#it’s been a decade but I’m still obsessed with this cartoon

[valexarts]

In a couple of days this drawing of mine will turn 3 years old 🥳

#gravity falls #gravity falls fanart #dipper pines #mabel pines #digital art #my art #artists on tumblr #old art #about my art #ilustration #it’s been a decade but I’m still obsessed with this cartoon #paranormal activity

[yandere-daydreams]

Title: Idolification.

Pairing: Yandere!Itadori Yuuji x Reader (JJK).

Word Count: 5.0k.

TW: No Curse/College AU, Fem!Reader, Non/Con, Prolonged Stalking, (Unintentional) Emotional Manipulation, Oral Sex, Drunk Sex, Unprotected Sex, Age Gap (Reader's 27, Yuuji's 22), Intimidation, Brief Mommy Kink, Pepper Spray, and Obsessive Behavior. Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.

“I’m so, so, so, so sorry.”

“It was an accident, you don’t have to—” Yuuji was cut off by another splash of milk, quickly followed by another jet of water. Her makeshift treatment was harsh, the temperature alternating unpredictably between ice cold and scalding hot, but Yuuji took the abuse with a smile that was almost bright enough to distract you from the red, aggravated skin around his eyes. Almost. “It’s alright,” he managed, eventually, doing his best not to sound like he was being slowly drowned in your bathtub. “Believe it or not, that’s only the second worst thing I’ve gotten in my eyes.”

Knowing him, it was probably closer to the fourth or fifth, but that did little to ease your guilt. He’d been leaving as you were getting home from your second twelve-hour shift of the week, and from there, it’d been a comedy of errors. He spotted you coming down the hall, haggard and bleary-eyed, and saw the babysitter who’d spent more summers than not keeping him (and, by association, his older half-brother) out of trouble before their family fell off of the face of the planet, and reacted the way Yuuji reacted to most things – with open arms and a contagious smile. You’d looked at him, a far cry from the kid you’d spent so much time looking after, and seen a very strange, very grown man loitering outside of the door to your shoebox of an apartment before charging towards you with a manic expression and, well, you had always wanted an excuse to use the pepper spray you carried near-religiously. It was only a shame it had to be on someone as sweet as Yuuji.

Now, you were on your knees on the floor of your bathroom, your fingers tangled in Yuuji’s hair as your roommate gently waterboarded him with a cartoon of organic oat milk in one hand and your decade-old showerhead in the other. The front of his t-shirt was soaked through, his lung half-flooded at least, but he was still grinning like you’d greeted him with a blank check and a litter of puppies. “Honestly, it’s on me,” he insisted, his enthusiasm too potent not to be genuine. “Miss Shoko mentioned she was living with someone.”

At the mention of your roommate, Shoko Ieiri, your attention shifted to the woman in-question. You weren’t an idiot. After the shock died down, it hadn’t taken long for you to piece together why a young man would be rushing to get out of your apartment while your attractive (albeit, socially dead) roommate was home alone. When she met your prying eyes, you shot her a pointed glare. “Cradle rocker.”

She threatened to turn the showerhead on you, but relented as soon as you flinched away. “He’s in one of my classes,” she muttered, then pushed herself to her feet with a soft groan. “We’re out of milk,” she said, shaking the empty carton. “Let his eyes air-dry. I’ll be in my office – come get me if he starts crying again.”

“I’m a doctor too, y’know.”

“You’ll be a doctor in another year. Right now, you’re an intern.” She eyed Yuuji wearily. “An intern who physically assaults her patients, at that.”

Without any real way to retort, you stuck your tongue out – a gesture Shoko mimicked as she slipped out of the crime scene that was your bathroom. Despite Shoko’s advice, you fished a towel off the nearest rack and handed it to Yuuji, who accepted it with a grateful hum. “I really am sorry,” you repeated, burying your face in your hands. “It’s just, it’s been so long, and you look so different, and god, it’s been—”

“—ten years,” Yuuji filled in, probably tired of hearing you repeat the same two excuses. “I remember, ‘cuz you invited us to your graduation that year. I wanted to go, too, but Gramps got sick and…” He trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck with an airy chuckle. “You know how it is.”

“Oh my god,” you gasped. “I loved your grandfather. How is he?”

Yuuji’s smile wavered for the first time. “He passed, actually. A few years ago.”

Fuck.

If the building was going to collapse and bury you in the rubble, that would’ve been the time.

“Sukuna’s doing good, though,” Yuuji went on, kind enough to pretend there hadn’t been a lapse. “He opened a restaurant a few months ago. It’s a hole-in-the-wall kind of place, but it’s been keeping him out of the ring.” His expression brightened. “And you’re a doctor! I mean, I knew you would be, but you’re a doctor!”

You felt your face heat up his brother’s name, your eyes falling to the tiled floor. “Almost a doctor. I just started my internship.” And they’d already managed to work you half to death. “You’re in med school, right? Shoko never teaches undergrad.”

“It’s my first semester,” he said with a slight laugh. “It’s harder than I thought it’d be, though. Miss Shoko offered to give me a few pointers, but, y’know—” He sighed, let his head lull back. “I’m starting to think I’m just not smart enough for stuff like this.”

“You shouldn’t say that kind of thing about yourself. You’ve always been—” You cut yourself off with a sudden gasp, clapping your hands together. “If you’re struggling, let me help you study! I have tomorrow off, and I promise, I’m not as strict as Shoko.”

Immediately, he straightened up, your towel still strung around his neck and his smile returned to its full brightness. It only dimmed slightly when he glanced down at his damp shirt. “…there won’t be as much pepper spray this time, right?”

His smile was as contagious as it’d been when he was still a kid, begging you to let him stay up yet another hour past his already-lenient bedtime. Despite his bloodshot eyes and your lingering, only slightly lessened guilt, you found yourself biting back a grin.  

“No pepper spray, this time. I promise.”

~

“Room for one more?”

She glanced over her shoulder as you struggled past the jammed sliding door, taking a moment to evaluate your stiff shoulders and strained smile over the thick frames of her glasses before nodding curtly. Your relief was immediate and all-encompassing. Honestly, you should’ve known better than to do anything but shake your head and flee the country when Yuuji invited you to hang out with a few of his friends, but he’d sworn up and down that it wasn’t a party and promised that you wouldn’t be out of place and pouted in a way you’d never been able to resist. You were starting to think that, no matter how old you got, you’d never learn to say ‘no’ to Yuuji.

The blaring music was only vaguely muffled by the glass, the blurry outlines of other guests playing behind thin curtains. There was a red solo cup in your hand, a lipstick stain on your cheek from a girl who’d passed out half an hour ago, but you were hyper-aware that you were too old to be at a college party with people at least half a decade younger than you, in the best cases. You braced yourself against the balcony railing with a soft groan, crossing your arms and hanging your head low enough to warrant a hum of sympathy from the woman next to you. She held up a box of cigarettes – the cheap kind you and Shoko used to split on the days you had to decide between food and rent – and you accepted her offer with the kind of gratitude you could only assume a starving lion would’ve shown to a limping gazelle.

“Maki,” she said, shaking one into your open palm and fishing a lighter out of her pocket. “You’re one of Itadori’s friends?”

“You could say that.” You let her light you up before taking a shaky drag, the bitter taste a welcome distraction. “I’ve been tutoring him for a few weeks. I think he just invited me as a way to say ‘thank you’.”

Her eyes flashed with recognition, the corner of his lips turning upward for the first time. “You’re the chick who used to babysit him. (Y/n), right?”

“He’s mentioned me?”

“He won’t shut up about you. Every other word out of his mouth is ‘(Y/n) this’ or ‘(Y//n) that’.” She tapped her cigarette against the edge of the railing, sending a few flakes of ash fluttering down to the street below. “Megumi gets it the worst, but we’ve all had to see the fucking pictures.”

“That… that sounds like him.” You forced out a half-hearted laugh, then wavered. “I’m sorry, pictures?”

Maki opened her mouth, but the balcony door was jerked open before she could respond. Yuji appeared in the open entryway, cheeks flushed and grin wide. He drawled your name in a single slur before moving on to more important topics. “We found a—We found a karaoke machine! ‘gumi thinks he can get it running!”

You sent Maki an apologetic look, but she only shrugged, a sliver of a grin. “Better get him tucked in.”

This time, when you smiled back, it didn’t quite reach your eyes.

~

It took a month for Yuuji to start ‘forgetting’ his textbooks when he came over for your little study sessions.

It took three for Yuuji to drop the pretense of studying at all – calling you out to some late-night diner or lethargic early-morning café or, better yet, showing up at your apartment door unannounced and empty-handed with only that unnerving smile and a half-baked excuse to spend time with you.

It took six for his hand to drift just a little lower than your shoulder while you watched some awful, b-rated horror movie on your well-beaten couch. You let him reach your waist before clearing your throat and shifting away, your smile pained.

“I… I think you should probably leave,” you half-mumbled, your voice shaking. “It’s getting late.”

“We haven’t even gotten to the best part yet.” Predictably, Yuuji was undeterred. His persistence used to be endearing, but now, it just felt unfair. “I don’t mind sleeping over, if that’s what you’re worried about. It’s not like we’ve never spent the night together.”

A nervous laugh, his hand planted just a little too close to your thigh. “I wish you wouldn’t phrase it like—”

“I mean, I know I’m your type.” It was almost impressive, what he could say with such an innocent expression. His free hand found its way to your other side, pinning you between the arm of the couch and his broad chest. “I know you had a thing for Sukuna, and everyone says we’re practically identical. That means you should be into me too, right?”

“Yuuji,” Your eyes darted to your phone, left absent-mindedly on your coffee table. The urge was there, but it wasn’t like he would actually hurt you. He’d always been a sweet kid – a little overzealous, but that wasn’t a crime. This was just… a bad decision, one you had to stop him from making before he did something he’d regret. “Sukuna is my age, and—”

“I don’t care about that.” He cut in swiftly, definitively. His bright eyes had glazed over, catching the dim light of your T.V. as he leaned in further, as his face came to hover less than a full breath away from yours. “I’ve loved you since I was eight. Can Sukuna say that?”

“That’s not—”

“I know you used to fuck him.” His chest was touching yours, now, his breath hot against your skin. “I know you’d fuck him again, if he was here. I know—”

You didn’t give him a chance to finish. It was a weak blow, simultaneously hesitant and instinctual, but your open palm made contact with his cheek with a deafening crack, his head snapping to the side and putting that much more distance between his body and yours. He moved to cup his swelling cheek, and you took the opportunity to slip out from underneath him and stumble to your feet. “I think you should leave,” you repeated, the words spat hastily enough to blend together. “Please, Yuuji.”

For a second, he didn’t move, didn’t speak.

Then, he turned to face you, his smile wiped away and his expression so blank, you couldn’t remember how you’d ever looked at him and saw anything other than void.

He didn’t say anything, only pushing himself to his feet and shambling out of your living room. You kept your eyes on the ground until his footsteps faded out of earshot, until you heard the front door creak open and slam shut with enough force to shake the walls.

When you were sure he was gone, you collapsed onto your couch and laid motionless while an actress screamed in the background.

~

“Your golden boy’s asking about you, again.”

You groaned, buckling at the waist and burying your face in your arms. Shoko glanced up from the exams she was grading, but whatever sympathy she might’ve felt apparently didn’t warrant the effort it would’ve taken to reach across the table to comfort you. “Satoru’s been getting it, too,” she went on. “That’s how you know it’s bad. I can’t remember the last time someone managed to talk over that narcissist.”

“I’m sorry.” You couldn’t remember how many times you’d already apologized for Yuuji’s recent fixation. “He’s… probably just worried about his grades, or something.”

Her lips quirked into a frown. “What are you talking about?”

“I was helping him study,” you admitted, reluctantly. As much as Shoko had to hear about your unruly patients and patronizing coworkers, you’d been less open about how much time you were spending with a student fresh out of undergrad. “He’s never been that good with school. I used to have to help him with his homework in elementary school, too.”

This time, she decided your conversation was important enough to earn her full attention. “Itadori’s one of my best students.”

You felt your chest tighten. “But, the first time he came over, you were tutoring—”

She said your name, curt and blunt, and you went quiet. With a sigh, she shook her head, dropping her pen entirely. “When was the last time I offered to personally tutor a struggling student?”

You swallowed dryly. “Never.”

“And when was the last time I gave our full address out to literally anyone?”

“Never,” you said, again. After a second, you added, “Well, there was that one time with Iori…”

“Not the point. I know you don’t want to hear it, but the kid’s a creep. You might have to—”

She was cut off by your phone buzzing against the table. Your eyes scanned over the caller’s name scrawled across the dim screen before moving back to Shoko, her gaze now narrowed into a sharp glare. “Don’t.”

And, for a second, you didn’t. You convinced yourself that you wouldn’t. You told yourself that, after you bought Satoru around of drinks as an apology, you’d do… you’d do something about Yuuji, even if you weren’t sure what you could do, just yet.

Then, you let yourself picture the kid you used to watch for a few dollars an hour while his grandfather was sick and his brother was on the other side of town doing something dubiously legal at best, dead in a ditch at worst – all wide eyes and scuffed elbows and lopsided grins. You let yourself remember the way he’d ramble about his day after you picked him up from school, and how excited he was the first time you made it to one of his school’s sports days, and how he’d clung to you and sobbed the day before his family moved to the other side of the country. At the time, you’d been thankful to have one less responsibility, relieved that you’d never have to see Sukuna again. You’d been selfish, even for a kid.

The phone was in your hand in a moment, the call answered in another. You stood as you brought it to your ear, hoping that would be enough to block out Shoko’s mumbled cursing.

“Yuuji?”

~

The silence in your car was thick, nearly suffocating.

It’d been one of Yuuji’s friends calling from his phone – the dark-haired one with the monotone voice, barely audible over the blaring music of whichever nightclub they were standing outside of. He’d asked you to, in his own words, ‘come get your problem child’, and when you’d asked why Yuuji needed you specifically, he’d only handed the phone back to Yuuji and let you listen to a full minute of whining, your name the only coherent thing to make it off of Yuuji’s tongue. Shoko urged you not to go, and yet, twenty minutes later, Yuuji was slumped over in your passenger seat, his eyes narrowed and his lips pursed in an uncharacteristic frown.

