#I’ve seen this meme around and I think it’s funny

[geoffrard]

My Chemical Romance, Hardcore Sexual Repression, and the Lemon Stealing Whore

[Content warning for non-graphic references to pornography, sex, sexual violence, and negative attitudes towards sex work. There is no explicit nudity but you might not want to read this in front of your boss. All images have descriptions in alt text. See sources here. Read this essay on my Dreamwidth here.]

It’s the setup of a joke: Gerard Way, Mikey Way, Frank Iero, Matt Pelissier, and a porn actress huddle around a leather couch in a dingy room as a camera rolls. The actress, a young and bright-eyed Joanna Angel, asks each member of My Chemical Romance in the room, “Do you guys watch porn?”

Most of us have seen the interview. If not, stop and watch it now, because nothing else I say will make sense otherwise. (And here, just for you, I’ve reuploaded the video with at least 10% more pixels. Watch below, or read a transcript here.)

The fact that My Chemical Romance, whose faces have decorated shirts at Hot Topic for over fifteen years, whose songs have saved lives and inspired memes, who all have wives and children, would end up associated with an alt porn website like Burning Angel often baffles fans watching the interview for the first time. 

For example, see these comments left on the original video uploaded to YouTube: 

These comments, though more than a few years old, generally represent how a lot fans understand the interview. Other people think it’s funny and perhaps a little out of left field, but don’t question how four members wound up on a porn site like Burning Angel. Both attitudes are a pretty typical example of the MCR fandom’s ignorance about the New Jersey hardcore scene, as well reflecting general weirdness about sex work. 

Since I cannot turn my historian brain off, I wanted to provide some of the extremely interesting historical context behind the video. The post I had originally planned to make very, very briefly outlined how MCR ended up being interviewed by Joanna Angel, founder and longtime CEO of Burning Angel. But the more I looked into it, the more I fell down a rabbit hole. This eventually turned into something of a mammoth manifesto about women and sexuality in the late 90s hardcore scene that gave My Chemical Romance and Joanna Angel careers. I will warn you: this is long. But it’s also important historical background information that rarely gets discussed at all—especially by MCR fans.

(So, with all that said, please feel free to ask any questions about anything I say here! Sources for will be posted on a different post which I will link at the end, and I have been quite thorough, though not as thorough as I could have been.)

Tl;dr: Joanna Angel came up in the exact same scene as My Chemical Romance, Thursday, and Midtown, a scene which stigmatized open sexual expression, at the expense of women and queer people—especially those involved in sex work. When she started her porn site, Burning Angel, she applied the same DIY values that her peers did to their own bands, but faced violence and ostracization from a subculture much too repressed to embrace such blatant expression of female sexuality. In this context, the My Chemical Romance interview with Burning Angel in 2004 was not only a group of guys doing a favor for someone they had probably known for years at that point; it can also be read as a somewhat controversial act that pushed back against this aversion to sexuality, and that helped legitimize and popularize both the site and Joanna Angel’s career. 

Burning Angel: the Movie (2005)

Say you’re a diehard My Chemical Romance fan in 2005—if you really want to watch your favorite band discuss their porn-viewing habits, you’ll have to travel to either your local adult entertainment store or go to the hardcore porn site BurningAngel.com and order their first DVD, appropriately titled Burning Angel: The Movie. Once you have the disc, you’ll have to fast forward through several sex scenes and interviews with other bands before you arrive at what you wanted: the actress who you’ve just seen in hardcore sex scenes asking Gerard, Frank, Mikey and Otter questions about their preferences in adult entertainment.

The DVD was Burning Angel’s first attempt at more professional pornography, and Joanna’s first foray into full participation in filmed, live-action sex. Joanna Angel would later go on to be one of the most well-known porn stars of our time—in Virgin Territory (2006), for example, she played a lemon stealing whore; you might have seen the video—and Burning Angel would be credited with the popularization of the “alt” porn genre, which broke from the exploitative mainstream porn model and typically featured models representative of subcultures.

But in 2005 her alt porn empire was still in its infancy, and Joanna was still struggling to rectify her recent full expulsion from the local New Jersey hardcore social scene with her enduring devotion to DIY values—and the fact that members of the sexually repressed subculture that had ostracized Joanna were her site’s target audience.

Joanna Angel on the Scene

Any thoughts of a future career in adult entertainment and the last name Angel were far from her mind when Joanna Mostov enrolled in Rutgers University in 1998. 

Though she often pushed back against the wishes of her religious orthodox Jewish family, the extent of her adolescent rebellion had ended at sneaking out to punk shows and getting piercings her mother wouldn’t approve of. At Rutgers, Joanna quickly became enmeshed in the New Brunswick hardcore scene, putting her in the same circles as a host of people whose names you might recognize: Geoff Rickly of Thursday (who ran hundreds of shows out of his basement), Gabe Saporta of Midtown and Cobra Starship, and Alex Saavedra of Eyeball Records. 

Geoff Rickly: Well, you know, the funny thing is that, at the time, Joanna, who would later go on to form Burning Angel and become a famous porn star in her own right, was playing in her goth bands with chelsea haircuts and the basement shows. Like, her local goth band would play. And they’d bring out people and stuff, and I’d put touring bands on that show, and so it’s funny to me how, weirdly, DIY punk hardcore scenes and porn had weird associations then. [source: Going Off Track: Geoff Rickly, 2012]

The NJ hardcore scene was close-knit enough that while she only has documented friendships with some of these people, she had to have crossed paths with most of them multiple times (for example, Joanna was at the show on December 31, 1998 where Thursday and Midtown played their first real sets). She went to every show she could and hosted some in her own basement. 

While we don’t necessarily have a written record of her friendship with Frank Iero and Mikey Way of My Chemical Romance, the fact that Joanna attended plenty of shows in the North Jersey area and also spent a lot of time at the Eyeball House (Alex was a close friend; and Pencey Prep was on his label) suggests that, at the the very least, Joanna, Frank, and Mikey were aware of each other’s presence in these early years. They were peers in the same scene, just as they were with everyone else who frequented the same venues or played in the same basements.

For years, the hardcore scene mattered to her more than anything else; it was her social life and what she based her values upon. 

Those hardcore values and a growing curiosity about her own sexuality lead Joanna to sex-positive feminist activism and a writing internship with Nerve.com, an online magazine which explored topics related to sex and romantic relationships. From there, her interest in expressing her own sexuality continued to develop.

[Suicidegirls in 2001]

So, in 2002, when her roommate and friend asked her if she wanted to start a porn site that offered more explicit content than sites like SuicideGirls, which featured punk aesthetics and band interviews but stayed away from anything more than simple nudity, Joanna agreed.

BurningAngel.com went live in April 2002. It wanted to do things differently than other porn sites. While not necessarily pushing the boundaries of beauty standards, the site used models who were beautiful but in a more approachable, average sense. Joanna has said that since she had little experience even watching porn prior to starting the site, she wanted the site to mimic the kind of sex she was having with actors who looked like the people she was having sex with. 

Joanna: When we started the website, it was a reflection of ourselves. It still is to this day. There's band interviews on the website, the style of girl that we use is not your average typical porn star and the personality on the website is a little bit different. All the members interact with each other, all of the girls have blogs and profiles, and people become friends with each other. It's more of a community and a reflection of a subculture rather than just being a website with content to jerk-off to and never think about again. [source: Complex: Interview: Joanna Angel Talks Alt Porn, Piracy, And Her Blow-Up Doll, 2011] 

[Burning Angel’s homepage in June 2002]

Hardcore Punk Reacts to Hardcore Porn 

Her longtime involvement in the scene and her application of DIY ethics to her porn business did not mean that the hardcore culture actively nurtured Joanna Angel’s career in porn. In reality, many parts of the scene were actively hostile towards Joanna and the site once Burning Angel went live.

This backlash isn’t incredibly surprising within the context of late 90s hardcore, a subculture that by and large refused to acknowledge sexuality of any kind. 

The sexual repression in hardcore reflected several different aspects of its culture: a negative perception of women active in the scene; a reaction against the violence of tristate hardcore in the early 90s; and, more than anything else, the general privilege of those involved in the underground.

Like Joanna, Geoff Rickly, and Frank Iero, most people involved in New Brunswick hardcore were enrolled at Rutgers, and white, middle-class male college students dominated the scene. For many of them, applying DIY values to their own lives meant distancing themselves from their socioeconomic upper-hand. Consequently, the scene as a whole developed an attitude of asceticism, rejecting anything that served no purpose beyond pleasure or personal enjoyment. (Of course, it was easy for them to reject their social privileges, especially when they could just as easily cast off their aesthetic of poverty and self-denial for an adulthood of relative comfort.)

To do anything just because you enjoyed it, or because it brought you happiness in the moment, was seen to be a betrayal of hardcore’s higher intellectual goals—and that included sex. You can see this trend, for example, in lyrics from NJ hardcore bands, which focused on things like political issues or childhood traumas instead of the common themes of sexual and romantic desire found in mainstream music.

Joanna spoke about finding comfort in the general sexual repression of the scene because of her own adolescent insecurities:

Joanna: Me being very sexually not advanced and insecure, [90s hardcore] was the perfect place for me, because I could ignore [sexuality]. I was getting older, I don’t know, I wanted to explore myself more. So I began to write these graphic sex stories. My roommate, Mitch, knew about it, and I remember him getting a kick out of it. [source: Turned Out A Punk #127: Joanna Angel (Burning Angel)]

For another salient example, Geoff Rickly of Thursday has spoken about his own struggles with the hardcore scene’s repression, especially in regards to the shame he felt about writing sexually explicit stories for pay:

Geoff Rickly: You have to think, this is the 90s punk scene. It's not now. Nobody would openly talk about sex in DIY punk. It was such a repressed PC time, where — I mean, a lot of that stuff is my heart, like the political activism that was still such a part of punk, and actually just giving a shit about things that matter, and modes of how you're doing what you're doing. Those things seemed to matter back then, and I appreciated that side, but it was also so uptight. So repressed. [source: Going Off Track: Geoff Rickly, 2012]

While its general aversion to sexuality might have been born out of an initial desire to reform the violent misogyny of other hardcore cultures, it created the conditions for certain social problems to go completely unaddressed. After all, how can you address the rampant misogyny, homophobia, and sexual violence in your community if any acknowledgement of sexuality is taboo?

(For a brief but interesting perspective on the impact of hardcore sexual repression upon queer people in the scene, check out Episode #4 of Geoff Rickly’s podcast Dark Blue, in which Steve Pedulla and Norman Brannon discuss their experiences as gay musicians in the scene.)

Of course, these issues aren’t confined to the New Jersey hardcore, nor were they unique to the late 1990s. This particular brand of sex-averse misogyny reflects important threads within the feminism of the time which villainized open female sexuality—especially when it concerned sex work. Left-leaning spaces like music undergrounds adopted this sex-negative, misogynistic attitude as a part of their feminism—not in opposition to it.

In particular, the Riot Grrrl movement of the late 80s/early 90s pushed back against a culture (and a subculture) that shamed women for publicly expressing their sexuality. Following that, early fanzines and performance practices addressed the mistreatment of sex workers in hardcore as one way that female bodily autonomy was limited and women’s bodies were policed. Bikini Kill frontwoman and Riot Grrrl pioneer Kathleen Hanna has spoken about her past in sex work, the hostility she endured for openly discussing it, and the importance of that experience in shaping the form of Riot Grrrl’s protest. 

Kathleen Hanna: “Whenever we were written about in the press, I wanted my sex-work history to be part of the description, because I wanted other women whom I danced at clubs with (and who never knew my real name) to see themselves reflected in some way. A lot of women who are doing music now have been sex-trade workers, prostitutes, dancers; I thought it was really important that I didn’t hide that. But I also didn’t want to glamorize that experience in being a super-cool thing in itself. I just wanted other women who work in the sex industry to remember that we can be sex-trade workers and be philosophers, writers, musicians, artists, or whatever. [Andrea Juno, Angry Women in Rock (1996)]

Riot Grrrl gained significant traction and nation-wide attention. In the decade or so after Kathleen Hanna and her peers catalyzed the movement, bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile remained incredibly popular, and likely contributed a lot to shifting attitudes towards sexuality in music subcultures. 

