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#ships essay from hell
dimitrscu · 2 years
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mohg has a history of kidnapping people and yet his fans will bend over backwards to try and make miquella the villain. “clearly miquella staged his own kidnapping” yea sure.
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hussyknee · 1 year
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i'm so confused rn, can you explain the goncharov thing?? i get off tumblr for five minutes
(Edits closed as of 28 Nov.)
Lmaoooo
Nah I getchu. So this post has been circulating for like two years:
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Link to post.
But yesterday, it had inspired someone to do this:
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Link to post.
Next thing I knew there were fake Letterboxed reviews.
Goncharov moodboards. Really good ones.
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Link to post.
Meta analysis. So many fake meta essays. Disturbingly good ones. And of course the memes. (Edit: HAVE I SAID THIS SHIT IS DISTURBING)
As you can see, the myth just started to grow, characters and ships and tropes being added one after the other, almost bizzarely without contradiction, until there was enough of shape to the whole thing for people to start posting fanfic about it on AO3. "No beta we die like ice-pick Joe" is already a tag.
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Link to post.
It was hilarious in the beginning, but the way it's developed within less than a day, kind of like it's being willed into existence, is freaking me out a bit. We're toying with powers beyond our comprehension. 😂😂😂
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Link to post.
Of course, there could be an ulterior motive as well.
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Link to post (tags mine).
Edit: guys, please tag these posts "unreality" so people with disassociation issues can filter them out (not this one, this is an explainer). <3
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Edit 2: Aparently the boots in the original post are actually referring to a movie called Gomorrah that came out in 2008, directed by Mateo Garrone, based on the Scampia Feud. And other people had also been making posts about the fake movie for a while before the poster took off.
found by @thepotch
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Edit 3: Explainer: why did those boots have this movie on them anyway?
Edit 4: Alt text added to all images courtesy of @valentineish ❤️
Edit 5: Turns out tumblr has done this kind of thing before. Nine years in this hell place and I had to have "Squiddles" and penis smp explained in the replies.
Edit 6: This post collects the Lore so far.
Edit 7: Lynda Carter (real one)/ earns more/ Tumblr cred.
Edit 8: Holy shit y'all we have the theme music. With sheet music. And it's on Spotify!
Edit 9: THERE IS A TRAILER WITH THE THEME MUSIC
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I made this post 18 hours after the movie poster went up. Closed edits 27 hours after first posting. So all of the above happened within 45 hours of the movie poster going up.
Edit 10: Google document live-compiling all the lore so far (Day 3)
Edit 11: Masterpost of Goncharov soundtracks (Day 3)
Edit 12: Entertainment news articles covering the Gonch-posting (real) (Contd from yday)
Edit 13: The music from the masterpost all compiled into a 31-minute original score with video edits on YouTube (edit: unfortunately taken down)
Edit 14: Staff's Goncharov art showcase for Tumblr Tuesday
As of closing on Day 3 there are 371 works in the AO3 tag.
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Updating with Day 3 shenanigans I missed yesterday:
Edit 15: Goncharov TV Tropes page
Edit 16: Ethics of Gonchposting
Important PSA 1 (how to reduce harm to Tumblr's neurodivergents)
Important PSA 2 (reality affirmation, anti-bullying)
Important PSA 3 (why you should stop trying to vandalise legit information sites)
Edit 17: Character lore from beezlebub whose poster they originated from
Edit 18: What we know about/ Director Matteo JWHJ0715 (#unreality)
Edit 19: Link to post with screenshotted and described NYT article (scroll down) and this golden exerpt from BuzzFeed: 💀
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(alt text included)
End of Day 4 there are now 485 works in the Goncharov tag on AO3
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Didn't get to update this on Day 5, so these are the Day 5 doings:
More trailers!
Trailer 1 (My favourite)
Trailer 2
Trailer 3
Trailer 4
I also just found out about the Goncharov Game Jam.
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It appears this opened a day after after the meme took off.
Goncharov was first entered into Wikipedia between Day 4 and 5 (attempts to vandalise it with fake info don't count, incidentally – please knock that shit off) under List of Internet Phenomena. This was then expanded into its own Wikipedia page at the end of Day 5 because, according to the talk history: "the topic now meets the notability threshold for its own artice due to significant coverage in The New York Times and other sources cited." We're on Wikipedia, people!
And then we made The Guardian half a day later. So while the meme is definitely dying down to embers by now, it still stays winning.
YouTube channels with episodes on the meme:
InformOverlord (4:30)
Lessons in Meme Culture (2:43)
End of Day of 5 there were 511 works on AO3, and End of Day 6 (today) there are 556.
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🚨BREAKING 🚨 from Martin Scorsese's daughter's TikTok (real actual)
tw: unreality:
We did it you guys!
Clarification: Francesca Scorcese asked her Dad about the meme and Martin played along. Please reblog this PSA to help Tumblr people with psychosis. Thanks.
Final edit: Day 8. Media reactions to Scorcese's TikTok (everyone from Forbes to Vulture). That one Tumblr user who said they'd do a screenplay if their post got notes has promised to shoot a single scene, but please don't be dicks just because you reblogged it; leave them alone until they get around to it themselves. As of end of Day 8 there are 609 works in the AO3 tag. I love all you lunatics. Peace! ❤️
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satoruhour · 4 months
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a/n: ty for all ur asks ill answer them soon but i just wanna write something small to get my mind off assignments and i miss writing; very self-ship coded and indulgent
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thinking about geto who loves to game and because he’s already finished his finals for the semester, he’s is enjoying his time online but you still have some exams and essays to finish up on and you’re just... so distracted by your boyfriend’s side profile as he shouts and smiles at his teammates on the game.
your mind is all muddled from the information you try to soak up, but you know you’ve reached your limit long ago when you start looking at the brightness of suguru’s screens more than your dull notes, and you fall even deeper in love when after each round he comes off his set-up to check on you.
first, “how’s my baby’s studying going?” he asks softly even if you cannot hear with the earphones in, and here you’re more focused, jumping a little when a larger, gentle hand strokes your calves.
“sorry, su— what did you say?” he hovers over you, gently pushing away the hand clutching your notes to give you a kiss before sitting down again.
