said.

“They have family who loves them, Larry. Let us help you. We can find people who love you. Then the hurt can become less.” Melony came a little closer again, but did keep a save enough distance because of the knife. Derek slightly moved from his previous position so he would have a clearer shot in case Larry tried to attack her.

“I-it can?” Larry asked and he slightly lowered the knife. Melony nodded and gave him a little smile,

“It can. I know so. It hurt when my dad left, but it hurts less now. Let us help you.”

Larry thought it over for a couple of seconds, and his eyes darted across the room. He then saw the two men with their guns again, and his face hardened,

“You’s lyin’. It don’t ever stop.”

“It might never fully go away, but it can get better, Larry.” Melony tried to assure him. She wanted to take him in peacefully, as she could tell he was very unstable, but she was a bit more on guard now.

“You’s dad abandoned you?” Larry asked, and Melony nodded.

“Well,” Larry said and stood up, “Then maybe you’s better dead too.” He said and raised his knife. He lunged at her, but before he reached her Derek fired a shot into his shoulder. He dropped to the ground and screamed out in pain. Melony was frozen for a second, but quickly kicked the knife away from Larry and twisted his arms onto his back before cuffing him. Derek and Hotch both untied one of the boys. Once the boys were free, Hotch took over taking Larry upstairs from Melony,

“That was very risky.” He said and gave her an accusatory look.

“I know, but when he mentioned being abandoned by family, I thought I could maybe calm him down.”

Hotch sighed, “You did well, but be more careful next time. It was difficult for Morgan and me to get a clear view to shoot him.”

“I’m sorry.”

Hotch slightly nodded his head towards the boy he just untied, and Melony walked to him and crouched down to be more on his level.

“Hey, are you okay?” She asked him and the boy gave her a little nod,

“Shall we go back to your mom?”

The boy nodded again. Melony grabbed his hand, and they walked upstairs.

~*~

Everyone took a seat on the plane and tried to get comfortable. They had spent a couple of hours bringing back the children, talking to press, and packing their things for the journey back home. Spencer had claimed the couch and made a makeshift pillow out of his coat and a sweater, JJ was working on her laptop, Elle was on her phone, and Gideon and Hotch were in the back, already going over some of the paperwork that needed to be done.

Melony had sat down across from Derek. They had talked for a little bit, Derek also lightly scolded her for putting herself in a risky situation. After a while though, they could laugh again. Derek put on his headphones at some point and had fallen asleep in his seat. Melony tried to sleep, but couldn’t, so she grabbed her sketchbook and decided to take the opportunity to start drawing Derek. She wouldn’t get much chance to draw someone where they would sit still like that, and she wanted the extra practice. She focused on her drawing. Since he was sitting so still, she wanted to get as many details as possible. Little lines by his eyes, the small dimples in his cheek, his scruff.

She focused quite a lot on getting his lips right. Those beautiful, soft lips she felt on hers just the night before.

"That's pretty good" said a voice right behind her. Melony jumped in her seat and quickly closed her sketchbook before looking up at who saw watching her draw.

"Hotch... you startled me."

"I'm sorry. It genuinely looks good. Do you draw us often?" Asked Hotch, who stood in the aisle of the plane, and leaned a hand on the back of Melony’s chair for some extra stability.

"Quite a bit, actually. I like the practice. At the training they keep saying 'every detail matters, one small detail can change a face' and stuff like that. So, when I have the opportunity to take my time to draw as many details as possible, like now, I like taking them."

"How is the training going?"

"Pretty good. It is a lot, but I do enjoy it. I don't know if you have gotten a report on me yet, but I feel like I'm learning a lot."

"I have gotten the first report. You've only started a few weeks ago, but they said you have great potential. You are a fast learner. And clearly you have already put in a lot of time to hone your skills." Hotch said with a gesture to her sketchbook. Melony smiled a bit,

"I'm glad they can tell I try my hardest."

"I'm glad you are trying your hardest," Hotch said, "We are very glad to have you on the team. Your sketches help a lot, and it is convenient to have you with us. It saves a lot of time."

"I am happy to help where I can. I know I am not that great around crime scenes sometimes, so being able to help like this is nice."

"Good." Hotch said and smiled at her. Melony smiled back and opened her sketchbook again. She wanted to flip to the right page to continue the drawing she was working on, but her boss stopped her,

"What is that?" He asked, partly confused, but mostly amused.

"What?" Melony asked.

Hotch turned a few pages back to a different drawing. It was one of him, but he had a short beard and an earring.

"Is that supposed to be me?" He asked. Melony smiled, a little embarrassed.

"I, I sometimes do things like this as practice as well. Because small things can change a lot about a face, I like practicing with changing features to see what it would look like. It sometimes happens that people tell us the unsub has long blond hair, but they cut and dyed it by the time we arrest them. Or they shaved their beard." Melony explained. “Or like with this case, a scar on the cheek can change a face as well.”

"Right. Is that something they told you to do in the course?"

"Not really. They told us that it does happen, and to not blame yourself too much. But this is not a specific thing they want us to do."

"Do you just focus on hair and earrings?"

"No. Many small things can make a difference. So, I do a lot. For example," Melony flipped through her sketchbook to a different practice drawing she made, "JJ with very thick, dark eyebrows. Or, " she turned the page to another, "Gideon after Botox" she joked, showing a drawing of Gideon with very smooth, wrinkle-less skin.

Hotch chuckled. "It does change a lot indeed. Any other funny ones?" He asked and sat down next to her.

"Oh, plenty. But I have two favourites." Melony said, a bit excited and looked for the right drawing. Once she found it, she showed Hotch. It was a drawing of Reid, but she had given him a buzz cut, a snake tattoo on his neck and a big scar across his eye.

"Wow. I hope we will never see him like that," Hotch said, holding back a little laugh.

Melony smiled more and turned the page to her other favourite fun drawing. This time Hotch couldn't hold in his laughter, but he did try not to laugh too loudly so he wouldn't wake anyone who was trying to sleep.

Melony showed him a drawing of Derek. He had a clean-shaven face. She had given him a beauty spot slightly above the right side of his mouth. His lips were darker, as if wearing lipstick, and plumper. His eyelashes were also more accentuated, as if wearing mascara. Most notably though, we the long, dark waves cascading down from the top of his head.

"That is, ehm," Hotch cleared his throat, "a very different Morgan."

"I call him Drag-Derek."

Hotch chuckled. Morgan slightly turned to them and opened his eyes.

"What are you guys laughing at?" He asked sleepily.

"Nothing," Hotch said, "Pearson just showed me some funny pictures. We should be landing in about 15 minutes." Hotch got up, "Get home safely. Good work on the case, you both. Pearson," He looked at her, "thanks for the laughs." With that, he walked back to his previous seat further down the plane. Melony smiled, proud she made her boss laugh.

"I'm sorry we woke you." She said to Derek. He shrugged,

"It's fine. We need to get up soon anyway. Now I have a bit of time to wake up." He said and sat up.

Melony put her sketchbook and pencils back in her backpack,

"What kind of pictures did you show Hotch?"

Melony smiled a bit, "It's nothing."

"Hotch doesn't laugh. Not around us."

Melony shrugged, "What can I say? Maybe I'm just funny."

