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yellowocaballero · 2 years

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What Is A Character?

This is not writing advice. This is a highly truncated version of a manifesto. I am correct. I have solved the mystery of a hundred Tumblr fights, thousand comic book forum threads lasting for three hundred pages. I'm just right.

A while back somebody mentioned that I had a pretty unique take on Tim Drake, a comic book character with a thousand characterizations. I ended up talking a little bit about ‘how to write a comic book character’, and how amorphous the definition of a character really is. Or, really, how ill-defined the ontology of a 'characterization' is. After rereading a lot of Batman comics in preparation for The Batman movie, and this deeply unfortunate Moon Knight thing, I’d like to revisit it. I am speaking predominantly in terms of comic books, since they’re definitely the easiest example for this, but you could apply this whole bag to a lot of different situations (Star Wars is almost as bad as comics) and maybe characterization as a whole. Nobody asked for this, but this is my blog and opinions were made to be heard (this is 90% of my problem). I swear I will try to make this as short as possible while still arguing my point, but my point will need to be argued.

The central question is this: what is a true, real character? The conclusion I eventually reach in this essay is will sound like bullshit but you will understand that I am correct. Rest under the cut.

The absolute inherent nature of any media that lasts for a stupid long time, has a stupid amount of different creators and creative teams, and passes between different owners and mediums like hot potatoes, is that it will be contradictory. Even without the insane continuity issues of Star Wars, comic book writer Michael will outright retcon Henry’s backstory for Wonder Girl because Michael fucking hates Henry. James fucked Henry’s wife so Henry will write in a character that James created and then murder them gruesomely. Geoff Johns is there. All of this means that everybody, from the execs to the creators to the fan content creators to the fanbase, ultimately do have decide who Batman/Obi-Wan/Sherlock Holmes ‘really is’. This is important – it decides the future of a character.

It’s not the origin story of the character. It’s not decided by who created the character (Otherwise everybody here would love Miles Morales for who Bendis wrote him as, instead of himself in ITSV – and they really don’t). I think the answer to this question is determined by consensus from every group I just listed. It’s what people, basically, agree on. Which means that a character’s true character is the character that everybody thinks they are.

Point One: The Power of the Disney

The first way this can be determined is, basically, by their most popular incarnation. I say Hawkeye and you think of Fraction/Aja Hawkeye. I say Tony Stark and you think MCU. I say Sherlock Holmes and you think of the book Holmes if you’re embittered by the BBC version and you live spitefully and you think the BBC version if you aren’t. I say Vic Sage as the Question and you think of the JLU version, which comes from the Denny O’Neil 1980s version, which has nothing to do with the character’s origins as a shitty objectivist mouthpiece. The Question, as a character, just is not a Randian, even if he was created that way. He’s a quirky conspiracy theorist. That’s who he is, because that’s the guy who pops into your head. You’d argue with me if I said he was a Randist. The people reading this who actually know the Question is are probably shocked by the Randist thing.

This can apply by transitive property too – I say Teen Titans and you think of the baller 2005 cartoon, right? That was based off the Wolfman/Perez 1980s TT. I wouldn’t call 2005 TT the ‘real’ TT, I’d call Wolfman/Perez the real TT – because it created the 2005 one, and was also hugely influential in creating a soapy teen drama comic book scene. It’s marked by influence. Nobody gave a shit about Thor before MCU Thor, so he’s Thor now – how influential was 1970s Journey into Mystery?

So the first idea is that the ‘real character’ of a comic character can change through runs or mass media becoming very prominent and making that characterization the most prominent in people’s minds. The second idea is that this change can happen more gradually through a cultural or reception-based shift.

Point Two: Drift Compatibility

Harley Quinn has changed a lot as a character from Batman: The Animated Series. She had a few interesting quirks, but she was really 100% a bad guy. I can put maybe the genesis of her more modern understanding in the Injustice comic, which presented basically a more interesting and intelligent and well-rounded feminist Harley. The fan reception was positive, the creators wrote that kind of Harley more and more, the fanbase reacted positively, the fanbase reacted negatively to Suicide Squad until she was rewritten into the BOP version, and through fan reception and gradual shift we get the #feminist we have today.

You can also say very much the same about Deadpool. I grew up on the 90s Deadpool and Deadpool & Cable, and the drift into the modern guy has actually been pretty insane for reasons too long to list here (he tortured Blind Al?). Reception to the Deadpool you’re thinking of was just better, and the Deadpool movie basically cemented that idea of Deadpool in popular consciousness.

Sometimes this change happens very suddenly, like with Fraction/Aja's Hawkeye, but sometimes it is a result of trial and error decided by fan reception and the zeitgeist of the times and the comic book tone. 90s Deadpool does not fit in '20s comics. BTAS Harley Quinn would receive some boos for being defined by her abusive boyfriend. These things change with culture, comic book fads & zeitgeists, and fans liking a character so much in one way that the creators wire them more and more that way.

So that’s the second idea: that the drift can happen within books through fan reception, and is eventually reflected in mass media and cements the personality until we cycle back into the first idea.

Point Three: The Inmates Run The Asylum

The third idea is a really logical extension of this: that the fandom and fanon version of the characters can grow to eclipse any characterization from 1) or 2), and that when this fan interpretation of a character becomes so rampant it becomes the new ‘consensus’ of the character. Batman can defeat anyone with enough prep time. Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy are unproblematic girlbosses. Spider-Gwen became so popular and such a big character solely through her pretty dope design that got super popular and went viral on the internet. If you cut out the middle man of the mass media and canon comics, then you have the fandom creations.

This drift is making its way into the mainstream. I won't talk here about fandomization of media, but the fanon characterizations and tropes are starting to enter Point #2 territory: that is, creators are realizing that the fandom plots and tropes are what people want, and they're creeping into the mainstream. The Webtoon Wayne Family Adventures is the greatest example of this, anywhere. That Webtoon is a million fanfics brought to life, and it's helping cement those fanfic dynamics and characterizations into 'the real Batfam' - to the point where the traditional comics Batfam is being dismissed as 'not real'.

Memes are intensely powerful, here! Every comic fan from around ten years ago knew the Squirrel Girl can defeat everybody meme. Now she has a comic and she’s pretty famous, through sheer memery. Sometimes a ‘true character’ can be derived solely from their meme status, if there is truly nothing better or nothing else to the character. Sometimes meme status can give them a book, which fleshes them out and makes a real character out of it. Virality is a huge force, and when a character goes viral then businesses jump on it and recreate what people liked about it as quickly as possible - and, sometimes, as influentially as possible.

Part Five: If You Agreed With My Other Points You Have To Admit That I Am Correct

So, logically. When you ask the question ‘what’s Moon Knight’s real characterization before the MCU show, which is pretty clearly a huge deviation from the comics and his comic self?’...and if you are a Moon Knight fan I'm very sorry about this...you're valid, alla youse are valid...

You see that nobody really gives a shit about Moon Knight. He has never had an influential run. Barely anybody had heard of him before the show. Nobody can list a single thing about the guy. Nobody’s read a single Moon Knight comic. The only panel from Moon Knight that I’m willing to bet the vast majority of this website has seen, that everybody thinks is real, that is 100% of what they know about Moon Knight, is this joke meme panel. That is Photoshopped. (If you didn’t know it’s Photoshopped, now you do – the other joke Moon Knight Panels you’ve seen are also photoshopped). This is not a real image from the comics. However, taking into account everything else I've said...

This meme Photoshop one panel image of Moon Knight is the definitive, true, actual comics Moon Knight goodbye everybody I’m right and nobody can change my mind.

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thejudgingtrash · 4 years

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Annabeth is a good person,but not a nice or pleasant one,IMO.

YES.

That’s it. That’s the post. Pack it up everybody, we just cracked the case and cleared up one of the most compelling fights in the PJO fandom since forever. Good job everybody, clap it out and there’s the door! Don’t forget ordering the drinks at Starbucks, Mitch! They’re on me!

Okay, but on a more serious note: YES. YES EXACTLY.

And before some of you roll your eyes or grab your pitchforks – put your biases aside and hear me out for once. I like Annabeth. She’s my in my top three characters only second to Percy himself. I love Percabeth. It’s my favorite ship in the entire series and to be frank, the only ship that I care about PJO wise. Hell, I spend my time creating my own headcanons or writing my own fanfics with Percabeth being the star in them.

But that is not to say that I’m unable to see how certain things have developed over the years or where they stand now in regard to Annabeth. I’m not here to ignore things that have been said and/or done due to or in the name of Annabeth and I’m not here to vilify anyone that doesn’t like her. And I’m here to admit that I’m guilty of some of the things that may be addressed in this meta essay that you will read in just a second. However, I try my best to assure you, that I’m for once able to recognize my own bias.

Warning: a monster essay lies right upon you.

This should count as a paper of its own.

Back to the statement on top: I would go out even further to reframe your claim, anon:

Annabeth Chase is a good character but not a nice or pleasant person.

Annabeth is a wonderful character but she isn’t a nice one. Or at least not nice to everyone. She is (construction wise if I dare say) the best character out of the series. She has her positive traits (she’s caring, she’s emotional, she’s encouraged and volunteers, she fights for what she believes in, she forgives (even if doing so begrudgingly)) but she also has her negative traits (she’s stubborn, she’s brash, changing her mind takes forever, she is prejudiced, she baits others). That balances things out. She is branded as the intelligent kid but does irrational things (like I’ve just said a) she’s a kid and b) she’s not a robot). She should probably know better, but we all make mistakes and hopefully grow and learn from them. The clouds in the sky do blur and cover our visions sometimes.

Annabeth had clashes with other characters or was about to have fights due to her stubbornness or jealousy (Rachel, Reyna, etc.) and has of course her problems with the mortal world and her family but she also found new friends, some things cleared up throughout the narration and she was/is quite popular in Camp Half-Blood.

The thing is: she doesn’t have to be nice or pleasant (as a character). Or at least not all the time. Her character is humanized. That is what or who she is. Human. She does stand out as a character, not just because she’s the (future) love interest. She feels like someone you could meet in real life and either adore from the top to the bottom or declare as your biggest enemy. And that’s totally okay if you lean either way – liking or disliking her. Or even feeling indifferent about her. Also great!

To say that she has been the best character that Riordan has crafted is easy to say, because she has been sculpted after Riordan’s wife. He had a model he could rub some of real-life events or traits on. That’s not the problem. The problem truly doesn’t lie on Riordan’s side for the most part for once.

The problem is inherently on the fandom’s side. What the fandom does, how it acts and how it treats Annabeth as a character is the problem. The problems vary but it’s mostly the mischaracterization of Annabeth, starting fights and fan/ship wars, internalized misogyny (in some cases) and how some of the Annabeth stans lash out (ha, got firsthand experience in that field among many of my friends and mutuals!). There is a reason why many people are wary of people that have Annabeth or Percabeth related URLs.

The fact that we see Annabeth mostly through Percy’s lens and (until the Heroes of Olympus saga hits) we never really see her in chill everyday situations is essentially Riordan leaving the back door of the house open, ready for all of you asshats to rob his mansion in Boston. Because a frame on a character means that we don’t get to see the character in its entirety (unlike we do with Percy in PJO for the most part). That means a bunch of stuff is left open for interpretation which is the reason why Annabeth gets so many polarized headcanon and opinions tossed around. I think that is one of the true appeals of Annabeth. You can add on stuff and it necessarily doesn’t have to contradict itself.

We have people calling her abusive due to a (n admittedly stupid and unnecessary) judo flip and we have people that act like she’s never done anything wrong. People sorta use this excuse to form and shape Annabeth however they want and distort her characterization.

People in the fandom act like Annabeth is some weird prized possession. We perceive Annabeth mostly through the eyes of others (Percy, Apollo, etc.) and when we had some sort of insight in her ways (MOA, HOH) it felt… weird? Somewhat? Like Riordan left two bullet points of her characterization and told the ghostwriter: aight, fuck it up, gringo, see you on Tuesday and greet Fred the next time you see him for me.

There have been many posts lately (by Tharini, Simi, Sawasawako, Jewishpercy and Annie I believe?) that HOO Percabeth felt weird. That they felt weirdly constructed, that there was no conflict, no growth. It felt stagnating, like we’re turning back. We had five books prior where we had Annabeth and Percy slowly shifting from disliking to liking and crushing each other. True development. And when we finally got the cake it felt… dissatisfying. Like the cheap box stuff and not the delicious exquisite taste that we were promised.

I said it previously in my Percabeth ship roast, but let me repeat myself: many Percabeth related things are straight up fanon. Some of it is very old fanon so that’s been unable to distinguish unless you’ve read the books recently and subtract nearly 99,9% of things you see on Tumblr (and occasionally the other shitty parts of the fandom like Reddit, IG, Twitter. Although they mostly steal and recycle tumblr stuff oh well. But back to the topic).

The way people treat Annabeth is so strange. She’s either an innocent fluffy smush baby that’s never harmed a fly and all that she wants for Christmas is being Percy’s lapdog or she’s the devil incarnate, broke into your house, killed your parents Batman style, kicked your puppy and didn’t flush the toilet on the way out. I think this is what mostly makes people hate her or the ship Percabeth. And both extremes are wrong and right at the same time? She is multifaceted so both stereotypes are true and untrue and sorta cancel each other out in the same way.

The true reason why people dislike Annabeth is because the stans are doing the most. (The haters as well, don’t get me wrong, but oh boy. Piss of a stan and you’ll know what I mean). That isn’t inherently new. Are you guys old enough to remember the ship wars that have happened cross platform? Perachel vs. Percabeth? Oh boy, oh boy. I saw some kids on tumblr a few months ago trying to infiltrate both tags and start shit (and also fail). The fact that Rachel still gets used as the bitchy (ex) girlfriend in fanfics? It’s 2020 guys. I know this apocalyptic year is far from perfect and over but I think we can let this trope die, right? Right? I thought we’ve established that Rachel is a pretty chill charcter by now… right?

If you posted your stuff on FFN back in 2010-2013 and it wasn’t the typical cutesy Percabeth story (Goode High, the gods read TLT, punk/prep Percabeth, college AU, etc.) people would’ve come for your fucking throat. Not because the story or the narration was shit. But because the pairing wasn’t Annabeth and Percy (in the sense that Annabeth had to be paired with Percy. I mean Percy gets shipped with everyone and their mother but for Annabeth it was strictly Percy. As annoying as this whole Connabeth thing is – the people behind it actually had a point. She never had a different love interest unless it’s a Percy centered story and he goes off dating Athena, Artemis and Zoe at the same time for some odd reason. Yeah, FFN Percy ships are something). Or it wasn’t the action filled canon compliant story or it wasn’t an AU that was popular.

People were really stubborn, snobbish and wanted their stuff in the four five boxes that were the most popular ones and that’s it. People have been bullied off the site in many fandoms, so it’s not a PJO-only thing but it’s still sad that it happened. (Off-note: most of these FFN tropes are still alive and well and thriving on AO3. Don’t be so snobbish and pretend that every piece you’d find there is a holy grail. There’s a lot of trash you have to waddle through. Same with Wattpad, Tumblr or anywhere else where fanfics get posted. Also had this discussion with Annabeth stans. Sigh).

And Tumblr back then? Forget it, wasn’t much better.

That view has sorta changed (at least for people that have been in the fandom for several years or have managed to find a way to navigate through it) but some of the negative sentiment from back in the day has survived. Be it by new fans coming in or from old fans that never let their stance die. The aggression feels differently and somewhat not. (I don’t know if the anon function had been abused that much back in the day. I was an observer not a participant in the fandom).

Crack a joke at Annabeth’s expense (Kal’s famous “Annabeth is a Republican” post or Dee Dee’s and many others “Annabeth has the education of a second grader, chill with the college plans, girlie” stance) and you have people insulting you, making callout posts, unfollowing and blocking you (based on only that? Okay, honey), making aggressive counter-posts, etc. in a minute. If you respond with “It’s a joke, it’s not real” you have a 50/50 chance of either getting blown off or embarrassing them so that they apologize for once.

This isn’t just about jokes. You can make a headcanon that’s not the cozy cute convenient mainstream saga and people would react the same way. Or art piece (no, not including the whole Tannabeth Blackchase shtick done by Viria and others) or fanfics.

People project so much onto the unfinished canvas that is Annabeth Chase that any form of negative sentiment as little as someone not liking her to straight up criticism, regardless of how tiny it may be, seems like an affront. Like an invitation to a fight. Like an insult to them, their character, everything they believe in. Let me state something:

You are NOT Annabeth Chase. Annabeth Chase IS NOT you. Annabeth Chase is NOT real. Her feeling cannot be hurt. Someone criticizing, disliking, joking about her or even insulting her will not bother her. Someone making a statement about her is not an insult to YOU.

Let me repeat that:

Annabeth Chase isn’t real. Annabeth Chase isn’t you.

So think a little before you act? I get it when you’re a kid and new to fandoms or haven’t been up with fan cultures in the past and are back in the scene. But if you’re in your late teens or even older as an adult and you’re unable to understand that you aren’t what you like – you aren’t the extension of a fictional character – I feel incredibly sorry for you. Because that’s just incredibly sad. Someone disliking something you like isn’t an attack of your character. It shows you that you are you and the other person is a human just like you. That they just have different taste. Disliking something you like isn’t a crime, you know? But me feeling sorry for the way some of y’all act won’t mean that that’s even remotely okay. Especially if you’re no longer in the intended audience for PJO age wise and should know better.

