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halfagone · 6 months

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Is it Canon or Fanon?

A little over a week ago, I received a very thought-provoking ask that wondered whether the Fenton parents could be considered good parents after everything they've done throughout the show. I did leave a response to that ask, and you can find the original answer here. But even afterwards, it had me thinking:

Why did we start depicting Jack and Maddie as Bad Parents to begin with?

I aim to answer this question through canon evidence to see where this argument might have come from. Now, something to keep in mind is that we still tend to ignore canon a lot of the time, so there may be some people who won't take this meta to mean all that much anyways. But for the purpose of fanfiction, we have to acknowledge that there needs to be an in-universe explanation to these events and sadly, the 'it's a Butch Hartman show' or 'it's an early 2000s cartoon' excuses don't really cut it.

So let's start with some basic stats. There are 49 episodes to the Danny Phantom cartoon (we will not be using the Graphic Novel, A Glitch in Time, for examples); 20 for the first season, 17 for the second, and 12 for the third. If you looked this up on Google, you might notice that these numbers don't line up with the episode list provided. This is because I counted any two-part episodes as one for convenience's sake. Season 2 has three two-parters: "Reign Storm", "The Ultimate Enemy", and "Reality Trip". Season 3 has "Phantom Planet".

Jack appears for 43 of those episodes, although he does not have any speaking lines in the episode, "Frightmare". Maddie, on the other hand, appears in 40 episodes. The three episodes that Maddie does not appear in, but Jack does, are as follows: "Memory Blank", "Flirting With Disaster", and "Double Cross My Heart".

Let's Start with Season 1:

"Mystery Meat": Jack is shown as dismissive to Danny and his friends' preferences, telling them, "True, I've never seen a ghost, but when I do, I'll be prepared. And so will you, whether you want to be or not." Later on, when Sam and Tucker are visibly shaking and Danny is panting from exhaustion, he doesn't realize something is off about this. When Jazz offers to drive Danny to school, the Fenton parents quickly assume that she's a ghost and go off to track them down... even despite her previous argument that she was mentally an adult (should I be concerned that Jazz called Danny an 'abused, unwanted wretch' to make a point to their parents?) A POINT TO MADDIE, she worried about hurting Jazz if she really wasn't a ghost but Jack quickly dismisses that, as their ghost-hunting device only hurts when gets into human hair (spoiler alert, it gets into Jazz's hair). She also insists that Danny is not a ghost, but unfortunately she ultimately doesn't try to stop Jack when he insist Jazz is a ghost. Standing aside and letting abuse play out does not mean Maddie is innocent of hurting her daughter too.

"Fanning the Flames": When Jazz and Danny are struggling to study for an upcoming test, Jack decides that they should put their kids into the 'Fenton Stockades' which is basically an iron maiden. And yes, the Fentons have an entire floor that is meant to torture people. I feel like that should probably be addressed at some point. A POINT TO MADDIE, she stood her ground and refused to let him put their children inside, and even locks him inside instead.

"Teacher of the Year": After hearing displeasing news about the state of Danny's grades in a parent-teacher conference, Maddie lectures Danny by saying, "Get this straight Danny. You're a Fenton. Fentons get As. Or in your father's case, B minuses." Before this, when Danny tried to explain himself, Jack shuts him up with, "Now that's enough of your sass talk mister." Do a lot of parents act like this? Yes. Does that make this a good, conductive way to help your child improve their grades? No, it does not. In fact, Maddie's response in particular probably reinforces the idea that Danny doesn't fit in with the rest of his family and further proves that Jazz is the favorite child. Not a great parenting moment.

"Fright Knight": In this episode, Jack tells Danny, "If I didn't consider it a sign of weakness, I'd weep with joy!" Not a very promising sign when a parent tells their child that it's wrong to show emotion. It's especially telling, however, when it's crying from joy and not even sadness. Yikes.

"13": This is the episode where Jazz 'dates' Johnny briefly, and we see Danny stalking them on their dates. I've seen people give Danny a decent amount of flack for that as well, so this would be a good time to say that the Fenton parents were there too and even encouraged him to keep stalking his sister. Danny was wrong to ignore Jazz's privacy like that, but he definitely learned it somewhere.

"Public Enemies": Here we see more of the Fenton parents' aggression towards ghosts. We get a line from Jack: "I'm gonna tear that ghost kid apart into a million different-" Notice something here? He recognizes that Phantom is a ghost 'kid' and yet still fully intends to shoot at him with the intent to hurt if not straight-up kill him. The only time Maddie disagrees with him is to insist that she does the dirty work because she has better aim than him. These are not the type of people you should let children stay with.

"Maternal Instincts": Okay, I gotta say it, this is a really cute episode. We get to see Maddie reminiscing over how close she and Danny used to be and wishing they had that bond again. Unfortunately she does get some points docked off for deciding what they should do as a bonding activity instesd of asking what Danny wanted to do and maybe learning more about his interests and who he is as a person now that he's a teenager. But there is this really sweet moment where Maddie tells Danny 'I love you' at the campsite which absolutely melted my heart and then later on when she saves Danny from the ghosts, Danny tells her she's awesome and gives her a hug. So sweet. But then she kinda ruins it by asking her son to act as a distraction and- Please do not ask your teenage children to keep skeevy old guys 'entertained' when you know he's a creep. A POINT TO JACK, while all this is going on he's defending his daughter and even shouts, "Back off, she's a minor!" That's some Dr. Doofenshmirtz energy right there, I respect it. He also talks about making Jazz an action figure, which was a really cute moment amidst the chaos.

"The Million Dollar Ghost": This episode is filled with some great Danny-Jack bonding moments and goes to show how much Danny cares about his father that he's willing to get caught to make Jack feel better about himself. We also get to see how much Jack cares about how Danny views him and he wants to be someone in Danny's eyes. Unfortunately, this is the episode where Danny gets lectured for not doing all his lab chores, such as cleaning the beakers and changing the ecto-filtrator- despite knowing that the portal could blow up if they don't change in time and knowing that Danny is bad at cleaning his own room. And we literally get a scene where Jack knocks something over and tells Danny to clean it up because he was too busy running around to do it himself. Is it important to give children chores? Yes, it teaches them responsibility. You should not be asking them to deal with hazardous, dangerous chemicals that can literally cause an explosion capable of killing people. Something to keep in mind.

Now let's look at Season 2:

"Doctor's Disorders": In this lovely (sarcasm) episode, we have Jack saying to Danny's face: "Poor Jazz. She's always been my favorite." I don't feel like this one needs much more explanation for how horrible this is. Also, this isn't really too relevant to the bad-parent-thing and more to the "they wouldn't take Danny's reveal well under other circumstances" thing, because Maddie literally says to Tucker: "Everybody knows humans can't have ghost powers." Which would technically, probably, dehumanize Danny in their eyes.

"Identity Crisis": There's one line in particular in this episode I wanted to point out, which is from Jack where he says, "Safety features? Why, safety features are for punks." ...I know this is probably supposed to be a joke, but when you think about it, it's even worse than you might think. In fanon we do tend to stress how forgetful the Fentons are when it comes to lab safety, but it's one thing to forget and it's a whole other thing to purposefully dismiss it. I could even argue that we're doing the Fentons a service by characterizing them as simply forgetful.

"The Fenton Menace": This is one of the episodes I referenced in the original ask as well, for its... plethora of concerning material. There are lines such as, "Whether it's air land or sea I won't stop until we capture a ghost and tear it apart. Molecule by molecule." A POINT TO MADDIE, she told her family she loved them by saying, "Nothing like spending quality family time with the people you love." However she immediately loses those points when she and Jack attempt to 'spin the crazy' out of Danny. The episode transcript reveals Danny's reaction to this, which is described by, "Danny screaming, his face and hair flying around. Zoom out to show him strapped to a table, which is attached to a metal arm. Zoom out to show the metal arm connected to a centrifuge-like device on the ceiling." As well as, "Danny is shaking, hair sticking up with bags under his eyes." Is this supposed to be a joke? I wouldn't know because quite frankly, I'm not laughing.

"The Fright Before Christmas": So in this episode we learn why Danny hates Christmas! Which is because he got peed on by a dog. As a baby. What kind of parent lets their baby get peed on by a dog? Again, child neglect is a criminally punishable offense, and if they had left him out, in the cold, with dog piss on him, we could have had a lot bigger problems here. They also ignore both their children for most of this episode due to their arguing, although they go back later on and tell Danny that he shouldn't be alone for Christmas and where was all this concern before?

"Secret Weapons": Ah... This is the episode where it happens. Here we get the infamous interaction. Please note how a ghost is referred to as an 'it'. Not a person, not even a kid. But an 'it' that can feel pain that will go ignored.

Jazz: "Does it hurt the ghost?" Maddie: [laughs] "Oh, Jazz! You know your father and I don't care about that. Jack: "Yeah! If we hear it scream, then we know it's working."

"Micro-Management": At the very end of this episode, Jack makes a comment to Danny, "I'm so proud. Our boy finally has the physical prowess of a 60 year old president. Here's to you son." Clearly it's meant to be a compliment, but I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't take this as a compliment.

"Masters of All Time": This one takes a more distressing turn, because after Maddie catches Danny for snooping around, she has his strapped down to a table and fires a laser at him to interrogate him, thinking he's a ghost (though the laser doesn't hit him, just threatens him, which... isn't much better). And this is after he's already insisted that he's her son. He is still very clearly a child, and even if she doesn't believe that he's her son (for admittedly understandable reasons, people usually remember when they bear children), the fact that she strapped him to a table at all does not look favorably on her. Especially when he very clearly believed that she was his mother, and he was her son. And she still did this to him. Yes, there were time shenanigans involved, but that doesn't make this any easier on Danny just because he knows the truth.

"Reality Trip": This episode showcases that the Fenton parents can actually be decent parents. While they have a hard time believing the truth at first, they do eventually accept it. However, it is still important to remember that Danny could have never known what their reaction would be, so his fear is understandable and rooted in real concern for his life. Here are some of the best points from this transcript:

Jack: "Imagine, our own son has had ghost powers all this time and has kept them a secret from us. [confused] But we love him! [turning to Maddie] I wonder why he didn't trust us enough to tell us." Jazz: "[sarcastically] Hmm, let me guess. [mimicking Jack] "Hey, Maddie, let's destroy the ghost!" [mimicking Maddie] "No, Jack, let's dissect the ghost." [mimicking Jack again] "I know, let's catch the ghost and rip it apart molecule by molecule!" [normal voice, sarcastic again] You guys are so understanding." [Jack and Maddie drop their gazes, ashamed.]

Moving onto Season 3:

"Eye for an Eye": This is more a passing mention, but Jack seems to be a little obsessed with the GIW and huge fans of their work, and you do see it some more in "Livin' Large" later on in the season as well.

"Girls' Night Out": We see Jack trying to make an effort with Danny in this episode again. I did point out in the original ask reply that Jack was obviously trying to be a good father for Danny, which definitely deserves some points. However, it is still important to point out how generally uninterested Danny was in the bonding activity. It goes back to how Maddie ignored the chance to give Danny a choice, and how dismissive they tend to be towards him. I still want to award Jack a point for looking for advice from 'Father/Son Relationships For Stupids!' but I do so half-heartedly. Their interactions in this episode definitely reek with discomfort, but considering everything that has gone down in between now and "The Million Dollar Ghost", that does make sense.

"Torrent of Terror": This is another instance of extreme lack of safety precautions- the airbags don't deploy? In the GAV??? Somewhere out there, OSHA is crying.

"Forever Phantom": Maddie and Jack show a lot of anti-Phantom rhetoric in this episode. So this tracks how uncomfortable and/or threatened Danny might feel at home. Some examples include:

Jack: "He keeps this up he's liable to make people forget he's nothing but a putrid rancid ball of self-aware protoplasm."

Maddie: "Don't be fooled sweetie. He's up to something. Remember that time he attacked the mayor? Or stole everyone's Christmas presents? Once a filthy ghost always a filthy ghost."

"Livin' Large": Something to remember, the GIW intend to fire a missile into the Ghost Zone after gaining access to the Fentons' portal. While they didn't have the password right away, it cannot be understated that the Fentons basically gave away their house in exchange for wealth. Thankfully the missile was just a fake and not a real weapon of mass destruction, but do not mistake this to mean that- had it been real- the GIW wouldn't have gone through with it. And the Fenton parents would have been just as responsible.

And that concludes our canon research for this argument! Let's wrap things up with some stats. Of the 49 episodes in the show, we have evidence in 21 episodes. That is roughly 43% of the show, and this does not include comments that Danny has made about his parents and how they treat him. Obviously, at the end of the day, human error is possible. There is always a chance that I could have missed another piece of information, or perhaps another thoughtful addition to this list. However, 43% is no laughing matter.

Yes, the Fenton parents had their shining moments, but with all the other evidence presented that overshadows those little gems, can you confidently say that they are good parents? And most of all, if you were in Danny's shoes, would you say the same thing?

It's easy to excuse this as a cartoon. When you're writing in this world, playing with these characters, that excuse instantly evaporates.

Thank you for reading, I hope you all learned something about the Fenton parents like I did.

#danny phantom #dpxdc #jack fenton #maddie fenton #fanon vs canon #character analysis #show analysis

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bolidebelle · 4 months

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So... I had a thought today about the general meh of King Peppy writing off all the trolls lost in the Great Escape and how so does the whole village, but also kind of how they treated Branch? We know from Trolls 3 Branch didn't really grow up with anyone caring for him. And based on how Poppy's involved in the teaching and how the kids in the cartoons kinda just run around and trust any adult we can probably safely assume that trolls have a somewhat Community-based way of raising Trollings. Families first, but everyone helps out where they can. This makes sense in a community that's so used to heavy losses. It also kinda leans into why no one seemed to realize Branch was -alone-. But another part of that may have been this massive community feeling of... not wanting to admit it. It was Generational Trauma to the extreme in the Troll Tree. Dozens of trolls are likely taken every year. There would be no way to realistically move forward without Forcing yourself to not see the problem. They knew it was happening, but it was their normal. It was their life. In all likelihood, none of the living generations had ever experienced freedom. They didn't know any better so they had to make due. When they finally escaped, leaving behind what looks to be easily a 1/4 of their trolls based on how many putt-putts there are. Knowing they all likely died. They don't know any other way of coping except to pretend it didn't happen in anything other than quiet whispers and scrapbook stories. It's their history but it's one they hardly want to acknowledge because then that would mean acknowledging all the terrible horrible things that had happened. So instead it's erased, to an extent. It's not healthy but it's what they know how to do. Then there's Branch, little gray Branch, like a silver neon sign of everything they're trying to forget. They don't know how to help him, because helping him means thinking. Remembering. So they ignored him, like everything else that reminded them. Of Course they didn't know how to take care of him other than keeping him alive. Generational Trauma, the collective cultural trauma of what all of them had been through, how they had unconsciously as a community decided to handle said trauma, didn't have a place for him.

#trolls #media analysis #trolls branch #I will ramble about this for ages

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mayflowers515 · 1 month

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(Wholesome Cartoon AU) Smiling Critters' Families

Wanted to make this to go more into depth with the Critters' families and their thoughts on them. I mentioned some aspects about some families already in my lore headcanons, but here the information relating to them will be more organized and may have some extra details not brought up before.

Note: For the purposes of cartoon logic, real-life lifespans of animals won't apply here when it comes to the parents (since their ages are definitely beyond what ages they typically live by-)

I also have headcanons for all the families, and I will update this if I think up more for them :)

🧡☀️DogDay☀️🧡

Members:

NoonHound - father; 32 years old

Bio: Works as a cartoonist and is very passionate and easygoing.

DandieDawn - mother; 31 years old

Bio: Works as a daycare teacher; she is very caring but a bit of a worrywart.

DogDay - older brother; 11 years old

SunnySpot - younger sister; 6 years old

Bio: Filled with endless curiosity and bubbly charm, but can be a smart allec sometimes.

DogDay loves his parents a lot and respects all of what they do for him and his sister. He only wishes they could all spend more time all together. That doesn't happen too often due to his mother and father working busy jobs. As for DogDay's relationship with Sunny, he cares a lot about her, too. Sometimes, he can get a bit too overprotective of her in cases where it may not be needed. Even then, he likes to play games with her whenever she asks about it. She's very playful after all.

DogDay's parents, Noon and Dawn, work a lot to care for him and Sunny. They used to all live in a more drab town where the job quality wasn't the best. They stayed there to improve their financial situation until finally they could move to a better town to work better jobs. Though they can still be busy at times, the parents now have much more initiative to take a break compared to before. As for Sunny, she really looks up to and admires her brother. Though she gets annoyed whenever he overly coddles her, and she occasionally plays smart with him.