“how’s your studying?” his tone is so, so loving and small, as if afraid that he’ll add onto your stress but he does the exact opposite.
you just settle for a shrug, wanting to tell him about this frustrating time period that you have to memorise the events for but before you can open your mouth, you can hear satoru’s loud ass from his headset and you both share a giggle.
“go,” you whisper, running a hand briefly through his hair.
“okay darling. you’ll be okay,” geto never forgets to gift you with a forehead kiss, tender against your skin before picking himself up. this happens a second, third, fourth time — hell, you lost count of how many rounds they played but your studying starts to falter around round three when you cannot take any more of the black plague and the protestant v. catholic disputes.
so, you just switch to watching your boyfriend be skilled with his fingers, clacking away on the keyboard and keeping the team together when gojo again dramatically has to scream at why he keeps getting shot at. he was everyone’s rock, at this point, but he was only willing to let you be the chiseler and chip away at him until you find obsidian.
“sugu...” you mumble, not expecting to hear you, but just at that moment one of his friends had to take a break, pausing it. all the chaos that comes in through his headphones stop, so you’re surprised when his head snaps to yours.
“hm?” he hums, looking at you with that smile.
you point, more to his lap than to his face, “can i?”
geto wasn’t a stranger to this, so he swivels his chair and opens his hands to face you; you happily trot over to him, abandoning your notes for a little bit of downtime. before you know it, you’re placing one leg over his pelvis and straddling him, safely cradled by him.
“hi.”
you giggle, “hello.”
geto grins in return, hands caressing your sides like it was his stress ball. “how’s it goin’?”
you shake your head and frown, “can’t remember.”
your lover only gives you a downward smile, one of his hands coming up to rub the stress away from you. his thumb goes over your furrowed brows, fingers squeezing your jaw until it relaxes.
“there we go...” he softly says, “want to stay here?”
“if you don’t mind? i don’t want to memorise any more things,” geto can hear the pout in your voice and he coos inwardly, brushing a few strands of hairs from your face.
“of course i don’t mind, baby,” another forehead peck, “once this round ends, i’ll clean up and come to bed with you, okay?”
“promise? you always let satoru talk you into another round.”
and you jump a little again when you hear a familiar voice sound out from the headset, hey, i heard that!!! and you laugh with suguru, exchanging small smiles as the other gives you a tender kiss — “i won’t let him do it this time.”
and suguru stays true to his word, squeezing you periodically while your hands wrap around his shoulders and your face buries itself in his neck. you’re snuggled comfortably on his lap, sometimes giving him kisses on the neck and he wriggles because of his sensitive spots. he has the pleasure of hearing your laughs, albeit faded and soft, you have all the warmth in the world in the form of geto suguru.
it’s when you’re slipping in and out of consciousness that they conclude the round, suguru immediately bidding goodbye to his friends and suddenly the world is quiet again.
“—eetheart? baby?” geto’s voice cut into your conscious and you blink away your fatigue. “there she is.”
“yea— here,” yawn, “here i am.”
suguru barks out a laugh, a beautiful noise and it’s got you smiling too. again, his hand like second nature goes to your hair to arrange it, heart tightening up when you lean into his touch.
“shall we head to bed?” you nod sleepily, but you have to get your kisses first, arms bending to slot your hands to his neck and face. there, you can feel his skin heat up, pale skin illuminated by the computer screens that turn red just barely. you bring suguru in for a gentle kiss, letting your boyfriend lead the way as you lock lips.
you move in tandem, in rhythm with him, taking in a deep breath when his arms wrap tighter around your waist. he hums into the kiss, cold hands descending upon your warm back and teasing that line that follows your spine, while he moves his head against yours. sneakily, he slips his tongue into your mouth and swallows your soft moans, pulling away with a deep breath when oxygen becomes scarce.
geto looks at you like you hung the stars, eyes soft and tired as well, a glow on his face and lips pulled into a smile.
“my pretty, pretty girl,” he whispers, your heart picking up in an even faster pace, taking advantage of your hand on his face. he turns his face, lips upon your palm and you can feel your heart soar. the scene is still all quiet — the computers shut down by now, the soft rush of water in the plugged-in diffuser, your breathing, as he takes your hand and kisses, kisses, kisses. each finger, knuckle to your wrist, leaving no place untouched by his lips.
you tuck his bangs behind his ear, but it will dart out soon enough. “my... gamer... boy?” you stutter out questionably and you make suguru throw his head back and laugh, fingers feeling at your skin.
“oh, pretty and hilarious? i think i scored,” the laughter subsides and you get lost in his eyes all over again, a labyrinth that you never want to come out of because it’s warm and cozy and consists of everything that you love.
“you jest.” you’re grinning, heading back into your safe space as you hide your face, and geto takes that as a sign to stand up, just as he knows everything about you. adjusting you, he stands up shortly after, bringing you to the bed and plopping onto it with a big sigh.
“oh, i do anything but joke about my baby’s capabilities,” he hovers over you, looking like a deity above you that you’d think you’re meeting with god, “not when she’s just so stunning. it’s true.”
geto suguru always had a way with words, and now, a way with your heart. from the lovesick look he has in his eyes, or the extra hair tie he keeps on his wrist for you, or maybe even the fingers that know your body so well, he knows you like second nature. loving you is like that — natural, ingrained into his body and yet every time he kisses you, the same fireworks never fail to ignite.
“by the gods, i’m sure they’re all talking about you in the love songs they write,” suguru whispers from above you, voice barely above a whisper and the pure articulation of it takes your breath away. the words and description fit him better, you know, but you’d indulge yourself in the eyes of your lover for once and let his love consume you whole.
geto mumbles mindlessly, thumb going over your bottom lip, “and everything they sing and speak of is true. venus looks like everything true and good and sweet. she looks just like love.”
“where is she, now?”
“what do you mean? i’m looking at her right now.” suguru replies with a smile of his own before he devours you whole, lips upon lips and skin against skin and nothing makes his heart burn and head spin quite like you do. he guesses it’s all goddess-level duty, but even then, even goddesses do not know of their powers sometimes, just like you and your humility and all your kindness and beauty that even you don’t know what you do to him.
and suguru is more than happy to let you know.