This isn’t a “white stans” only thing. I’ve seen and witnessed firsthand how people of color, mainly women of color, act the same or not even worse when it comes to her character. People have projected their problems and real-life occurring events into her character (I’m sure that she isn’t the only character nor that this is the only fandom where this is happening) and in some cases like I’ve said cannot separate their own personality from the fictional world. Fights with woc happened because of Annabeth fucking Chase. So many things have happened in the fandom the past few months, mostly due to people being forced staying at home because of the quarantine but I’d say it’s 10% on quarantine and 90% on people for acting up like this.

So here’s a little story: There was the act of Riordan blowing the fandom up because of his own stupidity and being unable to apologize for his mischaracterization and lack of research (the whole Piper fiasco) back in June (?) and admits the upset fandom, people on Twitter, Tumblr and Discord legit thought that none of that mattered and that the outcry was destroying Annabeth Chase’s birthday. That’s right. People thought that Annabeth Chase’s non-existing birthday because she’s a fictional character had a higher priority than the rupture and prevalent racism in the fandom. Okay. This isn’t a great look, Annabeth stans. And this of course pissed a lot of people off. I made a post about it and someone not only berated three other people on said post but no, we had a mighty argument which had disrupted many friendships in our circle which haven’t recovered until this very day. We both had our parts in it and no one is innocent. But the cause of this still remains Annabeth Chase or how people prioritize her non-existing well-being. Anyway. I’m getting agitated just thinking about it.

Let’s go back to the characterization thing with Annabeth. Let me remind you:

Annabeth Chase is an asshole. There I’ve said it in a post ages ago (too lazy to look it up, sorry) and I’ll say it again. And that’s not me insulting her. That’s me actually loving that about her. Annabeth is one of the very few unapologetic female characters that really showed all young readers across the world that you can be a girl, a badass, smart, strong, standing up for yourself and what you believe in. You don’t have to be nice. You don’t have to hide your feelings. You don’t need a man in all cases but it’s also okay to accept help and defeat.

A large reason why I think she’s an incredibly important character in children’s literature/YA because many other novels (mostly (sadly)) have the “Oh, I’m a white skinny dark-haired girl that likes unconventional things like READING. I’m not like the other girls, that take care of themselves and pamper themselves by enjoying shopping and wearing make-up. No, I’d rather be one of the boys but a sweet cute little boy and not the jock fuck that drank vodka shots out of a filthy shoe once. Despite me calling myself hideous every man in a 10-kilometer radius falls in love with me and tells me I’m oh so sexy and by the way I’m only 16 years old” shit going on for no goddamn reason.

Yes, I do blame Twilight for this mostly in recent years, but this trope isn’t by any means knew. Pretty sure that you could even use classics as Pride and Prejudice and dissect them in the same manner (Bold statement: Lizzy Bennet is the OG Bella Swan. There. Go fight somewhere in the corner, people). The new wave of YA focuses on girls belittling themselves and only starting to believe in themselves because someone else (mostly the male love interest) tells them they’re worth it. And these books hit the mainstream because they’re incredibly bland and picture perfect white.

With Annabeth it’s different. She shows up for the job and is done with it. (Brie Larson would probably be the perfect in real life version of her. You either like or dislike her. Or you really don’t care). That is what is so refreshing about her. Her unapologetic nature. Can it be off-putting? Yes. Is it annoying? Yes! Hell, every time I read The Lightning Thief, I want to rip her goddamn head off. And it’s just so well written. Her shift from mistrusting Percy but secretly still believing in him to her opening up. Wow, Riordan did something right there.

Annabeth Chase isn’t a young character. She has existed along with PJO for 15 years. She’s on her way to the second decade. I’m pretty sure that with the success of Percy Jackson (and Harry Potter) many lives have been warped and shaped.

But when I say the problem lies mostly in the fandom, it doesn’t mean that Riordan’s completely innocent. The only problem that I have with Annabeth lies not truly with her but the fact that Riordan is only able to produce three variations of female characters:

The sweetheart (Hazel, Silena, Calypso, Hestia)

The strong feminist (Annabeth, Piper, Thalia, Reyna, Artemis)

The bitch (Drew, nearly every female goddess in the goddamn Riordanverse next to every female monster)

And these female characters only know three endings:

End up married with a mortgage, three kids, two dogs and a cat somewhere in Connecticut by the age of twelve

Get dumped into the hunt

Chill on Mount Olympus and only come down to be a nuisance and/or give a cryptic message before going back and doing a godly rave party or something

We know Annabeth as the badass strong female first (or the bitchy character we’re supposed to actually like. Choose your approach), the blueprint so to speak, so some of the other characters feel almost pale in comparison and almost not needed? Doesn’t mean that other characters can’t behave similarly, but it feels kind of redundant especially if their character arcs end in a rather anticlimactic way (Thalia, Reyna). The new additions are the much needed woc as the main story with PJO was inherently white (anyway stan black!Percy and Grover, folks). So it’s not to bash on the new characters, it’s more Riordan’s fault more than anything.

Since Riordan only knows three female character arcs it feels like he tried to copy the formula several ways with different nuances. Some more or less successful. This is where fandom actually comes in handy and helps create more distinguished and fleshed out characters in form of headcanons or fanfiction.

But even in these cases people still make it about Annabeth when it’s time for characters of colors to shine. Remember that whole spiel and discussion that broke out when people (Kal, diver-up, Caitlyn, Bee, reynaisalesbian, etc.) joked about or criticized that Annabeth thinks that she’s having it harder because she’s a blonde? In front of Hazel and Piper? If she would’ve been a real person that’s an invitation for getting decked. And then all hell broke loose because Annabeth stans couldn’t accept the fact that in the real world and/or in fictional worlds the woc/coc have it harder? That the white woman wasn’t the victim that needed the coddling? Yeah, that was mad pathetic.

I hope you people get my point?

Well fuck. I wrote so many things and have the feeling I’ve said nothing. Anyway, I hope I made sense. This is way too long.

TLDR: Chill about Annabeth please. She’s an important character but that doesn’t mean that everyone has to like her, regardless of being a character in the books or a reader/fan of PJO in real life. She isn’t nice or a sweetheart all the time. She also isn’t the monstrous asshole that some try to make out of her.

Peace out.

#Mel answers #pjo #percy jackson #Annabeth chase #percy jackson and the olympians #Percabeth #pjo Meta #Heroes of olympus #hoo #trials of apollo #toa #hazel levesque #piper mclean #reyna avila ramirez arellano #rachel elizabeth dare #pjo fandom #coc #rick riordan #riordanverse

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lady-literature · 3 years

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I rewrite Sky High

okay so, disclaimer: sky high was actually pretty damn good for it’s time and a lot of the plot twists/tropes used in it were still just starting out and not as commonplace as they are today. so 10/10 really good movie.

Also as i was writing this, it turned into half analysis of what’s already in the movie and half things I would change about the movie so,,, yeah. enjoy!

***

So the point about Sky High is that and the way the school and hero society as a whole works, is that you, as the audience, are supposed to look at it and know that it’s a flawed system. We’re supposed to see it as an injustice that kids are sorted into hero or sidekick- Sorry, I mean ‘Hero Support,’ on your first day of school based on something you can’t even control.

(This movie was my hero academia-ing it up before it was cool.)

Anyway, the movie calls a lot of attention to it in the beginning, but then doesn't actually give it the resolution it deserves in the end. Which, not cool guys.

The Hero/Sidekick debacle is, on the whole, a very thinly veiled metaphor for the problems minorities face. Specifically, those of the alphabet mafia, or LGBTQ, as we’re more commonly known.

There are a lot of examples for this so I’ll speed through the big ones real quick:

Will’s nerves regarding not having attraction to girls superpowers?

The way he tries to fake having an attraction to girls superpowers to get approval from his dad?

Being literally outed in front of his whole class (by someone named Boomer no less) and then immediately trying to hide it from his parents as long as possible?

The constant references to being a ‘late bloomer’. Doesn’t it remind you of the common phrases: ‘it’s just a phase’ or ‘don’t worry. You’ll start liking [opposite gender] eventually.’ ?

The scene in the kitchen, right after Will introduces the Sidekick Squad (and yes, that is what I’ll be referring to them as for the rest of this essay tumblr post). Will is so obviously trying to gauge how his dad is going to take his friends being sidekicks and also him being a sidekick. I just, this is so blatantly a coming out scene? How does anybody not see it as that?

(also the dad talking so offhandedly about bigotry and the hatred his own father had for sidekicks??? Who else has been there?)

Will telling his dad that he doesn’t care, that he’s proud of being gay to be a sidekick is just,,, *chef’s kiss*

With all of this backing behind Will and him growing into not being ashamed of his lack of powers, My first change would be that Will does not, in fact receive his father’s super strength. It’s just such a cop out! The movie had all this amazing build up, and this brilliant metaphor it could have used and, instead, they threw it all away.

The sudden acquisition of powers and immediate acceptance by his peers, feels too close to someone being ‘fixed’. That Will wasn’t good enough the way he was and had to be better, had to be his father in order to be good enough.

So, no. Will remains powerless.

Instead of the revelation of ‘he’s strong’, we get to let the Sidekick Squad shine.

Lash and Speed still cause a fight between Warren and Will, but when Will is under the table, the sidekicks actually do something.

Will knocks the table over (not, like, lifting Warren up but something closer to pushing him off. I mean, even I could push upwards from underneath a table fast enough that if someone is standing on it, they’d lose their balance and fall to the ground) and that starts things.

The Sidekick Squad all grab forgotten lunch trays or cartons of milk or something and throw it at Warren. It isn’t long then that the whole scene devolves into a food fight (Zach, at least, does not have good aim and probably hits a bystander accidentally, drawing more people in, until the whole cafeteria is involved.) The fight turns into something more playful, but still with that bit of an undertone of trying to actually hurt each other.

Ethan melts at one point and (accidentally) causes Warren to slip and land on his back, Magenta probably punches someone (not Warren) and Zach is just mouthing off to anybody who gets close enough. Near the end, right before Principal Powers shows up, Layla finally gets the right idea and just fire extinguishes the shit out of Warren.

(Side note here: I am very much also nixing the Layla crushes on Will plotline. I love best friends to lovers just as much as the next person but… no. Let kids see boy/girl friendships!

Instead, I will be inserting a Layla/Warren love story and you can consider this the first scene on the road for that.)

Anyway, the whole Sidekick Squad plus Warren ends up in the detention room and all of them are covered in food. Right after Principal Powers leaves, the Sidekick Squad is immediately talking excitedly to each other about how cool they just were and what they did. Basically it’s very wholesome and they’re all hyping each other up and then one of them, Layla or Will, excitedly turns to Warren and goes, ‘and that thing you did with the fireballs? God! I don’t think Lash is going to have any eyebrows for a month’ and the tension between them all but drops.

Warren, of course, tries to push them away and not get involved with their ridiculousness, but the Sidekick Squad is stubborn and by the end of detention, everyone but Warren is in agreement that he’s a part of the Squad now. They will not leave him alone. They also start hanging out at the Paper Lantern all the time just to annoy/make fun of him in that loving way friends do.

(I just want Warren to be a part of the Squad guys. Will calls him his best friend at the end but what did the movie actually do to show they were friends? Nothing, that’s what. I want that fixed.)

So the cafeteria fight boosts the whole Squad’s reputation, right? People think those sidekicks are pretty cool, and they get their fifteen minutes of fame. Only… Will gets a little hooked on the feeling of being popular. He doesn’t want to be a capital-h Hero or anything! But, well… he’d be lying if he didn’t like people thinking he was cool.

The others don’t really care all that much about being cool, but Will does. He hates that he does but what is he supposed to do? He can’t change how he feels. So he starts trying to make himself more popular and sometimes tries dragging his friends into stupid schemes.

And then enter stage right, one Gwen Grayson.

I prefer Gwen being Royal Pain’s daughter, actually. A girl who would’ve had no stock in this fight but her mother, who is sickly and weak and survives mostly because her daughter takes care of her, practically brainwashes Gwen to do her bidding.

Gwen is a minion here, and also, perhaps, a victim.

At first, she follows her mom’s orders and charms Will into dating her. She also feeds into his desire to gain popularity but can’t, in this world, break him from his friends. Actually, Will brings Gwen along to the Sidekick Squad hangouts and, slowly, she becomes a part of the group too.

She starts to doubt her mother. Starts to care for Will and the Squad.

She throws the party, and the Squad is all invited (trying to break them up isn’t conducive to the Plan her mother has anyway and wouldn’t work besides) but she lures Will away to make out and… other things, and he brings her to the Sanctum for privacy just like before. She still steals the pacifier (or whatever death ray equivalent you want idk) but she and Will don’t break up at the end of the night.

It’s not actually until two days later, right before the dance is going to start, does Gwen decide she can’t stand back and let this happen anymore. She spills the whole plot and her betrayal to Will when he comes to pick her up for the dance. She’s crying and apologizing and basically expecting to be hated forever by the only people she thinks ever actually liked her.

And, well. Will is furious at her for lying but there’s more important things to deal with at the moment. They’ll talk more about this and he’ll be angry, but that’s all going to be later. Right now they have a school to save so he grabs her hand and starts running to warn the rest of their friends.

Things happen mostly as canon from that point with minor changes.

It’s Warren who pulls Layla into a kiss before they all split off into groups, telling her to kick ass and stay safe before sprinting off after Speed. There have been scenes throughout the movie where the two are very obviously getting closer and are into each other. And then, before the dance, while Gwen and Will we’re technically going as a couple, the whole Squad was going as a group.

When Warren and Layla saw each other all dolled up, it’s very cliché. Warren says she looks nice and Layla visibly gulps at his outfit of a button down and suit pants, sleeves rolled up to his elbows (because homeboy does not wear a full tux you can fight me on this).

And also, Will doesn’t fight Royal Pain by himself. Instead, Gwen is there with him and they don’t fight with super strength. Gwen’s been helping Will build an arsenal of gadgets a la Batman and the two face off against her mom together, Gwen with her powers, and Will acting as half support and half as a watered-down Batman who still needs some more training before he’s totally polished.

The school falls from the sky, but Gwen buys them time by keeping the anti gravs working through sheer force of will, while Will holds off her mom from attacking her while she’s vulnerable and concentrating. Magenta eventually kills the EMP or whatever it was, and the day is saved.

Gwen passes out, cause ~drama~ but she ends up okay so don’t worry. She’s just exhausted.

The sidekicks get their recognition and then immediately bounce because dances suck and they all agree that they should go to the Paper Lantern instead to celebrate cause they’re tired, alright? Saving the day is hard.

So it’s all of them, a little battered and bruised and exhausted, crowded into this corner booth and laughing and being kids. The camera does it’s fade to comic book page thing, and the narration is something more along the lines of:

“Royal Pain and her cronies got locked away. Gwen and I talked things out, and she’s getting help for all the stuff her mom did to her. We’re taking things slow in the meantime.

The school is undergoing a lot of changes to the curriculum and getting rid of the whole ‘hero/sidekick’ divisions. (Mostly at the urging of my parents… and Layla). Next year is going to look a lot different, I think.

But it’ll be a good different, just like we are. None of us were what we were expected to be, and, I think, we’re going to keep defying expectations. There’s a whole world out there that needs changing.

And I can’t think of a better group of friends to do it with.”

THE END

(just give me found family saves the day by being themselves rather than somebody else, give me them saving the day because they care about each other, give me them fighting for what’s right and fixing things. please i am b e g g i n g.)

***

Additional nitpicks that are small but Very Important to Me

Coach Boomer is still called coach Boomer because there is no way I am missing out on the ‘okay, boomer’ jokes

Layla stays like Layla, but i’d like for the movie to stop trying to make her seem annoying for her beliefs or like she’s wrong to be so vocal about them. Her caring about things that are wrong ends up as the butt of too many jokes and i… do not like that.

Why so many dad/son scenes? Why this janky imbalance parenting dynamic between the Strongholds. Knock that shit off. I want happy functional family thank you very much

Mr Boy and the mad scientist are very obviously in a relationship

Wait, actually: mr boy, mad scientist and Boomer are al in a poly relationship and are ridiculous about it

I’d like to see more of the sidekick classes going over like, ‘the boring’ parts of the job, and teaching the kids how to deal with the aftermath of the heroes heroics, just to hammer in the fact that the system is fucked up and that it’s messed up that the heroes get all the recognition while the sidekicks are left to clean up the mess

Use actual 14 year old actors? These kids look like seniors.

Or, if you want more ‘mature’ characters make it so sky high is like,,, a finishing school or smth. Something kids 16 and over go to.

(What the fuck kind of parent thinks that their freshman child dating a senior is a good idea?? An almost adult coming onto a fourteen year old??? Are you trying to make Will’s parents (particularly the dad) seem like irresponsible assholes??)

Gwen is, at most, a year above Will in this rewrite, kay?

#my typewriter #sky high #disney #warren peace #superheroes #lgbt

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cappsikle · 4 years

Text

It’ll be ok // fred weasley

Pairing: fred weasley x reader

Summary: the world just seems a little too heavy, but luckily, you have him by your side.

Warnings: it gets just a tad heavy mental health wise / not all of it is proofread so please forgive that

Word Count: 2.6k

A/N: Hey guys!! Sooo this is my first ever fic on tumblr! I would just like to dedicate this piece to @ickle-ronniekins as it was her and a bunch of talented writers that inspired me to get back to writing, and I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t for them!

Also if you like this fic please reblog! It would mean a lot if you did!

This fic is just a huge projection from my own feelings, quarintine has got me in my feels, and I’m sure everyone could do with some Freddie comfort. Enjoy!! <3

-----

There you were, hunched over various textbooks and pieces of parchment that seemed to cover the whole table. Fred looked up at the clock on the wall above the fireplace and then back down to you. Something in his eyes changed as he walked over to the table, quickly bidding goodnight to George and Lee as they headed up to the dorms.