Headcanons:

Sunny has learned how to solve a Rubik's cube at a young age. In general she is good with completing brain puzzles, but solving a Rubik's cube is her favorite one.

Dawn's experiences as a teacher is part of the reason for being a worrywart. Due to the way the kids at daycare act, she tends to have this persona of her slip whenever she tends to DogDay and Sunny. She is often out of work very exhausted and tense, but she still loves her job.

As a kid, Noon drew cartoons as he has always wanted to be a cartoonist. However, he doesn't really like looking back at them since he views them as "cringy". If his kids were to see the comics he created, he would laugh at them as a way of acknowledging how "cringy" his previous work was, even if this may not have been the case.

Dawn and Noon have known each other for a long time, as they were next-door neighbors in their childhood town (not the same as the drab town I described, though). They were childhood friends for a long time, but Noon had harbored feelings for Dawn for a long time even before they got together. By the time their high school's prom came around, he confessed his feelings for her, which she reciprocated (turns out she felt the same way Noon did, but he was oblivious to this thinking she was just being shy originally).

Dawn's hobby whenever she isn't working is landscape work. This ranges from gardening to decorating. She gets really into it, too, often taking a long time to finish her landscaping work to fit a certain occasion (especially the case when holidays roll around). Noon likes to help with decorations sometimes because of his own passions relating to drawing.

DogDay's appreciation of his father's drawings is also what makes him so interested of other people's art, even though he himself isn't as artistic of a person.

🩷🍎PickyPiggy🍎🩷

(I'm changing my mind about the status of Picky's parents. They never disappeared now- I didn't like the original idea I had for them looking back at it; may put what I planned for them previously in another timeline though, but I'm not sure atm)

Members:

PerfectPiggy - father; 36 years old

Bio: The main cook of the family's kitchen; has good leadership skills and charisma.

PetitePiggy - mother; 34 years old

Bio: The co-cook and gardener of the family's kitchen; not afraid to get messy and is hard-working.

PickyPiggy - older sister; 10 years old

PerkyPiggy - younger twin sister; middle; 7 years old

Bio: Takes a lot after her mother and loves outdoor activity. She and her twin brother commonly bicker.

PowerPiggy - younger twin brother; middle; 7 years old

Bio: Though very reserved, he is stubborn and goal-oriented. He and his twin sister commonly bicker.

PlayPiggy - baby brother; youngest; 6 months old

Bio: A very happy infant who loves to play games.

Picky has a lot of respect for her parents. They were the reason she has such a passion in gardening and especially cooking. As a result, Picky is a bit closer with Perfect than Petite, but she is always enthusiastic at both learning new recipes and growing new crops. She has learned a lot about responsibility and discipline from them that reflects in the piggy she is. Picky has a motherly attitude towards her siblings. Whenever her parents can't take care of them due to being busy, Picky usually volunteers to help. She is a peacemaker to her siblings if Perky and Power get into fights or whenever Play starts to get upset. She also caters a lot to their basic needs. She doesn't deny any of them for any reason, though she can sometimes act slightly mean and sarcastic towards them depending on her mood. She usually apologizes when she goes too far with this attitude, however.

Picky's parents love all of their children equally. In the case of Picky, they are especially happy that she takes interest in their work. They secretly want Picky to help run the business with them when she's older, and potentially even inherit it if and when they retire. As for Picky's siblings, they have a lot of respect for their older sister. Especially because of what she does to make sure they get taken care of whenever their parents can't help for whatever reason. Perky and Power usually have Picky play with them when she can because she can also let loose and play with them just like any sister can. Though not much is known with how Play feels about Picky due to being so young, he appreciates her company just as much as everyone else's. He especially loves the games she plays with him.

Headcanons:

Before their start as a local restaurant business, the Piggies took their food service slow. They helped out in any food drives and potlucks they came across. Their favorite place to help out is in homeless shelters and orphanages. Picky especially likes to help out in the orphanage (I imagine this is how she and Bobby met all that time ago).

Both Perfect and Petite were into cooking, and they naturally took interest in each other when realizing during high school that they both planned to go to culinary school. During their time in culinary school, they fell in love and eventually became a couple.

Perky and Power aren't into cooking as much as their older sister or their parents, but they still occasionally help out in the kitchen, especially if it involves their favorite food. They can't help out in the same room, however, since they bicker even in the kitchen.

Perky is VERY messy whenever she helps out in the kitchen. She often has flour and ingredients all over her clothes after helping out. This would annoy Power, who is much less messy in the kitchen.

Whenever Power is in the kitchen, he is very by the book. He does a good job keeping track with the details explained in the cookbooks, but he will question whenever something goes against what he expects would happen.

Perfect sometimes cooks the food he makes for the restaurant business as a surprise for the family. To save money, they usually eat store bought food whenever those surprise days don't happen.

Petite probably has a lot of injuries due to what she has to work with in her garden. She especially hates wasps since they sting her a lot whenever she tends to the garden.

🩵🌈CraftyCorn🌈🩵

Members:

King SpeQuine - father; 41 years old

Bio: A very demanding presence in the kingdom and always strives to receive the best in everything.

Queen PrisMare - mother; 38 years old

Bio: Known to be emotionally distant and no-nonsense. She cares a lot about keeping the kingdom afloat.

(Princess) CraftyCorn - daughter; 11 years old

Crafty's relationship with her parents is... complicated to say the least. While she doesn't hate either of them, she doesn't exactly respect them either. They always talked down to her for interests that didn't relate to royalty and they also talked badly about anybody that didn't share their status, and Crafty disliked that. Despite this, Crafty always tried to please her parents so she could feel accepted by them. She was often talked down to for not fulfilling their expectations. Eventually, Crafty had enough of this and ran away in the middle of the night. She was accompanied by a knight who took pity in her situation. She doesn't like talking about her parents ever since she ran away from them. This is also the reason why she's so sensitive on the topic of her upbringing.

Crafty's parents didn't really love their daughter as a daughter. Rather as someone that could help them with the kingdom's reputation. They always nitpicked her for not fulfilling the visions they wanted for her to be. SpeQuine would especially be more nitpicky with his daughter. PrisMare is the same, but she has a sense of coldness whenever she does the same thing. Mainly because she doesn't know how to show love in the traditional sense, since she was always so focused on her kingdom and her kingdom only. These attitudes caused Crafty to run away. Not much is known about the parents' reaction to Crafty besides the fact they are desperately trying to search for her, unaware of her current location.

Headcanons:

Queen PrisMare actually used to be a big artist as a young girl, but she was bashed for these interests in a similar manner that Crafty was. PrisMare herself doesn't realize her own hypocrisy because there was a point in her life where her family would convince her that art was nothing but a waste of time. She commonly uses those experiences to convince Crafty to do what she and SpeQuine want her to do. Even so, I feel deep down, she would've secretly been proud of Crafty and her artwork, but doesn't show it so she can be a "good example" of "proper royalty".

King SpeQuine grew up in a rich family that spoiled him rotten before getting married to PrisMare. He was always taught that he always deserved the best of the best at all times, even if that realistically couldn't always happen. Due to the way he was raised, if he wasn't getting into a relationship with PrisMare, he would've stayed with his parents and never got a chance to work. His parents didn't care about the severity of running a kingdom at the time. They only cared that their son got with a royal because of the reputation it gives them.

Though they aren't seen or heard of much in the events of the cartoon, there are implications that the finding of their daughter is getting more widespread. These implications would grow more and more as the cartoon goes on (probably during a point where Crafty is going through an arc).

The natures of both PrisMare and SpeQuine also caused them to clash and not have as healthy of a relationship with each other either. They hid this from Crafty as much as they could to set a good example for her.

The only reason the parents got together at all is because PrisMare was pressured by her family to find someone to marry for their kingdom and SpeQuine's parents wanted him to marry a rich lady to upgrade their own status. Both PrisMare and SpeQuine seldom treat each other like married couples typically do. They may have a slight hint of care for each other, but this never extends to true love.

💛⭐KickinChicken⭐💛

Members:

CooperRooster - father; 40 years old

Bio: A social butterfly who likes to live in the moment. Can get too over his head at times, though.

WendyHen - mother; 39 years old

Bio: A sweet but self-conscious hen who wants the best for her family.

StrikinChicken - older brother; 17 years old

Bio: He is generally chill and agreeable. He likes to tease Kickin a lot, but he also likes helping him.

KickinChicken - younger brother; 10 years old

Kickin doesn't show it around others, but he is very clingy to his parents. He is especially clingy towards Cooper since he often spoiled him and his brother ever since they were young. Despite not being as close with Wendy, he still appreciates her a lot and usually tries to help her when she has her episodes of self-doubt. As much as Kickin looks up to both of his parents, however, it doesn't compare to the amount of admiration he has for his brother, Strikin. They have always been really close, and Kickin wants to be as cool as his brother. He worries whenever he feels he can't reach Strikin's level of cool, but Strikin usually reassures him whenever he feels this way.

Kickin's parents care a lot about their son, but they deep down worry a lot about him. He was picked on a lot at a previous school he was at, and they feel Kickin gets a lot of his own hidden self-consciousness from those experiences. As a result, they reassure Kickin that he will always be a star to them. Strikin also feels this way, but he is very close to Kickin. He checks up on him a lot, and he feels bad whenever he feels he couldn't do much to help him with his doubts, even when Kickin is just happy Strikin was there for him at all. Deep down, Strikin worries about how Kickin will feel once he leaves for college...

Headcanons:

Strikin plans to major in engineering once he graduates high school and goes to college.

Cooper used to be in a garage band when he was younger. He still has a rock guitar reminding him of those times. He hopes one of his sons pick up on his skills sometime.

Wendy likes to scrapbook in her free time. She may also have some embarrassing photos of her sons when they were really young. Strikin doesn't really mind, but Kickin would absolutely get embarrassed if his mom ever showed anyone those photos-

Wendy and Cooper had BIG crushes on each other during high school, but neither one of them knew about it.

When they did get together, I imagine it happened in a really funny, coincidental fashion. Like, when they were teens, they took part in a spin-the-bottle game, and Cooper just so happened to land on Wendy, which she was TERRIFIED about at first because she thought she would be way out of Cooper's league yet he still pursued her. They hit it off ever since that night-

Though I wouldn't be able to straight out say it in the AU (since I hc the cartoon was created in the early 90s where rep wasn't exactly normalized yet), it is very much implied that Strikin is gay. Probably what made Kickin himself feel more comfortable about realizing he was bisexual (this would also be implied).

Strikin has a BIG comic book collection with comics he doesn't even read anymore. He plans to give those comics to Kickin once he moves out to college (he doesn't give it to him sooner because he wants to surprise him).

💙💡Bubba Bubbaphant💡💙

Members:

(Ben) Benvolio Bubbaphant - father; 42 years old

Bio: An outgoing, fun-loving elephant who likes seeing the bright side of things.

Bridget Bubbaphant - mother; 43 years old

Bio: A kind, calm elephant who usually likes to reminisce on the past.

Bubba Bubbaphant - son; 11 years old

Bubba cares deeply about his parents, but he hasn't always been so trusting of them. For some time (prior to the series), he thought the relationship he had with his parents was "off", as if they couldn't be his real parents due to how different they are from him (size, color, etc). Eventually he realized the reason why, and he has become much closer to them ever since. He always appreciates how much they support his academic interests, and they always strive for him to achieve the best he can. Bubba likes Benvolio's energy, but he sometimes gets annoyed when he doesn't take certain things seriously. As for Bridget, Bubba admires how calm and wise she is. They also like to reminisce on old memories together.

Bubba's parents care a lot about their son. They originally were concerned for him because he would barely open up to them at a certain point in time. Once they realized why, they took extra time in making sure they valued their son for being himself and that they would always care for him. Benvolio has always made sure to do what he could to cheer up his son whenever he felt hard on himself. Meanwhile, Bridget usually helps Bubba whenever he wants insight on certain decisions he's about to make (he wants to make sure he's doing the right thing).

Headcanons:

The reason Bubba distrusted his parents so much in the past was because of how different their genetics seemed to be. He accidentally slips up on this distrust one time when he had an argument with them. Benvolio and Bridget open up about why this is the case. It turns out they are still his real parents despite how different they seemed. Just their genetics made him turn out to not be as similar to them. This discovery was part of the reason as to why Bubba has become much more inclined to learning new things nowadays. Afterwards, he starts to trust his parents more.

This misunderstanding led to Bubba's own fear of his lack of knowledge on certain things. Benvolio and Bridget are aware of this, and always let him know that there's still a lot for him to learn and that it's normal to not know EVERYTHING. Though this doesn't personally help Bubba very much, he would appreciate the support anyway.

Benvolio was NOT good at school back in the day. However, he would barely ever get any help due to the discrimination on him being so small for an elephant. This is eventually how he met Bridget, who was the only one who would help tutor him (she also had similar problems being rejected for her differences). Though they did clash sometimes, they eventually became high school sweethearts.

Bridget had a lot of achievements for her work in school back in the day, but this wasn't capitalized on as much during the time due to the discrimination following her. They have been given much more recognition as she grew older whenever anyone found out due to their world becoming more accepting of these differences.

The Bubbaphants loved to play board games together. They don't get TOO chaotic, as to them it's all just harmless fun to them. Sometimes, Benvolio likes to be silly about the way he plays and is usually the most dramatic whenever they play.

❤️❤️Bobby BearHug❤️❤️

Members:

Beckett BearHug - adoptive father; 34 years old

Bio: A tough-looking bear who has a bleeding heart on the inside. He has fighting experience.

Barbara BearHug - adoptive mother; 33 years old

Bio: Looks snobby, but she is actually very empathetic and gentle. She is known to have a rbf.

Bobby BearHug - daughter/adopted daughter; 9 years old

Bobby loves her parents a lot. She doesn't see them for their outward flaws, but rather as the parents she wished she was born with a long time ago. The truth is, these aren't her real parents. They adopted her after she was dropped by her real parents who neglected her. Due to her previous experience with those parents, Bobby gets really scared and apologetic if she feels she is being too much with Barbara and Beckett or if she isn't good enough for them. They always give her reassurance that they love her no matter what. Bobby sees them as her real parents because of the love they've given her that she needed all along.

Barbara and Beckett care a lot about their daughter. They always wanted to have a child of their own, but they were unable to for some time. They were glad to have the opportunity to raise Bobby after realizing her situation. As a result of realizing what she went through previously, they take extra care in being as kind and reassuring to her as possible. This is so she can know that they won't leave her or neglect her like her previous parents did. They love Bobby unconditionally as if she was their biological daughter.

Headcanons:

Bobby's biological parents are Homer HoneyComb and Cara HoneyComb. They had Bobby at a young age and at the time, they weren't at all ready to have a child. They kept her anyway due to pressure from both sides of the family, but they seldom gave her any attention outside of the bare minimum. This left Bobby starved for love at a young age, and as a result, she was more clingy to them. Homer and Cara took this clinginess as an opportunity to make her a scapegoat whenever they fought and brush her off as a "nuisance". They also used it as a reason to eventually abandon her. This all happened when Bobby was at the age of 5, and she was placed in an orphanage for some time after this. When she was 7-8 years old, she finally found loving parents in Beckett and Barbara.

Beckett is heavily trained in martial arts. He someday wants to teach this skill to his daughter, but he knows she may not want to do that at this point (she doesn't like to get her hands dirty). Beckett is patient about this aspect of Bobby.

Beckett's side of the family runs a honey farm that is far from the Smiling Critters' hometown. Whenever Beckett visits his parents, he makes sure to bring back honey to share among him, Barbara, and Bobby.

Barbara and Beckett met sometime when Barbara visited Beckett's family's honey farm. They related to each other a lot due to being misunderstood by others, and they eventually fell in love as a result.

Barbara actually works as a teacher at the school the Smiling Critters go to. To avoid bias, however, she agreed to not have Bobby in the same classroom as her. She occasionally checks in on her daughter whenever she is on break to make sure she's okay during the day.

Barbara and Beckett allows Bobby to visit the orphanage sometimes due to her positive experience with the fellow orphans there before getting adopted.

💚⚡Hoppy Hopscotch⚡💚

Members:

Scott Hopscotch - father; 36 years old

Bio: Passionate and a little aggressive. He can have a bad temper at times.

Rebecca Hopscotch - mother; 36 years old

Bio: Excitable and optimistic. She can be pretty reckless outside of parenting decisions.