He was less talkative than he’d been on the phone. The clingier stages of his inebriation had passed, leaving room for a disassociated sort of passiveness that meant, even if you’d been brave enough to try and start a conversation, his response wouldn’t be anything worth that kind of effort. By the time you reached his apartment complex, the knot sitting at the pit of your stomach was equal parts dread and second-hand embarrassment, but you tried to keep your tone light as you turned to him. “It’s time to get out, Yuuji.” And then, when he failed to move, “You’re on your own from here.”

He looked at you, eyes unfocused and hands folded almost childishly over his lap. You softened more than you should’ve at the sight. “…do you need help getting home?”

A second of thought, a quick nod. You shouldn’t. You knew that you really, really shouldn’t.

And yet, somehow, you found yourself in front of Yuuji’s door, fussing over the lock as Yuuji clung to your side, his face buried in the dip of your shoulder. He was cooperative enough; able to stand on his own with minimum swaying but not so lucid that it took more than a gentle suggestion to lead him to his bedroom, where he was more than happy to collapse onto his unmade bed. With a shaky exhale, you turned to leave, but something caught on your sleeve – Yuuji’s hand, when you could bring yourself to check.

“Stay,” he mumbled, his voice dampened by the sheets his face was buried in. “Please?”

You felt your throat go dry. “I can’t.”

You expected him to go shrill and whiny, but he proved to be a touch more mature than the ten-year-old you used to babysit. Rather flatly, he asked, “Why not?”

How were you supposed to answer that? Would it be good enough to say that you didn’t want to, that you couldn’t spend your night looking after a drunk kid you’d known a decade ago, that you’d already done more than you should’ve just by giving him a ride? Was it worth trying to talk to him at all when he could barely hold his head up? Would it do anything to soften the burn of the bile rising into your throat to point out that, the last time you’d been in the same room as him, he’d tried to—

No, it wasn’t and it wouldn’t and you had to leave. With your heart racing in your chest, you tried to jerk yourself out of his hold, but his vice-grip only grew tighter, his head rising up from the mattress just enough to let him stare at you with those big, bleary eyes. “Why not?”

“Yuuji, this isn’t—”

He was so, so much stronger than he had been, the last time you’d seen each other. One second, you were on your feet, at his bedside, and the next, you were on the floor of his bedroom, forced onto your hands and knees while Yuuji’s body pressed into yours from above. “I love you,” he said, his voice as steady as it’d ever been. “I love you, and I—Fuck—” He panted against the back of your neck, something uncomfortably stiff grinding against your ass. “It makes me so fucking hard when you say my name like that.”

A hand slipped under the hem of your top, his palm pressing into the small of your back. You moved to speak, then thought better of it, biting into your bottom lip as your anxious squirming turned to full-blown struggling. Yuuji only laughed, the noise airy and affectionate, winding an arm around your waist and pulling you that much closer to him – making it that much more impossible to get away. His free hand worked clumsily at your top; drawing it up and over your head. You fought against it at first, but froze the first time you felt something stretch a little too far, heard fabric tear. This couldn’t happen, but you absolutely couldn’t be stranded in Yuuji’s apartment with no clothes and no way out.

With his face buried in the back of your shoulder, he cupped your chest, catching your nipples between his forefinger and thumb and pinching with just enough force to draw a low, strained whimper from the back of your throat. “So cute…” He nuzzled deeper into your neck as his touch drifted. Your skirt was drawn downward – a long piece, something you’d thrown on without much thought – then discarded completely, his own shirt wrestled off in the same motion. You felt his fingertips slip under the hem of your panties, but he pulled away and straightened his back, instead. For a second, you let yourself believe that he’d come to his senses, that whatever sick idea he’d gotten into his head had finally worn off, but the arm wrapped around your waist only drew tighter, hauling you off of the floor and into his arms. You were dropped unceremoniously onto the edge of his bed, and Yuuji sunk onto his knees between your open legs.

“I know you’ve probably slept with other people – aside from my brother, I mean. It’d be nice to find out you haven’t, though.” His tone was distant and dreamy. He was still drunk, but not drunk enough for how he’d been acting earlier. Not drunk enough for what he was doing now. He traced the pad of his thumb over your clothed slit, keeping a hand curled around your ankle to keep you in place. “I used to hear you with Sukuna – in his car, and his room, on the couch after you two thought I’d fallen asleep …” He trailed off into an airy laugh. “He likes to show off – always has. If he wasn’t my brother, I think I’d kill him.”

He sighed, pressing a lingering kiss into the inside of your thigh before shifting his attention to your pussy; his tongue laving over the thin material covering your cunt. You were crying, now, openly and audibly – your choked sobs almost loud enough to block out Yuuji’s quiet groans and pleased grunts. However his obsession might’ve made him think he felt about you, your distress didn’t seem to affect his appetite. Your panties were pulled down your legs and slid into some unseen pocket. With the last barrier between you and him gone, he was free to trace his tongue over your slit, to latch onto your clit and suck in a way that made you want to bury your face in your hands and scream. You tried to – crossing your arms over your face, but any sound you tried to make was quickly strangled into a broken moans as his tongue fucked shallowly into your pussy. It was invasive, disgusting, but your body didn’t care. You felt cunt clench around him as his nose ground into your clit, his need for air irrelevant while he spread you open with his tongue. Your thighs clenched shut, attempting to block him out, but his only response was a reverberating groan – and hand on your thigh encouraging you to squeeze him that much tighter.

You couldn’t tell which you hated more; the unwanted stimulation or the fact that your body was reacting to it, heating up where you needed it to go cold. As he sunk further into you, ate you out like a beast starved, you clenched your eyes and willed yourself to go numb, to ignore the sloppy sound of your slick on Yuuji’s lips. It was useless, though, as futile as trying to ignore him in the first place. Your back arched off the bed, legs twitching where they hung limply over his shoulders, and—

 —and Yuuji pulled away with a sharp gasp. He was on top of you before you could process that he was moving, his mouth crashing into yours before you could think to avoid him. The kiss was brutal, rushed; all teeth and tongue and lips shoved against yours with enough force to bruise. The only hint of tenderness was the soft, satisfied noise he let out as his tongue raked across yours, the bright grin painted across his lips when he drew back from you. “It’s alright.” He brought a hand to your cheek, cupping your face and brushing away tears with his thumb. “I’ve slept with other people too, ‘cause I knew I’d need a little practice to catch up with you. Could never go all the way, though. I just thought about you, and…” He blushed, simpered, like he thought he could pass himself off as the shy, lip-biting schoolboy with your slick coating his chin. “I guess I just didn’t really want anyone else to touch me. Not when I knew I’d see you again.”

A horrified sob bubbled up from somewhere deep and primal in your chest. Yuuji didn’t seem to hear it, only sighing as he pressed a lingering kiss into your forehead. “You don’t have to do anything,” he muttered, his hands falling to your waist. “I want to take care of you, tonight.”

You watched in stunned, paralyzed horror as he pushed himself to his feet, as he hastily worked off his jeans, his boxers (the dark material already notably stained with proof of his arousal). You made one more feeble attempt to squirm out from underneath him, to get away before his attention turned back to you, but confused and betrayed and so, so exhausted, you didn’t stand much of a chance against Yuuji. All he had to do was glance your way, his expression as warm as it was soulless, to leave you helpless against him.

He was eager enough not to reposition you, not to draw this out with the pretense of romance. With one hand on your hip and the other planted near your head, he lined the head of his cock up with your entrance and forced himself into you, bottoming out in a single thrust.

It was agony – pure and unrelenting. Any semblance of gentleness, of restraint fell away as soon as Yuuji was inside of you, as soon as your hyper-sensitive cunt clamped down around his cock. He cursed under his breath before collapsing, his chest pressing into yours as he tried to bury himself that much deeper inside of you, to chase the feeling of your pussy milking him for all he was worth. As hard as you tried not to think about Sukuna, Yuuji hadn’t been lying when he said they were alike. He was just as insatiable as his brother had been any time you let him but his hands on you; just as rough in the way his hips ground into yours between sporadic thrusts. There’d been bruises, the next day. At least Sukuna had been the type to make sure he was gone by the time the damage set in. You doubted Yuuji would be so kind.

“I—I’m sorry,” he managed as he buckled into you. Panting against the dip of your shoulder, he took your hips in his hands and dragged your ass of the mattress, his brutal pace stuttering as he found a new angle to abuse. “Next time—I’ll be gentle next time, I just need to—”

His cock hit something soft and sensitive inside of you. Reflexively, your hands shot to his back, your nails finding skin and tearing. The moan Yuuji let out in response was nothing short of sinful; hitched and guttural, ragged and loud enough to block out the wet, slick sound of his cock pumping into your cunt. “M—” His hand wraps around your thigh, catching you under the knee and dragging it towards your chest, letting him fuck into you that much deeper, that much faster. His face never left the crook of your neck, as if he was afraid to give you space to breathe. “Mommy, ‘m sorry, I need to—”

His teeth sunk into your throat as something hot and thick flooded into your cunt, as your body went stiff and your vision burned white. While his climax was sudden, intense, the peak to a decade’s worth of patience, yours had to be dragged out of you despite your attempts to hold it back, to deny yourself pleasure in the vain hope that it’d somehow be able to convince Yuuji to stop what he’d already finished. It seemed to hold you there in that state of dark, distorted euphoria for minutes – Yuuji’s movements turning slow and languid as he nursed you through your orgasm.

Eventually, mercifully, he went still, going limp above you with his canines still planted in the curve of your neck. If there was any pain, any other unwanted burdens he could force onto you, you were too lost in your own despair to notice, too distant to feel anything other than the mildest tinge of dread as he pulled back, raising his head just far enough to stare down at you, adoration heavy in his eyes and his grin wide and love-struck.

A small, naïve part of you found the sight suffocatingly familiar, while the rest could almost convince itself that you were looking at a stranger.

#yandere #yandere x reader #yandere x you #yandere imagines #yandere prompts #yandere oneshot #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen imagines #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk imagines #jjk x reader #yandere jjk #yandere jujutsu kaisen #yandere yuuji #yandere itadori yuuji #yuuji x reader #yandere yuji #yuji x reader #yuji itadori x reader #yandere yuji itadori #yanderecore #yancore

[thesoftboiledegg]

This whole Dan Harmon interview is worth reading, but here's a few essential quotes:

When the show scored its second season, Harmon was eager to staff up, filling out their ragtag cable team with Harvard-educated Community writers. If they were going to make a play for network primetime audiences, he reasoned, they’d need network primetime writers. “If I had felt like I was imposing something, I would have never done it,” he says, having played the whole thing back in his head countless times over the past decade. He can see now how Roiland must have felt that that transition was about making the show more Harmon’s than his, but he insists that was not his intent.

“If anything, what I wanted was for Justin and I both to be able to be increasingly lazy and not show up for work. That was the dream,” says Harmon. “We’d be these rich idea men. He could roll around and go, like, ‘What if a genie had a butt instead of a dick?’ And I could be like, ‘Yeah, and plus, we’re going to make people cry about it, and that’s going to make them freak out. It’s a story about a genie butt dick, but then we’d win an Emmy, and it’d be more ironic than ever.’ And then I’d come to find out later that it was like, ‘Oh, Harmon brought in his Harmon writers,’ and, man, that is not how I saw it.”

[...]

The last time he and Roiland spoke was over text in 2019, a conversation that left Harmon in tears. “He said things that he’d never said before about being unhappy, and I remember saying to him the last time we spoke in person, like, ‘I am worried about you, and I don’t know what to do about that except to give you all the string and also just say I’m scared that you’re not going to come back.’ But then this conversation became unprecedentedly confrontational.” Harmon stops himself there. “I think that’s as far as I get to take the story. At that point, we’re no longer both there for it, and it starts to become not only unfair for me to continue but totally uncomfortable because, from there, a friendship goes away, and I still don’t fully understand why.”

[...]

“The easiest thing for me to say about Justin has been nothing. Easy because he isolated so well and easy because I’m nobody’s first choice as a judge of anything or anyone. This is where I’d love to change the subject to myself, to what a piece of crap I’ve been my whole public life,” he says. “I would feel so safe and comfortable making this about me, but that trick is worthless here and dangerous to others. It’s other people’s safety and comfort that got damaged while I obsessed over a cartoon’s quality. Trust has now been violated between countless people and a show designed to please them. I’m frustrated, ashamed and heartbroken that a lot of hard work, joy and passion can be leveraged to exploit and harm strangers.”

---

I suggest reading the full article because it goes pretty in-depth into Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland's relationship and how their collaboration fell apart. The article also has some intriguing details about how the show operates behind the scenes.

#rick and morty #dan harmon #justin roiland

[enriquemzn262]

What are some western cartoons you've enjoyed?

Amphibia

A fun western take of Isekai, without the wish fulfillment escapism that plagues Isekai, which was actually criticized with the character of Marcy, with a lovable cast, great animation and a well made story with a bittersweet yet satisfying ending.

Hilda

The best modern cartoon period, a cozy and sweet yet action packed and even sometimes dark adventure show about a little girl exploring her magical realism world.

Gravity Falls

Not nearly as fantastic as everyone and their mom claims to be, but still a great show, with tons of good characters, excellent animation, and an overarching plot that while ultimately flawed (the second half of season 2 really dropped the ball on that one) was still great.

She-Ra

Great solid show from beginning to end, but especially towards the end when the silly princess stuff finally began to be properly integrated with the actual plot. Also Catra best character don’t @ me.

Kipo

The most underrated modern cartoon I’ve seen, a superb show with a great story, characters and a truly unique setting, not to mention it did the whole villain redemption thing everyone and their mom was doing at the time, but actually did it fantastically.

