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dameronology · 3 years

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love in the time of p.t.a. meetings {marcus moreno} - 4/5

summary: after a few months of slightly chaotic bliss, you & marcus start to think about the next steps in your relationship. {series masterlist}

warnings: swearing

this is up a little later than i wanted & i do apologise, i once again stayed up all night and i cannot recount a single thing i’ve done. enjoy!

- jazz

Things between you and Marcus quickly fell into a routine.

You kind of had to when you both had kids; their lives needed structure. Depended on it, in fact. It wasn’t long before both of your lives were entangled in more ways than one, mostly for the sake of Missy and Jack having security around them but also because things between you were so good. Neither of you were trying to rush by any means, but when it worked, it worked. You were both good at communicating with each other - not that many issues really cropped up - and you both understood that your children came first. Things progressed easily and naturally, and he made you feel secure enough that you didn’t have to question whether or not it was too good to be true.

Five months had quickly passed and you were both comfortable. Marcus Moreno was your boyfriend and it wasn’t a big deal. Okay, it had been at first - especially the first time he planted a kiss on your lips in front of the minivan brigade - but now? It was normal. It felt like he’d always been there, and you took it as a good sign. You got on well with Missy, especially since she’d witnessed your spat with Carol and started to think the world of you, and Jack...well, he was obsessed with Marcus. You couldn’t blame the kid.

‘Jack! Put the soup down!’

It was another one of those mornings. It was a Sunday, so you didn’t have to worry about getting up early for school or work but you’d been at Marcus’ till late the night before. You and Jack ended up spending a lot of time at his; there was a swimming pool and a big garden for Optimus Prime to run around in, so it tired both of your tiny spawns out, which worked in your favour.

Even when the kid had spent four hours swimming last night, he’d still risen that morning at 6AM like Jesus Christ on the third day. You’d woken to find the kitchen covered in smashed eggs and ham, then your oven had broken and the toilet was blocked again.

You’d been halfway through reversing the problem when you’d heard Jack shuffling in the kitchen. You were stood in the hallway, still in your pyjamas, with a toilet brush in one hand and the other balled up into a fist.

‘Jack, the soup is about to-’

You paused mid-sentence, watching as the bowl he was trying to reach for toppled straight off of the counter. You’d only washed his hair ten minutes ago, and you might as well have not fucking bothered because it was now covered in chunky vegetable soup. And the Chewbacca onesie he loved so much? Trying to peel that off him for the next few hours to wash the Heinz out of it was going to be a whole task in itself. You’d only just been to the laundrette the day before, and you’d gotten to the point in life where having a place with its own washing machine was a sign of success.

‘Mum, there’s soup in my hair.’

‘It’s okay.’ You took a moment to breath. ‘We are not going to cry.’

‘I’m not crying.’

‘Wasn’t talking to you, buddy.’ You rubbed your temples for a moment. ‘C’mon, let’s go hop in the bath.’

So much of parenting was just...stopping to breath. Stopping to take a moment to remind yourself that although your love for your child was unwavering and unconditional, you sometimes felt like screaming. All you’d done for the last five hours was go in circles, cleaning and lecturing and cleaning some more. It made you wish you were at work that day, because at least then you could have conversations with people that weren’t about what cheese they wanted for lunch or what cartoon they wanted to watch.

‘I just had a bath.’ Jack muttered.

‘Yeah well, you need another one.’ You took another deep breath. ‘I’ll be there in a minute-’

‘- I don’t want a bath!’

‘And I don’t want a kid that’s covered in soup!’ You shot back. ‘C’mon, buddy. Just do as I say, please?’

Your conversation was interrupted by a knock at the door. You frowned for a moment - you weren’t expecting anyone. There was no post on Sundays and you hadn’t seen your landlord since the day you’d moved in. Your nosey neighbour knocked sometimes, usually asking about the noise (he didn’t have kids, clearly) and you were this close to telling him to mind his own fucking business.

‘I swear to god, if that’s David again, I am going to shove this can of soup up his - Marcus!’ You almost did a double take when you saw your boyfriend stood at the door - he really chose his times, didn’t he? You hadn’t even had time to put the fucking toilet brush down. ‘Hey.’

‘Hey, baby.’ He greeted you slowly, eyes slowly taking in your appearance (and not in a sexy way). ‘Were you not expecting me?’

‘Shit, did we have plans?’ Your eyes widened.

‘No, but Jack called. He said you’d asked him to ask me to come over, but I realise half way through that sentence that starting with Jack called probably means you had no idea.’ He offered you a goofy smile. ‘He said that the sofa had exploded and that you needed help.’

There was a lot to unpack there. When had Jack done that? More to the point, when had he learnt to use the phone? How had he worked out your phone password? The kid couldn’t do up his own velcro and now he was a Russian hacker, apparently.

‘Oh my god.’ You groaned. ‘I am so sorry. Things have been batshit here this morning and I’m sure he had my best interests in his weird little heart, but he made you come all this way-’

‘- Marcus!’ Speaking of the devil.

Jack pushed past you, wrapping his arms around Marcus’ waist. He leant down to pick him up, lifting him off the ground - albeit at a distance, due to Soupgate.

‘Hey, buddy.’ He greeted him. ‘You been causing trouble again?’

‘Not on purpose.’ Jack replied. ‘Mum says I need another bath.’

‘I think she’s right.’ Marcus said. ‘Why don’t you go pick out some clothes and come back in a minute, yeah?’

‘Okay!’ Seemingly impressed by the newfound trust in him to choose an outfit, Jack wriggled himself back down to the floor, trotting towards his bedroom. Seriously, how did Marcus do that? Perhaps his ability to have authority over your archaic child was another hidden power of his.

‘You look like you need a break, baby.’ He reached out, gently running a hand down your arm.

‘I’m fine, he’s just been a lot today.’ You sighed.

‘You have soup on your shirt and fluff in your hair.’

‘Couch stuffing.’

‘Huh?’

‘It’s couch stuffing. Except that was Optimus Prime and not Jack, which makes a nice change.’ You muttered.

‘Look, Missy is at her abuela’s today and she’s been begging for ages to see Jack again.’ He said. ‘What d’you say I drive him over there, you clean up and we hang out? Just us, no kids, no dogs, no stress.’

‘That sounds like a fucking dream.’ You couldn’t help but smile. ‘But Optimus has consumed half the couch and I gotta keep an eye on him-’

‘-we can bring him with us!’ Marcus grinned. ‘He loves the garden.’

‘Are you sure? Because I remember you saying you had work plans today and I don’t want you to cancel them on account for the fact I can’t control my own kid. Or life.’

‘You two come first.’ He said it as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Three, including Optimus Prime.’

In the time it took Marcus to drive Jack to his mum’s and get back to yours, you were able to clean up. The apartment was still a state, but it hadn’t been properly tidy in...how many days had it been since Jack was born? Because it hadn’t been clean in exactly that many days. You felt a little bad dumping him on Anita when he was still covered in soup, but if anyone was able to wrestle him into the bath and some clean clothes, it was her. You’d met her a few times and she was absolutely lovely, but you had no doubt she could be terrifying when need be. She was the sort of woman you aspired to be.

By midday, you were driving out the city. There was music playing quietly over the radio and you were watching the houses go by; even though it was cold out, you had the heater on and you were bundled up in a leather jacket, Marcus’ scarf snugly around your neck. It smelt faintly of his aftershave, which had become one of your favourite scents over the last five months. The time had gone so quickly. You’d seen each other practically every day since then, and having the kids meant you’d been fallen into being domestic pretty quickly. The simplicity of it all - him and you and getting to this point so easily - was overwhelming in itself.

Your first relationship had been so complicated - so finicky and filled with unnecessary arguments. That should have been a sign early on, but then you’d gotten pregnant with Jack and getting married had seemed like the obvious thing to do. His presence meant you wouldn’t have changed anything, not for the entire fucking world, but it made you a little sad to think about how long you’d wasted on what had clearly been the wrong person. Meanwhile, Marcus’ situation had been entirely different; he’d had the right person the first time around and then he’d lost them. You never felt like a replacement to his wife, or even thought about the notion, really. That had been another part of his life. You were a new part and it didn’t mean he was forgetting the past. The two could co-exist without taking away from each other.

‘You’re deep in thought.’ Marcus observed. He moved one of his hands to rest on your leg, giving it a light squeeze. He did that a lot, usually whenever you were sat beside him at the table or on the sofa. It was just a him thing.

‘Yeah, sorry.’ You tore your gaze away from the window. ‘My brain always goes a little into overdrive when things are quiet.’

He chuckled. ‘What’s on your mind?’

‘You, actually.’ You tangled your fingers with his, thumb brushing over the back of his hand. ‘I was just thinking about lucky I am and how good things are, and how it almost feels too good to be true.’

‘Better believe it, baby.’ He replied. ‘Because it is true.’

‘I know.’ You peered over at him with a smile. ‘It’s just...my only perceptions of relationships were based on the single one I’ve had. Everything was so complicated and exhausting. This is completely different and it’s so nice. And normal. And I don’t know, that sounds stupid-’

‘- it’s not stupid at all.’ Marcus peered over at you, shaking his head. ‘It’s natural to be a little apprehensive after a bad relationship and if there’s anything I can do to help, you just have to tell me. You know that, right?’

Maybe it was the way he said it, or maybe it was just him, but you knew for certain that he meant that. There was sort of a silent agreement now that you were both in this for the long haul. Your mum had always said that you’ll know when you know but you’d always written that off. Mostly because you hadn’t known the first time round. But, now you did. You did know and though you weren’t going to admit that to Marcus, you never doubted him for a second.

‘I do.’ You said. ‘But he’s in the past now - and hopefully it’s where he fucking stays.’

‘I have contacts. I can find him and set Miracle Guy on him.’ Marcus’ grin had returned. ‘Just say the word.’

‘You make a tempting offer.’ You smiled back at him. ‘But the past is the past and I’m ready to...slam the lid on that dumpster.’

‘Do you think he’ll ever want to come back into Jack’s life?’

You pondered for a moment. ‘I don’t think so, but if he did, I dunno if I’d let him. I never wanna be the person who stops someone from seeing their kids but what he did was...it was unforgivable.’

‘You don’t have to make that decision until it actually happens.’ Marcus gently said. ‘And I’ll support whatever you choose.’

He pulled into the drive way of his house - his nice, clean, sofa-stuffing-and-soup free house. Optimus Prime leapt out the car as soon as the door was open, practically tearing past the two of you and down towards the yard. There was a moment of silence and then a splash!

‘Guess he found the pool.’ Marcus commented. ‘At least it’s heated, I s’pose.’

Truth be told, he loved having the three of you at his house. It felt like whatever had been missing before was slowly making an appearance as your relationship progressed. The irony was that you brought nothing but chaos and clutter with you, but that was exactly what made it feel like a home. It was small things; the painting that Jack had done for him at after school club was now hung up up on the fridge, and there was a photo of him and Missy on the fireplace with Optimus Prime. Half of the thousands of blankets of pillows that had been at your place had ended up on his sofa, thanks to the countless sleepovers.

If he could have it his way, Marcus would have you live with here all the time. The energy that you and Jack brought made everything feel complete. He loved the evenings where Missy and Jack would play out in the pool, and you two would sit back inside, complaining about the cold. Then there were the nights where you’d take both the kids back here when he was working late, and he’d come home to find you piled on the couch watching an old movie, with your burnt cooking abandoned on the stove, surrounded by boxes of left over take out. It was the kind of thing that was so simple and so domestic, but it was everything he wanted.

That was probably the flashpoint moment when Marcus Moreno realised he wanted to spend the rest of his life with you. He already knew he loved you - he’d worked that out about three months in, when you’d fallen asleep in one of his shirts whilst trying to wait up for him - but he hadn’t said it. He’d hinted at it and made back-handed comments but he’d barely admitted it to himself, let alone to anyone else. He knew what you and Jack had gone through before and it broke his entire fucking heart. You both deserved someone who stand by you and support you, someone who would embrace you both for the craziness and warm energy you brought everywhere with you. More than ever, he was realising he wanted to be that person who gave it you. After all, you’d made his life so much brighter without even trying.

Snapping out of his trance, Marcus looked over at you. You’d already ditched your shoes and dropped onto the sofa, pulling one of the blankets with you. This was exactly what you needed. A quiet house, your favourite person and a cable knit blanket.

‘Hey, baby?’

You looked over at him, smiling at the name. ‘Yeah?’

‘You know I love you, right?’

You blinked in surprise, sitting up. ‘I know.’

‘You do?’

‘You’ve never said it, but I can tell.’ You nodded, before offering a smile. ‘And I love you too.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner.’ He slowly approached you, dropping onto the sofa beside you and taking your hands in his. ‘I think I just got so caught up in everything and feeling everything that I forgot.’

‘Why are you apologising?’ You couldn’t help but scoff at him, leaning forward to press a kiss to his lips. ‘It’s your actions that say it, Marc. Hearing it is good but you showed it a long time ago.’

‘I know, but really you deserve to hear it everyday.’ He smiled against you, helping you move onto his lap.

‘You do tell me everyday, with the things you do.’ You reminded him. ‘Like meeting me in the parking lot with coffee, or bribing Jack into going to bed early with video messages from your superheroes, or doing my grocery shopping when you know money is short.’

‘Why wouldn’t I do those things?’ Marcus seemed genuinely confused. ‘It’s you.’

‘I love you.’ You repeated the phrase.

‘And I love you.’

He pulled you into another kiss - this time it was a little firmer, not unlike your second declaration of love. Marcus did all those things without thinking, simply out of his intense want for you to just be happy. He was the same with Missy, always doing little things to make her life easier just because. It was just part of who he was, and it made him happy to see his loved ones happy.

With your body pressed against his and your hands tangled in your hair, Marcus realised he didn’t want you to ever leave again. He didn’t want you to have to drive home in the dark at ten because all of your stuff was on the other side of town. You did stay over sometimes, but then you’d have to creep out at 6AM with a sleeping Jack in your arms to get home in time to get ready. He wanted you here all the time. You should have been here all the time.

‘Move in with me?’

He both did and didn’t mean to say it out loud. He did because he wanted you so badly to be a permanent fixture in the house, but he also didn’t because the idea might have been a little absurd. Was it too soon? What if you didn’t want to leave your place? He knew you loved your apartment. It was your home and had been for a long time.

‘What?!’ You suddenly pulled back from the kiss, eyes wide.

‘I mean...if you want to.’ Marcus slowly said. ‘Hell, Missy and I can move to your place if that’s what you want. It might be tight but she loves the dog and I just want to be with you-’

‘- hey!’ You cut him off, planting your hands on his shoulders. ‘You’re rambling again, but that’s besides the point. I would love to live here.’

‘You would?’

‘I would.’ You smiled.

It made sense. Aside from the glaringly obvious fact you wanted to, it was also practical. It was closer to the school, closer to your work and it had a fucking swimming pool. Marcus was already clearly financially secure and moving in wouldn’t mean relying on him, but it would have meant that things for Jack were a lot more stable. Missy loved the company of you both, and it meant she would finally have the dog she wanted so bad.

‘Missy would be okay with it, right?’ You asked.

‘She was the one who put the idea in my head, actually.’ Marcus admitted. ‘I’d thought about it but then she kind of asked in passing why you don’t live here, and I couldn’t give her an answer.’

‘Your kid is smart.’

‘D’you think Jack will-’

‘- I’m going to stop you there.’ You cut him off.

‘Right, I probably don’t need to ask that question.’ He chuckled.

‘Exactly.’ You pressed a kiss to his nose. ‘Don’t forget the dog, either.’

‘How could I? I can literally see him peeing on my lawn right now.’

‘Our lawn.’

Exactly three weeks later - and after a hefty amount of paperwork and hours of sorting through Jack’s endless amounts of crap that he insisted on hoarding - moving day came.

Anita had insisted on having the kids again. They were both excited, but perhaps a little too much. They were probably more likely to get in the way of things if anything. Children, a dog and large boxes? It seemed like a match made in hell. Plus, she had a whole ass training course in her back garden and if that didn’t wear the kid out, then you were definitely going to take him to the Heroics to get tested. The thought alone was enough to tire you out.

You didn’t have too much stuff to move. You’d been half-moved into the damn place before Marcus had even made the formal proposal, so that made things a lot easier. You were keeping your sofa for Jack’s room, but the rest was going to Goodwill. Most of it had come from there in the first place.

‘I think that’s the last box.’ Marcus announced, exiting the bedroom. ‘I didn’t realise that a five year could own so many variations of storm-trooper toys.’

‘Oh, yeah.’ You replied. ‘There’s the original trilogy ones, sequel trilogy ones, dark troopers, shock troopers, clone troopers - and I realise half way through listing them that you don’t care.’

‘I never said that!’ He placed his hands on your waist, pressing a kiss to your forehead. ‘I’m excited to learn.’

‘I’m sure Jack is excited to tell you.’ You grinned.

Then, it faltered slightly with the realisation you were actually leaving this place. You’d never intended for it to be your permanent home, but it had still been the centre of your entire universe for half a decade. Every room told a story; the crayon marks on the bathroom wall, the dents behind the TV from, the crack in the living room mirror. All caused by Jack, naturally. The last five years was contained entirely within these four walls and you got bleary eyed at the idea of it becoming someone else’s.

‘Hey, don’t cry.’ Marcus gently wiped away a tear from your cheek.

‘You know, the rent is still paid till the end of the month so we could revisit the idea of you and Missy living here instead.’ You tearfully smiled.

‘You’re kidding but you know I’ll do it.’ He pressed another kiss to your nose, grip on your arms tightening.

‘It’s okay.’ You moved so that the kiss landed on your mouth instead, capturing his lips in a brief kiss. ‘I knew we were gonna outgrow this place. I just didn’t expect it to be so soon.’

‘I know. Still kinda feels like it all came out of no-where, huh?’ He replied. ‘In the best way.’

‘You’re right. In the best way.’ You firmly nodded. ‘Can you believe I was 23 when I moved into this place? I found it on Craiglist within ten minutes of finding out I was pregnant.’

‘Do you wanna take a minute before we go?’

‘No, it’s fine.’ You shook your head. ‘We should get going.’

The apartment was just that: an apartment. And the house you were going to was just that: a house. But the people you were with? That’s what made it count. It wasn’t about the four walls or the roof over your head, or whether or not it had a big yard and a jacuzzi bath tub (though, that did help). It was about the laughter and warmth inside; the faces in the photos on the wall and the people you came home to after a long day. It was the smell of your burnt cooking and the pizza you’d ordered in place. It was Jack’s toys left in the exact place where someone could trip and it was Missy using all the hot water in the morning so that Marcus’ showers were practically arctic. It was everyday things that reminded you of the people around you; the people that made it home, and how lucky you were to have them.

That was home. And you’d found yours.

taglist: @naivara-duneimith @1-2-3-4-5metalfingers @likeshootingstarsinthenightsky @lyanna-the-giantsbane @phoenixhalliwell @crazycookiecrumbles @bitchin-beskar @comphersjost

#marcus moreno x reader #marcus moreno imagine #marcus moreno x you #marcus moreno x y/n #marcus moreno imagines #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal character headcanons

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ribbononline · 3 years

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Uuuuuu have PDA doodles so i can make a hc post for admin au!! Mostly for Maxie and Archie, but all admins are there as well

(for a full writeup of how the games play out in their respective AUs, check out this post!)

ok ! so like stated in earlier post the basic gist is that rather then splitting up back in their rocket days one convinced the other to join their team! So in Sapphire, Maxie joined team aqua as admin, and in Ruby archie joined team magma as admin! Depending on which team they’re both on, the other team just does not exist in that version of the AU

They’re still dating and together and (mostly) happy! Archie being with magma helped Maxie never really succumb to stress so he’s a lot more relaxed. Maxie in aqua mainly helped streamline and organise things a lot so they move a bit faster!

While they are happier in the sense that they’re still together and didn’t have to deal with that hell of a breakup, neither admin truly believes in the goals of their teams, making it a little… For Ruby; Archie doesn’t truly believe deep down Magma will be able to help everyone and is afraid it’ll harm ocean pokemon, but he knows Maxie is doing his best to cancel out any negatives and thus decided to put his faith in him and follow him anyhow. (Quite frankly, depression shines trough when he thinks about what their plans would do in the long term considering he still is not super fond of humanity as a whole- so he tries just to…. not think about it)

for Sapphire; Maxie is very convinced Kyogre is just going to flood everything and everyone and brought it up a lot with Archie at the start. Archie never flat up stated his plans are in fact to bring an end to humanity as a whole, but Maxie has his suspicions considering Archie kept dismissing all the concerns he kept bringing up- and eventually started to realise that either he was going to join Aqua working towards a restart of the world, or lose the one good thing he had going for him after Rocket in his relationship with Archie. He decided to be selfish and stuck around with Archie, though guilt is real and it is killing

teams;

Magma admin Archie;

-Sharpedo

-Gabite

-Gastrodon (East)

-Nidoking

-Crobat

-Mightyena

Aqua admin Maxie;

-Numel

-Dragalge

-Crobat

-Mightyena

-Whiscash

-Relicanth

now for a random big ass hc list in no order at all (Putting ‘S:’ at the front if they’re specific to Sapphire version of the AU, ‘R:’ if they’re specific to the Ruby version)

-S: Because he got Numel as a child, Maxie still has it even in the Sapphire version of the AU. However due to being surrounded by water and water types only, it never battles. It’s mostly just there for cuddles and to be spoiled.

-S: Because Maxie lets him wander the Aqua base, the grunts see Numel as almost kind of a mascot for their team. Everyone spoils it. Everyone. It started becoming kind of a problem, because it got a little overweight. Now there are multiple posters troughout the base warning people to ‚Not feed the Numel, no matter how cute it looks at you.’

-S: “Max ya can’t teach every single water Pokémon on your team Scald” “Sounds like the words of a coward too afraid to teach every single water Pokémon on his team Scald”

-R: Archie dabbed once instead of doing the proper magma salute as a joke. Now half of the grunts won’t stop doing it and Maxie is in pain.

-In both versions of the AU, the original proposed plan was to be co-leaders. Archie denied the position in Ruby because “C’mon Max, it’s yer dream, I’m just here to help” and Maxie denied the position in Sapphire because he did not feel comfortable being called leader of a team he fears is going to only bring destruction. He’s honestly not even entirely comfortable with the admin label, but Archie insisted.