Harley Hopscotch - older sister; 16 years old

Bio: Reserved and a bit shy, but very protective when it comes to her family's safety.

Hoppy Hopscotch - younger sister; middle; 10 years old

Holly Hopscotch - younger sister; youngest; 4 years old

Bio: She is carefree and imaginative, and her innocence is still very present.

Hoppy respects her parents a lot. They usually encourage her to follow her dreams of being a sports star. In fact, she was inspired to do it because of her mom's role in sports during high school and winning many medals. Hoppy also cares a lot about her sisters, though she wishes they would be more willing to play the kind of games she wants to play. That doesn't happen often since their interests are inclined in different directions. Hoppy would get protective of them if something happened to them.

Hoppy's parents are very happy with their daughters. Specifically for Hoppy, they appreciate the amount of energy she brings to the dynamic. Also happened because of their influence and their own energy. Hoppy's sisters also look up to her in their own right. Though Harley can act very cautious with Hoppy due to how reckless she can be, she appreciates what she does whenever she doesn't feel up to doing things. Holly really looks up to Hoppy despite not being into sports like she is. Holly usually likes piggy backs from her or Harley.

Headcanons:

This family seems to have a habit of cursing. Scott and Rebecca curse often whenever they're mad (mostly for Scott) or feeling intense about something (mostly for Rebecca). Holly and Hoppy usually have to be taken out of the room so they don't pick up on their cursing habits (Harley is the only one allowed to listen). Hoppy listens in anyway, so now she has a habit of occasionally cursing just like her parents. Obviously since the Smiling Critters is intended to be a kids cartoon, the swear words aren't actually heard by the viewers. They're coincidentally and comedically blocked out by something or someone every time. Ironically, Hoppy's parents would get mad if they heard their daughter cursing (secretly a bit proud at the same time, though). She usually tries not to curse in front of them anyway, but she occasionally slips up.

Family game nights are likely very, VERY chaotic with this family... Think like that Odd1sOut Monopoly scene-

Speaking of game nights, imagining this is how Scott and Rebecca met. One time they just had a game night with their high school friends. They basically had a game respects game attitude towards each other and grew very close ever since.

Harley wants to major in English once she makes it to college.

The sweater Hoppy has wrapped around her waist was given to her by Harley as a hand-me-down. Hoppy loved it so much that she has worn it ever since it was given to her. If she were to wear it, it would likely look a bit oversized on her-

Despite Hoppy getting in on the chaos of her parents, she will usually partake in making sure Holly keeps her innocence since she's so young. Basically like a "No! Not the baby!" situation like in Amphibia whenever something that would ruin Holly's innocence is about to happen.

💜🌙CatNap🌙💜

Members:

MewZizz - father; 34 years old

Bio: A calm, quiet guy who likes to play music for anyone willing to listen.

FeLune - mother; 33 years old

Bio: The resident "crazy lady"; She has a mysterious aura, but is she really what she seems?

CatNap - son; 11 years old

CatNap isn't by his parents often, but he still shows appreciation for what they do. Sometimes he can be a little embarrassed by the antics of his mom, but he will help her with any errands she needs done. As for his dad, CatNap appreciates the music he comes up with. He occasionally stops by to see his dad perform whenever he's awake.

CatNap's parents care deeply about their son. MewZizz is worried about his son's mental state sometimes, suspicious of the fact that he sleeps so often throughout the day. Though he knows why, he sometimes tries to convince him of better ways to go about the stress. This doesn't usually work since CatNap is so convinced that he just has to stay as calm as possible through proper sleep. Meanwhile, FeLune nags CatNap out of her own worry. Also because of a lot of the many traits they share with each other... She worries about CatNap going through the same judgement she went through, but she attempts to help him whenever he feels stressed about this.

Headcanons:

FeLune had a love-at-first-sight experience with MewZizz. She was always a part of the audience watching his performances. Eventually, she mustered the courage to talk to him, and they shortly got into a relationship afterward. For MewZizz, he loved FeLune's support and the quirks she had, so he quickly fell in love with her in a similar way.

The poppy gas CatNap has as his second scent came from FeLune's side of the family. FeLune herself had to deal with poppy gas, but she managed to control it to a healthy level. However, before she did, she would often get flak for having this ability, being deemed a monster by many for having it. As a result, this affects the way she feels about her son's poppy gas. She worries a lot about if people found out about this. Little did she know, her excessive worry about it is also what drove CatNap's own fear of the others finding out about his ability.

MewZizz often played lullabies for CatNap when he was younger. CatNap has fond memories of these lullabies, and he even hums them himself whenever he helps put others to sleep.

MewZizz and FeLune are very openly romantic in public. They do a lot of PDA, and sometimes this gets on CatNap's nerves because of how openly they do it.

FeLune was able to have their home installed with their own observatory. Besides his own bedroom, CatNap finds the observatory to be his favorite place to unwind.

(Phew... This took so long to make with the designs and descriptions =v=' I'm sorry for not posting about the AU in a while. I hope this makes up for it- Also tried to not be exactly the same as the existing family dynamics other people came up with for their own interpretations of the Smiling Critters- It's their original OCs after all- I did still get inspired by some things. If anyone has an issue with this, let me know and I'll work something out with my own characters since I don't want to copy off of anyone T^T)

Hope you guys enjoyed this (long) post!

🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜

#smiling critters au #smiling critters #justsomepersonalhcs #dogday #pickypiggy #craftycorn #kickinchicken #bubba bubbaphant #bobby bearhug #hoppy hopscotch #catnap

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gffa · 1 year

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Kinda vibing off the other anon’s ask…how did you reconcile with Anakin’s portrayal in the clone wars cartoon? I keep trying to, but the movie version and cartoon version seem like completely different characters at times. Like Hayden’s Anakin is so emotional and reserved and idk, vulnerable? (also prettier lol) Just generally more relatable in his struggles with his fears, anger, etc. And the cartoon version is so…not. Just kinda feels like a generic hot headed, himbo protagonist. Which is weird since that’s supposed to lead to the man we see in RotS. (I have similar issues with Padme and Obi-Wan’s portrayals at times too. But that’s not nearly as bad as with Anakin) So like any advice or words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated!!!🙏

This may not be a super helpful answer, but it's the truth of how I came to reconcile the two: 1. Trying to view Anakin's character through the lens of how the war changed him, how in some ways he was rewarded for it (because he's so good at killing things, he has a new confidence, ego in the stratosphere, self esteem still in the toilet, so he seems "settled" in his own skin at times, he gains a more confident demeanor, his issues manifest as the more traditional anger issues, etc.) even as it was slowly chipping away at his emotional foundations. I try to view Anakin (and the other characters) through the lens of how being in the middle of an active war zone practically 24/7 would change his day to day demeanor, even if I acknowledge that the real answer is "because they were trying to 'correct' Anakin's portrayal", this can pull the two versions a little closer together in my mind. 2. Focusing on the bigger themes, like rewatching the first season of TCW, I was struck by just how often Anakin was willing to throw people to the wolves to go rescue the ones he cared about. Like the whole thing with refusing to wipe Artoo's mission logs, so he's willing to risk his entire squad of clones to go rescue him, because that's what attachment is--the willingness to get a thousand people killed because you have been afraid to live without the one you love. Moments like that help bridge the gap a little further for me as well. Or the entire Mortis storyline is one I will defend as being a great look at Anakin's character and the themes of the Force (basically, it's the Force trying to get Anakin to get his shit together, that everything that happens in that arc is a reflection of Anakin's struggle as the Force tries to get him to face his inner self, because that's what the Force does) and that helps me with enjoying TCW, too. 3. Just giving it some time, not just since I first watched it, but settling into the idea that I will never fully reconcile it, it's just not possible for me, and that there are some ways I can reconcile it. Just... time to settle into the idea of its imperfections being okay and I still enjoy the good parts of it. 4. Maintaining my boundary of, "My foundation of understanding of Anakin's character comes from the movies, that is who the character is at his very core, that is the structure that everything else must rest on." and anything TCW adds on is still canon but is the layer over the movies. The movies/Hayden's portrayal will always come first for me, and anything that conflicts with that, I tend to view as "something else is driving the way he acts", "this is a partial layer, rather than a whole layer, like the movies are", rather than that it's a core component of who he is. That's pretty much it for me--I view TCW as part of Lucas' canon, but I also see it as connective tissue to Lucas' canon, rather than the foundation, which means that sometimes it feels a little off, and I can go, "Well, Anakin's acting like this because the war has made him appear more confident, but once that's over, at his core he would still have been that reserved, emotional, soft-shelled person we see from Hayden's performance."

#lumi.txt #anakin skywalker

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olderthannetfic · 10 months

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Re: (721666474305011712): This kind of reminds me of something I've been thinking about for a while, and this ask helped me put it into words. I think part of the problem with the shounen, shoujo, childrens cartoon stans, and YA "fans" the anon describes is the same thing: Adults who have functionally outgrown genre/demographics aimed at kids who then attempt to reimagine the stories as things meant for adults, but when the text falls apart under this premise (because it's still for kids!) they get upset. It's a weird state of arrested Development.

Yes, that YA novel about teenagers destabilizing a corrupt regime has young characters in war settings being taught by adults. It's aimed at kids! Read Dune or The Things They Carried. Yes, in SnK the Eldians thank Eren at the end for trying to help them, not because they approve of genocide (obviously because they kill him and his followers for it) but because of course there's going to be some acknowledgment of "the power of nakama." It's aimed at kids! It's a battle shounen, so it's still bound to some conventions of the genre/demographic like friendship, as sloppy/misplaced as it may be. There's even the power of friendship in Kingdom even though it's also a shounen manga about war that's well-written. Read The Ravages of Time instead. Yes, they're nice to the other oppressive gems in Steven Universe at the end. They're teaching kids about forgiveness.It's not the Iliad or Night. It's for children! Doesn't necessarily mean all things for children are poorly written, but they have to be understood as what they are.

At some point as an adult, you have to learn how to meet stories where they are in order to engage which them properly. Yes, we can read, interpret, and analyze the text as it presents itself, but you also have to place the text in its proper contexts to understand it, as well. When was it created? What is the target audience? What are other works within the same parameters, and what are the genre conventions? There's not really any childrens media that will completely hold up when you interpret it as something for adults with the maturity of adult stories (And this goes doubly for AtLA, not because it's any better or worse as a war story, but it's definitely For Children and doesn't hold a candle to other war stories for adults, despite how many of its fans loudly, annoyingly claim otherwise). We're adults! Enjoy things for adults if you want stories with the maturity for adults! It's time to grow up!

I think much of the issue is that people feel bad for not actually wanting to consume media aimed at adults, and then, sometimes, resentful of other adults who do.

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anopoulos · 9 months

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About Aziraphale.

GOOD OMENS 2 SPOILERS. LIKE ALL OF IT. ALMOST ALL OF IT. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

Look. I understand. I was angry too, when I saw the last scene. Because how could Aziraphale not know what Crowley wanted, right? How could he not know what Crowley needed?

But I feel like we’re mainly seeing this from the perspective of someone who’s seen Crowley’s (multiple) monologue(s) about his fall. How hurt he is, how angry he feels.

Aziraphale wasn't there for any of these scenes, so how could he know?

The moment Metatron offered Aziraphale the post of the Archangel and the possibility of reforming Crowley, EVERY (ha) viewer knew that wasn’t what Crowley wanted. But that’s the thing.

We know that because of things Crowley has never said to Aziraphale. Because this is one of the topics that they don’t talk about. That’s not part of their dance, never has been, apart from the usual “you’re different than me, that is why you do things the way you do” or the casual bickering.

We don’t know why they don’t talk about it, we can only speculate. Maybe it hurts Crowley (we can see that he’s upset about it many times), maybe it’s uncomfortable for Aziraphale (because, deep down, he fears that the same thing might happen to him).

But what we do know is that Aziraphale has never seen Crowley actively as happy with anything else around him (apart from himself, which I refuse to believe Aziraphale doesn’t realize) as he was when he was an angel. I believe that was the first scene of the season for a reason. But what Aziraphale doesn’t realize is the fact that Crowley wasn’t happy because he was an angel, he was happy because of his creations. He was proud of them (which may have been one of the reasons for his Fall in the first place).

And something that we see during this season, is the fact that Crowley a) doesn’t seem as interested in the things he created when he was an angel and b) doesn’t even remember most of his life as an angel (maybe because he was forced to forget, which I don’t believe to be true, most demons seem to remember their lives before the Fall).

So we know that, despite the fact that he’s hurt for having fallen, he has no true wish to come back. And that’s the thing I don’t think Aziraphale realizes.

He doesn’t want to come back to Heaven nor to Hell, and we know why. He’s the one who convinced Aziraphale to save the world the first time around, in the first place.

He likes living on Earth, he likes drinking wine and coffee, and listening to music, and taking naps and, sometimes, nibbing at some food. He likes watching action movies and cartoons. And he knows Aziraphale has his pleasures with the world as well (hence why the convincing to stop Armageddon worked so quickly).

Now, what I feel like is, ever since the job mini episode, Aziraphale has had to come to terms, understand or simply acknowledge the fact that he's on "his own side". That's what Crowley told him, that's the side Crowley's on, and that had taken him by surprise. Especially because he ended up going "against god's intentions" by ultimately doing something good.

Weren't angels supposed to be good? Why were Gabriel and the others (even Muriel) so unbothered by the death of three children? By the suffering of two parents who, ultimately, did everything right, in god's book?

And also, weren't demons supposed to be evil? Why was Crowley helping him save these kids, if he was an enemy? He says he's on his own side (that sounds… lonely), but he still had done wrong things, hadn't he? He was one of the fallen. Surely it wasn't without reason.

That was, I believe, the first instance where Aziraphale truly questioned the institutions of heaven and hell, good and evil, for what they were.

And at the same time it was freeing to "go with heaven until you can", I believe this is perhaps the moment where Aziraphale feels the most upset about this. Because heaven was where he came from, so there must be some comforting memories, fond feelings towards it.

So the information he gathered from this experience could be summarized to:

Sometimes, heaven (and god?) can go a little too far with the gambling of the human lives

Crowley is, deep down, good.

And based on what he knew from good and evil, it makes sense for him to think, at this point and time, that the "goodness" in Crowley is his angelic side showing up. Refusing to die with the fall. Persisting to show up despite everything that's happened.

And we see Aziraphale grappling with the notions of good and evil again and again with the other flashbacks, which I believe are essential, and were added with the specific purpose of, to understand Aziraphale's mindset.

He realized he wasn't fully aligned with heaven in s02e2 and that had taken him by surprise. It was lonely, it was different than everything he's ever believed in (and we know he doesn't like change), so it was painfully clear, achingly obvious that at the first chance he got, he would go running back. It was safe, it was comfortable, it was where he was made and what he was made for.

But. In the thousands of years he spent on earth, doing things a little more aligned to his own ideals, while at the same time trying to follow his original heavenly path, he had grown attached.

To humans (a little bit). To food. To theater, to drinks (eventually), to books. And to Crowley. And all of these things are inherently intertwined. One came with another, in a jumble. If he lost one of them, he would lose all of them, all at once.

So it is completely understandable that, the moment heaven (the place he missed terribly, the place he wanted to be good) offered him the two things he wanted most, he ran with it without much questioning.

Of course he would miss the little pleasures. Coffee, his bookshop. But he would have Crowley. He would have Crowley happy again, creating Nebulae and stars, and he and Crowley would make heaven good. Worthy. Worthy enough for both of them.

(We say that Crowley isn’t happy with the ways Heaven is managed, and that is true. But what is also true is the fact that Aziraphale has disagreed with the other angels [and GOD] times before. He, also, is unhappy with them, so of course he would take the chance to change that and run with it.)

And that, I think, is the most heartbreaking part of the entire last scene they share. Crowley knows Aziraphale likes Earth. Loves it, even. And he cares about the things Aziraphale cares about. And, most importantly, Aziraphale knows that, too. He’s known that since the Church bombing.

So when Crowley says “you can’t leave this bookshop”, Aziraphale sees that as “I know you care about this place more than anything, are you truly ok with leaving it behind?” and he’s so appreciative of it. Absolutely smitten.

He finally admits that he loves Crowley, and that he knows Crowley loves him back. How could he not?

And Michael does SUCH a good job of filling that line with pure, unadulterated love, it makes me want to bawl my eyes out.