Still, these sex-negative attitudes prevailed among enough people involved in local underground scenes that, when Burning Angel launched in 2002 and Joanna started marketing it in local hardcore spaces, the site received a lot of attention—both good and bad. The positive attention fueled the site and allowed it to expand beyond just photographs, text interviews, and low-budget personal sex tapes that characterized its early content. 

However, the negative attention Joanna and her site received was vocal, targeted, and occasionally involved literal physical violence. As Kathleen Hanna had faced moral condemnation for her time in sex work, Joanna Angel faced criticism from fellow members of her subculture who thought sex work to be completely antithetical to their social justice goals. She has spoken about how difficult it was to see a community she had cared about for years turn her back on her completely for engaging in a type of work that she found enjoyable, and that she thought could be done with moral integrity. 

Joanna Angel: People were calling me ugly, calling me all sorts of mean shit, how [Burning Angel was] making a profit, [we were] exploiting women, blah blah blah. And I was so bummed. I was like, you know, this isn’t fair! I always support every fucking band in the punk scene. Even if I don’t like the band, I support them—I go to their shows, I would hand out fliers for their shows. I thought it was like a code, in the punk scene, that it doesn’t matter whether you like it or not. If this is part of the scene, you accept it, and you help it, and you love it—and I thought that’s what you were supposed to do. I remember being very hurt, you know? I was like, dude, I didn’t violate any punk laws by starting this. My friend from my computer class is the one who put it online. All the other girls on the site—all three of them— were punk chicks and part of the scene. And I felt really bad; people were insulting the other girls, and I really thought I was starting this cool thing where girls could just explore their sexuality. And mind you, at the time, the beginning of Burning Angel was just photos, not even videos. People were getting all up in this upheaval because of a handful of naked photos on the internet. It’s crazy to think about now. [source: Turned Out A Punk #127: Joanna Angel (Burning Angel)]

Amidst the mounting antagonism and after an incident at Hellfest 2004, Joanna officially decided to leave the hardcore scene that she’d been involved with for over five years.

Joanna Angel: I remember going to Hellfest one year. Maybe it was like 2004?…these girls were throwing water balloons at us because we had a booth there. Because we used to get booths at some of these shows and sell tshirts. We didn’t even have any DVDs—we’d literally get in a booth and sell tshirts and hand out fliers and stickers. And these other girls were throwing water balloons at us and calling us sluts. I was like, “Hey, that sucks, can you stop doing that?” And one of my friends—he owned a record label. He owned Eyeball Records, Alex…he saw the girls picking on us, and he went over to the girls, and said, “Hey, can you cool it? They have a booth here—let them do their thing. They’re not gonna get in your way.” And then those girls and their boyfriends beat him up, and he wound up in the hospital. He almost died. It was terrible. And I was like, we have to get out here. Let’s just stay away. If we’re a porn site, let’s just be a porn site. Let’s promote ourselves with other porn companies; let’s step away for a little while. Everyone in the punk scene knows who we are. They’ve made their decision about if they like us or not. I’m still gonna interview bands, still gonna do that thing—but I’m done. [source: Turned Out A Punk #127: Joanna Angel (Burning Angel)]

Joanna and Burning Angel’s separation from the NJ hardcore scene in 2004 finally brings me to Burning Angel: The Movie, My Chemical Romance, and that interview.

So, 2004: after over two years spent largely behind the camera and slowly expanding her porn site, Joanna finally decided to get in front of the camera and produce a more intentionally crafted alt porn video that retained the feel of the website. Thus Burning Angel: the Movie was born. 

As Joanna explains in the interview, the general idea of the DVD was that different self-contained pornographic scenes would be interspersed with band interviews. One of the key features of Burning Angel, like Suicide Girls before it, was the band interviews subscribers could access alongside the porn, so it made sense to preserve this aspect of the site on the DVD experience. Joanna interviewed five bands in early 2005: Killswitch Engage, Eighteen Visions, Shadows Fall, The Dillinger Escape Plan, and, of course, My Chemical Romance—all bands that Joanna admired, and who had been involved in the same scene that she had recently left because of very real threats to her emotional and physical well-being.

Within this context, My Chemical Romance’s decision to participate in the Burning Angel interview was a statement, as they put their support behind an enterprise that was highly controversial within the social circle most immediately relevant to them. 

Fresh off the 2004 Warped Tour and promoted Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, My Chemical Romance might have appeared to be largely divorced from their scene of origin, but they still acted in response to those politics—politics that impacted American culture at large more than you’d think—in both intentional and incidental ways. 

That is not to say that MCR was being overtly political; they’ve made a clear effort to distance themselves from the clear-cut political imagery and goals of some of their peers in hardcore. Still, the band (Gerard especially) very obviously cared a lot about using their music and stage presence to express shades of sexuality that they perceived to be lacking from some forms of music.

Gerard: I also wanted, at the same time, [for] the record to be a testament to self-expression, and putting stuff in there like that, while not being a homosexual myself, but expressing myself in a homosexual way, is either going to push your buttons in a negative way or you’re going to identify with it. [AP: Well, this whole scene wants you to be sensitive, but not too sensitive.] It is extremely homoerotic, especially the whole emo-sensitive thing. Everyone’s wearing women’s pants; everyone’s got women’s haircuts; everyone’s wearing youth-medium shirts. I don’t want to come out and say it. It’s blatantly obvious. Wearing a leather jacket is an extremely masculine thing to do in this scene. Even the hardcore bands, the really hard ones, you see them in makeup and stuff. I like that. I think it keeps it dangerous. It keeps it exciting. In a way, sex has really been missing from rock, especially because of all the sensitivity. That’s what I really wanted to convey on the record, too. I wanted the record to be very dangerous and sexy at the same time. There’s such a lack of sex in music. It’s been more about getting in touch with your feelings and being there for each other, which is great, but it’s definitely lacking this sexual duality. [Source: Alternative Press #193, Aug 2004; emphasis mine]

Additionally, many of their moments of explicit sexuality on stage were designed to be somewhat incendiary and polarizing. 

But it’s important to remember that, just as late 90s New Jersey hardcore was not the first subculture with issues of sexual repression, My Chemical Romance does not represent the first attempt to push back at this asexual culture and definitely weren’t leading that particular conversation. Gerard took inspiration from artists already pushing those boundaries and incorporating sexual expression into their art. He has spoken, for example, about the impact of Riot Grrrl acts upon his music and stage presence (Joanna Angel has similarly pointed to bands like Bikini Kill as significant influences). These bands had already incorporated resistance against harmful sexual repression, values which Gerard and his band mates took on when they adopted their styles into My Chemical Romance.

(I also want to mention briefly that other significant people in the hardcore world have spoken out against pornography, such as Ian MacKaye of the formative post-hardcore band Fugazi. MacKaye owned Dischord Records, the definitive underground music label, to which a young Frank Iero unsuccessfully attempted to get his band Sector 12 signed. The matter of pornography and its role within the hardcore world was not one upon which you could maintain a neutral stance after, say, appearing on a porn DVD.)

As shitty as it was that they needed approval from the men in the scene, My Chemical Romance, along with other bands, supported Burning Angel, a new kind of porn, and helped legitimize Joanna Angel’s claim that what she was doing was not backwards or exploitative but had integrity. 

Have you had an issue with people you grew up with when they find out you're in the adult industry? Joanna: At first people had problem[s], but not anymore. Once the cool kids in bands said, "I think what she's doing is cool" all the others turned around. Everyone I ever respected didn't have an issue with it and all the stupid, annoying hardcore kids had a problem. For as much shit as I got, I also got a lot of support. [Source: Hustlerworld Interview: Joanna Angel]

I don’t mean to glamorize the porn industry or to depict Joanna Angel as some savior of female sexuality in the early 2000s. But, as Kathleen Hanna points out, sex work is legitimate work, and sex workers deserve to have workplaces that treat them with dignity and communities that recognize their humanity. The reality was that NJ hardcore as a community did not support sex workers. Fundamentally, these were the barriers that caused Joanna and Burning Angel to make an exodus from the local hardcore scene—and they are the attitudes we risk reproducing when we express discomfort that a band we admire has interacted with a sex worker.

My intentions with this post (which turned out longer than I had ever anticipated, so Jesus, thank you for reading) were to shed light on the historical context of one moment in My Chemical Romance’s history. I’ve found that the average MCR fan, even those with a specific fondness for their early years, doesn’t actually know much at all about it—so I hope this has given some clarity.

I’ll end on this note: Without bands supporting Burning Angel, who knows—we might have never seen the lemon stealing whore. At the very least, the culture surrounding porn would look a lot different. That might not mean it would look better or worse—though you can’t deny the role that Joanna Angel played, nor the role that bands from the New Jersey Hardcore scene like My Chemical Romance played in shaping the American culture of pornography. 

Find sources for this post here.

[acknowledgements: thank you so much for reading! my forever thanks, as always, to nic @raytorosaurus, sophia @sendmyresignation, vyn @bringmoreknives, and maddy @8thnotes for their continued cheerleading as i spent over a month writing this long, long post. additional thanks to wes @killrockstar for very kindly offering some incredibly helpful guidance about riot grrrl and sending me resources about kathleen hanna. and much gratitude to merlin @void-flesh and @transmascfrankiero for their feedback on the final draft of this essay.]

#mcr #my chemical romance #joanna angel #mcr meta #my post

[chalkrevelations]

Further to this :

I’m posting one more time on this, and then I’m hoping I’m done. But I continue to see bad-faith takes on the settlement statements that were released this week, and I’m so done with the double standard from so many people in Kinnporsche fandom who have spent the past three+ months engaged in hypocritical bullying and victim-blaming and/or remaining damningly silent in the face of actual, public and visible abuse of Build Jakapan.

This wasn’t even a he-said, she-said situation. This was a months-long campaign of cyber-bullying, harassment and abuse – verbal, emotional and psychological – that Poi carried out against Build online, in the open, with no attempts to hide it. We saw her abuse him, repeatedly. We saw her be homophobic toward him, and not only did everyone who was ready to rush into battle against Build for supposedly being homophobic while making money off the queer community now stay silent about it, Poi got almost 10K retweets of it, so all those people who’ve wanted to cancel Build since last summer? We can see how much their allyship is actually worth. We saw the release of the VP novel with his bruised, bloody and battered face on the cover like some kind of disgusting revenge fantasy splayed out in public. We saw her release messages about sexual matters that were insinuated to be his private messages – which, like everything she’s ever posted, have not been verified as real and correct, in the setting of her admission of lying and faking and making false accusations with other material she released. But if they were real, the release of those messages would be on the same spectrum as revenge porn. We watched her commit outright theft of his belongings, and we watched her lie about his words and actions in an attempt to drive a wedge between him and his fans, we watched her punch down at those fans by invading their privacy as surely as she invaded his, we watched her make it all as filthy and gross and mercenary as she could in order to besmirch it as much as she could, watched her laugh about how much fans cared about him like he doesn’t deserve any kind of care or concern, like he’s a dog she can kick around without repercussion.

And antis joined in that abuse, plenty of people in the fandom were complicit in it – lies were collected and reblogged and spread around as supposed receipts of what a terrible person he was, by people who repeatedly represented themselves as “neutral,” without the least bit of concern for the provenance of those rumors, which were already in unbelievable supervillain territory and sure enough, turned out to be actual legal slander. People posted things like “burn in hell,” or made and spread vile memes when he left BOC like the whole thing was something funny, to laugh about, rather than a serious issue like accusations of intimate partner violence. He was called trash, garbage, an incel – at the same time people were vilifying him for supposedly cheating on Poi, so which is it? Is he an incel or was he fucking half of Bangkok? In one of the most breathtaking instances of victim-blaming I’ve seen in a long time, people amplified and spread the lie that he slept with Poi to get his role like it was some kind of gotcha, as if – had it been true – that wouldn’t have been evidence of Poi’s harassment and sexual abuse of him. The casting couch isn’t any less abusive when a man is subject to it than when a woman is subject to it. If it's gross and abusive for Harvey Weinstein to do it, then it would be gross and abusive for Poi to do it, and the way some people acted like it would somehow be Build’s fault? I’m sure every actress in Hollywood would love to hear that. Or would it be OK because he’s a man? Because that sounds awfully close to those creeps who say that teenaged boys should think they’re lucky when their female teachers molest them. (Or maybe when women in power over them on the filming set coerce them into giving massages?)