-S: When May first showed up, Maxie didn’t believe she could actually stop Archie- he just thought she’s delay things. At that point the stress of knowing he was working towards genocide was getting too him pretty badly, and the idea of the end of the world seemed pretty relaxing if it meant never having to worry about any of it again. So seeing a child that wouldn’t actually be able to make a difference but could potentially delay things and drag it out even longer— he went as hard as he could trying to stop her. When she did in fact defeat Kyogre at the end of the day, she got some formal apologies and a lot of thank you’s.

-R: When May proved herself capable of holding her own, Archie started dropping hints to their plans so she could keep up with them. He didn’t actively want her to sabotage the operation- didn’t feel like that’d be fair of him to Maxie-, but in case his worst fears were to come true and Maxie wouldn’t be able to control Groudon, he’d rather have her as backup there. In the end he was very glad he did that.

-R: Archie is still in contact with Shelly, who’s still working at Devon here. She doesn’t really approve of team Magma, but Archie keeps telling her it’ll be fine, so she supposes he knows best and let’s it be.

-R: Archie still ends up saving and befriending Matt, but never lets him join the team, figuring it wouldn’t be the best place for Matt. Instead he introduces him to Shelly and helps him become a lifeguard.

-R: After the Groudon incident, Magma disbands. Archie ends up joining a wild Pokémon rescue service, specializing in water Pokémon. Maxie ends up working as a geologist. (Both under strict government watch after the Groudon stunt, but they’re doing their best!)

-R: Deciding Tabitha and Courtney could use some help making friends post Groudon incident, Archie ends up convincing Shelly and Matt to hang out together with them a couple of times. Matt was into the idea from the start, Shelly got more interested once she started talking to Courtney and got along with her.

(Eventually Maxie meets Matt and Shelly too because of the hangout sessions!)

-S: Tabitha still works at Devon, and Courtney works in a flower shop while studying for a major in geology on the side. She’s not super fond of her job, but this one cute Aqua admin girl keeps dropping by, so she figures she’ll stick around. Maxie never meets them until after the Kyogre incident.

-S: Shelly and Courtney met accidentally at Courtney’s job early on in and now talk a lot. Shelly was planning on asking Courtney out after Aqua awakened Kyogre, but once that goes wrong she feels too guilty. Instead Courtney suddenly shows up at the (now ex-) Aqua base to ask her out instead.

-S: Matt ends up becoming a lifeguard after Aqua disbands and Shelly ends up going back to Devon. She meets Tabitha there again and one day when Matt comes pick her up from work they meet as well. One weird conversion and a lot of misunderstandings later, Tabitha accidentally ends up agreeing to come work out with Matt in the gym every week.

-S: Eventually Maxie, Tabitha and Courtney all end up meeting trough Shelly and Matt and befriend eachother fairly fast due to mutual interests in Rocks™

-R: “Gabite is a Sharpedo with legs. Discuss.” “Archie please,”

-S: Maxie’s shirt is actually one of Archie’s shirts. Archie offered to get him one that fit him better, but Maxie liked this better.

-S: Maxie hates any and all field work missions with the team because usually that means water everywhere and the lenses of his glasses being smeared with it 99% of the time.

-S: Maxie still can��t swim. His one way of getting around in water is hanging onto his pokemon and hoping for the best. Only Archie knows.

#Magma Leader Maxie #aqua leader archie #aqua admin shelly #aqua admin matt #magma admin courtney #magma admin tabitha #hardenshipping #alphafemaleshipping #was that it?#and #seamountshipping #i think??#things dont show up in the tags after 5 tags right #i hope so cus seamounts more implied then anything here #it was the intention i just never went too in depth on m #sorry for all the admin tags when i dont have any doodles for m but theyre there in the hcs quite a bit skdhfskjd #i dont actually imagine maxie is big on pda w the p for public BUT i do like to think he appreciates cuddling up together in private so #pda (private display of affection)#u can not and will not stop me from drawing them committing acts of pda together that was my point hre #‚ribbon you cant post multiple times a day‘ I DO WHAT I WANT!!!#my brainworms are strong #ANYWAYS hee hee admin au #mostly cus i like the idea of them being a power couple and working together #but also cus i did like the lowkey angst side of it w them not truly believing in the cause they were working for n their reasons to stick #w it anyhow #archie cus he can put his trust in someone else over his own gut even if it aint easy #maxie cus sometimes one just says fuck it n puts the bf over the rest of the world.#(archie does know abt maxes doubts in sapphire version of the au btw)#(hes v thankful maxie sticks w m anyhow n is v excited to prove maxis doubts wrong once kyogre awakens)#(rip king when that goes wrong. maxie still appreciates the sentiment at least)

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wowsoboring · 3 years

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Deconstructing Baseless Harry Potter Arguments#2 (i) : Harmione Edition

Obviously I once again do not mean to target all Harmione shippers. I know quite a few who're very good human beings and tolerant and accepting above all. However these aren't. In this case, you might sense quite a bit of levelheadedness in the beginning, however you must not be fooled as it goes south and takes a nasty turn very quickly. Don't get your hopes up, this is some of the worst shit I've ever seen, especially the way in which it progresses through its course. Naturally, for this post I have picked my own style of writing which will match that of those redditors. Reddit is the perfect breeding ground for all these weird cults, honestly. I shall be resorting to a formal language and style of conversation, very much like a debater would to sound as pretentious as these do. These posts are found on the instagram handle toxicharmonyshippers who gather such toxic musings and sayings for Harmione shippers while respecting the ones that are nice.

Oh yes, let's use words like 'vehemently' to sound smart, why not? Of course, this little tidbit of the highly stupendous post seems more or less civil at the start. They also have the common decency to say "some Romione shippers" rather than generalizing all of us. Very nice of you, how very saint like. Let's wait till they drop the act and show us their true colors. Harkening back to the argument, I have but one question for you, "where do you find these people?". Where's the proof? Who are these radical Romione shippers who worship Ron and dislike Hermione? I haven't seen any such shippers and I am surrounded by Romione shippers on tumblr, instagram and fan fiction sites as well and haven't met the people you speak of. Some point out her flaws, yes, but no one hates her or dislikes her that much. I have seen two or three Romione shippers across hundreds and thousands who're skeptical of Hermione's perfection. Skeptical. Not hating, disliking, or anything. Of course, unlike this person, I have evidence: find these pi charts for your referral (clickable): https://imgur.com/a/QfPnQbB

you can, through these, see the amount of Hermione bashing across Harry Potter fanfiction and you can see that even in Romione fanfiction there's more Ron bashing. Hermione-bashing is a non-issue. That's what it is. Regarding the "nagging" statement, where's the lie in that? "Annoying" is somewhat subjective, I personally don't find her annoying at all. Who are these people and how often do you find them? "Mary Sue" is only reserved for Movie!Hermione. I have only seen book fans call her that. No one has ever called Book!Hermione Mary Sue. The movie does paint her as a flawless, all-rounder who's also drop-dead gorgeous. Only things she's bad at are flying and divination, all of which she denounces as useless, even though flying is like biking for wizards, divination, sure, not that important. with a teacher like Trelawney, even I would denounce it as hokum.

Remember what I said about waiting for them to show us their true colors, well here they are. Bask in the glory of their senseless arguments. Why, I am from reddit, heck I have 25 thousand karma points on there, I just left because it was too stupid for me but I can argue like them very well. And in this case I would like to say that these people are under the impression that Ron is just there in the story for the sake of existence. And he doesn't work hard. That argument is of course, wrong. Because Ron (in no particular order):

1) fights a troll when he's 11

2) is willing to sacrifice himself when he's 11

3) stands up for his friends

4) makes sure Harry feels like he belongs in the family

5) worries about Harry and rescues him from literal jail

6) stands up against Draco rather than by-standing and enabling his behavior

7) tries his level best to make sure Norbert the dragon is in safe hands and carries it out, albeit not in perfection

8) is with Harry every step of the way in his confronting the basilisk

9) sends Harry and Hermione long letters and calls them often to check up on them

10) stands up on a bitten leg to defend his best friend

11) always apologizes for any of his mistakes and is forgiving when others wrong him

12) works his way to join the Quidditch team unlike Draco who most certainly bought his way in

13) destroys at least 2 horcruxes

14) finds out how to defeat a horcrux

15) has an excellent enough memory and observation to notice Harry speaking parseltongue and also using it to his benefit which proves he's resourceful

now since I have 8 more such pictures to rebut and I do have a life, I will stop. These aren't even a twelfth of the remarkable things Ron has done though, so rest assured.

oh wait what did you say about him just existing and not working for anything? If I recall correctly, he did just as well as Harry did in school and didn't score well only in subjects he didn't care about. Which is true for most people except for Hermione who has an eidetic memory which not everyone has, understandably. Rote memorization is not the best way to get by in life, by the way.

what are the "so many reasons" behind why Harry is the best fit for Hermione? Kindly share so I can rebut those too, I'm rather free nowadays, my finals have been cancelled. You say there are so many reasons but don't even give one, yet you want me to take you seriously. I'm afraid that's impossible.

Romione shipper here, i don't dislike Hermione. I haven't met or seen many people in the book!romione fandom who dislike Hermione (except for Movie!Hermione). The question of someone you like ending up with someone you dislike doesn't particularly make sense. In Friends, Chandler ends up with Monica: now I'm not the biggest Monica fan (I don't hate her but I don't like her very much either) but they are my favorite couple because they make sense. It's about compatibility and character traits, not liking or disliking because that's just a set-up for a ghastly invitation for people to pair up hideousness. "Oh yeah, I like Harry and I also like Hagrid, they should be together. I mean it would be very very disgusting but that's my logic, now, you can't fight it. "- that's how you sound. Please read what you write. Your logic is just...abysmal. That's all I can say without breaking my resolve and berating you with colorful profanities.

This is without the doubt, the easiest one to rebut. It's a delight to see such terrible arguments at my disposal. Come on, dear Harmione shippers, write something that makes me question my choices, not things that make me scoff in disbelief.

In this case, you're essentially providing us with theories. Unproved theories and speculation of what you believe because you'd say anything you like. Where's the proof of your theory, though? Where is that crazy radical Romione shipper who does this? Kindly show me these people. Oh yes, you wanna say we objectify Hermione and disrespect her and view her as a prize. This aches me, that you believe this. No one has ever insinuated this, ever, in the history of anything. What is this winner-loser theory? How do you round off Harry Potter to "an alpha-male ends up with lead-lady" trope and still say you're a fan of the series? Harry Potter doesn't fit in with that format. Ron, Hermione and Harry are co-heroes. Similar to how there's no main character in Friends or the Heroes of Olympus series or the Avengers. We're not living in the 80s anymore. Hermione will be a hero, invariably whether she ends up with Harry, Ron or no one. She ends up with Ron and that's it. Talking about her like this doesn't make you sound any better either. Now you're calling me a misogynist because I don't support the ship of two people who describe themselves as siblings. That's very mature of you. Well here's the thing- I'm not a misogynist. It's as simple as that. I believe that women are capable of anything and everything. I believe Hermione is an amazing person and she is a hero and a different person. I believe the series would be impossible without her. I believe she is no one's prize. There's no requirement of a prize. I just think, similar to canon and the truth and her romantic interest, she will have a great relationship with Ron. There's nothing complex or deep about it, really. No personal weird-thing, no psychological complex, no internalized misogyny. There's nothing deeper than what I said. I am not sexist. I am a feminist. I am all for women empowerment. I love women with the fabric of my being. I love Hermione. I think she's amazing. You only become sexist when you ship people with unstable power dynamics, a bully-victim relation or something of the sort. Neither Romione, nor Harmione are sexist. Heck if you paired Neville with Hermione you wouldn't be sexist. And I hate talking about this so much, I can't even tell you. This talk does make it sound like I treat Hermione like an object and I assure you I respect her and I normally won't talk like this unless someone just outright calls me sexist for something that's not sexist. And this is that situation.

in the case of Romione, no one is too good for anyone. Both are amazing people who're heroes and have done amazing work. That's all I have to say. There's no league, they are romantically interested in each other. I have no intention on sounding lame, but, in love there is no league. As long as you're not putting in any effort and are extremely lazy and leech off of your partner, there is no such concept and no, Hermione is not "too good" for him. Unless of course you're talking about movie Hermione, who is too good for anyone.

5) (halftime!)

oh yes they try to pull this off and wonder why we hate them. Classic. This person likes to sound british, so let's switch up our language, yeah? At least then I won't be out of my element. Let me correct ya, Ron at his best is an amazing, loyal, friendly, brave, strategic hero. There you have it. Ron and 'git' can't be used in the same sentence. Now if you talk about Ron's achievements, I re-iterate you to point two. If it's too much work, here:

1) fights a troll when he's 11

2) is willing to sacrifice himself when he's 11

3) stands up for his friends

4) makes sure Harry feels like he belongs in the family

5) worries about Harry and rescues him from literal jail

6) stands up against Draco rather than by-standing and enabling his behavior

7) tries his level best to make sure Norbert the dragon is in safe hands and carries it out, albeit not in perfection

8) is with Harry every step of the way in his confronting the basilisk

9) sends Harry and Hermione long letters and calls them often to check up on them

10) stands up on a bitten leg to defend his best friend

11) always apologizes for any of his mistakes and is forgiving when others wrong him

12) works his way to join the Quidditch team unlike Draco who most certainly bought his way in

13) destroys at least 2 horcruxes

14) finds out how to defeat a horcrux

15) has an excellent enough memory and observation to notice Harry speaking parseltongue and also using it to his benefit which proves he's resourceful

hey, see, I like Ron and I took the time to copy-paste this instead of asking you to scroll up. And I'm a lot of bad things but I am not lazy. I stick to my deadlines like Hermione. I start my homework in library class and continue it during phys ed the day its given. And I am not exaggerating. Bloody hell, I wish I was. I'm the ceo of deadlines, mate, don't tempt me! So you can see that Ron is much more than just a "nice bloke". And being a "nice bloke" isn't a bad thing either. He's all the things I said: intuitive, strategic, helpful, loyal and on top of that he's also a nice person. Yes, I do see a bit of myself in Ron. I do. I see the insecure side. I waste my time hating myself and criticizing myself and undermining myself, telling me I'm no good. But Ron overcomes that. He inspires me to appreciate myself. Is that a bad thing? Are you going to shame me for having a low self-esteem? Do you want to worsen my low self-esteem and make me feel more like shit?

Now the person who replied to your comment saying, "he isn't a nice bloke most of time.", he is. He is not being nice twice in a span of 7 years. How often do you act rudely or with jealousy? Wasn't Harry yelling at everyone in caps lock in OOTP. Now I don't condemn him for that because he's a fucking hormonal teenager like me and that would make me a hypocrite, but by your logic why don't you condemn him? Or why not condemn Hermione for saying "I only date good Quidditch players" and shoving canaries at Ron's face because someone else kissed him, while she kept using Krum and Cormac to make him jealous. She wasn't being a nice girl, then, was she? Now, once again, i don't dislike her or hold that against her because guess what, mate, I'm a hormonal teenage girl who gets jealous most of the time and would probably react in a similar fashion in the spur of the moment (Not defending her actions here, just putting myself in her shoes.) In short, Ron is a nice bloke MOST OF THE TIME.

It would be misogynistic to think that. The thing is, NO ONE DOES my dear friend! My dear daft friend. I have never heard anyone say that! why are you so hell-bent on portraying us as misogynists when no one ever says that? Stop assuming. Just stop. You are crossing a limit here, aren't you? Yes you are. You cannot say these sort of things. We never said that or believed that, no one ever said this to be a reason to ship Romione. God what is wrong with you? Literally, stop fucking ASSUMING god damn it! Do you want me to assume things about Harmione shippers? Do you want me to go there? Because I will go there! I will go there the moment you tell me to. Just challenge me.

Ron is not a perfect best boi , the reason why so many of us like him is that he's imperfect and tries to become better through the course of time. You are once again assuming and I am once again asking you to stop.

Ron might be an ordinary wizard. He might be poor, sure, but he's a pure-blood and won't face much if he chose not to fight. But he did. He fought. Now I identify with Ron's attitude a fair bit, but I am also likely to spend my day in a library without noticing. People aren't one dimensional. Stop trying to act like you're a psychologist, i know you're not. I don't even think Hermione's overbearing at all! You just insulted someone you're a big fan of. Jesus.

Both Hermione and Ron are strategic, jealous, passionate, feisty, argumentative, intellectual...

that's like 6 similarities. They aren't polar opposites in the slightest. Their differences are just: workaholic, not workaholic. Nerd, not a nerd. Like that's fucking it, man!

being relaxed doesn't make you less independent or driven. A relaxed and levelheaded Hermione will think through things, not be impulsive, not panic etc. She doesn't need Ron. I don't understand your obsession with acting like we ever insinuated that. Then she doesn't need Harry either lol. Stop shipping her with Harry, then or like shut the fuck up. Being a bit relaxed won't stop her or anyone from hitting great strides. Just don't get relaxed to the point you're lazy and casual about everything, that's it.

What do you mean? Ron is balanced. He does finish his work on time. And even if he does procrastinate, she could also help him not and be more driven. Of course, this is an open invitation for you to call me a sexist bitch because I said that she could help him and now you'll think her goal is to help him become better yada yada yada. Fuck off. Defeating the horcrux taught him enough. He respected her. He remembered about the elves when she didn't. He begged to be tortured instead of her. He wouldn't need it because school work and jobs are different and the same person might perceive those differently. Calmness and relaxation doesn't hinder your potential. Not caring and laziness does. You can't function if you work and are stressed 24/7 with zero breaks. Period.

10)

No i do not want (nor does anyone want) Hermione to become Ron. Being slightly calmer doesn't change up your personality. I'm sure many people dislike those sort of fanfics without a doubt. I hate OOC and I don't want Hermione to lose her intellect with Ron because that makes no sense. Ron himself is intellectual and loves arguing with her. They'd boost each other, more like it.

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okay thats it i am exhausted as fuck. thanks for reading, i appreciate it. notes and reblogs are appreciated, this takes work.

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rachelbethhines · 3 years

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Vintage Shows to Watch While You Wait for the Next Episode of WandaVision - The 60s

So the 60s is the era that Wandavision pulls most heavily from for it’s inspiration. So much so that one could make the argument that each of the first three episodes are all set in the 1960s. Episode one pulls from the early 60s with multiple Dick Van Dyke refences, episode two is very Bewitched inspired, and episode three is aesthetically very similar to The Brady Bunch which started in ‘69. As such it was hard to narrow down the list for this decade and I had to get creative in some ways.

1. The Andy Griffith Show (1960 - 1968)

The Andy Griffith Show gets kind of a bad rap now a days for being, supposedly, a conservative’s wet dream. People claiming it as such have apparently never actually seen the series. Oh yes, it’s very much set in white rural 60s America and will occasionally present the obliviously outdated joke, but the story of a widowed sheriff being the only sane man in a small town full of lovable lunatics, who prefers to solve his and others problems with negotiation and hair brained schemes as opposed to violence has far more in common with modern day Steven Universe than whatever genocidal fantasy fake rednecks have in their heads.

As the gif above shows Andy Griffith was very subtlety progressive for its time. Andy was a stanch pacifist, pro-gun control, treated drug addicts and prisoners with respect, and all the women he would date had careers, ect. and so on. It’s not a satire making any sort of grand political statements but the series had a moral center that was far more left than many realize.

But if it’s not a satire, then what type of comedy is it?

The Andy Griffith Show excels in what I like to call, ‘awkward comedy’. See everyone in Mayberry is far too nice to just come out and tell a character they’re making an ass of themselves, so therefore whoever is the idiot punching bag of the episode’s focus must slowly unravel as everyone looks on in helpless pity until said character realizes the folly of their ways and the townsfolk come together to make them feel happy and accepted once more. Wandavision takes this polite idyllic awkwardness and plays it up for horror instead of laughs.

2. The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961 - 1966)

The creators of Wandavision actually met with Dick Van Dyke himself to pick his brain and learn how sitcoms were made back then. Paul Bentley also took inspiration from Van Dyke in his performance of the sitcom version of Vision, while Olsen stated Mary Tylor Moore had a heavy influence on her character of Wanda. But more than just being a point of homage, The Dick Van Dyke Show was hugely influential in modernizing the family sitcom and breaking a lot of the unspoken traditions and ‘rules’ of the 50s television era. It’s also just really, really funny.

3.The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962 - 1965)

Bit of a cheat here. Alfred Hitchcock Presents actually started in 1955 as a half hour anthology show, but in ‘62 the show got a revamp and was extended into a full hour tv series. I knew I wanted The Twilight Zone to be covered in my episode one recap, but ‘The Master of Suspense’ couldn’t be forgotten. While The Twilight Zone reveled in the surreal and supernatural, Alfred Hitchcock pioneered the thriller genre and made real life seem dangerous, horrifying, and other worldly.

4. Doctor Who (1963 - present day) vs Star Trek (1966 - present day)

Just like how westerns dominated the air waves during the 50s, science fiction was the center of the cultural zeitgeist of the 60s. From Lost in Space to My Favorite Martian, space aliens and robots were everywhere. So naturally I had to name drop the two sci-fi juggernauts that still air to this today. If you thought that the rivalry between Star Wars and Star Trek was bad then you’ve never seen a chat full of Whovians and Trekkies duking it out over who is the better monster, the Borg or the Cyberman. But which one has the more influence over Wandavision?

Well Star Trek owes it’s existence to sitcoms. As with The Twilight Zone before it, Star Trek was produced by Desilu Productions and it’s co-founder and CEO, Lucille Ball, was the series biggest supporter behind the scenes, lobbying for it when it faced early cancelation. As with all things sitcomy, everything ties back to I Love Lucy in the end. However despite that little backstory, it would seem that the series has very little to do with Wandavision itself beyond being quintessentially American.

I would argue that Wandavision owes much to Doctor Who though. Arguably more so than any show mentioned in this retrospective. Time travel, alternate realities, trouble in quite suburbia, brainwashing, people coming back from the dead, ect... just about every trope you can find in Wandavision has also appeared in Doctor Who at some point. As a series that can go anywhere and do anything, Doctor Who was a pioneer of marrying genres in new and interesting ways.