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its-your-mind · 4 months
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Some Thoughts on the importance of physical touch and connection for the Hells: A reflection on the new animated intro.
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In general, I think the Hells are a really strange and special group, especially for a dnd party. They pretty much laid all their baggage on the table within the first week of meeting each other (What the Fuck is Up With That?) almost as a litmus test: "hey, here's all the shit that comes with being me, last chance to run away if that's too much."
and none of them did. and they all kept choosing to stay, even as shit got even weirder and more and more disturbing answers came to light. I think that continued choice from all of them - to stay - is what makes the bonds between the Hells so deep and so special.
okay trauma analysis and party dynamics is a DIFFERENT POST but it was all RELEVANT INTRODUCTION bc the CHOOSING TO STAY and the KNOWING EACH OTHERS' SHIT are like. key components to understanding why I am so feral about this. okay hopefully you will understand. the body of my essay is below. it has pictures. it got... too long. so. it went under a read more. yw. anyway click below if you want a very detailed analysis of an animated intro that is literally only one minute and thirty seconds long
For the first bit, character intros for Fearne, Orym, Imogen, Ashton, there’s no physical contact.
BUT. First intro of hells as a team. Ashton Trauma Flashback interrupted by laudna approaching slowly from beside him with her hand gently in front of him to signal her presence without startling him, and THEN just talking at them. Bringing him out of those flashbacks. Reminding him where he is and who he’s with.
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And tbh? For Ashton? Touch is always iffy, so this is almost a more understanding and kind way to bring them out of the flashback. Just physical presence is good! UNLESS. (unless) first actual touch. Fearne stealing their coin purse, so gently that they don’t even notice it (FLIRTING THROUGH THEFT callowmoore my beloved)
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(also grabbed the cap that shows her with his coinpurse these fucking ANIMATORS)
okay pt 2 FLYING OFF THE AIRSHIP
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Ashton's first instinct and priority is grab laudna’s hand bc he KNOWS she is made of paper mache and he is ALWAYS watching out for her out of the corner of his eye bc she is breakable and he’s not gonna let her break bc he KNOWS what it’s like to be breakable and need someone to catch you when you’re falling but ANYWAY. he grabs her he uses his hammer as a fulcrum to throw her at Imogen
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because OF COURSE he knows that the safest and most comfortable space for laudna is in imogen’s arms. and the two of them wrap their arms around each other and hold tight Superman style bc ofc they do and once laudna is in imogen’s arms she’s absolutely delighted by this whole situation bc OFC SHE IS
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(tf do you mean I can’t add more than ten images on mobile UGH fine I’ll finish writing then draft and move to PC the images are IMPORTANT TO MY POINT anyway insert lesbians here) (note from future mind: I have decided that these pic descriptions i left for myself to grab the right images are fucking hilarious so they’re staying in yw)
Then fearne (who had been on her way in that direction already) swoops under Ashton to catch him as he flips over from the momentum so he can land on her giant bird back and she can fly him away.
(Pics: It’s fine to touch Ash if you’re saving their life)
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(also not pictured: chet staying on the ship but losing his hat, orym grabbing it out of the air, imogen casting fly on fcg right before she catches laudna, fcg flying over to grab orym) All of this happens in six seconds by the way. One round of combat. These animators are fucking incredible.
BACK TO CHARACTER INTROS laudna who is ofc alone and in the dark at the bottom of the Sun tree, reliving her past…
(Pic: sad lonely laudna)
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right up until Imogen puts her head on her shoulder, and the darkness burns away into light. She doesn’t say anything, or talk with laudna - all it takes is that physical reminder that she’s not alone anymore, that there is warmth, that she is surrounded by a family who loves her so much they chose to turn down comfortable beds in a lord’s manor so that they could join her in sleeping at the bottom of the Sun Tree. (Fav lil detail - fearne wrapped around Orym like he’s a teddy bear, and holding tight to laudna’s blanket to make sure she can’t go anywhere.)
(Pics: THE POWER OF LESBIANS AND FOUND FAMILY)
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fcg. Fuck. Starts with their flashback, with their red eyes and their buzzsaw, but almost immediately we see Ashton reach out to grab their shoulder and Orym whip out a vine to tie up their saw.
(pics: reaching out even if it might hurt youuuuu)
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Imogen goes on her knees and wraps her arms around FCG’s other side, and the rest of them all gather around him, holding him to keep him and each other safe, but mostly just grounding him in the present by surrounding him physically until the flashback fades and he’s once more aware of his surroundings.
(Pics: what the fuck they just need to be held)
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(once shit has calmed down fearne uses this opportunity to pick Ashton’s pocket again. Flirting through theft).
(Pic: fearne is a menace to society)
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final fight scene. fuck yes.
(Pic: IT’S THURSDAY NIIIIIIIIIIIGHT)
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This is mostly just giving all of them room to be badasses (as they deserve) - but there are some things!! First!!
(pics: THESE WITCHES BE BITCHES minus fearne sry fearne we miss u but you are on fire and laudna is made of wood currently)
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Imogen and laudna casting spells back to back, trusting each other to take care of what’s on their side. Inseparable, even in a battle where their party has scattered to fight other enemies.
BUT. The BIG thing though in this sequence. Maybe my favorite part? Idk I don’t have a favorite. But!! Orym. taking out four of Otohan’s shadow knights. then facing off against her personally!! And it’s one-on-one, because this was Orym’s task alone - to find the person who attacked his leader and killed his family. He’s angry, but mostly he’s honed-in and focused and determined. This is his mission.
(Pics: WHO’S JUST A LIL GUY NOW HUH)
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But then, when Otohan pushes him back…
(Pic: fuck. shit. fuck. im. fine. anYway. them.)
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FCG and Ashton are there right behind him, and they put their arms out and catch him so he doesn’t fly back any farther. And there’s this look of surprise on his face, because once he lost Will, he never expected there to be anyone else standing behind him, ready to catch him. And yet, here they are.
(Pics: fuck yes fuck yes fuck yes GOOOO ORYM!!!)
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They give Orym a push forward and follow behind him, and he walks back towards Otohan with confidence. Lil grin on his face, brisk walking pace - he even does a little fancy sword swoosh! Because maybe he’s not strong enough to take out Otohan on his own. But the thing is, he’s not alone anymore.