And as we saw all this happen – even as people patted themselves on the back and reassured each other that this wasn’t a witch-hunt, that it wasn’t an online mob working itself into a frenzy - 99.5 percent of the people who had been so very concerned with compiling and spreading everything and the kitchen sink during the initial feeding frenzy on Build went aggressively silent in the face of Build’s legal claims, including defamation, coercion and other abusive behavior by Poi. Suddenly, we started getting calls for circumspection and civility - aka silence - now that Build and his reputation and his career already had been savaged. Now that it was becoming evident that these same people were complicit in her abuse of him and had helped create the very scenario he said that she had threatened and kept him under control with. Now that they had helped an abuser get their satisfaction during what is traditionally the most dangerous time for abuse victims – when they try to leave.

Suddenly people were just done with all of this, just so very tired of it - now that the damage was done, and what was left was clean-up of the havoc they had helped wreak.

This fandom has done nothing to change my opinion that this whole debacle was never actually about genuine concern over intimate partner violence, but was rooted in shipwars - going all the way back to last summer, when someone went digging back through Build’s socials to find comments eight years old that could be blown up by Twitter cancel culture just as the Vegaspete storyline kicked off, VP was increasingly pulling attention, and BBB’s facetime was increasing. Not a single thing I’ve seen since then – since Build was identified as the soft target of the VP ship and discourse around him was poisoned by purity cancel culture – has convinced me otherwise.

People in this fandom took a deadly serious issue like intimate partner violence, and they used it as a tool for their petty shipwars, and they used it to get a little hit of self-righteousness, as a little “moral” crusade that allowed them to get their Two-Minute Hate on in a way that was deemed socially acceptable and gave them a taste of blood because it was wildly successful in the real world in a way keyboard slacktivism rarely is. It’s very telling, though, how much concern they actually seem to have for abuse survivors when they won’t even call out abusive behavior happening publicly, right in front of their faces. I guess some abuse victims do have to be perfect, or maybe it’s that some people do deserve to be abused, despite the claims when people were simping for Poi?

It’s very telling when their biggest concern appears to be using abuse claims as a cudgel to make themselves feel righteous - because it appears that’s all Poi ever really was, a tool for some people in KP fandom to beat Build with. If they actually, honestly gave a shit about her, someone would have shown concern about her mental health and whether she has any kind of support network at all, rather than egging her on, encouraging and amplifying her abusive and out-of-control behavior online. I’m not going to deny that I dislike Poi, that I’ve found her distasteful and incredibly off-putting since watching her behind-the-scenes behavior with the KP cast, including trying to yank Build to the edge of a balcony on a high-rise building as he tried to resist and laughing about being called out by Jeff for sexual harassment of a minor. But one of the things that I also found disturbing about this whole debacle was the way people encouraged and enjoyed - relished - behavior that ought to be concerning for her mental health.

And even now, I’ve seen people act as if the behavior that Poi and Build have admitted to in their statements was equally bad. Sorry, no, him secretly recording a conversation that was evidence of her abusive behavior is not equivalent to her faking pregnancy claims against him and insinuating that he was the reason she got an abortion or miscarried. I’m sure all abusers would love it if conversations in which they talk about their abusive behavior were kept private and secret, but I'm extremely suspicious of anyone who wants to act like that recording shouldn't be released - they should ask themselves why they're ok with abuse being covered up.

Would they call a woman who secretly recorded evidence of being abused a liar?

   (ETA 5/15, 1630 - Several people have messaged me to let me know this post has breached containment and is loose on Twitter. I would respectfully request that everyone follow Build’s own expressed wishes - and mine - and do not engage with antis. This includes @ing specific people with links to this. I could have attached individual names to many of the bad-faith behaviors I talk about in the post, but there are reasons I didn’t. People have already spent three months punching down at Build’s fans, as well as at him. The behavior of his fans reflects on him - however unfair that may be - and must remain above reproach. That includes not picking individual fights. If someone is encouraging this, consider that they are likely a plant, a fake fan trying to goad others into bad behavior to try to make Build look bad. If I find out anyone has done this, I will block you. Thanks.)

#build jakapan #kinnporsche cast

[rlyehtaxidermist]

so I’ve seen some posting about oil fire going around and as one of the people sitting in the eye of that particular hurricane i have a couple thoughts. keep in mind that I obviously can’t speak for every single Poster etc etc, obviously this is just my view on things. in particular don’t quote Twitter at me because the only time I was ever active on there was back when “have a visible professional social media account” was considered important for the job hunt. I know nothing of Touhou Twitter or Touhou Reddit and I am content in my ignorance

Anyway there’s three major points of criticism I’ve seen, and one of them as basically “it’s just a nothingburger that came out of nowhere” and even ignoring the history of that in Touhou in general, I’m going to set it aside because I don’t think it needs a more specific rebuttal than the length of this post. so on to the two more substantial complaints I’ve seen:

“it’s just a sex ship”: look, I won’t deny that there’s been a lot of sexposting. i’ve probably posted more about cock in the last 48 hours than in the last five years combined. almost certainly more than i will in the next five too. but there’s a subtext to it that often gets missed (not just by critics but also by a lot of sexposters).

these are two characters who have had... a bit of a history with being sexualised by the fandom. i shouldn’t need to recite all the “slut sanae” memes, those who know know and honestly they were never funny, but they existed. tsukasa meanwhile was stuck with “sex fox” pretty much from the beginning due to some kuda-gitsune legends specifically involving their rapid reproduction.

obviously this is going to go more into the personal view and i reiterate that i’m not speaking for Everyone’s posts, but I’m asexual. the whole emphasis people put on sex as a cultural thing, not just in terms of Posting about it but also in terms of Not Posting about it is funny to me. people dance around it like they’re waltzing with the demon core but also are baffled when i say i’m just not into it.

the oil fire sexposting isn’t about “lol they’re fucking”. there was already plenty of that. the joke is that it’s not a big deal that they’re fucking - it’s not dramatic or cathartic or even erotic. they’re bad at it, they get distracted, they’re not really thinking things through; fail sex with her cringe wife. it’s sexual in the way that a Tom and Jerry sketch is violent - stepping back from the artifice around it to say “you know, whatever else this is, it’s pretty goofy”. to me at least, that’s more of a repudiation of horny character exaggeration than simply ignoring it is.

(there’s also a false equivalence to me in the general notion of “it’s just hornyposting”, between hornyposting by straight men and that of queer women and/or the gender blender, when the characters involved are both women - especially in light of the reasonably consistent depiction of one or both as transgender in oil fire posting. there’s better people than me and my none gender with leftist beef to effortpost on that side of things.)

“tsukasa is manipulating sanae” I’d add a single phrase here - she’s trying to. The big thing with a lot of how I look at Sanae and this is no exception is that while she can be naive, she’s not stupid. There’s a difference between being trusting and being easily deceived. She’s not a master manipulator, but she lives with Kanako, she knows a bit of how the game is played.

I think this kind of echoes the last bit of the last segment, in that how the characters are portrayed in the context matters a lot. Oil Fire Sanae is, at least within the spheres I see here, heavily coded as if not explicitly autistic. A lot of the content is being written by autistic people, myself included.

Autistic adults are, in my anecdotal experience, pretty conscious of being manipulative or manipulated, because we have to learn deliberately where that line is drawn and how to act around it.

To get into explicitly personal experiences, I often think of myself as being “manipulative” because I have to deliberately strategise a lot of social cues and how I present myself and information I know, and still haven’t really shook that perspective internally despite the intellectual knowledge of several therapists and psychiatrists that no, that’s just an autism thing, most people do all that stuff without thinking about it.

Now obviously simply Being Autistic is not an unassailable fortress against manipulation, nor does it prevent you from being actually manipulative in your own right, but it does tilt the pinball table a bit, again especially in terms of awareness. And that awareness helps control a response - again, even if you’re not always quite sure how to respond.

Sanae’s way of cutting that Gordian knot is what a friend of mine calls the Bishop Myriel Method: how can someone steal what is freely given? She has her lines, but the stuff Tsukasa is leaning on her to get - protection, shelter, and an in-group - are all things Sanae doesn’t see an issue with giving to her. Tsukasa for her part doesn’t really understand this, being more used to dealing with power-broker types where everything has a quid-pro-quo, and from a position of pretty notable inferiority (just look at how any of the stronger youkai talk to her in UDoALG) at that - so she looks at all the leverage that Sanae now has over her (leverage which Sanae doesn’t really understand she has), and doubles down on trying to be manipulative because she doesn’t understand that she doesn’t have to.

in conclusion obviously I’m not thinking about all this wall of text every time I post something, for the same reason that I’m not thinking about how my house’s foundations are designed every time I go up or down the stairs - the general idea is there in the background and actually needing to go check it out usually means that I won’t be doing whatever I was going up the stairs for in the first place. but these are The Thoughts, upon which the lower effort thoughts stand as they heckle each other. there are many like them but these are mine

#touhou #oil fire #just to be clear before the piss on the poor website hits again: i'm not saying 'people who don't like it are ableist/transphobic' or w/e #i'm sure it's not to everyone's tastes and you do you #but just because you don't like something doesn't mean people who do like it only have Dumb Reasons for it

[redslug]

I think it’s kind of a question, kind of a statement but, there seem to be a lot of people upset about you utilizing ai art recently. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you’re training an ai on your OWN art, doesn’t that cut out a lot of the unethical things about mainstream ai art generators? And if I may ask, how do you feel about mainstream ai art generators and the way it utilizes others’ art? I apologize if this comes off as rude, I’ve not seen someone train an ai specifically on their own art and I’m curious about your thoughts. Thank you for reading, I hope you have a lovely day. Your world building and art is phenomenal and inspiring.

My opinion is that the only unethical bits stem from how an operator uses a tool, not the tool itself. Stable Diffusion isn't a person, it's isn't good or evil, it is incapable of acting on it's own without a human's input.

I could do some extremely unethical things with oil and canvas if I bothered to dig them up from the closet. I have the skills to theoretically mimic the style of a known artist and then sell it as if it's genuine. I could use the same traditional tools to straight up copy an artwork and claim that I came up with the composition and plot myself.

I then could come up with an original plot and composition in my head and then achieve that with prompts and inpainting using Stable Diffusion. The prompt might have some artist's name in it to achieve a particular style, but the end result won't match anything that artist has drawn before. You can't steal a style after all.

If I did all that it doesn't make oil and canvas evil and an AI good. The only thing that mattered was my intent. If your intent is foul anything you create with any tool can be unethical.

My attitude towards mainstream AI art isn't all that different from that towards normal art. Majority of both is unoriginal, boring, poor quality or all three in that order.

On AI's side it'd be big titty babes just standing around or Midjourney stuff (I hate MJ's style with a passion), on normal art's side it'd be what I call "face in flowers" types of drawings. You'll see that exact type infesting all of Instagram.

Should these artworks not exist? No, they can stay, they have their fans so whatever. I just personally don't find them interesting.

And then a small percentage of both is truly interesting. It has surprising plot, style, other quirks or is just genuinely funny. Good art is memorable regardless of what it's made with. It's just my opinion though.

If you haven't seen anything memorable made with AI yet, I recommend you search for "Will Smith eating spaghetti checkpoint". It's burned into my mind and still causes an ugly laugh each time I remember it exists.

Or "Anime rock paper scissors" for something less meme-y.