5. Bewitched (1964 - 1972) and I Dream of Jeannie (1965 - 1970)

It’s hard to pick one series over another because they’re essentially the same show. A mortal man falls in love with a magical girl who upends their lives with magic filled hijinks as they try their best not to have their secret discovered by the rest of the world. And both have their fingerprints all over the DNA of Wandavision.

There’s only two core differences; Samantha and Jeannie have completely different personalities, with Sam being confident and knowledgeable and Jeannie being naïve and oblivious, along with their relationships with their respective men, Sam and Darrin being married and in love at the start of the series and Jeannie chasing after Tony in the beginning in a will they/won’t they affair, finally only getting together in the last season.

6. The Munsters (1964 - 1966) vs The Adams Family (1964 - 1966)

Fans of these two shows are forever sadden that there never was a crossover between them. Because they’d fit perfectly together. Both shows are about a surreal and macabre family living in American suburbia and disrupting the lives of their neighbors with their otherworldly hijinks. Sound familiar?

The main difference between the two shows is the way the characters viewed their placement in the world they inhabit.

The Munsters were always oblivious to the fact that didn’t fit in. They just automatically assumed everyone had the same personal tastes as them. Whenever they encountered anyone who behaved strangely around them they would write that person off as being the odd one rather than questioning themselves. As such the main cast was structured like a stereotypical sitcom family who just happened to be classic movie monsters.

The Addams were well aware that they were abnormal and they loved it! They lived life with in their own little world and didn’t care what anyone thought of them. As such the characters were far more colorful and quirky as individuals but there was little in the way of refences to other horror franchises beyond just a general love of the twisted and strange.

7. Green Acres (1965 - 1971) and the Rual-verse (1962 - 1971)

So the MCU is not the first franchise to bring viewers an interconnected universe to the small screen. Far from it, as sitcoms had been doing this for decades, starting with the ‘rualverse’. Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, and Green Acres were all produced by the same company and were treated as spinoffs of each other, complete with crossovers and shared characters and sets.

Of the three, the last show, Green Acres, has the most in common with Wandavision. A well to do businessman and his lovely socialite wife settle down in small town America on a farm in order to get away from the stresses of city life, only to find new stresses in the country. Eva Gabor, herself a natural Hungarian, plays the character of Lisa as Hungarian making her one of the few non-native born Americans on tv screens during the cold war. Despite her posh nature and original protests to the move, Lisa assimilates to the rural life far easier than her husband, Oliver. Who, as the main comedic thread, can’t comprehend his new quirky neighbors’ odd and often illogical behavior.

8. Hogan’s Heroes (1965 - 1971) and Get Smart (1965 - 1969)

So as comic fans have been quick to point out, it’s looking like both A.I.M. (Hydra) and Sword (Shield) will be players in the story of Wandavision. To commemorate that here’s two shows to represent those opposing sides. Although in truth, neither series has anything else in common with each other but I need to condense things down someway.

In Hydra’s corner we got Hogan’s Heroes. A show all about taking down Nazis from within.

I love, love, love, ‘robin hood’ comedies where a group of con artists try week after to week to pull one over the establishment. The Phil Silvers Show, Mchale's Navy, and Top Cat, just to name a few examples are all childhood favorites of mine. However while those shows had a lot of morally ambiguous characters, Hogan’s Heroes has very clear cut good guys and bad guys, cause the bad guys are Nazis and the show relentless makes fun of the third reich as should we all. In fact I was watching Hogan’s Heroes while waiting for the GA run off election results. Fortunately my home state decided to kick out our own brand of Nazis this year.

For Shield, we got the ultimate spy spoof, Get Smart. Starring, Inspector Gadget himself, Don Adams, as the bumbling Maxwell Smart. Get Smart, is a hilarious send up of Cold War espionage but the real selling point of the show, imho, is Max and his co-worker 99′s relationship. You can cut the sexual tension in the air with a knife all while laughing your ass off.

9. Batman (1966 - 1968)

First was Superman and then came Batman. Yet while Superman was a serious action show, Batman was a straight up comedy. Showcasing that superheroes could indeed be funny.

Also shout out for Batman being the only show on this list to have an actual crossover with it’s competitor, The Green Hornet.

10. Julia (1968 - 1971)

Since episode two features the first appearances of Herb and Monica, let’s highlight the first black led sitcom since the cancelation of Amos ‘n Andy over a decade earlier. The show focuses on single mother and military nurse, Julia, as she tries to live her life without her recently decease husband, who was killed in Vietnam, as she tries to raise their six year old son on her own.

The series is cute. It’s more of a throw back to earlier family sitcoms where there’s no fantasy and life lessons are the name of the game. It’s the fact that the main character is a single black woman is what made the show so subversive and important at the time.

Runner Ups

There’s much good stuff in the 60s, so here’s some others that didn’t make the cut but I would recommend anyways.

Car 54, Where Are You? (1961 - 1963)

I call this the Brooklynn 99 of the 1960s. Bumbling but well meaning Officer Toody longs to do good in the world and help anyone in need, but often screws things up with his ill thought out schemes. He often drags his best friend and partner, the competent but anxiety riddled, Muldoon into his escapades.

Mr. Ed (1961 - 1966)

The grandfather of the sarcastic talking pet trope.

The Jetsons (1962 - 1963 and 1985 - 1987)

Hanna-Barbera often took popular sitcoms and just repackaged them as cartoons with a fantasy theme to them. The Jetsons has no singular show that it rips-off but is rather more a grab bag of sitcom tropes that feature, robots, computers, and flying cars.

The Outer Limits (1963 - 1965)

The Outer Limits was The Twilight Zone’s biggest competitor in terms of being a sic-fi/horror anthology series.

Gillian’s Island (1964 - 1967)

The only comparison to WandaVision I could think of was that this is a sitcom about people being trapped in one place. But by that point I was running out of room on the list. Still it’s one of the funniest shows on here.

So yeah, this took longer than expected cause there’s a lot, here. Hopefully the 70s will be easier. Which I’ll post on Friday.

#wandavision #sitcoms #1960s #dick van dyke #bewitched

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fandom-blackhole · 3 years

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Oooh oh oh! Me!! I have an AU!! Maybe even two? Both are modern!AU’s so feel free to go with anything modern in general + bucketheads but I also had these in mind:

1. Lately I’ve read this yoga instructor Din AU from @gaiuswrites and I was wondering about instructor-like AUs in general? Yoga Din owns my heart now but like if you want to go with like idk math tutor Paz or motorcycle instructor Boba or something - by all means: go ahead

2. KINDERGARTEN AU. Are they the teacher?? Or do they have a crush on the teacher???? Who knows? Perhaps even a babysitter??? Just kids + mandos make me vibrating with excitement (*ahem* I’m sure it keeps them excited in another way too but that’s a thot for another day)

Ooooohhh this is good, I like both of these. And since I'm doing two im doing them under a cut so the post isn't super long...

Instructor AU & Kindergarten AU

Din-

Instructor AU

Ok so for this AU I think Din being a sign language instructor would be an interesting concept. And you are taking his classes because you need them for your job or you have a family member that is deaf.

Din's classes aren't that big and he usually has his son, Grogu, with him, who is mute and only speaks through sign

One evening you came to class and you were the only one to show up that night so the two of you mostly talked and got to know each other

That’s how you found out that Din himself was deaf in one ear and that’s why he knew sign even before he got Grogu

The two of you grew closer and after that night, Din asked you on a date

Kindergarten AU

So for Din, you are Grogu’s kindergarten teacher and Din is one of the dads that you just watch and are like goddamn if only he was single, what only made it worse was he was on the local fire department

Then Grogu bites another child and you have to call Din into your class after school to have a small talk. That small talk ends up taking a lot longer than you thought and as Grogu played the two of you chatted, Din explained that he was a single parent and had adopted Grogu because after he saved him from an abandoned building Grogu clung to Din and refused to leave his side

After that Din started waiting longer when he picked up Grogu just so he could chat with you for a little bit, and finally one day you shyly had him your phone number saying that you’d like to chat more away from the school

After that, the two of you end up going on numerous dates, both with and without Grogu. You find out Din is a secret romantic and he is always super sweet on the dates

Then he picked you up for a date one night and drove you to a small park away from town. There he set up a picnic and it was so cute and sweet and perfect, but then he had proposed. (After you said yes, it was practically night and Din may or may not have made love to you on that picnic blanket)

Boba-

Instructor AU

So for Boba, I thought it would be really cool for him to be a self-defense instructor and you just moved to the city and wanted to take classes because you worked late at night and just wanted to be prepared

Boba usually taught in bigger classes, but when he saw that you were struggling with a few things he invited you to come at a different time so he could teach you one on one (and it had nothing to do with the fact that he had found himself very attracted to you, or how his co-instructor Fennec had been teasing him about you)

The first solo session went smoothly and you found yourself blushes and biting your lip whenever Boba would come up behind you to show how to move your arm or move your hips

The tension only grew within your solo lessons with Boba, but neither of you acknowledged it and just working around it

Then one lesson Boba decided to test your skills in a one-on-one spar, the first few times he overcame you, but to both of your surprise, you were able to get him on the floor and pin him. That tension, yeah that doesn’t exactly exist anymore but you do need help walking to Boba’s car afterward

Kindergarten AU

So Boba in this AU is going to be more of a Babysitter AU. So Boba owns some big corporation and that means he works late nights often so he doesnt get to be home often in the evenings, so enter you a poor college student that comes in and watches his son, Jango.

You never ask about little Jango’s mother and Boba never talks about it, which doesn’t bother you.

Boba pays you more than he should but shrugs it off saying that you are a good babysitter, Jango loves you, and he remembers being a broke college student

The nights that you work for Boba,you always make sure to cook a warm meal for both Jango and Boba, keeping Boba’s portion in the microwave for when he gets home and making sure there is enough leftovers for lunch tomorrow for Boba

You tend to work on homework on his coffee table after Jango goes to bed until Boba comes home. One night you end up falling asleep while studying and when you wake up you findyourself in Boba’s bed. You jump up surprised only for Boba to walk out from his ensuite bathroom saying, “Easy little one, youre too tired to drive hime tonight so you are staying here.”

Bonus: You both definitely end up fucking and the next morning you wake up cuddled to his chest and without even opening his eyes Boba tlls you you should move in with them

Paz-

Instructor AU

So Paz is like canonically a man that knows his way around weapons, so for this AU I want to make Paz a shooting/gun instructor

You take his class for some reason or another and you are just instantly taken by this huge man that is just so gentle with how he hands both his guns and the people he is teaching

Once one of the girls in your small class brought her small child because she didn’t have anyone to watch him so Paz puts earmuffs of the kid and carries him around on his shoulders the whole time, and you watched him sneak the kid a sucker after the class was over

Paz tends to linger around you alot when teaching or watching you hold or handle the guns, and the two of you just pine after eachother throughout the entire course

On the last day of class you ask Paz shyly if he had plans after class, he had planned to go drinking with Din but he canceled immediately, and told you no and the two of you went to a small restaurant and ended up staying and talking so long that you were there until closing

Kindergarten AU

Paz is the teacher in this AU and you are a single mother of twins, a boy and girl

One day you are late to pick them up because your boss had been being a jackass to you, and you walk in ready to start apologizing only to stop speechless, finding Paz on the floor redoing your little girl’s hair and telling a story that had both children captivated

When your kids notice you they get upset, not wanting to leave Paz’s company, you just turn to apologize to Paz for being late, he just tells you that it was fine. But you still feel guilty so you invite him over for dinner as a thank you

That night the four of you each a homemade meal and Paz does nothing but compliment your small home and cooking all the while keeping your kids entertained

Paz stays well after the kids go to bed and as the two of you sit on the couch you talking you find yourself eventually kissing him while sitting on his lap

Sorry for taking so long with this, but I hope you like it!

#anon thots #din djarin x reader #din x reader #boba fett x reader #boba x reader #paz vizsla x reader #paz x reader

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misterbitches · 3 years

Text

I ship muren and li cheng bc i only saw it through gifs then i watched this episode cos i was like im only starting this show if they kiss im waiting and they did and it was nice and i got so anxious that i was about to fucking vomit. I really like them together. The top/bottom shit is dumb and i hope if they must mention it they all build a bridge and get over it so they can switch cos who gives a shit. I didnt realize how large they all are like most “tall” men on tv are lying. But bc that kid is so thin and tall and the other one (idk the stepbrother) is huge too. Li cheng is shorter than them both but more ~manly~ but still short so why doesnt he take a DICK UP HIS BUTT XD since that’s all that fucking matters and there’s only 2 genders and 2 eays to have sex lmao so nothing else otherwise ur screwed

Hd a terrible past couple of weeks personally and because i keep seeing my peopl eget murdered and things ripped from us ^_____^ anyway here’s Some libertatrian communist dumb bitch discoars so i’ll tag it:

keep in mind these are my opinions’”” when i engage in discourse. I am not the end all be all and I don’t need you to agree. There’s some shit I am non-negotiable on but thsi is just exchanging of information. Any authoratative tone I take on comes from my beliefs, my life, my experiences, and what I choose to cultivate as a person and an artist. I dont have control over your feelings, you do. If it hurts you then either tell me the issue and be PRECISE about it, understand that context matters which is why i type so much in engagement, and do not fucking lie or misconstrue my words. Do not call me western ever in your life either. I am a black-american. I have adhd and bc i am a black woman if ur automatically thinking im brolic i am accepting money in my paypal for ur wellbeing to get me to shut the fuck up.Thanks.

The stepbrothers storyline is stupid and lazy writing. I really want to counter people that say it’s written well and that it’s interesting because it isn’t. Even if it was illicit and fucked we can write a story out about this. Let’s rethink what they could have done shall we:

- become stepbrothers at about 16 and their parents mismanage the relationship and they fail in trying to get an integrated family together (this is what happened in the #iconic transit girls and that was fuckin’ weird but hey dude guess what we watched it and it was weird but not unethical and we know one is like 19 and the other is 21 and a girl so it’s like wow you avoided so much and handled their stepsister story very…….um lightly given the end lmao but it was there and people had AGENCY)

-OR you realize that freak is obsessed with him and then he realizes it and is like “bitch i swear to god” and in typical shtity trope BL fashion they can find a way from obsession, to loss and independence when you lose your obsession, to “love” if they choose

- have the fucked up shit but make it clear what the issues are and you literally cannot write your way out of it so do not try

But why can’t fucked up things be shown? Also this is realistic.

0. Well according to you but no one said that they can’t. So that’s on your interpretation of critique (that is, again, not bullying or harassment.) They can, i just gave plenty of scenarios in which it is affective and not just annoying to witness, trope-y, and frankly ridiculous and offensive. Sorry! They don’t do it well. You can come up with alternatives too. See #2 btw.

1. No it isn’t doing a good job of reflecting life because life has consequences. The exaggeration in drama doesn’t mean the arc shouldn’t be there. Almost always things that aren’t heavy with the message or meant to be sobering in a deep way are COMPELLING. The realism is the basis for art because we are human. This is not the way real humans act.

Someone said Tharn Type was mature and I had to laugh because no, no one acts that way and is “in love” if they act that way that means they fucking hate each other and they’re immature and frankly it’s just not that interesting for many of us to watch because the dramatization of the “realism” is fucking bonkers. That was such poor writing it is unbelievable and someone has the audacityt o say it’s how real adults act. Fucking murder me if I’m with someone for 7 years and we break up over a miscommunication and for some reason I am not as horny as my always horny boyfriend. The fuck? What kind of lives do you lead? Either you are not an adult or you are an adult who needs therapy.

I also hear the “realistic” argument but then people try and temper it with “but also it’s fiction.” What do you think fiction is? Why do you think filmmaking exists? Number one, it’s propaganda in the sense that you want others to buy into your presentation and see what you see. That means that the creators are telling people and influencing them WITH ART BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT IT IS about their feelings around a situation. That’s why it is imperative to be responsible as a filmmaker and artist and underline the deepness of creepiness if that’s what they want. If they want to relay that rape sometimes ok and psychos are crazy so they get boy (??!?!?!? BITCH?) then they achieved it with no innovative information. We know people get raped bc we are human beings and many of us live with that fear. You know, being the target demo and all. And bc BL loves that trope it’s rape fantasy peddled to young people and women. Just like shitty wattpad fics or NYT best sellers. Hooray, what now? Or are you trying to purport that this isn’t glorified fanfiction? Which it literally is

2. This is the issue with these shows. No one is saying that fucked up shit cannot be shown. There’s a film about a woman who is raped and she falls in love with her rapist (because he was masked but i think we find out later that she knows. Binoche is in it.) I have no desire for that film—i think it’s by a man and i extra dont care—but I hear it’s sort of powerful for many. I heard it was a good film. But the act itself is always eschewed and the conflict comes from how fucking ridiculous it is especially finding out that she knows. The power imbalance adn the possibility. They may not have handled it in a way I would have cared for but it was there.

There’s simply no imagination because these people do not care that much and aren’t great writers and filmmakers because they simply do not have to be. Sorry.

The industry doesn’t rely on the best they rely on efficiency (this is everywhere.) You can tell by the camera angles, the editing, the camera itself (idk if it is multicam but the flatness is typical soap flatness without the glowboxes to soften their faces.) Simple constant lighting. Now the surroundings are mostly beautiful. But even to some of the costumes. And those edits are abysmal, some of that camera work.

So with all that said even with the couple I extremely enjoy I see its (H4) faults. Add into that a lazily thrown together “shocking” love and if they are trying to get us to feel a type of way about its sexiness they fail. This is why movies like 50sog, 365 days, etc aren’t enjoyable to people because it’s fucking strange situations that they dont want to entangle or make enjoyable to viewers across the board. They know what people will take. It’s just that bitch what are we here for if even the sexiness isn’t there for ur stupid story.

At least with that teenager and 30 yr old man in MODC (which i do not love but i like them in theory if it wasnt totally repulsive to me and also if it was developed in a way that was good TO ME) they had their, er, “sex appeal” i talk about this as well the main couple in MODC to me, visually, was a miss. Not bc whatshisface was small and stuff but bc he was so sickly and they needed that to propel the story but it was just not appealing given how the story progressed. A missed opportunity in tying the two together besides making him look waif-y and sickly only to have the “did ur mom die in a car crash? No, cancer” type of move in not another teen movie. But the opposite. And not funny. Wayne tho????? GORL. Eggs. Cracked.

fandoms have a very warped sense of harrassment and discourse.

Most fandoms have harassers who are “protecting” the cast and crew who don’t need their protection (or maybe the crew does since they probably dont get paid well but why the fuck would anyone care about that lol) but very few have the people who have concerns or massive critique about the show are not going to be “bullying.”

If people are saying “if you like xyz, u suck” then sure it may suck for you to see but who fucking cares. Either talk to the person or don’t be friends with them. That is not bullying or harrassment. Things that are shitty get criticized. Fuck, things that aren’t shitty don’t. Get away from this idea of cancel culture and people misunderstanding the story. We have the ability to.

Think beyond your noses of personal preference. You don’t have to convince people of what you believe. Discussing it is good but critique is not bullying, harrassment, or hate. Neither is fucking roasting shit because even this shit I like (manner of death lets say) deserves it. Art is meant to be critiqued and if you dont fucking like the bullshit people make then say it. They know stupid stories like this are scandalous and they don’t give a shit in how to present them.

And guess what? You won’t like everybody. Many people can’t stand me i’m sure. Oh well. I mean frankly I don’t like that and I feel very unsettled when I don’t feel understood. That’s ok! I have to temper it. Sometimes calm myself down. I won’t get anything and everything I want. And you won’t like every opinion and sometimes it’s like “man am i a dummy?” But the part of growing up is fucking maanging that and beng honest about “bashing and harrassment” and “bullying” and growing up. Yuo can like what you want the “let people like what they want thing” is so fucking juvenile and THAT is not the real world. Which is probably why so many people feel that way, they dont want to live in the real world. Unfortunately, you do.

Think beyond our noses of personal preference and what we feel emotionally in conjunction with others. You don’t have to convince people of what you believe. And you can say things that you believe to be true but it doesn’t make them so or maybe it isn’t received that way to people. And many times we learn new things in the discussions “oh shit i didn’t see it that way” right? Discussing it is good but critique is not bullying, harrassment, or hate. Neither is fucking roasting shit because even this shit I like (manner of death lets say) deserves it. Art is meant to be critiqued and if you dont fucking like the bullshit people make then say it. They know stupid stories like this are scandalous and they don’t give a shit in how to present them. Usually the “opposition” in these situations aren’t the popular beliefs that permeate through society. Trust me lmao

Antiblackness

Antiblackness is a thing. It permeates everywhere. It permeates in this genre and it permeates in fandom. Get it the fuck together. Also do not conflate cultural relativism with being repsectful. They are not barbarians, they are smart human beings either making work or deciding to. We all have diff cultures but we have fucking sense in what is respectful and not. And if we don’t we fucking learn. You cannot excuse things and say “oh culture” when you have 0 idea of that culture or actual people who are radical etc and are fighting against it. Additionally the word westerner is an ignorant term when referring to people in the US or UK who are black. Because we are not. We extend sympathy to other groups and empathy since we know so there is no inherent power imbalance between a black viewer and their subject. Don’t suggest that because it’s wrong and ahistorical and contextless.

FIRST the fallacy of representation as freedom makes people fucking complacent, individualistic, and doesn’t let them think critically. Consumption and discourse around consumption is not helping material conditions of the marginalized communities in your home, the black ones who are ignored, those intersectionalized in these communities. Groups talk about art and what it means for them outside of just what we see and because we also don’t have access to a bunch of Thai reviews or what movements or going on we are less likely to know if we don’t FUCKING SEARCH for it. Because art is constant...which leads me to....

Representation is difficult. It matters and it doesn’t.

Tthese shows are not meant to overturn the LGBTQ+ community.