(Pic: THEY.)
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None of them are alone. And whenever any of them forget, or slip into old habits and memories, the rest are right there to reach out a hand to remind them.
Building a family out of broken pieces is difficult even without an apocalypse. But the Hells have shown each other, over and over and over, often with their actions even more than their words, that they really are dedicated to this family that they've built together. This intro fucking slaps so hard and the animators deserve so much praise for how incredible this intro is
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Hazbin Hotel Ep 5&6 Oh My God (Major Spoilers)
I am having so many thoughts, this is just a brain dump
-LUCIFER. He’s so pathetic I love him
-Jeremy Jordan you fucking legend. I’m a big fan of a lot of his work and was excited to see him in this but I was slightly unsure if he was the right casting since I expected Lucifer to be more of a high and mighty/snobby figure, but with the way they characterised him HE IS PERFECT.
-“TAKE THAT DEPRESSION”
-The Lucifer vs Alastor rivalry is beautiful
-“Ha ha, fuck you.”
-Father figure Alastor
-HIS EARS GO BACK LIKE A CAT WHEN HES ANGRY I CANT
-MIMZY’S ARRIVAL. I know most of us know the lore about her and Alastor being developed as a couple before it was scrapped but I really like how they are in the show
-Even if it’s just crumbs I’m so excited to be getting snippets of Alastor’s lore. It’s wild to keep going back and forth between “aw he actually cares for and protects his friends” and “oh my god he’s a fucking psycho”
-Speaking of that the scene with Husk holy shit. Poor man looked terrified
-The confirmation that Alastor’s also stuck working for someone, it has to be Lilith surely. I know some people will call it predictable because a lot of theories are coming true but personally I think it’s from good worldbuilding/foreshadowing
-ALASTOR IN FULL DEMON FORM JUST ANNIHILATING EVERYONE and then he just goes “Ah that was fun, now back to it”
-I kinda like the parallel between Al and Mimzy & Angel and Cherri where they invite their friends to join them if they want to, even if neither of them take it up initially maybe we’ll see them join the hotel in the future?
-BABY CHARLIE
-I really expected Lucifer to be a dickhead and a shitty dad, but he seems to be an overall better guy than most people in hell
-CHERRI BOMB ARRIVAL! And she’s Aussie now fuck yeah represent
-I still love her and Angel’s friendship even if she is a terrible influence. Everyone’s got that friend who’s solution to a bad day is just self-destruction but they mean well at least
-DARREN CHRIS TOO, THE MUSICAL THEATRE/BROADWAY ACTOR CASTING IS STACKED
-Emily is so sweet I love her
-The Molly cameo is so sweet, I was waiting for her to appear somewhere but lowkey forgot she was in heaven. Honestly though how did she get there when the rest of her and Angel’s family got condemned for what they did together? Maybe she left the mob or something idk I just hope we get to meet her properly at some point
-Heaven’s real fucked up? Yeah not shocked
-VAGGIE?? FALLEN ANGEL REVEAL?? AND SHE WAS AN EXTERMINATOR???? I know most of us called it but holy shit I didn’t expect it to be confirmed this soon
-Adam is such a dick but he’s so much fun
-I love that Charlie was gonna start her court presentation with definitions like a high school essay
-“Consent is a good name for a sex club” the gentleman Husk truthers gonna have fun with this one
-Pentious hitting on Cherri is hilarious and totally not the same level of subtlety I flirt with when I’m drunk
-Hearing more and more about how Val treats Angel is so sad especially with how casually he talks about it since it’s just another day for him
-Him parenting drunk Nifty is beautiful
-“You wanna play with the kitty?”
-Valentino is my #1 enemy
-Seeing Angel stand up to him to protect his friends is making me feel feelings. Like he knows that he’s gonna be treated even worse for it but I think he’s reaching his tipping point and shits gonna go down soon
-Also I know there’s a popular theory that he’s gonna die soon and a lot of the theories are coming true so I am scared. I kind of don’t think this one’ll happen though since he’s the fan favourite and its just too soon to take that much of a risk. Plus Vivsie’s admitted he’s the best written character and it’d be such a waste of all that development
-More sweet moments between him and Husk, they’ve gotten me so invested in this ship so fast
-The fact that most of heaven didn’t know about the extermination?? Wild
-Idk how I feel about the timeskip between Ep 4&5, they’re only a month away from the extermination now. Yes it’s making the stakes feel higher but I do wish we’d been able to see more of that time for the relationship development, all the characters seem much closer than before and we’ve only seen bits of how they got there
-I really wish they’d greenlit more than 8 episodes to pace things a little better but I’m glad we have season 2 confirmed
-That last minute ‘reveal Vaggie’s past to Charlie, boot them out of heaven and then cut to credits before she can react’ is gonna torture me until next week
-I don’t disagree with past criticism that Vivzie’s female characters can feel a bit underwritten but I think it’s getting better
-“We’re coming to the hotel first” plus all the theories that someone’s gonna die are fucking stressing me out man
Anyway hope you enjoy the brain dump, this show has once again consumed my thoughts
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junhui-png · 2 months
Text
puppy love ⌦ .。.:*♡
mingyu x reader x scoups? (Still figuring it out LOL)
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summary: first year of college, you literally knew no one and you planned for it to stay that way but damn were you wrong
notes: uhmmm hiii idk what this is I got rlly bored so yeah LOLL if you read this I hope you enjoy and I’ll try and update like every other day hopefully 😽
‼️disclaimer: this is not proof read so I apologize if there are any spelling or grammar mistakes ‼️
genre: seventeen college au, love triangle between scoups and Mingyu, Mingyu being on a football team, financial major scoups, angst??, fluff, cute friend ships, Hoshi, Joshua, Seungkwan, Minghao, and Wonwoo r your besties, Also besties with Yunjin (Le Sserafim) and Minnie (G-IDLE), other seventeen members are mentioned?? Childhood friends, cursing, drinking
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you were always quiet, even when you were a kid. Because of this, you had very few friends and very much struggled to make new ones. Throughout Middle and Highschool the only thing you could do was to stuff you face into books to pass time. Eventually, you being a loner helped you to getting into your dream college. You thought you would be fine all by yourself at your new university, getting a degree in Creative writing, but hell you were so far from the truth. You thought you could just ignore everyone around you and just keep your head low but god was that somehow ten times harder now that you had entered college. Soon enough you had been paired with a man in your Journalism class names “Jeon Wonwoo” You didn’t know anything about him, you didn’t know anything about anyone there actually. He has Black somewhat messy hair and a pair of black glasses to compliment his hair. Both of you were introverts so the first week of the project was painfully awkward but as the next few weeks flew by, you had successfully made you first ever friend in maybe 10 years? You weren’t even sure. Once you had finished the project (and of course gotten an A) you and Wonwoo stayed in touch and talked frequently inside and outside of class. Till he offered to invite you to meet his study group. You were of course hesitant but you ended up going and just like that you had made another 5 friends and then because of those new friends you met new people and became their friends. Before the semester even ended, you new basically everybody on campus.