Thanks for the compliments btw, nothing is more rewarding than inspiring others.

#neuroslug

[liightsout]

the blue - part four

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

✯ summary: mattie goes out for drinks with the boys. danny and mattie get to know each other a lil better ✯

✯ pairing: daniel ricciardo x fem!oc ✯

✯ content warnings: light swearing, alcohol consumption, danny and mattie being sickeningly cute ✯

✯ now playing: vienna - billy joel ✯

✯ masterlist ✯

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

Feb 2021

It had been around six weeks since Mattie had met Daniel. Although it certainly hadn’t been the last time she had thought about him. Far from it in fact. 

She caught herself thinking about the Australian every time she found herself in the cafe across from her flat, buying her usual iced oat milk latte and blueberry muffin. 

It was on the Monday morning after their introduction that she had found out from one of the baristas that a tall, charming Australian man had come into the cafe early Saturday morning and had awkwardly asked the staff if they knew what the “pretty girl called Mattie who lived across the street’s favourite muffin was”. 

She found herself thinking about him most evenings as she curled up on the sofa. Subconsciously she would inhale the intoxicating scent now attached to her blanket and she would be reminded of those glowing brown eyes and gleaming smile. 

It didn’t help that her roommate appeared to have developed a bromance with her new found crush. Just when she had managed to shake the thought of Daniel Ricciardo from her mind, Adam would be there to bring him up again and again. 

“Did you know Danny has a clothing line? He said he’d send me some of the new stuff from before it drops” 

“Look at this meme Danny just sent me, you’re gonna die, it’s so funny!” 

“I think Danny is going to smash it this year. I’ve got such a good feeling about it” 

Adam had even taken to joining Daniel during his work out sessions with his coach and long time friend Michael. 

She simply could not shake Daniel Ricciardo from her brain. 

It was made even worse when she had woken up one morning and saw the notification  danielricciardo has requested to follow you on Instagram. She had stared at her phone for a good while before her hands finally started working again and she was able to navigate her way to the app in question. She had nervously debated what to do for a few minutes before concluding it would be weirder if she didn’t accept the request. 

Wouldn’t it? 

Either way, she now found herself reeling at the knowledge that the most gorgeous man she had ever seen had taken the time to request to follow her on Instagram. She knew in the deepest parts of her brain that she was over romanticising the action. A habit she found herself doing a lot. Adam would blame it on the hundreds of Romance novels she had read over the years. 

She decided to squash her over-active imagination by reminding herself that Daniel had probably only followed her due to his budding friendship with Adam. Although, he did only follow 398 other people. He had millions of followers. Endless possibilities of people he could follow, and he chose for her to be one of them. It shouldn’t have made her feel as special as it did. 

It was lunchtime on a Saturday in February that the opportunity to see Daniel again in person arose. 

“I’m going out with Danny and Lando later, just a few drinks down the pub if you wanna join?” Adam’s first plea had come early that Saturday afternoon. She had told him she’d think about it, but not to get his hopes up. He knew the score, she wasn’t one for going out and partying. She found comfort in a quiet night at home, curled up on the sofa, a vinyl spinning and a good book in her hands. 

It was around 6PM when his attempts continued. 

“Please come Mattiea! It’ll be one of the last times we get the chance to go out properly before the season starts and you know how much I miss you when I’m gone! It won’t be a crazy one, just a few pints down the pub and then home and in bed by 11PM. I promise!” 

Adam knew her weak spots. He knew she wouldn’t be able to turn him down once he mentioned the fact he’d be leaving again soon. He also knew she couldn’t resist his puppy dog eyes. She never could, even when they were kids. It was how he had convinced her to go joy riding in his dad’s car around the old abandoned airfield when they were 16. But that was a story for another day. 

She weighed up her options. She could go out with them for a few drinks. She would make sure she didn’t stay for too long and would only have 1 or 2. She didn’t want to allow any opportunity for further embarrassment or for her crush to develop even stronger. The latter she feared would be inevitable with any time she spent in the presence of Daniel Ricciardo. 

﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎﹎

Mattie pulled nervously at the skirt covering her legs. She had spent hours agonising over an outfit and had finally settled on something comfortable, but cute. A forest green corduroy skirt, black long sleeve, oversized leather jacket, dark tights and her favourite Doc Marten Sinclair platform boots. 

She had checked hair and makeup a million times in the mirror before she had concluded she felt confident enough. 

Yet, here she found herself following her best friend into the pub growing more and more anxious with each step she took. She had reasoned with herself that she had nothing to be anxious about, but she could not calm the nerves seeping into her bones. 

Adam, ever the empath, sensed his best friend's anxiety the minute they had left the flat. As the pair walked further into the pub towards the bar, he placed a comforting hand on the small of her back. Casually letting the smaller girl know he was there and she didn’t need to worry. 

“A pint of Neck Oil and a double gin and tonic please” Adam said to the man behind the bar. Mattie inwardly sighed in relief. Adam was a life saver. She wasn’t sure yet that she had remembered how to speak properly. She realised she would have to figure it out sooner rather than later as her eyes found Lando’s across the bar, his hand frantically waving back and forth beckoning the two of them over. 

She could see the back of Daniel’s head. His brown curly locks tousled to perfection. How did the back of his head look cute? Ugh. She hated this. Stupid feelings. 

Mattie grabbed her drink and thanked the bartender. She turned and followed Adam as he  walked through the crowded bar, easily paving a path for them to the corner where Danny and Lando sat opposite each other in a booth. 

“Adamskiiiiiiiii” Lando called affectionately towards his friend moving over to allow the male to sit down beside him. “And Matilda! I haven’t seen you in ages! I’m so glad you came!” 

Matilda felt the smile creep onto her face. She loved Lando. He was three years her junior and a thousand percent her unofficial adopted younger brother. They found a friendship during lockdowns playing various games together online with Adam. The younger male found her lack of skill, but determination to do well endearing and admirable. He also liked that she was as easy to make blush as he was to make laugh. It helped that he thought she was pretty fit as well. 

“Hey Lando” Mattie spoke softly, smiling at the younger boy. Her eyes nervously looked down at the empty space beside Daniel as she found herself moving to sit down next to him. 

“Howdy” Daniel spoke out to the table with a grin, greeting the pair as they got themselves settled. Matilda turned her eyes to look at his face for the first time since she arrived. 

“Hi Daniel” Mattie said, her voice shaking slightly. Fuck. She hoped he didn’t notice how nervous she was. Her hand reached out for her drink, gulping down a couple mouthfuls through the straw, careful not to smudge her lip stain. 

“Daniel? Ooft. Please call me Danny. Daniel makes it sound like we’re not friends, and if we aren’t friends, well that would break my heart” the Aussie joked. His arm moving to nudge the girl next to him.  

“Oh, we’re friends?” Mattie said, her eyes looking carefully to the man next to her. 

“We’re definitely friends. I don’t buy baked goods for people who aren’t my friends.” 

Mattie felt her cheeks heat up as her smile widened. She looked across the table to see if the boys had been listening in to their conversation. They weren’t. The pair had already launched into a detailed conversation about a round of golf they had planned and the latest video game release they were excited for. 

“I meant to thank you for that. It was really sweet of you. You didn’t have anything to apologise for, it was that idiot that woke me up” Mattie said as she pointed a finger towards her best friend sitting across from her. 

Sensing he was being spoken about, Adam's eyes looked across the table to his friend. His eyes narrowed. “You said you forgave me! It was weeks ago now! I bought you sushi to apologise! What more do you want from me?” 

Lando laughed at the excuses coming from the man sitting next to him. He looked towards his fellow driver and noticed the heart eyes the Aussie had for the girl he was sitting next to. He didn’t blame Danny. Mattie was a stunner. 

“Right, before you land yourself in shit mate, let’s go play a game of pool” Lando spoke as he nudged his friend, urging him to slide out of the booth next to him. 

Adam’s eyes immediately found Mattie’s, silently asking for her approval to leave her alone with Danny. Mattie nodded her head quickly. Her heart deciding before her brain that some time alone with the older man sitting next to her wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. 

Adam and Lando stood up and headed over to the pool table a few feet away from the booth. Mattie watched as Adam walked over to the bar, ordering the group another round of drinks. 

With newfound courage Mattie stood up from her seat next to Danny and moved to the other side of the booth. She sat down opposite him and smiled taking a sip of the new drink that had been placed in front of her by Adam. 

“Seeing as we’ve established we’re friends now, we should probably get to know each other a bit better, don’t ya think?” Danny spoke towards the girl in front of him. He took the opportunity now that she was in front of him to properly admire her. 

He really didn’t think he had ever seen someone so effortless before. 

“Do you want to play twenty questions?” Mattie offered, her voice less shaky as it had been previously. The alcohol gave her the liquid confidence she felt she needed so desperately. 

“Absolutely! Nothing dirty though, the last thing I need is you spilling all my secrets to the press!” the Aussie quipped with a grin. He knew she wouldn’t do that. She didn’t seem the type. Her eyes were too kind. Her smile too soft. 

“Let’s start easy. What’s your favourite food?”

“You’re right, you are starting easy. I’ll go with pizza. Can’t beat it, and it’s good everywhere in the world” Danny explained, “You next, what’s your favourite food? You can’t say blueberry muffins. That doesn’t count, it’s not a meal.” 

“Hey! That’s not fair!” Mattie dramatically frowned. Blueberry muffins were her favourite food, and she definitely had substituted them for a meal more times then she would care to admit. She imagined Danny’s diet was far stricter and far more regular than hers.

She thought for a minute before answering “ok fine, my favourite meal is probably pasta, but like fresh pasta from a proper Italian restaurant. There’s one near our flat that delivers. It’s a bit pricey but it’s so worth it. Adam and I always get it on special occasions.” 

“Ok, ok, good choice. A woman after my own heart. I can get on board with that. I grew up on Italian food, my parents didn’t want me to forget my Italian heritage despite growing up in Australia” Danny explained. 

“My turn to ask a question! This one means a lot to me, but I wouldn't bother asking it back to me cus I don’t think I can answer it. What’s your favourite song?” Danny asked curiously. 

“I think anyone who knows me would expect me to say anything by Taylor Swift. She’s my hero. But the real answer is a bit more classic if I’m totally honest. My favourite song of all time is Vienna by Billy Joel. I have the lyrics tattooed on my arm” Mattie answered quickly, her eyes filling with joy as she pulled the sleeve of her shirt up to show Danny the ink on her arm. 

Danny looked down to the arm now extended towards him with the words delicately etched into the skin on the girl's forearm ‘Vienna waits for you’.

He grinned as his eyes looked back up to find hers. She smiled back at him, pulling down her sleeve and placing her hands back in her lap. 

A beat of silence passed between the pair. 

Mattie’s brain immediately kicked into overdrive. Had she said too much? Why did she just thrust her arm at the man in front of her? He didn’t care that much what her favourite song was. She didn’t need to prove it to him by showing him the tattoo she had gotten as soon as she had turned 18. 

Danny noticed the look of panic etching onto the girl’s face. He regretted not answering sooner. For one of the few times in his life he had found himself searching for words. 

He found Mattie absolutely fascinating. How many girls in their twenties had Billy Joel lyrics tattooed on their body? And how many of them would be displaying it so proudly without a care in the world? But in the same breath, she seemed so nervous after the fact. Almost as if she’d shown a piece of herself to him and she was scared she’d shared too much. 

He concluded in that moment that she could never share too much with him. He would take whatever she offered him. 

“That’s really cool, like super fucking cool in fact. You didn’t strike me as a girl with ink. I’m glad you are though. Super cool. And excellent song choice as well, definitely a classic.” Danny spoke, trying to reassure the brunette that she had nothing to worry about. 

Mattie sighed with relief. He didn’t think she was a weirdo. And if he did, he was being awfully kind about it. 

“Thanks. Not a lot of people would agree. Or only know who Billy Joel is because of Uptown Girl and think that’s the lyrics I chose to get tattooed on my body for the rest of my life” Mattie spoke “you said you wouldn’t be able to answer the question, so I’ll change it slightly, what’s your favourite song at the moment?” 