Because this is Aziraphale saying “I see you care about me by caring about the things I care about, but I will be alright to leave it all behind if I have you by my side”. ALL IN THREE WORDS MICHAEL SHEEN ARE YOU KIDDING ME

But then, Crowley puts his glasses on. And he’s leaving, and he sounds hurt, and Aziraphale doesn’t understand why. He had heard Crowley’s monologue, and had called him to go with him, to be together, in Heaven.

So he tries again.

We’ve never seen Aziraphale this open about his feelings. He’s terrified to say it, but he does it anyway. He’s spilling out everything he’s been dealing with for literal thousands of years, and it must’ve taken so much courage to do so, and I can’t help but to be proud of him.

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arcadekitten · 8 months

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Hi! I have a question

In the mary and reginald aquarium scene, how are there pinguin, fish, etc? I mean aren't those noisrevians that transformed into their animal forms? Sorry I am just so confused right now

(Sorry if It is a bit confusing I am not really good at English and I don't really know how to explain it)

I know it's a bit confusing!! And people have asked me similar questions in the past, but I think now that I have at least one game each as an example I can explain it more clearly--so I will try to explain it as best I can. (Apologies in advanced for the long read!)

"Noisrev" is the name of the planet my characters exist on, and characters from Noisrev are called "Noisrevians" similar to how we would be called "Earthlings". However, Noisrev takes various different forms with slightly differing lore across all my games, hence why I call my works part of the "noisrev-verse".

The majority of Noisrevians are animals with human forms, who can shapeshift in and out of these forms. However, this changes depending on the game/work they're used in. I will put the 3 main types of "Noisrev" I use in my work in a numbered list below, but know that the order they appear in doesn't signify importance.

This version of Noisrev is one where, even though the people are still anthropomorphized versions of animals, many of the people don't seem to realize this and many of their abilities are latent(like fish people not being able to breathe underwater). These abilities may very well still exist, but it is as if the people have unconsciously forgotten what they really are. This is the version of Noisrev that exists in games like Cemetery Mary, where Mary describes herself as feeling a connection to manta rays while not acknowledging that she is one. They may acknowledge the presence of animal features on some characters like Zapara's ears or Theo's horns, but they'd only describe these characters as being "a wolf-like girl" and "a bull-like guy" and not acknowledge them as actually BEING a wolf or a bull. This is also the kind of Noisrev that exists in a game like Here For Sweethearts, where the protag describes characters as being "like" things like turtles and dogs, but not saying that they are one. "Normal" animals still exist and are regarded the same way they are in our world, which is why Mary and Reggie were able to go to an aquarium or why Mary had a pet tarantula in the past. ===

This version of Noisrev is one where Noisrevians know exactly what kind of animals they are, and can even shapeshift in-and-out of human form, but "normal" animals also still exist. I describe this version of Noisrev as being very similar to a Disney Cartoon, where Goofy is a dog and can walk and talk, but Pluto is also a dog and is only a pet. It's like that! This version of Noisrev is one where games like Crowscare and Blackout Hospital take place. In Crowscare, when Ryo talks to Ingram for the first time, Ryo acknowledges that Ingram being a talking bird is a bit surprising to him--but that he's also met plenty of people like Ingram before. In Blackout Hospital, Mary flat out calls Vasilis a deer instead of just saying they are like one. However, there are also references to "normal" animals such as therapy dogs that function the exact same way they do in the real world. ===

This version of Noisrev is one where Noisrevians know exactly what kind of animals they are, and can shapeshift in-and-out of human form, but "normal" animals do not exist. Noisrevian animals are the ONLY types of animals to exist, meaning that every single animal is also a person that can shapeshift. The role of real-world "normal" animals is taken over by "monsters/beasts" in their world. This is the version that exists in Semiaquatic Circus(and to an extent, Sweet No Death). Savannah is not a lion-tamer. She IS a lion who is a beast-tamer. This is the version of Noisrev that Noisrev was originally conceptualized as (and also my favorite). For this reason, you might occasionally hear me refer to this version of Noisrev as "Noisrev Proper". It's the way that Noisrev is technically "supposed" to be. === I hope this helps clear things up a little bit and that it's not too confusing!! ^^"

#and if it is you can always ask me more questions!#noisrevverse #lore #ask

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forgingecgs · 4 months

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droog - droog would have to most boring dreams i feel like he doesnt have to repress anything and his subconsciousness doesnt hold as many unknown things as slicks and his inner worlds existent but its really boring.

hed have realistic dreams about everyday tasks. and slick is there sometimes with the same role as he has every day and he wakes up still feeling tired after dreams with slick in it

hed know that they reveal a part of his subconscious and he might use it to solve some of his problems or as a reason to reflect on something

slick – slick has so much repressed it would be a little crazy once it starts decompressing. it would still have an abstract form so it would be dreams where he has both normal arms but the right one goes limp or becomes paralysed or he plays at a concert and he keeps playing off-note and missing the keys. it would be like a window into how he sees it and the way it limits his actions and affects his life would have a more abstract expression

also the realism in his dreams could vary his inner world is on life support but he still has a way of processing and expressing reality in a deformed way the fact that he uses drawings for his schemes and starts role playing with it

and the fact that a lot of things have a chance to be internalised by him if they reach his views/world in any way. a less meaningful side of it would be that once he watches some movie and given that it keeps his attention and makes any impression on him he may unknowingly start to act slightly like the character he thought was cool or the character that reminded him of himself but i dont think hed be able to acknowledge that any characters like him hed just agree with whatever it says or he might hate it for whatever reason that he wont acknowledge in himself

the point is his mind has the ability to go to such places unlike droogs

slicks dreams would also consist of him going somewhere being in the process of some mission or a goal while droogs would be like random snippets of s day the most important element would be whats the main focus of the situation like he may be shopping or making coffee and its more in the moment while slicks more in the future

he might get vivid, realistic dreams about convoluted heist plans and something going terribly wrong and these would happen if theyve got upcoming heists and then he might get more careful and paranoid if too many elements overlap with the dream or get an urge to use the dream as an advantage but hed never allow that consciously he doesnt believe in dreams or that they make any sense at all

it could be about his past on derse too, really anything thats currently on his mind. or he gets sex dreams where hes running on all fours with a pack of dogs

deuce – deuce has both realistic and abstract dreams and theyre usually about his wants like slick praises him in them or he takes a family photo with the crew. then the rest is the kind where hes a sausage in the sausage cooker rotating with other meats or that he turned into a beetle and drinks out of a droplet. it also could be dreams consisting of the things he forgot during the day and he wakes up and it feels surreal to him but then he remembers what it was about and hes happy he remembered and plans to take care it during the day but then he forh=gets the dream after a minute

boxcars – boxcars just doesnt have any dreams its like a black hole

then once every few months he gets a series of very typical dreams

hed just have the most normal dreams like every other person, it would be something like a classic example of a dream that would be shown in a cartoon. he could dream about being back on derse and getting lost in its winding architecture while he doesnt have his top on and everyone he works with sees him naked. or he dreams about running away from something and falling. hed have so many falling dreams

after being stuck in the horse calendar on rare occasions hed be dreaming about being back there grooming horses and feeding barn animals and watching month long sunsets in low quality print but that’s the most original it gets for him

#midnight crew #spades slick #diamonds droog #clubs deuce #hearts boxcars

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callipraxia · 17 days

Text

The Interview: A Running 'Live' Commentary

Well, you asked, kinda, @the-orion-scribe...

Disclaimer: One of my…things is that where there is a transcript, I'm gonna read the transcript first and then may or may not tackle the audio version later. As such, I'm inevitably going to get some of the subtler bits indicated by gesture and tone of voice wrong. I hope it won't be anything that significantly changes the meaning, but we shall see. I'm doing this live, (redact) it! And partially on my work breaks at that, so apologies if anything gets repetitive or disjointed as a result of different bits being read several hours apart. Full transcript is available here from, I believe, @fordtato, who seems like awesome cool folks.

That all said, let's begin.

[On the SAG-AFTRA strikes]

Alex's grandmother was an actress? Interesting. Also, generally approve of the sentiments stated there, very good, no actual notes.

[On the pilot and the 'Next On' reel]

When I was a much, much younger Callipraxia, I also had an interest in TV work - we had this class at my middle school call Careers, and we had to do a research project on, well, a career every year, and one year I did mine on being a soap opera writer (early nineties soap operas were my first literary influences, and I suspect it still shows). I therefore find this glimpse into the industry fascinating, even though I don't have much to say about it beyond giggling at the image of executives having such reptilian, limited-intelligence brains that they could be tricked into thinking something already exists and therefore just approving it so they don't have to think about why they're being asked to approve something that already exists because it would make their heads hurt.

"I was working...on a cartoon called 'Flapjack.'"

I'm 99% sure I've never seen a single frame of this show, but also 99% sure I've heard of it somehow. Not sure why. No idea what 'Fish Hooks' is, though.

"Then, when we did the Cipher Hunt, I was running out of rewards and treasures to give the audience because I'd already bled Gravity Falls dry of every drop of content that was inside it..."

See, this is what I find fascinating about Proper Creators, and this one in particular. Their creations can seem so much fuller to us than they do to them. This baffles me, because even when I don't do things on purpose, I generally do realize that I did them sometime, you know? (Edit: ha, Hirsch actually talks a bit about this at the end)

"I remember asking him, 'Hey, Mike, you read the bible, right? What do you think about this Jesús character? Do you think it's working? Do you think people will get it?'"

Even though I clearly read the words 'series bible' right above this, my first thought was that Alex was asking Mike if he'd read The Bible - y'know, the religious one. And I was so confused. And then I stopped being confused and I facepalmed in real life.

"Instead of embracing that this is part of lore that fans love...in his mind, he, as a serious videogame programmer, made a mistake, and is ashamed of the mistake, and doesn't want to acknowledge it, doesn't want to encourage other people to corrupt their own game, and so he said 'there's no such thing as MissingNo.'"

This is another "I just don't get Proper Creators" moment. I'd have embraced it so thoroughly I'd have written a sequel just about it and only revealed that it was actually serendipitous (not 'a mistake' - word choice, people!) years later!

Sometimes no answer is better than a boring answer.

This is why I love that thing Robert Jordan used to say - "read and find out!" and the fandom shortened it to "RAFO," and now that's a one-word response to questions you don't want to answer, at least if everyone in the room is familiar with The Wheel of Time books and fandom history...so many times I've wanted to just reply "RAFO!" in a review, but then realized the odds were excellent that the other person would have no clue what I was talking about.

"I know that we did cut like 12 pages from the journal, just due to length."

I've been told that I can make people feel cussed out without ever uttering a single swearword, when I'm annoyed enough with them. I would like to try to do that to whoever it was who decided on this length restriction. Give me lore! All the lore! More! More lore!

[On the walls of genre cards and character beat cards and how this led to rejected episode ideas]

I'm gonna try this writing method out, it sounds interesting. Thanks, Alex! And also thanks to everyone involved who's mentioned any of these rejected ideas over the years, as this allows us to play with them instead! (one day, y'all will know the tale of Wendy as a weather witch. I've got a whole arc planned for her with that one).

"When [Rob Renzetti] and I are together, we're very much like Grunkle Stan and Ford, and he is Ford and I am Stan."

I wish so much that someone had asked if there were ever any RL fistfights during the production of the book. It's barely even funny and would have wasted time, but I wish they had anyway.

"I still recall when Ford had a long beard and was a hippie."

...No.

"We were thinking it'd be kind of more like a zen kind of guy"

I mean, technically I suppose he still is. Apparently quite big on meditation back in the day, and the Journal strongly implies he's a firm believer in divination now. He could have been a sort of hippie lite, had he gone for drugs other than brain demons and/or Truck Stop Coffee I Initially Assumed Was A Euphemism For Significantly Stronger Stimulants.

"I remember talking about, maybe, J.K. Simmons and then thinking, 'Gosh, you know, he's got a very familiar voice, is he gonna feel too overexposed.'"

Ford was actually the first character I ever heard Simmons voice, because I have acquired what passes for my pop culture literacy mostly completely backward. My mother was watching reruns of whatever that cop drama he was on was (was it The Closer?) one day, though, and I did a double take at the TV because why is Ford here on one of Mama’s shows? Did he get arrested again or something? Why are they acting like he's one of the...ohhhh.

Which yes, means I found my way to Portal 2 via Gravity Falls instead of the other way around. That isn't so surprising, though, because video games are another of my...things. I absolutely love a lot of the stories and will happily read about them and watch cutscenes and video essays about them and player-keeps-quiet playthroughs all day, but I've never actually played video games because I have poor hand-eye coordination and rather low frustration tolerance when it comes to entertainment. The puzzles would drive me mad. I adore complex things, but I hate having to figure them out before I can move on with the story if I don't want to stop. Let me figure stuff out at my own pace, dangit -

Er, that got off-topic, sorry. The point was, I've watched a ton of clips of Portal 2 now, and it's kind of fascinating to me that it possibly wasn't a conscious influence, because Cave Johnson is...not really that dissimilar to a thing that Ford could have become, in a lot of ways. Or what he and/or Fiddleford might have actually become in the "Better World," for all we know. He's probably closer to what Fiddleford did become in canon, though, at least for a while/in my possibly somewhat weird interpretation of Fiddleford.

"So we're putting this character together, we're putting blocks together, we're moving blocks and putting them up, and it's only at the last second that a Ford is revealed that we're like 'I guess we did it?'"

This is how I construct plots basically, more than characters, but - oh, gosh, I wanna do a lore dump so bad but this isn't the time or place. Never mind, I'll ramble about character development another time.

Also, I am amused by the visual of, like, Stan or someone performing a dramatic flourish and being like "Behold: A Ford!"

"What to you comes across as 'oh, Rob understands Ford's ridiculous recklessness' to me comes across as 'Rob IS Ford and Ford does rationalize.' That's what he does. One of Ford's greatest powers is rationalizing. So you're seeing Rob as Ford rationalizing Ford's bad decisions. In that moment, I think what's being revealed is less Ford's recklessness, and more Ford's ability to justify anything."

Why not both? But yeah, fair, I've observed this about the character myself. He censors himself when he doubts. It's a defensive mechanism I think - it keeps him alive and functional to a degree, because, well...we've seen what happens when Ford admits he was wrong, twice. In the Journal, he nearly lost his mind, and in the finale, he basically went from thinking of himself as He Who Shall Save The World to He Who Is About To, However Reluctantly, Become Death, The Destroyer of Worlds in an alarmingly short period of time. Extreme black and white thinking with him a lot of the time. Not a psychologist, just a nerd, but the longer I think about the character, the more probable a personality disorder seems. Which is one reason I worry about him and Stan both after the series ends. They're both going to be confused as all get-out when it dawns on them that "...wait, we're not suddenly better after all? We're both still really, really screwed up?"

"When you do a clone story, the point of a clone story, in my mind, is a character seeing themselves in a different light, right?"

Depends on which side you're looking at it from, really ;)

"They're all wonderful, wonderful dumbasses, all of them."

Accurate.

"They know that I am a detail-oriented bastard."

...Less accurate, in a way. I've spun whole worlds out of details that the writers have admitted were unintentional or screwups, not to mention the later discourse on Alex as the "emotional" story one while Rob was the "make it a story" guy, or the specific detail that was actually under discussion here. As for that one....

"When you're editing, when you're writing, and then you reread your writing and you edit it, and then you reread your writing and you edit it, there's a very subconscious process of streamlining, literally making paragraphs look nice - it's entirely possible that me or Rob made that change out of one in a million changes specifically because we knew that psychologically Ford is not traveling this path alone, he's traveling it with his muse who he has a very complex and fucked-up relationship with, and even in Ford's private thoughts, he would not say 'I'm alone,' he would say, 'Oh, I have a very important relationship in my life with Bill, but I don't have a friend, that is a difference!'"

...except he canonically referred to Bill as his friend, too, so, uh...yeah, there's that.*

Interesting to hear someone else's perspective on rewriting and editing; I'm pretty sure that there's very little sub-conscious going on with me when I'm editing. If anything, I'm double and triple checking to excise anything that even hints of subconsciousness out of the manuscript, and I am very, very conscious of times when I go out of my way to make paragraphs physically neat and pretty, because I always feel really stupid about doing it. So I suppose I'm glad to hear other people do that, too.

I also found it interesting to see the description of the relationship with Bill as "very complex and fucked-up." Ford, at least, wrote and spoke as though he was under the impression that his relationship with Bill was very straightforward pre-betrayal, but here's the Guy, on the record saying it was in fact "very complex." This doesn't confirm that Ford was on some level aware of this, but it does make me feel more confident about my theory that Ford invited Fiddleford up not so much because he really needed the technical expertise as because his subconscious was throwing up enough red flags to cover every square inch of land in the U.S.S.R. and he just couldn't admit it to himself consciously because admitting that he is not in control of a situation tends to render him non-functional.