"What did you show him?"

"That's between me and Hotch." Melony said with a little grin.

Derek rolled his eyes a bit, "I'll figure it out."

They soon landed and they went to the office to get some of the paperwork ready for the next day.

"Don't worry about coming in early tomorrow. We all need some rest after that case." Gideon said, "take tomorrow off. We'll see you the day after."

"Great, I could use some time to unwind" Derek said as he started grabbing his stuff.

"Tell me about it" Elle agreed.

"Me too" Melony said and grabbed her coat. She packed her last few things and walked towards her car. The others followed soon after and Derek joined her in the elevator.

“Wanna come over tonight?” He asked her as they walked in the same direction towards their cars, “I made too many burritos, they are about to go bad.” He quickly added as an excuse, but Melony could tell from the look in his eyes what he was really after.

“Sure,” She said with a little grin, “I’m always up for burritos.

#criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #derek morgan #derek morgan fanfiction #spencer reid #aaron hotchner

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tailsrevane · 1 year

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my top ten ficitonal moms, and other thoughts on fictional moms and them being amazing

what up gay nerds! so, this is another post that was originally a patreon-exclusive article back when i had a patreon. if i were writing it today there are a bunch of fictional moms i woulda added to the list that i didn't have on it at the time, but i'm just going to go ahead & post it as-is.

thanks to chosen family (hi, mommy and grammy), this is a topic that is much nearer and dearer to my heart than it would have been in the past.

i know this can be a difficult and complicated topic for many people in similar circumstances to me (queer, estranged from biological family), and i promise i’m not trying to push any of that cishet neurotypical b.s. about biological family being The Most Important Thing, or having to love your biological family No Matter What. but i still think, when it’s a healthy relationship, the bond between mother and child can absolutely be one of the most special things in the world, and that’s often reflected in fiction.

now, the person who requested the topic did say that i didn’t just need to focus on positive depictions of motherhood, so i’m going to go into a few related topics here for a minute, but the bulk of this post is going to be a ranked list of my favorite fictional moms, because it’s (belated) mother’s day dang it! we’re here to celebrate moms and chew bubblegum, and–oh, shoot, hey mommy??? can you buy me some bubblegum? pleeeease?

but before we get into that, i do want to take this opportunity to talk about a really important depiction of a dysfunctional mother/daughter relationship that does relate back to what i was talking about a few paragraphs ago. and that’s audrey and alike in pariah (2011). this is one of the most important depictions of a mother, but it is very, very, very much not one of my favorite fictional mothers.

pariah is the story of alike, a black girl who is discovering and exploring her identity as a butch lesbian. her mother is deeply homophobic, and an abusive asshole. the movie is really alike’s story, not audrey’s, but it does something so important that i really wish more queer movies would do: it doesn’t have alike reconcile with her mother. it has her move past her. it has her try to reconcile with her one last time, has that attempt go horribly wrong, and it sucks… but alike just keeps going. more than that, it’s immediately followed by alike just absolutely flourishing. she’s going to college early, she’s written a heartbreakingly beautiful poem (read to us in voiceover as she begins the next stage of her life). if i had to describe alike at the end of this movie in one word, it would be “triumphant.”

i need more of this. i need more queer media that doesn’t give us the “happy ending” that makes cishet people more comfortable. i need more media that shows us not reconciling with our homophobic/transphobic/etc parents (mothers and/or fathers both).

so many of us don’t ever reconcile with our families. we keep going. we make our own lives. we grow past them. and i want more media that reflects those experiences, and that shows us that it’s okay. that we don’t need them. that we’re enough.

… that was kind of heavy, i know. so instead of awkwardly seguing right into my list, let’s talk about some tropes aimed at fictional moms that i frequently find infuriating.

one that jumps immediately to the forefront of my mind is a trope that i’d refer to as the “sitcom mom” syndrome. where the mother character is portrayed as more emotionally intelligent and mature, and that might sound like a good thing but she’s then tasked with managing the emotions of not just her children but also of her useless man-child of a husband who is (ruefully, comedically) often explicitly referred to as an extra child that she has to deal with as well. laugh track! this was an especially rampant characterization in film and television in the 90s. think jill from home improvement.

another trope that frequently frustrates me is one i’m going to call the “hello, my name is mom” trope. like… you know what bambi’s mom is named? bambi’s mom. i literally wanted to include her on my list because i love all the scenes of her cuddling with her fawn and gently encouraging and teaching him before her tragic death which i’m pretty sure traumatized basically every kid that was raised by disney. the same goes for littlefoot’s mom, though she at least gets the fanon name of mama longneck.

but this trope actually expands beyond characters who are unnamed aside from their relationships with the protagonists for a given story. like, say, most depictions of martha wayne. seriously, quick: tell me one thing you know about martha wayne as a person. like one, actual thing about her. her personality. her career. her hobbies. her hopes and dreams.

thomas wayne does also occasionally also get shortchanged in the character development department, but sometimes we get a whole lot of him like in the flashbacks in batman begins and a few episodes of the animated series. and alfred talks about him all the time in basically every version of batman, and a huge chunk of the plot of the batman (2022) is about his legacy. it’s always about his legacy. and martha barely ever gets a single freaking line.

it isn’t just martha wayne. martha kent oftentimes fares better, but not always? and we hear about tony stark’s father constantly in the iron man movies, but almost never about his mother. also dr. beverly crusher on star trek: the next generation hardly ever gets any sustained character development, and while that continues to be the case after wesley leaves the show, while he is on the show she just pops up occasionally to talk about “my son, wesley” and how important he is and it makes her lack of other character development glaringly obvious. i’m sure there are plenty of other examples but those are the ones that jump immediately to mind.

stop taking moms for granted, is all i’m saying.

honorable mentions

[hey there! editing-robin again. just wanted to toss honorable mentions to camila noceda from owl house & lisa from ponyo, both of whom would have a good chance of making the list if i had seen that far in owl house and/or seen ponyo when i made this list.]

now that we’ve lightened the mood a bit, let’s move on to our list! in order to keep things manageable i decided to limit the list to ten so there were plenty i had to leave out. also i’m sure there are plenty i didn’t think of because my brain likes to miss exceedingly obvious stuff on occasion.

so, yeah! there’s a sort of category of characters who are amazing characters and unmitigated badasses and happen to be moms, but we never really get to see them being moms, or else being a mom isn’t a big part of their character. think b’ealanna torres from star trek: voyager or letty from the fast saga. for me personally, this trope also fits mara jade skywalker from the star wars novels, even though she did actually get quite a bit of “screentime” as a mom in the later novels, but that was when i had moved on to just skimming them quickly to see what was going on in general because it was hard to get really invested post-njo.

i didn’t have any particular category for her, but i also wanted to shout out evelyn from the mummy returns. (heh: the MUMMY returns.) and she’s kind of adjacent to the above-listed action badass moms, except that her motherhood is actually a pretty big part of her character in the mummy returns, so yeah.

i also want to give a shout-out to evil moms! the one that comes immediately to mind is cersei from game of thrones. i love her way more than i should, she is obviously an unspeakably evil character, but man i would let her domme the heck out of me. same for seska from star trek: voyager.

although i talked about the bambi’s mom problem above, i should say that i do love a lot of cartoon moms, even underdeveloped ones, even underdeveloped disney ones. so we’re talking bambi’s mom and mrs. jumbo from dumbo. and plenty of background animal moms like the cuddling deer in snow white.

but how about some non-underdeveloped cartoon moms! like elastigirl from the incredibles, or mrs. brisby from the secret of nimh. the latter was literally #11 on this list before just missing the cut, and it kind of gave me a brief existential crisis about limiting the list to 10 because she’s such an unmitigated badass.

scifi moms? we also got scifi moms! how about some dr. carol marcus from star trek ii: the wrath of khan, or sarah connor from terminator 2 and the sarah connor chronicles? or ellen ripley from aliens, who became surrogate mother to the orphaned newt and had to fight a protracted battle against the alien queen, herself an avenging mother.

the last special category is the category of this year! because this year has already had two movies with amazing moms as central characters in the form of ming lee from turning red and evelyn quan wang from everything everywhere all at once.