Fred sat in the chair next to yours and he couldn’t help to just take a minute to admire you. But from glancing at you now, Fred knew that something wasn’t right. From your usually very well-kept hair that now looked as though you ran your fingers through it at least a hundred times throughout the night to your joyless and sunken eyes, eyes that used to hold all the joy and spark Fred loved most about you, but are now just dull and almost... lifeless.

For a while now, Fred had noticed small changes in the way you’ve been acting recently, and it wasn’t even just him, all your other friends had taken notice as well, but no one knew what to do. It wasn’t until this very moment as he watched you tire yourself out with work that he realised just how much had changed, and he felt a pang of guilt for not talking to you about it sooner. So, in the softest voice he could muster, Fred tried to coax you from your work whilst placing a gentle hand on your arm. “Hey, love. ‘S getting a bit late, reckon we should head up to bed?”

Your head snapped up at Fred as he spoke, only now taking notice of his presence, but you then quickly looked back down to continue scribbling mercilessly on the parchment. You needed to get this essay done before tomorrow, otherwise, you’ll slowly but surely fall behind on everything else. You can’t let that happen,

“I’m sorry Fred, I really can’t. I have to finish this stupid essay for potions”

“For potions? Isn’t that due next week?” You looked back up at Fred, your eyes widening as you became more distressed.

“I-I know but if I get this done now then I can use my time to focus on other assignments. I’ve fallen behind and I need to catch up.” Fred slowly nodded his head in understanding. It seemed like a good enough excuse, hell, he’s been in this exact position before, pulling his fair share of all-nighters for assignments due the next day, but when Fred looked deep into your eyes, there was something there that he couldn’t quite place. Desperation? He wasn’t sure.

“Look, love, you’re wearing yourself thin. You need a break”

You don’t know why, but suddenly you’re very irritated. It’s possibly due to how much sleep you’re getting, well, more like lack of sleep. You don’t know why, but suddenly you’re snapping at him “Fred, I don’t need a break so can you just please leave me alone?”

You don’t want to look at him, for the fear of seeing a look of hurt or the resentment that’s bound to be there you’re not sure you can take that sort of thing, so you lower your head and quickly wriggle your arm free from under his hand.

Fred tried not to feel offended, he really tried, but you removing your arm from his touch just nicked him in his chest. He knew you didn’t have a problem with him, he knew this was something that seemed too out of his control, but he just wished he knew what to do to make you feel better. Maybe giving you some space should help.

“Okay... I’ll head to bed then. Try not to stay up too late, yeah? I’ll see you in the morning. Goodnight” Fred placed a quick and gentle kiss to the crown of your head as he stood up and walked towards the stairs. Before ascending, he looked back towards you still slumped in your chair, and an unsettling feeling crawled its way into his stomach. With one final look, he walked up the stairs towards his room.

Once Fred left, you chucked down your quill in frustration and rapidly ran your hands through your hair, pulling at the roots in distress. You hated this. You hated how you get annoyed at things that shouldn’t annoy you, you hated how it was impossible to get a good night’s rest, you hated how your mind just wouldn’t. Shut. Up. And what’s worst of all, you loathed how you keep pushing the one person who seems to give a crap about you. It’s not like there’s a lot of people who do.

A sharp pain nestled in your chest, but you tried to ignore it, you always did. You weren’t even sure what it meant. Anxiety? Guilt? It was probably a mixture of both. You didn’t know how, or when, you allowed it to get so bad. With Umbridge slowly taking over the school alongside her vile punishments (you’ve had your fair share of them), the upcoming N.E.W.Ts that you needed to ace and the stress of keeping up with the DA meetings. But that doesn’t even seem like the half of it. Every little inconvenience had the power to ruin the rest of your day.

You couldn’t deal with it anymore, with any of it. You just wished there was a way to make the world slow down to grab your bearings, to just actually breathe. You released a big sigh and grabbed your quill again, but the tip doesn’t even touch the paper. It’s stuck, just like you. Eventually, you fold your arms on the table and rest your head on them. You know you must finish but maybe... just five minutes won’t hurt. Just five minutes.

---

Fred lay awake on his bed, staring up at the ceiling for merlin knows how long. That weird feeling in his stomach didn’t go away, something just felt extremely off. Fred checked the watch located on the table beside his bed. It was pretty late; he’d been awake for at least a couple hours. Knowing that he wasn’t going to be getting any sleep anytime soon, Fred threw the covers from his body and gently got out of bed, careful to not wake any of his sleeping roommates.

By the time he made it down to the bottom of the stairs, he was already wishing to be back in bed, however, what he saw made him stop in his tracks. You were still there, this time unmoving with your head resting on your arms and your deep and even breathing. Why were you still here and not in bed? As carefully as he could, Fred walked over to your sleeping self and gently laid a hand on your shoulder squeezing just enough to rouse you.

After a few more gentle squeezes you started to stir awake. Fred almost felt bad for waking you, but he knew that you would have a much better time sleeping in an actual bed than a desk. You lifted your head and Fred couldn’t help to admire the sheer adorableness of your sleepy form. Your hair was dishevelled and sticking up in a few places, your cheek was red from where it was resting and the tiny noises that came from you whilst you stretched. However, as much as he’d love to stare, he knew he had to take care of you, or at least get you to bed.

Once you had done stretching, you looked around the table until your eyes landed on an arm, which trailed all the way to Fred’s face. You were taken aback at suddenly seeing his face next to yours, but you quickly calmed down upon looking into his soft eyes, the glow of the fire making his brown orbs look more alive and opening.

“Hey,” Fred said, a small smirk appearing at the corner of his lips.

“Hi,” you smile back. For a moment, when you looked into his eyes, you felt warm, like you were safe, you always did. You loved Fred, you loved him so much but often at times you caught yourself doubting whether or not you deserved to be with him, and each and every time Fred did his absolute best to prove your thoughts wrong. Looking into his eyes, you just get that feeling... the feeling of coming home to a warm bed after a cold day. Sometimes, you feel as if your heart might explode from the amount of love you have for him, you couldn’t even out into words. But that warm and safe feeling was quickly diminished and replaced with dread once you looked down to the mess that was sitting on the table. Darn this stupid assignment.

“Crap, I can’t believe I fell asleep!” you groan as you shuffled through some of the parchment, trying to find the one you needed.

“Hey, hey, hey, slow down there” Fred placed his hand on top of yours, trying to stop your erratic movements. “Don’t you think it’s time to take a bit of a break? It’s nearly two a.m.”

“Fred, I can’t just ‘take a break’, I’ve got too much to do,”

“And it’ll all still be here after you’ve had some sleep,”

You released a groan in frustration and turned to face him, your irritation getting the better of you. “Don’t you get it? That’s the problem!” your voice started to rise with each word, the stress and lack of sleep catching up to you. “If I stop now then I’ll fall behind and I just can’t let that happen, ok? So just back off.”

“Hey,” Fred grabbed your cheeks in both his hands and guided your face, so you were looking at him. Seeing your widened eyes and reddened cheeks concerned him, as this was just so unlike you. What happened to this happy-go-lucky and incredibly bubbly person go? The person who had the purest soul than anyone he knew? You just looked... tired. He knew he had to tread carefully here if we wanted to crack all your walls to understand what the hell is going on.

You moved your hands up to try and remove his from his face, but his grip tightened ever so slightly to make your attempts futile. “Look, I’m worried about you. All this,” he tilted his head to the side to gesture to everything on the table. “it isn’t like you. Please don’t hide away, because you know I’m here for you.”

You both stayed silent for a minute, his hands holding your cheeks and yours resting on his forearms. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, you just crumbled. Your face scrunched up and your breathing became erratic as you looked down to hide your face from Fred’s gaze. You leaned forward so your head was resting against his chest, letting out a few silent sobs as you just... broke. At the sight of your crying figure, Fred immediately jumped into action. He removed his hands from your face and wrapped his arms around your waist, carrying you over so you sat in his lap. One of his hands trailed up to stroke your head as his other maneuvered your legs so they wrapped around his torso, your head pushing further into his shoulder.

You reached up and wrapped your arms around his neck, trying to get as close to him as possible. You just needed the warmth that constantly surrounded him. After a few minutes of tears and whisperings of sweet nothings into your ear along with Fred’s comforting touch, your breathing started to return to normal, and your sobs turned into the occasional hiccup. You weren’t really expecting to have a total breakdown, you honestly thought that you had things under control, but when you looked and Fred and he looked at you, you knew you couldn’t keep everything bottled up anymore.

Fred was the first to break the silence, “d’you wanna move to the couch? It'll be comfier”. The only response he got was a small nod of your head, you not really being able to trust your voice enough to speak. So, Fred stood up with you still wrapped in his arms as he carried you over to the couch in front of the fire, grabbing the spare blanket and wrapping it around you and himself. It was like a nice little cocoon of comfort and warmth.

And for a while, you two stayed like that, basking in the silence and the warmth the fire provided. You knew you needed to say something, you just didn’t know what exactly you could say. Fred was in the same boat. Should he make a joke to try and make you feel better? That always did the trick. But... something about tonight just told him to leave it on the backburner for now. He slid his arm underneath the blanket and stroked up and down the expanse of your back, hoping to relax your tense muscles. Occasionally Fred would turn his head to place delicate kisses on your forehead, cheeks, nose... basically anywhere his lips could find.

God... what did you do to desrve someone like him? Someone so boisterous and loud, but also understanding and gentle when he needed to be. As the minutes ticked by, and Fred’s hands continuously moving across your body, you finally found the courage to speak up.

“Sometimes I just feel like...” you trailed off, trying to find the right words.

“like?”

“like nothing is going to be ok. Like no matter how hard I try, or pretend, I’m not going to be ok,” your voice caught in your throat as you buried your head into his shoulder, a weak attempt to shield yourself from the world threatening to beat you down. A silent tear trailed down the side of your face, but you hadn’t made any attempt to wipe it away.

Fred sighed through his nose, and he swore a piece of his heart cracked when your voice did. He knew you were struggling with something, but he was just never sure of what or how bad it was. He only wished he could just take all your pain away, even force it upon himself if it meant that you’d get the chance to be happy.

“Oh love, I had no idea. I’m so sorry”

“It’s okay...” you half-shrug your shoulder, removing one of your arms from around his neck to quickly wipe the corner of your eye “no one really knew, so it’s fine”

There was a moment of silence as the both of you tried to catch up with your thoughts, until Fred finally spoke up, a strain in his voice, “no, it’s not fine. I hate that you’re feeling like this. Please, is there anything I can do to help you?”

You shrug your shoulder again. To be completely honest, you weren’t even sure if there was anything he could do. You've barely even figured out what you can do for yourself. However, there was one thing you knew you needed, the one thing that could help you through anything. “Just be here, and hold me?”

Fred placed his lips to your forehead, leaving them there for a bit as he gave a gentle kiss. He breathed deeply through his nose and spoke the words against your forehead. “for you, my love, anything.”

With those final words and his fingers slowly tracing up and down your arm, you felt for the first time, that maybe, just maybe, things might turn out ok.

-----

whew and there we go!!! My first fic completed!! I honestly have no self control when it comes to word limits, my teachers hate me for that... oopsies! anyways I hope you all enjoyed that, if you guys liked my work feel free to send in any requests!

Reblogs and comments are greatly appreciated!!

- Mills

#fred weasley x reader #fred weasley x you #fred weasley imagine #harry potter #sad vibes #soft boi #harry potter imagine #george weasley #george weasley x reader #george weasley imagine #reader insert

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hanijunk · 3 years

Text

Alright boys, girls, and nonbinary folks of the world. It’s 5:36am (1/30 when I first started) as I decide to give up on my attempt to continue to focus on learning statistics, avoid studying for my two upcoming midterms, and put off my two actual essays for two different classes.

Instead we’re going into a dive about ✨ KazuFuuma ✨ . Is this me telling you you gotta ship it? No of course not, you’re entitled to your own ships! You don’t really gotta care about it as a ship. But I do want people to recognize it’s THERE canonically, and how disregarding it is extremely unfair to Kazuki as a character particularly. Also, I’m working on the assumption anyone clicking this at least knows the bare bones about what KazuFuuma (ex. You know they are a ship of Kazuki/Fuuma from Dolce, you know they are childhood friends, you know who Dolce is, you know about Honeyworks, etc.) I’ll be making references to specific things, but I won’t always go into heavy detail. Might just hope you know it or take my word for what it is, and go into analyzing it. Some I’ll put direct references to find, but some I’ll trust you can find it yourself. If you somehow read this MAMMOTH and want reference to a specific thing mentioned, hmu I can help you find it!!

Also I hate tumblr formatting sm if you legit wanna read this 7 page essay but hate tumblr format lmk I'll add it as a google doc link instead too. anYWHO

Before actually getting into the meat of things lemme preface some stuff.

Again it’s like almost 6am so this will be disorganized and very train of thought (and likely long due to the fact when I fly by the seat of my pants I’m known to get unnecessarily extensive). It’s definitely gonna be in large part why it’s important to recognize as a romantic relationship foundation and what about it shapes Kazuki’s character in particular. Maybe a bit of how it’s been built up and its general focus and implications. Dunno yet. We’ll see LMAOO

I say f*ck. Not a lot, just a handful of times. This ain’t something scholarly this is for my own enjoyment so if you don’t like that might not wanna read. And it’s not like spitefully I just curse a lot if you haven’t...read my tags before lol

Again this is through the lens of a Kazuki stan. Of COURSE I’m going to have some level of bias, but if anything that bias may help more than hurt because that means I become FIXATED and think a lot about Kazuki. Which plays into establishing just how important it is that Kazufuuma’s relationship is recognized, especially in a romantic light at this point. Lmfao.

I’ll have a few more prefaces about the actual content below but to keep this from getting too long if you wanna read come below the cut owo

I have extremely limited knowledge of Japanese just taking a few classes in highschool (so like 3 yrs ago) and live in America. This means a lot of my knowledge is gathered through the english translations of the super duper incredible and lovely people in the Honeyworks fandom who provide translations (delaix and takanenene esp have provided so much for me being able to understand Dolce) and my own limited Japanese paired with Google Translate for things that remain untranslated.

This only will be drawing on information I have come in contact with and have access to and making assumptions based on that, most (if not all) of which is in the public domain. So things like the Dolce Manga Volumes released via Animate, exclusive 4komas, and Light Novels are out of my area for the most part (apart from again snippets of translations thanks to this fandom’s godlike and generous translators).

I will not be drawing on anything from the first Dolce album with the exception of Nade Nade. From a meta standpoint, I consider those songs as songs made as performance media as opposed to character explorations. Nade Nade is the exception because (1) it was released a whole year before the album and (2) you can tell it’s explicitly an exploration of Fuuma and Kazuki’s interpersonal relationship even if it’s in a slightly more performance based context than the songs that came out with the Dolce LNs. Easiest parallel I can make to show this is if you held Non-Fantasy, Yume Fanfare, and Samishigariya up against each other, you could tell the difference in intended audience and intended purpose the same way the Dolce 1st album, Nade Nade, and the songs of the LNs do respectively. Even if there is some basis to ground Kazufuuma, for the purposes of this essay I’ll be acting under the assumption the 1st album falls under the Non-Fantasy equivalent category.

THAT WAS A LOT OF PREFACING CONSIDERING LIKE 2 PPL WILL PROBABLY READ IT I just have a tendency to anytime I do anything analytical lay down ground acknowledgements for myself to work on just...cuz it makes me feel less guilty for any accidental misinformation even if I’m writing towards my future self to read lolll IM SORRY WITHOUT FURTHER TO DO HERE’S THE BRAIN DUMP

First let’s go ahead and establish why it needs to be recognized as an important relationship. Again, I’m a Kazuki stan. He’s my favorite character not only of Dolce but also of the entire Honeyworks series, and as much as I love him for reasons outside the ship, whether you like it or not Kazufuuma is an essential aspect of his character and narrative. Of course there’s the fact that him and Fuuma are childhood friends, so that’s going to in part define their characters and interactions with each other and those around them. They’re both going to be relevant to one another and important to one another’s stories to an even greater extent than the rest of the members of Dolce. But on Kazuki’s side at least, it’s an EXTREME amount. A running plotpoint in Dolce Diary is the sheer amount of dedication Kazuki has to Fuuma and how much his thoughts and decisions are influenced by Fuuma, whether it be how he feels happiest spending time with Fuuma, how he decided to get his piercing to represent he wanted to protect Fuuma, how he doesn’t want to dislike food so he can eat what Fuuma dislikes, etc. Not to mention running jokes about his borderline overprotectiveness and downright possessiveness of Fuuma, how proud he is when Fuuma gets praised, or that one 4koma that literally explicitly states he can read Fuuma’s mind when he thinks motherfucking ‘dirty thoughts’ about his childhood friend (Fuuma). I still don’t know what the fuck to make of that last bit. Genuinely. Or the fact it’s a fucking running joke. As in it’s not a one off. It’s been brought up multiple times. Kazuki what the fuck.

That’s not to say that he doesn’t have character outside of Fuuma or he doesn’t interact with people other than Fuuma. He’s great friends with Sara, Girisha, and Kippei and is shown time and time again to have fun interactions with all of them, generally acting as the best support friend for every member of the group, not Fuuma alone. For instance how he helps Kippei with his self confidence issues or stays over at Sara’s to protect him from a cockroach (which he fails at lol). Nor is that to say all his interactions involving Fuuma focus solely on his devotion to Fuuma, especially in instances where the manga focuses on Dolce as a group dynamic (though even in that setting there are times where jokes about his devotion are thrown in). He’s kind, he’s stupid, he’s friendly, he’s an amazing character in his own right, and I love him for all those reasons. But that doesn’t change the fact a major part of his character and his character interactions are rooted in Fuuma, and arguably some of his most interesting, eccentric, and notable behaviors and traits revolve around Fuuma (again the mind reading for example).