There are queer filmmakers and artists in these countries. Deep illustrious film careers or even TV that is moving and deliberate. We can even see it with the dude from “your name engraved” in their short series he was in beforehand. BL is no wa pejorative because it is simply not “qu**r” storytelling whatever that means. But know it has always existed everywhere and there are also out artists or radical artists in all these countries who do no respect mediums that are cash-grabs and poorly made.

ex: As much as “Like in the Movies” sort of isnt for me and is a bit hamfisted you can tell how much love goes into that. Love of the characters, acting, and message. Yes it’s cringey to see some of the lines (like very tbh subtlety wasnt exactly their strong suit) and yea naming them after lenin and marx is just 0ihgoaudgijposkagjihou BUT GUESS WHAT? THEY FUCKING DID IT. THEY TRIED. And class was a large component as well bc u cant fuckin ignore it. The show is aware of the machinations in its world as a show but also in the philippines and for a fuckin reason. And duatarte? Loooooooool so like yea not so sure bl makes him love his ppl but the show isnt trying to do that

It’s not a transgressive genre and it has no reason to be. No ethical anything under the way we live it’s just trying your fucking best to be. That’s it. They serve societal ills and capital’s purposes. Which is fine but it is not revolutionary.

These countries in SEA or even SA do not have as big budget for even mainstream dramas—though things are changing and that’s bc REVENUE like revenue from kpop is fucking huge for SK and again so much about that is bc of what happened in their history from japanese imperialism to WWII to the US—so for “queer” stuff it is sort of now important to make that an export and it sure is one. Not only globally or to the west but a lot of these places make their money within asia (duh!) outside of their countries. OBVIOUSLY. so BL is a way to output and gain money. The thing is, it doesnt seem to be put back into the industry at all. For people in all these countries to make works that aren’t for mainstream or wont reach as many people there’s a difference between trying and just shoving shit in your face and going here it’s gay you like it right? But dont antagonize the inherent patriarchal nature of BL.

Another thing: did you guys know thailand was never colonized? You should look it up. There’s little hints of things in ITSAY to represent french influence still. Isnt that fascinating? Find out why. It’s certainly interesting that the representation, though damaging and dubious many times and also incorrect like any media, is huge in asia and this isnt a commodity here (the US) exactly. A lot of that has to do with colonial ideas of gender of which I am sure. But listen………lmao

Sometimes people dont give a shit. And it very much shows. Here is the thing once again. GOOD TRANSGRESSIVE WORK exists.

Een within the capitalist Bs paradigm or you can see people trying (I can sort of applaud parts of lovely writer) also queer media has always existed everywhere the reason you don’t know about it is because it gets takena nd commodified into a mainstream product. We hvae little incentive, particularly if we are not fans of cinema or art in gen, to search fror others when the output is right here. Being dictated by others and the state and who will give you money. No longer an effort of a cast and crew who want to convey things. But google [any country] independent cinema, radical cinema, queer radical cinema, or even retrospectives on the cinema and rethinking what is queer and radical in film. What if we took that, diluted it, got rid of the creators who put themselves through all the work, ignroe al the nuances and do……………….two actors who are conventionally attractive with no chemistry making out.

It’s the same here lets say daniel kaluuya winning the oscar for the film about the BPP. I heard it was okay and not too offensive but it still isnt’ enough. It still isn’t like hwood isn’t trash, nnati black, misogynistic towards BW and women, and all that other shit. It was pushy but it can’t be enough where we are. Black KKKlansmen i think won an oscar, by circumstance i fuckin hate these award shows they mean nothing, and i like the film a lot but he has his misogynoir still resting in his films even if it is poignant. And it was a film that honestly wasn’t really made for black people. And should all art be a response to direct trauma or trying to make ourselves palatable when we’re just human?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ and it’s importance (capitalism) but also sorta individual responsibility

Considering a lot of these actors are rich and then just dip that’s another problem. Mainstream isn’t what sustains marginalized art ever. It doesn’t change in the vast ways we think it does. What changes is the people of these groups pushing, fighting, forcing and then capitalism trying to make it work under capitalism. It will not. It cannot.

This is why artists and labels often don’t mix or you see people like Sonic Youth doing whatever they want and pissing off their label but making them give them money. Same with Nirvana. Vince Staples. The thing is they can fight and make good shit but what capitalism helps people….not care? They don’t respect the audience? We’re getting those returns on poor executed product placement, lighting, editing, framing, fucking acting. And you surewon’t see mixed black asians in these shows. WHY R U is the oNLY one i have seen it in and he just disappears (but that was pretty cool.) so who the fuck is this representing? And before you start: asian countries are not homogenous the way we believe them to be. There are marginalized communities outside of even mixed people that are harmed. So you can skrrt cause on that one: you’re wrong buddy. But it gives us the IDEA of a paradise which is what they NEED.With representation and visibility comes consequence and responsibility as artists. What it allows them to do is coast and not think complexly because why should they; it’s mostly the fantasies of some older woman who probably has money and much less interaction with the world. It’s bonkers. And what that allows even further is for them to say YOU ARE THE THING THAT YOU CONSUME and the THING THAT YOU CONSUME IS YOURS. It is not, it is not your identity, form a close bond but figure it the fuck out. Especially for adults who are hellbent on twisting their minds into pretzels and can’t acknowledge what’s just laziness in art and not giving a fucking shit. Truly.

There’s damage that has been done from Parasite as he was supported by CJE&M and the bullshit obsession america had and eveyrone’s poor interpretation of it if they are rich. BJH is a socialist and he is a filmmaker. He has made films that are outstanding and cost a lot of money. But now a fear for indie filmmakers is just not being able to raise that much or have that much attention. Getting funding that helps them instead of expecting the Next Big Thing that is a fad because capitalism is trash. Yes this funneling of money is absolutely harmful to us artists. Even buying in is strategic. Additionally, that film is probs one of the most radical films to have that wide release and accolade (unlike “Sorry to Bother You” which i have a lot of thoughts about. One being that asian exports are acceptable but black ones are not. This is an overall art critique and global media critique. Blackness is removed, not respected.) However, filmmaking isn’t green, it can’t be socialist, and it’s a lot of work. They used tons and tons and TONS of water to do a huge beautiful feat but we still know there is a cost. We have to figure that out because it shouldn’t be. It doesn’t go back into the crew’s pockets the way it should and the work becomes that of the director’s and actors solely. It’s fucking hard. We have to do our part but it doesn’t mean we are doing it perfectly. We just have to try to do better. So does BJH cos he needs to not be a misogynist but anyways i digress.

additionally and this is something some users fail to understand: people in the media sphere generally have fucking money. I went to film school that was international with super fucking rich kids. Taiwanese kids, kids from south asia, china, thailand. They had money. No not upper middle class money, not “rich” money, not some paltry 1m that’s chump change. Fucking money. Fucking RICH-RICH. MILLIONAIRES. BILLIONAIRES. WHICH IS DISGUSTING MIGHT I ADD. The domestic people didn’t have the money for school (in the UK) and i am in a massive amount of debt like every other black student that went there. You do not understand how much money is needed to survive so people who turn to these crew positions even casting etc need this fucking money usually. OKAY. A lot of the people that do well in these dumb shows or even on a larger scale HAVE MONEY. The reason these industries are small and struggling is because of lack of people and lack of resources to independent shit because oh gee it takes money to make things.

Why should I try? Well you don’t have to really if you have money or a name. Yet...

We can tell when like those Tik Tok shows or DCOMs dont give a shit (anymore.) You know how frustrated we get when content for young people is garbage? Well, see, BL is literally that under that system. Occasionally we will get something good now but there is virtually no need in any sector in the world at this point to truly figure out how to make it better and what to do to enhance artistic literacy, outreach, teaching people new things, getting people from these communities there and having true realistic says. Art and culture is IMPERATIVE TO WORLD LIBERATION but not when it is so stiffly trying to bend to capital’s idea of progressiveness. No. Neoliberalism. No.

That’s why in a way ITSAY is a huge feat; it takes from films etc and they clearly had money (the actors rae rich too which….lmaooooo j’aime pas) but it was a respected fucking script, acting was important, blocking, framing. There’s very little to critique as a visual medium for that because I understand what they are trying to do, their market is going to be mostly young girls, but they RESPECT THE FUCKING AUDIENCE. And guess what guys? You can make money from it!!!! WOAH! Since that may be the only goal which is disgusting and repulsive.

HOWEVER AND THIS IS WHAT IS SAD: itsay is an ex of a great show however knowing the actors backgrounds and the pseudo trouble it stirred when they weren’t supporting people protesting against the coup in the summer it really put a damper on my enjoyment. And this is how we can see that:

a) it’s honestly just a show and a good one but b) now what?

These kids (actors, who are like idk 19? 20?) are rich and not saying anything while countless actors, who were filming, did. Even tul who has $$$$ and the thing is the protesting against the coup legitimately attacks the rich. As it should. The protests going on were cries for help, against a dictatorship and fucking coup, asking people to get fucking help for covid, having kids be able to live. There’s a mini on VICE about this and it probably doesnt go too in depth but there’s a kid in there who talks about his friends getting into drugs and how he just wants to make music, have fun, skateboard. And it’s harrowing to see. This is a direct example of what these things do and don’t do. Yea we know a good show is here, we know growing up and slice of life, we know this is a bit of escapism and idealism but the idealism is reflected in the way these actors also choose to live their lives. So what progress? To who? For who? How is this helping me? What purpose does it serve? I say ITSAY serves its purpose as a piece and a glimpse into possibility of growing up but i do not say it antagonizes a broader issue that needs to be relevant in some sense but simply is not. It’s very singleminded and, well, it’s sort of like “besides my sexuality, what do i have to worry about?” But for real humans like....a lot. I do not respect their decision at all.

Why can’t we do our jobs and make something decent and respect our audience? No time, gotta make that sweet sweet sweet cash baybee. Look how progressive we are! Don’t look at history and material conditions. Thanks in advance, management.

History 4 does not have that respect. Many of these shows do not. Sometimes we hit good, sometimes we don’t. But in the end we cannot settle. And I won’t. If I am critiquing something I will not be shy and if I am meant to enjoy something as escapism then these shows NEED to highlight that and it’s rare sometimes (the best twins is a good reminder like that show is bad but man do i Brain Empty when i turn it on and i like that and there’s not much in it that makes me want to kill myself from annoyance but there are transphobic jokes i dont love however the whole show is a comedy about this dude’s crazy homophobic sister and she is constantly positioned as wrong and they talk about the aforementioned trans women as the actor was in drag. Interesting that they can manage that, huh?)

Oh btw.....taiwan has a very complicated history but ignore all the bad stuff it’s good now you can kinda sorta get married and stuff. KMT? You know how i learned that? I care about human beings and read about it lmao. I am not Taiwanese and look at that. So now I have historical and DIALECTICAL~**~*~****~*~*~ context so i can judge it as an artist, a black woman from america, and from the knowledge i have to pick up on their history to see if this fits into a broader picture besides the micro-one of sexuality on an individualized level. And this is kinda where it comes full circle: these shows are not you, you are not them, they do not exist in a vacuum because nothing does. The failure to critique now means continuing on as it has and it will still do so. History and time are not linear in the sense we think it is. Someitmes things are better, sometimes things feel more austere. We are not living under liberation though and these shows are not going to do so. So they are not US nor are they for a nebulous “us” of which the groups are all fractured and have diff opinions anyway (my opinion as a black american is going to vary from an asian woman’s say and that could really clash and i do not feel solidarity with all those in every community i am for several reasons.)

Final thots that have taken up my time and the only thing i actually wanted to write but got distracted:

Anyway my dissertation is that I ilke Muren and LiCheng a lot a lot and i like how cute they are and how truly dumb li cheng is. This is an example of mostly good writing, decent actors, nice chemistry, and sort of a calmness to them. And I super enjoy how Muren is pretty forward with LC in the sense that being together is like very important to truly be together. When he was like “no i didnt forget!” Or when LC asked him something in the office I forget it was 6 am and again i almost threw up and muren nodded and then LC leaned on him. Very cute. I want more of them tho i may have to skip that othre couple (the cameo the ones from MODC) but omfg the younger one HIS HAIR GREW SO MUCH HE LOOKS SO MATURE AND CUTE OMFGIJ0HUG9SAOGIJPKOAGJSIOHUAGIJP hahhaha the one good thing i will say about THEM.idk how old the actor is i figure he was young idk it makes me happy to see him he’s very cute. I hope he’s in something i can watch and not gag at. Is he hot? Who knows but he is a cutie!!

Anyway muren and lc have a good thing going it’s nice to watch ho\pe they dont fuck it up but im truly a sucker for some true finds 2 luvas i think some user on her\e was like i’m not a fan of friends ot lovers bc it doesn’t seem like they’re actually friends and maybe they were referring to this show idk. But it made me think and it was a very good observation. So i think they are friends and also luvrs <3

#history 4 #history 4: close to you #i told sunset about you #a thot #tharntype #lovely writer #bl fandom #idk #lol #long

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jenniferxprentiss · 4 years

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You Are In Love -> 9/?

chapter nine. three hearts.

Will had done exactly what Emily warned her he would do, told her he was coming and canceled a little under an hour before the appointment. The way he treated JJ and their unborn child never failed to fill Emily with a seething anger, heart racing and breath quickening at only the thought of him. She had to suppress a smile at the memory of the sickening crack when her fist connected with his face, easily one of the proudest moments of her adult life.

hi! okay. this has been SUCH A LONG WAIT for y’all. and I hope this little bit of fluff brings you all some joy as I get into the *real* plot of this fic. as always, the biggest of thank yous goes out to my group chat for always inspiring me and helping me with my writing — and reminding me to take breaks. without you all, this fic wouldn’t exist. so thank you. I love u all. ALSO. a oneshot & 2 chapters to fics in a weekend? y’all do be blessed.

tag list? tag list. lmk if u wanna be added xo. @jjsgirlfriend @whiskey-fluent @babyblockcolorcat @criminalmindsgonewrong @heat-waveee @anepiphany @j3mily @dont-trustyourfeelings @blakes-dictionxry @clockedstar @ellegreenawy

————

Fuck Will.

Fuck Will for being the deadbeat father she knew he was going to be, for stringing JJ along and never following through. Emily tapped her fingers impatiently against the steering wheel, stuck in bumper to bumper traffic — just her luck as she was trying to race across town to get to JJ before the sonogram, Will having stood her up.

She was so angry when JJ declined her offer to go with her in favor of Will, couldn’t describe the crushing hurt she felt. She tried to remind herself that she and JJ were nothing — not in a romantic way, at least, despite the stirring feelings she had been feeling for the other woman since she had moved in.

Another car cut her off and Emily slammed on the horn, yelling an obscenity out the window. She took a deep breath, remembered how sad and scared JJ sounded when she called, begging Emily to come to the sonogram only thirty minutes before her appointment.

She swung her car into a space in front of the doctor’s office before jumping out and hastily shoving quarters into the parking meter. Emily took the stairs two at a time, burst into the waiting room and noticed that JJ wasn’t there, having already been taken back to an exam room. Her heart sped up at the thought of missing the appointment — of letting JJ down.

“Can I help you?” The receptionist directed a warm smile towards Emily, looked over her glasses at her and back to the computer screen. “First appointment?”

“I’m here for JJ — Jennifer Jareau.” Her words came out in a rush, heart still pounding and hands fidgeting.

The woman’s eyes lit up in understanding, nodding quickly as though she knew something before writing on a visitor’s badge for Emily. She handed it over, a knowing smile on her face as she watched Emily affix the sticker on her shirt.

“Your wife told me you’d be coming, said you’d probably be right on time. She’s through that door and in the first room on the left.”

“My — thank you.”

Emily couldn’t help the way her face heated up in a red hot blush at the way the receptionist said JJ was her wife. She knew it wasn’t anything they had done or said — most people don’t take their friend to the first sonogram after their ex-boyfriend cancels — but the implication still filled Emily’s stomach with a nervous flutter. She knocked on the exam room door, waited for a soft murmur from the technician before she opened the door slowly, stepping inside and shutting it behind her.

The sight of JJ reclined on the bed, towel thrown over her stomach made Emily’s stomach flip worse than it already was — her bright blue eyes wide and filled with nervous excitement. She barely registered the technician making a joke about showing up in the nick of time, smiled politely as she watched JJ mouth a silent thank you, her lips curling up into a wide grin.

“Are you guys ready to see your baby?”

Emily nodded hesitantly, stood dutifully at JJ’s side and let her fingertips graze her shoulder. She couldn’t look away from the blue of her eyes — the way her lips were still twitching up into a smile despite every tell that she was trying to fight it, trying to be as serious as possible. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the subtle swell of JJ’s stomach when the ultrasound technician removed the towel and squirted the gel onto her stomach, letting out a breathy laugh when JJ jumped at the temperature of the gel.

The small bump made her heart flutter, eyes transfixed on the slightly tanned skin, mind racing with all of the possibilities for the future — visions of an infant cooing in a crib while JJ looked down and sang. She felt a pang in her chest when she reminded herself that no, that may not be the life JJ wanted to give her child — and it was just that, hers, and not Emily’s. She was brought from her thoughts when JJ reached up, fingers wiggling until Emily grasped her hand and she visibly relaxed, only to tense up again when the technician pressed the wand to her gel covered stomach.

They both stared at the dark screen, eyes transfixed on the grey and black static until it finally focused — a little gummy bear of a baby jumping around on the screen. JJ let out a delighted gasp, lips curled into a grin as Emily wiped tears from her face. She hadn’t expected to be so affected by the image, but she already loved this little baby so much it hurt.

“There you go, mommies… there’s your baby.”

“Oh I’m not…” Emily started, hastily wiping at the tears that were rapidly falling down her face.

She wasn’t a mother, this wasn’t her baby — hell, JJ wasn’t even her girlfriend, merely a friend that lived with her and fell into her bed occasionally. A roommate, and she had already reasoned with herself that she would be beyond lucky to be able to co-parent and cohabitate with JJ and the baby at best — knew it may not be a likely scenario and didn’t want to get her hopes up, despite the excited flutter in her stomach she felt when she let herself sit and think about it for too long.

“Shut up. You’re mom too.”

“You guys make a great couple, I can already tell you’re going to be amazing parents.” The technician tapped at the keyboard before moving the wand around, pressing down on another spot. “I just have to grab a few more…”

“Take your time.”

JJ meant what she said — would have been content to sit there all afternoon and watch both the bouncing baby on the screen and the light in Emily’s eyes as she stared, completely transfixed by the image. It was a look JJ couldn’t quite decipher — love, she could tell, but a bit of something else that made her heart flutter and stomach flip. It was the same feeling she got when Emily’s fingers grazed hers in the car on the way to work, the giddy happiness in the pit of her stomach that no one else seemed to ignite.

“And I’ve got it. Thanks for being so patient with me, ladies.” The ultrasound technician pulled the wand from JJ’s stomach, wiping it clean before handing Emily a towel to clean the gel and a sheet of pictures. “I think that’s all for today… when you get cleaned up you can just check out and book your next appointment.”

They both murmured out a thanks as the technician stepped out of the room, Emily already wiping gently at JJ’s stomach and cleaning the gel off. It was like there was a trance between them — neither able to speak or look at each other, only the slight protrusion of JJ’s stomach as it really settled in that there was, in fact, a tiny baby growing inside of her.

“Emily…” JJ’s fingers grazed Emily’s wrist gently, looked up at her face and waited for their eyes to make contact before continuing. “Thank you. For everything… for coming, for doing this with me.”

“Jayje, you don’t even have to ask, you know I’ll always…”

“I meant it.”

“You — what…?”

There was a pause between them as Emily tried to decipher what JJ meant by her statement. Her eyebrows were knit together in a look of confusion, eyes half squinted in a way that made JJ let out a soft, airy laugh. After a moment, she reached up and let her thumb graze Emily’s cheek, smiling gently at her.

“Meant that you’re mom too, we’re doing this together… if you want to?”

It was a loaded question and they both knew it, and this wasn’t the place to have that sort of conversation. Emily knew she wanted to — wanted to raise this baby with JJ more than she had ever wanted anything, so badly that it scared her a little bit — but rationalized with herself that they should probably sit down over lunch and discuss it.

“We need to leave before they send another patient in.” She noticed the way JJ’s face fell, pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head before pulling her shirt down over her stomach and gently patting the bump. “Hey, this isn’t a no, it’s a we’re not having this conversation in this doctor’s office because I’ll cry. Come on, we both have the rest of the day off… I have plans for us.”

“Plans?”

JJ hopped off the table, letting her hand bump against Emily’s until she got the hint and laced their fingers together — fell into step beside her as they rounded the corner and walked to the checkout counter. They were understaffed for as many patients as they had, receptionists bustling around the circular desk as they tried to tend to everyone at once. Emily waved her wrist, signaled to them that they could take as long as they needed, before turning to JJ with a slight smile.

“I may have reserved a table at Olive Garden for us, and it’s right by this darling baby boutique I found on Facebook.”

She watched as JJ’s eyes lit up to that sparkling, shiny blue she adored so much, the way her smile reached her eyes and wrinkled her nose. It was endearing, the way her entire body seemed to thrum with every emotion, from the good to the bad, always feeling so deeply, so purely. Emily found herself hoping that the same energy — the same ability to feel so truly — would be passed on to the baby dancing about in her stomach.

“How do you always manage to make bad days better?”

“I just do, I guess.”

A receptionist hurried over to where they were standing, breaking them from their trance and snapping them back into the real world — a world where more existed than just the energy between the two of them. Emily couldn’t tear her gaze away from JJ’s subtle smile as she spoke to the woman, nodding enthusiastically, a few strands of shorter hair falling from her ponytail and shaking into her face.

JJ slipped the appointment card in her pocket as they walked out, entering the elevator hand in hand with giddy smiles on their faces. She almost hated the fact that they drove separately, wished she could sit beside Emily and bask in the happiness she was feeling, just be with her and present in the moment. There was never pressure with her — never any pressure to be more than she wanted to be, to carry on conversation when words seemed too hard — always content to just exist together.

Outside of the office, too many eyes on them, Emily found herself able to let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding. She let herself look at JJ — truly look at her, the way her eyes were still shining and cheeks pinkened in what could only be described as a glow. The way her hair was falling in her face, having been shook free from the confines of her ponytail, was endearing — and Emily found herself gazing deep into JJ’s eyes as her fingers gently brushed the hair back out of her face.

The metallic grind of the elevator doors opening broke them from the moment, from their lips slowly gravitating towards each other as though pulled by magnetic force. They laughed, straightening up and walking out of the elevator, Emily’s hand on the small of JJ’s back as she guided her to her car just a few spaces away from her own.