10. mom racer speed racer (2008)

in another movie this character would probably disappear into the scenery. she’s gentle and softspoken, but she is absolutely not about to be pushed out of any conversation. she’s warm and supportive, but she has no problem telling her husband or her son when they’re dead wrong.

speed racer is, unsurprisingly, speed’s movie. but what makes it so sublime is it leans really heavily on all these wonderfully-drawn characters and their incredibly functional relationships. mom racer isn’t given quite as much time or development as many of the other characters, but susan sarandon makes the most out of every frame. and she’s a vital part of this incredibly wholesome family dynamic that contributes to making speed racer one of my favorite movies of all time.

9. jasmine independence day (1996)

towards the middle of the second act of independence day, first lady whitmore and the woman who saved her strike up a conversation and start to get to know each other. the first lady asks jasmine what she does for a living and she tells her she’s an exotic dancer, and mrs. whitmore gets embarrassed and tells her “i’m sorry.” to the movie’s credit, jasmine confidently responds, “don’t be. i’m not. it’s good money. besides, my baby’s worth it.”

when i was like 12 i considered these the “boring” parts of the movie, but today i see them as its heart and soul. the entire city of los angeles has just been bombed out of existence and a lot of people are giving up, but this sex worker and single mother dusts herself off, finds a big ass truck, and starts rounding up other survivors.

sex workers get shit done and moms get shit done. sex workers who are also moms? apocalypse-defying levels of getting shit done.

8. aunt frances owens & aunt jet owens practical magic (1998)

who the fuck wouldn’t want to be raised by witches who teach you to be a witch and let you eat cake for breakfast. that is literally the dream.

7. kobayashi-san miss kobayashi’s dragon maid & miss kobayashi’s dragon maid: kanna’s daily life

kobayashi is the butch ace mom representation we need.

she’s frequently required to work long hours in her office job and that causes no small amount of distress for her adopted daughter, but she also finds a way to make time for the things that are important to her family. and her interactions with kanna when the latter is being cute are just achingly sweet.

6. moriticia addams the addams family (1991) & the addams family values (1993)

while her incredibly healthy gothic egalitarian bdsm relationship with her husband rightly gets a lot of the attention, morticia addams is also a fucking incredible mom? she’s so supportive of her children, and so damn proud of them. and obviously my queer, witchy, halloween-obsessed ass loves this wholesome gothic family.

5. eda the owl house (2020-present)

the absolute gold standard in lesbian wine moms. eda already had plenty of mom energy in her relationship with king–the adorable demon fluffboy she’s been raising for years–and then luz comes along. at first their relationship is more somewhere in between employer/employee (gross) and teacher/student, but it evolves over time and emphasizes the teacher/student thing quite a bit more, while their cohabitation and shared goals start to push things into more of a family kind of place.

a lot of this is down to luz’s sweetness, but for all her standoffishness eda really is a big softie at heart. just, don’t tell anyone.

4. mothra mothra (1961) & various godzilla movies

more like momthra. (sorry, i had to.)

in her first appearance mothra is the mommy of an entire island and when two of her people are kidnapped she destroys half of tokyo and then the fictional “new kirk city” to rescue them. the resolution of the film is literally the human characters worshiping her as a goddess. in her next appearance, mothra vs. godzilla, she beats the shit out of godzilla, but she was already near the end of her life cycle and the fight takes too much out of her to continue. so with her last act she literally shields her hatching egg with her wing before succumbing, and then her daughter precedes to beat the shit out of godzilla.

although she’s only ever called it in the legendary universe, i fully agree: queen of the monsters indeed.

3. captain/emperor philipa georgiou star trek: discovery (2017-ongoing)

i loved the relationship between commander burnham and captain georgiou in the first episode of discovery. georgiou is mentoring burnham, but they’re both clearly learning from each other and growing and amplifying each other’s power. it’s everything i’ve ever wanted out of star trek, and then they just unceremoniously kill off georgiou and send michael to space jail.

then suddenly the show brings back michael’s nurturing mommy domme as a badass mean domme in the form of her mirror universe counterpart who literally asks, “don’t you bow to your emperor?” after swooping in torpedoes blazing. and it turns out that this version of georgiou was literally her universe’s michael’s foster mother, and she frequently interacts with michael’s biological mother and adopted father on those terms. and every time michael is in danger we see rare signs of vulnerability from her as, for once, she is not her own primary concern.

(spoilers)

this relationship was so unexpectedly sweet and it was genuinely sad to see it end a second time, but it was nevertheless amazing to see it acknowledged as the thing it was in the two women’s tearful goodbye. i love them so much. one of my favorite relationships in all of star trek.

2. all of the moms in dragon moms dragon moms by alexis long

if you are even slightly interested in either dragons or moms, dragon moms is essential reading so if you haven’t already read it i’m just going to wait right here while you go and read all of it. go on. i’ll wait.

nope, i’m not joking. go do it.

back? did you do it? well, this isn’t an interactive medium, so i’m just going to have to assume you went and did it. good job! what’d you think? yeah, i know! it’s so good, omg!

what i really love about dragon moms, besides everything, is that all of the three main moms are so drastically different from each other, but there’s something essential about their motherhood that bridges those differences. and don’t get me wrong, they’re also very different from each other in how they express those feelings and relationships, but the core of it is the same and that really does help them understand each other.

dragon moms is an epistolary narrative, told in the form of diary entries. initially these are from the three main moms, though later as some of the other characters grow into mom or mom-adjacent roles themselves we get entries from their perspective as well plus the occasional non-mom entry. the three we hear from exclusively at the beginning, and the most throughout the stories as a whole, are gloria, merry, and baroness.

glory is a down-to-earth, practical, no-nonsense former soldier type who’s now saddled with a desk job. most of her entries (especially early on) start with a factual description of what the entry is going to be about, like “today was [x]” or “today [x happened].” she’s rather strict and protective with her kids, but there’s also an underlying, understated sweetness. she gives them both nicknames–her son, who is all grown up by the time we meet him, is “terror,” her daughter is “treasure.”

merry, despite being close friends with glory, could not possibly be much different from her. she is a super energetic, straightforwardly affectionate, endearingly naive baker who loves to cook, desperately wants to be a mom, and her sweetness is much more upfront than glory’s. most of her entries (especially early on) start with “today was a good day!” she ends up adopting a human runaway who becomes a “dragon-in-training,” and just absolutely showers her with affection in a way that’s so fulfilling for both of them. there are a lot of moments in these books that make me feel all the feelings, but the moments when merry and philly establish that their mother/daughter relationship is real to both of them are pretty high on that list.