Hell let’s take it one step further. If you look at the character bios of the Dolce members, you get everyone’s motives for being an idol and interests. Of them, Kazuki is the only one to have another character mentioned directly, not to mention that supporting Fuuma is explicitly stated to be his primary motive as to why he became an idol. Not even Fuuma’s sister is mentioned, though two arguments can be made for this. The first would be that Fuuma’s backstory about wanting to fulfill his dream for himself and his sister was decided later to explain Fuuma’s choice to crossdress though it can be argued it was intentionally done to leave it as a reveal at a later date, to which I would argue I don’t think this backstory was a choice in post. While Fuuma’s dedicated Dolce Diary extra exploring that backstory was released a little less than a year after Dolce was revealed, the preview to set up Fuuma’s backstory was actually the first thing released after the character bios on the Dolce Official Twitter page if you exclude a drawing of Dolce from Yamako. The second argument could be that information about his sister was intentionally withheld to set up the reveal when Fuuma’s extra released to explore it. However, going by that logic (which I do agree with), that would also mean that Fuuma’s inclusion and importance in Kazuki’s character bio also set up his dedicated extra, which I don’t think would be incorrect to assume considering what his actual extra turned out being.

Which brings me to the thing that makes it inexplicable to write off the romantic implications behind Kazufuuma: Kazuki’s dedicated Dolce Diary extra, Suki. I shipped Kazufuuma before even knowing of Suki, sure. But the fact that Suki even exists is a shock to me and drove into me the fact that Kazufuuma wasn’t just my own projection. Again, it’s not a surprise that Fuuma shapes Kazuki’s life. They’re childhood friends, of course they’re going to be important to each other. But this extra explicitly brought Kazuki’s feelings towards Fuuma under a direct spotlight. At first I was thinking oh, this extra was just to acknowledge the fact that Kazuki and Fuuma’s relationship can have romantic implications, but the end of it the conclusion that we got was that it didn’t matter what type of “like” he felt for Fuuma. Originally, I thought it wasn’t anything more than saying there are all types of like, and it doesn’t always need to be explicitly defined, but I appreciated the fact they were aware that they were writing Kazuki in a way that conveyed romantic implications.

Then I thought about it because, again, I love Kazuki of course I’m going to think about his character extra, and realized...that’s not how these character extras have worked. There are only three character extras out as far as I know and have read: Fuuma, Kippei, and Kazuki. If we look at Fuuma and Kippei’s, each extra had a conclusion, sure, but they didn’t have a resolution. Rather, they were simply setting up explicitly what each character’s primary character arc and conflict were. Fuuma’s extra brought attention to the fact that he’s particularly a crossdressing idol by exploring the motives behind it. His choice to be a crossdressing idol is constantly under fire both by himself and the world around him. He’s not immune to those who consider his crossdressing strange, and a part of his story is both finding people who accept his decision to crossdress and to succeed for himself as a crossdressing idol. It’s an essential part of how we understand and define him as a character and it’s a central part of how he interacts with the world around him. For Kippei, it lays the severity of his insecurity under the spotlight and his journey and motives for improving himself. Again, this isn’t something isolated and resolved in the extra; his extreme insecurity and negativity is constantly affecting how he interacts with practically everyone from his fellow Dolce members to his fans despite the fact in all honesty? He’s fucking insanely talented in his own right, his own brother mentioning how smart he is and how he has amazing reflexes. For Kippei, his negativity is an essential part of how we understand and define him and central to how he interacts with the world as much as Fuuma’s decision to crossdress is to him.

Which brings us back to Kazuki, of course. In his dedicated extra, in the chapter that’s supposed to explore and establish and bring attention to an essential part of his character, the aspect of himself under investigation is how he feels about Fuuma. It’s not just how he behaves around Fuuma, it’s explicitly an exploration of his feelings, on top of the fact it’s explicitly an exploration about whether or not he likes Fuuma r o m a n t i c a l l y. Literally the conflict is spurred on by someone outright asking “Do you like him?” and having to clarify “I mean romantically.” What they decided to focus on for Kazuki’s character and emphasize and establish is that Kazuki’s like towards Fuuma toes the line between friendship and romance. His ambiguous feelings towards Fuuma (if we leave them inconclusive as Suki did) are just like Fuuma’s crossdressing and Kippei’s insecurity in the sense the weight of whatever those feelings may be are seen in how he interacts with the world around him and influences his behaviors. It would be another story if they introduced the potential and shut it down all within the extra, because then his central conflict would to me be less directly open to romantic potential and more simply about how his arc was meant to explore the dynamic of the behavior of an extremely dedicated best friend. The fact that he may be romantically attracted to Fuuma or may be only platonically dedicated to Fuuma is instead something that looms over Kazuki in the same way Fuuma’s decision to crossdress constantly looms over him. It’s what Dolce wanted to point to and say this is Kazuki’s central character conflict and central arc: exploring what type of feelings he has towards Fuuma.

Sure, it can be argued that there’s only three Dolce Diary character extras, there’s not enough to be sure about that being the purpose of the extras unless we get the other two’s extras. First, at this point I honestly don’t know if or when they’re going to release an extra revolving around Sara and Girisha just because not only has it been over a year and a half since the latest Dolce Diary Character Extra (Kazuki’s) was released despite the gap between the first and latest Dolce Diary Character Extra (Fuuma’s and Kazuki’s) were within a year of release but also because the Dolce 4komas and comics they’ve been posting to Twitter have decreased (last one being over half a year ago) potentially due to them deciding to focus on releasing Dolce manga content through the purchasable volumes instead. (This is not particularly related to the Kazufuuma argument, just wanted to put out there my two cents on what Sara and Girisha’s extra/focal arc would be. Based on a large part of the Dolce Diary in conjuncture with Can’t an Idol Fall in Love, I’d argue Sara’s would be his journey to regain his passion for performing, and if it’s not that I’d say it’d be coming out of his self-imposed isolation and opening up to people again. As for Girisha, I have less of a concrete idea but I’m assuming it’d be something pertaining to how people often misconceive him whether it be in tandem with his determination, his optimism and sociability, or his stupidity/ability to ignore those misconceptions and work past them. But Girisha is treated like the comedic relief 90% of the time so I’m not entirely sure, but his primary conflict is definitely rooted in misconceptions of him being his roadblock imo. #MoreGirishaContentPlz) That being said, I personally feel like the three are already enough evidence, especially considering it would be honestly even more cruel for Kazuki’s character-centric extra to be focusing on something that wasn’t essential to his character and character arc, anyway. And though it’s not explicitly stated that these chapters are extras exploring a central character, you can kind of tell based on how they are (to my knowledge) the only Dolce Diary updates with cover/title cards each which include their focal character front and center. So working off that fact, the Kazuki-centric chapter established that a pillar to his narrative was his feelings towards Fuuma and that those feelings are still open to romantic potential.

But if you follow me, this is why up until Can’t an Idol Fall in Love With Another Idol’s release, I was terrified of them writing that off. I would have been ok if it was just an arc that was given attention then continued to actively work in the background, as all the character arcs have been over all of Dolce’s content. The fact that they might be giving Fuuma a love interest and giving Fuuma a love arc while Kazuki’s feelings were still up in the air and were still the primary highlighted narrative for him would have been fucking scuffed. To me, it would be like… why would they make him so Fuuma-centric to the point that even his dedicated chapter was not just focused on Fuuma but focused on the ambiguity and potential of him having romantic feelings for Fuuma, yet reduce him to being Fuuma's designated right-hand man. Don’t get me wrong, friendships are just as important as romantic relationships. But again, rather than conclude Kazuki’s answer in Suki to be that his feelings were of friendship, they left it open ended and allow audience members to be actively aware that Kazuki’s feelings towards Fuuma still had potential to be romantically coded. It would just be so weird to quickly close off that narrative by giving Fuuma a love interest as opposed to letting Kazuki conclude it himself. It would be fucking beyond frustrating for me, at least Eventually, I kept trying to drive my hopes that they would explore Kazuki’s narrative at all down to the ground because it was a Fuuma-centric novel; maybe if anything they’d explore those feelings in his own novel after the fact. But then they kept having little drops here and there of Kazuki being even the slightest bit relevant and I’d go back to questioning “Are??? They??? Is this on purpose??? Do they know what they’re doing or are they just doing this because Kazuki’s just so important to Fuuma as his best friend that he’s there as his right-hand I genuinely can’t tell???” And um. Welp.

Safe to say Can’t An Idol Fall in Love sold me on the fact that they know what they’re doing LOL. And to anyone who thinks that Kazuki’s feelings can still be read as ambiguous in CAIFILWAI as opposed to explicitly romantic - whether it be due to a fear they may pull the “I like him as a friend” card or due to the disbelief that they have an explicit mlm main character in the Honeyworks series - I’d like to cover any bases that may make you think this way. If you think it’s just Kazuki acting like a protective friend, why do you think he calls Yui a rival? If you’ve only seen the MV and think it’s ambiguous or can be taken as the "likfe" for friend, then does that mean you think Yui’s feelings toward Fuuma are also ambiguous or as a friend? With the way Yui responds, she is trying to rival Kazuki’s feelings towards Fuuma. She and Kazuki recognize whatever feeling it is that they hold towards Fuuma, both of their feelings are the same type. I don’t think most people would argue that Yui’s confession about Fuuma was one of pure respect and friendship. Plus, if anything I’d argue of the three characters in the MV, Fuuma is the one whose feelings are left the most ambiguous despite him being the central character. It’s heavily implied that he may be forming feelings for Yui, but nowhere is it established either in the song or in the MV, especially if you compare it to Kazuki and Yui’s declarations or if you compare it to Sara’s feelings for Uru in Can’t An Idol Fall in Love. Fuuma’s romantic narrative here is trying to figure out how he feels for Yui, while for Kazuki and Yui they’ve established a rivalry because they both have mutually established they like Fuuma romantically.

If the MV isn’t enough for you and Suki isn’t enough for you for...some reason…??? You can check out the snippets of the light novel which the wonderful takanenene translated: one which revisits the conflict set up in Suki and one that covers the confession scene in the MV in more detail. If the fact that the conflict set up in Suki (aka the lurking feeling of not knowing if all he felt for Fuuma was only platonic or more than platonic) was specifically reestablished in the LN for anyone who didn’t keep up with Dolce Diary didn’t tip you off that it was something important, his behavior in the confession scene as depicted by the LN definitely should have. He’s possessive about his spot by Fuuma’s side. He doesn’t want that spot to be taken by anyone else. Even if he knows that they can help Fuuma, he wants it to be him. And this line: “Kazuki then trails off his words, quietly saying ‘That’s why…’ and then gave Yui a slightly painful smile, his cheeks turning red,” before he declares Yui a rival and states he likes Fuuma. If you can tell me you read that line and are still on the fence about Kazuki’s “like” towards Fuuma being romantic, please message me and I will see how I can get through to you. Like it wasn’t even just a romantically coded confession. It’s just a romantic confession. That “like” is romantic. And I’m so proud that he’s not only come to understand for himself how he feels, but that he’s confident enough to ask the person he sees as a romantic rival to speak in private and not only clarify her feelings for Fuuma but before she can even do that firmly establishes that he loves Fuuma with conviction. Kazuki my boy I’m so proud of you. *sniffs*

And that’s it for establishing Kazufuuma as at least canonically one-sidedly canon and why there’s not only no reason to deny it but also why denying it is a fucking disrespectful move towards Kazuki. He’s a character, sure, but that doesn’t change the fact you shouldn’t write off his struggle to come to be convicted enough to say it out loud. This has been something weighing on him at least a year, if not more (all I know is it started when both he and Fuuma were in some year in middle school). And as a character in a piece of media, I’ve been saying this the entire time, but brushing it off as non-romantic is literally chucking a fucking pillar of his character’s story into the gutter. And to those who may be saying Kazuki’s confession came out of nowhere and is pandering reread this entire fucking essay again I dare you to do it and tell me to my face it’s pandering. Again. Writing off the buildup as pandering is disrespectful to him, disrespectful to his character and narrative, and disrespectful to the wonderful people who have been creating Dolce so diligently and have crafted this narrative for us. Saying his “supposed feelings” and “ambiguous confession” is pandering is like saying Fuuma’s crossdressing is pandering which. If you say either of those I will find you and I will shank you in the fucking gut. Even if you’re not fully into Dolce, recognize these characters are actually very well developed and executed amazingly, as per every Honeyworks character that has come to exist. I don’t blame you if you weren’t aware of the weight of Kazufuuma, but now that you read this I hope you are. That’s mainly what I needed to get out there, but as follows will be me more exploring how Kazufuuma has been built up and generally waving my hand off at where it may be going. If you want you can dip, thanks for reading up to here because I know I repeated a lot because it’s just. So important to drill into your head and has been something I’ve been hung up about constantly. LOL

As for where exactly they’re taking it from this point on, I honestly don’t know. In all honesty, I didn’t even expect them to take it the direction they did. But honestly, I think the direction they went with it is really interesting and better than I could have imagined, in my opinion at least. Honeyworks never ceases to amaze me with their storytelling and narrative choices, and I don’t think there’s any that stand out to me as being severely questionable that they haven’t reapproached at some point down the line. And, again, I think they’re treating this with a lot of care and deserved respect. So I’m just gonna be gushing about how smart they set it up and how smart they’ve been executing it and maybe my own hopes on the direction it could go.

Whether they make Kazufuuma reciprocated I have no real clue or bearings, but to me my gut reaction is they will. Of course, I’m biased, but again if you trace things all the way back to 2018 and step through Dolce’s content and growth from there, I’d say even if they didn’t know if they could execute it like this and see it to fruition, I’d argue that Kazufuuma has been at least heavily implied since the beginning as a relationship they wanted to explore from both sides of the relationship. Obviously I brought up Kazuki’s character bio already, but if you look at the *goes to count* 5th Dolce Diary update already has a joke jabbing at the fact that Kazuki is technically Fuuma’s type (and the way Kippei and Kazuki excitedly react is so cute). The fifth update. And as stated before there are tons of Kazufuuma moments in Dolce Diary, whether it’s played for comedic effect or played straight (and this is post Suki but oh my god I’ve said it before I’ll say it again get yourself someone who looks at you the way Kazuki looks at Fuuma oh my jesus). But song-wise, I mentioned the one Dolce album song I would bring up is Nade Nade and this is where it comes!

Not only is Nade Nade specifically focused on Kazuki and Fuuma’s relationship as opposed to the whole of Dolce despite being the first song, it included the setup/preview of the Fuuma-centric extra prior to the full release of the Fuuma-centric extra itself and was released early as fuck. Literally between the 6th and 7th update to Dolce Diary. Sure, it could be to isolate them as a duo for marketing purposes (they’re very often the two promoted idols together if the whole of the group aren’t included), but the way it’s established as a perspective song as opposed to a general idol duet is what fascinates me. Anyone who didn’t know about Dolce prior and only followed Honeyworks for music would be first introduced to these characters through this song alone, and maybe this is where my Kazufuuma bias comes from but I was one of those people LOL. I thought it was just a cute one-off relationship that they had set up for the purpose of a song and that it was an implied friends-to-lovers story that would never get a conclusion. Also I mistakenly thought Fuuma was a girl oop-. In the full context of Dolce, this song in part helped establish Fuuma and Kazuki more solidly as a unique duo out of all of Dolce, but it also specifically explored through Fuuma’s eyes just how much Fuuma recognizes and appreciates the unwavering support Kazuki gives him to follow his dreams as he wishes. For Fuuma, he loves Kazuki too, though whether it holds any romantic potential in the same way Kazuki loves him has never been explored to nearly the same extent. But Fuuma appreciates how Kazuki’s remained by his side and does everything he can to support him, so Nade Nade explores how his way of expressing his love and thankfulness to Kazuki is by never saying that he needs Kazuki by his side. He’s glad Kazuki’s always been there for him, and his reciprocation takes on the form of being ready to unwaveringly support Kazuki and not ask for more than he already has, even if it meant Kazuki would be leaving his side, despite the fact that he really does wish they could remain together forever just as Kazuki does. The one point he lets himself say something vaguely close to always wanting to stay together, he gets a surprised expression out of Kazuki and says an ambiguous “suki dayo.” Of course, this it much less romantically coded than what we get from Kazuki in Suki and CAIFILWAI, but there is an interesting emphasis put on it nonetheless. Keep in mind, this is all established through the song, which released long before not only Fuuma’s character-centric extra released but also Kazuki’s character-centric extra released, so there is at least a substantial setup for Fuuma’s feelings towards Kazuki’s being strong as well and possibly grow to be reciprocated one day.