*Full disclosure since nobody's read this far anyway, but hi if you have, have a full disclosure: I would not say I ship it, because in context - Fiddleford married, Ford on the brink of sanity, Ford as Fiddleford's employer, Fiddleford mind-wiping both himself and Ford behind Ford's back after a certain point, and that's all before we consider that on occasion, it's entirely possible Fiddleford was interacting with someone who mostly looked like Ford but, uh, wasn't - it would be incredibly dark and messed up and suitable for nothing but a full-blown adult psychological horror story, but I do consider "Ford was in love with Fiddleford, regardless of whether it was reciprocated or not" as a perfectly valid reading of the Journal. I also consider it perfectly valid to read it as Ford just being prone to really intense attachments, regardless of what kind they are - he either adores you or he hates you, whether you're his brother, his muse, his friend, his romantic or sexual interest, or what-have-you, which is kind of what I was saying earlier about the potential for personality disorders there. Ford writes in a style more like he's from the mid-nineteenth century than from the mid-twentieth, or at least like he's trying to imitate that style, so that could make things sound gay that aren't gay, but by the same token, much of Ford's rhetorical style seems to exist to allow him to not-quite-lie to himself while using his superpower of Justify Anything, so ultimately that means nothing, too. I went through the Journal line by line once and determined that you could make roughly equally strong cases for Ford being some form of straight, some form of gay, some form of bi, and some form of ace, and that it also wouldn't be unreasonable to come away with the view that he's not into humans so much but might very well be into one or more types of alien. I don't know and so will potentially read any variant of these things, as long as it's a decent story.

"You know the thing about working with a big company, it's like working with a friend who swaps their head with a different head every couple of years."

Huh, Alex has met Olm, has he?

[Hana] "By the way, I know there's a lot of fake blood on this page, that's for one of my YouTube videos, ignore that."

Why is this the moment I laughed out loud?

"That's the trouble of a puzzle box, is it's like, there's two flavors of it, there's a question with a satisfying answer, and then there's a question that is sort of an open-ended invitation to a kind of, uh, you know, group improvisational session. We've created a prompt for fans to 'yes and' their own story out of it, and the sense that there might be something in there creates a sense of excitement along with it."

Pretty sure this is sums up my general thoughts on the Interview/is the part of it I regard as Important so far. Also, I wish I could write something like that. If I leave a loose end hanging, it's very blatantly a loose end. I can improvise a 10,000-word essay about Ford's anger issues on the fly, doing that out of someone else's work is incredibly easy and natural for me, but I can't do the same in my own work. It's a frustrating thing.

"The Mystery Shack is a bucket full of misshapen, lost, odd oddities, and these character are a bucket of full of misshapen lost odd oddities, and like the idea of them all having a place where they fit in, and - and loving each other as a family, was very important to me."

...Ok, this is another Important bit, but for completely different reasons. Basically sums up why I'm here, really.

"That means that Dipper and Mabel's parents may have had children at a concerningly young age, and is this show's intent to say that it's okay for those relationships to exist?"

Here's a thing that I think is just...me not quite getting how a lot of people work, I guess? To me, there's a world of difference between "that could be what happened" and "and that means I approve of it." The Pineses are a really screwed up family. They should have called that pawn shop Dysfunction Junction, that’s how messed up they are. Apparently it was Filbrick who knocked someone up at a drive-in movie once (one of my 4.5 Shermies is actually a much older half-brother who only gets to know Stan at all after they meet at Filbrick's funeral, though I never decided if his mom was the shotgun wedding or if that was with Caryn. Either way, though, he was vaguely aware that "yeah, Dad and his second wife had those twins" but he'd had very limited contact with them and bought that he'd mixed up which one was supposed to be weird and have six fingers without too much trouble), and Mabel's level of proto-sexual aggressiveness is...occasionally disconcerting, to me at least. One or more generations of teenage parenthood seems perfectly in character for them to me, without it meaning anyone approves or disapproves of that. It's fairly realistic, however depressing, that a much younger son in a family as dysfunctional as theirs might well have started acting out, resulting in Indiscretions - my second fic was based on the premise that the "you gotta raise a kid, your life falls apart..." was Stan talking about Shermie's lot in life rather than his own, as I hadn't yet heard the remark about it being a Filbrick quote (the whole events of that story were constructed with the idea of keeping Stan's line about how he lied to everyone, including "my family" and "your parents", literally true, so every event was created to explain how Stan got away with it for a little longer without anyone noticing, basically). Mabel also seems impractical enough, even post-character development, to get waaaaaay too into a high school relationship with unfortunate results. That's not approval of such relationships, that's just...reality? Goodness, people don't think I morally approve of everything (or even very much at all) in my stories, do they? That's an unsettling thought.

"I think we say 'damn.' I think we say 'hell' maybe, um, yeah."

Ford specifically says "I'll be damned" in the Journal (though, in context, it seems less like swearing than like he possibly means it some form of literally; there's several hints in the Journal that suggest Ford believes in...Something, though he's almost certainly not a member of any organized religion and almost definitely not a member of any organized religion we'd recognize). Stan, for his part, says "hell" in "Lost Legends," referring to a part of the carnival that he thinks would be a good hiding place.

Since Disney allowed people to refer to going to literal, capital-H Hell in at least two properties long preceding Gravity Falls, though (specifically, David Xanatos infamously says "pay a man enough and he'll walk barefoot into Hell" in the pilot of the animated show Gargoyles, and Claude Frollo sings a whole song where he repeatedly yells the words "Hell" and "Hellfire" without a care in the world in The Hunchback of Notre Dame), I am still more shocked that they let Ford say the word "suicide" on the show proper, on Disney channel. And...okay, Frollo is significantly less child-friendly than Bill, even given the torture scene. Frollo does things that are just as violent as that scene, plus Frollo is quite blatantly driven by a perverse sexual obsession with a woman, so that he attempts to coerce her into sex with everything but the word 'sex' on screen before setting her on fire. There's distinctly perverse undertones in Bill's every interaction with Ford in the Weirdmageddon Trilogy, but Bill's been an energy being without physical form since before the birth of the Milky Way, which takes the edge off...a bit, anyway. Bill in the Journal flings down and dances upon the line between "this is a metaphor" and "...okay, so, the way this is being written about is so on the nose that I'm not sure this counts as a metaphor for any practical purposes anymore," but Bill having "extract information" as a motive in the most blatantly unsettling scenes of the show proper means he's still less overt about it on screen than Frollo.

...What was I talking about, again? Oh, right. Disney Channel: A lot less squeaky-clean in general than it wants you to think, Parents! They've been letting animated people say "Hell" occasionally since I was four!

"We talked about 'is there a way for this government agent who knows about Trembley to be connected to the government agents who picked up this disturbance?' We weren't really able to find a way to make them connect in a satisfying way, so, I wish we had done more with it."

Welp, there's another one for the "Projects to Eventually Do" List. Y'know, I'd never even thought of associating Powers and Co with the guy in "National Treasure"? It's one of those episodes I kinda mostly forget about tbh, the S1 filler episodes - I remember facts from it because they're useful when constructing my "Nathaniel Northwest was a warlock who made deals with Bill and here's how that could play out" theories, but I never think about the plot. Kind of like how I forget that Dipper's infatuation with Wendy is why the Paper Twins exist, even though they're now major characters in a lot of what I've written and are even bigger players in the vast majority of what I plan to write in future....I can tell you way, way too much about "Double Dipper," but I'm always slightly surprised that "oh, the Wendy obsession is why all this other stuff even happened!"

[On a very long section of text about McGucket and the memory gun]

OMG OMG OMG I WAS RIGHT! I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE ALCOHOLISM METAPHOR, IT'S CANON, I FEEL SO SMART RIGHT NOW, WHEEE!

Ahem...sorry about that. Got a bit carried away there. So, Alex also compared McGucket's relationship with the memory gun to alcoholism. And to taking anxiety pills, but...well, there is a reason you don't mix those, I suppose. I want to dig into this so much more, and I'm probably gonna end up printing this section and tacking it to the wall next to my writing table, but right now I have gotta do my mother's taxes, she refused to admit they hadn't been done yet until a few hours ago, arrgh, I don't have time - yeah, that bit's probably gonna get its own analysis post eventually.

"It's like he has to always have a mission in front of him, because if he doesn't have a mission in front of him, he's thinking 'how have I treated the people in my life?'"

Hey, I think I said that...like...three times in this insanely long post, and I know I've said it before. My character interpretations are being validated. It makes me faintly grumpy that I'm as pleased by this as I am. I have a...complicated relationship with validation, let's leave it at that.

"The same way you know a black hole is there by the light warped around it, it's like, you know the damage someone's family has done to them by all of their weird tics and behaviors. So who is the character who would result in Stan being this hurt and needy and mad and also longing?"

I'd argue that it was the whole family dynamic, really - Stan clearly had a ton of daddy issues on the boil even before he got disowned, and while Caryn seems to have been more openly affectionate toward him, I can't imagine it did his psychology any good to grow up with a mother he calls a "pathological liar" without missing a beat. There'd always be that uncertainty (much like there later is with Stan himself) about what was real and what was a lie, what was a performance, because Caryn, like Stan, was an entertainer - it's the thing they were good at. Meanwhile, Filbrick is a fifties and sixties father of the most rigid sort, someone who is clearly uncomfortable expressing any positive emotion of any kind, or really anything except anger. He's either indifferent or he's shouting, and he apparently calls his sons by the same name to the point that they can say "he means you" when he's bellowing for "Stan Pines," because Stan's unimportance in life has been so thoroughly underlined for him by his parents, long before Ford personally was in any position to inflict much childhood trauma, that he struggles to have any form of identity separate from "Ford's twin" by a very young age, and never really grows past this until maybe the final moments of the show - I really wish we'd had a moment of Stan claiming his own name properly, but at least it made the news. Until that point, he'd literally failed at everything he ever did as Stanley, as himself, because he had no direction without Ford - even the Mystery Shack, as built around his specific talents as it is, was created because the mission in front of him had Ford as a focus point. That's a crucial thing, too, about his bond with Dipper and Mabel, and Soos, and even kinda Wendy - he's built a life for himself outside of just being Ford's brother. It's implied none of them even knew he was a twin, that the Other had ever existed. He still defines himself in relation to other people to a large extent, but that's still less restrictive than defining himself (and being defined by others) solely in terms of one other person. Fairer to Ford, too. But I digress.

"And it's like 'oh! I think he's also aloof and distant from himself.' I think he is, uh, deeply, deeply hiding from his real feelings about things, because at some point early on, he decided that he could run from hurt by achievement and by creation, and has dug that hole so deep that he has no relationships."

Accurate, at least at times.

"The shows I was watching growing up were, like, Doug and Rugrats, and there were no holy wars about whether Chucky Finster, uh, should be interpreted this way or that way. We had no idea the world that was coming into consciousness as we were making this thing."

I found this kinda interesting, because I remember those shows, too - but by the time I was old enough to be aware of very much, Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer had already created the core of modern fandom culture as we know it, so I at the same time have the concepts of "there is no Rugrats fandom" and "that did not make fandom a surprise to me, because it was falling into place right about the point where my memory starts/I became dimly aware of the world outside of [Microscopically small town I'm from]." I don't know if this is something where he maybe remembers early childhood more than I do, since I have very, very few distinct memories from before I was 10-11 - a few, but they're like isolated snapshots with limited context, except what I know happened because people have told me it happened. I know Hirsch is older than me, but also not *that* much older than me, so I wonder if it's down to those few years (like he said about how gay marriage had just been legalized as the show was wrapping, and it's disconcerting now to think how different so many things were back then) or if it's a difference in personalities or what.

Well! That was more enjoyable than I expected! Thanks for prodding me to finally read this thing, @the-orion-scribe. It's eaten much of my day and seems set to eat a fair bit of it tomorrow, too, since I had to cut myself short at a couple of interesting points, but it was fun.

#gravity falls #gravity falls characters #gravity falls fandom #commentary #my commentary

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mdhwrites · 1 year

Note

I still like TOH, but your comments have made me notice something about reviews praising it: namely, a lot of the elements praised are specifically described- Belos’s character, Luz’s depression, the dark themes, the serialization, etc- as being amazing for a kid’s show, and I think that’s a factor in why critical reviews tend to match fandom opinion. Namely, kid shows having understandable limitations leads to attempt at darker themes/big stories being praised as standouts as long as the execution is competent enough to not be noticeable. So while some people do acknowledge TOH’s flaws, they point out it’s still admirable the show made the attempts it did, especially with Disney’s public stance on what it pushes for in its cartoons.

So... I want to be kind first before I somewhat lose it because I am so SO TIRED of it being stated that TOH is different from other kid's shows. The Owl House is perfectly competent and entertaining in just its base elements. The animation is good, the voice acting is amazing, the feeling of teenagers is well captured, it's a lot of fun when it's interested in being fun and S1 has a lot of great ideas that earn a lot of good will with an audience and the plot line with Eda in S1 is genuinely amazing. After all, usually you don't have a character who is actively dying.

A theme they never actually address in detail. Eda doesn't feel like she's being held back by the curse very often and there's even one episode where it's used to re-enact a family guy episode of King trying to murder a toddler who won't let him be ruler of the playground. That... Isn't serious. In anyway. It's only serious when it's first revealed and the big sacrifice moment. After S1, it's barely a thing outside of Keeping Affearances.

This is the fundamental problem with The Owl House... And why it's so easy to praise. Yesterday I talked about how it screams its themes at the top of its lungs. How it is very blunt about how it wants to be perceived. Whether this is perception is earned or not is secondary to what it can easily state.

Which makes making an online article about how it's so different from other kid's shows, how it's the kid's show for those who don't like kid's shows, very easy. If you don't actually know much about kid's shows and how shit like Static Shock way back when was already addressing racism, having serialized content, etc. like that.

I mean, if we look at recent kid's cartoons, we have Steven Universe and Steven Universe Future. Gravity Falls. Amphibia does a lot of the same themes as TOH, with honestly about as much meaningful serialization, but also while being good, consistent and enjoyable. It earns its themes... But you have to dig for them.

So why have to scrape the barrel when the soapbox preacher is right there? This is part of the character arc problem too. Do you know how EXHAUSTING posts about "Look where they were and are now" by the end of S2? Where Amity would be a distinct, interesting, unique character in S1 but all they care about is that now she SMILES!

If you don't actually have to talk about the substance of her arc, if the show actually tackled any of its potential, complications, etc like that, it looks impressive. Then you talk to them about Winging it Like Witches or Understanding Willow, both frankly very much so kid's show episodes that something like Danny Phantom, My Little Pony, or Kim Possible would have and could have done, and suddenly it sounds less impressive, doesn't it? Not when you're describing episodes where Amity's past doesn't match her introduction at all and are obviously wiping away what makes a character arc interesting for "SHE'S ALWAYS BEEN GOOD! It's not her fault."

Sure. That's why she was willing to kill someone who didn't even lower her grade but instead just got someone else to be praised. And that's still S1.

Luz's depression is similar. You can have her make big statements that sound like they may imply she wants to die but they're still not willing to use the actual terms. Have Luz only suffer the absolutely loudest but worst stereotypes of depressed people like being constantly suicidal, pushing others away and not caring about them. 'But it's depressi-" No. As someone literally crippled by it, I don't want it being used as the excuse for literally the worst thing Luz does in the whole series, which is to just abandon an entire world to whatever fate she claims to believe she inflicted on it. I myself and a lot of other depressed people will tell you that it is FAR easier to help others, especially if you've hurt them, than any sort for yourself. But Luz's depression is used as an excuse for her to claim to keep caring about others when she is actually only serving herself and lying constantly to everyone around her while doing it. If that's great, depression representation, something most kids are still going to miss what it is, then fuck that noise.

But depression is a big topic right now so going "DISNEY'S FIRST MAIN CHARACTER WITH DEPRESSION!" sure is a headline, isn't it?

And let's quickly talk about the fact that TOH is very morally weird. It's not willing to do many big lesson episodes, hence why Episode 2 stands out so much to me, and a lot of its main cast has dubious morality. And... Then it doesn't really touch on morality either. It has no interest in it, even to the point of bad actions maybe getting a line or two said about them but then moving on.