Invincible

Like many others I was drawn in by the brutality of the first episode, and boy did it just keep getting better after it! Just skip everything with Amber in it, and you should be in for the best animated superhero show since JLU.

Arcane

Love it! From beginning to end it was a wild ride of a show, and this is coming from someone that only knows about LoL through memes and porn. At times it almost felt like I was watching an extended movie.

The Amazing World of Gumball

This has to be the funniest modern show there is, at least before they decided to use a ton of “funny faces”, when it went down to being among the funniest. Still, a love letter to animation, featuring just about every style of it there is, and with an extremely weird yet fun cast of characters.

Before jumping back to anime I used to watch a ton of these, so I’m sure there’s more, but these are on too of my head and from the last decade, but I can honestly tell you, that my favorite cartoon of all time is:

Courage the Cowardly Dog

There’s just not a single bad episode in it, and every character has been as memorable as Courage himself.

Dishonorable mentions:

The Owl House: Amphibia but actually embracing the bad of Isekai.

Steven Universe: Started weird, got good but ultimately fell down the stairs due to its terrible obsession with finding good things about terrible people.

OK KO: Garbage character models and too obsessed with making references.

Adventure Time: Everything wrong with modern animation.

Regular Show: Modercai is a simp and just looking at the guy gives me cringe.

Bee and Puppycat: Everything wrong with AT and SU COMBINED.

Korra: Not canon

#Amphibia #hilda #invincible #kipo

[gayelectro]

Thirst: A Ten Year Retrospective

On June 7th, 2013, at 7:30 PM, The Hub Network aired Transformers Prime’s 60th episode. Title: Thirst. Just five episodes before the conclusion of the series (and a post-series “movie”), the last few episodes of any serialized show can have a lot weighing on them, as you need to wrap up story threads in a satisfying fashion. 

For me though, Thirst missed the mark. Pretty hard.

When this episode aired, I hated it. And when posting my grievances on Tumblr, I was met with a lot of backlash. This naturally compounded the hatred I ended up brewing for this episode, as I felt as though couldn’t even talk about it with people without hearing some seriously stupid counterpoints or outright attacks to my character over not liking an episode of a children’s cartoon to sell toys.

Well, a lot of time has passed since then. It’s been a decade and I want to lay this whole thing to rest. I was 16 and still in high school when it aired, and now I’m a whole ass married 26 year old adult with a job. So I feel that getting all of my thoughts and feelings out, while also reflecting on how the Transformers fandom (and myself) have changed, might finally quell this beast for good. Aiming for the spark, as it were.

Skip the readmore if you don’t want to encounter a genuinely and insanely long post full of rambling and Transformers media consumption.

Naturally, disclaimers, because this is the internet.

Don’t go and read this and give any guff to anyone who worked on this episode or in Transformers Prime in general. I shouldn’t have to say this. Even as I speculate over what writer’s intentions or unconscious biases were back in 2013, it still gives nobody any reason to find these people and bother them. I’m allowed to criticize a show but I see no need for anybody to send shit to people who were likely just trying to get their paycheck from Hasbro.

Another disclaimer: I don’t have any problem with people who like or love this episode. I have friends who do. And I can see what positive points about it shine out for them. But I’m still allowed to have differing feelings about it and express them. At the crux of it, I think it’s just that simple. Everybody should be able to coexist within a fandom and deal with someone not liking your favorite episode or someone loving an episode you hate.

And I think one last disclaimer: the fact is that a lot of my anger towards this episode is partially baked in due to immediate fandom reactions at the time of release and my own disappointment in the episode not being what I hoped it to be. I’m going to dissect that where possible in this post. But fundamentally, I just don’t understand people who are like “you can’t hold it against a piece of media for not being what you wanted it to be” in regards to being misled. There’s a vast difference between letting fan theories get in the way of the author’s intent and being misled due to the way something is advertised. And while yes, the show isn’t to blame for how the fandom reacted to the episode, it still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. How could it not? Human brains are wired for pattern recognition. How am I supposed to forget the way I was treated for not liking this episode? How am I supposed to be objective about this short of amnesia to experience the episode for the first time all over again?

Anyways, now that that’s out of the way, let’s dive in!

Now let it be known that I was thrilled for this episode. I was an avid Transformers Prime watcher. I made a whole event around every new episode airing. And I watched the promos like a hawk. I was obsessed with Transformers Prime when it was airing and convinced that it was a masterpiece. Truly, the apex of Transformers media.

So, the promotions really emphasized the zombie aspect of this episode, with a sneak peak at what they would look like. I don’t consider myself a horror fan by any means, I’ve always been squeamish and jumpy, but I think there’s an aspect of horror that lends itself to the curious mind. I wanted this episode to be scary. Knowing the Y-7 rating, I knew that this was going to be horror that likely fell within my comfort zone while also possibly pushing the envelope a bit. After all, Samurai Jack creator Genndy Tartakovsky had spoken at length about how much violence he could get under the radar in kid’s TV by having all of the “gore” be robots and aliens. I assumed that this episode was going to do much of the same.

Let me get it out of the way right now, one good thing about Thirst is the “zombicon” designs. I think they’re great. Personally would not change a thing about them, they’re pretty darn perfect.

But, being a weenie, I did try my hardest to steel myself against what the episode might throw at me. I was expecting the absolute worst they could get away with in regards to robot gore and violence and jumpscares. I wanted this episode to be scary. Sure, Y-7 scary, but still scary. I probably expected too much, given that I didn’t understand why shows stuck so hard to just 22 minute time slots at the time. But I was an easily startled kid, I figured they could still deliver... And, well... I just didn’t get that at all.

More or less, the episode rips itself into pieces. If one is being generous, about 1/3rd of the episode is veering on horror. But 2/3rds of the runtime are easily just comedic slapstick and banter between Knock Out and Starscream. While this is fine, it certainly wasn’t to my taste and was a let down. This episode obviously really really wanted to be funny and Decepticon focused. And while it was the only episode of Prime to not have a single Autobot in it, I still found its humor to be. Well.

Now, a tangent:

The writers and this series relationship with its queer-coded characters is complex and strange, to say the least. While I do love and appreciate a gay villain, it’s still very telling that the most flamboyant and clearly gay acting characters are Decepticons. Starscream in his literal stiletto heels and effeminate shrieks, Knock Out with his foppish behavior and just about everything said behind the scenes about him... It’s undeniable that they’re intended to be read as gay and it feels as though it varies from episode to episode whether them being gay is supposed to be humorous, relatable, or dastardly.

Thirst definitely feels like... The worst of this to me.

I’m going to focus more on Knock Out, just because he’s realistically more near and dear to my heart. But the fact is, I saw myself in these characters growing up. I was a young queer with no representation in the media I enjoyed. So of course I would cling to the gay, sexy robot. Regardless of if writers wanted him to be someone the audience saw themselves in, I did.

Of course, I believe at this point that everyone is familiar with “The Botcon Incident”.

[ALT TEXT : When asked at BotCon 2011, the Prime writers said that there is no designation for gay, or straight, for that matter, on Cybertron, where Transformers are created by the AllSpark, not through sexual reproductions. They also said that Knock Out is a knock out, and that the Nemesis is a very "don't ask, don't tell" place. And then they jokingly deflected the matter, claiming that Knock Out's mannerisms are not caused by any particular orientation, but are simply eccentricities caused by "a glitch in the AllSpark" the day he was created... which is unintentionally so insulting to gay people that it could create an awkward silence in the Void. ]

On one hand, Knock Out acting gay is seen as a defect. A mistake or some sort of source of humor. At the same time, there was still a lot of love given to him by the writers. In panels, they’ve expressed that they refused to let Knock Out be killed off (regardless of if any other character lived or died). Part of this was because he was really the big “original” character for the show, but part of it also definitely has to be some sort of genuine love for the character, I think.

So, it’s a weird act to juggle as a queer fan, right? The writers loved Knock Out but it feels like they still wanted to poke and jeer about how gay he was (without even really confirming him to be gay, but we can all admit he acts gay and that’s WEIRD, am I right guys).

To wrap around to Thirst: I feel like this is part of why I don’t find as much humor in the slapstick Knock Out/Starscream moments in the episode as other fans do. This feels like the most brazen and obvious part of it: the humor in the episode feels like it comes from a place of “how funny would it be to make the fags run around the ship screaming their heads off”.

By season three, the animation in this show became so beautiful and utterly expressive. And that’s a great thing. But the level to which they pushed Knock Out and Starscream’s run cycles was just... Like I get it, it’s funny when scared gay person does a silly effeminate run. Not to mention how these characters have established run cycles, we’ve seen them run before, no, in this episode they flail about helplessly because it’s sooooooo funny.

I do feel like there were undercurrents of homophobia in this show. It released in 2013 and thus was probably written back in 2012. To act like the writers room was completely devoid of the influences of homophobia would be absurd. I’m not saying that the episode is explicitly homophobic, nor that it’s homophobic to put gay characters in horror scenarios, nor that everyone who worked on Transformers Prime is a homophobe. But I am saying that this show was a product of its time, and 2012 was a very homophobic time, and that I think we can talk about that without assuming the worst in those bringing it up or the worst in everybody who worked on the media in question. Multiple things can be true at once. I just want to talk about how the vibes are off, man, it feels a little gay bash-y.

Part of what I’m trying to describe here is, to put it another way, would this episode have worked the way it did with any other characters being at the forefront? Thirst, but with say, Shockwave and Soundwave? Airachnid and Megatron? Or Arcee and Bulkhead? Or Ratchet and Wheeljack? However you switch this episode around, I’m almost positive the characters’ mere presence would not be treated as inherently comedic into itself. It feels very telling that this was a Knock Out and Starscream episode, because Knock Out and Starscream are the most obviously queer-coded characters.

Getting off of that tangent which I’m sure has already turned the few readers of this away, let me get back more into the meat of this retrospective.

Another thing that infuriated me about fan reception to this episode is that a lot of fans reduced everything to shipping wars. If there’s something that’s really changed with time in the Transformers fandom, thank fuck it’s the shipping culture. A decade ago, any and all issues I had with this episode got reduced to “You’re a KO/BD shipper and you’re angry because this episode had KO/SS moments”. To this day, I cannot express how such a dismissive and us vs. them attitude makes me see fucking red! If anything, the fan’s combative nature is what made me come to dislike KO/SS as a ship-- not the other way around.

The fact is, the banter between Knock Out and Starscream is entertaining. I do like that aspect of the episode. When they open up to one another in the bunker, it’s a really sweet moment! We have two Decepticons being vulnerable and open with each other, which is a rarity, given how cold living on the Nemesis is! It was a genuinely touching moment that gave us insight into both Knock Out and Starscream as individuals, which I really did enjoy.

The way they speak to each other throughout the episode is actually one of the things that makes me wish I could come back to this episode more (and hopefully now I can). It’s telling how they can open up to one another only to immediately throw each other under the bus the very next moment. It speaks to the Decepticon’s culture.

But anywho, there was also just the... Blatant ignoring of what actually was said in the episode to fit an agenda. Ardent “only-one-ship-may-rule” KO/SS fans insisted that Knock Out’s behavior in this episode ““proved”“ that he didn’t care about Breakdown. This thankfully has died off overtime in the fandom, now that more people can accept multiple ships coexisting in peace instead of making conflict where there doesn’t need to be any.

But even if we take shipping out of the equation entirely, you have to be either not listening or willingly deluding yourself if you think that any of Knock Out’s actions in this episode are showing that he did not care about Breakdown, regardless of if you think that relationship was lovers, friends, or just close coworkers.

“Despite your justifiable lack of regard for his human side, it doesn’t trouble you to watch what remains of your former partner endure your scientific endeavors?” “Not really. Besides, Silas once had poor Breakdown pinned to his lab table. I think my former partner would be pleased to be a part.”

This was the big exchange that really got under people’s skin. Watching it live, I loved this reaction from Knock Out. It spoke to what a sadist that he was and how he went about extracting revenge. He saw the perfect bookending of stories; Silas experimented on Breakdown, so it was only fit for Knock Out to experiment on Silas. Just as Silas had used Breakdown’s corpse as a suit to trounce around in, Knock Out would treat his body just as such. Just a shell, not any remnant of the soul that was once inside.

But certain people just heard the deadpan “not really” and just stopped listening. Like, I’m sorry, but these guys are alien robots. They probably already don’t have exactly the same feelings around corpse desecration as we do, and even if they did, Knock Out is kind of a freak anyways.

And once again, when I saw this episode, I was single. Now I’m married. I can see even more now how love can push you to weird, freakish, even ghoulish extremes. I personally could think of hardly anything more romantic than my wife torturing and experimenting on someone who wronged me. And I certainly wouldn’t be kind to someone for wearing her face in the event of her passing.

And the line “You’re no Breakdown” got wildly misinterpreted too. Somehow people thought that meant that Breakdown was “lesser” than Starscream, which... What? How? Like it’s obvious that Knock Out is contrasting his former relationship to Breakdown to the relationship he has to Starscream here. Starscream and Breakdown are vastly different people, that’s not to say anything about shipping. Once again, even if you only see Breakdown as Knock Out’s assistant, his relationship to Starscream is still vastly different to his relationship with Breakdown. Starscream is his superior officer whereas Breakdown is either on the same rung as him or a step lower. This is not a value judgement on either ship! It’s just basic chemistry and writing! One of them is a quiet brute while the other is a commanding fruit. I’m not understanding how this could lift up or put down either ship, so to see people do that (admittedly on both sides of this stupid fucking ship war) was just aggravating.

Once again, I can’t stress enough how by and large, the fandom’s attitude has shifted away from that bullshit. I see people gleefully talk about shipping all three of them together or just shipping their own favorite thing without needing to bring the other ship into it at all in an adversarial way. It’s great. Wish that could’ve been here all along. I could only imagine the kind of blood that would have been shed if someone had conducted the Transformers Husband Poll or Canon Ship Poll back in 2013, but now people can just have a good time with things the way we’re supposed to.

And then we get to the part where I actually take issue with the writing of the episode itself, regardless to fandom reaction.