——present timez————
“you finished the essay Mr.Marten assigned” Minghao askes you, slightly shifting in his seat to get a better look at your computer screen “yeah basically” you simply reply “well then…” You noticed Minghao had been really fidgety ever since you both had entered the library, which isn’t how he normally is, meaning something’s up. “You ok? Something’s bothering you, right? You turn your body to face him and his body seems to relax just a bit “ok so… I kinda..maybe, possibly told soonyoung that you would come to the party he’s hosting tonight” Minghao keeps his head slightly down “Minghao..” you sigh, slumping back in your seat. You rarely ever went out, only when it was some sort of special occasion but besides that you basically just stay in your dorm or at a library or cafe. “I know I know” he says apologetically “You never go out and I swear your gonna go insane if you don’t go out once in a while” you chuckle a little at his stupid reasoning “still I should have told you I just wasn’t thinking and now Soonyoung is all excited about you coming and I just felt bad telling him, you know?” You nod, “I guess I’ll go” you let out another tired sigh as you pack your things “really? Damn ok I didn’t see that coming” Minghao laughs, getting up from his seat “I’ll see you later than” He smiles and you smile back at him before he walks out of the cafeteria and you finish packing your things.
It’s about 7:30 when you leave your dorm and get an Uber over to Soonyoung’s house. You were dressed up for once in a while, wearing a grey denim tube top with matching jeans paried with black boots and a black bag. “It’s my first and probably last time going out for this month, might as well just go all out” is what you thought to yourself while getting ready, but now in front of Soonyoung’s house you gravely regretted your stupid decision “Y/NNNNNNN!” Seungkwan yells your name from the entrance of Soonyoung’s house “hi Seungkwanie” you giggle patting him on the back “I didn’t think you would come!” He says all giddy “A promise is a promise” you give Minghao a dirty glance, which he catches and throws you an apologetic look before rushing of to get another drink. Seungkwan leads you to the couch and plops down next to you “do you want anything to drink?” He asks and you take a moment to think about it before just saying “fuck it” and asking him to bring you whatever he’s getting and he nods, leaving you on the couch with some other girls. Your not left alone for long until you hear someone call for you “Yoo! Your Soonyoung’s friend right?” A tall man with black hair and a stunning face. “uhm yes” you responded nonchalant “You don’t know me but I’m Kim Mingyu, Graphic design major” Mingyu sticks his hand out for a handshake “I’m y/n, Creative writing major” you shake his hand, giving him a slight smile and he returns it. “Anyways imma get straight to the point. I’m interested in you. You caught my eye earlier and asked around about you and they said you were close to Soonyoung, and im also his friend and I’ve never seen you before, so I wanna be friends” The man says bluntly. Mingyu’s sudden “confession” Has your head spinning, searching for some sort of response “uhm ok..?” Is all you manage out but he seems satisfied with your answer “Alright, then go out with me this week” again this man and his blunt statements have you so lost and you can’t even bring yourself to say anything before he says “of course with Soonyoung, and Minghao and everyone” Your face gets a little hot realizing he wasn’t asking you out but in fact his grammar just sucked and you misunderstood him and he definitely got what you were thinking “You thought I was asking you out, didn’t you?” He says with a sly smile “whatever” you roll your eyes, hearing the man’s giddy laughter “IM BACK SORRY” Seungkwan squeezes through the crowd, two bottles of beer in his hand “some guys back there were CRAZY drunk” he sighs, slumping down next to you and placing the drinks In front of you. “Drink up!” Seungkwan lifts his cup up for a cheer.
“Damn girl you didn’t even drink that much” One of you girl friends, Yunjin says, trying her best to keep you up. It was well known in your friend group that your alcohol tolerance was basically 0 and that’s also another reason you didn’t go out much “CAN SOMEONE TAKE HER HOME!” Yunjin shouts over the crowd but to be met with no answer “I can!” Mingyu’s booming voice is easily heard over the loud music “Omg great thank you so much, I’ll text you her address” Yunjin pats Mingyu on the back before rushing back to the lively party, leaving you with him “let’s go then” he puts his arm over you as he helps you out of Soonyoung’s house and into his car. “You know, I think I should go out more” you proudly announce “Then take my over and have dinner with me and the rest of the group” Mingyu chuckles, starting the car “Ok!” Is all you chirp before you completely knock out.
“I swear to god y/n you better get up right now” you best friends voice echo through your foggy mind “what..” you mumble, the warm sun hitting you through the windows. You were now in your dorm room completely changed. “What happened..?” You scratch your head, still trying to process your surroundings “You tell me!” You roommate, Minnie exclaims “you tell me why, when I was getting ready to go to sleep, looking the WORST I could ever have looked someone knocked at our door and it was the most ANGELIC BEAUTIFUL SUN KIST Man I have ever seen, holding you bridal style!” Minnie exclaims once again “I WAS WEARING A FUCKING HELLO KITTY SHEET MASK” Minnie cringes at the memories of last night “damn..” you mumble, giving her a somewhat apoplectic look “ugh it’s whatever, he said you were drunk and he was just dropping you off and he brought you some medicine as well so take that before you leave” Minnie sighs, leaving you alone in your room “what the fuck is happening”.