“Follow me to the restaurant?”

“I’d follow you anywhere, Emily Prentiss.”

#my writing #jennifer jareau #jemily #emily prentiss #jj #you are in love

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morningflames · 4 years

Text

a word of warning

well here’s a post i never thought i’d be making

it’s come to my attention that a Certain Someone is planning on making a comeback to WrA soon and it fills me with nothing short of dread. i spent the day yesterday warning people he terrorized and manipulated that this was happening. you know it’s bad when there’s a literal network of people who share an abuser that have remained in contact for years in the event this happened again.

i am not going to lie and say that making this post does not terrify me but i cannot in good conscience sit back and let him worm his way into the rp scene again and do what he did to me and at least half a dozen others all over again.

to summarize: tarcanus aka tarcanus frostborne is a manipulative, emotionally abusive and predatory individual that should be avoided at all costs.

i am the player behind lyrinel, a former officer of his and someone who was on the receiving end of nearly a years worth of abuse and manipulation. my experiences pale in comparison to those of others who dealt with him and came forward to me after i left his guild, and i cannot speak for anyone who does not feel comfortable coming forward. if you do want to let your voice be heard, feel free to reblog and add your own anecdotes.

my story below the cut.

tw: manipulation, emotional abuse, gaslighting, coercion, grooming

i first joined coram populo in early 2014 after my best friend and fellow survivor (i will refer to her by her character’s name of thradia from here on out) joined the raid team in december of the previous year. we were both just looking for a social place to park our characters and maybe start role playing again, as we hadn’t had a guild or dedicated rp group in a while. things were fine and friendly for the first couple of months, though it’s worth noting that a large part of the office corps had just left or was in the process of leaving when thradia and i joined. we were both 18 at the time.

i made the mistake of reaching out to tarc in the spring, when i noticed him posting to his tumblr about how busy he was. i offered to be an IC assistant of sorts to his character and he was more than happy to toss me into an absolute whirlwind. we still didn’t know much about each other, but in the span of a couple weeks we went from casual contact in guild chat to immensely long (sometimes between 10 and 12 hours) skype calls, constant DMing, and an almost uninterrupted stream of conversation. i was struggling to finish high school at this time (spoiler: i failed to graduate) and found myself suddenly caught in an all-consuming relationship with this man and his guild. from the moment i woke up to the moment i finally hung up and crawled into bed, my time was taken up by tarc and the guild and the game.

i was promoted to officer less than five months after joining the guild. this was overwhelming for a number of reasons, chief among them being the fact that i had never been an officer in a guild like this before and i was very quickly escalated to tarc’s “inner circle.” this was a circle that he evidently didn’t even include his most senior officers in, as he didn’t seem to communicate with them to the extent or abundance that he did with me - and later, when she was ALSO promoted to officer, thradia.

within a few weeks i found myself at the center of dozens of micro-confrontations and venting from tarc about other members of the guild, raid team, and even fellow officers. every time, i would tell him he needed to take it to his co-gm and talk it through with her. she, like him, was a grown woman with a lot more experience and better people skills than me, a teenager barely out of high school, but tarc insisted on beating me over the head with his frustrations and then proceeding to guilt me and tell me i was a terrible friend when i didn’t agree with him or expressed i was uncomfortable being in the center of a vent session that i felt was unwarranted.

tarc was never wrong. he did not apologize. the words “i’m sorry” did not exist in his vocabulary, and if they did, they were almost always followed up with the word “but.” constantly he would be sending multiple messages to me or thradia while we were running events and raids for the guild, ranting about a few particular members that he disliked at the time regardless of how we felt about said members. thradia and i would both be reduced to tears and/or anxiety attacks by his outbursts that all but demanded we take his side even if we didn’t. his feelings and circumstances were paramount. everyone else’s were just inconveniences.

tarc was always the victim. no matter what was going on, no matter who had instigated whatever vein of conversation we were on that had gone awry, he had a way of making you feel like utter shit until you grovelled for his forgiveness, which he rarely gave. instead he would move on without giving any closure or allowing you to discuss your feelings at length. if you tried, you were the insensitive one who he couldn’t go to with his “unfiltered emotions,” which was the entire purpose of his inner circle to hear him say it. i was not allowed to just be his friend or just be an officer, i had to be both and neither at the same time, and it still was not the right course of action. nothing ever was.

tarc was openly manipulative and antagonistic, always citing it as an “inside joke” when called on it. i opened up to him once about my father’s alcoholism and how i was uncomfortable with alcohol culture and being around drunk people. regardless, he would constantly call while drunk (or maybe he was pretending to be to get a rise out of me, i honestly do not know what was genuine and what was put on with him) and make me stay on the call with him for hours. when he was (allegedly) diagnosed with an inability to process certain alcohols that could be life threatening, he continued to drink (or claimed he was drinking) dangerous amounts, which lead to me begging him to stop as i feared for his life. one of the worst anxiety attacks i have ever had was over him endangering his health and me believing i was going to see a friend die. he knew how much this upset me and he did not stop. he held me as a captive audience to his self destruction (or the playacting of it) and let me cry and beg and plead with him to take care of himself.

tarc loves to promote a clean, “family friendly” persona online. he will go on and on about the positive atmosphere his guild provides and how progress and accepting he and his “safe spaces” are. as soon as you are inducted to his inner circle, however, you learn otherwise. he will gladly engage in sexually charged conversation with you, even if you are ten years younger than him as thradia and i were. we were both legal adults, yes, but just barely. i can’t count the inappropriate remarks and jokes made about us, our friends, and even minors all in the spirit of joking “what if” conversation. he has a history of making young LGBT+ people uncomfortable, making their sexualities and identities about him and how he can relate to them.

tarc was the most two-faced and divisive guild leader i’ve ever seen. he would rant to me mercilessly about wanting to kick one of the junior officers and raid team members in private while never saying a word to their face or bringing it up with the co-gm. he would start schisms between people, telling each what they wanted to hear and encouraging both parties not to confront each other about it, allowing the resentment and distrust to grow as he fanned the flames on both sides. he wanted people to stay in the guild and continue to basically work for him while also putting him above anyone else in their friend circles. he told straight up lies to thradia and i, claiming one of us had said things about the other that we never did, driving a wedge and distrust between us.

tarc treats his guild(s) like a business. he is entirely capitalist-minded even in an MMORPG that people play for fun, churning out “content” and keeping up appearances like a machine. he treats his officers and guild members like employees, not people. any time irl would demand attention away from the game, forcing someone to miss or cancel an event, he would subtly guilt them about it until they apologized, even if it was a dire situation or a family emergency.

when tarc wanted to start a wow roleplaying podcast, he approached me about cohosting. he wanted a female voice, and since i was out of school and had no job lined up due to not graduating i was the perfect candidate. i came on to narrate and research the lore segment of the looking for roleplay podcast, which was little more than me paraphrasing a wowwiki article, but i was held to a “professional” standard. i had to have my research done by a certain day, my recording done in advance, etc.

the podcast was a spot of contention for several reasons, one being the mysterious emails tarc would allegedly receive about it. the podcast had a shared email account that all three of us could access and look at, but tarc claimed that people sent emails directly to him since “everything’s under his email.” he would use these strawman emails as indirect criticism of turwinkle and i, reading them aloud or typing up what they supposedly said but NEVER producing a real screenshot or address to verify them. i’m convinced he only did this as a way to make turwinkle and i feel badly and work harder “for the listeners” to appease things tarc didn’t like about our segments. he also insinuated he got inappropriate emails about me specifically at this account but, again, i was never allowed to see them with my own eyes, just hear about them secondhand, which is why i believe they did not exist.

around this time, tarc began recording conversations without mine or thradias consent. he would start recording random sections of calls and taunt us, playing back out-of-context lines and joking that he would make “podcast commercials” out of them. they were often embarrassing, personal, or just wildly out of context lines that we didn’t want played to the public, and i heard only a fraction of what he possibly recorded of me. i have no idea what kind of material he has of me and thradia that was recorded without us knowing or consenting. it felt like blackmail. it still does.

i internalized all of this. i thought this was normal. i thought he was an excellent guild leader and a role model for leadership. i had begun to treat world of fucking warcraft like a goddamn job and i thought that was fine. my life revolved around coddling and entertaining him, socializing and promoting and recruiting for the guild, raiding, running pvp entirely on my own, keeping up IC connections and attending events, recording for the podcast, all of it. i ate, breathed, and slept wow and coram. it was insane. i had been talked into having no boundaries for myself and my time, and any time i tried to correct that and build a boundary i was attacked for it until i backed down. i have never felt worse about myself than i did while i was in this guild. i trusted no one. i was worn thin.

i finally had enough early 2015. at this point this man was trying to get me to come live with him hundreds of miles from my family so that i could attend a technical school in his area. i am still 18. he was 28. i had been trying to step down from my position as an officer, citing if i was going to be LIVING WITH HIM that it was going to give me an unfair bias in my standing in the guild. this set him all the way off. he was planning a trip to atlantic city for me, himself, and thradia, who i had a ticket to visit for my birthday. he was getting frantic because he had been pursuing thradia for months, and i was no longer cooperating.

when i threw this wrench in everything, our relationship devolved in the span of a few hours. within the day i left the guild on all of my characters and pulled myself out of all of his projects. within the month i had frantically faction changed several characters and eventually unsubscribed from the game for two years because i lived in fear of him. he had always alluded to “knowing people” who could hack and track IP addresses and kept tabs on everyone who visited his blogs and websites. i didn’t know what i thought he was going to do - all i knew was his thinly veiled brags and threats were at the forefront of my mind. i have played this game since 2006, but for the first time in my life i couldn’t enjoy it out of fear and exhaustion caused by him. he had ruined my favorite game in less than a year and made me paranoid about my entire online presence, to the point where this blog was abandoned for months before i turned it into what it is today.

and the thing is, tarc’s not a creepy or abrasive guy when you first meet him. he’s funny and charismatic and outgoing. he loves to tell you about his world travels and show you pictures of him petting baby tigers at rescues in southeast asia and go on about these crazy winnings he would have in vegas. he’s larger than life - at least online. he came to visit me twice in the year that we knew each other. the first time was also the first time i had ever met thradia in person, and we had been friends for six years at that point. he has met my family, and that of several other members (both my age and older). no one ever questions why he’s there. no one ever thought it was odd that for a week he hung out with three teenage girls exclusively.

this horrifies me to this day.

thradia and i are still best friends. we compared notes and were sickened at how we were played against each other. slowly, i returned to the game. i reached out to people who had left or been on their way out when i first joined the guild, curious to see if there was a common thread. there was. everyone i spoke with had similar stories: being made to feel like shit, nothing they ever did for the guild was enough, they weren’t allowed to miss events or raids no matter what the reason, they were questioned and joked about inappropriately and made to feel uncomfortable and preyed upon, etc. i was not the only one. thradia was not the only one. at least half a dozen other former members and/or officers had these stories, and tarc just kept getting away with it.

he cannot keep getting away with it.

i am being open with this for the first time in six years because i don’t want to see it happen again. because i don’t want to know that, had i said something sooner, more people could have been protected. i was 18 when this was going on. i had no real world experience. i had no standard for how i should be treated, much less by someone almost ten years my senior and who claimed to be my friend. but he knew better. he should have had boundaries and space and lines he refused to cross. he did not. he crippled my trust in people for a very long time. i have only become comfortable playing wow on horde side again in the past year or so. i finally stopped looking over my shoulder, /who’ing him and his guild, avoiding rp hubs. but now i feel like i can’t do that anymore. the safety i have worked so hard to achieve for myself is now threatened.

i understand my experiences are mild in comparison to what some offenders on this server have done. but at the end of the day, this year was the worst year of my life. to this day, the skype ringtone literally triggers me because i associated it with him and his endless calls that i never knew what to expect from or how to get out of. i can’t look at certain parts of the game without feeling fear. for months i held my breath going online or logging into wow because i was waiting for him to pop up and start accusing me of things or trying to guilt me into coming back.

tarc ran coram populo, a guild that, as far as i know, still staggers along with a few members who can’t be bothered to leave. whether or not he’s planning to return there, i don’t know. he organizes and runs (from what i can tell) the azerothian trade federation (whatever the fuck that is). i don’t know what his plans are. i don’t know what his online presence looks or will look like when he comes crawling back. but i beseech you, do not give him the time of day. do not give him a platform, no matter how nice and “woke” he makes himself out to be. he lures you in with humanist ideals and then sucks the absolute life out of you- and that’s if he doesn’t want to pressure you into a relationship on top of it.

to tarc: if somehow you’re reading this, stay away from me. keep my name out of your mouth. i do not want an apology and a string of half-assed, gaslighting excuses. i have records of past conversations. i have screenshots. i know what you fucking did to me and to my friends. i do not want you back. i do not want you here. i do not want to share space with you. i want you to go away and never come back.

you alone made it so hard to trust myself and other people. thradia and i both have had to seek therapy due to you. and now, you have the audacity to come riding back into the scene on a white horse, being self righteous about abuse and predatory behavior online, and have the utter gall to condemn behaviors you yourself emulated without apology or second thought. i know you think you’re a good guy. that’s what makes you so fucking dangerous. you genuinely don’t think you’ve done anything wrong, and if you do, you’ve buried it and squirreled it away and have covered it up to the point where you can turn any accusation back on the claimant.

do not attempt to contact me. do not try to threaten or appease me. go back where you were. i am finally at home again, and you will not take that from me. go. away.

#wrymrest accord #wra rp #wra community #okay to reblog #i am going to basically go dark on here now and not check on this #i have gotten ohysically ill from dredging this shit up #i will not be engaging past this point so whether you believe me or not i do not care #i know my truth and i know what happened to me even though i was gaslit to hell and back

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strippermuffins · 4 years

Text

Monday Fairytale

“Shit, I’m short.”

Y/N glanced at the cashier of the bagel truck with a wry smile with just slightest hint of reassurance that she was in fact trying her best to not claw through her handbag just to make up the remaining fifty cents.

Fifty cents. That was how much she was short of. She felt every single penny wrap around her neck in a godforsaken noose— more so for holding up the line than not popping by the ATM to have cash on her.

“Ma’am, if you could just—“

“I got it, I got it,” she frantically replied, using up all of her pre-caffeinated sanity to sound composed even as the contents of her wallet screamed in desolation. “Just give me a second, I’m so sorry.”

“Lady, just step to the side,” a nasally complaint from certainly the man behind her— one that accompanied a scowl, she was sure— leered around her. Y/N would usually just shrug off the attitude. She lives in a big city. Absolutely no one has the time to be nice or patient, but she was panicking.

Y/N dreaded the thought that fifty cents might be one of the few things she would ever ask any figure at all pertaining a higher power. She had no time to beat any other rush hour breakfast line except this one.

“No, miss,” a voice embodying the euphoria that overtakes your forehead after a good painkiller replaced the commotion of impatient customers. “I insist. It happens, I’m happy to cover this for you.”

Y/N stepped to the side almost immediately just so she could have the foot space to turn around in pure amazement at the modern day angel who had just stepped in to declare his menial—but life-changing— philantrophy.

Before she could even utter a word of gratefulness, it seemed the cashier shared in her shock as the sharply dressed man next to her handed over a sizable stack of notes.

Gods above and devils below— he was stratospherically handsome.

Another moment of panic had set in as Y/N feared that she was in a dream and that she could be any way later than she already was for her meeting. She had seen her fair share of happiness and tragedies in this ancient metropolis, but handsome men in expensive office attire were strictly reserved for movies.

His medium grey shirt adorned each detail of his uncannily perfect upper body as if the tailor had a marble sculpture of the man to work off from. His stature was tied together beautifully with pants of a slightly darker shade that Y/N would not have been able to pin on a spectrum and a belt of which she had no doubt the morning sunlight must have drawn inspiration from.

“Hey, pal,” the same nasally voice shredded her momentary day dream, and she was now able to see that it in fact came from the scoundrel behind the subject of her Monday bliss— which in theory sounded oddly paradoxical. “I appreciate the chivalry but—“

“This should cover everyone, right?” The gentleman continued, politely swatting away the interruption like a pesky fly on a hot summer day. “Just give me that one over there. I’m good with that.”

Y/N hoped that he wouldn’t notice at all that she was still in pure awe at his abnormal generosity. The bagel line that extended close to the entrance of the apartment building nearby went from being annoyed at her incompetence to otherworldly charmed by this knight in Hugo Boss shining armor.

She couldn’t have seen the man politely handing over her order the next second as he excused himself from the line. Y/N could see that the cashier was still trailing her eyes in shock at the abnormality of wealth distribution on a godforsaken Monday morning.

“And this is yours, I believe,” the handsome man joked. Y/N chuckled softly as she took the paper bag from his hands and she could swear back and forth that he was magnetic. “Don’t worry about that guy. I have to get going now, though. Have a nice day.”

Y/N could have sworn he lingered his gaze on her just a little longer. It seemed that her manners had gone silent, but before she could part her lips just enough to say thank you— since a situation involving her slamming him against the lamp post in an impromptu makeout session wasn’t appropriate— he disappeared with one last smile into his chauffeured black Benz.

Y/N walked in pure awe towards her office building for the next few blocks as she both tried to demolish her meal without smiling too hard. This had to have been a fever dream or just that one instance in life when the cinematic universe bleeds over for corporate hamsters like her to feel less awful about their glass office prisons.

She hadn’t noticed that she was still smiling ear to ear until her manager, forcibly called Bang P.D of his own coercion and no one else’s, stopped her in her tracks.

“What the hell are you so chirpy about, sunshine?” He snapped, lumping a stack of paperwork right on her desk. The coffee in her hand would have met the floor had she not resumed her usual Monday dread.

“Nothing,” Y/N muttered, shoveling the stacks to her end of the table. “Just in a good mood.”

“Hopefully that carries on in the meeting later,” he scoffed, turning his heel to exit her office. “If you don’t get Kim Seokjung to sign on with us, you can get acquainted with the water cooler again.”

Monday morning was never properly settled without an empty threat from Bang P.D. Y/N was almost grateful that her fairytale bliss was disappearing. Smiles are rarely ever genuine in corporate and she hated to kid herself.

Y/N was never going to see this guy again. He probably had a woman waiting for him to be a million times more chivalrous to that he had to rush to see. She was just a lucky commoner caught in the threads of his charming web.

She had underestimated the bliss, really. It trailed her to the meeting room shortly after and the mile high view of the park and skyscrapers below only heightened her little euphoria. The rich— especially the handsome bunch— really do know how to capture the commoners by the heartstrings, it seems.

“Wipe that glee off your face or Bang P.D will do it with his forced overtime, Y/N,” Nayeon, her co-worker and the closest concept she has to a friend in this lonely city, pinched her gently. “Seriously, some of us are miserable. Kim Seokjung is a dickhead and if he cancels today, it will be the third time.”

“Someone paid for my bagel,” Y/N whined, glancing at Nayeon with a small smile. “And for everyone else in line as well.”

“Crack? Is that what you do, Y/N?” Nayeon hushed, shooting her an affectionate yet snarly glare. “That literally never happens.”

“I’m telling you it did,” Y/N insisted, keeping her expressions as complacent as possible as her colleagues began to take their seats. “Though remind me to never go to Riley’s again. What kind of food truck doesn’t take cards these days? After a pandemic too.”

“One that actually makes good food, dumbass,” Nayeon retorted, shaking her head softly at her friend. “You got lucky this time.”

“Yeah, well. I’m hoping the good karma carries on so Bang P.D doesn’t chain you and me all week for fucking this deal up.”

“Way to go. Keep your spirits alive, Y/N. You can do that for a bagel but not a deal that could help you move out of that prehistoric relic.”

“My place is exceptionally tasteful. Excuse you!”

“By that you mean derelict and musky— and not the good kind! You just willingly walk up five stairs. Couldn’t be me.”

The girls laughed among themselves for the few seconds of fleeting happiness they were allowed. Nayeon was right. If Kim Seokjung bails and chooses another PR firm for his book tour, Y/N would for sure become acquainted with the water cooler and the staff room dish rack. She was the one who brought him on to try and make a name for herself, but it seemed she had not picked the right old money know it all with an out of touch book and too much dough to blow.

“Look alive, ladies,” Bang P.D snapped his fingers towards them. Y/N had gotten over the disrespectful threshold. She wasn’t a human in his eyes anyway. “He bailed again. His brother is filling in.”

And neither Y/N or Nayeon knew. The girls turned to face each other in pure panic as they had not been notified prior. The fear in their eyes seemed to inquire which of their incompetence allowed for this to happen.

“Chill,” Bang P.D continued. “I didn’t know either. He literally called in just this morning. I’m just ready to wrap this over with. Kim Seokjung could send his damn poodle at this point.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint, then.”

All the heads in the room collectively whipped around to behold the owner of the apologetic statement. Y/N gulped as her eyes widened like saucers at the sight of the handsome man who took care of the bagel rotting in her stomach.

“No fucking way,” she thought to herself, the realization blaring in her eardrums.

Kim Seokjung had a brother and he was the man who gave the cashier at a bagel truck a stack just to make time move faster for him. Kim Seokjung had a brother who was punctual and funny.

“Tiki, his poodle, would make a better co-signer than me, but I was told you needed a human,” he continued.

A soft laughter roared through the room, and Y/N giggled to herself simply because she had never seen Bang P.D panic before.

So much so that she almost didn’t take notice of the handsome man locking his gaze with her briefly— as if he too was pleasantly surprised to see her again. She didn’t know if she was just adamant to get it all over with, but she held his gaze long enough to whisper a soft thank-you-for-this-morning to the multimillionaire bagel philanthropist north of her seat.

He shook his head as if his gesture was just so normal in his routine, and Y/N swore he kept his eyes on her long enough to ignite just a faint hue of blush on her cheeks.

Nayeon swiveled her focus back and forth from her and the handsome man. Y/N knew that she must have figured out the whole ordeal because she slumped in her chair and rolled her eyes with a smile.

“I’m Kim Seokjin,” the handsome man gave a name to his otherworldly existence. “You probably haven’t seen me around at all because I like to sort of manage in the background, but I would just like to apologize for my brother’s previous tardiness. Truly I’ve tried all my life and still can’t contain it, so I will fully sign once and for all today. The proposal is excellent. May I know who initiated it?”