Airachnid. 

Okay, so can we finally talk about this part? Because when I took issue with this when the episode aired, I got a lot of “wait and see, they still have time to do something with this”. Which. No they fucking didn’t. They opened up like five new plot points, for no reason, right at the end of the series, and then did not follow up on them at all.

I can’t wrap my head around this, even now. Why did they even take this character out of stasis? They fridged her before only to let her out for five minutes to fridge her again. This is so absurdly stupid, like I still cannot even find a silver lining to this part.

Airachnid having a hoard of zombie Insecticons on one of Cybertron’s moons did not even get a mention for the rest of the series.

What was the point of this? Legitimately, was there some sort of reason they needed to write out the Insecticons so badly? They hadn’t really been important in any regard for a long time. At that point in the show, they were barely a step above Vehicons when it came to being Decepticon cannon fodder. Was there any reason to make Airachnid extra dead with more steps? Because this doesn’t provide more closure than her already piss poor exit from the show with her being in stasis, frozen in a pod, as a trophy for Megatron.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, would have changed for the rest of Prime if Airachnid had stayed frozen in her pod and the Insecticons stayed aboard the Nemesis. I can’t think up a defense for this, I can’t conjure up an explanation, just... Why? I’m still left feeling like this was fucking strange. Maybe someone’s femdom hypnosis vampire queen fetish, I can’t fucking tell.

Now that the series is over, I’m hoping at least people can acknowledge that this was pointless, stupid, and just unnecessary. Or at least give me any reason why this isn’t the dumbest thing ever. Because this was the big thing in the actual canon of the episode that made me go “wow, that was an awful episode”.

And while I’m still left scratching my head over that, I do feel... Relieved. The more I think it over, the more I can see how the fandom has changed for the better in a lot of respects. And upon rewatching this episode, I can better see the parts that I actually like. Sure, some shit still bothers me, but I do feel better about it now.

And of course, watching Prime as it airs at 16 is a very different experience than trying to rewatch it... Basically any time once you hit your 20s. I still love Prime, but I’m older now and can see its flaws, especially since we’ve got the whole story to work with. I still recommend Prime as a starting point to people with certain tastes who wanna get into Transformers. But doing a full rewatch of the series for me is a chore now due to some of the glaring writing issues and pacing. It’s a good show, but not the pinnacle of Transformers media I used to think of it as. And that’s okay! Tempered expectations help a lot with disappointment.

With something like ten years, a lot has changed in the Transformers franchise. We now have a plethora of canon queer characters and relationships, all treated with respect. We have a nonbinary Autobot in a children’s cartoon, and I know that would have changed my world as a kid if I had grown up with that. And while it sucks that my favorite character in Transformers Prime, Breakdown, got killed off so unceremoniously, so many continuities after that have tried to make up for it by having him survive and thrive.

Another positive note is the way my feelings for this episode have impacted my real life.

Back when my wife was still just my girlfriend, I ranted and raved to her about how much I hated this episode. How stupid it was. How it was the worst episode of the whole show. Back then, she had no interest in any media pertaining to robots, let alone Transformers. But something about how passionate that got me made her curious. She checked out Thirst, and concluded that if that was the worst the Transformers Prime had to offer, then it might be a pretty good show overall. She ended up watching Prime, and with that gateway, I was able to get her to watch and enjoy more Transformers media. Which lead to more robot media as a whole. Now we have so many more fandoms and shows that we enjoy together, all because my hate boner for this episode piqued her interest! Sharing my love of robots with my wife has been a wonderful facet of our relationship and I simply don’t know how we would have gotten there without this entry way!

All of this to say... I think after ten years, maybe this isn’t the worst episode of the series. I can’t be bothered with a whole rewatch to find out, as the episodes that bore me aren’t ones that I’d bother to watch again just to rate. The shit with Airachnid was mind-achingly stupid and maybe some of the slapstick hasn’t aged the best, but otherwise it just is what it is. I liked Silas dying, I liked the character interactions we got between Starscream and Knock Out, I always adore Darren Norris’ performance as Knock Out and this episode does wonders to show off his skill (“Precisely my-- WHAT”), and the zombie designs were pretty baller.

I thank this episode for what it’s given to me, I’m going to let go of the ghosts of fandom’s past, and now I set it all free.

Here’s the whole episode on Youtube, TFwiki just links these if they’re available, apparently.

#long post // #Transformers Prime #Thirst #TFP #Transformers Prime Thirst #TFP Thirst #Breakdown #Airachnid #Knock Out #Starscream #Silas #CYLAS #mentions of homophobia #f slur warning #I cannot stress enough how long and rambling this is so don't say I didn't warn you

[gibblegabber]

i wrote most of this a month ago but might as well spill my personal nonsense regarding kick on his 14TH ANNIVERSARY WHHHHHHHH

nothing interesting it’s truly like a diary entry

i’ve been keeping to myself while i wind down from another hyperfixation with KB:SD, because it has to come to an end, because there’s very few people left in my life who were there in the fandom while it aired, because i get so fucking depressed when i think about it.

how do i describe this. Kick reminds me that i’m alive. he ALSO reminds me that i’m a failure. he’s the reason i finished art school and also (part of) the reason i stopped pursuing art as a career. the show’s run was the best time of my life and at the same time i was dealing with an overwhelming amount of trauma.

and i packed ALL of that into this silly 6.5/10 rated cartoon. why??? because it just happened to be THERE when I was going thru some shit?? sometimes i think “this could have been any cartoon, the timing is what mattered” and other times i’m like no…the adventures we had in mellowbrook were genuinely incredible and if it were any other fandom, i wouldn’t have met the same amazing people!!! do you know how thankful i am to have Kachiimi and Misha in my life still??? REALLY FUCKING THANKFUL. i don’t deserve them in the least!! they’ve known me at my worst and happened to also SEE me at my worst in person and they’re still my friends and i love them very much, i hope they know that.

and if anyone’s still following me that knew me during the KB years, or was friends with me during that time… 1.) i’m sorry. i was crazy LMAO and 2.) just know you made the whole experience so so awesome :) i appreciated so much that the fandom was a tight knit group of people, no drama, just a great place to be when my life was falling apart around me.

yea if i psychoanalyzed this whole thing i wouldn’t like the answer. but. it doesn’t change how much Kick means to me, and how much he’ll always mean to me!!

it had always been a bucket list thing of mine to be the number 1 fan of something at some point. ever since i was like nine years old i was like “man that’d be cool if it happened”. never in a million years would i have guessed that it would be this. but in a weird way Kick was exactly who i needed at that time. someone whose failures were just his fuel for success. someone who didn’t let his shortcomings stop him from achieving his goals. someone who kept going even if the world was against him. looking back it’s really no surprise that i got so attached.

obviously i’m far from the number 1 fan position now. who knows if i ever really was; i only knew a fraction of the fandom that called me the “queen of the KB fandom”, and Sandro had called me the number 1 fan at one point so i just took it all to heart. i would argue that Aisha took that position when school and jobs and life started consuming my life more than fandom did. or well, all of this is a moot point when you consider Jackie who is definitely 100% his number 1 fan LOL. but wow, what a time. we were so lucky to interact with the crew as much as we did.

it doesn’t seem like much but it really made me feel like i could do anything. if Kick had gotten a third season you KNOW i would’ve stopped at NOTHING to be on the team in some way shape or form. i would’ve flown out to LA in an instant and not looked back. despite everything. i would’ve done it.

kinda sucks considering uhhhh THINGS that got revealed about the director years later, so in the same vein i’m very happy that Kick did not get a season 3. but when the show ended something in me died, or i came to terms with something, idk what it was. something like: i knew i’d never feel the same way about a cartoon again so i didn’t bother trying. i stopped drawing almost entirely for 10 years.

aaaand it’s true. over a decade and i never came close to the level of obsession i had with Kick, and never really wanted to either. THEN i got slapped in the face with IZ and well…let that be a long and cheesy post for march 30th or something. :P and as much fun as it’s been and continues to be, it’s a DIFFERENT sort of experience from KB. it can’t compare. maybe in 10 years i’ll look back on IZ friends and fandom times and reminisce fondly on them too.

KB:SD is stuck where it was. if that makes any sense. there’s a lot in the show that i don’t think modern day fandom would take kindly to. there’s a lot of crack shipping and shenanigans we got up to back then that isn’t okay now. (god… okay i don’t miss that part LOL. i cringe painfully at a lot of it, but i DO miss when people understood the fucking difference between fiction and reality. it was a different time for sure.) it just is what it is.

and that’s okay. i’m gonna let it go, again, and i’ll be back on and off. it hurts. it hurts every time this happens but that’s okay because Kick taught us to live till it hurts. :) 🤘🏼✨

#mina talks #mina visits mellowbrook 2k24 #this is really long and personal and kinda outside my normal range #so like. apologies in advance i guess.

[marmot-bee-person]

hello!

I’ve done a couple of reblogs, but this is my first post proper. So hello.

About me!

I am obsessed (OBSESSED) with ATLA. Sometimes I am obsessed (OBSESSED) with other shows or books or whatever, but right now I’m obsessed (OBSESSED) with ATLA. This blog will definitely show what I’m obsessed with at any given moment.

Edit 2/16: I’m still obsessed with ATLA but Ducktales 2017 was my hyperfixation a couple years ago and that has now resurfaced

Edit 3/4: more about me!

I mention in the blog description that I have ADHD and social anxiety, am aroace (at least that’s how I identify now but who knows), and I’m a minor (for those of you with DNI about that). I also may be autistic (more information available within the next decade probably) but I really don’t know about that one. Pronouns are she/her (despite the whole thing of my sexuality and romanticism, I am very very cis). Hyperfixations are cartoons (DT, ATLA, sometimes Gravity Falls), UK history (currently dormant), sometimes linguistics (this has never been my ONLY hyperfixation but it will probably get there) and genetics and multiple births (also currently dormant). I write a lot, of… varying quality. I think my fics are better than my original writing but idk. I’m also a shameless theatre kid and love performing (even though it also gives me social anxiety, but it’s fiiiiiiine).

Please call me Marmot! (Edit 3/22: if you’re coming here after i made this edit then you should know that Mushy was my older nickname from when I was @mushy-giant-friends-for-life, i have now switched to Marmot lol) (i don’t really care which one is used… how bout both ig)

Edit 3/25 (i need to make a new post but oh well)

So I’d like to clarify that I hate JKR but I’m not going to stop posting about Harry Potter because of her. She can go screw herself for all I care. But I also refuse to let her ruin Harry Potter for me because yes, it’s not a perfect series and has plenty of shortcomings, but it’s also the center of a lot of my happiest memories, so…

To be clear: trans people are valid. jkr can go screw herself. marmot likes the harry potter books. got it?

edit 3/26 (seriously, new post gah) i blocked anon asks for selfish reasons, which are that i dislike not knowing who’s sending asks.

edit 4/7: my sideblogs are @keyboardsmashandkittycat (for cats) and @marmotmaidofnorway (for history)

edit 4/12: nvm, anon asks are on again

#first post #hi! #intro post #pinned post #please read

[ordinary-eternalmachinery]

On Femininity - Pt. 1

One of my very first memories is related to femininity or rather, becoming aware of it.

I must have been 4 or 5, and my mom was picking me up from school. I vaguely remember her talking above my head, chatting to another girl’s mom who was – I think – bemoaning the amount of money she spent on these shoes or that dress or whatever.

My mom said “oh, mine doesn’t really care what she wears.”

The conversation is wrapped in the hazy mist of early childhood memories, but I can still remember clearly that in that moment, I felt a jolt of pride. “Yes,” I thought, “this is me, I don’t care what I wear. I’m not a girly girl.”

I doubt my mom ever meant to give me the message that femininity is bad - in fact, she spent the following decade and a half begging me to please take her money and go fucking shopping for something presentable to wear on Christmas dinner.

Regardless of her intentions, though, I had already internalised a certain idea of femininity at that early age - and my mom’s remark sparked the realisation that I didn’t have to be girly just because I was a girl.

At that point in time, girly, to me, meant the following:

Girls are proper, quiet, demure, they don’t get dirty, they wear uncomfortable clothes, they’re preoccupied about their looks, always put other people first, sigh while looking out the window and dream about having babies and will most likely end up shackled to someone else. Girls wear pink and frilly dresses. Girls are whiny and stupid and vain.

Boys had all the fun games and cartoons and comfy clothes and whatnot. I mean, I'm talking about the mid-90s, when videogames weren't exactly marketed to girls yet. Hell, I'm sure dinosaurs weren't girly at the time.

I remember my mom coming home from work and my babysitter telling her, in a hushed voice "she's been good today. she's been watching boy cartoons!", half amused, half asking "is this okay?"

I am pretty sure I proclaimed to my entire family, multiple times, that I’d never have kids, never get married, and never even have a boyfriend. I might have gone as far to say I’d never even have sex with a man (one does wonder what would’ve happened if someone told me about lesbians at that age).

I remember reading Little Women and being absolutely smitten with Jo March's character and equally disappointed when she ended up getting married and giving up on her dreams.

I had a period of intense obsession with Greek mythology and obviously, my absolute favorite goddess was Artemis, because she was a virgin huntress who lived in the woods surrounded by nymphs and hounds and only ever did whatever the fuck she wanted.

Knowing what I know now, I’m not even sure whether I was rejecting femininity or heteronormativity or both, but at that point the two concepts were very much conflated both in my mind and in the public opinion.

And after all, why would I want to buy into the traditional package? Did it do any good for any of the women I saw around me, both in real life and in media? All married women were someone’s supporting actress, in my experience. Working behind the scenes for someone else’s glory.

I remember being absolutely fucking pissed when I realized that at one point I would go through puberty and get a period and grow boobs. It's strange to think about that now that I know what gender dysphoria is, because what I was experiencing was not dysphoria. I've never had any doubts about my gender identity: I have never liked being a woman, but I’ve always known I am one. But to me, acquiring what I then considered the physical markers of womanhood meant I would’ve had to become a real woman, with all the trappings that entailed.