“Fair, I can answer that. I’ve been listening to a lot of Zach Bryan, he’s a country artist, you might not be into that, but yeah he’s awesome, he’s got a song called The Good I’ll Do and that’s definitely been on repeat for me recently” Danny answered easily. 

“Oh yeah I noticed that, you’re into the whole cowboy thing aren’t you?” Mattie replied, taking a sip from the drink in front of her. She could feel the swirl of alcohol running through her veins as her eyes moved to look up at the man in front of her. 

“Urm Mattie… have you been stalking my Instagram?” Danny joked bringing a hand up to his mouth to feign shock. He watched as the girl's face started to turn red as she shook her head. 

“No, well not really, it’s just that I’ve followed you on Insta for a while, and I’ve seen you post about it before. I’m not a creep, I promise I just-” the girl rambled, embarrassment filling her body as she attempted to explain herself. 

“Woah, woah, I’m joking sweetheart. Honestly I think it’s flattering that you even bothered to remember that about me.” Danny spoke softly to the girl. Cursing himself internally for making her think she had embarrassed herself. He was the one that should be embarrassed. What a shit joke. 

“Oh ok, cool, as long as you don’t think I’m a creep or something” Mattie offered, shrugging her shoulders in a desperate attempt to save the conversation. 

“Far from it. I pinky promise” the man said as he extended his hand out towards her, his pinky finger extended. His eyes met hers as he urged her to join him. 

Without thinking much about it Mattie raised her hand to meet the one in front of her, her pinky finger linking with his and their hands moving up and down.

“Right, who wants another drink then?” the pair heard as they pulled their hands away from each other.

Mattie looked up and saw that Lando and Adam were now standing next to the booth. She immediately noticed the questioning eyes of her best friend, who she feared had definitely seen the interaction between herself and Daniel that had occurred seconds before their arrival. 

“Only if you’re paying” Danny exclaimed pointing at his team mate. 

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✯ authors note: part four!!! this is such a long chapter so if you made it this far, congrats!!! danny and mattie are so cute it actually hurts my heart ✯

#daniel ricciardo #dr3 #daniel ricciardo fanfic #daniel ricciardo fanfiction #danny ric #f1 fanfic #dr3 imagine #daniel ricciardo fluff #formula 1 #f1 fic #lando norris fanfic #lando norris #ln4 #mclaren f1 #mclaren

[eretzyisrael]

by Jaxson Kaplan-Rudolph

If you walked a day in the shoes of a Jewish high school student, regardless of which high school, you would be shocked by the number of racist tropes or casual references and off-color jokes to atrocities that have befallen the Jewish people you would hear.

“No one asked you, you dirty Jew.”

“I bet you can hear a penny fall from a mile away.”

“Go back to the gas chambers.”

At first glance, these sentences, with varying degrees of problematic content, sound like they come from a 1930s movie, Nazi propaganda or an interview with post-2020 Kanye West.

    But these are all sentences and phrases I have heard directed at me or my Jewish friends in 2023, in a place that is supposed to be an institution of higher learning. When you hear people offhandedly mention that antisemitism levels are rising in America, that does not just apply to hate crimes like those tracked by the Anti-Defamation League. It also means it is becoming more socially acceptable for people, especially teens, to revive and repeat anti-Jewish stereotypes that have been around since near the beginning of our existence as a people.

If you walked a day in the shoes of a Jewish high school student, regardless of which high school, you would be shocked by the number of racist tropes or casual references and off-color jokes to atrocities that have befallen the Jewish people you would hear. Of course, in some areas, it is worse than others; as a kid in Metro Detroit, I shudder to think of the conversations in areas of Michigan where our communities are tiny or nonexistent.

Yet, even in an area where Jews make up a substantial portion of the population, this behavior is increasingly prevalent. So, what exactly is happening in our high schools, what do Jewish students do to cope with it and how can the community help us deal with this social burden and distraction from our education?

I go to a school where students routinely have some of the best test scores in the state and often garner excellent scores on history exams. We are required to take World History and American History courses where WWII, 9-11, American slavery, the Armenian genocide and other acts of brutality are well covered, and students seem to have no problem handling the moral weight and solemn attitude associated with discussing these topics in class.   

Yet, it is shocking how my peers who will gasp with outrage if someone did make jokes about these topics or did not treat them appropriately will not intervene if the same thing were to happen with quips about the Holocaust or abusive Jewish stereotypes.

I’ve seen people jokingly form a Nazi salute at a poster of Hitler in a history class or repost a “funny” meme about Jews secretly having horns and wanting to eat Christian children. Now, there is getting to be a climate where these dangerous portrayals are somehow not only deemed OK, but also humorous.

Discussing this with my Jewish friends from Monday night school and around other high schools in the area, we were not appalled, but grimly unsurprised to learn that we were all going through similar kinds of situations. Even close friends who were not Jewish might call out kids for making uncouth jokes, only to make a comment about Jews or our Jewishness in private. I won’t get into every example of stories I’ve heard, but suffice it to say that we’d all seen or heard something, directly or indirectly, that ranged from uncomfortable to horrific.

It was at least reassuring for me to talk to my friends about how we are all going through the same thing, but it’s hard to find solutions for this issue.

Besides saying “that’s not funny,” or “what the hell,” it is hard to do much without putting a target on your back, because even in the schools with the highest Jewish populations, we are firmly in the minority. The way we are able to power through this casual adversity that people don’t think causes actual harm is by sticking together.

Over the past year or so, I’ve developed a silent understanding with other Jewish kids my age who I wouldn’t normally talk to: a glance across the room, a pat on the back or a nod passing each other in the hallway. With a lot of people angrier than usual because of the current situation in the Middle East, this only becomes more important as the feeling of isolation and targeting has compounded within the last couple of weeks.

Since many of our peers began to mercilessly attack Israel and Israelis after the reignition of the conflict and speak to us as if we are representatives of the Israeli government, remembering the words “Hinei ma tov, umah na’im, shevet achim gam yachad” (“How good and how pleasant it is that brothers dwell together.”)  becomes more important than ever.

Even if we are treated like outsiders, whether we are religious or not, we must stick together with our tribe and treat everyone with harmony and respect, no matter what they say back to us.

The way the adult Jewish community can help us deal with this struggle is to do the confronting when we feel socially like we cannot. Parents, temples and Jewish organizations should be actively supporting and asking their high school kids if they need to share anything, because chances are, they probably do.

Problems obviously need to be worked out on a case-by-case basis, but most of the time it’s not the fault of a specific person or a few people; it’s a problem with the atmosphere or culture of the school or group.

Most Jewish kids I know are strong, motivated and intelligent, but it can be too much to ask for everyone to plan their own initiatives and reach out to create things like antisemitism seminars and panel discussions that help heal. What could be beneficial is if groups and congregations can provide opportunities to students that seem interested but aren’t sure how to take the first step to healing.

The next time you see a Jewish high school student you know, do not apologize or act super worried about what they’re probably going through now. But please offer them support to work toward the Jewish concept more important now than ever: tikkun olam, healing the world.

Jaxson Kaplan-Rudolph is a junior at a Metro Detroit public high school.

#antisemitism #high school #jaxson kaplan-rudolph

[sir-klauz]

So elated Yamada-kun to Lv999 no Koi wo Suru/My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv999/山田くんとLv999の恋をする is out, aired to the public in Spring of this year, 2023, through Madhouse studios, one of my favourites for a series.

I watched a few episodes before I decided to wait till it was mostly/totally released so I could sit and watch it in one stint. Yesterday I gave in hahaha.

I am most pleased. It’s the first anime released about a manga I’ve read since I returned to immersing myself into manga just over a year ago once again. I usually read a lot of not super popular mangas which never see the screens unfortunately despite being beautiful stories in the rough. As I thought, I’m very much enjoying it so far.

If you’re into anime, you’ve probably seen a fair few memes of Yamada already during the one scene he turns away from the computer. The most amusing one to me, was this one, as I’m also a big gamer of Genshin this was a funny joke between me and my partner.

I still can’t get over the scenario where he just starts totally choking on cup ramen in the manga, and I hope that doesn’t get forgetting. Because yeah, very relatable. Introvert gamer eating and choking on noodles, disaster. How he’s like socially I understand, I like the character, Akane is always very kinda despite some ways she gets treat and I think that’s quite brave but I wish she would stand up for herself more! The time with the fan incident was so sad, and such a real thing to be wary about even though she was set up. I cannot everr forgive that lil’ wet wipe Runa for doing that to her. She totally got my goat when that happened, idc. Her excuse is she’s younger and lonely and immature but.. that doesn’t cut it for me, there’s no excuse to do that but I’m glad she felt guilty and apologised as y’know, I thought she definitely never would when reading the manga.

Eita is so camp I love him, and when he goes angry face at Runa, we know shiz gonna go down as he’s usually like ^-^^^.

Let’s just say, Takezou, is, just, adorable. I’m very glad there’s representation for the older gaming community which very much exists, not only for the fact many avid gamers from when games started releasing still very much have been around this whole time since those days and have a lot of experience! Even if you can’t do big tournaments as easy the older you get, a lot of older gamers get ignored or forgetting and it’s associated with only being a young people thing.

Synopsis

After her boyfriend breaks up with her for another girl, college student Akane Kinoshita wrestles with a broken heart and the memories he left behind. Loading up Forest of Savior, the MMO they used to play together, she forms a plan to get back at her ex-boyfriend through an in-person event for the game. In the process, she runs into someone unexpected: Akito Yamada, a gaming legend who just happens to be her guildmate.

Desperate for support, Akane ropes the asocial Yamada into helping with her scheme and lending her a shoulder to cry on. The differences between Akane and Yamada soon become apparent as they spend time together, yet they cannot help but notice each other's inner qualities. As the two gain more experience with one another in and out of the game, their tentative acquaintance may level up in a way neither expects.

Producers: Aniplex, Movic, Tokyo MX, BS11, Egg Firm, Kadokawa, COMICSMART

Genre: Romance

Theme: Video Game

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

#yamada kun to lv999 no koi wo suru #loving yamada at lv999 #山田くんとLv999の恋をする #my love story with yamada kun at lv999 #akane kinoshita #yamada akito #akito yamada #kinoshita akane #anime spoilers #anime #anime and manga #anime blog #manga blog #manga review #anime review #anime reccomendations #manga reccs #manga reccomendation #anime release #anime recommendation #anime recap #manga recap #manga recommendations #josei manga #josei #josei anime #gaming manga #anime updates #anime releases #anime news

[ofmermaidstories]

im sorry im sorry im sorry i had to do it ive been thinking about them too muchhh petey poo and izuku on the mind!!!! i think it would be rlly funny if his quirk was like that one meme btw where its like he has super minor prophetic tendencies but only thru telling jokes like the meme!! the little apollo throwing a dodgeball at some unsuspecting dude tryna make a joke and its The Gift Of Prophecy. anyway he just says stupid stuff for gaffs and giggles and sometimes it comes true 😭 is smoking a little weed with his friends and theyre like oh no the cops!! and pete is like we can run from the cops its fiiinneee but can you imagine if it was like Deku or someone equally insane LMFAO like obama and then deku is rounding the corner like are yew thewiothly thmoking cannabis marijuana rn 💀🤓 and pete is like NOOOOOOOOO WHY COULDNT IT HAVE BEEN OBAMAAA just stupid things anyway im sorry. Im sorry theyre on the mind

ok first lesson junie: NEVER apologise ‼️ i’m laughing but also like, i’m so serious junie, the moment you mentioned them i have SEEN THE VISION ‼️ just the self-depreciating humour and self-destruction that you could layer a (forgive me pete 💀) character like petey with…. and how that could reflect in the Quirk, when that power’s unwittingly turned back around on himself and Deku and whatever burgeoning thing they have. 😩 the ULTIMATE form of pushing away!!!! and GOD pete… heartbreaking klsdjhflksdjf. at least in this AU LOL. u made your thing funny and then i was like, ok but what if we made it sad. 💀 IM SORRY JUNIEEE. in my defence!!! i blame ur mixtape you made. 😌 the vibes are THERE and i’ve had it playing since you sent this ask. 🥺 the yearning under the jokes and the anger…. junie!!! banger of a mix, yet again. 😩 you keep proving me right when i say you have great taste!!!!!!!! as u should, bc im always right. 😌✨ but seriously. i’m like, more than here for this deku/pete ship. can you imagine how suspicious the gang would be of pete. 😭 BAKUGOU? i think shouto should be in his corner though, eventually. 😌 and denki. 🥹

#ofmermaidstories-asks #junie where is my tag for u #personal jesus: the deku/pete ship

[teecupangel]

Submitted by @saberamane​

So I’ve seen a lot of meme’s recently basically saying how, of the Frye twins, Evie is the actual assassin and Jacob is the idiot, comic relief brother? And like, sure, Jacob can be a bit dense, but he’s still an assassin.