As an example: Amity just wants to invade Luz's privacy. Period. She has Luz's phone and wants to be given an excuse to look into it. Talking to Willow, they could have a very real, very human conversation about how Amity's parents have taught her that such measures are okay because trust doesn't matter as much as control and how that's not okay. It could be a genuinely very adult moment for the series and maybe even have Willow talk about how Luz finding out so much about her past during Understanding Willow makes her uncomfortable sometimes because even if nothing bad surfaces, that was information given. By making all that a real conversation, which yes would have taken more time but let's face it, TOH honestly doesn't spend enough time setting its characters morals and letting them have conversations where there's real conflict between the two. And none of this is explicit or so dark or so boring that there's no reason a kid's show couldn't have it.

And do you want to know what you gain by making it a conversation like that? A real lesson to kids. A lesson that will prepare them for not only their own loves but for just how to handle others in general. TOH is still a kid's show after all. It should in theory be considering its audience and while not talking down to them, remembering they do need to still bring them into the conversation.

OR, YOU KNOW, HAVE WILLOW SHRUG AT THE QUESTION! And I could do a full breakdown as to why that's a real, human reaction to that question, even for someone like Willow. But I have to bring the real world, my life experiences, my sister's life experiences (and she's 30 while I'm almost 27) in order to explain why Willow is not blatantly being a TERRIBLE person by not calling Amity out.

And yes, that's when TOH is at its worst. It commonly just brushes off immoral behavior that isn't the end point of the plot as just a thing happening, like how Edric and Emira don't actually suffer consequences for their plan against their sister or how Luz is made to feel bad for stealing Amity's wand but then isn't attacked by Amity but put into a protective circle by her. A time out, sure, but one that leads to the ice glyph and her getting to save everyone.

A kid can learn the wrong lessons by the lack of consequences in the show and they're not going to learn a lot of good lessons from what is there. There's a reason why kid's shows are blunter than other media and they have morals. They're remembering that, especially in our modern age where one income households just DON'T EXIST that they have to pick up the slack and modern cartoons are doing that better than old 90s cartoons.

But do you know how much TOH reminds me of older cartoons like the 80s or 90s? With their villains who are evil for the sake of evil? With characters that can change on a dime, or the blatantly comic relief ones who don't have much character outside of that? The plotlines that are more about spectacle or statement which led to all those terrible PSA cartoon moments? Or hell, with how Amity ended up: The character who is blatantly only there to be the pretty girl that gets with the main character?

That's the thing: You want to say TOH is better than Teen Titans Go? Fine. That is obviously true. Who actually cares about and is praising Teen Titans Go though? When you compare it to the shows that people do praise, like Amphibia, Gravity Falls, etc., shows that not only teach and make kids better but also tell an engaging, full story with real themes, characters, developments, etc... What does TOH actually have? How much more serialized is TOH than say, the first season of My Little Pony? There were two episodes of build up for the Grand Galloping Gala before the finale and in TOH S1, you technically only need to see The Intruder and Covention, besides the pilot obviously, before you will understand almost everything going on in Young Blood, Old Souls and Agony of a Witch. There's more in S2 but most people agree that it's done competently at best, which is why people keep screaming about the shortening and I made an entire blog pointing out that S2 is bad because... The show is bad about serialization effectively.

And as a final note: I lived with a Star Wars and Star Trek fan for two years at the peak of Discovery being out and as wind up for Rise of Skywalker was going on. I lived on their couch and when they put on an almost 24/7 reel of 'reviewers' for these franchises, I heard a LOT of shit takes. A lot of the same shit being repeated with no real thought behind it, it being what was popular said (which goes into what makes people popular online versus being a mouthpiece for the popular opinion) and showing no thought or care about the actual system of production for things or the people behind it. A lot of people just blaming issues on one creator, or praising a single creator for all the good in something without talking about why they were attributing the problem to them. And yes, I know how hypocritical all of this is coming from some white dude on the internet no degrees, experience, etc like that. I just hope that my blogs show a little bit more real thought to storytelling to make it not as bad.

So a show where the popular, fandom consensus is that it's amazing, it states its themes making 'deeper' analysis easier and is very loud about its statements like they're original is going to be very popular to this type of review. Does this mean it's all disingenuous? Of course not. I started this blog by saying a lot of the reasons why the show is easy to like. Does it mean it has none of the depth people give it? No because a show trying this hard is going to manage successes sometimes though a lot of the times it then shoots those successes because it doesn't realize it's doing them.

But this statement that it is somehow better than things that have come before, is somehow truly groundbreaking while shows clearly paved the way for it so that it's just at the front of a wave it didn't have to make, and ignoring its flaws for all of these reasons, especially with "It's special because it's on Disney" or "It's only bad because of the shortening" is... REALLY tiring. To put it mildly.

A thing should be good because it's good. Not because it says it is or because you have to put modifiers on it to make it special. Shrek was groundbreaking not because it was made by someone other than Disney. It was groundbreaking because it genuinely looked at how it could parody the landscape around itself while making a genuinely good adventure and love story. Did it help that the creators wanted to give a middle finger to Disney? Maybe but I don't have to bring that up with what makes Shrek amazing. I can just say it's very good. In or out of its time.

The Owl House will only become increasingly less special and interesting as time moves forward and its big statements have to be yelled louder and louder to be properly heard. =======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead, If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

#The Owl House Criticism #TOH Critical

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jae-bummer · 6 months

Text

My Idol 3: Part Twenty

My Idol from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My Idol is a South Korean competitive reality dating game show. It currently airs on Saturday nights on Jae-bummer’s blog. First broadcast in 2016, the show offers the opportunity for a lucky fan to go on seven blind dates with seven idols. The idol plans the date with the show throwing in a specific mission to complete during the day. At the end of the initial dates, the show opens up an audience vote to decide what four idols will move on to the second date.

My Idol 3: The Series

You imagined from Jinyoung's perspective; you looked a bit like a fish gasping for air. Opening your mouth only to close it again when no words came, you grappled with what to do.

Pulling himself up into a much less seductive position, (albeit still hot - it was THE Park Jinyoung after all) he patted the bed lightly beside him and smiled. "Sit."

Your brain instantly obeyed, dropping your body like dead weight beside his.

"I bet you're wondering why you're here with me," Jinyoung smiled easily. "And not Jack-"

"Y/N!" a familiar, gravelly voice called as it came hurtling into the room.

Belly-flopping into both you and Jinyoung's laps, Jackson splayed across your thighs, a wide smile on his face.

"Yah," Jinyoung groaned, immediately pushing the older man's legs away, causing Jackson to roll toward the ground. "You didn't even let me get to the buildup."

Plopping unceremoniously onto the hard wood floor, Jackson winced. "I was excited."

"Evidently," Jinyoung grumbled, shaking his head.

Trying to hide your amusement, you watched as Jackson crawled back toward the bed. Pulling himself to his knees, he set his arms gently across your legs and smiled up at you. "Hello, gorgeous."

"And it begins!" Jinyoung groaned. "I couldn't even flirt for five minutes without you ruining it."

"It's my date," Jackson bickered back. "Why should I let you flirt with them?"

"Because," Jinyoung said softly. Turning toward you, he reached up to tuck a piece of hair behind your ear. Biting his lip slowly, he let it pop out from his teeth before smiling. "I'm good at it."

His methods were much more efficient than you had anticipated, causing your soul to leave your body before slamming back into it again. What in the Wattpad was that?

"So am I!" Jackson whined. "Y/N, tell him how much I romanced you on our first date."

"Oh yeah," you nodded, still struggling to get your bearings. "So much romance. Very...wow."

Jackson rolled his eyes as Jinyoung cackled.

"Jinyoung's obvious jealousy aside," Jackson sighed. "Are you ready for the best slumber party ever?"

"I'm going to own Season 4 when they draft me for this show," Jinyoung pouted. "Mark my words."

"Who came up with the idea for a slumber party?" you asked, noting how very themed it was. You hadn't noticed it when you walked in, but there were three sleeping bags rolled up and set at the head of the bed, each with their own signature 90's cartoon character. The fairy lights you had thought came default in the room were actually haphazardly strung Christmas lights. There were also even more snacks spread out on the bedside tables.

"Me," Jinyoung and Jackson said in unison, only to turn on each other. "You?!"

"I've always wanted to have a good, old-fashioned y2k slumber party," Jackson challenged. "I trained a lot as a kid and didn't have time to do fun stuff like this."

"You may have always wanted to do it," Jinyoung countered. "But I was the one who suggested it."

Narrowing his eyes and tilting his head to the side, Jackson gave a small nod in acknowledgement. "Okay, maybe I remember that."

Watching the two of them bicker back and forth was one of the purest forms of entertainment you had had in a while.

"Why don't we get started on some snacks?" Jackson continued cheerfully, springing from his spot on the floor. Grabbing you by the wrist, he dragged you through the camera men and back into the seating area. "Pick your poison."

Your eyes weren't sure where to land first. Every Korean chip and candy that you were familiar with was clustered on the tabletop. There were even snacks from your home country, which was a special surprise.

You glanced up to Jackson who was busy watching you. "Pick for me?"

A slow smile spread across his lips as he began to nod. "How about this," he hummed, putting a bag of shrimp chips in one hand. "And this to balance it out." He placed Lotte chocolate in the opposite hand. "Go sit and I'll grab us all some drinks."

Doing as you were told, you waddled with your snacks (you had admittedly grabbed one or two more) and cuddled up on the sofa.

Jinyoung followed behind, a bag of seaweed snacks in his hand as he dropped heavily in one of the accent chairs. "I have to ask, Y/N. What are your intentions with my friend?"

A shit eating grin spread across his face as you heard Jackson bark laugh from the kitchenette.

You snorted softly with amusement. It was incredibly clear how important Jackson and Jinyoung were to each other, so even though Jinyoung was phrasing it in a joking manner, there was a hint of seriousness behind the question.

"I have only good intentions," you said carefully. "While not every choice has been my own, I'm really valuing the time that I've spent with Jackson, and I look forward to getting to know him better."

"What a diplomatic answer," Jinyoung hummed. "Do you think you have a handle on his personality from what you've seen so far?"

"Maybe a certain side of it," you nodded. "He's very caring, especially when it comes to his family, both found and biological."

You watched Jinyoung's lips twitch at that. The way you saw it, Got7 was the family that Jackson got to choose, and he was all the better for it.

"He's got a fiery side to him," you continued. "But in different ways. He's fiery in his passion for what he's doing and, in his communication, to get his point across. He's also fiery in a simmering sense."

"Do tell."

You felt your cheeks grow warm. "Well, he has no issue conveying what he wants emotionally...or physically."

"Physically?" Jinyoung coughed, wide-eyed.

"Calm down," Jackson chuckled, placing a kiss on the top of your head before handing a drink to his member. "I tried to kiss them. No big deal."

"But I'm guessing he was very clear while trying to do that," Jinyoung finished, gladly accepting the bottle he was offered.

"It's important to be clear," Jackson nodded, taking a seat beside you. "I never want to pressure someone into something they don't want."

"Which brings me to my next point," you smiled. "He's both nice and kind. He's nice while other people are around, and very respectful. But in private, he's extremely kind. It's in his words and actions that not everyone gets to see. He doesn't need to prove that side of himself to anyone. He just gives it freely."

"Well said," Jinyoung agreed.

Jackson let out a chirp of approval, a cheesy smile on his face. "I could listen to you two talk about me all day."

"Which means we should stop immediately," Jinyoung laughed.

"No, no," you interrupted. "I want you to tell me about him. From a friend's perspective."

Jinyoung took a deep breath before leaning all the way back in his seat. He eyed his friend wearily.

"I met Jackson on his very first day in Korea," Jinyoung started. "I asked one of the managers if he was an actor from Hong Kong because he was so handsome."

Jackson beamed as he slapped the air. "You are a good flirt."

Jinyoung smiled before shaking his head. "We went out to a restaurant and started to get to know each other. I liked him from the very beginning. He was just so free. I know we all see this side of him that's so bright and clever, but really, he's one of the calmest people in private. He's a grounding force."

"Someone has to be," Jackson chuckled. "Half of you have the worst tempers."

Ignoring that barb, Jinyoung continued. "I like to say that he's my teacher of life. He tells me all the time that I can do anything. You'll find with this career that a lot of people will say that, but with him, you actually believe it. He has so much faith in you that you start having faith in yourself."

"Needless to say," Jackson said, emotion clear in his voice. "We're friends for life."

"We are," Jinyoung agreed.

"He's a true-hearted friend," Jackson nodded. "I know this wasn't a question about him, but in fifty or sixty years, I think we'll still be spending time together."

"Little old men," Jinyoung laughed. "Pop, locking, and dropping it."

"I hope I'm there to see it," you smiled.

"Me too," Jackson hummed, wiggling his brows. "Cause that'll mean I won."

"Not necessarily," Jinyoung said, waving a finger. "You could just be friends."

"Okay, that's fair," Jackson agreed. "If I didn't get another option, I think I'd be happy with that too."

"Thanks," you grinned. "Hopefully you'll have a high opinion of me someday as well. Hearing you two talk about each other is adorable."

"Adorable," Jinyoung scoffed. "Please don't tell another living soul."

"I hate to break it to you," Jackson whispered. "But there's been cameras recording this whole time."

Jinyoung sprung forward, clutching his chest as he gasped. "How was I supposed to know?! I should have charged a higher price to say all of that."

Jackson giggled. "Before my friend here makes me pay a compliment tax, why don't we play a game?"

"Sure," you agreed easily. "What did you have in mind?"

"Weeeell," he sang. "It wouldn't be a real slumber party without a game of truth or dare, would it?"

You shuttered internally. While you hadn't been to an abundance of sleepovers in your day, you had been forced into truth or dare more than once. The game could go one of two ways; one, incredibly boring because everyone chooses truth, or two, grow out of control as people try to out-dare each other. Judging your company, you were leaning toward the latter.

"Alright Y/N," Jinyoung said, mischievousness dancing across his features. "Truth or dare?"

You sighed, knowing that picking truth would be a cop out, but didn't want to commit to whatever twisted dare these two could come up with. "Truth."

"What's your worst fear?" Jinyoung asked. "Specifically, about this show?"

You weren't sure what kind of question you had been expecting, but it definitely wasn't that. Jinyoung had pin-pointed the exact thing that could instantly turn your brain to mush. You tried to tread water in the sea of problems that My Idol presented. Due to recent events, one of your newest fears was that you or one of the guys would get injured. Some of them already had and that was pain enough. The thought that it could get worse wasn't a line that you wanted to cross right now. No, you'd choose to ignore the chaos of the security issues and go with something that had been one of your fears when the show started.

"I'm afraid that I'll fall in love with more than one person," you admitted. "And that I'll have to break their heart and my own to make a decision."

Jackson's hand quickly found yours and gave it a soft squeeze. "You're not in an enviable position."

"Everyone thinks dating idols is all fun and games until you actually like them," Jinyoung smirked. "I think that's an easy fear to understand. Do you think it's possible to fall in love with more than one person at a time?"

"Hey, hey," Jackson said. "Only one question per truth."

"It's okay," you chuckled. "I didn't think so before I started this show, but now that I'm in it... It's starting to become a worry."

Jinyoung nodded. "I'm sure it'll all turn out fine. You just have to love Jackson best."

You let out a surprised laugh. "I'll see what I can do."

"Jinyoungie," Jackson cooed. "Truth or dare?"

"Dare," the man across from you said confidently.

"I dare you to go to our neighbors across the hall," Jackson grinned. "And ask them to have a dance party with you."

"In the hall?" Jinyoung winced.

"In the hall," Jackson confirmed.

"Isn't that a little much?" Jinyoung whined. "They're just people minding their own business. What if-"

"You could choose truth," Jackson teased. "If you're a... chicken."

Jinyoung's expression smoothed before quirking a brow. "I'm not a chicken."

"I dunno," you said, joining in on the fun. "Sounds suspiciously like something a chicken would say."

"God, you two are made for each other," Jinyoung grumbled, pushing out of his seat. "Where's the speaker?"

And that was how you and Jackson stood behind Jinyoung as he spun what had to have been an 80-year-old woman to the sweet sounds of JJ Project's Bounce (Jackson's request).

"That was cruel and unusual punishment," Jinyoung whined, plopping back into his chair.

You and Jackson dissolved into a fit of giggles as you both fell onto the couch.

"This has to be the best day of my life," Jackson cackled. "Why did she try to give you money after?"

"Did she think it was a service?" you gasped between peals of laughter. "That she was tipping you?"