I unsurprisingly grew up to be a tomboy (hate the word but bear with me)

I refused to wear dresses until I was 16 or so. You wouldn’t catch me dead with make-up on.

This is probably sounding like I was a cool teen, but it was pretty much the opposite - I was very much fucken uncool. What I was going for wasn't just "not feminine". It wasn't necessarily masculine either. It was... not planned or thought out or in any way intentional - my whole vibe was “I don’t give a fuck about how I present myself and I want to make it clear to everyone that I don't spend half a second in front of the mirror (because that's cringe)”.

(No, seriously, I had an XXXL grey hoodie that got down to my knees. For a while I had a single nail painted bright green. I had a ginormous headset that for some reason had a 3m long cable that I kept together with a zip tie. I walked around dressed like a fucking anime character except this was 2008 and anime wasn't popular. Maybe Gen Z can get away with the clown aesthetic now. Idk.)

Did I feel comfortable like that though? Was I confident in my looks and in who I was?

No. I didn't and I wasn't.

A while ago, I discussed this with a dear female friend of mine (hi I love you!!) who was also a tomboy. We met in our late teens and among other things, we bonded over our mutual mistrust of extremely feminine, conventionally attractive girls.

A couple years ago, I asked her, were we actually happy with ourselves back then? Did we like what we saw in the mirror?

No. No, we both weren't.

See, all the women we saw in media were at least pretty. This is a whole other can of worms - suffice to cfr this meme.

This is a whole can of worms in and of itself, but it does apply to the “tomboy” archetype.

All of the cool non-girly girls we wanted to be like were thin (but ate a lot), wore baggy but flattering outfits (that they obviously didn't buy themselves), had perfect winged eyeliner (but you wouldn’t spot them within a 5-km mile from Sephora).

We wanted to be like them. We wanted to be attractive and get validation. But working towards that ideal (learning to do our make-up and buying actual clothes instead of stealing our dads' sweaters) would have compromised us ideologically.

Like all other teenage girls, my friend and I also had an unattainable beauty ideal; unlike the other girls, though, we couldn’t even attempt to get closer to it, because putting an effort in our appearance would’ve made us… vain. Shallow. Girly.

Just like other girls.

Femininity was something I just couldn’t try my hand at. If I didn’t care about being feminine, I couldn’t fail at it.

It was a weird cage to be in.

(to be continued)

#femininity #heteronormativity #feminism #gender #womanhood #gender roles

[anothergayrobot]

this is more of a vent than anything so i’m putting under a read more.  fair warning if anyone decides to read, it’s kinda long (and a bit rwde)

It's very frustrating, as someone who's been obsessed with RWBY since they were 12, to make the concious choice not to support the show and be told in response that they're a bad person.  Cause i loved RWBY, and even though it was very very flawed i put my faith and money in the crew and company behind it to make it something good.  I have almost every rwby-related book/manga (pr sure theres only two i dont have) and had at least 10 RT-related articles of clothing over the years.  Pretty much my entire family knows about it cause of me and my parents were shocked when they saw me watching a video critical of it, cause it was the thing i'd been obsessed with for years.  

And now here i am, someone who's supported RT for probably a decade.  I'd seen all the bullshit they did and put my faith in them to do better time and time again.  At this point i can't comfortably do that anymore.  I can't trust them with my time and money to treat the people working there well.  How much of that money they're making off of my viewtime is actually going to the workers that need it vs the shitty higher ups who only want to make the most profit with the least losses?  (Lets be honest, considering all the animators were either under contracts that've ended or fired, probably none.)  

But despite this i still want to watch RWBY.  There'd been themes that were annoying, and uncomfortable, and outright disgusting but i saw good in the show and saw the creators acknowledging their wrongdoings and put my faith in them that they'd learn.  And then Vol 8 came out, i fucking hated it, not only did it have more disgusting themes but ones that hurt me personally, and EVEN THEN I DECIDED TO CONTINUE WATCHING THE SHOW.  Because i thought even if the writers are shitty, bigoted people who don't want to do their proper research or take criticism or maybe they just don't care as long as they're making money- at least i can still support the smaller workers on the crew.  Like i said, i've been in love with the characters and world since i was 12, it's not something that's going to go away that easily.  And then Kdin and all the workers came out about how shitty and bigoted RT was and that was it.  

So with all this, not only is it extremely frustrating to see people who are willing to overlook or maybe they've justified supporting RT so they feel comfortable watching RWBY, but to hear that i'm a bad person for choosing to stop supporting a company after a decade of being burnt by it??  It's not like i said "fuck every individual person who chooses to work there, they're awful people who deserve to be abused." (trust me, i understand how capitalism works and hate it just as much as the next guy)  And then i remember the post *someone* made about how choosing to not support RWBY means i'm actively being bigoted AGAINST MY OWN INTERESTS, because i guess all companies are now entitled to my time and money based on how progressive they PRESENT themselves.  Despite the fact that i want to watch RWBY, i want to see how it ends, and i've been supporting it for so long regardless of how it's fucked up that now everytime i go to the manga section in fucking barnes and noble i instinctively go to the R section to see if there's been a new vol of the manga released, i'm a bigot.  And it would be SO FUCKING EASY to just not give a shit.  i already have access to a paid crunchyroll account so it would be so fucking easy to do so.  But i can't.  And honestly- if you actually think that i or anyone else is a bigot for not supporting some dumb fucking cartoon made by a garbage company?  Fuck. You.

#this is kinda out of nowhere but someone i follow on twit keeps posting about how ppl should support rwby legally so #and i dont mean to hate on them specifically #i dont necessarily think everyone who chooses to support rwby is bigoted #all i want is for them to understand that theyre likely giving more to the shitty part than the people they want to support #vent #anyways fuck rt #anti rooster teeth #rwde? #anti rwby? #maybe? idk just in case

[ginger-snap-talkin-nonsense]

The only thing you talk about in regards to media diet diversity is, if anything, how much you DON’T have any and actively resist any attempts that could be made to broaden your media diet. You have an extremely restricted, insular media diet and you surround yourself with people whose media diets are as dogmatically narrow as your own. You actually RARELY, if ever, talk about any of the ways that you have supposedly gone out of your comfort zone and watched/played any media that you didn’t already, 100% know that you would absolutely like. And, if anything, have dug your heels more and more into obsessively consuming the narrow fraction of media that you HAVE decided to enjoy, such as sitcoms. Diversifying your media diet is incredibly important, and is definitely something that everybody should do, but you just. . . .don’t do that. At all. At least not in any ways that are even REMOTELY obvious to other people.

Instead, you most often spend your time screaming and crying about how much you HATE the vast majority of media from the past decade or so, and the fact that the small fraction of TV shows that you personally enjoy. Haven’t been able to stay the most popular shows literally forever, while different shows take their place in being popular for both creators and audiences to enjoy. Not only that, but actively going out of your way to REFUSE to watch any shows or movies that are in genres that you’ve written off completely (for some bizarre reason) or were worked on by creators that you treat like the fucking plague (for some creepily obsessive reason). I’m sorry Ginger, but that’s just NOT what makes a diverse media diet and its NOT even how somebody would go about making their media diet diverse if they actually wanted to do so.

You can keep on shitting yourself with anger about how everybody else just enjoys garbage and that they’re stupid and bad and wrong for watching more movies, cartoons, TV shows, etc. than you do and/or that you don’t personally like. But the fact still remains that, even IF you still just want to keep doubling down and crying that sitcoms/non—fantasy cartoons didn’t remain the dominant form of TV forever, you still have an objectively LESS diverse media diet than the people who watch other TV shows that solely those ones. If the 100 shows that somebody watches are just the most pure garbage ever to be shat out onto the screen, but you only ever fucking bother watching 5 shows that meet all of your very specific requirements for being ones that you personally want to watch. Than, sorry, but that somebody STILL has an objectively MORE diverse fucking media diet than you do! No matter how dogshit that you think that the shows, movies, video games, etc. that they are watching/playing are.

Oh hey sitcom anon! I thought you died! How ya been, champ?

[marisoft-paint-adventures]

Pgs. 138-213

Blue John.

Blue John.

look at him smile. little guy.

Serious Business is the best social media app, the hub for all businessmen to give advice about their nice attire. however, best guy fedorafreak has not appeared yet.

in which Rose Lalonde exhibits her incredible therapist bullshit, and also a really good line is dropped.

EB: ok, if that will satisfy your weird ocd complex then go ahead. TT: My Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder complex? TT: Can a disorder also be a complex? EB: in your case, probably!

John you fucking FOOLISH BOY you’re going to BLIND YOURSELF.

TT: Whoops.

comedy gold to think about Rose grabbing and ripping a fucking toilet from the pipes only to then consciously type into Pesterchum “whoops” like she’s a fucking cartoon character.

JADE.

HI JADE.

TT: Oh fuck.

again, cartoonish.

SAY THE LINE, JOHN.

EB: you can see me, right. EB: tell me what is wrong with this picture.

TT: I would look for a stronger signal in another part of the house, but I'd rather not risk an encounter with my mother. TT: I battled through her cloud of gin and derision once already this evening. EB: haha, yeah I hear you. TT: Yes. Cake, jesters, unfaltering love and support. TT: Quite a road to hoe there. TT: Though I suppose I'm complicit for not informing Social Services about your situation.

this is the shit I’m talking about when imagining talking about parents with John, Rose is here talking about she can’t stand her alcoholic weirdo housewife mother and John’s just out here like “haha yeah, reminds me of my dad and his cakes.” John someone has a drinking problem and all you can think about is how much you hate clown people.

TT: I've been looking at the GameFAQ walkthroughs to figure some of this stuff out.

it’s very interesting how GameFAQs remains as 1 of the only real world online platforms to ever be reference in the early comic, yet to me, it doesn’t stick out that much. I’m a big fan of how Homestuck utilizes its own programs and sites as close analogs to tools at the time, Pesterchum, Serious Business, the fake browsers and OSes, and so on. these original clients allow for the comic to not drag itself down and let it age horribly by shoving in very specific styles of social sites or apps. at the same time, I can say something like GameFAQs or YouTube being shown on-screen in a casual manner doesn’t take me out of the story because they’re only there to serve their functions and they’re still adding to Homestuck as a period piece. character needs a walkthrough? well everyone at the time would go to GameFAQs for a walkthrough. character wants to share a video? people at the time would use YouTube to share videos. it also helps that GameFAQs is an unchanging monolithic beast that remains the exact same as it was decades ago. not YouTube, I miss the old YouTube designs.

I say this now because later on the comic introduces more direct social media analogues (sometimes even outright naming them), with more attention drawn to the fact that said social media is being parodied, this all ending with said parodies feeling very dated and way too contemporary. I’m looking at you Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat, fuckin Vine. yeah, remember when Vine was in the comic???

Seizure Ball.

your fate is sealed.

and then the doll gets prototyped with the kernelsprite and...

I LOVE clown music!!!

I don’t know if you can tell by the clownsona in my main blog, or the fact that I literally said this beforehand,

but

I like

jesters.

evil jesters to be specific.

jesters are looked down as fucking fools and little funny idiots, but the moment you make 1 a villain they become terrifying, maddening, and a destructive force of nature.

so of course, I have to say that Homestuck directly appealed to me by introducing a major jester-esque character, as well as having these jester aesthetics permeate throughout the rest of the comic and informing the designs of other characters, mostly villains.

it worked so well I was inspired by pre-Bec Jack Noir’s transformation for this sona.

who up speaking in Fleur de Lis.

these are the symbols of Homestuck, not the Slimer shirt, not the Sburb house, none of the fucking trolls, no. these, the perfectly generic objects, green fuck-off cubes that are entirely useless and are canonically the physical representation of jackshit. they are a craft.

AH SHIT, IT’S A FUCKING THING.

You figure you've left him hanging long enough.

this simple bit that happens within the 1st 200 pages of this comic both introduces a really good running gag but also fucks up an entire late-game, like, end of the fucking comic late-game, writing decision that I still maintain makes no fucking sense and had no reason to exist, especially being randomly introduced at the very end.

but that writing contradiction also spawned Alternate Session which is a really cool fanventure that you should read.

I ate Gushers as a kid, I never had them in years afterwards, but now they’re sold at my college and they’re both tangy candy thingies and fucking disgusting processed trash.

still buy em though.

oh my god it’s this fucking pesterlog oh my god this is it.

TG: like the size of texas TG: or just rhode island TG: theyre always throwing around these geographical comparisons to give us a sense of scale like it really means anything to us TG: but its like it doesnt matter its always just like: WOW THATS PRETTY FUCKING BIG TG: like mr president theres a meteor coming sir. oh yeah, how big is it? its the size of texas sir TG: OH SHIT TG: or, how big is it? its the size of new york city sir TG: OH SHIT TG: sir im afraid the comet is the size of your moms dick TG: OH SNAP TG: sir are you familiar with jupiter TG: you mean like the planet? TG: yeah TG: well its that big sir TG: hmm that sounds pretty big TG: i have a question TG: is it jupiter? TG: yes sir, earth is literally under seige by planet fucking jupiter TG: OH SHIT

Dave, Daaaave. this is my boy. this rambling fucking nonsense is what I think of when I think Dave Strider, it’s so fucking good. planet fucking Jupiter.

and then Rose Lalonde happens.

#homestuck liveblog #hs liveblog #hs reread #liveblog #reread #live read #liveread #homestuck #hs1 #hs #home22tuck #Act 1 #Flash

[dappledpaintbrush]

NO SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE HERE I JUST WANT TO !!!!! SCREAM!!!;;!!! AJSJWJDJWJEJEJ !! IF YOU KNOW ME IRL NO YOU DONT!