I think for me the most fascinating part about Nade Nade is how they tied it back around to Can’t An Idol Fall In Love with Another Idol. Again, without remembering Nade Nade, I still thought CAIFILWAI was brilliantly explored and executed, even if some people would have preferred no love triangle. But honestly, revisiting Nade Nade makes me trust even more the direction they’re taking with this. Whether or not they make Kazufuuma canon mutually (which. Even if they for some inexplicable reason didn’t I’m going down with this ship.), I’m sure they’re putting a lot of thought into the story, because the last bit of Nade Nade directly parallels the misunderstanding that arose from Fuuma mishearing the Kazuki and Yui. Fuuma is resolved to support Kazuki in any area he’s given the chance, and that explicitly includes if Kazuki had some girl he liked, which is what he assumes is going on. The fact that they tied this back around in the form of a misunderstanding was really really smart and Honeyworks is always so good at parallels and references back to their older songs, but for some reason I didn’t expect this. I don’t know how to say why, but the fact that the song that started it all, kicked off both Dolce and Kazufuuma, was directly referenced both visually in the MV with a cameo at the start and narratively despite the central dynamic being predominantly explored in this story in particular was that of Fuuma and another potential love interest and involves said potential love interest for some reason makes me think that (sorry Yui) this is all planned out for Kazufuuma in the grand scheme of things. That being said, I don’t know if me thinking it was planned all along is just me with shipper goggles, but the idea it’s come full circle nearly 3 years later is not shipper goggles and a very very well done parallel in my opinion, whether this trajectory was their plan for Kazufuuma from the beginning or not. Just wanted to gush about that some more.

There’s more I could go into especially if I went into specific details about interactions or specific implications established in Honeyworks' Dolce content about different characters that would be fascinating to explore in relation to and under the lens of Kazufuuma, but I think this is uh...plenty long enough. Plus, I doubt you'll stop seeing Kazufuuma posts from me so those ideas will probably just be miniposts or somethin.

Back to the overarching point of this segment, idk what they’ll do with this story in the end, but do I think Kazufuuma will canon? I’m used to looking at ships that aren’t explicitly apparent with a sliver of skepticism, but all things considered (as I stated before) yeah. I don’t see reason why they wouldn’t now that they’ve explicitly identified there is a romantic dimension to it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Like to me, the setup isn’t something that would be written off as unrequited? And this doesn’t have to play into why I don’t think it will canon, my personal opinion on the Fuuyui relationship (again albeit through the lens of a hard Kazufuuma shipper lmao) has it’s own merits and is really cute, I find it cute in the way I found Koyuhina cute. I personally never really shipped Koyuhina, and especially since they slipped Kotarou into Ima Suki Ni Naru I was more curious about who this kid was and how he played into things I didn’t really see Koyuhina as something that would come to fruition. Similarly, there’s more importance in the overall sense on Kazuki than there is Yui (considering he’s one of the 5 original and focal members of this generation of idols, this would be natural), as well as the fact there’s just way more foundation and exploration in Fuuma and Kazuki’s relationship than there is Fuuma and Yui. As for how much of a balance there is inside the LN itself, the fact that they seem to have spent a substantial amount relaying the foundation of Fuuma and Kazuki’s relationship and re-exploring it (at least in Kazuki’s perspective) at all on top of how much content there is covering their relationship prior to the LN ever since Dolce’s origin just feels like that relationship holds more weight. Pretty much Kazufuuma feels more established as a priority in general. The way I personally hope Fuuyui plays out is whether they wind up holding mutual feelings or not or whether Fuuma doesn’t feel that way towards Yui is they get a relationship akin to Kotarou and Arisa. Albeit, Kotarou and Arisa never viewed each other in a romantic light, but they had mutual respect and solidarity. That’s the type of friendship I hope comes out of Fuyui. And considering there hasn’t been a break-up in any Honeyworks’ canon relationships (nor do I expect there to be… they’re all perfect for each other LMAO) it would actually be interesting if Fuuyui get together but don’t endgame and Kazufuuma is established as the inseparable endgame after some realization or another, though I don’t expect them to go that route nor do I know if that’d be the best way to go about it anyway. Also final point, Honeyworks seems to have a thing for childhood friends trope anyway soooooo owo All in all, don’t know where they’re taking it, just excited to see where it goes.

TL;DR of this *counts* 7 page essay, stan Kazufuuma. Not gonna proof this. Maybe I’ll edit and repost but yall are getting a confusing clusterfuck of ramblings over 2-3 hr periods of me writing across 3 different days at around 5am each day. Uh. If you got this far like and subscribe and-- jk plz reply to this mammoth anywhere you see fit or tell me if you have stuffs to add or counter or whatnot I like hearing people talk about Kazufuuma ;w; I am Kazuki and Kazufuuma brainrot can you tell after reading this? No? Lemme just remind you I’m K--

#honeyworks #dolce #kazufuuma #kazuki haiga #fuuma shirayuki #long post #analysis #character analysis #kinda?#nobody cares trash #also keep in mind this is PURELY for self satisfaction LMFAO read it if u wanna dont if u dont idgaf either way #anyway kazufuuma canon fight me #or have intellectual conversation with me #if you want it on a google doc bc it's easier to read hmu #if you can't tell i think about kazufuuma too much #how much of this is repetitive? probably a lot...

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mrpenguinpants · 3 years

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Alrighty it's been a few hours and I'm fully awake so here's the (mostly) coherent response that I promised:

Okay so when you mentioned how the unknown god said “the arrogation of mankind ends now” it made me wonder if we (Aether & Lumine) had a hand in that calamity that destroyed Kaenri’ah? Whether accidentally or on purpose (hopefully w good intentions tho) we triggered the calamity and the unknown god stepped in like “it’s time to STOP” and even though a lot of other factors went into it she kinda scapegoated the outlanders? Maybe our presence was disrupting the balance of the world lol

OH AND WHAT IF THE UNKNOWN GOD USED TO BE KAENRI’AH’S GOD BUT SHE TURNED HER BACK ON THEM AFTER THE CALAMITY??? BC SHE THOUGHT THEY WENT TOO FAR W THEIR ALCHEMY????? MAYBE??????? Did you already mention this I honestly don't remember lmao sorry

But also I’m super intrigued by the fact that the sky is a hoax as Scaramouche said and the possibility that Kaenri’ah is in the false sky 👀 Bc rn we can see Celestia in game as an actual physical place and I wonder if Kaenri’ah used to also be a bunch of floating islands but the calamity yeeted them into space or something lmao? This also just reminded me that in the traveler’s voice overs they mentioned that the day/night cycle in Teyvat is much shorter than in their world (and ofc we can see that clearly in game) and idk if that was just a hand-wavey way to incorporate this game mechanic into the lore or if it’s actually significant but maybe it means something????? Like idk the calamity fucked up time in Teyvat or something????

Idk I’m word vomiting rn I said I’d write a coherent response once I’m awake but turns out I just can’t be coherent in general lmao

HELLO! IT’S BEEN A FEW DAYS BECAUSE I’M SUPER BAD AT REPLYING ON TIME BUT I’M HERE NOW! TUMBLR WON’T LET ME REPLY TO COMMENTS BUT I AGREE WITH WHAT U SAID ABOUT CHILDE. HE’S SUCH A ONE BRAINCELL DUMBASS BUT HE’S MY DUMBASS. [nvm tumblr fixed itself] I am holding onto his boss fight so I can beat him into submission with Xiao. I AM SO EXCITED FOR FEB 3. IT’S TOMORROW!!!

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Okay, not gonna lie, I really want Aether and Lumine to be horrible people lol. Not in a sense that we caused the calamity in order to wipe out humans with evil intentions, but Aether and Lumine are really sheltered in a sense. Since it’s only been the two of them and they don’t seem to stick around in the same world. Lumine doesn’t appear to have a lot of feelings and hangs around the abyss order while Aether seems to be gaining human emotion (since he basically had a mind reset) and that could be why Dainsleif issued his whole “prove to me that you are fit to save her”. Since he’s super into humanity and hates the Gods. That kinda stuff. But this is me spitballing and wanting everything to be sad haha.

Yo, I wanna see that. The unknown god spitting metaphors and flowery language just to say “yo wtf are you doing, it’s time to STOP.” I definitely believe in our presence was disrupting the balance since Lumine says something like “outlanders don’t belong here” or something like that. Plus all the shit that happened with Aether throughout the story. Saving Dvalin and sealing Osial.

YES. YES. I’M TOTALLY ON BOARD WITH THAT THEORY THAT THE UNKNOWN GOD WAS THE KAENRI’AH GOD. I love those tragic “I used to be the good guy but due to unfortunate circumstances it’s time to stab a bitch” (yo what a status. This is my status now). But I completely believe that Khemia was what caused the calamity. Or even, okay back to me spit balling even tho this isn’t really a theory (and I don’t think this is how genshin is going to go but my brainworms are taking over), since Khaenri’ah was an archoneless land, that doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t gods the same way Liyue has adepti’s right? We don’t know what region Khaenri’ah is yet (at least I think) since Liyue is China and Mondstadt is Germany so I can’t say anything about folklore and what not. But each region so far has some sort of celestial being that isn’t an archon but still protects that specific piece of Teyvat. So what if the unknown god was technically a god, might have been the archon, but perhaps Lumine and Aether dislike the gods and tried to teach the people of Khaenri’ah how to like, rise above or whatever, but that whole situation backfired and started the calamity. And the unknown god was just this whole, misunderstood situation the same way with the salt goddess in Liyue. Havria? I think that’s her name. That could explain why she went after the two siblings and said the whole, arrogation of mankind.

Scaramouche you fucking bitch, explain to me in english what you mean!! Why are you leaving me off on a cliffhanger;; Stupid gremlin smh, I say this but as soon as I see his banner I’m gonna whale for him even though I hate using castors. I’m gonna finally use Mona and Lisa when I get him haha. That is very true tho, I believe Khaenri’ah is the false sky or it has something to do with the sky. YEETED THEM INTO SPACE LOLLL. This kinda reminds me of the gbf lore and the crimson horizon. Basically the gbf main story takes place above the clouds and the crimson horizon is what separates gbf with the “main world”. The main world went to shit so that’s why everyone now lives in the sky. It would make sense since the calamity turned everyone into monsters.

Honestly, I can see it being some sort of hint because genshin is lowkey really bad at subtly hinting at things (COUGH ZHONGLI AND ALBEDO COUGH). Or it could just be a nod to irl people and the day night cycle but who knows. I feel like Venti or Zhongli would say something about it since the calamity started, Mondstadt went to go and help and honestly, the timeline of Khaenri’ah is so fucked. Either way, Scaramouche was on musk reef which does lead to the spiral abyss and time doesn’t act naturally there either so there might be some connections but who knows haha.

Nah nah, I live for this kinda stuff. Don’t worry about being coherent because I’m never haha. Honestly, theory lore stuff needs to be more “slapping the whiteboard as I look at you with my sleep deprived eyes” instead of “this is my 20 page essay detailing the quantum mechanics of fictional characters”.

#genshin #genshin impact #genshin lore #genshin impact lore #genshin theory #genshin impact theory #genshin dainsleif #genshin impact dainsleif #genshin scaramouche #genshin impact scaramouche #genshin khaenri'ah #genshin impact khaenri'ah #genshin spoilers #genshin impact spoilers

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illfoandillfie · 3 years

Text

Easy As A-B-C

Pairing: Professor!Gwilym Lee x Reader

Summery: Professor Lee is getting sick of marking papers, you offer an alternative. One where he doesn't need to think at all.

Warnings: SMUT (18+), unprotected sex, bimbofication (without hypnosis), oral sex (m and f receiving), hand job, light dom/sub dynamic, dom!reader, sub!Gwil, overstimulation, maybe a little bit of hair pulling

Words: 4,537

A/N: This was massively massively inspired by my love @dracoladon and her Drarry fic Lucid (seriously, go read it because she’s a much better writer than me and also sex dumb Draco is hhhhhhh). Reading it made me want to write more himbo fics but without all the hypnosis stuff thats in my Future Management series. Then I got talking to @peachydeacon about himbo!Rog which led to talking about himbo!Gwil and this fic is the result of our discussion lmao. It was also partly inspired by a post on a porn blog that popped up on my dash but I can’t link to that because tumblrs dumb.

Also, it is a professor gwil fic but set after reader has graduated so it’s all above board lmao

Blurb Advent: Day 24

Taglist: @vee-ndetta @atomic-watermelon @kellypenac @labessieisallama @deakyclicks @jennyggggrrr @drowseoftaylor @hannafuckingsucks @i-cant-hangout-im-drumming @queenmylovely @ilovequeenmorethanyou @johndeaconshands @borhapbois @stardust-galaxies @cherries-n-rocknroll @rogersslave @scorpiogemini

Gwilym looked unreasonably hot while he was grading papers, his brow knitted, wearing a look of serious concentration made all the more noticeable by the reading glasses sliding down his nose. His loose tie and the undone top buttons of his business shirt lent him a casually dishevelled air, and that wasn’t even mentioning the way he absentmindedly twisted his pen between his fingers as he read and reread sentences he was struggling to understand, occasionally pausing to underline something or write a note in the margins. It all painted a very sexy image, the kind of serious sexy only a professor could achieve, though this sexiness was nowhere near new. You’d found his manner oddly arousing even when he’d been your professor. Of course, that had been a few years ago and well before you’d had your chance encounter in the local second hand bookstore that led you to ask him out. He’d stuttered out something about never having even thought of you as more than his student and “really I feel almost as if I’ll get in trouble for the conversation as soon as I get back to campus.” But the awkwardness soon changed when you confessed to having had a minor crush on him back in the day and having since hoped to run into him. He seemed more open to the idea of dinner with you after that and, if you were being honest, more cocky too, but cocky in a decidedly dignified and charming way. Anyway, one thing led to another and now here you were somewhere close to a year and half later and you were struggling not to stare at Gwil as he graded papers and looked professor-ally disarrayed and hot.

You knew it was something to do with the Romantic era poets that the students had to write about because he’d read a question out to you earlier to get your opinion of if it was confusingly worded. “No, I don’t think so,” “Then why in god’s name do none of my students get it?” he looked about ready to hit his head against the desk until he passed out but he returned to the topmost paper with a sigh and ruffled hair from where he’d run his hand through it. That’s when you’d started trying not to stare. A tall order when all you could think about was dragging Gwil to the bedroom and ravishing him enough to make him forget all about John Keats and poetry and the English language itself. Not that that was exactly hard. No, Gwilym had a tendency to get a little dazed and confused when you really gave it to him. Sex drunk you’d decided to call it. A transformation that you quite delighted in witnessing and causing. Gwil was sharp as a tack usually, always ready with some obscure fact or quote from literature. It was part of what made him such a good teacher, his memory for all things bookish, as well as his approachable (if a little stern) demeanour and his determination to get the best from his students. But it wasn’t hard to shut down his brain, cloud his memory and entirely befuddle him. One time you’d snuck into the bathroom at the restaurant you’d gone to for dinner and poor Gwilym had become so spaced out he’d spilt half a glass of wine in his lap and then walked into the glass door as you left, even with you leading him by the hand. You supposed that what they said about great power and responsibility was true. All the same, it was a fun power to wield and you knew that, with the right sort of attention, you could have Gwilym babbling incomprehensible gibberish with no memory of what a poem even was, which was surely something he’d appreciate right about now.