"Oh god," Jinyoung groaned. "She kept trying to tuck it into my sweater pocket. And when I refused, she put a finger up to my lips to shush me."

The visual was enough to cause you and Jackson to laugh even harder.

'Okay, enough!" Jinyoung pleaded. "Jackson, please, truth or dare?"

"This isn't about me!" Jackson screeched. "This about you and your Host business!"

"Truth or dare," Jinyoung repeated through his fingers now covering his face.

"Dare, obviously," Jackson said, finally letting his laughter wind down.

"I dare you to jump into the pool," Jinyoung said, lifting his hands to shoot a pointed look at his member. "With all your clothes on."

"Now where's the fun in that," Jackson said, giving you a quick wink. "Let's do it."

Following your two dates dutifully outside, you stood beside Jinyoung and waited. The night air had gotten a bit chilly, but the pool seemed to be heated. Getting in didn't sound like a totally bad idea.

Crossing your arms, you watched as Jackson made sure the sliding door leading to the deck was as open as possible. Picking the seating area as his starting point, he began a full sprint out of the door and toward the pool. Just as he shouted something you couldn't make out, you were scooped into the air as well, quickly plummeting toward the water.

"Jackson!" you squealed seconds before your head went under. You moved your legs frantically underneath you until your toes touched the tiles at the bottom. Giving a solid push off, you broke through the surface and gasped for air.

"I have you; I have you," Jackson cooed, wrapping his arms around your torso and pulling you toward him.

"You certainly do not have me!" you shouted, smacking at his chest. "What the hell, Jackson?"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," he winced. "Maybe not?"

"Absolutely not!" you groaned. "I didn't bring a change of clothes, you absolute turd."

Despite the insult, Jackson grinned. "But I got us all matching pajamas."

"Of course, you did," you sighed, shaking your head. While your irritation was slowly starting to burn away, you tried to calm yourself even further. Jackson seemed to recognize that taking you with him may not have been the best decision, but you could live in the moment. Who could say that they ever got to experience something like this? "At least the pool is warm."

"I definitely wouldn't have taken you in if it wasn't," Jackson nodded. Sticking out his bottom lip, he said quietly, "I'm sorry if what I did made you upset though. Sometimes I just don't think."

Sighing, you ran your fingers over the plains of Jackson's face, wiping the water away as you went. "You were just trying to have fun."

"But I should have considered how you felt," Jackson nodded. "Just because I'm trying to have fun doesn't mean I have to pull you into it. Literally."

"Valid," you said, your heart melting as he offered up genuine apologies. "I forgive you."

"Good," he smiled. Turning away from you, he shouted at Jinyoung who was still hovering at the water's edge. "Jinyoung-ah! Get in here!"

"Are you kidding?" Jinyoung called back. "This sweater is cashmere!"

"Party pooper!"

"Nag!"

"I can tell you two really love each other," you chuckled, watching Jinyoung's retreating frame as it went back inside.

"Oh, I'm convinced he can't stand me sometimes," Jackson laughed. "But we're like brothers. We've been there for each other through some of the toughest moments of our lives... do you have friends like that?"

"I do," you nodded, letting Jackson glide around the pool with you in his arms. You tried to ignore the way the water had taken up residence in his collarbone, or how his shirt was now nearly see-through, clenching his chest as if it were painted on.

"What do they think about you doing the show?" he asked, finally stopping as he pressed your back against the side of the pool.

"Well, one of them also applied," you chuckled. "We both kind of did it as a joke. It's one of those things where you never think you would make it."

"But then you did," he smiled.

"Then I did," you sighed. "I haven't been able to talk to them as much as I usually do...and obviously I can't go out with them, but they're supportive when they can be. They send me a lot of food deliveries."

"if that's not the makings of a true friend, I don't know what is," Jackson mused. "What do you think they would say about you if they were here?"

"Curious about me?" you teased. His body was so close now, you couldn't help but have flashbacks of your first date. Just like it did in the hallway, having him only inches away made you feel slightly off balance. You hadn't had a single drop of liquor tonight, but you could have sworn you were intoxicated.

"Always," he said quietly. "I obviously don't know them...but what I've seen is someone brave. I see someone who willingly gives while the world takes. I see someone who can stand to be protected even though they think they need to protect everyone else."

"If only I could," you whispered. "But I think they would say something similar? Or at least I hope they would. I don't necessarily have the highest opinion of myself, but they seem to for whatever reason."

"Well, go on," he urged with another one of his flawless grins.

"They'd probably say I'm a nerd," you thought out loud. "That I read too much, eat too little, and stress about everything. I've been trying to do better with that by the way, but this competition makes it difficult."

"I think a healthy amount of stress is okay," Jackson nodded. "It drives you forward. It becomes a problem when it holds you back."

"Man, Jinyoung really got that spot on with the life teacher comment, didn't he?"

Jackson chuckled, shaking his head. "I think of him the same way though. I think we've both just lived so much life for our few years that it's natural for us to see things a different way."

"That makes sense," you hummed. "You had to grow up fast in a lot of ways."

"Maybe," he shrugged, adjusting his hold on you to circle around your waist. You couldn't help the small shiver that ran down your spine. "I think our generation sees a lot of that in general."

Allowing the conversation to lapse into a comfortable silence, you were hesitant to speak again. "Were you happy it was me?"

Jackson eyed you, amusement clear on his face. "Well, I didn't have much choice, now did I?"

You laughed, immediately feeling foolish. "I guess not."

"But to answer your question, I am so excited it was you. I don't know any different, but I wouldn't want to."

You nodded, trying to take both him and his words in. Before meeting Jackson, you had never really anticipated his introspective side. He was such a blast of energy and passion that it was easy for his quiet moments to get lost. The time you were sharing now felt incredibly special, despite having a boom mic hovering a few inches over your head.

Turning your eyes to Jackson's, you weren't surprised to see him watching you back. A layer of steam was starting to congregate just above the heated water, making the moment all the more dream-like.

"I think now would be a good time to say, I like you, Y/N," he said quietly, separating the space between you to rest his forehead against yours. He took a deep breath and blew it out of his nostrils.

"I like you too," you said easily. Probably too much considering it was only your second date.

"Am I...am I allowed to kiss you this time?" he asked, not bothering to look up. His forehead remained still against yours, his eyes closed.

"I dunno," you said, slowly turning it over in your mind. "What would you do if I said no?"

"Try again next time."

"What if there is no next time?" you whispered.

This caused his eyes to pop open. "Then I guess I'll have to get creative."

Smiling to yourself, you tried to really think it through. You were worried that kissing Chan had set a certain precedent, but you shouldn't even factor that in. Jackson was his own independent person that you were building a different relationship with. This one was just as amazing, just as much of a whirlwind. There was no denying your attraction to him, both physically and mentally. If you had met outside of the show, you were pretty certain you would have let him kiss you on the first date.

You licked your lips before deciding to make the first move. You wanted to catch him off guard just this once.

In a swift motion, you caught his mouth with yours, wrapping your arms tightly behind his neck in the process. You let your fingers rove through the back of his hair, tugging gently as he moved to get a better vantage. He let go of your waist, pressing you further into the wall, and moving his hands to rest on the lip of the pool. All boxed in, he leveraged the space by pressing his lips roughly against yours, breathing heavily through his nose as he captured your mouth again and again.

You could easily die in his arms, kissing him forever. He conveyed so much in one small motion, it was difficult to get all of your nerve endings working succinctly. He was such a shock to the system, you could feel the kiss all the way down to your toes and at the ends of your fingertips.

Dragging one hand from the back of his scalp to rest on his collarbone, you gradually reached up to grip his chin. Ever so slowly you began to push his face away from yours. His mouth continued to fight forward, causing you to giggle.

"Jackson," you said breathlessly.

"More," he groaned.

"We're going to get pruney," you protested. Really, you were scared of allowing things to go even further, especially with cameras lingering nearby. You knew he would never take things too far, but you also did not want to arm the My Idol crew with an hour's worth of footage of the two of you making out.

"I'll live my life happily as a raisin."

"While you would be the most handsome raisin in all the land," you continued. "We should get out."

Motioning to the cameras with your eyes, Jackson finally caught on. Groaning, he moved his body away from yours and started swimming toward the steps.

After you had both gotten out and toweled off to the best of your ability, you were given a colorful pair of pajamas to change into. The pants were a lime green plaid and the top had a small green bird on it, your name stitched underneath.

"The monograms were a nice touch," Jinyoung said lazily from his spot in the corner of the couch. He had a fluffy, bow headband on and several pimple patches covering what you thought was already flawless skin.

"Only the best for the best," Jackson grinned. Handing you a sheet mask, he moved to lay down on the sofa, resting his head on your lap. "Can you put this on for me?"

"How can I say no when you've already gotten so comfy?" you chuckled, pushing his hair back from his face. Your date hummed happily as you pulled the mask over his skin, flattening it out and smoothing in all of the serum. By the time you were finished, you looked up to find Jinyoung asleep, one of his under eye patches sliding slowly down his face. Judging by his fluttering eyes, Jackson wasn't far behind.

"Do you want to get in the bed?" you asked softly. Wedged between you and Jinyoung, he couldn't be comfortable.

"No," he grumbled. "Do you want to get in the bed?"

You looked longingly toward the main part of the suite. The option did seem incredibly nice after another long day.

"I'm fine here," you decided. If he didn't want to move, you didn't want to disturb him.

"Okay," Jackson whispered. "I'm okay with wherever you want to go...just as long as you stay."

You tried to combat the fuzzy feeling spreading warmly across your chest. He was so soft and beautiful in this moment. You didn't have the words to describe how it made you feel.

Just as his breathing finally began to even out, you heard a steady knock on the door.

"Y/N?" Insu called lightly through the barrier. "We've got a problem."

#jackson wang #park jinyoung #got7 #bts #jungkook #choi san #ateez #jeon jungkook #bang chan #stray kids #skz #christopher bang

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seasaltcosmos · 11 months

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i know some of the fandom may be getting discouraged by the lack of news, but i just want to write this and tell y’all that even if we have yet to get that big “RISE OF THE TMNT RETURNS FOR SEASON 3,” we’re still on that path and our efforts HAVE bore fruit.

1. there’s been more and more attention surrounding rise. youtubers are watching it and talking about how good it is. (one guy in particular who made a really bad video on it admitted he knows it’s bad and said he’ll be making a new one in the future.) saberspark in particular- one of the BIGGEST cartoon youtubers- has admitted to rewatching the show 4 times because he thinks it’s that good. nick itself hasn’t been ignoring rise like i thought they would. they’ve actually given it just as much attention as 2012 and 03, which i have to give props for.

2. shredder’s revenge’s dlc confirmed that it’ll include alt color schemes based on other iterations of the turtles. and one of those schemes is the ones from rise. it isn’t the “weird different tmnt that no one watched” anymore, it’s getting attention even from an officially licensed, highly praised video game.

3. the comics are being rereleased next month in ONE big book. i’m not an expert on comic counterparts, but i don’t think nick or idw would’ve gone out of their way to rerelease a comic for a show “on pause” years later.

4. remember that little “meet n greet raph and leo” event at a london convention back in spring? you’d think for stuff like that, they would resort to the typical 1987 general brand representation designs. but nope, the costumes were specifically rise of the tmnt. an OFFICIAL event, using designs from an iteration considered “obscure and dead?” i can’t believe i haven’t seen more people bring that up tbh

5. there’s been a HUGE influx of rise merch in china. on top of the movie being released in theaters, they’ve also done cross promotion with snack brands, a nickelodeon (wanna say exhibit or park, i don’t remember) having a full display of them alongside other big nick icons, a new MOBILE GAME. and if there’s anything i’ve learned from “first lgbt disney chara” memes, western media companies LOVE china money.

6. again- NICKELODEON has noticed all of the attention on rise. i can’t confirm that it means they’re discussing more seasons right now as i type this, but it still means that all the work we’ve been doing has been worth it and there’s still a reason to keep fighting. the most attention they’ve usually given their short-lived series was an intro upload to youtube and maybe a couple clips. but they’re acknowledging rise as just as much a part of the franchise as their other “””more successful””” iterations, even if there’s no confirmation of more seasons yet.

we’re not at the end goal yet, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t accomplished anything. the show has been getting the attention it deserves. and we shouldn’t take all these little achievements for granted, because they’ll go a LONG way as long as we don’t give up. every art piece, every addition to the tags, every positive mention of the show gets more eyes on it. so don’t give up, keep fighting, don’t burn yourselves out, and let’s save rise of the tmnt! :D

#rise of the tmnt #save rottmnt #save rise of the tmnt #save rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt season 3 #unpause rise of the tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles

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marshallpupfan · 11 months

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Is it just me, but doesn't it feel a bit strange that in the mighty movie, Skye and Chase have an "integral" friendship when they weren't even close when the show began.

Chase's best friend is Marshall, but I feel like they're trying to change the show's history by making Skye and Chase close when they weren't even that close in season 1.

It doesn't feel right to me 😕

Sadly, this isn't the only instance of the writers ignoring things in recent years. Rubble not having a family and then a really big one suddenly pops up for the spinoff, Skye's out-of-nowhere lack of confidence because of her size, Aqua Pups ignoring nearly every Merpup rule established in earlier seasons, etc..

But Spin Master disregarding Chase and Marshall's strong friendship and pretending it's actually been Chase and Skye is, to me, one of their biggest offenders. It's a change that, as silly as it may sound, does nothing but tarnish the love I once had for this franchise.

It's not like this is some fan-theory or anything. Even Nick Jr. has made videos showcasing their strong bond. Fans fully acknowledge it, and even Chase x Skye proponents have reacted to this news in utter confusion.

So... what gives? Well, I think I might have an answer. This may be a bit of a touchy subject, but what the heck, I'll talk about it anyway.

If there's one thing I've noticed over the years, it's that people have been demanding (sometimes angrily) for more female protagonists in movies, games, TV shows, etc.. Companies have complied to this, and Spin Master is no exception. Unfortunately, when they created PAW Patrol, they only made one of the main six pups a girl - a detail that displeased many viewers from the very beginning. Sure, they've created more female members since then, but the cartoon has been getting lazier about using any of their part timers now (I think Everest only appeared three times each in season 8 and 9).

Their solution? Give Skye more screen time, of course. Unfortunately, either by accident or on purpose, we now have a pup who gets called in during nearly every single mission. This is not an exaggeration; in season 9, she was used more than Chase, the main character and face of the franchise. Of course, it's not enough that they call her in a lot; they also wanted to give her an edge over the other four... something to make her "special" to stand out.

How did they go about doing this? Well, I think we know, given how this post got started in the first place.

Thus, our favorite Dalmatian got booted out of his position as Chase's best friend. Now, it's Skye who has an "integral" friendship with the shepherd. They're all "friends", but it's suddenly nothing compared to what these two share... apparently. I suppose it wasn't enough for them to shove Marshall to the side during missions so they could call Skye in more... they had to take that from him, too.

And for the life of me, I've no idea what the Spin Master president is talking about. Sure, Chase and Skye get called in together during missions a lot, but they hardly interact at all. It's not much different outside of missions, either. And if it was "acknowledged" in the first theatrical film, I certainly don't remember it. Chase and Marshall, on the other hand? Although brief, we still get hints of it every now and then, even as recent as season 9. It's clearly there, but I guess Spin Master, and possibly the movie director/writers, have other ideas.

There's no denying their priorities have changed. Sadly, I don't expect things to go back to the way they were anytime soon, especially if this leaked document is any indication.

As you can see, Spin Master is adopting a new strategy that promises to focus more on female-driven marketing and stories. Don't get me wrong, I don't oppose the idea at all (in fact, I'm thrilled they're giving Everest a 44-minute mini-movie... I absolutely want her to get more screen time), but in the long run, it shouldn't come at the expense of the male characters. Sadly, due to how much they overuse Skye now, I feel that's exactly what's happening... especially to Marshall. It's one of the reasons why I've started losing interest in the TV series, and why I'm sorry to admit I have little interest in The Mighty Movie. Skye will continue getting preferential treatment to compensate for their lack of foresight, while characters like Marshall will likely continue getting the short end of the stick as a result. I really hope I'm wrong, but the evidence seems all too clear.

I apologize for the length of this post, and if any of it comes off as sounding like a rant. And if anyone takes offense to something I've said here, I swear to you, that was never my intention. In truth, as many of you have seen, I have a lot of passion for both Marshall and the PAW Patrol franchise, which has lead me to become frustrated by some of its changes and the direction it's going in. And I know I'm not alone on this, as even most fans nowadays cheer when Chase and Marshall are finally given the chance to team up again... the rare times it happens, anyway. I suppose it's telling how excited we get for such morsels, but...it's often all we've got now.