“She did,” Nayeon perked, directing his gaze yet again towards Y/N. “All of it. Her name is Y/N.”

Bang P.D looked both dejected and furious that he even pinned all of the responsibility on her. Y/N could only manage a small smile as she nodded and affirmed her work.

“Very well, then,” Seokjin nodded, uncapping his fountain pen as she glanced at her for every dotted line he glided his name across. “Am I able to discuss more about the terms with you after this meeting, Y/N?”

“She would love to,” Nayeon interjected once again, to both the dismay and gratefulness of Y/N of course. “In fact I think she could benefit from someone who listens. She doesn’t get much of that around here. Hah.”

Hah. Nayeon made sure to always end every valid observation as a joke as nobody else in the office understood her brand of snarky humor as well as Y/N.

Y/N was simply just overwhelmed with relief that her gamble had paid off in the best way possible that it was even hard to accept so much satisfaction with her work. It didn’t come from Bang P.D and she wws all too grateful for that.

“She’s right,” Y/N finally spoke. “I could go over the clauses after.”

Y/N could feel Nayeon’s deadpan that’s-it from beside her. Y/N wasn’t as brave as Nayeon. She wasn’t some old money graduate who could treat this job like a past time and get away with so many snarky remarks. Even in the face of a literal old money angel, she had to be professional.

“Okay, well,” Seokjin dropped the pen back into his shirt pocket. “Meeting adjourned now, yes? I apologize once again. If not me then I’ll make sure my brother enjoys your consideration.”

The staff could not wait to wrap up their supplies upon the dismissal, and Bang P.D practically pulled Seokjin up by his shoulders just for a handshake. Nayeon had joined the rest of the crowd as they shuffled out of the office, and once Y/N could catch that heart fluttering gaze of his again, she mouthed she would be right in her office whenever Bang P.D was done with his overwhelming gratefulness.

Seokjin knocked on the glass in the same manner a confident yet slightly timid schoolboy would on his way to make an impression with his crush. Y/N was sure he had swindled many like her before, but there was an air of genuine intent surrounding him as he made his way to sit in front of her.

“I hope you had a warm welcome,” Y/N began, glancing over to the side for a split second to see Nayeon looming over with a coffee mug in her hand and an encouraging brow raise.

“I sure did,” Seokjin replied, his hands individually and politely resting on the arm rests. “It’s not everyday I try and help a beautiful woman and I see her later with a manager that would have liked me to be a poodle.”

“Well,” Y/N continued. “It’s not everyday I meet a bagel enthusiast somewhat bent that I wrote an astounding PR proposal. So much so he has to see me alone.”

Seokjin shook his hand and still so politely laughed at her professional dismissiveness. If he was marvelously gorgeous at ground level, he was hard to not melt at the sight of on the 60th floor. Y/N had no idea Kim Seokjung had more to offer than tardiness. She was entirely too grareful he never showed up.

“I am quite serious about that. Thank you for seeing the potential so many others turned down. I know he’s my brother and I’m almost always inclined to be biased, but with you and your team on our side I think I will perhaps sleep better.”

“Why is that so?”

“He’s not exactly easy to make likable. I don’t like him most days.”

“I have a strong bias and inclination that you are the opposite most days, Mr Kim.”

“Most days, Miss Y/N?”

And if Nayeon had instilled anything in her at all, it all boiled down to this next tongue-in-cheek catch.

“All of them if you’d like to hear that.”

Seokjin clasped his hands together gently and eagerly leaned forward as if there was no one on earth he would rather speak to but her.

“And would it be formal of me to formally invite you for dinner with me tonight whenever you and I can meet as Jin and Y/N?”

“I—,” Y/N was struggling to meet his eyes as confidently as she had been prior to this romantic proposition. She wanted badly to say yes, of course, but Y/N was never someone who approached flirtation with her brain. It was always with her issues, and she could feel his warm gaze dropping ever so slightly at her clear hesitation. She did not want him to think he was rejected, but she had herself to think of first.

It wasn’t entirely rushed that he had signed the proposal so quick. Her firm had been delayed a few times that everyone on the team, including the janitor, could recite the clauses by heart. Nayeon and her had a firm plan to approach everything. She was well within her professional competence and his interest in her came out of a kind curiosity than forcible persuasion.

Her work was very, very unlikely to be interrupted. Seokjin approved of the terms and expressed his satisfaction prior to knowing that it was her who drafted it. He really was unequivocally interested in her for her and whatever enticing demeanor she radiated from the bagel instance until now.

So why was she hesitating so much? Even if all societal connotations were eliminated, it would not be so abnormal for her to just say yes.

“Y/N, you know exactly why,” the voice in her head interrupted, causing her eager smile to hang onto her hesitation just a little longer.

She had seen many hopeful interns and young professionals walk to their cubicles looking dreary and defeated beyond just corporate dread too many times. She and Nayeon have had to push past the lines at the clubs and rescue one too many dreamy-eyed youngbloods trying to fix their broken hearts by killing their livers.

However, it seemed that Nayeon in this current moment had every intention to murder Y/N in broad daylight if she didn’t agree. She had figured out the situation from meters away and threw a deathly, coercive scowl towards Y/N as her claws sunk unintentionally into the forearm of an unsuspecting male intern.

“I will kill you,” Nayeon mouthed, scrunching her lips as she urged Y/N to agree— a feat Nayeon had never shown before due to her unassailable distaste for the male species.

But Nayeon was from the same old money circle as Seokjin’s. She had to have known a few things Y/N could never grasp.

Even more simple than all of this mental gymnastics— her heart tugged at the sight of him. He was a hopeful boy shooting his shot at a girl he was interested in.

“Well...” Y/N began, relaxing her shoulders as she pushed her chair further. “I work very hard so I most likely won’t be too cute when I get off, but does 8pm work for you?

“8pm has never worked better,” Seokjin sighed in relief as if he had been hanging onto every breath that she drew. “Please come as you are. I’ll be happy to see you however.”

The content on his face was paramount. The kind of happiness for someone who anticipated a rejection but was grateful the universe ended up on their side. Y/N wondered if a man Seokjin ever got rejected before, and if he has then it had to have surely been someone who eclipsed her in terms of... well, literally everything.

This led her to a train of doubt Nayeon had taught her not to have. Why was Seokjin even interested in her? And why in god’s name can she not put a finger on where she had seen him before? He looked far too familiar and it was an observation she had not deduced prior.

If all rich and handsome men shared the same features, Y/N thought Seokjin had the créme de la créme.

Y/N hadn’t noticed that he seemed to have snapped out of his own daze of being entranced with her, much to her own surprise. He uncapped that marvelous fountain pen again and handed it over to her alongside his business card.

“Please give me your number,” he requested, looking once again nervous and Y/N once again wondered why. “I want to let you know I’m looking forward to seeing you.”

Y/N couldn’t help but relax her shoulders and laugh endearingly at his wonderfully timid disposition. She took the pen from his hands and touted quietly to herself that her number had never looked more beautifully written. Seokjin took his business card from her and gently put it back into his suit pocket alongside the pen.

“I wish I could look at you longer, Y/N,” he spoke softly, his shoulders hunched eagerly forward in the same manner as when he asked her out. “But I’m horrifically late for my next meeting. I’ll pick you up in the lobby at 8pm.”

“You best get going then!” Y/N blurted, not really wanting him to leave— if at all— but rather out of worry that she might be a minor inconvenience. Even if the younger brother of the richest family in Seoul had just asked her out.

Seokjin dropped his smile ever so slightly at her accidental dismissal, and Y/N shook her head like she had never wanted anyone to think otherwise so badly.

“No, no,” she insisted, chuckling softly at her own insolence. “I mean, I can’t wait to see you as well. I usually don’t agree often if at all, but the pandemic is over. Might as well take a chance, right?”

Y/N could see that Nayeon’s jaw had dropped in pure shock at what had just exited her lips. It was as if she could detect the curtness of her words from across the office. Call it a best friend’s intuition.

“Oh, if she’s not gonna kill me, she’ll at least strangle me for this,” Y/N thought to herself, hoping Seokjin at least found her dryness somewhat humorous.

It was if the heavens listened to her because he too started laughing as his gaze lingered on her the whole time he left his seat and walked slowly towards the door.

“I promise I’ll let you know more when I see you again, Y/N,” he wished her well, his smile reaching his eyes as they twinkled towards her. “Until then... have a day as beautiful as you are.”

Before another word could exit her lips, he bowed ever so slightly and left with his bodyguard by his side. She hadn’t even noticed that the guy was there, but she did notice the lingering gaze on Seokjin’s face even as he headed towards the elevator. She could not help but display the same hopefulness to let him know that she too couldn’t wait as well.

When his marvelous stature disappeared in the elevator, Y/N had never wanted to work harder just so the hours could fly fast enough until she could look into those capitative brown eyes again.

What else could have wanted to tell her that it was best saved for later?

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popculturebuffet · 4 years

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Toons For Our Times: The Loud House: Strife of The Party/ Kernel of Truth

Lana plans her and Lola’s party with copius amonts of dirt and garabage while Lola tries sabotaging it and I struggle to figure out which one we’re supposed to be rooting for exactly. Meanwhile Lincoln and Co find an abandoned news room and attempt to start their own news show with the immediate threat of cancelation hanging over their heads. You know like most shows on nick. Also Rusty gets hurt a lot which automatically makes this a winner. News Team Assemble, under the cut.

Well this week was a mixed bag.. which granted could apply to this week as a whole but I meant it specifically for this episodes. Like last week one of them is a true classic that uses the series new status quo to create something intresting, and the other... is the worst episode i’ve reviwed so far. Yes not even one week and the show managed to go from having a boring episode to having a truly odious one. Both metaphorcially and literally as there’s a lot of grossout gags this time around. And unfortuantely since i’ts first in the pairing and the airing, I have to talk about it first. Pitter Patter, let’s get this over with.

Strife of the Party I”m not exaggerating either. I admit I was hard on Schooled! and Family Bonding, but the former sitll had some good content and the latter was .. well it’s still a boring lazy retread with a bonkers ending, but I admitted to having seen worse. But “I’ve seen worse” is never the best defense. I’ll admit usually I avoided the worse episodes of the loud house. I haven’t seen some of the more infamous episodes of the show like “No Such Luck” or “Kings of the Con”.. because as just a viewer I could skip an episode if it sounded like toilet dinner. Sure i’ve still ran into them: “Study Muffin” was just eh when it aired but now both post me too and post chris savino being rightfully fired for being a harassing dickweasel thanks to said movement, it’s realy fucking creepy, has Lori at her worst (Actively trying to cheat on bobby), and .. I have no third thing. All we really got out of it was Lynn Sr’s obsession with the British. And “The Green House”’s reputation proceeds it and there’s a reason I couldn’t finish it. Point is i’ve been lucky to only step in a few cowpies in the field of this show, and now i’m watching it as it comes out i’m accepting the hard truth that with the show’s hit and miss quality, i’m going to have to go panning in shit creek some weeks if I want to find the nuggets of gold. Now I will grant this episode doesn’t sound NEARLY as bad as “No Such Luck”.. but as opus would say....

Exactly my Pengy pal. Again not being worse than the worst episode of the show, still dosen’t make you a good episode. It just makes you marginally less terrible. It’s like saying Creed isn’t as bad as Nickelback. While tha’ts true they both still sound terrible, it’s just playing Creed isn’t a warcrime in some countries. And yes I just compared two episodes of a children’s show to bands my audience thankfully likely weren’t aware ever existed, I don’t care. If you haven’t left my blog running and screaming your either new here or tolerate me being an obscure weirdo.

Before we get in proper, I haven’t covered the twins yet so let’s do that quick. I haven’t really watched a ton of Lola and Lana’s episodes, their not bad characters htey just don’t intrest me much as i’ve seen their gimmicks a lot, but I will say lola’s slightly better and I will say I like Lana more when she’s doing animal antics instead of grossout. Not terirble characters and their acted well, just not my cup of tea is all. Okay enough stalling , pitter patter!

We open with Lola planning the twins upcoming birthday and talking to her stuffed animals which is cute and all.. before a POSSUM CHESTBURSTS OUT OF LOLA’S UNICORN DOLL.

The.. the fuck. Look i’m all for scaring the crap out of kids in children’s entertainment. I loved Courage the Cowardly dog as a kid and as a grown ass man writing about children’s entertainment. I love the lich from adventure time, i’m okay with scaring kids. But this is just.. a bit too realistic. Yes really. While doll that size probably can’t fit a possum it could sure fit something else and i’ve seen stuffed animals big enough for a posssum, so yeah.. this could actually happen to one of my nieces and that thought terrifies me. It happening to me also terrifies me but I’m a grown man not a small child who’d be scarred for life. Christ. The episode does get better, for a second I didn’t bitch for a few paragraphs for nothing. Lana comes in, claims the demon possum, and tells Lola she’ll fix the doll. Uh Lana i’m not sure she wants it back.. you’d be better off burning it and setting the possum free in a republican center’s home where it belongs.

Anyways Lana has a good point, Lola’s been plannig their parties ‘since before they were born”.. literally as the image above shows which is just.. fucking amazing. I cannot belivie they got to go there and it’s glorious they did. I can’t think of many, if any, other chlidren’s cartoons that showed a fetus on screen so kudos.

But yeah that was the one good moment of the episode. Next our twins go to a party suply store where Lola, clearly knowing the host well because these kids have connections, has her stash all the poop colored stuff away... which backfires as lana instead goes to the garbage for party favors and decorations. It fails to get better: Next they go to a bakery where Lana makes her own literal garbage cake and then go to flips for entertainment i.e. a bull. NOw i’ll grant both stops have good bits: The cake store guy asks if Lana’s a cop when she asks for grime and Flip has them sign a waver for the bull. And the bull being lana’s idea of entertainment makes sense.. but overal it just comes off as gross and mean spirited. I mean yes Lola’s about to do some terrible stuff herself and yes Lola ouvershadowed lana.. but she dosen’t deserve this abuse and none of this is healthy or tolerbale for.. well anyone, and could get the Loud Parents in serious trouble, which also leaves the obvious plot hole of “why don’t they step in in either situation. “

The episode would’ve made more snese if Lana went to them to get them to let her host the party and their guilt over letting Lola always do it means they don't’ reign her in despite wanting to. Instead their just.. there at the end for a great bit we’ll get to. It’s always the bad episodes that paint the loud parents as terrible parents honestly. No Suck Luck had them cast their son out into the cold over nonsense, On Thin Ice had Lynn Sr decide forcing his children to embarass themselves was more important than teaching one of them that maybe sometimes you don’t always get to force your family to obey your whims for dumb reasons, and the april fools eps have Lynn Sr so terrified of pranking retribution instead of you know.. GROUNDING Luann for going full joker on their asses. IN most episodes their kind and reasonable but it’s always the bad ones where they instead make Homer Simpson look like a good parent.

But yeah my rant aside the episode COULD work if Lola, encouraged by one of her other siblings, Luann would be a good bet as she could easily slide into the party setting when appropriate without being too distracting, realizes she’s been selfish and tries to hold her tounge for lana’s sake. Maybe then she tries sabotage.. or better she DOSEN’T, but both of them realize something; Lola realizes she’s been doing this to lana their whole lives by forcing her into a party she doesn’t like so LOLA can be happy while Lana realizes she’s being no better. Hell even if Lola did complain, which is in character, this plot woudl still work. instead.. Lana is just as bad as Lola while Lola is still pretty terrible. See the big problem is that NEITHER girl is likeable. As I’ve made clear Lana pushes a gross, dangerous party on her sister she clearly doesn’t like, and Lola, instead of trying tot alk to her parents or get Lana to tone it down.. tries to guide her to what she wants, then when that fails sabotages the party, makes it so Lana has nothing and gets her party. Both sides are being really bad, but instead of them realizing this, lana is treated as the one we should be sympathetic to when she gets mad when she finds out about Lola even though NEITHER of them are sympathetic or likeable and deserve to win 100%. But Lana does, lana gets her way, Lola apologizes and hte paradigm just shifts from one sibling being unhappy to another. We do get that one gag I talked about where when lola goes to make things right she has Lynn Sr stall and he pulls out a cowbell “You thought I wasn’t going to need this”. No bud, Rita HOPE you wouldn’t need this. There’s a difference. Thank god it’s the end.

Final Thoughts for Strife of the Party: They should be obvious but to be clear this is hippo excrement. i’ts not funny, it makes both it’s leads look bad, the parents look worse by inaction and just isn’t pleasant ot watch. I do GET the show has a young audience, and they like grossout, I get i’m not the target demographic, so I probably would just be okay with a good version of this episode.. but even with that in mind both twins come off so unlikeable it’s just not fun to watch or to see Lana win as she didn’t feel like she earned it. It’s bad and it should feel bad, and i’ts the first truly odious episode i’ve had for weekly coverage. I’ve had okay or eh ones, but this one is truly bad and belongs in the pantheon of bad loud house episodes.. or at least in the honrable mentions. Good gravy this blew.

Kernel of Truth

Okay now we’ve panned the gold nugget out of the crap creek, we can get on with the GOOD episode this week. I was excited for this one.. I was excited for both actually, even not being a huge fan of the twins I liked the idea of a loud birthday but as we just saw,.. didn’t work out so good. But this one while I thought it would just be average, promised another lincrew shenanigan and I like most of those i’ve seen, and plus I knew it’d allow me to refrence anchorman a bunch so i was llike :Fuck it let’s go”.. and this one ended up being REALLY damn good and probably one of the best episodes with this group i’ve seen, right up there with “Be Stella My Heart.” I’ts good stuff. But before we get into it you probably noticed my ranting about girl jordan but turns out, while I haven’t watched that episode, she’s in the sand field trip episode from last season hanging out with stella so I have an answer to if they forgot abotu her, they didn’t they just need to use her more, and a new ship so i’m satisfied and I apologize for bitching about it. Next time i’ll just check the wiki and see before I bitch about something. ON with the review.

We open with our motely crew searching for a hidden Game Room rusty’s cousin claims exists, with Stellas as lookout and the guys.. er all in stacks that make it look like their doing a team up move from donkey kong country 2?

I mean I have been playing the game a lot since it came to switch online, seriously if you have the service go play it, but i’m not hte only one seeing this right? Right. So yeah the kid stack fails and Zach doubts Rusty’s story.. because when has rusty ever been right.. well apparently just this one time, but we’ll get to that. They even checked the boiler room.

And then promptly vowed never to go back to the boiler room while Principal RAmierz just sighed at having to deal with a freddy kruger infestation again. They loose more children that way and the school board JUST got him out of the high school. Liam also gets the line of the episodes when he calls the group “Fellas and Stellas” Which is just objectively amazing and needs to be used every time this group appares from now o. Luckily= Stella noticed another closed door, this one taped off instead of just with a keep out sign and the Fellas and Stellas make their way inside and find themselves in.. a news room! But it’s nto a fox news room so it actually had news in it once and not Tucker Carlson, the answer to what happens to an 80′s or 90′s yuppie scumbag villian after they fail to get the orphange paved over for condos

Anyway, our heroes alll ohhh and all while Zach thinks this is where children are harvested. Nah Zach they just call them up on the pa system.

So everyone does what’s natural to them: Zach and Liam inspect the cameras, Stella looks at the old mic because she’s a natural for being an on camera personality and Rusty.. oggles an old group shot of the news team. You know I may not hate him with the hatred of a hundred suns, but he’s still objectively the worst. Zach gets mad at him over it because “That’s my mom”. Rusty defends himself by calling her hot and while th. no please god no dont’ talk about women like that you creepy little weatherbeaten Chucky doll that somehow became a real boy, or had dustin diamond transfer his soul into it befrore he died. Either is possible. The point is Ewww. The other point is while Rusty’s being his usual living proof of while he’ll die alone Zach has no right to get upset , AT FIRST because how the hell would Rusty know that’s hsi mom. You two have the combined braincell of a dead feret. Stella is the only one out of all 6 of you evenmy boy liam who has more than one brain cell. This argument is stupid and I hate you both, just settle things in the most humane way possible.. or at least THIS is what I consider the most humane way possible.

So while those two are being as stupid as expected, Lincoln suggets fixing the place and becoming the new school news crew. I mean they’d need new equipment since even if the stuff there still works’ it’s all worn out 80′s tech none of you know how to use but given their seen with a modern camera later int he episode, I assume they just sold this off and got new cameras. Even if the show flopped, more on that in a minute, the principal could still use those for other projects so it’s a win win. Stella Zhau agrees.. and FINALLY has a last name. Like holy shit i’ve been waiting a full season for this and it feels like that bit was JUST to give her a last name. Now they just need to do Liam but still, I needed this one more. Plus it also means we can now firmly say she’s chinese. Neat!

So after that blockbuster reveal Stella wonders where Rusty is, because fuck if I know, and they all find him continuing to oggle zach’s mom at their age....

Zach snatches it away and crumples up understandably annoyed. Rusty’s response is about what you’d expect.

So once Liam’s done throwing that calender into the school furnace, and saying hi to freddy as he passes the boiler on the way, our team heads to the principal to plead their case. They run into Meryl, the identical in personality, plot function and apperance outside of wearing pink instead of yellow to Cheryl, the receptionest at the elementary school who I really liked and it’s a clever way to keep the character at both schools and pays off the runnig gag of Cheryl asking liincoln or clyde who looks better her or her sister by having said sister show up and ask the same. Good stuff.

Meryl ends up agreeing to let them go see the wizard, I mean Principal Rameriz, because her soap is on. Also clyde’s a fan to his friends blank stares. Come on guys he watches romance movies, of course he’s going to love drama shows, even the non teen ones. I now imagine he joins the loud sisters on their riverdale nights. Riverdale the clusterfuck that has something for all of them: Teen drama and shirtless hunks for Lori and Leni, Music and scantly clad “teens’ of both genders and neither gender for Luna, something to laugh at for Luann who probably loves mst3king stuff, and violence for Lucy.. dosen’t seem like it’d be Lynn’s thing honestly but I rest my case. Also the rest of the sisters are too young but the parents figure Lucy’s desentised enough to violence and blind enough to sex to make an exception.