You blinked yourself from your reverie as, finally, Gwil set his glasses aside and rose from his seat, groaning as he stretched out the stiffness in his back. He rolled his neck back and forth, your eyes following, before letting his shoulders drop and moving to sit next to you on the couch. “I can’t do it anymore, I can’t read another word about Byron or I’ll loose it.” He sighed, draping an arm around your shoulders and leaning into your neck. “Byron? I remember that assignment. Everyone hated you for it,” His breath was warm against your skin as he spoke, sending a tingle down your spine, “Well if this year’s lot is anything to go by, the feeling was probably mutual,” “Mmm, I remember one girl saying she was going to shove her copy of Don Juan up your arse if she didn’t pass,” He lifted his head again and laughed, “And yet my rectum remains Byron fee and no other injuries befell me, so either I taught you enough to get by or you were all a bunch of cowards,” “Bit of both probably. And why would this year’s be any different, huh?” “I don’t know, you haven’t read any of their attempts at cohesive analysis. Some of them are just throwing out terms like allusion and anapestic and personification all willy-nilly, clearly without properly understanding them. ” “I think you’re being too harsh on them. They’re first years after all and it’s not always easy to understand all that poncy poetical bullshit. Plus, you know it all already so of course everyone else seems stupid to you,” “Maybe,” he conceded, though it seemed to take some effort. “Honestly, someone should put you in their position, see how well you go with it,” “Yeah? And who would do something like that?” Gwilym laughed as you shifted to straddle his lap, accepting the kiss you offered, “You?” “Maybe I will. Spell personification for me,” “You know it’s not high school English, right. We don’t do pop quizzes on spelling and grammar.” “I know you don’t, but this is my subject and I’m testing spelling. Besides,” you let your hand drop between you, brushing lightly over the front of his pants, “I promise it’ll be fun.” Gwil gave a half-hearted eye roll, “P-E-R-S-O-N-I-F-I-C-A-T-I-O-N, personification. D’you want me to use it in a sentence too?” You knew he’d get it right. Gwil always had been good at spelling off the top of his head which you supposed was a side effect of all his reading and the years devoted to the written word. But it was still a little annoying. Mostly because he was being a bit of a tool about the whole thing, but it didn’t help that you’d grown quite wet thinking about how you’d like to have him, like to turn him into the fucked out airhead you’d seen before. You shook your head and tutted at him as if he got it wrong. “No, that’s definitely it. I’ve just read it about a hundred times, I know I’m right. P-E-R-S-O-N-I-F-I-C-A-T-I-O-N,” he spelt it faster that time, trying to prove that you were wrong. “Try allusion for me,” “A-L-L-U-S-I-O-N,” Right again. You sighed as if you were disappointed. Gwilym raised his eyebrows but said nothing. “What about caesura?” “C-E-A-S-U-R-A,” The mistake was an easy one to make, two letters flipped around the wrong way, and you could tell he knew it was wrong as soon as he’d said it. He was surprised when you leant forward to kiss him again, cupping his jaw with one hand as you dropped the other and slowly pulled down the zip on his work pants. “But I fucked up,” he said softly, eyes still closed as you pulled away a few centimetres. You just smiled as you thought of a new word, “Anapestic,” It was another word Gwil had mentioned as seeing in his student’s essays so you knew it would be fresh in his mind and he proved as much when he spelt it, “A-N-A-P-E-S-T-I-C,” He was right of course, so you tutted and pulled your hand away from his crotch, grabbing his chin with your other and forcing him to look at you, “You can do better than that.” His features shifted at the sudden loss of contact, the look of concentration returned once more. If anything, your much closer proximity to the expression made him seem all the more hot but you resisted the urge to give in and drag him to the bedroom, curious if he’d catch onto your little game now and, equally so, to see if he’d play along, “Try Onomatopoeia.” A longer word gave him more chances to get things wrong but would his pride and his brain allow that? Apparently so. “O-N-O-M-” Gwil paused and thought for a second, his eyes narrowed as his looked at you, “O-N-O-M-A-T-O-P-I-A,” the last three letters were said with such deliberate diction that you knew he’d figured it out. “Good boy,” you said, letting your hands slip inside his undone pants to massage his dick. His hips jolted at the contact and he let his hands fall to your arse, squeezing. “What about, dactyl?” His reply was instant, unthinking, and totally correct, “D-A-C-T-Y-L,” You clicked your tongue condescendingly as you once again removed your hands from him. “Fuck,” “Well that’s what happens when you get things wrong, honey, and such an easy one too,” “I didn’t get it wro- fine, give me another,” You smiled, unable to hide how delighted you were that he was interested in following your rules, even if it was just his competitive streak rearing its head to show that he could out smart you, “Assonance,” Gwilym spelt the word slowly and carefully, making sure to only say one ‘s’ and to leave off the ‘e’. And you made sure to reward him for it, shuffling backwards on his lap so you could shimmy his pants down his thighs and wrap your hand around his cock. He raised an eyebrow at you but otherwise made no comment as he leant back in his seat to enjoy the attention. “Romanticism,” Once again Gwilym was careful with his spelling, intentionally replacing the ‘c’ with a double ‘s’ but that was the kind of behaviour you wanted to encourage so you kept stroking him off, twisting your wrist, dragging your thumb over his flushed tip. It must have felt good with the way he was sighing, shifting his shoulders as if to move his whole body closer to yours. “So clever baby, what about,” you paused, dredging up memories of poetry analysis and the words you used to have burned into your brain but which you’d not had much use for recently, “Enjambment” “Ummm, E-N,” Gwil hummed as you leant over him and let a trail of spit drip onto his cock, using your hand to spread it over his length, “Enjamb-ment, uh, E-N-J-A- no E, no A, M-E-N-T,” You leant into his ear and spoke softly, “That’s right, being so good for me, so clever. What should I do next though? Ride you? Or maybe suck you off? Or just keep doing this?” “Uh,” Gwilym shook his head a little as if to clear it, “mouth? Please?” “Of course, baby. If you can spell dissonance for me.” You were quietly confident that he’d get the spelling wrong, already noticing the first sign of his impending brainlessness, extra filler words where he’d normally not need them. It was funny though, usually he wouldn’t reach that stage until he was much closer to nutting. “D-I-S” he rushed through the first three letters and then stopped, biting his lip, “T-um, A-N-E-N-C-E.” You were sure the errors in that word were less intentional than the previous few and, as promised, slipped off his lap and settled yourself between his legs, pulling his pants off so he could spread them wider for you. You held eye contact as you let your tongue trail along the underside of his cock, tracing along a vein, though you couldn’t help but smile as he groaned above you. “Can you spell Decasyllable for me?” you asked before closing your lips around the head of his cock. “What? Oh, um, D-E-C-K- fuck,” he broke off as you swirled your tongue around his tip. “Fuck’s not a letter, baby,” you sank down on him again, bobbing a little lower. “I know, um, Deck-syllable, D-E-C-K-A-S-Y-B-L-E, I think. Is that right?” In answer you hummed and took him a little deeper, pushing his shirt up towards his chest. Gwilym took the hint and pulled it off before he grabbed your hair, leaning his head against the back of the couch. For a moment you just focused on sucking him off, listening to his shallow breathing and whiny groans. But you weren’t finished with your game yet.

“Epigraph?” you asked before bobbing down on him again, pushing yourself to take him deeper still. Gwilym remained silent as you gagged and pulled back from him again to breath freely. “Well?” “What did you say?” “Epigraph. Can you spell that?” He nodded as you resumed your bobbing, his hand grabbing at your hair, “E-P-P-E-G-R-A-F-F.” You hummed around him and his hips bucked up, pushing him further down your throat for a second. “No, don’t stop,” he whined under his breath as once again you let him fall from between your lips. “Sorry baby,” you wrapped your hand around his base and switched back to jerking him off, “you’re so hard though and I know you want to earn your orgasm like a good boy,” Gwilym nodded. “Okay, so spell meter,” “M- oh, I don’t know,” “You do know, baby, you just gotta try. Meter,” He scrunched his face up in thought, “M-E-E-T-R,” “See, I said you knew it, and you did it so well!” Gwilym gave you a dopey smile, looking proud at your praise, “I did?” His mouth dropped open with the movement of your hand. “Of course baby! You got it completely right because you’re so clever. What about sonnet, do you think you can do that one for me?” He nodded enthusiastically, “S-N-E-T,” “Very good! Okay, three more and I’ll let you cum,” “Okay!” “Okay, what about,” you thought for a moment, watching your hand pumping over his shaft as you trailed your fingernails lightly over his thigh, “Spell rhyme,” “Ummm,” Gwilym bit his lip in thought, soft grunting noises rising in his throat in time with your strokes. “It’s a bit of a tricky one,” “Yeah.” “And it’s hard to concentrate isn’t it?” “Mmhmm, so hard to con-ten-tate,” he thought for a little longer as you slowed your hand, “rrr- R-I-M,” “So clever baby! Okay canto,” “Oh! Ummm,” Gwilym pouted and whined as you unexpectedly drew the tip of your tongue around his head, “I don’ know,” “No?” He shook his head, eyebrows furrowed. “Okay what about, poem?” Gwilym seemed to have reached the last dregs of his knowledge, grunting in frustration as he shook his head again.” “You sure you don’t know?” He bucked his hips up into your hand as he shook his head again. “Alright, I’ll give you an easy one then. Spell your name for me, spell Gwilym,” Gwil’s eyes lit up at the suggestion but his face quickly slipped into a frown again, the expression getting more pronounced with every passing second he didn’t say anything. He sought out your face, his eyes brimming with frustrated tears, “I don’t…” his fists balled up as he looked to you for help. “You don’t remember?” He shook his head once more, a tear shaking loose and rolling down his cheek, “you said it was easy.” “It’s okay if you don’t know,” “Really?” he sniffled. “Of course it’s okay. You’re not supposed to know things.” “I’m not?” “Awww, of course not baby. That’s why I’m here, to know things, and you’re just here to make me happy.” Gwilym sighed and leaned back against the couch, smiling again. “Do you want to give it a try for me?” “Umm,” he whined as you slowed your strokes “It would make me very happy,” “Okay, umm…G? L? ummmm, M?” “You’re so clever, baby!” Gwilym giggled proudly and grinned at you as you adjusted your grip on his cock. “You’re my good, smart boy, aren’t you baby?” “Mmhmm,” he bucked his hips towards you as you took him into your mouth again. “Feels go-od,” he mumbled, almost panting with how close he was. You dragged the hand that rested on his thigh up to cup his balls as you sucked on his tip until he moaned and came, spilling his seed over your tongue.

You kept working your hand along his length, even after you’d pulled your mouth from him. “Was that a good orgasm baby? Did it make you feel good?” He nodded, pouting a little as you kept wanking him, “good oggsam,” It took all your effort not to laugh at that, biting on the inside of your cheek to keep from letting so much as a chuckle slip. Very few things delighted you as much as when Gwil forgot how to talk properly. “You know,” you said as you finally let his cock free, “sometimes when people have orgasms they feel euphoric. Do you feel euphoric?” “Mmhmm, you-porik.” “Clever boy. Do you want to help me feel euphoric?” “How?” “With your mouth,” “Oh! Okay!” You braced yourself against his knees as you stood, leaning forward to give Gwil a small kiss on the lips. He closed his eyes and smiled up at you contentedly as you shimmied out of your own clothes, dropping them all to the floor. “You going to let me lie down?” you asked, tapping Gwil on the shoulder. He looked around confusedly for a moment before his eyes settled on you, growing wider as he realised how naked you were. Without warning he surged forward, his hands grabbing your arse as he nuzzled his face in the valley between your breasts. If it were up to Gwil he would have stayed there all day but you had need for him elsewhere so you yanked his head back by his hair, earning a small noise of displeasure. “Don’t complain, baby. You want to make me feel euphoric, right?” “Mmhmm,” he hummed earnestly. “And how do you think you could do that?” “I don’t know,” “Maybe, cunnilingus?” “cun-un-un-un-gus,” “Exactly,” you directed his gaze down to your pussy, failing to hide your amused grin. But he was too far gone to notice, happily slipping to his knees in front of you. Telling him to wait for a second, you climbed onto the couch and spread your legs, beckoning him between them once you were comfortable.

He hadn’t been able to say the word but that didn’t mean he wasn’t skilled at the act. A string of soft hums and throaty sounds rose to your lips as he licked your cunt, the scratchy sensation of his beard only amplifying the soft, wet, warmth of his tongue. “Can you, oh, can you spell poem for me baby?” Gwilym hummed and then started naming letters, his mouth still pressed against your cunt as if he didn’t realise he couldn’t talk and suck at the same time. You didn’t bother to stop him when he said too many letters or correct him when all of them were wrong. You just let his breath wash over you, his tongue flicking against your clit with each new letter, eliciting longer moans and sighs from you. “Fuck Gwil,” you panted, “keep going,” “Keep going,” he repeated, his voice muffled as he dragged his tongue all the way down your slit and then back up again, making you whine. You jolted when he reached your clit again and pressed against his head, keeping him close to you, your other hand trailing up your chest to tweak your nipples and knead your breasts. Occasionally you’d give him an instruction – “faster please,” or “do that again,” or “fuck Gwil, right there,” – and he’d repeat the words back to you, softened and often a little slurred together or mispronounced, before doing as he was asked, drawing you closer to release. He was pleased whenever another groan or mewl slipped from your lips, responding to them with sounds of his own as if he were savouring a particularly delicious meal. It seemed he’d taken what you’d said about making you happy to heart, though some of his whines might have had more to do with his cock, hard again and straining to be touched as his attention remained focused on you. “I’m c-lose ba-by,” you grunted as Gwilym pressed his mouth to your lower lips, as if to give you a soft chaste kiss, only to begin shaking his head side to side, rubbing his face against your cunt. “loase,” he muttered to himself, trailing his tongue back up to your clit, making you grind your hips up into him. It was impossible to keep your mouth shut in the face of such a feeling, wantonly moaning as you felt your orgasm bubbling to the surface. Gwilym hummed against you in response to a particularly loud moan which managed to be your undoing, your knees trying to clamp shut around his head as he continued to suck at your clit.

When you calmed enough to let go of his hair and loosen your thighs from around his ears, Gwilym looked up at you. His face was shiny and wet but he seemed to have regained some of his usual awareness. His eyes weren’t quite as vacant and his smile less dopey than it had been. “Feel good?” he asked, sounding almost normal except for a slight lightness in his tone. “Very good baby,” you leaned forward and kissed him full on the lips, tasting yourself as he opened his mouth and accepted your tongue. Slowly you dropped your hand between you, finding his cock again, not quite done with your brainless toy. He grunted against your lips and bucked into your hand as you stopped his return to sense. “Isn’t this fun?” you said softly as you pulled back, holding Gwil by the chin to stop him from trying to follow. “Yeah, fun,” a smile slowly tugging at his lips, “what is?” “Not needing to think, baby,” “Oh! Yes,” he laughed. “You’re too pretty to have a brain anyway, aren’t you? Much better off letting it leak out of your head,” “Mmhmm, much,” “And do you know what good, dumb boys get?” “No?” “They get fucked. Would you like that?” “Yes yes yes,” “Alright, lie back for me,” you chuckled, giving his cock a final stroke. Gwilym settled on the carpet on his back, grinning as you straddled his lap. Silently he held out his hand, all but two of his fingers folded against his palm. “No, I don’t need your fingers sweetie,” you said, giving the tips of his two fingers a light kiss, “as dextrous as they are and as much as I enjoy them, I think I’m okay skipping straight to your cock,” He nodded, letting you place his hand down on the floor again. You watched his face as you slowly sank down onto him, once again the picture of cunt drunk bliss with glazed eyes and his lip between his teeth. He smiled as you leaned down to kiss him, rolling your hips against his slowly. As you tongues entwined again, Gwilym framed your waist with his hands, slowly dragging them up your sides and onto your chest. He cupped each of your breasts in one of his palms, squeezing softly as you rocked forward and back. “Better than Byron isn’t this?” you asked, pushing yourself up a bit, but not so far you couldn’t kiss him again. “Wha’s Byron?” You laughed, “Y’know I think this might be the dumbest I’ve seen you. Can’t believe all it took was a rigged spelling test. He obviously didn’t understand, staring blankly back at you.

What he did understand was that you were moving further away from him and he whined as you pushed yourself to sit higher again, bracing your hands on his chest as you used your knees to raise and lower yourself. It still wasn’t enough though so you shifted again before too long, placing a hand behind you to grab Gwil’s leg. You leant back on it changing the angle of Gwilym’s cock, and felt his hands drop from your chest, no longer able to reach as easily. They came to rest on your leg, his fingertips digging into your skin as you rode him, keening as you felt the start of your orgasm building in the pit of your stomach. “Fuck Gwil, fill me so well, feels so good,” “My dex-ik-tus cock?” You couldn’t help but laugh, taken by surprise at his misunderstanding and mispronunciation of dextrous, but you nodded in agreement too, repeating your sentiments about how good it felt. “Wanna make me feel even better?” “How?” You sat forward again and reached for his hand, pulling it to your clit. Gwilym took the hint, messily rubbing as you bounced on his cock, but his whines and moans only grew as you rode him. “You’re close?” “Mmhmm,” You were on the verge of asking if he could hold it when he came with a groan, pulsing inside you. But you didn’t stop. “I’m close too, baby, so I’m gonna keep fucking you, okay?” He nodded, eyes fixed on you. “Good boy.” You panted, grabbing his wrist to hold his hand at your clit and adjusting your rhythm. Each time you sank back down onto him you did it harder, slamming his cock into you as deep as you could manage, groaning with each one. Your orgasm was frustratingly close but Gwilym was becoming steadily more sensitive as his subsided, wincing more with each of your thrusts. The winces turned to whimpers which turned to whines as you whispered that you were so close. “Almost baby, almost,” “Please. Hur’s,” “Nearly, just. One. More,” you threw your head back with a moan as you finally found your release, Gwil whining when you pulsed around him, a fresh tear running from the corner of his eye onto the carpet as he squirmed under you.

“Sorry, baby,” you said softly as you carefully dismounted him. He hummed as you kissed him again, leaving an extra kiss against the tip of his nose. “Did so well, such a good boy for me,” “Yeah?” “Mmhmm, so good,” He gave you a slightly watery smile and let you pull him into a cuddle, sighing contentedly when you brushed your fingers through his hair. You stayed like that for a while, knowing that later you’d regret lying on the floor for so long but unable to find the energy to move or the willpower to tell Gwilym you had to let him go. He gradually lost the fucked out expression, becoming more aware of his surroundings and more capable of clear speech. “How are you feeling?” you asked when you realised he’d blinked away the last of his sex drunk vacancy. “Better than before. Little tired but much more relaxed and very satisfied. And, before you ask, yes that’s satisfied and yes I can spell it if you want,” “I believe you.”

#my writing #my fics #smut fic #gwilym lee x reader #gwilym lee smut #gwilym lee imagine #this has been half written in my drafts for much too long now #but im very happy to be able to finally post it!#just got one more thing to write for this advent countdown #which i'll try and knock off after i get back from church #so that its ready to go in the morning #anyway #hope ya'll like this #i might kind of love writing pretty dumb boys #blurb advent 2020

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latulasbian-1 · 4 years

Note

what are your thoughts on kankri? personally i never understood the appeal and im interested to hear your take since he Was on the b tier of your list

OK! Sorry for lateness but I only noticed your question at like 2:00 AM and needed a full tank of brain-gas to be able to convey my thoughts even semi-coherently.

So Kankri’s a weird one, probably one of the most convoluted and self-contradictory characters in Homestuck. Its fitting given he’s pretty much a one note joke and hussie’s one-note joke characters actually wind up being either his most oddly complex (see: equius and feferi for instance) or most sympathetic (see: Nepeta). Kankri’s a bit of both imo, though I wouldn’t call him a favorite for me.

Kankri’s characterization is built almost entirely on one fuckin’ note: “LOL AIN’T TUMBLR SJWs FUNNY AND ANNOYING!?!?!?”. If you disagree with this then I don’t even know what to tell you, bc everything from his style of long-winded monologues (that wind up running up on Hussie Ableism Moments bc in-narrative his infodumping is supposed to be annoying???) to his inability to take social cues to his supposed-to-be-interpreted-as-excessive use of trigger warnings to his unapologetic killjoy attitude to his supposed hypocrisy/”privilege” are literally all just a fucking layer cake of anti-SJW stereotypes. This is where the issue of how the fandom interprets Kankri kicks in, as people’s opinions on him (aside from a few diehards) tend to scale from “DAWWW CUTE WIDDLE UPPITY BEANBOY” to “fucking annoying neoliberal”. For the matter, neither of these are intended by Hussie, while he did design him to be cute he wasn’t meant to be hateable for leftist homestuck fans as a (neo-)liberal or faux leftist. Hussie just designed him after everyone hussie found annoying in the social justice community primarily on tumblr. Even his political monologues, though not WITHOUT hypocrisy and bullshit, tend to actually skew towards “pretty fucking reasonable hussie just thinks people being upset by bad stuff is stupid”.