You change into a pair of grey sweatpants and a beige like hoodie with your hair up in a ponytail “Sorry for all the trouble last night” you said, even thought you couldn’t recall anything after you had entered Mingyu’s car you knew you had probably brought hell down on Minnie night care routine “it’s fine, just take your medicine before you leave” She places the medicine on the counter before heading back to her room. You take the medicine with some water before putting on your shoes and grabbing your bag “OK BYEE LOVE YOUU” you shout before leaving the house. You rush down to campus and into your next class just a minute early “You feeling ok?” Wonwoo asks you “I feel horrible” you sit down next to him, placing your stuff down next to your seat. The entire class was just a bunch of yapping you couldn’t pay attention to because, one you were too tired and two, you were still trying to remember literally anything from last night. “You have the address right?” Wonwoo’s sudden question pulls you out of your trance “Huh??” You mumble with a confused look and Wonwoo face also molds into a confused one “For dinner..?” He tries clarifying but you still don’t seem to get it “the dinner plans??? Me, you, mingyu, Soonyoung, Joshua, Seungkwan and some other guy?” Wonwoo tries again and it finally clicks, but why was he asking you “I know what your talking about but I’m not going?” You say “really? You said you were going?” Wonwoo says and that’s when you finally remember some of last night “OH SHOT! Mingyu told you that right?” You ask and he simply nods “So you are going” he asks again and you let out a sigh “yeah..yeah I’m going” you’re tired of going back and fourth so you just let it go “ok cool! I’ll text you the address!”
The rest of the day was boring, nothing special just the usual classes than group studying, solo studying and some “HI’s” and “How are you’s” here and there. Once you had finally finished your classes for the day, you return home to get ready for the dinner. You wear a simple black short-ish dress with a black leather jacket and the converse (didn’t feel like wearing the boots) “You’re going out?” Minnie peaks through your door and examines your outfit “you look nice” she smiles “thank you” you smile back “I’ll be back at maybe 9?? 10? Not sure but I’ll text you ok?” You tell Minnie and she nods “I’m probably gonna go out later, anyways have fun!” She calls out as you shut the door. The restaurant was only a 5 minute Uber drive and you also weren’t the only person arriving at that time “Hey” Mingyu says, almost creeping up behind you. You hadn’t talked to him since Soonyoung’s party and all though nothing happened you felt awkward, like you were meeting him for the first time all over again. “Hi” you reply “And uhm sorry for the trouble I caused the day before yesterday” you and Mingyu both walk into the restaurant and spot Joshua, Soonyoung, and Seungkwan at a table “don’t sweat it, it’s what friends are for” he chuckles, leaving you behind and rushing over to the table we’re your friends had been seated. Friends is what he called you. Could you two really be friends if you had just met the other day? “Y/N sit over here!” Joshua’s calming voice calls out to you “mhm!” You responding rushing over to the table and taking a seat next to Joshua. You guys talk a bit while waiting for appetizers when Mingyu says something that catches your attention “coups said he’s outside right now” “finally god damn” Soonyoung chuckles and the rest laugh “who’s “coups”?” You ask “one of my friends, I invited him today” Mingyu says and you nod. “Sorry I’m late guys!” A voice from the entrance calls out. Everyone turns around, including you to see a familiar face “COUPS! What’s up man!” Choi Seungcheol “omg..” at first you weren’t sure but now you were a hundred precent sure that was Choi Seungcheol “Seungcheol?” You mumble, in case you were wrong. The man’s eyes shot up to you and they almost immediately soften “Y/N??” He voice changed immediately after calling your name “you two know each other???” Wonwoo asks and you slowly nod, still in awe “it’s been awhile?” He chuckles.
previous / next
part 2 coming out 01/31/24 or 02/01/24 😽
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thisismeracing · 4 months
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LEWIS HAMILTON MASTERLIST
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✦ LEWIS HAMILTON ▶ LH44
All my Lewis posts here
▸ main masterlist | patreon guide ▸ taglist ▸ who I write for & guidelines ▸ subscribe to Patreon for exclusive content ▸ tip me on ko-fi
KEYS: s: smut f: fluff a: angst ✷: Patreon exclusive
― ✦ SOCIAL MEDIA AU
it's just us against the world (f): Some fans noticed how Leiws is constantly listening to Y/n’s songs and decided to back him up and make it happen a bit faster. Will their cupid play work?
jealousy, jealousy (f): After a red carpet interaction, people are shipping Yn with Chris Evans without knowing that she’s dating a pilot. What will Lewis do when he sees the fuss internet is making about it?
a friend of a friend (f): After a friend in common introduced them, Lewis and Yn can’t seem to stay away from each other, and the fans are quick to catch and manifest a relationship.
part of your world (f): What happens when Lewis goes to the theater with his nephews and realizes he now has a new favorite Disney movie. The princess? Ynl Yln and she’s definitely fairytale-worthy outside the screens as well.
she's that girl (f): Lewis would never imagine that something, or rather someone, could take his attention off Beyonce during her own show, but one of her dancers did
sunshine (f): In which Lewis starts dating an earthy/spiritual girl who just loves nature and good energy.
moonshine (f): In which Lewis is sunshine, but dates a grumpy!reader and fans start noticing how different they are.
food baby (f): Yn is used to posting her belly after meals, claiming it’s her “food baby”, but fans are hell-bent on waiting for the reveal of a real baby Hamilton.
mó paz (f): It’s time for the Interlagos GP and fans are excited to see how Lewis’ Portuguese sounds after becoming a citizen AND dating Yn.
after the afterparty (f): Fans have been watching Yn and Lewis interact since she first started attending races. Nothing seemed enough for them to pinpoint what was going on between the two until the Las Vegas Gran Prix happened, and contrary to the belief, what happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas. Yn and Lewis are about to find out.
your time (a): A couple months after the biggest breakup in the F1 paddock, your song gets leaked, and the internet uproars about your relationship again. This time they have more ammunition than ever to feed the narrative that Lewis Hamilton cheated on you. Are they right though?
more than friends (f): You’re friends with Lewis, but fans don’t buy the “just friends” discourse - for them, you and Lewis make the most powerful couple, even if you’re not famous. And maybe they’re right, maybe you’re supposed to be more than friends.