Now that fun headcanons out of the way our heroes pitch the principal whose skeptical, as the 80′s news show ended because it was boring, much like why that 80′s show ended. That and it was a bunch of 80′s pop culture refrences strung together. I do have a minor nitpick that it seems odd a school room would be in disuse for this long, but given the Principal has apparently spent years looking for aformetioned game room as we find out in the end, the school blueprints are apparnelty lost to the ages or if they exist are some sort of ancient treasure map buried beneath the school drawn in blood by an old witch. I mean this universe has cherry hating peach loving spies now, i’ not ruling anything out.

But our heroes beg them: Clyde has journalism experince on the school paper, Stella has the dedication and heart and Rusty .. thinks people need to see his face on camera. Rusty as far as we know your face functions like the vdieo from the ring and everyone in school is going to die 7 days after seeing it on film. That’s my theroy and i’m sticking to it. Thankfully everyone else is just as annoyed with him as me for once, and we get the glorious shot above of everyone just looking.. done with his antics and wondering why they keep him around. Finally for once I agree iwth the characters on something rusty related. Let’s show that agian.

Poetry. You can just feel the levels of “So done with this crap” seeping from every poor.. except for Poor Lincoln who just wishes his best friends and rusty woudl stop using him as furniture, and Liam whose covered but probably very much on team “Rusty Stop Being Yourself your blowing this for us”. They even have an action news pose.. which is botha dorable and breaks the principal’s bust of herself, so she relucntantly agrees to get them out of there. Plus as I said there’s really no loss for her here. If their sucessful the school gets a new elective, something to put on the tv’s every morning, a way to do announcments so she dosen’t have to, and free good publicity for her next bonus. If not.. then she has somehwere to store her new cameras she can use for other stuff, and come up with something else to do with the media lab. Either way she wins. Plus iwth phones and stuff noawaydays they only need the one new camera. Okay before we move on confession time: I was on a school tv news show’s crew myself. Not in middle school, we werne’te that lucky but in high school we had video media, an elective where seniors edited news segments and what not for the school’s WhamTV program. I hope i’ts still around honestly. I started on a field crew doing stories but my awkardenss and a blow up at my partner where my awkward rage prone ass threatned him by accident, got me bumped to doing credits.. which I genuinely loved. I got to something fun, creative and unique, I was still part of hte intros every week, and I got plenty of time to goof off and watch videos. It’s how I found channel awesome and first got to watch atop the fourth wall since it wasn’t on youtube back then, back before you know, it turned out Doug was abusing all of them and younger me was just unaware of it. But it was still good times so this episode does feel a bit nostalgic for me. But enough teary eyed reminciings of ten years ago, back to the plot. Our heroes air their newscast. It’s the Middle School Action News with with your Anchors Lincoln Loud and Clyde McBride, Stella Zhao in the field, Rusty Spokes on Sports for.. some reason, Cameraman Liam Wedon’tknowhislastname and Zach Gurdle somewhere out of the way. Middle School Action News, always on, always free.. no wiat tha’ts pluto. Middle School Action News, Taste the rainbow. Middle School Action News.. The Good Guys Always Win, Even in The 80′s. Yeah that’ll do!

But yeah while our heroes try their best, and to their credit this does feel like a middle school news show. The writers not our heroes. Anyways Lincoln and Clyde banter and we get our first segment Stella trying to interview mr. Bohlmer about his birthday.. which goes about as well as doing anything for him on ron swansons’ birthday.

Next we have Rusty on sports.. which I questioned when I first say this but as obonxious as Rusty can be.. yeah this is the best place to have him. Stella has the drive and the talent to be their field reporter, Clyde and Lincoln have a lifelong report that does well for the desk, Liam is nice and patient enough for camera work, and Zach is a paranoid weirdo so he probably has experince editing since thats where I assume where he is since htey ddon’t do weather and even if they did Liam’s just not the right shade of oblivoiusly nuts.

I do however at least get why they keep him around as Rusty needs someone to get fed up with him.. but as the above moment showed Clyde and Stella can do that easily, as can Lincoln, so he really has no functional purpose other than as a B-Grade dale gribble. ANd I know kids don’t know who that is but they frankly deserve better. Seriously Zach...

Okay getting back to the segement. For starters Rusty does a breath spray first.. but suprisingly despite interviewing a lady, specifically Lynn, he DOSEN’T hit on her and is actually professional and manages to get a quote despite her disintrest. LIke I know it’s the bare minimum but you’ve met rusty right? the Bare Minimum is hard for him to grasp. Earlier this episode he was oggling old pictures of his friends mom and saying he should take it as a compliment which, Hard No. So the fact hours later he’s talking to a woman without radiating creep after that is an achivment. For him and him alone mind you, most kids should know better. But still I may be hard on the kid, because DAMN is it fun and damn if he dosen’t give me plenty of joke fodder, but I will give him credit even if it’s the bare minmum. Good job rust you passed the very basic plateau of human decency.

Stella wraps things up with a look at the cafteria that’s about what you’d expect from a kids cartoon, shoe int he beans etc. Unfortuantley bean shoes, sportz and angry assholes aren’t enough to float the show and the principal is ready to can it. On hte bright side they have their first lawsuit from Mr. Bohlmer. I mean John Olvier idnd’t start getting sued by dickheads with no real case till he was 30, nicely done kids. And it’s not even why, it’s just boring and the kids aren’t enjoying it. So Stella, being again the one with her own brain cells here, proposes to let them find a big story, and Ramirez reluctantly but graciously agrees. And that’s why I like her so far. Don’t get me wrong having Steven Tobolowsky as principal was great, but I like Rameriz better: she’s smart, weary of the crap she puts up with and tough but fair.. which is a cliche btu fits here: She’ll be honest with her kids but will give them an honest chance and sees our news team really doees want this bad and her giving htem one more day to find something actally intresting is more than fair. So our heroes spitball about what to do for news. LIam suggests alien because again he has about one character trait, so everyone tells him for hte last time no. I mean it isn’t much worse than his last suggestion.

So once agian it’s RUSTY who saves the day, bringing in beet snacks.. which he tries to get them not to stone him over over the fact the popcorn was all gone.. which okay 1) I get the show’s tring to be healthy so maybe ther’es not chips, but I have a hard time buying that there’s no Chez Its, snack packs or other goodies between “Popcorn’ and “something with beetz that only two men would eat” For the record those two men are Dwight Schrute, for obvious reasons, and this guy my boy Tony Chu.

I highly recommend this comic, Chew for the record, to anyone. Just.. anyone whose not a children it gets voilent, but it is sublime. We’re not here for that, but I thought i’d plug it. It also has a spinoff currently running, Chu, following his criminal sister. Also real good and dosen’t really spoil anything for hte main series thus far so you can hop in there instead. Either way your in for a ride. Back on topic, while Rusty failed with snacks he actually brings up a good point: The popcorn isn’t just gone because it’s late in the school day, but because as the kids notice, it’s just missing in general despite the trucks arriving. They have their story and head out to investigate. And suprisingly, unlike last week’s investigation they find something: A mysterious hooded figure bribing the driver for popcorn, and taking it off somewhere. They fail to catch her, as Rusty dives over her telling Liam to “Make sure you get this”.. he instead gets a shrub and video of him attacking a shrub. I’ts a good runner and shows the writers are leanring to use Rusty better. They take the footage to the principal, who is impresssed, but states they need to find out who dun it for the story to be complete which is fair enough. They stalk out the nexxt delivery time later that night, but find the drivers have been switched and the mystery person has fled to canada. Rusty once again tries catching her and fall sin the water. Liam once again responds with a cheerful “Don’t worry rusty I got it”.. okay this dynamic is honestly better than him and Zach: Cheerful oblivious Liam and scheming dumbass rusty. Why isn’t THIS the “Those Two Guys” dynamic in the group, honestly.

Anyways Lincoln is dispondent the next day as iwth no leads, they have no programa nd prepares to do a spider-man no more with his anchorsuit.. which okay 1) you can use that for other things man. Peter Parker can’t really use a spider-man suit for anything but spider-manning but you can use that suit for dates and dances and stuff. and 2).. whya re he and the clyde the only ones with outfits? I mean.. it’s clear from this episode there will be more school news stories nad it just looks weird that they get to play dressup in suits but the rest of the crew isn’t. Liam at leat is working the camera and Zach is Zach but rusty and Stella are field reporters. Field reporters, while not always, usually get nice suits too guys.

ANyways Lincoln finds something in the garbage. And not his sister this time, as Lana oscar the grouched it up lat episode in sadness. Which to be fair will be her future career mark my words. At least I think that’s a career. Anyways, our heros find a ferry ticket meaning whoever fled to Canada is in the building. They trail some popcorn from the ticket to the locked door from earlier, which Rusty, finishing the rule of three, tries knocking it down hwile Liam gets it. Stella, again proving to be the real hero of this tale, uses her hair as a lockpick. Is.. is there anythign this child can’t do? She and Marcy should swap notes sometime damn.

And the culprit is MERYL! She was using the popcorn for insulation to get a quite room to herself and begs the kids not to tell which. is the weaker part of the episode> We don’t have the investment in Meryl we do in Cheryl, and she did you know.. steal school property.. or at least buy it off under the table. But the kids being the sweet kids they are understandably, schemes or not don’t want her to loose her job, and agree to not tell on her even if they loose their show. And to their creid and what keeps this from sinking the episode Meryl is genuinely greatful for this gesture, and gives them the scoop. And as i’ve been mentioning turns out RUSTY WAS RIGHT. Yes Rusty. That Rusty. Was Right about something. The Game Room exists. They find it thorugh a hidden locker entrance and unlock it from the inside, with af lodo of viewers coming in. Granted at first I didn’t know why Meryl didn’t just use this room but then I thought “Oh yeah she’s a full grown adult and can’t fit in the entrance and i’m assuming it was locked from the other side to the rest of the school”. So the kids have a new hangout and as the principal joins them, they havea show! Turns out she’d been looking for this place for years.. and doesn’t turn it into something else. What a legend. She plays Air Hockey with Meryl, is there something going on there or are my shipping goggles acting up.. probably both. Anyways our heroes have genuine thanks, a fun new hangout at school, their own headquarters and their own news show. It’s a heck of a day but it’s no time to rest as Rusty tells them he has another tip and i’ts off... to pick up a broom to sweep up the gumball machine they knock over.. THEN they can go find the hot tub for the teachers lounge.

Final Thoughts: OH me mow, this was a great one. For one the main complaint I had I mentioned at Schooled! of it not feeling like Lincoln’s friends were given enough personality sometimes? Gone enitrely. Everyone except Clyde and Zach get a moment and Clyde is still fully present and has gotten several focus episodes at this point, while Zach again should just leave already. But the rest of them? All on form. Stella continues to prove her competence, energy and adorability, Rusty is not only actually useful for once but was actually really funny his episode. The gag with Zach’s mom was actually pretty hilarious, my jabs at him aside, and the runner of him trying to do some epic stunt, telling Liam to film it and then humiliating himself while his pal cheerfully tells him he got it is just great and Lincoln’s Spider-Man no more moment with his suit was both said and kinda funny and I love him and Clyde’s reporter outfits. It’s why I wanted everyone to have them, especially since this will be a recurring theme and looks to be a fun one. It was fun, creative, and took me back a decade. It was a REALLY damn good one and I’m glad I watched this one first, a true highlight of the series and a true good sign that the season can, even with some hiccups, will apparnetly have some REALLY great episodes on average even with the weaker ones. That’s it for this week... and somehow for loud house coverage as, for now, their doesn’t’t seem to be any new episodes in October, but that could change. Until then, follow this blog every Monday for regular ducktales coverage and come back in October for more loud house, more the Casagrandes and some spooky spooky fun Until then, Go team venture.

#The Loud House #Lincoln Loud #Lana Loud #Lola Loud #Clyde McBride #Stella Zhau #Liam #Zach Girdle #Rusty Spokes #Principal Rameriz #Meryl #Lynn Loud #Girl Jordan #Lynn Loud Sr #Rita Loud

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theonceoverthinker · 4 years

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I don’t want to let go, not right now. I don’t think you do either... So, let’s see how long I can keep these Fair Game HC’s going...Though I guess they’re now more AU’s than anything...

Today was worse than I ever could’ve imagined, I’ve been fighting off jerks all day, and I need a break...

@luck-of-the-caw suggested Fair Game’s first date, and that’s as good of a fluffy place to start as any other, I guess.

Well, I definitely feel a bit freer in my interpretations of this than I did yesterday, now that I’m stepping away from canon...

Crummy consolation prize, mind you, but I’ll take it, for what it’s worth, at least.

So without any further adieu, let’s a-do this.

-Of course, it’s Clover who first asks Qrow out. Things have been peaceful for a bit, finally, and a night out is more than deserved. BUT, while Clover gives Qrow an invitation for a night out, it’s Qrow who asks if it’s a date. Clover doesn’t put expectations on the evening when he initially broaches the topic, but once Qrow drops the word ‘date,’ Clover decides to test his luck. Qrow stammers, and Clover is almost willing to drop it since Qrow looks nervous by the proposition, but in a twist on things, before he can, Qrow accepts, slightly stuttering, but firm all the same. Clover grins and says he’ll pick Qrow up at seven.

-Ruby and Yang hear about it (Or were maybe eavesdropping) and tease Qrow relentlessly about how he’s going on a date. However, upon seeing Qrow flustered about the date, almost to the point of wanting to cancel, the girls start to help him out. They rifle through his closet, give him dating advice, and suggest places to go after dinner. At an hour before seven, they head out, leaving Qrow to do the final preparations on his own.

-Not ten seconds past seven pass before Clover rings Qrow’s doorbell.

-Both dress up a bit more than usual for the date. Qrow throws on a different blazer (This time black), some dark jeans, and sneakers. Clover wears a dark grey t-shirt, blue jeans, and dark sneakers. Qrow teases him about finally wearing a top with sleeves (Granted, small ones), but Clover returns the quip by asking him (with that signature wink) if he prefers Clover with no sleeves. That gets Qrow all flustered again, but Clover gives him just the right kind of smirk to get him back to normal. Teasingly, Clover offers Qrow his arm, and Qrow laughs while accepting it as Clover takes the to his car.

-They have dinner together at a relaxed restaurant (Think like a step above a diner). Qrow orders a burger with fries and Clover orders some salmon. The conversation is light, and neither can stop smiling as time floats by. Qrow trades a fry for a bite of salmon, and Clover manages to steal a few fires on his way to and from the bathroom. Qrow gets his revenge by grabbing a giant spoon of Clover’s mashed potatoes. The restaurant owner almost expect them to get into a food fight, but apart from some mashed potatoes that his Clover’s eyebrow, nothing major comes of it.

-As they leave the restaurant, Clover takes Qrow’s hand. Clover nearly drops his jaw as he feels Qrow tighten his hold on the hand, casually grinning. There’s a park nearby and the weather is perfect for a moonlit walk.

-More conversations take place, but this time, they get more personal (Ex. Family, bad experiences with their semblances, loneliness). To anyone else, they’d be uncomfortable, but to each other, there’s so little they wouldn’t reveal. They circle the park at least three times as they exchange these stories.

-At some point, they take a seat at a bench perched right in front of the moon. They look out to it, wondering if they could jump across the different pieces of it if they could ever explore the stars. Thoughts of running and jumping across the moon with Clover by his side, all the while sharing laughs swim through Qrow’s mind, and it makes Qrow feel like they’d have the time of their lives. Then again, the two of them could probably have fun doing just about anything together...

-A comfortable silence takes place. Clover wraps an arm over Qrow’s shoulder, and Qrow leans into him a bit. They turn to face each other, and then...they kiss under the moonlit night.

-Clover asks Qrow out again en route back to the car, and Qrow accepts with almost no hesitation (The only hesitation being date jitters).

-It’s almost impossible for either to let go of the other when they reach Qrow’s home again, but they painfully will the action into existence. A final kiss on the cheek is snuck by Clover, but Qrow gets the jump on him with his own, and Clover’s never been more sure about his love for this man.

-Yang and Ruby text Qrow about two minutes after he gets home. Qrow wonders how they even knew he was back, but the girls are relentless, so Qrow spends the better half of the night afterwards filling them in on all the details.

-Clover has no one to talk to about the date. Qrow knows this, so shortly after Clover texts him that he made it back safely, Qrow texts him to ask what he thought of them.

-Okay, NOW Clover’s never been more sure about his love for this man.

-But that’s a sentiment that will continue to be outdated every single way Qrow lights up his life going forward!

Tagging @homokinetic @skybird13 @whipped4qrow @mooksie01 @luck-of-the-caw @xwildangel @solitude-of-stars @magneto-is-neato @o0nashipear0o @fairgamey @doctorrwby @clover-and-co

I can’t promise you I’ll make these forever going forward, but for as long as I do, if you want to be added to this list (Or removed, given...things), reach out to me via replies, PM’s, or asks.

#rwby #fair game #clover ebi #qrow branwen #lucky charms #luck birds #luckbirds #rwby spoilers #because GOD do we need something positive right about now #I wonder if anyone will want these anymore #Still it didn't feel right to not do at least one more #fair game hcs

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omgshecodes · 4 years

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“I wish I could talk and pause at the same time.”

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DISCLAIMER: With the following passages, I do not intend to discredit or belittle any of the emotional, reactionary behavior of the black community. I see where they are coming from, as I do have plenty of racist experiences on my back, too, and I couldn’t hold my emotions a lot of times, too. And yet, as of right now, it’s obviously still easier for me to speak up on this matter as someone distant who isn’t directly affected right now. I think I just try desperately to react in a more composed manner, with a scheme, because if everyone would react with emotions instead of reason, where would we go from here? I just really, really hope that my effort to encourage folks to pause for a second and allow themselves the time to do their research doesn’t make me sound “privileged”, as if I’m saying in between the lines that I can afford it from a non-black person’s stand. As I said, I may not be black, but being a covered Muslim woman requires me to be reactionary a lot of times, too. I don’t see it’s a matter of time, but a matter of long-dated plan. Correct me if I’m wrong.

***********************

Not an hour later after I shared my frustration about the current atmosphere on instagram (our community in particular) in my stories, my 5 y/o kid happened to actually put into words what I couldn’t. I was just in the kitchen doing stuff as he suddenly was like: „Gosh, mommy, you know I’m so in the mood to talk right now.“ I thought it was so funny that, and how, he said that, so I encouraged him thereafter and said he should just talk then, but then he was like: „But I want to pause, too. I wish I could talk and pause at the same time.“ And oh my God, I’ve felt that!!!

Different story, but too often he happened to speak what resides in my mind and heart into existence with such simplicity, as if our minds were connected and while I oftentimes fail to find the right words, he succeeds in finding the most simple for this matter.

Anyway, the way he put it not only made the point I couldn’t make, but he made me realize that my frustration stem from social media’s reactionary, unprogressive nature. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter & co are so quick and fast and flooded with information, and you just wish to stay up-to-date and go with the flow and spread the word like crazy, but at the same time want to pause for a second and just breathe and allow yourself the time to do so.

You know, I’m usually someone who always tries to see both sides of the coin, and sometimes I struggle with building my own opinion because both sides appear reasonable to me, but you know what? That’s completely fine. Who even says that you always have to have one perfect opinion on everything? That’s the thing about social media, too. It expects you to be political and biased, but if you think about it, many opinions stem from hive mind, which again is shaped by mainstream media, anyway. And oftentimes, no one even cares about your opinion, or if you have one at all. You may not even care about my opinion, or the message I try to convey with this blogpost, and that’s okay. I don’t even know why I feel responsible for making a deal about this, but I just had to get it off my chest because I was so unsettled.

***Please note that I do not talk about forming an opinion on racism. In this matter, there is obviously no „opinion“ of course. Racism is what it is - absolutely incorrect and to be freaking cut off this world! But when I’m addressing opinions I rather address those that arise from judging people you don’t know according to their behavior on social media, and how this is affecting our community’s „domestic bliss“ right now.***

The way it seems now is as if neither saying something nor not saying anything at all is the right thing to do. I mean, I don’t even want to address what white folks seem to criticize regarding the looting and rioting because that affects the real world, and real-life emotions have been all over the place and I personally get the turmoil off social media, so hence I’m rather talking about what’s happening online.

It’s one thing to decide to share useful content such as spreading resources for your own research, for donating or how to go on about the „virtual protesting“ in general, but it’s another thing to fight with each other and spread more hate and contribute to a greater shxtstorm and dispute.

Pressure creates back pressure, and that’s that.

One person reached out to me and said how she got hate for emphasizing with accounts who didn’t say a word about what’s going on yet because you never know what they’re going through in life right now. In Islam, we have this saying that says you should make 70 excuses before judging your brother or sister, so I really felt where she was coming from. There’s just a mass cancelling call referring to accounts who still post code. Come on…seriously?

Then again I talked to Vonds, someone from the black community himself, and he analyzed the situation by saying that the core of this current cancelling culture is pretty much that certain folks choose to actively look away when they have seen the injustice, the killing, the wrong with their own eyes through all the shared videos, and in one of his latest posts (which you desperately need to read btw!) he reminded us of how social media got crazy over a freaking building like Notre-Dame. And that, I felt, too.

So if pages who usually are so outspoken on political matters and injustice and yet remain silent this time, yes, you should totally unfollow and boycott them because that is hypocrisy and exclusive/selected commitment at its finest. This includes public figures with a massive reach, too.

But then it’s still questions remaining like should you cut back on your ego and adjust your account completely and transform it into an activist account? Who, then, determines the right timing to „go back to normal“? Is there even the right timing? Would you be allowed to go back and forth between spreading the word and continuing your account as usual? Isn’t this confusing and dissembling? You may see what I mean when I said I can’t deal with the fragility of the moment when addressing the bad happening in the world and why I usually choose to remain silent online.

I feel like a right balance would be to leave the „major work“ to the activist pages, and you should support them in spreading the word, but why would you try to make-up your entire account?

We - people who get not only trigged but especially are affected by racism - may feel like the world stopped for a second and we want everyone else to hop on the „spread the word“ train with us. But for others it keeps spinning to the degree that they still need to take care of their family, pay their bills(so much for the people shaming those accounts who still uphold their brand deals) and just live their lives, but at the same time they might try their best off social media to make a change.

Don’t be so quick to judge and raise expectations. Perhaps they attend protests without you knowing, and you’re still spreading hate at them not loosing a word. Could it possibly be the case that a big account has been dead for a while w/o your notice, and now imagine this person coming back to +50 dms naming and shaming him for not giving a fxck?