Now, people cite Kankri being ableist in his criticism of certain other dancestors for ~conforming to stereotypes~, which yes from an in context scenario is pretty fucking bad. If someone IRL is dealing with their disability in a way you think seems pretty stereotypical keep that thought to yourself. HOWEVER, AS ONE OF THE MOST CRUCIAL POINTS TOWARDS KANKRI BEING GENERALLY SYMPATHETIC, WE GET THE META ELEMENT. Hussie, in writing a hypocritical mansplainer who goes on and on and on about everything thats politically incorrect about the people around him, practically beat-for-beat replicates talking points PEOPLE HAVE USED TO CRITICIZE HOMESTUCK ITSELF. YES! MITUNA’S PRESENTATION AS A CHARACTER IS 100% UNAMBIGUOUSLY AWFUL IN ITS PORTRAYAL OF PEOPLE WITH BRAIN INJURIES AND MENTAL DISORDERS. DAMARA IS A RACIST STEREOTYPE SO BAD HUSSIE SHOULD GET THROWN IN JAIL. INCEST IS BAD. If ANYONE in homestuck should’ve pulled the meta knowledge shit in post-canon, kankri would’ve been a WAYYYYYY better candidate than dirk for it, especially since kankri seems halfway to realizing he’s fictional just by political analysis of the story he’s in! Kankri seems to exist at the apex of Hussie’s confusion about fandom, given he’s baffled enough by people being obsessed with his work yet so intensely negative that he can only seem to think of them as obsessive manchild wierdos with no sense of rational thought. As someone who myself unironically loves Homestuck and yet have an entire third of my brain dedicated to ripping it apart on an ethical level, I can see some of myself in that turtleneck’d contrarian. Just because someone is a fan of something doesn’t mean they will or should unthinkingly defend it from all recourse. This is something homestuck as a whole struggles with, I think back to the aspect or extended zodiac quiz where one of the questions amounted to “someone is talking shit about a show you like, how do you respond” and there wasn’t even an answer for “actually listen to what they’re trying to say and consider if they could be right”. Kankri is a symbol of sorts for those critical enjoy-ers, in a way. A stupid silly not-that-meaningful way, but a way. I think people should reclaim him.

I’ve touched on it a bit before, but the last main sympathizing aspect of kankri for me (aside from personality things like his frankly unearned patience with a friend group that entirely fucking hates his guts) is a trait share by almost all the dancestors: Hussie’s fucking disturbing use of mental illness & psychiatric disorders with them. Between Kankri’s unwillingness to observe common social cues, his overtly poised and practiced manner of speaking, his obsession with using trigger warnings to warn off confrontation in leu of not just speaking his mind with everything, his tendency to cling to certain articles of clothing for long periods of time, his implied difficulty taking care of himself physically, and the fucking insulting “mom-friend useless-manchild-who-needs-nannying” dynamic he has with Porrim, he comes off (intentionally or no) as a beat-for-beat embodiment of an autistic person as seen through Hussie’s tropey and horribly ableist worldview. This is a common trait he shares with both Aranea and Mituna, as well as many of the other dancestors to lesser degrees (many of them, like Mituna, also have OTHER mental disorders flat-out-stated in such a way that makes their depiction just fucking confused and bad). For me, and for at least SOME other people, it makes unbiased critical reactions to them damn near impossible. They deserve better than how hussie can write them. In a lot of ways I have friends like Kankri, and Hussie’d almost fucking certainly find them just as embarrassing and annoying as he meant for Kankri to be.

So yeah, Kankri isn’t my favorite by any means but i don’t feel like i can or should condemn him. He’s fun. I’d watch his video essays.

And this isn’t even BEGINNING to touch on how much I loathe Porrim as an example of “good cool fun feminists that hussie can sexualize!” And her more open bisexuality than other trolls being both a tool for fetishization by Hussie and a fucking skin-crawling thing to use as a contrast for Kanaya’s status as either “the only confirmed lesbian in homestuck (until postcanon showed rose was a lesbian too)” or “the only lesbian troll in existence ever bc thats totally how sexuality would work with aliens” (sorry if you ascribe to the “all trolls are bisexual bc they’re supposedly binormative as a get-out-of-jail-free card for hussie’s hetero-ass ship tease shit” then. well get better soon)

(seriously though everyone who pulls the “kanaya is the only lesbian alternian” shit owes every lesbian 100 dollars)

#homestuck #kankri #longpost #discourse #Anonymous

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katierosefun · 3 years

Text

so after one really big latte, a muffin, a run which resulted in a near accident with an oncoming car, and a shower in which i contemplated my own mortality, here’s my thoughts on the adorable me & au podcast, because babe wake up new hyperfixation dropped. very spoiler-y, i’m sorry in advance for how f*cking long this is, this might only have like two people reading this but i have many thoughts please listen to this podcast because it’s so cute and i listened to it all in about 2.5 hours?

- firstly: the main character is super relatable. like, scary relatable. meet kate “acunningplan” cunningham, a gal about to enter her senior year of college and just kinda,,,lost. she works as a barista and very confused, very...stuck gal by day, fic writer (and still very stuck gal) by.........not barista hours.

- honestly, i love kate. idk i’m about to enter my senior year of college, and bro i related so hard to her fears of “bro i can’t even think about next week without feeling overwhelmed”. she misses her best friend whitney a lot, who is currently on the other side of the country for an impressive internship. so that can be kinda lonely.

- but fear not, kate has an escape, like so many other fic writers/fandom people: fanfic. this whole story references tumblr without actually naming tumblr (let’s be real....it’s tumblr, from the “notes” to “this stupid app keeps crashing”), and kate follows this tv show about werewolves and supernatural creatures. very gay. only problem is that there’s not a whole ton of people active in the fandom, since this show is relatively new.

- however, in this small fandom, kate meets ella: otherwise known as “hella-enchanted”, who is another fic writer.

- kate is very obsessed with the idea of alternate universes, and for that alone, i love her.

- okay, so even if you’ve never fallen in love with a person online/in fandom circles, i just wanna say that ella and kate’s interactions are still so super relatable. the shooting messages, the starting random conversations and getting a little thrill when you see someone liking your personal post or whatever. it’s very wholesome.

- also, at the end of episode 1, kate goes on about how “yeah, fanfic is kinda odd, but it led me...to you” and it was so soft and gentle you just know your heart is gonna melt huh

- at one point, kate decides to be vulnerable via vent post about something that came up on the show (and oh god yeah i feel...things. kate relates very hard to one character in the tv show she’s following, and tbh,,,yeah. i can’t quite word it right now, but i think anyone who feels kinda.....stuck? would relate.)

- the “EXACTLY ONE PERSON ASKED FOR THIS ESSAY SO HERE IT IS” please

- also oh :’)))) kate talks about ella’s playlists and when i tell you i squeaked a little bit because oh hey--

- anyways lol yes can you relate to like,,,posting a vent post and forgetting to delete it and being mildly horrified (but also mildly touched) when someone actually responds?

- ella’s very sweet, just responds with “seems like one of my favorite fandom people needed a pick-me-up” and :’))) i would die for ella! (i mean, i would die for all the characters)

- okay yes also all the bits where ella and kate scream at each other about fic. very relatable, very real, you can tell that the writers of this podcast really knew this feeling, and i just :’)))

- THE TWO DEBATE OVER TITLES,,,,,kate keeps sending in crack-y titles and also song lyrics, and ella comments on “well,,,i just read this whole wikipedia page, so i think i’ve lost the high ground”, so if y’all KNOW i started laughing at that

- also LMAOOOO the moment when conversation diverts from fic and fandom to slightly more personal things! kate being like “oh,,,,,you have an actual job! like,,,you’re an actual adult and.....how’s that?” and then quickly rambling on via message “actually let me change the topic because that’s probably too personal”...

- okay so there’s this bit where ella drops the fact that she’s never read anne of green gables because “listen,,,,you have an ex-girlfriend who sang the anne of green gables musical all the time--” and kate’s “.......ex-girlfriend? you had an ex-girlfriend? girl--” (and BACKSPACING ALL OF THAT because “god i’m such a freak”)

- much gay disaster

- so much gay disaster

- opportunity for kate and ella to meet irl comes up! at a fan convention! in toronto! (and kate lives in bc). kate’s best friend (remember, internship one?) invited kate over to toronto for this thing anyways, and then ella posts something about “heeeey i’m gonna be in the area so if anyone wants to meet up for the fan convention...”

- let me just say......kate chucking her phone across the room because she freaked out about that. again. very cool, very nicely done, very relatable, etc.

- ALSO,,,,i forget if this was one of kate or ella’s fics or if it was the actual tv show, but there’s this tidbit where the characters in the literal fandom has this conversation:

“don’t waste your time.”

“what?”

“don’t waste your time on me.”

and the way that reflects kate’s feelings-but-she’s-not-trying-to-think-about-it for ella please let me just die here

- okay, so kate does decide to message ella about the meet-up, and let me just tell you, kate’s inner monologue about the worst possibilities for ella’s responses:

“1. no response. which is terrible.

2. you find out you’re not wanted after all. :(((((

3. the most terrifying response of all.......” (an enthusiastic “yes i’m so glad we can meet up!!!”)

- well, of course ella responds with #3.

- gay disaster kate not knowing how to acknowledge her feelings for ella...she goes on this “you don’t wanna come across as....y’know because if they suspect that....y’know.....and like, i don’t....y’know--” oh my god kate

- anyways, kate works at a coffeeshop, right? and her co-worker stewart (nonbinary pansexual co-worker! we love to see the rep!!) being like “oh yeah maybe you can bring over your friend!” and kate panicking because “ohhhhh i’m not too sure about that,,,,she’s,,,,,,,,,busy......” (ie. the awkward moment of having to explain that,,,,,,your online friend isn’t exactly someone you’ve met in real life,,,,,,,,and not sure exactly how to explain that so you just,,,,,,“ohhhh uhhh......y’know...............it’s really hard to.......get her out of.....work.....”

- kate and ella video-chatting for the first time is very cute, very gay. very gay.

- they swap “how’d you know you were gay / liked girls” stories :’)))

- “that’s a cute story!” “you’re a cute story” [awkward silence] “please let me hide under the desk now” (have i mentioned that kate’s a disaster? i love her, but you’re a disaster. we need to be best friends.)

- kate.....describing herself as “irl fanfic disaster waiting to happen” and the whole “i didn’t know we were actually dating until she asked if she could kiss me” lmaoooooooooo (but okay yes this is also a mood? like,,,,,,idk something about heteronormative standards so like,,,,,it’s so stupidly hard to figure out if a girl is flirting with you or if they’re just being nice i am glad kate’s such a disaster)

- in other news: kate’s “how tf do i write a kiss scene i don’t like the word lips ughhhhHHHHH” (yeah, mood kate)

- lmao stewart (kate’s co-worker!) just chilling with kate and being like “oh yeah i figured you had a girlfriend? the one you’re talking about? ella?” and kate blanking because “wait you thought ella was my girlfriend? she’s not....uhhh....” and then later drinking with stewart and rambling about ella and panicking because “what if she realizes i can’t talk about anything except this tv show what if she thinks i laugh too loud what if i have horrific body odor what if she realizes i have NOTHING to say what if our meeting goes SO terribly that i need to deactivate and change my name just so i could like her posts at 3 am” and then her small “please forget i said any of that”

- oh kate :((((

- kate :((((((

- k a t e :(((((((((((((((((((

- anyways, kate does go to toronto.

- meets ella.

- very cute.

- ella...........very gay. they go into a coffeeshop and kate doesn’t know what to do.

- okay but what’s hilarious is that ella,,,,,seems so cool and suave and i too would be kind of intimidated by her but then these two idiots really talk about writing kissing scenes and the build-up and ella’s voice gets all,,,,,,suggestive and there’s this.....awkward gay silence between the two oh my GOD they’re both IDIOTS

- also okay yes kate and whitney, a irl friend, having a heart-to-heart. good. we love that. also, whitney being like “I MISSED YOU!!! YOU IDIOT!!!! and i’m glad you have a new friend, and you’re happy, but I MISSED YOU!!! I HATE THIS CITY AND I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING!!!” (whitney is also very relatable. ily whitney.)

- they’re so cute. they hug, and it’s sweet :’)) also, then kate says in a stupidly small voice “i think i’m....kinda in love with [ella]?” and whitney being best supportive friend--

- OKAY so we finally get an episode of ella’s perspective

- listen, you’re gonna think ella’s this cool, suave person who has all her own gayness put together (i mean, she kinda knew since she was 9 or 10 years old? she’s had a girlfriend? she seems like she has her life together? she’s waiting to get into grad school? she has a job? she just seems....cool and knows what she’s doing).

- but then you realize. ella is just as much a pining mess. (her bullet point list/schedule in her head is so relatable. as someone who uses her notes and reminders app religiously, that was just :’)))

- ella: reasons why this is not a date. and then....kate sends a message. (ella: reason why this....might be a date....kate keeps saying stuff like...that.)

- kate rehearsing how to tell ella that she maybe kinda likes her? very cute. (”you know the feeling in your chest when....uh, you know when you feel like you have a frog in your stomach--oh god not the frog NOT the frog”)

- the love confession is very cute, and also very relatable. “i like you a lot” “i like you too!” “no i mean,,,,like i like you. wait. which like do you mean? wait that’s not english. uh. what did you say?”

- kate’s “I HAD A WHOLE DRAMATIC FANFIC CONFESSION PLANNED OUT”

- kate and ella just spilling everything made me :’)))

- “i like how your brain works” “i made so many posts hoping that you would just talk to me” “you always make me laugh” “you just make me feel...better” “you make me smile”

- “this whole summer you’ve been making me smile and i guess it kind of freaked me out? ...i don’t know where my life is going but if i have a choice, i want to go in any direction you’re going because you are cute and smart and amazing and i like you a lot, ella. like that. so yeah. that’s what i was thinking i’d say.��

- i essentially explaine dthe whole plot but

- i love this podcast a lot

- it was very sweet

- and very cute

- very wlw

- i don’t even mind that i almost got hit by a car while i was running and listening to this it was worth it

- idk. just like. anyone who’s ever read or written fic or just like...not necessarily fallen in love with another person? but at least relating to that feeling of “oh god i am not qualified to talk to this person” and “oh god what if they realize i’m actually,,,,a loser” and “oh god wait how to friend” can probably hit a lot of people

- but that said. the romance was very cute, very sweet, makes me :’)))

- okay i’ll stop talking now but i just. it’s very cute, very relatable, i wish we had a season 2 but i think it’s a limited series. (but they’re living rent free in my head! forever!)

#caroline talks #oh god.......oh god #i'm so sorry for how long this is #but in case you couldn't tell i have literally so many feelings #so many feelings #yo @ me and au creators: thank u for making me feel seen and wanting to cry because of it!#it's beautiful #and very gay #and like idk even if you've never fallen in *love* with a fandom friend i think you can still hardcore relate to this?#just because like......bro there's something..........so soft about this #also.....gay disasters #also really saying 'hey everyone's actually super awkward there's no such thing as being cool and suave'#also just......AGH no someone please scream with me about this #i am going to SCREAM about this forever #i also....once again: feel WAY too seen #like.....WAY too seen #anyways #me & au

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adultswim2021 · 3 years

Text

Ephemera Week (2002)

I really wonder how effectively I’ll be able to do this in 2003. In 2003, Adult Swim started doing the black and white text bumps, where they give max sass and NO EFFS (fucks), so every week had unique content. I definitely don’t have the resources to catalogue every bumper or even come up with a decent “best of”. Ephemera Corner 2003 may look very different. To quote my good friend Zorak, “Brak, do you ever think about the future?”. To this I say, yes. Yes, Zorak, I do.

BROADCAST ANOMALIES AND SPECIAL NIGHTS!

Adult Swim Action (and other stuff) | February 23, 2002

February 23rd was the first installment of Adult Swim Action. Up to this point, Adult Swim aired a block of mostly comedy capped off with Cowyboy Bebop. This was the first formal separation of Action and Comedy. I remember the bitter rivalry between the two fandoms on various message boards I posted on. It really did seem like a venn diagram with almost no overlap; action fans hated the comedy shows (maybe they liked one or two but hated the rest) and the same went for the comedy fans, except most of the comedy fans I knew were devout anime haters.

At the height of my anime animosity an internet ex-friend of mine started a message board called ANIME SUCKS. It was an experience I’ll always remember fondly. At it’s peak it had over 1000 members. All but about a dozen of those members were actually ANGRY anime fans who just stumbled on the board and were FURIOUS at us for being anti-anime, and we’d just act like obtuse dickheads about it. Like, we’d act stupider than they were and just wind them up.

We developed a few tricks to really set somebody off. For example: they’d write an impassioned defense of anime as an art form, and say something like “it’s not all like Pokemon or Dragonball Z”, to which we’d reply “actually those are the only two animes I like”. This really got them. There was a special thrill to just replying “miyazaki is an idiot” to a guy’s 6-paragraph essay about why anime was “good, actually”, prompting an even longer response. It was really fun! We didn’t have to harass people online, they’d just come to us to get abused. I’ve never seen bait get taken so effortlessly. One day that guy just closed the message board, locked everyone out, and disappeared forever.