Okay okay so it’s only been super recent I’ve been accepting that I’m probably neurodivergent so I have NO idea if Mario in general is a special interest or a hyperfixation??? But REGARDLESS!! I’ve been super obsessed with it since I was like five and I adored the old cartoons and even the life action film but IVE WANTED SOMETHING LIKE THIS SO BAD FOR ??? LIKE WHAT NEARLY TWO DECADES??? AND !:!:! ITS HERE AND ITS SO SO GOOD I FUCKFIFJFJF I seriously started stimming (I think? I was like. Shaking my hands. Again I’m still learning about allat) the second it started and I had to hide it under the little extendable table thing we had over the chair AJSJSJDJWJDJD I WAS JUST SMILING THE WHOLE TIME AND LOSING MY SHIT OVER EVERY SINGLE REFERENCE !:!:! AAAAAA IM NOT GONNA SAY ANYTHING BC OF SPOILERS BUT LIEKEJEJRJRJEJR IM SOOOOO HAPPPYTHTTTHTH!:!:!:!:!:

LUIGI WAS FUCKING ADORABLE I LOVE HIM SO MUCH AND PEACH!!! MARRY MEEEEE MARRYBME PELASE!! AND BOWSER!!! I HAVE TWO HANDS!!! AJSJSJSDNJSEJWOOOHOOOOOOOOO FUCK YEAHHHH MARIO MOVIE!!!

#mario movie #I HAVE SO MUCH ENERGY AND IDK HOW TO RELEASE IT!!!!!!!!!!

[jjorbles]

(Repost) This is not my Wonder Woman

Note: This article was originally posted July 28th, 2014 on the Agony Booth, which I used to write for. Since that site is sadly no longer with us, I’m reposting my old articles here.

So as you probably know by now, the image above is the new Wonder Woman, as she will appear in her first (official) theatrically-released motion picture role. It’s pretty much exactly what I expected her to look like. The design is focused predominantly on her Greek warrior origins. The image is meant to sell her first and foremost as badass and intimidating. Surprisingly, despite details like her bandolier leaning toward utilitarianism, Wonder Woman still apparently fights evil in high heels, which will probably rub some people the wrong way*. It’s hard to tell from this sepia-toned image, but it looks like there’s next to no color in the outfit; dark brown, bronze, and a dull silver seem to have replaced the traditional American flag color scheme, which is new. Presumably, the idea is to make her more in sync with the muted color scheme of the film, which will likely carry over from Man of Steel. Overall, it does nothing for me, but it’s not a horrible costume. Gal Gadot certainly looks the part, and it’s actually quite faithful to the spirit of who Wonder Woman has been for the last twenty years or so. The problem is, it’s not my Wonder Woman.

Wonder Woman, as a character and as an icon, means a great deal to me. She is by far my favorite comic book superhero, and has been for a long time, so much so I once made a makeshift costume of her to wear when I was five. Seriously, I did that. I was a weird kid.

So naturally, I have pretty strong feelings about Wonder Woman. Which is not easy for a character who’s had such a strange and tumultuous existence. One of the reasons I love her is that she has by far one of the most bizarre and fascinating histories and origins of any superhero. And while that’s a source of her charm, it’s also her greatest weakness. Despite being inarguably the most recognizable female superhero of all time, she remains strangely obscure for someone so iconic. Her image is universal, yet her character almost unknown. Her media presence is constant, yet strangely few adaptations of her comics exist compared to her male counterparts. She’s managed to stay in constant publication for 73 years now, yet unlike Superman, Batman, or Spider-Man, she’s almost never had more than one concurrently-running title at a time.

Why is this? Why has Wonder Woman traveled such a rockier path than other superheroes? Why does everyone know who Batman and Superman are, but know very little about Wonder Woman beyond her name and costume?

There are a lot of complicated reasons for this, but one way or another, most of them have to do with one simple fact: she’s a woman. No one likes to admit it, but even in this day and age, the comic book industry at its best has an... awkward relationship with women. Study the history of any female character who’s been in publication for a decade or more, and things get weird and often uncomfortable.

For example, Lois Lane, the most well known woman in superhero fiction outside of Wonder Woman, started out strong, willful, and career-minded, one of the first to break the mold of how damsels in distress were meant to act. She had agency and goals of her own outside of her relationship with Superman. And keep in mind, this was the 1940s. But then the ‘50s came around, and Lois’s character turned towards an outright psychotic obsession with marrying Superman. The pages of Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane are packed with bizarre, misogynist stories that frame Lois as a shrill harpy constantly scheming to entrap Superman into marriage and failing, like some matrimonial version of a Road Runner cartoon. Things have gotten better for Lois lately, though they do have a tendency to write her as a gun-toting commando ninja, because that’s obviously the only way a woman can be empowered. It seems like the writers are constantly overcompensating for Lois’s perceived status as a damsel in distress.

What’s the disconnect? Well, for the majority of its history, comics books have been written, drawn, edited, and published almost exclusively by men, and while that’s becoming less and less the case, male attitudes still tend to dominate the industry. And male creators tend to overthink their female characters at best, and at worst, imprint their own warped views of the opposite sex onto them. This is especially true in Wonder Woman’s case. In fact, Wonder Woman comics are so predictably influenced by changing attitudes towards women that you can actually see the last 70 years of the feminist movement reflected in her publication history.

You remember the feminist movement, right? That thing that apparently we don’t need anymore? Yes, this is going to be a bit of a rant, but unfortunately there’s no way to talk about Wonder Woman without talking about feminism. The two are essentially joined at the hip. The character was created by a feminist based on his own radical gender politics, and essentially co-opted by the feminist movement as their mascot. Basically, as Wonder Woman is perceived, so is feminism perceived, and vice-versa.

Any given era of Wonder Woman comics in some way reflects what the popular image of a “strong woman” was at the time. The ‘40s through the ‘60s saw Wonder Woman’s alter ego Diana Prince as the mousy, secretly-overqualified secretary pining away for a man who barely notices her. You can see shades of everything from Bewitched to Woman of the Year in early Wonder Woman. The Robert Kanigher era especially was all about Diana apologetically emasculating her boyfriend Steve Trevor.

The ‘70s briefly saw her morph into a fashionable, liberated “modern woman”, a powerless kung-fu detective with more than a little of Emma Peel in her. 1980s Wonder Woman had more of a Princess Leia vibe, as a regal, dignified ambassador with no steady romance in her life. Finally, the ‘90s began the rise of “Straw Feminist Wonder Woman”.

What do I mean by “Straw Feminist Wonder Woman”? Well, do you remember that episode of The Powerpuff Girls called “Equal Fights”?

It was about a costumed lady bank robber named Femme Fatale, who justifies her crimes to the Powerpuff Girls by citing gender discrimination against women, and the fact that all men are jerks. She essentially has a persecution complex: as a member of an oppressed minority group, anything she does if justified in her eyes. Femme Fatale was designed as an archetypical Straw Feminist: man-hating, irrational, and abrasive. While not in the least bit subtle, “Equal Fights” was an admirable attempt to educate its audience on the true purpose of feminism. Unfortunately, the episode ended up being strangely prophetic. Except, in the real world, Femme Fatale won.

And this is where I get ranty. Feminism has had a bit of a PR problem over the last twenty years, which has recently come to a head. There’s a new online movement calling itself “Woman Against Feminism”, involving women declaring they “no longer need feminism”. In some ways, the movement has admirable goals. Many of its members clearly have their hearts in the right place. They want equality and understanding between the sexes, and simply don’t understand that that is exactly what feminism is about. (A few of them, of course, are just plain slut-shaming or belittling the suffering of others, but I’m just going to ignore them. Let’s talk about the actual problem here.)

This one image for me sums up the entire problem here. For some people, the word “feminism” has come to mean something else. What a “feminist” actually is is someone who believes in equality between the sexes. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. If you believe women should be allowed to vote, you’re a feminist. If believe women should have control over their own bodies, equal pay, and the right to make their own financial choices, then you are a feminist. It doesn’t matter if you choose to self-identify as one*, those are the ideals the movement is defined by. That has not changed. Only the popular conception of the movement has changed.

[*And since this always manages to come up, yes, there’s something to be said for the idea that we shouldn’t need the word “feminism” anymore. Yes, I also saw and agree with Joss Whedon’s excellent Equality Now speech. Yes, it would be great if gender equality was at the same place that racial equality is now in the national conversation, where we no longer need a word for “not racist” because not being racist is just assumed to be common sense. But for feminism, we’re not there yet. And as the video below points out, removing the word “feminist” from the discussion isn’t helping, because it’s not actually changing the public discourse. It’s just avoiding the issue, and steering the topic away from gender.]

Laci Green articulates things in this video far better than I ever could, but basically, society has somehow become convinced that feminism is some kind of extreme female superiority agenda rather than a simple call for gender equality. Feminism is a dirty word, conjuring up images of shrill, unattractive harpies who hate all men and shame good-looking women purely out of jealousy. People feel the need to distance themselves publicly from the movement in order to be taken seriously when speaking about gender issues. Celebrities like Katy Perry and Shailene Woodley and Lana Del Rey have gone on record claiming to not be feminists. Even Wonder Woman herself fell prey to this recently, when the new creative team set to take over her book said in an interview that they didn’t want her to be feminist.

If I may steer the conversation away from Wonder Woman for a moment: Whenever the topic of “when did feminism go so wrong?” comes up, people always want to play the blame game. Usually people fault the movement itself for going off-message. The notion is feminists let too many extremists join the movement and give it a bad name. And I really don’t think that’s true, mostly because there are so few actual well-known feminist extremists to point to. Usually Andrea Dworkin’s name gets thrown out, and people are always quick to pounce on the Tumblr community. But in my experience, feminist extremists are a very small minority, and not a very vocal one compared to the many, many positive feminist voices out there. No, the reason feminism’s image was so easily distorted is that as much as we hate to admit it, this is still a man’s world. The patriarchy is slowly losing its grip, but it’s still in power.

Men don’t like to admit how much we still benefit from a patriarchal society, and when confronted with reality, we become defensive. We’ve somehow convinced ourselves that sexism is more or less “over”. It isn’t. Not even close. Women still receive less pay for equal work because of their gender. Less than fifty years ago, it was still legal for men to rape their wives. Women still face constant obstacles when trying to make decisions about their bodies. They still (rightly) fear coming forward after being raped because of the likelihood they will somehow be blamed for it. And yet, we often manage to overlook all this.

We’ve decided things are more or less equal now, and anyone still fighting against sexism is perceived to be overreacting, and fighting a war that ended long ago. No one likes to be blamed for the sins of their fathers, but unfortunately, we’re living in a world still dealing with the consequences of those sins, and blaming the victims isn’t helping. It’s making us culpable, and it needs to stop.

But I was talking about “Straw Feminist Wonder Woman”, wasn’t I? As I said before, this image of feminism as bitter and anti-men has been the popular conception since the early ‘90s, and not coincidentally, this is roughly around the time Wonder Woman suddenly got very, very angry. To be fair, everybody was scowling in comics in the ‘90s, but Batman and Superman were scowling because “DARKNESS! NO PARENTS!” Whereas Wonder Woman started scowling because “Ugh, men are dirt, amirite ladies? I’m gonna go back to my island of butch militant lesbians because I hate men so much!”

As previously stated, comics have an awkward relationship with women, due to them being mostly written by men. Men, many of whom aren’t really feminists, and in the case of Wonder Woman, find themselves tasked with writing a character who’s almost literally the living embodiment of feminism itself. Therefore, they always find themselves falling back on what they think a feminist is. She hates all men, or at least looks down on them, and overreacts to every sexual or romantic proposition, because how else are we to know that she’s a modern, independent woman that doesn’t need a man? She’s extremely aggressive, and prone to anger and violence, because how else are we to know that she’s a strong woman who can kick just as much ass as a man?

Trying to distance Wonder Woman from feminism isn’t new either. In the late ‘80s, a new element of the Wonder Woman mythos was added: The Amazons of Bana-Mighdall, a splinter faction of Amazons living in secret in the mortal world. How they’re used varies from writer to writer, but generally their purpose is to provide deliberate straw feminists to contrast against the less extreme, accidental straw feminist Wonder Woman. They’re the man-hating extremists who want to reap bloody vengeance against anyone with a penis. They’re basically there to say, “See? Wonder Woman’s not that kind of feminist! She’s totally cool with dudes! These are the man-hating dykes you so fear and despise!” It’s understandable why the writers feel the need to include them, but they have the effect of delegitimizing Wonder Woman’s position rather than clarifying it.

It may seem like I’ve gone completely off-topic here, but the point I’ve been building towards is that people don’t understand Wonder Woman because people don’t understand feminism. Her comics have always been subject to the changing image of feminism and her writer’s skewed perspective on feminism, so much so that she’s never managed to remain consistent long enough for people to get to know her. Our site’s own Sofie Liv posted an excellent video essay to that effect, putting forth the well-reasoned assertion that maybe Wonder Woman just doesn’t have a character.

And I can’t really argue with that. If nothing important or character-defining about Wonder Woman remains consistent from writer to writer, then what argument can be made about her character? It’s a question I honestly don’t have an answer to. On the one hand, I believe in Death of the Author. I believe that characters in fiction take on a life of their own, independent of the influence of their creators.

Batman has evolved far beyond the original vision of Bob Kane and Bill Finger. The current Superman certainly isn’t what Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster first imagined. On the other hand, I also don’t believe characters are completely defined by popular perception. If that were the case, Batman would be a bloodthirsty Punisher knockoff, based on what a lot of his fans seem to want. So what really defines a character like Wonder Woman, who’s been around forever, but has had so many completely incompatible interpretations?

I don’t have an answer for you. I don’t know if there is a direct answer for that. Maybe it’s all subjective. Maybe who a character is to you personally is all that really matters, and if other people share and enjoy your vision, then great. I can only tell you what Wonder Woman means to me, and unlike Superman or Batman, it comes almost entirely from the mind of her creator.

Outside of Spider-Man, I’m not sure there’s a superhero as popular as Wonder Woman who was as fully formed as she was in her first appearance. William Moulton Marston was one of the most interesting men ever to write for comics, and his vision of Wonder Woman, odd as it may have been, was a fleshed-out, living entity all its own. The seven years’ worth of Wonder Woman comics he wrote before his untimely death remain the highlight of the Golden Age for me.