Truth is you will never ever please everyone anyway, it’s that simple.

I just wish that we could respect each other’s decisions and opinions more because that’s the essence of a peaceful co-existence, isn’t it? We don’t know each other’s backgrounds, and we are little aware of how social media is mostly run by an American narrative, too, and that’s why the US mostly determines the online directory that occupies our minds which people on different continents may not even can relate to. (Again, I am not referring to racism!)

There’s been an iconic moment on a TV show where two women had a debate on the hijab, one of them wearing it, and the one who was against it was approaching her: „You know what, frankly speaking I personally don’t like you wearing that scarf on your head, but I will give my life that you can wear it freely and have your opinion on it.“ And to me, that is maturity.

I guess the bottom line of all this palaver is that I wish to create a broader understanding between parties and decrease the hate, and especially to encourage you as a non-black person to allow yourself the needed time to process things, do your research and form your opinion/decision on how you wish to proceed on- and offline. Just because social media is so reactionary and fast, and information is just one click away doesn’t mean your brain has to adapt and follow, let alone manages to do that in first place. Be wise and clever enough not to just act for the sake of acting and pleasing the crowd. Let the peak of emotions subside before you proceed, but act and proceed at all. You owe that to our black brothers and sisters. Tim Ferriss’ post really puts that perfectly, thank you for pointing that out to me John!

Just think about it, when did you ever hold a conversation or a discussion with someone and you told the other person „Hey, I need to think about what you said first, I’ll get back at you later.“? These days we speak for the sake of speaking to fill the silence, but even more so do we listen with the intention and dire need to respond. We need to learn to consume slowly while being exposed to a constant stream of information.

Even this clutter of thoughts isn’t meant to build your opinion. It is just what it is, a fragment of ideas in the midst of chaos. Form an opinion on the cancel culture, or just don’t. But what you definitely should do is remain a good character and do what you can do make this world a better place. And the thing we can do the least is getting educated on the matters revolving around black folks and supporting them in ways that reconcile with our means, whatever they may look like. Just keep in mind that each one may have a different means which you don’t know about, and that way you will be less likely to judge so quickly and contribute to spreading hate.

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letterboxd · 4 years

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Screen Time.

Can the data about actors’ time on screen help bust open Oscars category fraud? Jack Moulton talks to stopwatch-wielding Academy Awards fan Matthew Stewart about his hours (and hours, and hours) of timing Academy-nominated performances down to the second. Pictured above are the longest on-screen appearances for winning lead and supporting performances: Charlton Heston, Vivien Leigh, Tatum O’Neal and Mahershala Ali.

“It’s a shameful practice and in order to argue against it, there has to be evidence.” —Matthew Stewart

The Oscar categories for Supporting Actress and Supporting Actor were introduced at the 9th Academy Awards in 1937 to recognize those who excelled in roles that were less-than-leading, but no less important to the story. It’s a category in which emerging actors, fantastic character performers and non-famous industry veterans have found their way to Oscar glory.

Except that in recent decades, there’s so much more to an Oscar-winning performance than what we see on screen. It’s often a deliberate campaign, using every publicity trick in the book: red carpet walks, ‘surprise’ Q&A appearances, press coverage about the sacrifices involved in playing the part, narratives about previous ‘awards snubs’.

And then there’s category fraud—a strategy where studios split two stars across two categories, in order to nudge both towards the Academy’s podium. Example: for their equally leading roles in Carol, Cate Blanchett won the leading actress nomination, while Rooney Mara was nominated for supporting actress.

The problem, as Anne Thompson writes in her recent Thompson on Hollywood column assessing this year’s likely category-shifts, is “when lead actors (or actresses) decide they have a better chance in supporting, they take a slot away from another deserving performer”.

As history moves on and the politics fade away, measuring screen time is perhaps one of the few objective, quantifiable and finite pieces of information the director passes along to the audience and Oscar voters about an actor’s contribution to a film.

Enter Matthew Stewart: a 28-year-old Oscar buff and Letterboxd member from North Carolina who’s been following the Academy Awards for fourteen years. Curious as to why Frances McDormand and William H. Macy were nominated for Lead Actress and Supporting Actor respectively for Fargo, he set out to investigate how egregious their category placements were, by comparing their time on screen. Turns out Macy is on screen for 38 seconds longer than McDormand.

Matthew is our type of completist. Over the past twelve years, he has made it his mission to time all of the Academy Award nominated performances; tracking actors’ seconds on screen (whether seen or heard), keeping track of the time in his notepad, and then summing it all up. He certainly knows more than the Academy, who broadcasted incorrect trivia on last year’s Oscar game that Matthew was quick to put right.

His motivation is largely to debunk myths, such as the commonly repeated ‘fun fact’ of Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs having the shortest Best Actor Oscar-winning performance. The shortest, in fact, is David Niven’s appearance in Separate Tables, which is exactly one minute and thirteen seconds shorter than Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter.

Of course, screen time does not reflect quality by any means. Having a character on screen for longer does not mean the role is better acted or more well-written. In many ways, it can be more impressive when an iconic or powerful character is technically on screen for half an hour or less.

We spoke to Matthew about his hobby, his opinions on category fraud, and the data he has on this year’s nominees. He shares his results on Twitter, his Letterboxd profile and his website, Screentime Central.

Vivien Leigh in ‘Gone with the Wind’ (1939).

Let’s get to those stats. In Academy Award history, what is the longest performance to be nominated for an Oscar? Matthew Stewart: By length, 1940 Best Actress winner Vivien Leigh is seen on screen in Gone with the Wind for two hours, 23 minutes and 32 seconds. By percentage, 1976 Best Actor nominee James Whitmore is on screen in Give ’em Hell, Harry! for 96.52 percent of the film’s runtime.

And the shortest? Both by length and percentage, 1960 Best Supporting Actress nominee Hermione Baddeley is on screen in Room at the Top for only two minutes and 19 seconds, which is just 1.98 percent of the film’s runtime.

You’ve done the math: what was the most egregious category fraud of all-time? And also—the worst failed attempt at category fraud? The most egregious case of category fraud is Richard Burton’s supporting nomination for My Cousin Rachel. Others come close, but that is the worst. He’s the main focus of the film and is in 85 percent of it, making it one of the 25 longest performances nominated in any category. And his co-star, Olivia de Havilland, is only in 44 percent of the film, so there’s no explaining it.

One of the most serious cases of fraud I can think of that didn’t result in a nomination is Jacob Tremblay being campaigned as supporting for Room. It’s a shame that that kind of bias against child actors still exists. And then there are cases where a definitive decision on placement wasn’t made, resulting in no nomination at all, like Lesley Manville in Another Year.

How does your husband feel about your time-consuming hobby? I actually didn’t tell anyone about my hobby for the first four years or so. I wanted to avoid the judgment of people thinking it was odd.

My husband was interested as soon as I told him and showed him my work up to that point. He’s always been willing to listen to my Oscar-related ramblings, so I shouldn’t have been worried!

Why do you think it’s important to keep such scientific track of category fraud? I think it’s important to because it’s a shameful practice and in order to argue against it, there has to be evidence. And the evidence is stacking up just about every year. I want to provide as much screen-time data as possible as a way to support correct category placements, and of course I hope that someday the Academy will catch on.

Now we have the data, has category fraud gotten worse over the years? Can you tell if the recent absence of Weinstein has helped ease fraud? Category fraud seems to have gotten worse in recent years, with cases like Rooney Mara [in Carol] and Alicia Vikander [winner of Best Supporting Actress for The Danish Girl] in 2016 and the cast of The Favourite last year. But really, it’s not any worse now than it’s been since the introduction of the supporting categories.

The worst thing about it now is how blatantly greedy some studios are in terms of winning as many Oscars as possible. It’s sad that we’ll never again see two leading actors or actresses nominated for the same film out of fear of them cancelling each other out and neither winning. Campaigning one of them as supporting makes for two potential wins.

I think Weinstein intensified the trend so long ago that his absence doesn’t change much. Some studios have campaigned that way for so long that I don’t think it will get better any time soon.

Which is the most significant difference between a nominated lead and supporting performance in the same film? [See Matthew’s list: Who’s Supporting Who?] The worst case is Timothy Hutton [supporting] over Mary Tyler Moore [leading] in Ordinary People. Hutton is onscreen for 32 minutes and eighteen seconds more than Moore! I would personally classify both of those performances as leading, as well as Donald Sutherland’s performance in the same film.

Meryl Streep in ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’, the first—and longest—of her three Oscar-winning roles, from a record 21 nominations.

Have you timed which actor or actress has the most Oscar nominated minutes ever? Or, let me rephrase: how many minutes do Meryl Streep’s 21 Oscar nominated performances add up to? Meryl Streep’s Oscar-nominated performances add up to 21 hours, 19 minutes, and 39 seconds, which gives her an average of about 61 minutes per performance.

And the runners up? After Streep, it’s Katharine Hepburn (12:45:10), Jack Nicholson (12:32:27), Bette Davis (12:09:13), and Laurence Olivier (10:54:22).

Which were the hardest and easiest films to time? Naturally, the harder it is to see the actor on screen, the harder it is to time them. So I really despise drawn-out battle scenes or scenes with huge crowds. Timing Charlton Heston’s performance in Ben-Hur during the chariot racing scene wasn’t that hard, because you know where he is, but timing Hugh Griffith’s performance in the same scene was much harder because he’s part of that enormous crowd.

The easiest one I’ve ever done is James Whitmore in Give ’em Hell, Harry!, since it’s a filmed one-man stage show. Sleuth and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? were easy too, because there are so few actors in the cast.

What results surprised you the most? I remember being shocked to find out that Robert Strauss’s supporting performance in Stalag 17 is nineteen minutes longer than William Holden’s leading one. But still, in that case, I don’t have a problem with the category placement. More recently, I was surprised by the shortness of Sam Elliott’s performance in A Star Is Born [eight minutes, 45 seconds!], and the fact that Scarlett Johansson’s performance in Marriage Story is 20 minutes shorter than Adam Driver’s.

Of those you’ve timed so far, what are the screen times for this year’s nominees? [Actors are ranked below by screen time as a percentage of each film’s total runtime.]

Best Actor in a Leading Role: Joaquin Phoenix (Joker) – 1:43:44 / 85.3% Adam Driver (Marriage Story) – 1:25:03 / 62.1% Jonathan Pryce (The Two Popes) – 1:12:42 / 57.7% Antonio Banderas (Pain and Glory) – 59:31 / 52.5% Leonardo DiCaprio (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) – 1:01:12 / 37.9%

Best Actress in a Leading Role: Renee Zellweger (Judy) – 1:27:29 / 74.0% Cynthia Erivo (Harriet) – 1:25:12 / 68.2% Saoirse Ronan (Little Women) – 1:15:01 / 47.7% Scarlett Johansson (Marriage Story) – 1:05:19 / 47.7% Charlize Theron (Bombshell) – 37:16 / 34.3%

Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Anthony Hopkins (The Two Popes) – 55:14 / 43.9% Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) – 55:12 / 34.2% Al Pacino (The Irishman) – 53:58 / 25.8% Tom Hanks (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood) – 44:56 / 41.4% Joe Pesci (The Irishman) – 43:22 / 20.7%

Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Florence Pugh (Little Women) – 42:06 / 31.2% Margot Robbie (Bombshell) – 26:16 / 24.2% Kathy Bates (Richard Jewell) – 25:06 / 19.2% Laura Dern (Marriage Story) – 18:36 / 13.6% Scarlett Johansson (Jojo Rabbit) – 15:36 / 14.4%

It looks like the more time on screen, the better the chances of a win, judging by some of the frontrunners this year. Is that an identifiable trend in your data? Looking at the data from the last ten years, Oscar wins do tend to favor longer performances across all categories. The shortest Best Actor or Actress nominee of the year has only won once since 2010—Olivia Colman last year for The Favourite.

The average winning leading performance since 2010 is 75 minutes long (63 percent of screen time), with none under 50 minutes (when the previous decade had eight under 50, and five under 40 percent). The average winning supporting performance since 2010 is 36 minutes long (28 percent of screen time), with only one under 20 minutes (which was Allison Janney in I, Tonya).

Have you noticed any fun stats for this year’s nominees? The only screen-time-related stat I’ve noticed is that this year’s Supporting Actor nominees have either the highest or second-highest average length of all time in the category. I can’t say for sure until after I time Tom Hanks, nominated for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

With an average age of 71.6, this year’s Supporting Actor Oscar nominees are the oldest group ever nominated in any acting category. This is the fourth time this decade that the Supporting Actors have broken the long-standing record of 61.3 held by the 1965 Supporting Actress group.

Also, all of this year’s acting nominees make up the second-oldest group ever nominated, with an average age of 51.8. The record is still 53.1 for 2017—the third time the record was broken this decade after previously being held by (again) the 1965 group (49.3).

So far, this year’s nominees haven’t broken any records. Phoenix’s performance could be the overall longest Oscar-winning performance of the decade, but that’s about it.

Mahershala Ali as Don Shirley in ‘Green Book’ (2018).

What nominees in the past decade broke records? I think one thing worth mentioning is that Mahershala Ali just broke the record for longest Supporting Actor winning performance last year [for Green Book], previously held by Christoph Waltz in 2013 [for Django Unchained], who took the record from Timothy Hutton.

And the female percentage record was broken twice this decade after being held since 1991 by Meryl Streep [for Postcards from the Edge]; by Marion Cotillard in 2015 [for Two Days, One Night] and then by Charlotte Rampling in 2016 [for 45 Years].

Three of the ten longest Best Supporting Actress-nominated performances of all time (by minutes) are from 2016 (Mara, Vikander, Leigh). Mara and Vikander also make the percentage top ten, along with Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit), Emma Stone (The Favourite) and Julia Roberts (August: Osage County)—so exactly half of that top ten are from this decade alone.

2019 was the first time ever that two performances under ten minutes were nominated for Best Supporting Actor in the same year—Sam Elliott, and Sam Rockwell in Vice.

And what about performances you timed from 2019 that were snubbed? (More from other years are here.)

Awkwafina (The Farewell) – 1:00:19 / 60.4% Zhao Shuzhen (The Farewell) – 37:33 / 37.6% Constance Wu (Hustlers) – 1:02:31/ 56.8% Jennifer Lopez (Hustlers) – 53:09 / 48.3% Robert De Niro (The Irishman) – 2:14:19 / 64.1% Lupita Nyong’o (Us) – 57:21 / 49.3% Robert Pattinson (The Lighthouse) – 1:23:18 / 76.4% Willem Dafoe (The Lighthouse) – 56:02 / 51.4% Margot Robbie (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) – 17:00 / 10.5%

You’ve watched more nominees than most people (let’s face it, maybe all people). Forgetting screen time, what are the most underrated nominated performances you think people should check out? Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in The Guardsman (I can’t separate them, sorry!), Mickey Rooney in The Bold and the Brave, and Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette.

How about greatest snubs. Who are you dying to see get nominated for an Oscar? When I think of who the Academy has snubbed the most, I immediately think of John Goodman. He’s everyone’s go-to answer, but it’s true. After him, I’d say Emily Blunt, Steve Buscemi and Alfred Molina.

What Oscar win are you rooting for the most on Sunday? My favorite Oscar-nominated performance of the year is Joaquin Phoenix in Joker. I know the film is polarizing, but he’s undeniable, and I hope he wins. As for upsets in below-the-line categories, I’d love it if The Lighthouse won Best Cinematography, and it’d be so cool if Parasite won Best Film Editing.

The 92nd Academy Awards take place on Sunday, February 9, at 5:00pm PST. See also: The Best Best Picture Lineups and All the 2020 Oscar Nominees.

#academy awards #oscars #oscar #oscars 2020 #awards #acting #actors #time on screen #matthew stewart #leading actor #leading actress #supporting actor #supporting actress #letterboxd

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Wave of Sexual Misconduct Accusations Rock Comics Industry

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CW: Sexual harassment, grooming

This week saw a wave of sexual misconduct allegations against men of varying positions in the comic book industry. The first came from artist Aviva Artzy, followed up by artist and writer Kate Leth, with support from the wife of the late Darwyn Cooke, Marsha Cooke, and convention organizer Andrea Demonakos, accusing Cameron Stewart of grooming underage girls. Grooming is when an older person establishes a relationship with a usually underage one, with the intention of developing a sexual relationship in the future. As a result of this, Stewart, the one time Batgirl co-writer and Seaguy artist, was let go from a previously unannounced DC project and had a variant cover for Image’s Ice Cream Man canceled.

Later, former Dark Horse editor Brendan Wright was accused by former colleague Bekah Caden of an extended campaign of sexual harassment and stalking. Wright left Dark Horse in 2015, and has been dropped by Starburns Industries Press, as well as an anthology benefit comic for gun violence survivors, and multiple other small press books.

And finally, Warren Ellis was accused by writer/editor Katie West of using his power and influence to emotionally manipulate women into often sexual relationships, emotionally abusing them, and abandoning them. West was joined by musician Meredith Yayanos, and photographer Jhayne Holmes, who later started cataloguing and providing support to other victims of Ellis. At last count, that group is over 60. Ellis has since been dropped from the Dark Nights: Death Metal anthology he was scheduled to take part in.

Ellis’ response, posted on Twitter and emailed to his newsletter list, is embarrassing in its totality. The idea that the showrunner of Netflix’s Castlevania, a man who has had multiple comics adapted into movies grossing hundreds of millions of dollars, the man whose millennial web forum launched the careers of half of comics, didn’t realize he was famous enough to abuse a power imbalance is insulting to the intelligence he used to demand of his audience.

What these three separate instances of abuse represent are yet another example of a pattern of toxicity at the intersection of multiple forces at work in comics as a whole: a toxic undercurrent that exists inherent to fandom and the complicity it encourages, and an industry full of informal work arrangements that encourages the rapid downward distribution of exploitation. And with comics at an inflection point, caused by the massive jolt to all the systems of the world by this pandemic summer, it’s worth examining the systemic flaws that enable rampant sexual misconduct to exist as open secrets, unaddressed, for decades, and think about systemic solutions.

Just about everyone who loves comics wants to make them. This isn’t universal; there are some people who enjoy simply spectating in the medium, but if you talk to 100 comics fans, I promise 98 of them are sitting on a pitch for something. Comic conventions are packed with people looking for portfolio reviews; the internet, jammed with people trying to get their scripts looked at.

While it was in existence, the Warren Ellis Forum was one of the most reliable pipelines for new comics talent. There are good rundowns of the contributions of the WEF to current comics culture from both pre- and post-toppling of this idol, but what neither mentions is that this was an accepted way to break into the business for a brief comics era – not only through the WEF, but through the Bendis boards, and through Mark Millar’s faint echo of the WEF, Millarworld. The internet dramatically expanded the potential audience for comics, and made it easier than ever to put out your own work, but it also combined with the superhero industry’s tendency towards bombastic personalities to channel talent development through a series of larger than life internet personas and the cyber networking events that sprang up around them. These, as is the convention social scene, are full of potential abuse.

One commonality to all of these cases (and not just these cases, but also with Brian Wood and Scott Lobdell and many others) was the access to the industry they dangled to entice women into relationships. That power imbalance is creepy and bordering on toxic from the start, even if there are anecdotes of it working out. There are different ways to solve this problem – using agents to mediate the relationship between publisher and creator, as Kelly Sue DeConnick suggests, would help, though it wouldn’t be a panacea. As would comic companies regularizing the talent scouting and development process. Greater systemic access for new creators closes off one channel that these predators hunt through. If it’s easier to get your break on superhero books through a new talent training school than it is to know somebody who knows somebody, then those intermediate somebodies lose access to impressionable, exploitable fans.

It’s also time for comics to reexamine the freelance system. The comics industry has a long history of exploiting its workers powered by the freelance system, and an under examined side effect of freelancing is that it absolves companies of responsibility for the actions of what should be their employees. Freelancers occupy a murky area in employment law, particularly when it comes to harassment laws. Some places, like New York City, explicitly cover freelancers under sexual harassment laws. But New York is the exception to the rule. Most freelancers in any industry have no legal protection against the sexual harassment or discrimination that we seem to hear about every other month. It’s long past time for comic publishers to adopt policies to mitigate these problems.

Finally, a portion of the responsibility for this abuse falls on all of us, the comics community. Time and time again, when one of these harassers is outed, they’re followed by stories about extensive whisper networks warning of the harasser’s behavior, or of victims being ignored, or harassment being downplayed by people in positions of authority. Every time one of these harassers is outed, the accusation is followed by a flood of additional abuse pointed at the victim. And without fail, this additional abuse falls into one of three categories:

“[barely intelligible bigoted shrieking]”

“I like the opportunity the abuser afforded me in the industry.”

“I like the comics the abuser made.”

The first is a problem with broader civil society and won’t be eliminated until we can collectively toss hatred from acceptable public discourse, and is too big a problem to break down today. The second is a condemnation of the work arrangements common to comics and can be mitigated by the industry offering more opportunities than the abusers. The final one is a problem we should all be working to solve.

When victims don’t feel safe standing up for themselves through official channels, it’s not just the official channels that have failed those victims. Every member of the community at large has failed those victims, by failing to demand greater accountability of the ones setting and mediating the rules of the community, failing to demand more protection on behalf of their fellow fans and friends and present and future creators. Whisper networks exist because victims aren’t heard and believed. And they perpetuate the problem – you can’t be a part of a whisper network if you’re not connected to the network. They exclude large portions of fans, who eventually may find themselves targeted by these predators.

This is not on the whisper networks to fix, and none of this should be read as casting a drop of blame on the people working to protect whoever they can in the comics community. Nor should any blame be hung on the victims themselves – “We all should have seen the signs” is a cop out that ignores the complexity of abuse patterns and how abusers manipulate the rules to get away with their abuse. This is on the companies to fix, by ending their support and protection for known abusers. This is on the comics media, to stop promoting and protecting known abusers. This is on cons, to stop platforming abusers and to do what they can to control the social scene that springs up around them. And this is on all of us as fans, to stop putting these people on pedestals. Sometimes a monument needs to be torn down.

The post Wave of Sexual Misconduct Accusations Rock Comics Industry appeared first on Den of Geek.

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