That was some aside, huh? Anyway, the arrival of Adult Swim Action meant that Adult Swim stopped airing the Thursday night repeats of Adult Swim Comedy, which was a shame. It Also meant Adult Swim’s Sunday night had an extra hour to fill, which they did with Rocky & Bullwinkle and the Popeye Show. People complained. I didn’t. Vintage animation is just a different take on the “adult” label. Besides, I was used to tuning out by 12AM anyway, so even if I didn’t like those shows (I did!) I wasn’t missing anything, really. But yes, if it were a full hour of Space Ghost repeats I guess that would’ve been better.

The Lewis Lectures | May 19, 2002 - 12:45 AM

A repeat of Lewis Lectures? IT HAPPENED! But what was so different about this broadcast of Lewis Lectures? Well, they accidentally scrambled the SAP audio with the default English audio, causing the Spanish soundtrack to play in tandem with the English one. It was bloody well fucked mate. This is simply no longer England.

I remember becoming an Adult Swim completist and taping this, considering it some kind of void in my collection. Part of me wishes I saved the recording, so I could combine it with the inferior YouTube rip currently up and have a closer-to-pristine copy than the one that’s available. But also, JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THIS IS LEWIS LECTURES WE ARE TALKING ABOUT. How much pain can I inflict on myself?

Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law Mini-Marathon | September 15, 2002 - 11:00 PM

On this night they aired a little Harvey Birdman marathon of the 4 episodes. This was kinda baffling, as Birdman had 6 episodes to its name and they’d been repeated into the ground by this point. I guess it goes to show that Adult Swim kinda considered Birdman to be their prestige program. I’m hard-pressed to call any one Adult Swim show “smart” in a way that’s apparent on a shallow level. Birdman is set in a courtroom, animated the most competently out of all their other shows, and involved cultural references in a showy way. Like, Space Ghost having Dave Willis absurdly shout “UP THE CHAIN” in the background of a Space Ghost episode is almost just a weird easter egg. But Birdman? Birdman was name-dropping Hanna Barbera characters the same way Frasier would talk about whatever gay shit Frasier talked about.

They aired The Dabba Don, Shaggy Busted, Shoyu Weenie, Very Personal Injury in that order. I would’ve swapped Shaggy and Shoyu and for Bannon Custody Battle and Death by Chocolate, but that’s just me, I guess.

vimeo

Adult Swim New Years Bash hosted by Carl and Brak | December 31, 2002 - 11:00 PM

Adult Swim officially ended 2002 with this: a night hosted by Carl and Brak in Times Square, watching the ball drop (which was FREAKING MEATWAD!!!!). I remember this night fondly. Unfortunately I can’t find the whole thing, but here’s a single segment I found on vimeo to give you some idea. I think I had it up at one point and Turner very annoyingly had it taken down.

I used to have this massive physical media collection; stuff on VHS and DVD and DVD-R that was meticulously catalogued. I ditched a lot of it in favor of digitizing stuff like this, eternally keeping it on hard drives that I meant to back up but never did. It seems more convenient, but it isn’t. If this were 2003 and I needed to show you this, I would be able to retrieve it from one of my many shelves. I might still have this, but would have no idea where to look for it and it would probably involve me getting in my car and going out to my storage unit and pulling every single box out. I turned it into ones an zeros and stuck it on a nondescript black box that could very well be dead. And now it’s not even on YouTube. Sad? Sure, it’s sad.

PEAK EPHEMERA

(phrase stolen from Grifthorse podcast)

Hey, here are some videos I found on YouTube in case you wanna go down a wormhole of watching old Adult Swim commercial breaks. May the gods of posterity keep them online forever:

February 4, 2002

Spring 2002

June 16, 2002

June 30, 2002

July 27, 2002

August 2002

November 17, 2002

November/December 2002

MAIL BAG:

This ends EPHEMERA WEEK. We’ll do actual episodes soon!

What's the scariest thing you seen on adult swim?

I don’t know if I have a real answer for this. I don’t think I actually get scared by stuff in movies or TV shows. I can’t even come up with a funny answer. Remember the end of that Metalocalypse episode where the little sick girl is dead and her eyes turn into maggots and you hear that screechy voice was like I’M DEAD BECAUSE OF YOU!!! I’ll just go with that even though it made me laugh really hard

Ever watch Limmy's Show

I am content just being vaguely aware of Limmy (no, I never watched his show. Seems good).

Please don't do such a big mailbag. I couldn't believe how many r-words wrote inane bullshit to you. Let keep this blog about the real stars: Master Shake, Space Ghost, Brak, Zorak, Meatwad, Frylock, Debbie, Black Debbie, Carl, Sparks, Stormy, Hesh, Moltar, Harvery Birdman Captain Murphy, Dr. Quinn, Paula, Marco, Brendon, Jason, Melissa, The Mooninites, the Plutonians, Peanut, Coach Mc Gurk, Mentok the Mindtaker, Virjay, Antoin, Colby, Trotter, Adair WE ARE THE UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE :)

I can’t believe this IDIOT doesn’t get that by typing such a long message he very IDIOTICALLY contributed to the length of the Maili Bag... LMFAO, what a IDIOT

This is maybe the funniest blog on tumblr. You really think these nasty little cartoons are special, huh?

Hey than-- oh :( Yeah, I guess so :(

would you like master shake if he did the whole thing

I’m sorry what

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #ephemera

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prettywordsyouleft · 3 years

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I used to write on tumblr since 2012, I used to write for Big Time Rush, One Direction, The Wanted, 5SOS, Austin Mahone, Cameron Dallas .. I’m pretty much old lol, then this miserable little pill appeared and kept on messing with my self esteem and confidence as writer (if I may call myself that) idk if it was one person or more but they kept coming harshly at me and my happy safe place pretty much became just like my reality that I’ve been escaping by being here *im dramatic af* but I just kept on going on hiatuses just so they can forget about me and let me be but that just never happened and I decided to stop writing at all, no one knows how it feels to hold back your imagination and lose all self confidence that I you can’t even trust yourself anymore to write something as simple as college essay!! It’s really hard to find another hoppy and it’s really hard to stop yourself from doing what you love fearing your own mind will let you and other reader down cause I’ll never be good enough so PLEASE never listen to anyone saying dumb shit just to get to you for whatever lame reason.

I’ve been writing fanfic since 2005-2006 though only came to tumblr in 2018. Whilst I have loved my time here, and it still is my preferred place to write fiction, it is the most dramatic place to post on. I’ve never faced so much criticism, ridicule or hate before on a public platform such as this. But even more so, I’ve never received such beautiful and kind support as I have here either. Anon hate is the worst, and comes with a lot of backlash if I respond to it. I’m often told I’m problematic because now and then I do respond to it and that I should just ignore it every time.

In the case of today’s message, it was totally harmless - to me - and I could have easily just pushed delete. I chose to reply because whilst I might have laughed, to someone else, that could have been the start of them giving up writing which NO PERSON ASIDE FROM YOURSELF has the right to pressure you into doing. However, sometimes I get really awful messages to the point that I’ve considered deleting this blog numerous times just to avoid the bullshit. Of course, I never do... because at the end of the day, it’s their problem, not mine. I know what my actions are, and if I make a mistake, I’m the first to stand up, apologise, educate myself on my mistake and move on. So for those who choose to be entitled or take their own hurt out on others, I know it’s not my poor actions that have led them to do it.

But I am human, and I don’t have a thick skin. I do let things get to me too easily, and I know many writers who have also had attacks and felt uncomfortable from them. Whilst I might have laughed at today’s message, I have cried over some in the past. And yes, I’ll admit, I choose to have anon on. So therefore, I leave the door open enough for those nasty comments to come in. But for every anon hate I get, I can count many more kind and generous ones that make it worth it.

Anon, reading of your journey broke my heart. How dare anyone target you like that so much that they take away your joy and love for something as creative and passionate as writing. Last year, I faced some of the worst feelings of my adult life from this website and I actually brought them up in therapy. I felt so stupid when I said them out loud to my counsellor, but she actually validated my fear, and pointed out my need for acceptance as a human was allowing me to treat myself really badly, because I was carrying around evidence that didn’t belong to me. Anon, it sounds like you too, after becoming hopeless from your situation - and rightfully so, that sounds so soul-destroying - are carrying around evidence that isn’t right. These people aren’t the ones holding your imagination hostage now though. Their treatment of you in the past has made you so reluctant to try again and I really hope you can break free from this! It’s taken me several months now to even feel comfortable with the idea of starting to let things go, and further, to allow myself to believe I’m a good person again. Cyber bullying is a real thing and can be very cruel... and I get so upset when people tell me to just not let it get to me. Sure, I’d love to! But when you hear the same thing over and over... or if someone believes in something that isn’t true about you and carries that around as fact, it does become harder to navigate. Anon, I hope you have a really good supportive network that you can turn to and I also hope you can try and stop suppressing your natural love for writing. If you ever need someone to talk to and feel comfortable doing so, please don’t hesitate to message me. Thank you so much for feeling brave enough to share your story with me. That takes a lot of courage, and I’m so honoured you trust in me enough to share it.

Whilst I get frustrated, hurt, cry, angry, and dramatic at times, I write because it helps me as a person. I value that writing has a huge impact on my anxiety and my personality as a whole and could never let anyone take that from me. If I ever stopped posting here, you best bet, I’d be still writing somewhere in this world. I really hope you can write even just for yourself again soon <3

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kaiawrites · 4 years

Text

Stupid Plan

Remus Lupin x fem!Reader

Word count: 1.6k

Promt: “Are you jealous?” “That’s cute.”

Summary: Y/n is convinced Remus Lupin doesn’t like her, that is, until one of James Potter’s stupid plans actually works.

Warnings: none that i know of except my bad writing

a/n: hii this is my submission for Millie’s ( @iliveiloveiwrite )writing challenge, and my first time at writing on tumblr. this is kinda bad but uh i hope you like it anyways :)

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Y/n L/n was extremely, irrevocably and very obviously in love with Remus Lupin, and she was pretty sure everyone could see it except the subject of her crush himself. That’s why she was very surprised by a certain James Potter’s question one evening when they were hanging out in the Gryffindor common room together.

“Hey y/n/n, wanna go out with me?” he asked and y/n chocked on air.

“Excuse me?” she retaliated thinking she for sure had heard him wrong.

“Well you know what going out means don’t you?” he asked sarcastically.

“Yes I know what it means, why are you asking me that is what i’m asking. You-“ she cut herself off, looking around the common room to make sure they were alone.

“You do know I like Remus don’t you? And besides, aren’t you completely in love with Lily?” y/n asked, her confusion being overshadowed by the embarrassment of having to admit her crush so bluntly. She knew— or at least thought she knew— James knew about her feelings for the werewolf but she still wasn’t used to speaking about her feelings so openly.

“Yes of course I know you like Remus, blimey you make it so obvious i’m surprised he doesn’t know yet. And of course i’m still irrevocably in love with my dear lily flower.” he said the last part in a mix of a love struck and a singsong voice.

“Uhhh, then why are you asking me out” y/n asked confused as ever.

“Well you see, I was wondering the other day why my darling Evans doesn’t seem to like me back even though all of her friends have told me she reciprocates my feelings so,” James took a pause for dramatic effect, something y/n found stupid but also very James.

“I thought, if I make her jealous then maybe she’ll realize that she likes me, so I thought who better to help me than my very best friend y/n. So what do you say?” James asked with hopeful eyes.

“What! I thought I was your best friend! YOU TRAITOR” said, or rather shouted Sirius making y/n jump, not even having realized he had entered the room. She looked toward him to see an overly exaggerated expression of betrayal on his face.

James sighed at his best friend’s antics and filled him in with the stupid plan he had previously pitched to y/n.

“Ooh this is like killing two birds with one stone,” said Sirius mischievously. Y/n sent him a confused glance which he ignored before continuing.

“Who do you think will crack first, Moony or Evans?” Questioned Sirius.

“Lily,” answered y/n without much of a second thought, to which James and Sirius responded with hopeful and perplexed glances respectively.

“Why are you so sure y/n/n?” Asked Sirius quizzically.

“Well for one, Lily definitely knows James likes her, I mean you’ve been asking her out for years, and also, Lily definitely has feelings for James as well, all she needs is a little push, it wont take much,” y/n explained.

“Meanwhile Remus somehow still doesn’t know about my feelings and most likely doesn’t return them” she added, masking her disappointment.

“What makes you think Moony doesn’t like you back?” asked James, very well aware of his friend’s feelings toward the h/c girl.

“Well I've flirted with him thousands of times and he either didn’t care or didn’t notice” she concluded, defeated.

“Well I think he likes you, but don’t take my word for it, if you agree to this little “arrangement” you can find out if he really does like you,” proposed James.

Y/n pondered over the offer. There was no harm in it really, she was just helping two of her friends get together, and conveniently finding out along the way if Remus liked her back. As much as she hated to admit it, James’s stupid plan wasn’t that stupid.

“Alright, I agree but, in no circumstances will I kiss you,” bargained y/n, not even wanting to consider the possibility of kissing the boy she considered a brother.

“Deal,” answered the bespectacled boy, pulling a face at the thought.

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The next morning, y/n woke up early to get to breakfast before the swarm of people came in as she usually did. Fine, maybe the real reason was that she could spend a bit of time alone with Remus before the rest of the students arrived, but nobody had to know that. She made her way around the corridors of the majestic castle all the way to the Great Hall. Her conversation with James from the prior evening had almost slipped her mind, that is until she saw him sitting down at the Gryffindor table, waving her over with a bright smile.

Remus had gotten up early as he usually did. At first, it was just because he was an early riser, but now it was a way to have a bit if free time with y/n before everyone else got there. Or at least it usually was, because for some reason James had gotten up even earlier then Remus. At first, Remus was thankful for the company, but as time went on, Remus was starting to think James would still be here when y/n got there, which Remus did not want. Remus’s fears were confirmed when y/n entered the Great Hall and James was still there.

Y/n made her way to the Gryffindor table where she had spotted James waving her over and Remus looking at her with the same smile he had every morning when they would have breakfast together. Y/n looked confusedly at James, but sat next to him none the less.

“What are you doing up so early?” y/n asked him skeptically as she served herself breakfast.

“Couldn’t pass out on an opportunity to hang out with you love,” James answered with a wink making y/n blush.

Remus looked between the two skeptically, sure, James was usually quite flirty, but never with y/n. Remus thought the boys had caught on to his feelings for the y/h/c haired girl by now despite never having explicitly talked about it, but maybe he had been wrong because here James was, obviously flirting with her, and it made Remus’s blood boil. First, James came in and stole Remus’s time with y/n, and then he spent the whole breakfast flirting with her.

As more people started filing in, Remus kept glaring daggers at the close proximity between y/n and James, but didn’t comment on it. Lily, who had come in around 10 minutes prior, was in a situation similar to Remus’s.

“What’s happening?” She hissed under her breath, more to herself then anything but Remus heard her anyways.

“Beats me,” mumbled Remus as an answer.

Y/n was actually surprised at the results of James’s little plan. Lily was good at hiding her anger, but y/n could tell ticking her off. And, to y/n’s surprise, Remus also seemed quite tense, and it made a tiny bit of hope bubble the pit of y/n’s stomach. Maybe Remus actually did like her back. She was thrown out of her thoughts when James kissed her on the cheek making her go beet red.

“I thought we said no kissing,” y/n hissed so only James would hear.

“Oh come on it was just a kiss on the cheek, besides, it worked didn’t it,” he said while gesturing towards Remus who was gripping his fork so hard that it had started to curve in a way it wasn’t supposed to.

Warmth spread in y/n’s heart at this, but it was quickly replaced by a cold, guilty feeling when Remus abruptly got up and left the Great Hall, mumbling an excuse about a forgotten essay.

“Hey guys, I forgot my potions text book in my room, i’ll meet you in class,” said y/n quickly making up an excuse to head out of the Great Hall and go after Remus.

She picked up her bad and hastily walked out of the Great Hall. Once she passed the doors, she saw Remus rounding up the corridor towards the courtyard and ran after him.

“Remus!” she exclaimed to catch his attention. The boy in question didn’t stop, in fact, he only started walking faster.

Once y/n had caught up with him, she opened her mouth to talk to him but he beat her to it, stopping abruptly.

“What? You want advice on how to ask out James or something,” he spat, poison lacing his tone.

“Are you jealous?” asked y/n teasingly. Remus’s eyes went wide.

“What?! N-no why would-“ started Remus, but y/n cut him off.

“That’s cute,” she said with a shy smile.

“Wait, what?” asked Remus, confused.

“James and I aren’t a thing, we were just trying to make Lily jealous, and, you as it turns out,” explained y/n as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, and Remus suddenly felt relieved, but really stupid.

“Oh,” he simply breathed out. “So you don’t like James?” He added.

“No! I like you, you idiot, I thought it was obvious!” She said laughing.

“Really, you like me?!” Asked Remus dumbfounded. He never thought y/n, beautiful, smart, kind, perfect y/n would ever like someone like him, but here she was, telling him that she did.

Y/n stepped forward and grasped Remus’s hand in hers, making the boy’s heart flutter.

“I was wondering if maybe you would like to go to Hogsmead with me this weekend?” She asked, suddenly nervous that Remus hadn’t actually explicitly said he liked her back.

“On one condition,” he said, “I’ll go with you if I get a kiss,” he said with a smile, and y/n happily obliged.

#millieswritingchallenge #remuslupin #remus lupin #remus x reader #remus lupin x reader #marauders #harrypotter #harry potter #sirius x reader #siriusblack #sirius black #jamespotter #james potter #james potter x reader

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