Wonder Woman was the first notable attempt (to say nothing of success) at creating a female action hero who didn’t need to sacrifice her femininity in order to be powerful. Wonder Woman got to save the day and be the hero with no qualifiers or concessions to male sensitivities. Her stories were almost a complete gender reversal of the superhero formula: In Wonder Woman comics, all the heroes, villains, and otherwise powerful and influential characters were women, including most of Wonder Woman’s rogues’ gallery, while men were usually limited to roles with less agency that were normally occupied by women. Steve Trevor remains one of the only examples of a male damsel in distress.

Marston’s comics were bold and groundbreaking, not to mention nutty as hell and immensely fun. The mythology of Wonder Woman’s world was unique and eye-catching in ways that few comics even today can match. Golden Age Wonder Woman rode giant kangaroos through space, fought seal men and fire warriors from the sun, and rescued WWII soldiers from evil valkyries, all in the name of love and peace.

After Marston left, things got a lot more shaky with regards to Wonder Woman’s “Girl Power”, but the comic itself got no less strange. It was the Silver Age, after all. A strange mix of science fiction and fantasy still remained, and Wonder Woman herself continued to be a mostly peaceful champion of love.

After the reboot in the ‘80s, however, things began to get a lot more conventional, and in my opinion, the poorer for it. Previously, Paradise Island was a wondrous mix of science and magic. They had ancient marble architecture, but communicated with telepathic radios. The invisible jet was one of many unique aircraft. Wonder Woman didn’t just journey through a greatest hits collection of Greek mythology; She travelled to other planets, subterranean worlds, and subatomic universes. The Greek gods themselves would occupy other planets instead of vaguely defined, seemingly earthbound realms. But all of that changed after the reboot.

No longer playing fast and loose with Greek mythology, the comics suddenly began valuing historical accuracy. Paradise Island became Themyscira, devoid of anything remotely fun or interesting. Gone were the giant space kangaroos, replaced with more conventional mythical creatures like pegasi. Gone were the strange space-age gadgets, leaving the Amazons still technologically primitive after thousands of years of immortality. Wonder Woman’s adventures lost their pulp sci-fi edge, confining themselves to the familiar world of Greek myth. Wonder Woman became almost completely earthbound, and those unique elements that remained, like her invisible jet, began to be downplayed.

One of the more subtly subversive changes was that the character’s patron goddess was changed from Aphrodite to Athena. It may seem insignificant, but whatever else she may be (Goddess of Wisdom, Justice, etc.), Athena was still a War Goddess. And war, even justified war as Athena was meant to represent, is not something Wonder Woman should ever be a champion of.

See, whatever else may have changed over the years about Wonder Woman, there’s one thing about her that’s remained consistent enough for her best writers to latch onto: She’s a peacemaker. Always has been. The Marston comics and the Lynda Carter TV show—probably the best and most defining versions of Wonder Woman ever—were both very clear on this. One of the best quotes ever made about the DC Trinity was when Gail Simone said, “When you need to stop an asteroid, you get Superman. When you need to solve a mystery, you call Batman. But when you need to end a war, you get Wonder Woman.”

That’s who she is. She never fights in the name of war, even a just war. War is her enemy. Literally. Her archenemy is Ares, God of War. If there’s one thing Wonder Woman has always been about, it’s preventing conflict. That’s why her signature weapons—her lasso, bracelets, and tiara—are nonlethal and defensive in nature, designed to defend and subdue but never harm. That’s why her patron goddess was the goddess of love. As her theme song says, Wonder Woman’s goal is to “stop a war with love”.

This subtle change in Wonder Woman’s ideology was immediately felt. Wonder Woman wasn’t exactly barbaric at first, but she was definitely more violent, frequently ripping her (admittedly nonhuman and monstrous) enemies apart. But the thing that really cemented Wonder Woman as warlike in readers’ minds was Kingdom Come.

That mini-series featured the image of a sword-wielding Wonder Woman who, at the book’s climax, murdered her human opponent by stabbing him through the chest. That moment was meant to shock and horrify, by showing how far the once noble heroes of the DC Universe had fallen, with the kindest and most nonviolent of them cutting a man in half. The image of Wonder Woman running a man through was meant to feel as wrong as Batman shooting someone. But in a bitter irony, from that moment on, that image would be what defined the popular concept of Wonder Woman.

She’s now frequently seen carrying a sword and other ancient weaponry, her lasso hanging unused from her hip almost as a formality. Heavy, stylized armor is often added onto her costume. Her sisters, the Amazons, have become almost unrecognizable.

Paradise Island was once essentially a highly sexual nunnery, an island of women dedicated to the way of Aphrodite, and the way of love. The whole reason they were on that island to begin with was to escape from the war and violence of Man’s World. Now the modern Themyscira is like an all-girl boot camp, filled with armored, battle-ready Amazons, constantly training and fighting. They act as if they enjoy war and conflict, which completely defeats the whole point of living on a isolated island in the first place. The great Wonder Woman, once a trippy, unique pulp sci-fi heroine, has been reduced to the generic Xena clone that Gal Gadot will apparently be playing onscreen. Because one warrior princess is the same as another, right? No need to go deeper into her character than that!

Look, I like Xena. I like Lucy Lawless. I like badass warrior girls in general. But that's not who Wonder Woman is. It has never been who Wonder Woman is. Wonder Woman is as much like Xena as Ellen Ripley is like Buck Rogers. Yes, they both fight aliens in space, but that’s about where the similarities end. And giving Wonder Woman a sword isn’t just counter to her whole message of love and nonviolence, it actually disempowers her as a character, which is the opposite of what they’re presumably going for.

Giving Wonder Woman weapons and armor implies that she needs weapons and armor, which she never has before. She’s always been able to take on rogue gods with nothing but a lasso, a tiara, and a pair of bracelets. Giving Wonder Woman a sword and armor just because she’s a warrior princess is like giving Superman a raygun and a jetpack because he’s an alien.

But mostly, a lot of the problems with Wonder Woman stem from how every writer approaches her with the idea that she’s somehow broken and in need of repair. She’s too weird, or she’s too political. Whatever the reason, they all feel the need to junk everything and start over. But they never start by asking themselves who Wonder Woman is. They instead ask who she reminds them of. So not only does Wonder Woman become whatever the current version of a “strong woman” is, she takes on incongruous elements from other, more popular superheroes in the hopes that her books will sell. She reminds us of Superman, so let’s give her the power of flight, even though she’s already got that iconic invisible jet. She reminds us of Thor, so let’s put all the focus on her mythological background. She reminds us of Xena, so let’s give her armor and a sword, and have her take joy in battle.

Wonder Woman is not Superman. She’s not Thor, and she’s not Xena. She’s a wholly unique entity. She is Princess Diana, peacemaker, healer, ambassador. She’s the champion of Aphrodite, pledged to end humankind’s suffering and conflict by teaching them how to love. It’s Wonder Woman who won the Tournament of Grace and Wonder, and the right to bring peace and love to Man’s World. It’s Wonder Woman who reformed Baroness Von Gunther, a Nazi war criminal. It’s Wonder Woman who was so pure and honest of heart as to withstand the scorching breath of Drakul Karfang. It’s Wonder Woman who withstood blow after blow from an angry Green Lantern while continuing to hold out her hand in friendship.

She has the strength to crush armies and the heart not to use it. She’s a woman who’s never had to fear any man, and therefore never has reason to hate. She has the strength of women, yes, but also the empathy and gentleness of women. She fights not to divide or punish the sexes, but to unite them. She is kind, empathic, curious, fierce, loving, dominating, and utterly fearless. She’s the greatest superhero who ever lived.

Well, that’s who she is to me, anyway.

#stuff I wrote #agony booth #repost #wonder woman #dceu

[siryouarebeingmocked]

mitchels vs machines (spoilers)

didn’t like it

I wanted to watch it when it came out, because I heard the name ‘miller and lord’, the guys who did Spider-Verse and other cool stuff. Then I saw the main character had a Pride pin on her shirt, and I was worried it would be woke.

But I gave it a shot anyway.

Take a look at the main character, Katie. What do you think her core character concept is?

>Ironically post-grunge teen hipster?

Good guess, but no. Here’s a hint; she’s about to leave for art school. Combine that with the Pride pin.

>Her design concept is stereotypical college lesbian?

So I assume.

But okay, it’s a cartoon, they deal in broad archetypes. Whatever. You know what also bugs me about the movie? Much more? As a character designer?

The eyes.

Look at them.

The bodies are mostly realistic, with stylized proportions, but the eyes are just tiny dots in an oval of almost-flat white like a psycho Korean webcomic character. All that’s missing is the fisheye overhead lens.

There’s probably ways to make those work in 3D, but the animators used precisely none of them. They’re barely even 3D.

Okay, okay, I’m kidding. Let’s scale it back. To that horrible Squirrel Girl art.

I browse /r/ImaginarySliceOfLife. There’s a lot of pictures there with a realistically drawn setting, a realistic character/s, and then the face is basically standard flat anime cel-shading. MvstM’s art direction reminds me of that.

Let’s get back to Katie. While she’s chatting with her pals on Zoom or whatever, one of them tries to sell her on the school because it has “diversity”. No backspin or depth, the statement just lays there. This is foreshadowing for the reveal that she’s gay/bi at the end, when she reaches the school and the girl we thought was her friend was actually her girlfriend! What a tweest!

Oh, wait, no, I’m not sure why we’re actually supposed to care about that. It’s not some shocking twist. Is it trying to improve gay acceptance by making us like the character and then revealing she was gay? Because it wasn’t exactly subtle. Or well-written. I don’t see how it recontextualized her character in any significant way. It just feels extremely token. 

...California should’ve been a hint.

Writing-wise, what’s the lie the protagonists believe? The Dad thinks tech is bad. The mom keeps using her phone to compare herself to the perfect Joneses, played by John Legend and Chrissy Teigen basically playing themselves. 

The son is obsessed with dinosaurs and also he thinks the Joneses’ daughter is cute and he’s socially awkward. Katie...well, she feels her small town doesn’t appreciate her and her tastes and her ironic, 30ish-writer’s idea of what the kids like these days, (which is apparently Youtube poops) - and want to go to art school.

Oddly enough, I should empathize with her. I went off to art school. I didn’t fit in at home. We both wear glasses. Heck, she’s even part black, and I’m entirely black. I’m from the Caribbean, so I think that makes me, like, 120% black.

But her story still bores me.

Ostensibly, the idea is “she learns to appreciate her family and her new friends by working together to save the world from the Metaphors.” The mom should learn that the other family isn’t perfect and she needs to accept her own family’s flaws and stop comparing herself to the Joneses’ idealized image. Dad learns tech isn’t all bad. Little brother learns how to accept himself and take his shot and of course it turns out the Joneses’ daughter actually likes to hear him talk about dinos.

Did I mention that I’ve also been writing regularly for over a decade now? On top of being a bibliophile?

These are all good arcs, on paper - I’ve written about and struggled with some of them myself - but I just wasn’t feeling it. I think the script needed more time in the oven.

I stopped watching in one scene where the tech-company-AI’s rogue robots are hunting all humans - yes, I know, the metaphor is very nuanced - and the tech-hating dad takes their phones and gleefully stomps them to pieces, a gigantic smile on his face, insisting he’s not enjoying it.

Then he hands the little pieces back to the son, who thanks him. 

And that’s the joke.

It’s not actually funny to me. It’s just awkward and cringy. Maybe that’s because I spend most of my waking hours looking at a screen, but all I could think of was the hundreds of bucks of electronics he was cheerfully destroying.

Maybe it would’ve been funnier on Fairly Oddparents, in 2D. Maybe it would’ve been funnier without the other three family members watching him in shock and horror.

Now that I’m typing this maybe it reminded me - somewhere deep down - of my own abusive mother, who once destroyed a book I was reading in similar fashion.

Maybe that’s my real problem with the movie.

TEAL DEAR: Movie’s not woke, IMO, just mediocre.

#neftlix #movies #animal #personal #character design

[sunder-soul]

𝖜𝖍𝖎𝖙𝖊 𝖉𝖔𝖛𝖊

❶·❷·❸·❹·❺·❻

Chapter One: There's just something about those Riddle murders that doesn't quite make sense... Wordcount: 2.3k Content warning: language, allusions to bigotry.

Permanent Taglist: @jujugentle @weirdowithnobeardo @pearlstiare @fromthehellmouth @whoevenfrickenknows @moatsnow @voidmalfoy @lucys-brain @sunles @arana-alpha @tallyovie @expectoscamander @nothinghcppens @itsjustfics @mikariell95 @suicide-sweetheart636 @toasterking

Name: MORFIN GORMLAITH GAUNT

Age: 46

Wand: fir, 10 ¾ inches, dragon heartstring

Residence: Gaunt Estate, Little Hangleton, Yorkshire

Marital status: -

Offense charge: three counts of murder in the primary degree

Date of charged offense: 1st July, 1943

Offense Detail: prisoner entered the residence of the Riddle family (Muggle, IM-00) and inflicting the Killing Curse (UC-001-1717) upon the three members of the Riddle family present; Thomas Riddle (63), Mary Riddle (60), and their son Tom Riddle (37). Use of the Killing Curse has been confirmed by Prior Incantato (see report DMLE-619-1951-BLE, SA: Robert Odgen).

Date of Testimony: 3rd July, 1943

Prisoner plea: guilty

Sentence: Azkaban, 360 years

Date of Sentence: 3rd July, 1943

You frown.

It’s very late, the candle your desk is barely a stub, the little flame hovering nervously on the surface of a broad pool of wax, and you’ve been copying over these stupid reports to the new, tamper-proof parchment forms for seven hours now – but something is extremely odd about these dates.

“McCollin,” you say slowly. “Did you work this case?”

“Hmm?” McCollin doesn’t look up at the desk beside you, head resting heavily on one hand and his spine curled into a perfect and truly concerning C-shape over his own stack of files. He looks close to passing out right there and then, salt-and-pepper hair a little greasy, scruffy five o’clock shadow, eyes bleary and shadowed.