― ✦ BLURBS
Home (f)
Essays and cuddles (f)
More than friends (a)
― ✦ REGULAR IMAGINES
the phantom of miscommunication (a): Dating a professional athlete is hard, and it’s even harder when you are famous too, and your schedules just keep crashing. How will their love beat their insecurities? 
haunted (s): Lost in the years, lost in the days, Lewis Hamilton haunts the house that once was his. The house where he was killed. And the house that now has new inhabitants. He was used to blowing candles, breaking chinas, and it being enough for the curious newbies to leave. However, it was the first time he met someone who wouldn’t act terrified by his presence. Yn was curious, and that curiosity had a price. Lewis was the one who would collect the debt.
bad religion (s)✷: He used to be a sinner, maybe that’s why nowadays he has so much compassion for those. Your kindness, however, can be your downfall. Especially when directed towards a demon. A breach and a hand to hold were all that Yn needed to complete the Devil’s wish. Lewis should have crushed the snake’s head before she swiftly bit him.
this love is ours (f): Relationships aren’t usually easy. Add to it the fact that you date a world champion racing driver, and your dad doesn’t really like said driver and the media is ready to dissect every move you make. At the end of the day, the stakes are high and the waters can be rough, but what you share with Lewis is true love, and it’s yours
heartdresser (f): When Lewis finds himself just a couple days away from a racing weekend and without his usual braids he desperately searches for suggestions of available hairdressers in the area. As the saying goes, love can come from the most unexpected places, and Lewis is about to discover that this is, in fact, true.
― ✦ HEADCANONS
♡ lewis dating a korean girl ♡ lewis marrying a desi girl ♡ lewis as a dad ✷
©thisismeracing do not copy, steal, or translate my work. do not repost on a different media platform.
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BEST LONG-TIME PINING SHIPS: ROUND 3 MATCH 2
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(The Griddlehark art was made by @henreyettah!!!)
Reasons to vote for each ship underneath the cut!
Griddlehark: The Messiest, Most Complicated Lesbians. Basically destined to both love and hate each other since the day Harrow was born (Gideon is approximately one (1) year her senior). You can fit so much guilt, codependency, rage, miscommunication, devotion, and complicated emotions into this relationship. I wish I could go into more detail without writing an essay and filling it with spoilers, many of which probably wouldn’t make sense even in context, but that’s the Locked Tomb series for you. Royai: They met when they were younger because Roy was learning alchemy from Riza's dad, and were close friends for a long time. Eventually, they both joined the military, Riza only because she wanted to protect Roy, and endured a terrible war together. Both of them trust only each other and both of them have killed for each other. Because they're in the military, they aren't allowed to actually date (hence the endless pining), but once Roy takes over as the leader of the government he gets rid of that rule and they live happily ever after. Riza literally says that she would follow Roy to hell and back ("Don't go where I can't follow" is literally the most romantic sentence in any ship ever are you KIDDING me) just. hsudugnh i love them :(&lt;3
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Tiktok's enshittification
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Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a “two sided market,” where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
When a platform starts, it needs users, so it makes itself valuable to users. Think of Amazon: for many years, it operated at a loss, using its access to the capital markets to subsidize everything you bought. It sold goods below cost and shipped them below cost. It operated a clean and useful search. If you searched for a product, Amazon tried its damndest to put it at the top of the search results.
This was a hell of a good deal for Amazon’s customers. Lots of us piled in, and lots of brick-and-mortar retailers withered and died, making it hard to go elsewhere. Amazon sold us ebooks and audiobooks that were permanently locked to its platform with DRM, so that every dollar we spent on media was a dollar we’d have to give up if we deleted Amazon and its apps. And Amazon sold us Prime, getting us to pre-pay for a year’s worth of shipping. Prime customers start their shopping on Amazon, and 90% of the time, they don’t search anywhere else.
That tempted in lots of business customers — Marketplace sellers who turned Amazon into the “everything store” it had promised from the beginning. As these sellers piled in, Amazon shifted to subsidizing suppliers. Kindle and Audible creators got generous packages. Marketplace sellers reached huge audiences and Amazon took low commissions from them.
This strategy meant that it became progressively harder for shoppers to find things anywhere except Amazon, which meant that they only searched on Amazon, which meant that sellers had to sell on Amazon.
That’s when Amazon started to harvest the surplus from its business customers and send it to Amazon’s shareholders. Today, Marketplace sellers are handing 45%+ of the sale price to Amazon in junk fees. The company’s $31b “advertising” program is really a payola scheme that pits sellers against each other, forcing them to bid on the chance to be at the top of your search.
Searching Amazon doesn’t produce a list of the products that most closely match your search, it brings up a list of products whose sellers have paid the most to be at the top of that search. Those fees are built into the cost you pay for the product, and Amazon’s “Most Favored Nation” requirement sellers means that they can’t sell more cheaply elsewhere, so Amazon has driven prices at every retailer.
Search Amazon for “cat beds” and the entire first screen is ads, including ads for products Amazon cloned from its own sellers, putting them out of business (third parties have to pay 45% in junk fees to Amazon, but Amazon doesn’t charge itself these fees). All told, the first five screens of results for “cat bed” are 50% ads.
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola
This is enshittification: surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they’re locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they’re locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit. From mobile app stores to Steam, from Facebook to Twitter, this is the enshittification lifecycle.
This is why — as Cat Valente wrote in her magesterial pre-Christmas essay — platforms like Prodigy transformed themselves overnight, from a place where you went for social connection to a place where you were expected to “stop talking to each other and start buying things”:
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
This shell-game with surpluses is what happened to Facebook. First, Facebook was good to you: it showed you the things the people you loved and cared about had to say. This created a kind of mutual hostage-taking: once a critical mass of people you cared about were on Facebook, it became effectively impossible to leave, because you’d have to convince all of them to leave too, and agree on where to go. You may love your friends, but half the time you can’t agree on what movie to see and where to go for dinner. Forget it.
Then, it started to cram your feed full of posts from accounts you didn’t follow. At first, it was media companies, who Facebook preferentially crammed down its users’ throats so that they would click on articles and send traffic to newspapers, magazines and blogs.