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thevoidcannotbefilled · 9 months

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The Void Says Hello by Luna Gale

(Trigger warnings: dissociation, isolation, suicidal ideation, non-explicit/supernatural suicide)

Summary: This is how I became the visitor in your window.

It started the same for both of us. Someone knocked on our windows and we didn’t want to say no.

Well, that’s not exactly true. To say it was the start ignores the context to why we don’t say no, but to say this isn’t the start ignores the beginning of this beginning. We are all made of different entrances and exits. Where we start largely is retrospectively obvious while the end never seems to ever want to show itself even when it’s clear, there’s nothing more to gain.

For me, my start was as a child.

I don’t remember much of my childhood, but I remember the windows. Ironically enough I used to be terrified of what could come out of my window. Many children fear the monsters under their bed or the ones in the corners or the closet, not me. I was a practical kid. I knew nothing could be in my room if it wasn’t already there. Then why fear the shadows on the walls that moved and twisted if I knew that it was only the trick of the light and my fan that would cause them to move?

My window however. Oh my window. Growing up I lived on the bottom floor of a house. The only thing protecting me from the outside world was a wee-little bush, the easily broken glass, and the weak lock holding it in place. At first, I didn’t think much of the window. Perhaps a little cautious, but if I slept facing away from the glass, not a single thought of the outside would follow me into my dreams.

Fortunately or perhaps unfortunately, I watched a late night crime show with my parents. Enough said there. If that didn’t solidify it enough, there was a cartoon when I was younger. I forget the name, but I remember the monster. A wide thing that destroyed the ground as it moved, made of darkness and void and nothing at all. For all that you could see it, nothing could stop it from punching holes into walls by simply wanting to move through it.

Yes, from then on, I was terrified of the outside. My window was an invitation, for many its simple existence would be an opportunity to hurt me.

In a way the window was also my protection. From then on, I slept facing it. That may seem strange, why face fear if you just ignore it? Not acknowledge the lurking creatures that could come from the darkness? If it were so simple to forget, I would have. But you can not forget the window in your room as much as you could forget the creatures you know that could be there. If I tried to sleep below it, the fear compounded inside. At night, I could feel the hands of robbers at my throat, the claws of monsters ready to slice my neck, or even simply, a misplaced rock being thrown into my window and just happening to land on my sleeping face.

If I faced the window, I could see the intruders. If a robber were to arrive or a monster try to barrel its way into my home, I could slip and roll away from the bed before their hands could grab me. As for the rock, well, if I could see where the noises happened, I could stop anyone from hurting me before it was too late.

Of course, this did nothing if I was asleep. I knew this, even at the time. But facing the large window helped me rest, so despite the illogical circumstances, that was enough.

Such was my beginning. I grew out of this habit, of course. My next room, my bed was beside the window and that was that. Sometimes tree branches would tap at the glass, but considering my childhood fear that felt more like a running joke between the universe and I than anything.

Did you have something like this? Did the windows ever call to you before now? I wonder if it’s all of us, or if it’s just me who knew the dichotomy of them before they knocked.

I didn’t know the full truth for many years. My memory is faulty but I know I grew. A child into a teenager into an adult. I had many fractured parts of me become what the world called a person. I went to university. I got a job. An apartment.

With how small my apartment was, my bed settled against the side with the window.

I had everything to what many would call a fulfilling life. I had a career and a clear shot to happiness. Money. Because that’s what happiness is isn’t it? At the end of the day? Money to move, money to live, money to have time and experience reality. Money lets you nurture the fractured ends of yourself who loves art but can’t afford supplies, who wants a wedding but does not have the time to love, who wants the world but does not have means to visit it.

I know many disagree. I’m not even sure I agreed at the time. I had hope that the world would fulfill its promises to make me whole.

But you work and you work. The only constant is that and a home. You sleep under the window where the branch goes tap tap and wake to an alarm that tells you that your dreams are gone. You’ve moved away from your friends and family. They haven’t called in days, weeks, months. You text to tell them you’re coming back, and no one answers until you can’t get the days off from the shackles you’ve tied yourself to.

The parts of you that are art and love and want, decay. You must rebuild to retain them. But is there time when there’s only exhaustion left in you? Is there even a place for you to make your garden when you know nothing of the soil and the people are nothing but aliens to you?

There were nights I would simply stare at the white popcorn ceiling. Even my dreams had felt sour, in reality’s light. If I didn’t go to sleep it meant the morning wouldn’t arrive as quickly. I could keep to myself in the darkness where I could simply be without judgment.

That’s when the knocking started.

The branch had been familiar at this point. A little tap tap on windy days and nights that said hello to me on the second floor. No one else had this tree at this time, and it was never loud enough to wake me. So when the knocking started, I knew it was different. As I stared at the ceiling, ready for sleep to force me under, I heard it.

Knock. Knock knock. Knock. Knock Knock.

It was particular. A rapping difficult for someone inhuman to replicate.

Knock. Knock knock. Knock. Knock Knock.

Someone was saying hello. They wanted into my second story window.

The first time I heard it, I froze. The first sets of raps felt like a coincidence but the second? I had to know what could make that noise. Did a bird somehow make its way to the latent branch and try to drill through my window? Was it a lost window washer wanting to start a conspiracy with me against the complex? Did a robber want to steal my things, but decided to be polite about it? Or even better, did someone secretly need my help and their only escape was between me and my window?

Notably I hadn’t been sleeping well the past week and maybe I was open to feeling much more wonder than usual.

It goes to show my disappointment when I opened the curtain and there was nothing there except the darkness and my friendly branch.

That night I slept with the curtain open and facing the window. If there was anything there I would face it. Easy at that.

The knocking came back three nights later, as did the dropping disappointment when nothing revealed itself. Was there something I’m missing? Did my tree friend gain someone new in its branches when I wasn’t looking? Worse, was it all in my head? Or in a vile sense, was someone playing a prank and the landlord hid a camera to watch me lose hope again and again. That something was there. That they wanted me to see them.

You understand, right? Why I needed to believe in the knocking. I know you do. That means you also understand when I figured it out.

When I was a child, I feared the outside world and what it could bring. If I faced my fear then I was prepared to leave. That’s it. The knowledge wasn’t for the sake of knowing or understanding, but rather to escape what the outside wanted from me.

If I faced the window then it knew I wanted to know more than I wanted to understand it. If I didn’t face the window, maybe then, maybe-

In this time, the parts of me I was building were also falling apart. I was work and darkness and the former kept losing its luster. It wasn’t that there, wasn't anything new, but rather there was nothing at all. When I worked, I knew I was creating building blocks for another future, for another me. One that was happy and ready to face another work another day another art another person another world.

The gradual aspects of another something built up in my mind. I had to ask myself, is this worth it? Is the me that is me now going to be someone I want to be? If I stopped working now and went home, would there be anyone left to pick up the rotten pieces of work and decay? Would there be anyone that would understand the me that stared into the ceiling just to hear the friendly knocking that was just for me?

Knock. Knock knock. Knock. Knock Knock.

Again.

Knock. Knock knock. Knock. Knock Knock.

Did I want to be someone else? Or did I just want to be here, knowing a friend wanted me. Wanted to let them in and accept them, despite the fear.

I was afraid through all this. I speak fondly of it now, but how could a person who was not yet darkness not be afraid? How could I not think it was just tormenting me? Distracting me in the night when all I needed was sleep?

For a few nights, I slept in the living room to escape it. It worked. When I went back into my room after, I almost sobbed when it didn’t wake me the next day.

I did cry when I went home that evening because nothing out there filled the void sleep had given me.

I wanted to be something. Not this fractured thing that needed sleep and acceptance and love to feel good. I wanted more than money and work to exist. What are what-if’s to someone who is nothing but pieces they already despise or broke? Who was I but a thing pretending to be a person? A potential that hated that they were not yet manifested?

It was then, a month since the knocking started, that I got a call the next day into my boss’s office. They told me I wasn’t good enough. If I didn’t improve, they would have to let me go.

I remember nodding and nodding and nodding. By the time I arrived home, what I was agreeing to changed.

That night I faced away from the window. I didn’t stare at the ceiling, or anything at all. The moon was covered by a layer of clouds, so it was only me and the darkness so thick if I moved if it was tangible.

Knock. Knock knock. Knock. Knock Knock. The window said at one point in the night.

Knock. Knock knock. Knock. Knock Knock. I said back.

A pause between us, an understanding from them.

Knock. Knock knock. The window said as it creaked open. Knock. Knock knock, even as I saw nothing except darkness.

Knock. Knock knock. It said against my head. There was no breath. No hands. Just noise.

Knock. Knock knock. It said as it covered me.

Knock. Knock knock. Said my heartbeat in reply.

It asked me once just once, if I wanted this. In a voice that wasn’t a person and only the voice of the trees that tapped in the darkness, the wind that rattled the doors, in the shattering of glass, in screams of those who were taken in the night. It asked me if I wanted to be these things. To be the knocking that asked others to be like it. To be nothing and know exactly what you are.

Knock. Knock knock. Knock. Knock Knock.

Knock.

I said yes.

Then I was nothing.

Painfully, wonderfully nothing.

I exist only in special circumstances. To knock on doors and windows big and small. If someone turns to me and acknowledges the sound, they must know to tell me to go away. Then, I will be nothing but wind and branches. I will be darkness with no consciousness and nothing more.

But if you don’t say no, I will stay. Stay and knock and keep knocking until you either invite me in or tell me to go away.

I am nothing and everything and all things small and scary in the dark. I am not a fractured person but rather a creature that only exists when needed. To be a home and a person and a concept means you are always something when you exist and blissfully quiet when you don’t.

There is nothing to lose by accepting. You will forget the parts of you that cared. You will become a full idea not burdened by the universe. All you need to do is say yes.

So, will you accept this? This invitation? You’ve listened to me and I heard you knocking back.

Just say yes, and it will all go away. The hurt of existence, and you will be something new and manifested.

…

No? Okay.

Okay.

That’s okay. Truly. Truly it is.

I’ll be back if you change your mind. Don’t worry. I come to those akin to me. Those who see the nothing and see a friend. Who see the future and see rot. The world may change and fracture, but I will not.

I will never break again.

And I’ll make sure, if you break too, I’ll be here to take the pieces that are left.

So, as sad as I am to go, it’s only goodbye for now, friend. You know where to see me again when the darkness calls and you have nothing else to fill your void.

#the void writes #the amazing written word #dissociation #indirect death #isolation #og void stories

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beardedmrbean · 20 days

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Sorry, the long puzzles things is meant to show how the Templars influence history while the assassins desperately try to stop them

Oh yes I know about Ford Antisemitism, ac acknowledge that in the long video I sent

As Ford sent a certain item to Agent “H” to kick off WW2

Ugh, okay which king I have to strangle in hell that decided that Jews were only good at doing “dirty” jobs like money?

I sure hope that antisemitism don’t come back like virus because people wanted to treat a geopolitical conflict like it a fucking kids cartoon

Oh btw, yes their fully grown adults, but Candace and Kanye antisemitism? Welll

It’s heavily because how my community views the world

Yes I’m 24, but allow me to explain

You see black Americans, since the fucking womb, that white people are the root of all our problems. Like years ago I learn that Africans sold Africans to Europeans

But if my reactions to the horrific connections the Dahomey is to the black American diaspora

Imagine the mentally hell older blacks may have

But about Kanye because someone pointed out a line in Micheal Jackson song. Given how a lot of powerful people in the music industry often screwed over artists happen to be Jewish so I think Kanye projecting that a lot.

No infantilizing him and sorry for the pain he caused

But the reason why I say I’m a zoomer Huey, i acknowledge that yes black Americans been fucked over…but we also have a lot of self destructive habits

Also look how black activists say Asians are white adjacent or how magical negeroes thought the fuck up “joke” saying upset white people are the most dangerous animal on the planet

Candace and Kanye bigotry…isn’t surprising when a huge chunk of the black community have the “Jews ran the world!” mindset but changed the Jews part to “ white people”

Yeah tomorrow anon but people acting shocked about their bigotry…sure if you turn a blind eye to the unhinged dog until the rabies comes out

Shit that kinda racist, but if people switch “white people” to “Jews” in the racist af but Society approved statements black activists got

You would think it’s a black edition of Mein Kampf

Sorry, the long puzzles things is meant to show how the Templars influence history while the assassins desperately try to stop them

no need to apologize I try to give some time to the things folks send, even most of the silly stuff.

Oh yes I know about Ford Antisemitism, ac acknowledge that in the long video I sent As Ford sent a certain item to Agent “H” to kick off WW2

Ya he was pretty bad, not uncommon at that time either, Louis Armstrong had a Jewish Lithuanian couple that lived next to him as a kid taught him some of their song, he found an affinity with 'these white people that got treated like us black people' always war a Star of David in their honor, if you have a little time to spend reading about it, it's a good story.

Ugh, okay which king I have to strangle in hell that decided that Jews were only good at doing “dirty” jobs like money?

That would be the Pope, Christians couldn't extract usury from other Christians so Jews did the loans since they could do them.

They were excluded from lots of jobs, that's why we wound up with so many of them in the arts and sciences and also entertainment.

Stayed in their own communities because not only community, but kosher is easier that way too, among other things.

I sure hope that antisemitism don’t come back like virus because people wanted to treat a geopolitical conflict like it a fucking kids cartoon

Feels like we're getting there, sadly, I hope I'm doing enough to stop it.

Oh btw, yes their fully grown adults, but Candace and Kanye antisemitism? Welll It’s heavily because how my community views the world Yes I’m 24, but allow me to explain

all ears

You see black Americans, since the fucking womb, that white people are the root of all our problems. Like years ago I learn that Africans sold Africans to Europeans But if my reactions to the horrific connections the Dahomey is to the black American diaspora Imagine the mentally hell older blacks may have

Best part of that movie was forcing people to confront that at last.

But back to my community…the problem is that my community have extremely bigoted views that is normalized. Like i remember someone saying that black activists (and many blacks in general) views white people the same way Nazis viewed the Jews But about Kanye because someone pointed out a line in Micheal Jackson song. Given how a lot of powerful people in the music industry often screwed over artists happen to be Jewish so I think Kanye projecting that a lot. No infantilizing him and sorry for the pain he caused

Look up ice cube's "no vaseline" dis track aimed at Eazy-E (E would be shredding his old mates lyrically if he hadn't got AIDS) I don't remember the exact line but you can tell cube isn't fond of the Hebrews even though he'd be dead on the street if not for the one that helped make him and the rest of them famous, also kind of homophobic and honestly saying I hope you get prison raped dry is not something anyone should say.

But the reason why I say I’m a zoomer Huey, i acknowledge that yes black Americans been fucked over…but we also have a lot of self destructive habits Also look how black activists say Asians are white adjacent or how magical negeroes thought the fuck up “joke” saying upset white people are the most dangerous animal on the planet

Go back to Louis Armstrong and what he'd said about that couple, now look at where the two groups are currently,

MLK was a Zionist and the Jewish community for the most part joined in with the black community for civil rights marches and protests and all that.

I don't know how Politico can actually determine his motive for doing it, but still the point here is that even in 1995 there were clubs that had a no blacks no Jews on the door, still are some too.

I always like people that say shit like this, guy doesn't care who you love and the only colour he cares about at the club is $$$green$$$

But that's beside the point, 1995 even if you could pay the $100,000 fee there were clubs all over the world you couldn't get into if you were black or Jewish, really should be more solidarity there I'd think.

Candace and Kanye bigotry…isn’t surprising when a huge chunk of the black community have the “Jews ran the world!” mindset but changed the Jews part to “ white people”

nick cannon ( I think) stepped in it a while back too, cost him his tv gig

Yeah tomorrow anon but people acting shocked about their bigotry…sure if you turn a blind eye to the unhinged dog until the rabies comes out Shit that kinda racist, but if people switch “white people” to “Jews” in the racist af but Society approved statements black activists got

@inverted-race is fun, dead but the race swapped posts are still there and good fun

You would think it’s a black edition of Mein Kampf

They made a feminist one and it got peer reviewed and published in a academic journal, team that did that one did several and I think all but four were published, so why not.

Gonna have to wait on that other one till tomorrow, it's time to start shutting my brain off I'd like to get some final fantasy VI time in, still need to order a controller so I can do the other games I have that I really want to play but I keep forgetting to get a controller.

#zoomer huey anon

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