“Gaunt,” you read, “1943. You were working with Odgen then, right?”

He snorts. “Yeah, I remember that nutter.”

“What happened?”

“Guy was from one of those ancient pure-blooded clans, you know, one of the real fanatical ones, inbreeding and liquidated assets and all,” McCollin yawns, dragging his hand down his face and smearing ink across his whiskered cheek. “Hated Muggles like nobody’s business."

“Yeah he killed three Muggles, right?” you peer at the report.

McCollin nods at the form he's copying. “Went off the deep end one day. Walked right up to their house and murdered ‘em. When they brought him in he was ranting and raving about how they’d had it coming for years.”

“He was arrested, charged, and sentenced within three days,” you say slowly.

He finally looks up at you. “So?”

“That’s the fasted processing I’ve ever seen.”

“The guy admitted to it, kiddo,” McCollin says in deadpan, “he had snakes nailed to his door and his family tree was basically a Christmas wreath.”

“Yeah, but… what made he snap?”

He laughs again, shaking his head despondently as he returns to his form. “You got a lot to learn.”

His tone wants to be fond but it just strikes you as patronising, especially considering the amount of times people have said that exact same stupid line to you. It’s like half the bloody department think being Muggle-born makes you incapable of understanding the subtle and unique intricacies of wizarding culture – as if bigotry and supremacists and assholes are exclusive to the magical world. “What?” you say a little too defensively.

“Families like that… guys like that… they’re not right in the head. Hate Muggles just to hate ‘em, reckon they’re all that’s wrong with the world. Honestly it’s a miracle he didn’t do it sooner.”

You look back down at the report, suspicions anything but assuaged. “Yeah,” you say quietly, “it is.”

☆゜·。。·゜゜·。。·゜★

“Did you ever watch Gaunt’s testimony?”

“You’re still going on about that?” McCollin drawls, heaving the towering box of finished files up a bit as he heads for the lifts.

“I looked him up in Records and the memory’s only available with supervisor permission,” you push, following him quickly. “If you signed me off then I could get Owler to –”

He slams the button and stares at the little golden arrow above the elevator grate slowly sliding towards the basement floor. “And why in Merlin’s name do you want to watch the Gaunt trial?”

You slip your hands into the pockets of your purple Ministry robes. “I’m interested.”

“Interested,” he echoes, shooting you a look. “Is that so?”

“He was processed in three days, McCollin. If it was that obvious he was guilty, it must have been one hell of a trial.”

“It was,” he scoffs as the lift dings and the grate grinds to a noisy open. “Fine, but only if you finish Johan’s quota by five.”

The triumph is impossible to keep off your face and McCollin rolls his eyes at your immediate glee. “I’m on it,” you grin, spinning around and racing back to your desk to get started.

☆゜·。。·゜゜·。。·゜★

“Merlin’s beard,” McCollin mutters, shaking his head at the stack of completed transcripts. “I gotta hold stuff over your head more often.”

“Just sign the slip, McCollin,” you smirk.

He sighs and grabs the quill from your hand, and you hold your breath as he scribbles his initials on the slip. “You’re obsessed,” he drawls.

You seize the slip and round on the lift, heart racing with excitement. “I’m interested.”

☆゜·。。·゜゜·。。·゜★

The trial is absolutely insane.

Morfin Gaunt looks like a Witch Weekly cartoon caricature of a fanatical blood-purist and he rambles in a manic-edged, ceaseless torrent about how much he enjoyed murdering the Riddles as the Wizengamot mutters and blithers disapprovingly for about three hours – but something catches your attention right near the end. Something you can’t help but ask Owler about the second the memory ends and you’re thrown back into the Records Room.

“Who’s Merope?”

Owler’s sallow face looks about as thrilled at your question as he was at your request for the memory in the first place. “Merope Gaunt,” he says in a flat, nasally voice, waving his wand at the Pensieve and sending the memory swirling back into its phial.

“Merope Gaunt?”

Owler’s thin, anaemic lips downturn even more. “His sister.”

You stare at him. It is not at all what you’d expected. “And why did he call his sister a mud-soused, scumsucking slut?”

“Ask your supervisor.”

“He seemed to be saying he killed those people because of Merope, why on earth would his sister be why he –”

“I keep the records, I don’t conduct the investigations,” Owler interrupts with not inconsiderable disdain. “Now if you could please –”

“Did they bring Merope in for testimony?”

Owler gives your continuing presence a very dirty look. “No.”

“Why not?”

He pushes the door to the Records room open and stares at you.

You try to hold your ground but Owler is unrelenting, and you're forced to step past him with a curt sigh. “Right, well, good afternoon, Owler, thanks for –”

The door slams shut behind you.

☆゜·。。·゜゜·。。·゜★

“Get what you wanted?” McCollin smirks as you collapse stony-faced into your chair.

“I forgot how impressively unpleasant it is to talk to Owler,” you mutter, resting your head in your hands. “Did you know about Merope?”

“Merope?”

“Yeah, Morfin’s sister.”

“Didn’t know he had one,” McCollin says disinterestedly.

“He was saying some stuff that made it sound like she’s why he killed those Muggles.”

“Uh huh.”

You lift your head, giving him an incredulous look. “He said she’s why he murdered three people, McCollin. How does that not interest you?”

McCollin throws down his quill and sighs sharply. “Look kiddo, the guy’s rotting in Azkaban, he admitted to the murders, they found the curses in his wand, and he had a memory of the whole thing. What exactly are you hoping to achieve here?”

You can barely believe it. “Why isn’t Merope Gaunt mentioned in any of his trial documents?” you say sharply.

“Either she wasn't relevant to the proceedings, or she's dead, or he made her up,” McCollin shrugs, “like I said, the guy went off the deep end.”

“But why doesn’t it say –”

“Just drop it,” he sighs impatiently, “you have work to do, and I won’t have you wasting clocked time on some case from nearly a decade ago.”

“Come on, McCollin, can’t you admit that it’s weird that –”

“I said drop it,” he says sharply, “don’t make me be the big mean supervisor here, you know I hate it.”

You glare at him. “Fine,” you say through gritted teeth.

It’s almost too easy to pull Morfin’s old file from where it’s still sitting in the refuse pile and subtly charm a copy of it that evening.

☆゜·。。·゜゜·。。·゜★

Merope Gaunt, as far as you can tell, fucking vanished off the face of the earth in 1925.

There’s nothing, no addresses, no marriage or death notice, no registered Floo connections, no DRC calls for gnomes or doxies or even the odd kappa, not a single trace of her after Morfin and their father Marvolo had a stint in Azkaban for assaulting Bob Odgen back in the 20s.

It seems like the second they were locked up, she scarpered.

You sit back in the Archives Hall and let out a long breath, flipping the folder shut dejectedly. Morfin’s file is a thick wad of anti-Muggle hate crimes rivalled only by his father’s, and closer inspection had revealed that the Gaunt family estate sat a cool twenty minutes' walk from Riddle House where the murders had occurred. If Morfin had lived so close to some of the Muggles he hated so much, he’d been sitting on a clear motive for murder for years.

So why suddenly snap?

What had pushed him over the edge?

Why did he cite Merope in his deranged testimony?

Why talk about her in that way?

Where the hell did she go?

There are endless questions and zero answers. Plus, you kind of get the feeling that if McCollin saw you hunched in the Archives after-hours trying to find those answers, you’d get your pay docked.

☆゜·。。·゜゜·。。·゜★

That night, you sit bolt upright in bed with a surge of electric realisation.

Mud-soused… scumsucker…

You’ve heard that language before. You’ve processed about four hundred case files of harassment with that language.

“Idiot,” you breathe, smacking your forehead and falling back onto your pillows with a thump. “Idiot, of course…”

Because that’s the way Pure-blood extremists talk about witches and wizards who've fallen in love with Muggles.

Suddenly, you have a pretty good idea where Merope might have disappeared to the moment her blood-obsessed brother and father were out of the picture, and a pretty good idea of where you might be able to look to find her. Because you’ve been looking in the wrong place.

You’ve been looking for her in the wizarding world.

☆゜·。。·゜゜·。。·゜★

“I have the craziest news for you,” you grin, slamming a silver Sickle on the counter and taking your seat at the bar.

“You say that twice a month,” Mori grumbles, setting your drink down and sliding the coin into his huge, calloused hand.

“It’s true twice a month.”

“It’s true half as much as you think.”

“I found her.”

Mori’s dark brows raise. It makes his gruff face look slightly less intimidating. “The lady from that old case you're into?”

“Yeah,” you beam, seizing your drink and leaning forward. “Started going through marriage certificates, and –”

“You’re telling me that your big-shot Ministry intern arse has been working this thing for a month and you didn’t even check marriage certificates?”

“Not Muggle ones,” you smirk.

Mori takes a glass off the bar and starts to clean it as he peers at you. “Go on.”

“She married the same guy her brother murdered, Mori,” you breathe, glancing around to make sure none of the shady denizens of Moribund’s are listening – it’s not like the bar's regular patrons are so welcoming to your big-shot Ministry intern arse on the best of days considering you’re half-way down Knockturn Alley in the dead of night. “They fucking ran away together!”

“Well, that explains a lot,” Mori mutters.

“Exactly!”

“What are you going to do about it?”

You shrug, taking a sip of your drink and feeling supremely pleased with yourself.

“What, you spent that much time investigating this thing for no reason?”

“Nah,” you say quietly, lips still in a smile. “I have a feeling there’s more to it than this. I still have to find out what happened to her after they got married and her brother murdered his new in-laws.”

“And what’s this guy’s name again?”

You give him a dry look. “You know I can’t tell you names, Mori, I’m pushing the bounds of my contract telling you this much already.”

He shrugs his massive shoulders, casting a wary look around the dark bar. “If you’re looking for people who might know a thing or two about murderers and Muggle-haters, you’ve come to the right place.”

“I’m here to talk to you, Mori, not the murderers and Muggle-haters.”

“You’re here to drink cheap and rant to someone who won’t rat you out to your boss,” he growls.

You give him another grin. “Cheers to that.”

☆゜·。。·゜゜·。。·゜★

You find Merope’s name in a record tome of an old church parish almost by accident. There’s barely any information there, just one name on a huge list of those buried in the pauper’s graveyard less than ten blocks from where you’re sat amongst the looming shelves of the Muggle public archives at that exact moment.

But there is something.

It says she died in a place called 'Wool’s Orphanage' on New Year’s Eve in 1926. It’s not hard to guess why she might have been there, and how she probably died.

Merope Gaunt had a child.

☆゜·。。·゜゜·。。·゜★

❶·❷·❸·❹·❺·❻

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[thankskenpenders]

The DiC characters or the adventures of sonic characters are not coming back, ever. 90's nostalgia is super huge right now, tons of companies are doing nostalgia bait and callbacks to especially 90's stuff. If SEGA were to ever use those characters, it would be now. The fact that theyre not, says enough. And they sure as heck wont use them 10 years from now when kids dont even know sonic had those cartoons.

Think about it like this, obscure characters from the Sonic Manga of all things have gotten referenced. That the FF's dont get that or Sonic X characters is for a reason. I'm sure the comic writers would love to do some easter eggs or just goof about the old cartoons, but SEGA must be keepin a tight grip on certain characters not even getting alluded to.

I'm not sure why you felt the need to send this? First of all this isn't even something I've talked about in the last few days. Second... yeah, no shit there are reasons why the DiC characters like the Freedom Fighters or Scratch and Grounder or whoever haven't come back? I've written about all those reasons extensively. The legal drama of the Archie comics, the mixed reputation of the series, the clear desire to differentiate the IDW series from the Archie run, their relative obscurity compared to the Sega cast, the fact that they clash with the modern vision for Sonic without retooling, and of course the fact that Sega has just never really cared about any of them. If getting those characters back was easy then the IDW series would've just been about the Freedom Fighters from the start. I've said repeatedly that folks shouldn't hold their breath

But I also don't think it's completely impossible, even if it's not something I'm counting on. And that's because Sonic is a franchise defined by weird, unexpected decisions. Did anyone expect to get a decades late live action Sonic movie, or for it to be the highest grossing video game movie ever? Did anyone expect Sega to sanction a new classic-style 16-bit Sonic game from a team of indie devs? Or a game where you get to make your own Sonic OC and have them be besties with Sonic? Or a (bad) Sonic RPG from BioWare? Or for them to devote that much screentime to Elise at the big Sonic Symphony? Or for Tangle and Whisper to get their own comic miniseries, a bunch of official merch, and even playable appearances in two mobile games? Or an officially licensed Mephiles the Dark Tech Deck? I could go on and on. Again: I'm not saying it's gonna happen any day now. But weirder things have happened

I also don't think "kids don't know who characters like the Freedom Fighters are" is an argument that holds any water. I mean, yeah, obviously they're not NEARLY as popular as the game cast. But like... older media doesn't just disappear when a new generation of kids rolls around? Especially not when it's attached to a perpetually popular franchise

Like, when I was a kid, I became obsessed with a lot of shit that was from before my time! Classic Mega Man, the G1 Transformers cartoon, EarthBound. And as I've explained before, Sonic too. I got into Sonic in 2002, but it was through catching AoStH on Toon Disney and randomly stumbling upon Archie Sonic #13 at a flea market. It didn't matter that those were outdated pieces of Sonic media because they were still new to me. And I know there are kids out there who are the same way. Months before the movie came out, my little niece and nephew became obsessed with Sonic X (with no involvement from me) because it was on Netflix, and now they love Sonic. It didn't matter to them that that show was nearly 17 years old at the time. While they're definitely in the minority, I'm sure there are kids out there finding SatAM on YouTube (or on Netflix, when it was on there), or finding fanart of Sally online and looking into where she came from. No, they aren't as widely marketable as someone like Shadow, but that doesn't mean NOBODY knows who they are aside from old farts, or that kids who like Sonic turn their noses up at characters they don't already recognize

#anon #ask #tkp asks #this got longer than i intended it to