the last of the main three moms is baroness, a lich who basically looks like a dragon skeleton that is surrounded by flames. most of her entries, especially early ones, start with “conquest continues.” her touch can kill, so she has to be incredibly careful. there’s a surprising amount of vulnerability to her character that she isn’t upfront about, and seeing her reconnect with her feelings and her need to meaningfully connect to other people is so rewarding. she grows so much over the course of the story, but she never really loses her threatening aura and that just makes every moment of gentleness and sweetness from her so much more rewarding.

all three of these moms, and the other characters who either become moms (or mom-adjacent) or were secretly already moms shhh it’s a secret shhhh have their own way of expressing their profound feelings for their children, and they all also have their own stuff going on that isn’t about being moms, but they carry their mom-ness with them always. even when they’re dealing with like fate of the kingdom type stuff. oh, and most of them are super gay, so that’s pretty cool too.

honestly, if i had read dragon moms before i played undertale there’s a decent chance this would be #1 on my list. it still very nearly is. it was easily the hardest decision i had to make when putting together these rankings, and again if you’re even slightly interested in 1) dragons, 2) moms, 3) amazing writing, i cannot recommend it highly enough.

i know this list isn’t supposed to be about recommendations, it’s supposed to be about my opinions, but in my opinion you should read dragon moms, so there.

1. toriel undertale (2015) & deltarune (2018-ongoing)

let’s be real for a second: there was absolutely no way anyone else was going to be at the top of this list.

toriel is the mommiest mommy that has ever mommied. toriel made an entire generation of queers realize that we wanted our mommy. she’s one of the most fully-realized video game characters i’ve ever encountered. all of the characters in undertale are so vibrant and vital and achingly real, but even among them she’s on another level.

the game also seems to realize this, having her be the first friendly character the player encounters. she leads you through the ruins, and at one point quite literally holds your hand to get you past a dangerous obstacle. she’s so sweet and so nurturing, she’s just the most wholesome character ever who could totally destroy everyone with fire magic (but mostly uses it to bake pies).

although it would be tragic because of all the people you wouldn’t meet, lives you wouldn’t touch, and big problems you wouldn’t solve for the monsters of the underground, when toriel talks about reading to you and taking you bug catching, it really does sound like a beautiful life, and i do kind of wish there were dlc or something where you could just live happily ever after with toriel from the start.

(spoilers ahead.)

what really impresses me is that the game actually understands how much the player is going to grow attached to toriel. the option to call her phone never disappears from the menu even though once you leave her house you’re never going to be able to reach her again. at the end of the neutral ending (which is a prerequisite to the pacifist ending), you get a phone message from most of the major characters but toriel doesn’t come to the phone, and that’s pretty clearly the hook that’s meant to draw you back into the game to get the true pacifist ending. speaking of which, there’s a moment in the true pacifist ending when she shows up to save the player from flowey and she’s just such an unmitigated badass and it’s such a relief to see her that i literally threw my arms up and shrieked with joy when it happened.

and finally, at the end of the game’s true pacifist ending, the player’s last choice is whether to strike out on their own or to–one more time–take toriel’s hand and stay with her.

although i genuinely do wish you could just stay with her at the beginning of the game, i will admit that this is just so much better. by the end of the game you’ve grown so much and accomplished so many heroic deeds, and she’s so, so proud of you. it’s just… it’s just perfect, guys.

undertale is a heartbreakingly beautiful game, and toriel is the beating heart of it all. in the opinion of this humble writer she is, and probably always will be, the most incredible fictional mom of all time.

#moms #undertale #toriel #dragon moms #philippa georgiou #star trek discovery #mothra #eda #the owl house #morticia addams #the addams family #miss kobayashi's dragon maid #practical magic #id4 #speed racer 2008

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seeingteacupsindragons · 2 years

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i had literally never heard about the BANANA FISH antisemetism; what happened? (i haven't watched it because i am semi-allergic to horrible major character death lol)

There's two main parts that I remember distinctly after not revisiting the series for like four years. And I'm not Jewish, so this is just what I noticed.

One is more obvious than the other.

The first one to happen is this nerdy scientist who created the BANANA FISH drug was, in fact, Jewish. One: hell of a stereotype about Jewish nerds. But more importantly, he was referred to as a slur for Jewish people and then...decided to....BANANA FISH them?

Now, BANANA FISH is clearly like, based off on MK Ultra or some shit: there's no cure and it controls people's minds and makes people basically trapped in a living hell and makes them very violent.

People he tested this thing on include Ash's older brother, Griffin, whom our racist scientist admitted had done nothing actually to him. But other soldiers they were in the military with were abusive to him and called him a slur for Jewish people.

And so...he just. Killed people in a gruesome, horrific way because he was oppressed. Ash murders him, and we're not even supposed to feel bad because his actions were completely inexcusable and disgusting.

The more obvious one is this fucking line after Blanca shows up about Union Corse wanting to be the next "Jewish American community" like, excuse me, what, the pedophile mafia?

This obviously traffics in the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people are rich and powerful and control things behind the scenes, and it also draws a connection to another antisemitic conspiracy theory that (Christian) children are in danger from Jewish people (yay, blood libel!) both physically and sexually and etc. This is where the QAnon pedophile conspiracy comes from.

This line about the Jewish American community was actually removed from the original English translation of the manga. It was in the Japanese, and whoever looked at it when translating it into English in the 90s clearly went, "Whoa, okay, no," and they changed it to the "Rockerfellers" which frankly makes more sense anyway.

The anime kept it.

So, uh, yeah.

Not great.

#Banana Fish #tw: antisemitism #antisemitism

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hemingway-papers · 1 year

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on one hand calling miyazaki the "disney of anime" is a horrible misnomer that completely undermines and reduces his artistic integrity to a false comparison.

on the other hand I completely understand why his work was pitched that way to american general audiences in the early 2000s.

being a kid in that decade i remember how allergic people were to foreign film and how limited and stigmatized our view of anime was at the time. in the 90s and 2000s anime was immediately and exclusively associated with either loud and juvenile children's entertainment or weird pervert fodder.

-partly out of xenophobia & racism. and partly in fairness because otaku pandering really did start its massive take-over of the anime industry at the time. and because the only mainstream household-name anime series broadcast in america then was for young children (pokémon), or tween boys (DBZ), or tween girls (sailor moon). other than that, some quality anime would air late at night on adult oriented comedy channels where any kind of animated debauchery, weirdness and offensiveness ran wild. so cowboy bebop and such made a huge impression on rebellious teens and edgy young adults but was still grouped under pervy and or offensive nerd stuff by general audiences because of how when and where it aired.

-AND partly because the US dubbing industry was extremely primitive at the time (as i said americans are allergic to foreign language film and the supply and demand for dubbed film was minuscule before anime craze hit). so the dubbing for those kids shows was notoriously irritating to most adults since the amateur dub voice actors were often kind of obnoxious in those early days in a way that made regular cartoon voice actors seem mature and sophisticated lmfao.