However, it did get me thinking about a plot idea that would start off really funny and kinda light-hearted that would dip briefly into angst before sky rocketing to happy endings for everyone.

So time-travel happens, of course, only Desmond isn’t alone. He wakes up with some british guy with him. And it isn’t Shaun. (Jacob, or course.)

Jacob, with the last thing he remembers being getting drunk with some rooks, thinks he’s dreaming himself in Renaissance Italy.

So Desmond of course plans to save the Auditore family, Jacob goes along with it because what else is he gonna do in his dream?

Because he thinks he’s dreaming, Jacob does act like a bit of an idiot. Desmond is sneaking around, quietly taking out guards while Uberto talks, planning on interrupting Uberto once the enemies have been thinned.

Jacob, walks right on up to the scaffolding, doing the whole ‘oh shut up’ bit before slicing Uberto’s throat right there, infront of a huge crowd.

Rodrigo gets a kukri thrown into the back of his head as he tries to flee.

Giovanni and Federico are both like 0o0.

Desmond is (－‸ლ)

Desmond and Jacob follow the Auditore to Monteriggioni.

Jacob, still thinking this is a long elaborate dream, flirts shamelessly with Federico, who is very confused but also…flattered?

At some point, Jacob falls into bed with Federico. And upon waking, realizes that…maybe this isn’t a dream? His bum kinda hurts, and he never wakes up still in the dream when it’s a sex dream…

Jacob freaking out, enacting the angst saga.

He goes to Desmond, because Desmond was there when Jacob woke up. So, he must have an idea whats going on? Surely he didn’t get to Italy from London while drunk??

And how has he been speaking italian?

Desmond’s response? Isu BS…Probably.

Jacob, realizing it’s not a dream, goes 'oh shit…I slept with a dude? for real? it’s not a dream anymore??’

Jacob acting really weird around Federico for a bit, unintentionally hurting Federico’s feelings.

Ezio gets involved, because Federico has been acting really sad, and Jacob is avoiding him now.

Desmond helps Ezio talk sense into Jacob, 'it’s ok to like dudes, Jacob. I like dudes too. And so does Ezio.’

And Ezio be like…'I do? oh. I do…’

Jacob reconciles his feelings and makes up with Federico.

HAPPILY EVER AFTER?? MAYBE?

(Bonus, clay being transported with them as well would add a lot of extra comedy, because he’s already a snarky asshole who has died and really doesn’t have time for this…and he would probably be best buds with Jacob and Federico, they’d definitely be the type to go clubbing together, and drag a reluctant Desmond along.)

Addition from teecup:

Adding Clay would mean that their dynamic would be something like this:

Between a man who thinks he’s dreaming and a man given the power to finally take control of his life and the life of others, Desmond’s chill personality may look like a heaven sent.

Perhaps you’d even have a scene where Clay just tells Desmond:

(Img src)

So when Ezio comes to Desmond asking for help with Jacob and they finally cornered Jacob who is having his bidisaster awakening, Desmond finally thinks “This is it. This is my punchline.”

AND he just outright states everybody else’s dirty laundry with a serene smile.

It starts nice.

Desmond: There’s nothing wrong with liking men, Jacob… I happen to like dudes too. And so does Leonardo.

Ezio: Wait, he does???

Desmond: And if Ezio just gets his head out of his ass, he’d see that he happens to like Leonardo too.

Ezio: Wait, I… do…? Oooohhhh…

Desmond: Not to mention, Giovanni and Lorenzo are definitely banging.

Ezio: What.

Desmond: And Cesare definitely got fucked by his second in command.

Ezio: What???

Desmond: And La Volpe and Mach-

Ezio: OKAY! That’s enough, Desmond! (covers Desmond’s mouth) What he means to say is that there is nothing wrong with being attracted to men. Right?

Desmond: (muffled sounds that Ezio swore is about his uncle)

Ezio: Right, Desmond!?

Desmond: ……… (nods)

#submission #you hit with angst #and i counter with crack #i'm sorry XD #assassin's creed #desmond miles #jacob frye #ezio auditore #clay kaczmarek #jacfed #lorengio #cesamich

[lemonxdaisybby]

Ichigang and their Animal Crossing Islands

Currently spamming the Dondoko Island mini-game and it’s giving me ultimate Animal Crossing vibes, so here’s headcanons on the Ichigang and their Animal Crossing: NH islands. Short and sweet cos it’s kind of a dumb idea ✨

Also I’ve got my last few requests drafted and hopefully ready to post soon, so if you wanna send in some more headcanon requests please doooo, I could do with the inspo 💕

Ichiban:

Ichi’s island would be pretty chaotic, to be honest. There’s just random items dropped all over the island, from where his pockets got too full, or he’ll even just intentionally place random pieces of furniture somewhere and thinks it looks great, but it does not.

Hasn’t quite got the hang of landscaping or terraforming, so there’s just random cliffs and rivers/ponds dotted about everywhere. The layout makes no sense.

He probably has his character dressed up in a hero costume or outfit.

Also gets very attached to his villagers, and nearly cries when one of them even suggests moving away.

Nanba:

Does not care about his island at all, and couldn’t give a shit about what it looks like. There’s just weeds and buried fossils everywhere, and his house is still un-decorated.

Never interacts with his villagers, but does think it’s funny when he accidentally hits them over the head with the bug net when hunting creepy crawlies.

Speaking of catching bugs, he is surprisingly into the bug hunting and fishing. He has probably caught almost all of them, and visits the museum daily to just admire his collection.

Took him ages to catch the scorpion, as it kept stinging him. He almost rage quit the game.

Adachi:

He literally has no idea what he is doing. He’s terrible at the game. His island is full of weeds, and his fish, bug, fossil and art collection is almost non-existent.

He likely started the game, got confused and switched it off, and forgot about it for ages. When he eventually did log back on, his house was infested with cockroaches, and he just never bothered to get rid of them.

Sometimes visits Nanba’s island, and their characters just chill in the museum together watching all the critters and fishes.

Saeko:

Saeko has the prettiest, most aesthetic island ever. It’s full of flowers, is so organised, and probably has a full on theme that she closely follows. She has fully upgraded her house, and all the furniture and rooms match perfectly.

She honestly gets so offended when an ‘ugly’ villager moves in, and she immediately kicks them out.

Her museum collection isn’t that full, as she sells all of her fishes, bugs, etc. Her priority is earning bells, so she can buy decorations and furniture for her island, and make it as pretty as possible.

Joon-Gi:

The most stylish Animal Crossing character you have ever seen. He changes his outfit every day, and chooses his characters clothes so carefully. His entire island and home is also very aesthetic, and he’s secretly very proud of it.

Joon-Gi has likely almost completed all the fishing, fossil and bug collections, but he keeps getting ripped off by Redd with the artwork. He gets so mad when it happens and Blathers declines his donation.

He would actually be pretty good at the game, and is always so smug when people visit his Island and are blown away by how it looks.

Zhao:

He has purposely made both his island and his character look dumb as fuck, because he finds it funny. He also keeps all the ‘ugly’ villagers, to match the silly vibes.

Follows his villagers around and hits them over the head with the bug net until they get mad at him. He finds it hilarious.

Visits his friends islands and quotes memes or writes funny yet rude messages on their notice boards, but doesn’t tell them. He waits for them to find the messages themselves. It could be a few days to a week later, and he’d get a message from one of his friends like ‘why did you leave this on my noticeboard you weirdo’. Both Joon-Gi and Saeko have banned him from visiting their aesthetic and organised islands because of this.

#ryu ga gotoku #yakuza like a dragon #yakuza 7 headcanons #yakuza like a dragon headcanons #yakuza headcanons #tianyou zhao #joon gi han #joongi han #ichiban kasuga #adachi koichi #saeko mukoda #yu nanba

[mushroom-trafficking]

bing bong ask meme tell me about them please

Benji 1, 18, 39

Max 2, 12, 23

Archie 13, 17, 28

Putting this one under a cut!

Benji:

1. What’s the maximum amount of time your character can sit still with nothing to do?

“Rarely is there truly ever nothing to do. There is always something I can busy myself with. The only thing I dislike more than boredom is wasted time. Any time not utilised is time wasted. I can barely withstand five minutes without engaging in something.”

18. What embarrasses them?

“Oh. Wouldn’t you like to know.”

It actually takes quite a lot to embarrass him. Usually he’s the one embarrassing others because of this. It took him long enough to get over embarrassment to just wear the clothes he enjoys so he tried to not let anything get in the way of what he enjoys. The worst thing you can do however is be direct with him, he’s very flowery and indirect about things if you get what I mean. Calling him out on his bullshit works wonders too.

39. How easy is it for them to ignore flaws in other people? 

“Name me someone who isn’t flawed! We’re all just trying to get by and do what we can, hard to be perfect when around every corner is someone trying to ruin your day.”

The answer is INCREDIBLY easily. He’s no saint himself. He’ll readily ignore quite glaring issues if you help him with whatever it is he wants done. Besides openly flawed people have no right to judge when they’re also working with a flawed idiot.

Max:

2. How easy is it for your character to laugh?

“Eh, not a lot of people are actually that funny.”

Max tends to steer towards dark humour as a coping thing, but not a lot of people find that shit funny. He rarely lets down his guard enough to enjoy the humour of those around him. It’s usually something really daft will get him going. Ya’know like when you send your Dad a funny animal video and he’s crying with laughter when it’s not really that funny? That kinda thing. Once you find that niche you’re in.

12. How do they deal with an itch found in a place they can’t quite reach?

“Sometimes if I’m lucky the mutt can sort it out, but not always. I gotta be careful on account o’ the whole, ya’know, claw situation. I shredded a shirt once trying to get to a spot on my back. Not my… Proudest moment.”

Max’s death is able to touch him at times, not constantly, but enough. Sometimes he gets lucky and it can sort it out for him! Personal back scratcher! Though if that won’t work he sometimes just fucking rolls around like a damn dog if no one else is around. Catch him rubbing himself on a tree like a bear and watch him run faster than you’ve ever seen in your entire life.

23. How does envy manifest itself in them (they take what they want, they become resentful, etc)? 

“I’ve started tryin’ to just go after the shit I want. I’ve spent long enough not getting what I want from life I think I’m deservin’ of shit finally going my way for a change.”

Envy itself isn’t something Max struggles with often. He’s a former rich kid so he knows how the other half have lived and he’s pretty much over it at this point. Though he is incredibly resentful overall, he’s got a lot of unlearn and get over.

Archie:

13. What color do they think they look best in? Do they actually look best in that color?

“Oh, uh. Hmmmm. BEST? Oh man, that’s hard. I like most colours pretty equally… It’s so hard to pick a favourite… My Ma always said I look good in white… But I think everyone looks good in white! It’s WHITE! Hm. I think. I think it’s gotta be between turquoise or burgundy! But I don’t have much of either at the moment sadly…”

Archie hasn’t really been allowed to explore his options much fashion wise. But now he’s loose on the town there’s nothing stopping him from trying out new styles! He does struggle with picking a favourite colour though, his ideal thing to wear would be one of those colour block jumpers where each part is a different, bright colour.