I honestly think the disney comparison was a desperate attempt to get people to shed that VERY pigeonholed impression of anime and trying to say "this animated movie by studio ghibli is a fun and NORMAL. it is not the anime you know that is generally creepy & off putting, annoying or boring, it has some artistic merit, it is engaging for children but you won't hate it. you know like when you take you kids to see something by disney?? and it's always pretty good? this is like that. ghibli is like disney" and tbh i get that.

i remember the early 2000s and i can promise you, most american adults did not think anime could be normal. they didn't realize it was a medium just like anything else and not an extremely narrow genre of weird foreign nerd shit. the actual scope of anime was literally was unheard of.

so the comparison to disney actually was fair under those extreme prejudices. it was accurate enough in the mere sense of its quality control and genuine all-ages orientated material, two simple things that literally no other anime in america was widely known for yet. that did convince a lot of people to give miyazaki & studio ghibli a chance. for what it's worth, that's why people were saying that. it just said far more about the culture in america at the time than saying anything about miyazaki's own work.

although now that anime understood in america as a completely normal animation format that is pretty widely accepted it's a really reductive and kind of insulting comparison

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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 10 months

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I’ve been thinking lately about the idea of what I like in comedy, whether it’s a good thing. I mean, I like a lot of different things in comedy, including very gentle and quiet and sentimental and emotional stuff. I like nice comedy. I like easy comedy. I like silly comedy. Not all of any of those things. But I like it when it’s good. And that makes sense to me.

I’ve been thinking about the other stuff lately. Comedy with an “edge”. How I really like that stuff too, almost more than I wish I did. And again, not all of that. I put “edge” in quotation marks, to try to show that I mean only one thing by it, and I’m not condoning the other 89 things people might mean by “edgy comedy”. Okay, maybe not only one thing. Of the 90 possible meanings for “edgy comedy”, I like about twelve of them. Maybe sixteen. Of the 137 possible meanings for “dark comedy”, I like about 46. And a lot of the others can get into very dicey territory very fast.

I fucking hate it when people defend saying racist or otherwise awful shit with “sorry people don’t like my dark sense of humour”. Sometimes they don’t even say that sarcastically – they’re genuinely sorry that their “dark joke” didn’t land, and are saying they won’t tell it again. But that still bothers me, because why did “plays on a horrible racist stereotype” become “dark comedy”? Now I can’t tell people I like “dark comedy”, because they’ll think I mean jokes about how great Nazis are. If you get called out on racism, don’t apologize for telling “dark jokes”. Apologize for telling racist jokes.

It took me a while to work out that not everyone likes the stuff I do, even though the concept of “different people have different tastes in subjective entertainment” should be obvious. I kept hearing Ed Gamble make jokes about how he knows his over-competitiveness at Taskmaster was annoying, and I thought he was just sort of playing a game, the way comedians do. The way comedians will make self-deprecating jokes about things that are clearly positive things, like Nish Kumar calling himself a nerd when he knows full well that everyone watching him loves him specifically for his nerdiness. I thought Ed Gamble making fun of his competitive nature was like that – he was aware that it’s what made him an extremely entertaining Taskmaster contestant, but just pretended it was a bad thing.

I’ve done some reading since, and it seems that actually, not everyone did love Ed Gamble on Taskmaster. Some people liked him, certainly. Some people liked him because of his overly competitive nature, some people liked him despite it. And some people disliked him because of it. Some people disliked lots of them because they got too into it, too competitive, too intense. I don’t understand that at all. But like I said, things are subjective.

I got into Taskmaster in March 2020, just as the world took away the sport to which I’d dedicated my whole life since 2004, and I was very much using it as replacement. It was very, very funny, and that was a big part of why I enjoyed it. But also, there was a whole other part where I just loved watching something with some stakes, with some competition, with some people pushing themselves and trying things because they wanted to win. I missed that. I love watching it. And I do find it funny. I find Ed Gamble funnier when he’s really getting into things.

It hadn’t occurred to me that anyone could find Rhod Gilbert’s over-the-top intense throwing himself into things on Taskmaster anything but incredibly engaging, until I watched it with my then-girlfriend a couple of years ago. And she disliked Rhod Gilbert, specifically because he was too loud, too angry, too much.

We broke up before season 15, but at one point we were talking about comedy in general, and I brought up Mae Martin, not as a potential Taskmaster contestant, but just as a comedian I like. I didn’t think my girlfriend would know them, but actually, she said she’d seen Feel Good on Netflix, and didn’t like Mae Martin. I asked why, and my girlfriend said it’s not anything against Mae Martin themself – they’re probably a great comedian – she just doesn’t like the character they played in the show. The character was too intense. She didn’t like seeing that.

I do remember thinking, in both those instances… there’s something of a divide here. Let me be clear – I did not break up with my girlfriend because she disliked Mae Martin in Feel Good and Rhod Gilbert on Taskmaster. I broke up with my girlfriend because I had a serious depressive breakdown and could not handle anything good so I decided to get rid of the best thing in my life, and she was too good for me (that is a slight oversimplication). So the point is that I’m not saying we didn’t work out because of that divide in how we saw things. But it is true that, while we were very compatible in almost every way, one of our few real incompatibilities was that I liked things with some kind of “edge”, I liked things that were intense and competitive, and she didn’t. And that difference did occasionally come up in slightly more significant ways than a disagreement about our favourite Taskmaster season 7 contestant.

I’ve been thinking about panel shows lately. The things that got me really into comedy a few years ago, the reason I started this blog at first. I’m aware that they are, as a rule, not the highest form of comedy. And I don’t enjoy most of them nearly as much as I used to. Some I still do. Catsdown had some brilliant upswings, though its best days are long behind it now. WILTY’s still good. Taskmaster is amazing.

But these days I’m watching/listening to a lot more stand-up, and going from that to watching a panel show can feel like… annoyingly, I can’t think of a better simile than when I was a kid, I really liked very very sweet white chocolate. But then I got used to good milk chocolate, and then I tried to eat the overly white chocolate again, and it just tasted way too sugary. That’s a bit what panel shows sometimes look like to me these days, but the sugar is the editing and production. They look over-produced and contrived. I mean, I knew before that they were edited and rehearsed and stuff that was made to look spontaneous had in fact been planned. But I notice that a lot more like that now that I’m used to other stuff.

But still, I like the way panel shows can sometimes create some sparks. I like when comedians, who are professionally funny and entertaining about this, get into things with each other. I like watching people get intense and competitive and really really into it, on Taskmaster or on Catsdown or anything else.

I think my three biggest guilty pleasures – the things I enjoy but most hesitate to admit to enjoying them, because I know they’re objectively not great – are Frankie Boyle-era Mock the Week, Simon Amstell-era Never Mind the Buzzcocks, and, by far the worst of all, Roast Battle UK. I want to clarify, on that last one – not most of them. Most of that show is too bullshit even for me. And I don’t think I’ve ever watched any of it sober since the first time I saw the show. But I do have a folder on my hard drive of some of my favourite parts of it, that I cut out and put in that folder specifically because I enjoy re-watching them while drinking.

There was only one “battle” in the whole show that made me genuinely uncomfortable, and that was the Jessie Cave and Alfie Brown one. Because they were ex-partners (at the time), and seemed to actually mean what they were saying, and I don’t like that. I felt like I was watching a reality show there, or like some tabloid had installed a camera in their home and we were eavesdropping on a genuine fight. I don’t want to watch a genuine fight between ex-partners, I’m not out there watching [insert whatever reality shows feature that sort of thing here].

But I do, when I’m in the right mood, find it really fucking funny to watch Ed Gamble and Phil Wang yell increasingly rude things at each other, knowing they don’t really mean it and everyone has signed up for this and agreed that they want to do it and they do actually like each other. I think the last time I did any Roast Battle re-watching was after I watched The Wrestling on the livestream back in March. It felt like a very similar thing. In both cases, watching Ed Gamble and Phil Wang in some darkened room, literally or metaphorically throwing themselves at each other, but knowing they’re just playing.

I guess that’s why people like actual pro wrestling. I find people getting into pro wrestling very odd – not just that it’s not for me, but I think it’s odd that other people like it so much. I’m starting to come around on that a bit, though. I liked watching the Max and Ivan comedy wrestling, and really, I’m pretty sure actual pro wrestling isn’t that different. There’s still a lot of comedy and entertainment in that. It’s performance, it’s people fighting for entertainment. I guess I can’t judge anyone for enjoying pro wrestling when I like watching Roast Battles sometimes (though I’d argue that that works the other way around too). Watching Roast Battles sometimes probably leaves me with not even enough high ground to judge people for enjoying [insert reality show where people have sex with each other and fight here].

I’m aware that Amstell-era Buzzcocks and Boyle-era Mock the Week are not considered the peak of quality comedy. Simon Amstell wrote an entire sitcom to apologize for everything he did on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, and that sitcom was brilliant. Frankie Boyle… honestly, I don’t think he’s changed quite as much as people think. He was always left-wing, and had jokes from that perspective. He just used to also make a lot of jokes with down-punching targets, before he started paying more attention to that.

I don’t think Frankie Boyle was the only thing that made Mock the Week good back then, by the way (also, to be clear, I don’t think it was the only good era of Mock the Week, that show had some bad years but also plenty of good years post-Frankie – I mean, “good” is a relative term and Mock the Week has never been the peak of comedy and my assessment of it as “good” is fading a bit these days due to the chocolate simile explained earlier, but it had post-Boyle years when it did what it set out to do well). When I say I liked Boyle-era Mock the Week, I don’t mean I just liked Frankie Boyle. I mean I liked the whole show when he was on it.

Since then, many people have agreed that those were bad years for the show, including several comedians who were on it (Dara O’Briain’s come pretty close to actually saying the Boyle era of Mock the Week was shit, Jo Brand had some very justifiable criticisms of it). Generally, this is for two major reasons: lack of diversity, and the culture of it being a “bearpit”. The first issue is definitely a problem, I’ll never defend it on those grounds and I don’t think anyone involved with it will either. It did reflect the culture at the time to an extent, but I think it was also even more white and male than most shows in the 00s. For a while, Frankie and Dara being Celtic pretty much counted as diversity, by their standards.

The second issue is one I’ve heard a lot of people talk about. That it was combative, it was competitive, new comedians couldn’t get a word in. People were always so quick to jump on every moment, they all had to fight for airtime, they were all trying to beat each other, to steamroll each other. They were trying to one-up each other by saying increasingly vicious things. The culture was brutal.

And that’s the part where I get into guilty pleasure territory, because… I think every criticism along those lines is true (except the criticism that Frankie Boyle was constantly saying racist or otherwise bigoted stuff – he said some things like that, and I think those things were bad and he’s said since that he knows they were too, but also, if you watch the show, even then he punched up more often than down, not that that makes it okay, it just makes it incorrect when people say it was a constant stream of only unacceptable jokes), but that’s kind of what I enjoy about it. I like, sometimes, watching comedy that’s combative and competitive and rough. I know it’s not a good thing. It’s not good for the comedians, trying to fit into that, or for the comedy industry, trying to nurture new talent in that environment. And probably, it’s not good for the audience because they missed out on good jokes that could have come out if the pace had slowed down a bit, the comedians had had some room to breathe and think and say stuff without getting talked over. It’s not the way to get high-quality comedy.

But sometimes, the combativeness in itself can be comedic. And sometimes, it’s fun for reasons besides just that it’s funny. Sometimes, I like to watch something get intense. I don’t know why, but it’s the same reason I like lots of stuff. My best memories from my life involve a charged atmosphere, something that feels big and intense going on, and often, they involve competition. Old Mock the Week episodes can sometimes, when they got into a strong rhythm and turned things in a particular direction, evoke a bit of that feeling.

Phil Nicol, who’s kind of the king of this sort of thing (he’s a stand-up comedian who talks at a million words a minute and tells really outlandish stories about doing wild things for no reason), has a bit in his show The Naked Racist (Perrier winning show, 2006) where he says: “We can transmute our violence. We don’t have to be violent to each other. That’s why people are into sports – roller derby. That’s why people are into fetish clubs and death metal.”

I liked that line, because I felt like he hit on something there. To be clear, I have never been to a sex club. But I think he might be right to make the comparison. We have all kinds of things we do to feel intense and alive. Listen to music loudly. Contact sports (I guess non-contact sports might count too, if you like that sort of thing). Pro/pretend wrestling. Actual wrestling. Reality shows where people fight and fuck. Sex clubs. Watching really Frankie Boyle or Simon Amstell or someone on fucking Roast Battle say something brutal and vicious and then watching someone else scramble to reply until they get into increasingly intense back-and-forth. Watching Ed Gamble jump off a rope with Max and Ivan. Watching Rhod Gilbert throw a javelin that nearly killed Alex Horne. Watching Mae Martin be too intense, on Taskmaster or Feel Good or anywhere else.

I like that stuff. That’s what I’m talking about when I say I like comedy with an edge. I mean, I’m talking about a bunch of things (about twelve things, maybe sixteen), and that’s just one thing. I’m not talking about racism or misogyny or anything else dressed up as “edgy humour”. And I don’t like that they’re conflated. The occasional horrible comment about women or disabled people that came out of Frankie Boyle’s mouth was not the point of him back then. It was a little thing that I cringe through and think “Fuck I’m glad he doesn’t do this anymore, if he were still defending this I don’t think I’d be able to enjoy him despite it, but he’s changed and we all agree that’s bad so I can pretend he didn’t say that part and go back to enjoying the other stuff”, and then enjoy watching him be a dick to Baby Russell Howard, because that was funny.

I don’t know where the line is. I’ve recently been reading some old message board threads about Daniel Kitson again, because that’s just a thing I do with my life, but also because I’ve had reason to engage with some retrospectives about his earlier career. Back when he was known for being brutal to the audience. And I don’t know how much of that I’d have liked.