17. Are they easily embarrassed?

“N…No… (10 second pause) Okay. Yes. I never used to get this flustered back home but out here in the dust it’s… A bit more. Intimidating. I know the wings are a lot but c’mon!! Quit staring!!”

The youngest of three Archie actually had a pretty thick skin back home. Especially being of demonic descent, people get pretty judgy. But that quickly faded getting out into the real world. With any luck he’ll build it back up over time once he’s a bit more used to it out in Red West.

28. Would they prefer a lie over an unpleasant truth? 

“The truth is ALWAYS the best option!!”

Dealing with the ramifications of certain withheld truths, Archie wants nothing but the honest truth. Even if it hurts. Though it’s quickly becoming apparent that the truth is not something post people enjoy sharing around here. Archie only believes in lying for the bit.

#benji #max #archie #oc ask meme #ask #my art

[maurice-memes]

hi. im back witih another ask (sunglasses emoji) why do you like maurice so much? (+ i rlly like ur design for him hes silly)

Thanks for asking about Maurice!! I do love him so much, even enough to make a blog based around him lol

It actually took me a little bit to get to this, and I fully intend to answer your ask about Piggy as well eventually!

I don’t really know how to introduce this topic, so I won’t, I’ll just say that I liked him mostly because he’s seen as the jokester of the boys. Because of the way people saw him was the “memer” because he made those kids laugh in that one scene. I thought he was funny! One of my favorite lines in the book is so simple and so silly, and it was the one about Maurice having both his legs in one side of his shorts (I actually drew this a couple years ago and never posted).

Initially, I just wanted to make a meme page, and Maurice fit the bill for a suitable mascot for the blog, but having him as the face of my blog made me a lot more conscious of him, and he became my favorite over time.

What I’ve come to realize is that I tend to like more pure-hearted characters, which is also the reason I tend to like children’s media. Because the protagonists are all pure of heart and not as cynical as characters from more mature media. I think I had a positive first impression of Maurice when he was introduced in the book as “grinning all the time.” He’s happy and simply being what he is, just a kid.

I realize that Maurice is eventually lost to savagery like most everyone else in the book, but his appearances in the first fraction of the book depict him as being carefree, and at times, more conscious of others than the other kids and even himself later on. Given, this is only because society had imprinted on him so heavily.

In this scene depicted below, Roger and Maurice walk toward the beach from the woods, and they both kick down sandcastles on their way. But as soon as Percival begins to cry, Maurice stops because someone at home had raised a hand to him for hurting a child sometime before his arrival on the island. It might just be how heavily society influenced him, but it shows that he was raised well and that he was disciplined and conscious enough of others’ feelings the least amount to refrain from making Percival cry more despite there being no one to punish him anymore, unlike Roger. It says something about his personal character, even if it’s not very strong (since he gave in later). I honestly doubt that Roger had zero discipline in his life, so that was an act of him disregarding the respect for others he should have been taught at a minimal level (hence why he isn’t my favorite character, though I still love him).

As for design, even if you didn’t ask about it, the reason I gave him a middle part is simply because everyone else seemed to be doing it at the time too. And the reason I gave him a big purple bow has nothing to do with canon at all. I just wanted a way to set my Maurice aside from everyone else’s. I had just watched Beauty and the Beast’s live action, and Belle’s father, Maurice, had a tiny little bow to tie up his hair, and I happened to incorporate it into Maurice’s design. Actually, his bow was small and off to the side the first time I drew him, but it got bigger over time, until it framed his entire lower half of his head. My association of Maurice and purple was also completely random. Purple was just the first color I saw when I was coloring his bow that first time. I really like seeing people associate purple with Maurice! It makes me happy, even if it is by pure coincidence!

TLDR: I just think he’s sweet and silly! He’s the more lighthearted, inconsequential character in the book, and I like that!

Thanks again for asking about my favorite boy!

#lotf #lord of the flies #lotf fanart #lotf headcanons #lotf roger #lotf maurice #lotf percival #percival wemys madison

[spacemanxpaninis]

Whose your favorite characters from the fandoms you listed? Hope you have a good day :)

I hope you had/have a great day too thank you so much 🥺 but

OH HO HO FRIEND THE FLOODGATES YOU HAVE OPENED.

My term for these individuals collectively is Blorbo High Council™ & every time I hyperfixate on a new character a seat is added. Absolutely feral for the chance to introduce them I’m so sorry

Presenting…Blorbo High Council™…or at least some members of it

• Abed Nadir- it kind of started right away because when I first started watching Community I had a huge crush on him lol not me exposing myself because I thought he was super cute & vibed with him. Every time I watched I was like That One™ *pointing Leo meme*. As time went on & things progressed in the show I felt even more of a connection to him, feeling like no character has made me feel as seen & validated as a person because wow, this person is living & describing experiences I’ve had & things I’ve felt like an outsider for & oh my gosh. Things that made me feel unfit & unseen & here they are being represented by a fictional character, someone others will see & love & that has always served as an escape for me. I’ve gone to fiction & lived in my own head since I was a kid so wow. I think that was part of why I fell so hard for him, it was like here’s someone I finally get & feel a connection to which is so hard for me to find irl. By extension Troy also gets a throne because those two are a package deal dangit 😤 plus I have a lot of feelings about Troy & how he’s such a good representation of going from your teens to your twenties, being more unabashedly yourself & learning that the world doesn’t revolve around you & you don’t have to perform & it’s just so 🥺

• Hobie Brown is just totally a type of character I like & I love his style as someone with something of an alt style too. The moment he entered the screen I thought ‘oh this one is going to be my favorite’ & guess what I WAS RIGHT. He’s just so sassy & funny & I love a character who spends a ton of their lines just doing a bit (because like many of us I’m convinced he was screwing with Miles during a bunch of his intro). Also seeing him with Mayday? My heart. Hobie’s the kind of character I have a whole playlist of songs I think he would like that I wish I could show him hehe

• Ever since first watching LoTR as a kid I loved Pippin! I tend to fall for funny characters & also I just related heavily to him, he’s clumsy, neurodivergent-coded, & my heart just breaks for how he gets treated sometimes. He’s a symbol for how war changes innocence & the maturity that develops from all the experiences the characters have. Since childhood I thought he was so cute & fell for his singing voice, I just love him so much! Plus his moment in the wedding scene is so funny it’s literally one of my favorites in the whole trilogy.

• From The Hobbit as much as I love Bilbo & the Line of Durin, Bofur was the one who managed to really snag & hold my heart! He’s such a sweetheart & one of the first dwarves to really show care for Bilbo. Such a kind jolly soul! Plus the hat. Literal boots with the fur. Iconic. Peak.

• Sergeant Carter is a longtime blorbo. I just loved his infectious whimsy & innocence & found him so adorable! Another neurodivergent-coded character that charmed me act shocked! But no I love a ‘dumb smart’ character who’s a genius in one area but clueless in others, I see it, I feel it, I love it. I must protect him at all costs!!! Except he can protect himself because he is the sweetest man but also loves arson & has the highest canonical kill count on the show by far. Duality of man 😌

• Radar, Klinger, & Father Mulcahy all hold special places in my heart! Especially in the later seasons as with all the characters, but my side character loving heart just adores all of them! Radar’s a cutie pie, Klinger’s costumes are amazing & he’s so funny, & the good father I just have a soft spot for 😌 William Christopher & I share a birthday too 😁

• Barley Lightfoot is a big part of why I love the movie Onward, like big huggable metalhead D&D nerd my beloved 😌 Second member of the playlist squad FOR SURE. I just know he listens to Nekrogoblikon. Another character I can both relate to & am incredibly endeared to. Poor guy being seen as the family screw-up, I feel like that’s me a bit being the ‘wasted potential’ sibling 😔 I just want to give him a hug so bad.

• Gladstone Gander is a character I’ve just randomly loved since I was maybe 13-15. I just found out about him & loved him for no explicable reason 😆 I have a pin of him & it’s one of my prized possessions lmaos. I was happy to see him included in the new Ducktales & even had an OC I shipped with him…but unfortunately I think I saw a spoiler with a canon character that may render that comfort character sort of moot 😔 y’all are like thank God now she won’t post about it 😂 maybe I’ll still keep her in my heart.

• Huey, Dewey, & Louie got seats in the council of course ☺️ I joke how it was my first experience having child blorbos & wanting to live vicariously through my OC (who is family to them) & spoil them instead of my usual doodling hearts around them like with most blorbos 😆 the triplets are so cute & I love how they all have their interests. Of course I have a soft spot for Huey because he’s adorable & my friend recommended I watch Ducktales just because I love his voice actor… ya girl also just loves nerds 🥰

• I love the whole Moon Knight system of course but I’m a Steven Grant Girlie at heart!!! Once again, cute nerds…

• From BG3 well none of them have *fully* seated at the high council but my favorites thus far would have to be Karlach, Gale, & Halsin feat. Astarion because why not??? I want someone with a personality like Gale or Karlach in real life tbh

• My favorite Brooklyn Nine Nine character kinda changes??? & same as BG3, maybe not full high council membership but characters I’ve loved for almost 5 years now so very special! I like Charles but overall Jake & Amy have my heart. I love their relationship & they’re both so funny! It’s a bit of a joke with friends too that my personality is a mix of both of them & I look like I could be their child 😂 having Peraltiago as parents sounds like so much fun hehe

#community #across the spiderverse #bg3 #ducktales #hogan’s heroes #m*a*s*h #lord of the rings #lotr #the hobbit #moon knight #onward #neurodivergent infodump mode activated 🫡 #the sad thing is I could go on way longer too- 😭 #sorry friend for the long response!!! #but I love to chat asks are always welcome 💕 #thanks for indulging me hehe #ask #letmelickyoureyeballs #moots 💕 #blorbo high council

[cloudman070]

I’ve had another thought ok so three of enids brothers go to nevermore right there’s no way they don’t show up and bother her sometimes I feel like Enid would treat her brothers way different then literally everyone else it’s like that meme of Gordon Ramsay where he’s like oh gorgeous then calls someone else a donkey that’s her relationship between her and her brothers they could come up to her table in the courtyard and be like “hey μικρός λύκος” and they’re laughing and stuff then enids just like “it won’t be funny when I rip off your arm will it?” The boys are unfazed but her friends are just looking like wtf did she really just say that? from what I’ve seen the brothers seem unruly and Enid is trying to avoid their “toxic pack mentality” but do you think that’s going to stop them from bothering Their sister absolutely not so one day Enid and Wednesday just sitting around in their dorm all of a sudden there’s a knock at the door Enid says she’s to comfortable to get it so weds reluctantly goes it get the door she’s expecting Yoko Bianca or maybe even Ajax but instead she’s met with three dudes tackling her before she can react it’s to late all four of them are on the ground (she got caught lacking lmao) the poor girls being crushed one of them looks down and he’s like “hey guys this isn’t Enid” then they all hear it 5… “hold on sis it was an accident” 4…. By then they’re off Wednesday and booking it 3… after a second of silence Enid says 1 and she’s out the door before weds can even say anything about an hour and a half later Enid returns with all of her brothers Wednesday doesn’t fail to notice the claw marks and bruises that they now have Enid speaks up she says “καλά οι ανόητοι ζητήστε συγγνώμη” and in unison they all apologize and swear it won’t happen again Enid speaks again “αν ξανασυμβεί αυτό θα σας ταΐσω όλους με wolfsbane” they all nodded it was quiet for a bit then they all start laughing as if they weren’t just getting scolded a second ago they hug and then They’re on their way out not before one last jab though “have fun with your girlfriend!” “γαμήστε ηλίθιοι!”