Not most of it, probably. I don’t think any heckler has ever improved a show, even if they do spark a bit of the kind of competitive interaction that I normally like. I only like that stuff when it’s clear that everyone’s on board, that everyone’s agreed to this. A heckler just throws off the show that everyone came to see. Also, it’s worth remembering that this stuff is fun to watch because these people are funny on a professional basis. People in the audience aren’t nearly as good at it. It's always funnier to watch comedians have a go at other comedians, than to watch them have a similar interaction with the audience. Because the other comedians signed up for this specifically, and are able to be professionally funny. And I think that's kind of the connection between panel shows and the rest of this post - panel shows are good for that. They create a situation where we can watch professionally funny people talk shit to each other and get that competitive spark that I think is fun. Unlike panel shows, stand-up normally only has one comedian on stage, so if you want that interaction it has to be with the audience, and that tends to be more awkward, I find.

So I don’t think I’d have ever enjoyed his “heckler destroying” stuff. But I do sometimes find it very funny to hear Daniel Kitson fuck with the audience in general. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry for this, because I know it’s the sort of thing he hates, but it is actually pretty funny when Daniel Kitson calls people cunts. It wouldn’t be funny if that were all he did. And obviously, it wouldn’t be funny if I thought people were getting genuinely hurt. That’s a key part of it. That was a key part of the Phil Nichol quote – that these are ways we sublimate our desire to hurt people, ways we can avoid genuinely hurting others by, I don’t know, throwing ourselves into a mosh pit once in a while instead (I have never been to a mosh pit, but I assume that’s why people do it). It’s not fun if someone’s actually getting hurt (who doesn’t deserve it, but it’s rare that an audience member does – and even if they do deserve it, that doesn’t make things fun, it just makes me wish they’d stop).

I think Daniel Kitson’s got it figured out now. He can still be pretty vicious to an audience when he wants to, but he’s not genuinely trying to hurt people. I saw some people arguing online recently about whether he really has changed, or whether he’s still a bully. Someone said he called an audience member fat, someone else said that must have been a long time ago and he doesn’t do that stuff anymore, someone else said he does still do that because he fairly recently called an audience member a pedophile.

That kind of summarized, to me, what I think is and isn’t okay. Calling an audience member fat is a shitty thing to do. Because presumably they are actually fat, and now they know this comedian thinks there’s something wrong with being fat. And every other fat person in the crowd knows this comedian thinks there’s something wrong with the way they look. That’s an awful thing to do to people, it makes an uncomfortable experience for people who’ve done nothing wrong, I don’t defend it and I think it’s the sort of thing Kitson means when he says he doesn’t do that stuff anymore.

But calling someone a pedophile… I mean, they’re presumably not one. Presumably everyone knows he doesn’t genuinely think that person is one of those. He’s just playing. He’s playing with tension, and with saying something mean in a way that might be funny, to a crowd that went into it knowing this was what they were likely to get, and are enjoying the experience. I don’t mind that. I don’t think it’s a sign that he “hasn’t changed” because he did that fairly recently. It's not the same thing as picking on someone for a physical quality they actually have and you could hurt them with it. Weirdly, what I've learned from reading that message board thread that apparently this is where I draw the line: it's better to call an audience member a pedophile than to call them fat.

Anyway. That’s what I think about a few things that are vaguely related to each other. Guilty pleasure TV shows (my view on that: look, he was right to write a whole sitcom apologizing for it because the apology was warranted, but also, it was really fucking funny the way Simon Amstell fucked with some of those shitty music celebrities), panel shows being “too combative” (my view on that: yes they are, but I kind of like that), panel shows in general (my view on that: I used to think they were not high quality comedy but still great fun, these days my enjoyment of them is dwindling a bit but at their best they can still be very entertaining), viciousness in comedy (my view on that: complicated, but I do like it if it’s not genuinely hurting anyone or playing into harmful stuff against already vulnerable groups), competitiveness (my view on that: I genuinely think years of being very serious about a sport may have gotten my brain addicted to the neurological chemicals that are activated in competitive situations, I went through withdrawal during lockdown and Taskmaster was my methadone).

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walker-extended-universe · 1 year

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WIP Wednesday Game

(stolen from @kedreeva)

Rules:

Post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to post!

After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can't share from (for example, an event fic), write 3 sentences on it anyway, and then 3 more on another to share.

That’s it!

Cordell/Lucia

It was a lovely day in Independence when a handsome stranger rolled into town. He ignored the calls from the white doves and the waves from other women out and about as he rode on down to the sheriff’s office.

Deranged!Dean takes August Walker for a ride

Cordell was surprised to see Colton calling him. They had exchanged numbers since they were technically business partners at the Side Step but they usually communicated in person or through Stella. “Hey, Colton. What’s up?”

“Um…. SomeonekidnappedAugustandIdon’tknowwhattodo.”

“Woah, woah, take a breath and slow down.” There’s no way Colton just said what Cordell thought he heard. It’s impossible. He’s just talking too fast, that’s all. “Tell me what happened.”

Micki & Cassie being frens

Turned out, Cassie actually was a trivia nerd. She knew more than Micki did about 90s pop culture, which happened to be the theme for this trivia night. 2 hours later, they were the owners of free drink vouchers to be used anytime in the next few months.

“Let me buy you a drink,” Micki said when they won. She wasn’t going to use her voucher right away but Cassie deserved a nice reward for winning the game for them. “I totally owe you.”

Sam and Geri are friends

Geri pulled up to the bus station and sighed when she saw Sam. He was hunched over on a bench all alone, staring at his phone like it held all the answers to life written in a language he didn’t understand. The last time she’d seen that look on his face was when she gave him a ride to Stanford after that horrible fight with his father.

She was going to kill Dean for putting that look on his face again.

Posting this for asks. If anyone else wants to add on or steal, go for it!

#wip wednesday #my writing #trying something new #i want to talk more about my writing here #so #have this

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feathers-fallen-on-riverdale · 2 years

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Season 1, Episode 1: Chapter 1 - The River's Edge These Aren't The People From My Polycule! (They Said What?)

[Ep. Statues: Already Watched/First Time Watching + Remember/Vaguely/Don't Remeber]

First off. It sort of slipped my mind that Jughead narrates the opening of each episode. Doesn't he become like a God type writer in the new season? Very Jensen coded of The CW to only know how to do one (1) thing.

Oh god that nasty "Welcome to Riverdale!" board.

Also I will probably be saying this a lot but what are these outfits? Cheryl and Jason are going for thier stupid little boat ride (really? A boat ride? In the morning? On July 4th?) dress all in white expect for Cheryl's bright red stilettos. Like no wonder first time watcher me though Cheryl killed her brother. All the white, the creepiness of the scene and the "are you scared Jason?" just convinced me Cheryl had ritualisticlly killed her brother in a fucked up horror movie girl kinda way. Instant way to make me stan her. Kinda disappointed she didn't (would now would also be a good time to mention that I completely forgot who actually killed Jason? Oops?). Anyway where is that AU? Where is that show?

"In those last moments I hope he suffered. May Jason Blossom burn in hell" ? Miss girl. Are we sure Betty's mom isn't the real family psychopath?

Also can we talk about Jughead in season 1. With his lil beanie and his camera. I'm like 90% he was written to be a movie nerd/buff then it was retconed to books and they never talk about it again? That was weird.

Lol okay so I forgot how privileged the Lodges are made out to be. But honestly, Veronica's mom? Kind of a MILF. Now that I think about it, aren't they like, the Riverdale Kardashians?