(μικρός λύκος = small wolf) ( καλά οι ανόητοι ζητήστε συγγνώμη = well you fools apologize) ( αν ξανασυμβεί αυτό θα σας ταΐσω όλους με wolfsbane = if this happens again i will feed you all wolfsbane) ( γαμήστε ηλίθιοι = fuck you idiots)

#wenclair #enid sinclair #wednesday netflix

[wondernus]

Hello everybody. It’s been about a month since I got back into continuing In Full Bloom. As excited as I am to continue the series, I’ve had a couple of people tell me that they have seen my slides outside of Tumblr. And this really makes me hesitant to continue my last SMAU and leaves me in a really disheartened state knowing that something like this is happening.

Although I’m pretty sure those who saved my SMAU to their devices probably meant no harm (ex: they thought it was funny or wanted to share them as memes), it is definitely inevitable that stories that the I post online via pictures I create would be taken and shared even if I did state in my masterlist to not copy, repost, or translate any of my works. All I am asking is that if you like something or think something that I write is funny, please let me know! It would make my day. If you see any of my works floating around online, please don’t be rude to the person, but do tell the person to credit me.

Thank you so much for all of your constant support. I hope we can enjoy more stories together in the future.

-nu

#💬 #seventeen imagines #seventeen series #seventeen au #seventeen smau #seventeen x reader #svt fluff #seventeen fic #svt imagines #svt smau

[chemicallyyourss]

Hey guys,

I’m new here and sort of wanted to introduce myself and ask for some advice/suggestions.

I’m somewhat new to tumblr- I’ve had accounts before, but never really fully understood how to work all the features, and still don’t, lol. So if there’s maybe a guide or something somewhere that would be uber helpful and appreciated for me!

I used to write quite a lot- both fanfiction-sorts and original works- mainly on Wattpad, Fanfiction.net, and AO3 (yes I know the distrust that comes with Wattpad users lol, but I was 14). I have always mainly written for The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer- my absolute favorite book series of all time and my comfort series as well- as well as some other fandoms like funny enough BBC Sherlock and Hamilton, and I had quite a lot that I wrote for The Lunar Chronicles. I’m really wanting to get back into the flow of writing and see about reposting my old works onto here in a master list and also working on some new ones, again both fanfiction and original. I’m also wanting to get more into drawing and such- fan art and other things. I never drew that much of fanart other than some sketches and designs and bookmarks that I mostly kept to myself, but I’d love to start making my own so that I can work more towards drawing specifically what I want to see, as I’m such a perfectionist and there’s not that much The Lunar Chronicles fanart especially for my favorite couple. I do do several forms of arts and crafts like crocheting, knitting, pottery, art, etc, and I especially did good with photography and realistic drawings and charcoal drawings, and I’d love to incorporate that and also get better at other types.

So I was looking into devices that could help me out and make it easier to do these things. I don’t really like writing on my phone, as the keyboard is so small and I like a wider view and such. I used to write on an iPad, but that was waaaay back in 2014 or so. It didn’t give me all the features I’d liked, but it was enough to do my main bit of writing. I’m not that informed about technology and such so I’ve been trying to look into what products may be best for what I want, like an iPad and keyboard, a MacBook, etc. I’m not that well off so I can’t necessarily just drop a thousand or so dollars on stuff, especially if it doesn’t work best for me. If anyone can respond or even message me with some ideas and resources and information as to what would be most beneficial all around for this sort of project, I would be so appreciative. Thank you so much!

**you can skip down to the other two asterisks if you don’t want to read all about me or get bored lol, please read below the bottom asterisks at the end though**

I guess I’d like to say a bit about myself as well. I know I don’t have my page strictly shown as a “The Lunar Chronicles” fan account, but that’s pretty much what it is, plus some poetry, quotes, landscapes, art, Adventure Time stuff, cats, and memes. You pretty much might as well view me as a Lunar Chronicles fan account lol. It sucks because I figure I may have a hard time getting seen and interacted with since I’m not broadly showing that I’m absolutely obsessed with the series, but I really want to get the word out while still maintaining my individuality on my page.

I started reading The Lunar Chronicles when Cress was coming out, I think right after Scarlet had been released. I was preeeetty young back then, which is a little embarrassing because back then most of the fans were in their 20’s and I was a teenager, but hopefully more people my age have found the series now. I won’t say how old I was back then, but I will say I’m 21 now lol. You can do the math yourself if you want.

My OTP is Kaider, Kai and Cinder. I legitimately adore them, like ridiculously so. They make me so giddy honestly lol. I wrote mainly for their ship, but rereading the series for maybe the 20th time, I am starting to adore Jacin and Winter as well. I just think Kai and Cinder are so underrated and overlooked a lot of the time. I loved writing for them and I’m an absolute sucker for their fanfictions, so if you find any or write any I haven’t already checked out, hit me up and I’ll devour it lol. And Id love to share my current works and hopefully future works! I was relatively young when I wrote them all, but I’ve always written quite a bit and been more talented at that more than anything else- not to brag, it’s just I’m mostly a one trick pony and that’s the trick lol.

So, I’m a 21 year old female from the USA, and have lived in a very small town for all of my life so far, but I’m trying to move to a midsize city with my husband soon. I’ve been married since May 2023, and I’ve been with my husband since 2019. We’ve known each other vaguely since middle school, but really started speaking maybe 2 months before we started dating lol. I have 3 pet cats, 2 calicos and a male tuxedo, all food names. I absolutely adore them lol. I used to take care of a feral colony, and got them all spayed and neutered and most rehomed to good families. I’m very passionate about TNR and animal rescue, and the fight against cat overpopulation. I’m a huge cat person. I do have a dog that I’m currently long term taking care of for a relative for the last year and a half, but none of my own.

I grew up a huge book nerd and was a gifted kid until about highschool, when I sort of burnt out and also started coming under some heavy struggles with mental health, stress, and issues at home. I grew up with a father suffering multiple issues including vascular dementia, which he’s now in the late stages of and is mostly bedridden. He’s a huge sensitive subject for me. I took care of him a bit growing up and my life was pretty much anything but ordinary and it was very stressful. I had to do a lot of things kids shouldn’t have to. We also struggled a lot with 2 disabled parents, so as soon as I was old enough, I got a job and started relying solely on my own income. I mostly worked 2 jobs in highschool.

My childhood is a whole wild story I could go on forever about and I’d be more than happy to if ever asked, but I’ll pretty well leave it at that for now.

I ended up joining a college program while still in high school to practice and study Culinary Arts. I then entered college with a major in Culinary Arts with a focus in Baking and Pastry Arts, and I also studied business and was working for a degree in Home Science Education. I wanted to teach culinary classes, probably in a highschool, and maybe have a cafe of some sort. Eventually I did drop out of college with no degree so far but quite a few certifications. I started to struggle with my mental health and physical health a lot, and I was very stressed and my father had declined drastically and I just couldn’t take it at the moment.

I worked in several fiends, including Food Service, Healthcare, Opticianry, Management, etcetera. I currently work in a hospital as part of Registration, but I really want to work towards a career in Human Resources, and maybe finishing my Culinary education.

Like I said above, I’m very passionate about cats and TNR, and I have supported tons of TNR programs and tried my best to help people out with resources and such so they can spay/neuter their pets and keep animals and stray/feral animals safe. I’m very against kill shelters and euthanasia. I’d love to either open a rescue or Cat Cafe of sorts maybe, or at least volunteer/work at one, and I’m currently trying to get involved in CASA work, as the struggle with my goddaughter and the rough custody battle against one absent parent was a lot and I really want to help out more kids like that.

I was actually raised Amish/Mennonite and converted out, which is funny. I always get tons of questions about that so feel free if you’re wondering. I speak English obviously, but I’m also semi-fluent in Spanish and I know just a little of Pennsylvania dutch, which is my areas dialect of Amish/Mennonite language (I’m not in/from Pennsylvania but we call it that). My husband and I are not Amish/Mennonite, and my husband has never been.

I identify as a cisgender queer woman, and I am diagnosed with OCD, PTSD, and MDD, and have always struggled with eating disorders. I’m very big on mental health advocating, as well as general welfare and health. I grew up without much healthcare and it’s been hard working to cover my bases, and I finally was diagnosed in 2021, the same year I was able to start taking care of myself without being held back. I also have some physical illness issues, including heart issues and kidney issues. The kidney issues were furthered from my mental health issues and consequences of long episodes and dark, sick times. I was extremely sick for a very long time but I’ve gotten a lot better, even though I do still have flare ups and occasional issues. I’m a pescatarian, for many reasons, including my eating issues, my love for animals, and namely my sister showing me a slaughter documentary when I was a toddler. I never really liked the taste anyways so it’s easy for me. I eat any seafood, eggs, and dairy, although dairy does make me bloat so I avoid it usually. I’m a coffee and caffeine snob and used to be a barista so I’m properly addicted and have a drink bar at my house for coffee, energy drink refreshers, and mixed alcoholic drinks. I support 3rd party politics, namely the Green Party.

I guess I’ll sort of wrap this up but going into what I like- my favorite color is black- haha- my favorite book series is The Lunar Chronicles as I said and my OTP is Kaider from that series, I like some other series like the Unwind series by Neal Shusterman, the original Sherlock Holmes series, and others, I love The Walking Dead series and I love Rich and Michonnes relationship from the tv show and Daryl and Carols relationship as well, I haven’t gotten to read all the comics but I’m working on it, and I’ve working through all the sister shows and spinoffs, my favorite movie/show genre is horror especially psychological horror. I love all of Jordan Peele’s movies and a lot of A24 horror movies. I never got to watch many classic or cult favorite movies and shows so I’ve been trying to work through them all. I watched Orange Is The New Black and adored it. I’d say my favorite shows so far are tied between BBC Sherlock (my comfort show) The Walking Dead and Adventure Time, which are both very personal to me. I don’t exactly have a favorite book genre, but I guess it would have to be dystopian/romance and comedy. Comedy anything is always good lol. I like quite a lot of music, mainly Classic Rock, Grunge, Rap, Trap Metal, Pop Rock, Underground, Alternative, Indie, and others. I was a semi theatre kid- semi because my school didn’t have drama or theatre and I couldn’t afford to go see many plays lol. I loved Hamilton, Heathers, Falsettos, Dear Evan Hanson, and others. I was a part of choir but I’m not too confident in my voice lol. I used to write a lot of fanfiction and original stuff as I said, and I also wrote and read poetry. My favorite poets were Charles Bukowski, Emily Dickinson, Robert M Drake, and Sylvia Plath. My favorite authors would probably be Marissa Meyer (though I haven’t read her other works other than TLC yet) and Neal Shusterman. Their writing style really appeals to me and I write somewhat similarly. I’d say my favorite bands are Queen, The Beatles, Hozier, SuicideBoys, and Rainbow Kitten Surprise. My favorite song of all time is Hey Jude.

I do have a tattoo, currently only one, but I’m planning more, one to commemorate my father and one to reference Adventure Time, and some for my cats. I currently have a geometrical and floral pattern on my sternum. I want more floral pieces as well besides the specific pieces I mentioned. I have several ear and cartilage piercings and I’m not planning on any body piercings besides my nose.

I am generally a big advocate for peace, equality, kindness, etcetera, and I mean that wholeheartedly. It takes a whole lot to get me messy and/or violent or mean. I’m very supportive and understanding and accepting of all things- besides legitimately morally wrong things that I don’t even want to name here. I’ll just say I’m lgbt+ supporting (and a member), BLM supporting, race issue awareness supporter, accepting and understanding of all genders sexualities religions backgrounds disabilities mental health issues etc, sexual assault and abuse awareness supporter and a victim, a mental and physical health advocate, against euthanasia and for TNR, am working towards HR work to better help the workforce and also working towards child advocacy and animal rights.

**

Aaaalllrighty, I think that’s more than enough. Thank you if you read much of any of that, feel free to inbox me or ask me anything, and please PLEASE if you have advice about the products I would need for writing and drawing please let me know!! I really want to get back into it and share my works.

Thank you!

Cat gif for tax (jammin)

#kaider #lunar chronicles #the lunar chronicles #my writing #writing #fanart #fanfiction #fanfic #drawing #artwork #new to tumblr #looking for friends #looking for advice #writing tools #drawing tools #about myself #introduction #introductory post #blog intro