Girl naurrr the gay-bestfriend-ification of Kevin 😭💀. My mortal enemy. I will make Kevin a full fleshed character if it kills me. Kevin walked no-crawled so that Will from Stranger Things could stumble over to Mike only to be called a slur.

Also how old are these bitches supposed to be? 15 year olds do not look like that. What is in the water in Riverdale? Pfffff what am I talking about Archie is Just Like That TM.

Also something about the way the actors deliver thier lines. I can't explain it but it's hilarious. Maybe just cause it's the pilot and everything's a little stilted still.

Also I think Kevin wants to hit that (Archie). #LetKevinHitThat2022 #LetKevinBeArchiesGayAwakening2022

Oh Archie's music passion my beloved. I forgot that one too. Season 1 may not be as batshit as its descendants but it has it's gems.

Betty and Archie: having their disgusting little heterosexual talk

Me looked in the background: omg Pop Tate 😍😍😍

I used to laugh at the sketches of Riverdale on tiktok because the facial expressions were so greatly exaggerated. But nope, it's actually Just Like TM.

Omg Veronica's slow-mo entrance my beloved. Some would say it's over the top but honestly she's an icon, she's a legend and she is the moment. She deserves this.

Also I know I should be focused on the Archie and Veronica's meet-cute but there's this one shot of Betty's face that is absolutely sending me.

Betty said gay rights because I'm going to be homophobic towards a straight couple.

ALSO FRED ANDREWS. I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU. ARCHIE STOP BITCHING AT YOUR FATHER.

Forgot just how... Karen-like Betty's mom was in season 1. I know it's out of worry but I can't wait for her character to flesh out (as much as it can on a CW show). Also I did not know Betty has ADHD?

Archie, honey, what is your handwriting. Okay, if Betty has ADHD then I want Archie to be dyslexic. They bond over being neurodivergent and mistake that comradery for love.

Nasty ass early season Chad Reggie 🤮🤮🤮. Where is my is my mafia bimbo meow meow. Give him to me now.

What. What was this moment. ONLY The CW. I would only accept this moment if Veronica was wearing a little bi or pan flag. Hold on.

Guys she sewed them on herself! (her mother taught her!) (I know it looks like shit alright I'm horrible at editing)

JOSIE! AND THE PUSSY CATS. Okay but genuinely they sound really good.

JUSTIN GINGERLAKE ??! Oh she's savage I love her. Also Josie and her girlies all use she/they pronouns because I said so.

Also the way Veronica talks. How does Camilla Mendes pull it off. What ever they're paying her, double it.

"Are you two dating?"

"No we're just friends."

"No he's straight.'

I stand by my earlier statment, #LetKevinHitThat2022

Oh god. The one plot line I wish I could desperately forget is the one where Archie fucks his music teachers. How is nobody noticing these 2 eyes fuck infront of the entire gymnasium.

Oh Fred and Hermione 😔

"Is cheerleading still a thing?"

"Is being the gay best friend still a thing?"

Shots fired. I am loving the mlm wlw hostility. At least The CW got gay on gay violence right.

Cheryl? Body shaming! What year is this?

They're trying to make me like or feel sympathy for Grundy and it's not working. I'm just waiting for her to leave.

Okay no actually I need her to DIE. A student is asking for help because he's feeling guilty and scared of something he's witnessed but your saying no because you fucked him? 🔪🔪🔪

Beronica kiss hello? Young sapphic me blocked this out because they could not deal with the emotions and revelations this brought her. Also this is beginnings/foundation of the Riverdale polycule. Also that kiss was.... a little longer than necessary 😏.

Cheryl is not impressed tho and honestly good for her. But that baiting scene. Sheesh I'm not one to judge be get a better coping mechanism honey. Betty's half moon scars I remember vividly. I wonder if they ever resolved that plotline.

Also. VERONICA ACTUALLY POPPED OFF NOT CLICKBAIT!???!!!???

WE COME AS A MATCHING SET? I AM THAT RECKONING? SORRY CHERYL BOMBSHELL MY SPECIALITY IS ICE?

I am losing it. Is this Riverdale's version of "Freedom is a lenght of rope and God wants you to hang yourself"?

Nope, now I've lost it. That scene! Where Veronica is zipping up Betty's cheerleading outfit and the sweet music is playing and they're all smiles and giggles and she turns around and Veronica compliments her and Betty just touches her in the same way Veronica did her even though Veronica was already set! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH GOODBYE! The entire show could end right here and I wouldn't care. Also, I see you Veronica's black nail polish.

Oh Betty and Veronica's little chat after that felt very very real. Oh no this Supernatural all over again. Shit show, good moments that keep u coming back.

Okay Betty's mom is giving my mom vibes and that is not okay.

Fred's words to Archie about his future are ringing really true and are a really fresh and good twist on the parents dont support the kids passion trope.

Maybe this first season is actually good? Skdjkskdjd nah.

Omg our favourite trouple doing their entrance!

"What does your heart say?"

Archie: *looks over at Grundy*

Me: Come on, Grundy?!

Archie: *demands lessons*

Me: Oh he chose music!

Oh god.... I keep pausing the fantasy couple scene because I just can't.

Veronica and Kevin, mouthing: ask him about the polycule!

Betty, who can't read lips for shit: power couple? 🤔

The absolute silence on Archie's side. WHY did he look at Grunkle what's her face.

Let's see who's riding the ginger stallion tonight? WHO IS WRITING THESE SCRIPTS?

"Who are you asking for, you or Betty?"

Me: SAY BOTH

Veronica: *doesn't say both*

Me:

Me watching Archie and Veronica kiss even tho the polycule is in shambles before even fully forming:

Veronica and Hermione's relationship. God I wish I had something like that.

"Archie went looking for the girl next door. Instead he found me." Okayyyy, it's giving Jarchie.

Archie and Jughead's scene. First of all Jughead's dark humor. Love it. The talk to her. It'd go a long way. It'd have went a long way with me. Ooof. But also what did happen? Omg gay coming out went wrong!

Me watching the "I can't give you the answer you want" scene trying to focus on literally anything else but the forced monogamy in front of me: huh the way they shot this reminds me of the "I was there where were you scene".

Okay but let's put a pause on the polycule and talk about Barchie. Archie says something along the lines of "You are always perfect, I could never be good enough for you" and earlier on Betty said she's sick of being perfect, the perfect x,y,z for everyone else. I don't know if she's realised this but that may include being the perfect love interest for Archie. And Archie perceives her as Perfect when Betty just wants to be perceived. So if they were ever to get together, polycule or not they'd need to work past that.

Oh Moose. Didn't he just fade into the background as the show moved on or did I just forget him?

Oh Jason? Neat ig. Was he shot and his body dumped after the lake was searched? I can't even remember.

Unhinged rating: 3/10. There were some moments (mostly from Cheryl) mostly from the dialog and things I'd forgotten but this episode is really tame reconsidering my expectations for later seasons.

Tag list (you can ask to be added [or removed] though I doubt anyone will ask: @youre-only-gay-once

#riverdale #riverdale polycule #unhinged ep. review #barchie #jarchie #beronica #season 1 episode 1 the river's edge #archie andrews #betty cooper #jughead jones #veronica lodge #cheryl blossom #jason blossom #josie mccoy #josie and the pussycats #kevin keller #live slug reaction #live betty reaction #the cw

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