Then, once those publications were dependent on Facebook for their traffic, it dialed down their traffic. First, it choked off traffic to publications that used Facebook to run excerpts with links to their own sites, as a way of driving publications into supplying fulltext feeds inside Facebook’s walled garden.
This made publications truly dependent on Facebook — their readers no longer visited the publications’ websites, they just tuned into them on Facebook. The publications were hostage to those readers, who were hostage to each other. Facebook stopped showing readers the articles publications ran, tuning The Algorithm to suppress posts from publications unless they paid to “boost” their articles to the readers who had explicitly subscribed to them and asked Facebook to put them in their feeds.
Now, Facebook started to cram more ads into the feed, mixing payola from people you wanted to hear from with payola from strangers who wanted to commandeer your eyeballs. It gave those advertisers a great deal, charging a pittance to target their ads based on the dossiers of nonconsensually harvested personal data they’d stolen from you.
Sellers became dependent on Facebook, too, unable to carry on business without access to those targeted pitches. That was Facebook’s cue to jack up ad prices, stop worrying so much about ad fraud, and to collude with Google to rig the ad market through an illegal program called Jedi Blue:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue
Today, Facebook is terminally enshittified, a terrible place to be whether you’re a user, a media company, or an advertiser. It’s a company that deliberately demolished a huge fraction of the publishers it relied on, defrauding them into a “pivot to video” based on false claims of the popularity of video among Facebook users. Companies threw billions into the pivot, but the viewers never materialized, and media outlets folded in droves:
https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/facebook-online-video-pivot-metrics-false.html
But Facebook has a new pitch. It claims to be called Meta, and it has demanded that we live out the rest of our days as legless, sexless, heavily surveilled low-poly cartoon characters.
It has promised companies that make apps for this metaverse that it won’t rug them the way it did the publishers on the old Facebook. It remains to be seen whether they’ll get any takers. As Mark Zuckerberg once candidly confessed to a peer, marvelling at all of his fellow Harvard students who sent their personal information to his new website “TheFacebook”:
> I don’t know why.
> They “trust me”
> Dumb fucks.
https://doctorow.medium.com/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video-adbe09319038
Once you understand the enshittification pattern, a lot of the platform mysteries solve themselves. Think of the SEO market, or the whole energetic world of online creators who spend endless hours engaged in useless platform Kremlinology, hoping to locate the algorithmic tripwires, which, if crossed, doom the creative works they pour their money, time and energy into:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/11/coercion-v-cooperation/#the-machine-is-listening
Working for the platform can be like working for a boss who takes money out of every paycheck for all the rules you broke, but who won’t tell you what those rules are because if he told you that, then you’d figure out how to break those rules without him noticing and docking your pay. Content moderation is the only domain where security through obscurity is considered a best practice:
https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563
The situation is so dire that organizations like Tracking Exposed have enlisted an human army of volunteers and a robot army of headless browsers to try to unwind the logic behind the arbitrary machine judgments of The Algorithm, both to give users the option to tune the recommendations they receive, and to help creators avoid the wage theft that comes from being shadow banned:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/05/tracking-exposed-demanding-gods-explain-themselves
But what if there is no underlying logic? Or, more to the point, what if the logic shifts based on the platform’s priorities? If you go down to the midway at your county fair, you’ll spot some poor sucker walking around all day with a giant teddy bear that they won by throwing three balls in a peach basket.
The peach-basket is a rigged game. The carny can use a hidden switch to force the balls to bounce out of the basket. No one wins a giant teddy bear unless the carny wants them to win it. Why did the carny let the sucker win the giant teddy bear? So that he’d carry it around all day, convincing other suckers to put down five bucks for their chance to win one:
https://boingboing.net/2006/08/27/rigged-carny-game.html
The carny allocated a giant teddy bear to that poor sucker the way that platforms allocate surpluses to key performers — as a convincer in a “Big Store” con, a way to rope in other suckers who’ll make content for the platform, anchoring themselves and their audiences to it.
Which brings me to Tiktok. Tiktok is many different things, including “a free Adobe Premiere for teenagers that live on their phones.”
https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-fragments-of-media-you-consume
But what made it such a success early on was the power of its recommendation system. From the start, Tiktok was really, really good at recommending things to its users. Eerily good:
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1093882880
By making good-faith recommendations of things it thought its users would like, Tiktok built a mass audience, larger than many thought possible, given the death grip of its competitors, like Youtube and Instagram. Now that Tiktok has the audience, it is consolidating its gains and seeking to lure away the media companies and creators who are still stubbornly attached to Youtube and Insta.
Yesterday, Forbes’s Emily Baker-White broke a fantastic story about how that actually works inside of Bytedance, Tiktok’s parent company, citing multiple internal sources, revealing the existence of a “heating tool” that Tiktok employees use push videos from select accounts into millions of viewers’ feeds:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/01/20/tiktoks-secret-heating-button-can-make-anyone-go-viral/
These videos go into Tiktok users’ ForYou feeds, which Tiktok misleadingly describes as being populated by videos “ranked by an algorithm that predicts your interests based on your behavior in the app.” In reality, For You is only sometimes composed of videos that Tiktok thinks will add value to your experience — the rest of the time, it’s full of videos that Tiktok has inserted in order to make creators think that Tiktok is a great place to reach an audience.
“Sources told Forbes that TikTok has often used heating to court influencers and brands, enticing them into partnerships by inflating their videos’ view count. This suggests that heating has potentially benefitted some influencers and brands — those with whom TikTok has sought business relationships — at the expense of others with whom it has not.”
In other words, Tiktok is handing out giant teddy bears.
But Tiktok is not in the business of giving away giant teddy bears. Tiktok, for all that its origins are in the quasi-capitalist Chinese economy, is just another paperclip-maximizing artificial colony organism that treats human beings as inconvenient gut flora. Tiktok is only going to funnel free attention to the people it wants to entrap until they are entrapped, then it will withdraw that attention and begin to monetize it.
“Monetize” is a terrible word that tacitly admits that there is no such thing as an “Attention Economy.” You can’t use attention as a medium of exchange. You can’t use it as a store of value. You can’t use it as a unit of account. Attention is like cryptocurrency: a worthless token that is only valuable to the extent that you can trick or coerce someone into parting with “fiat” currency in exchange for it. You have to “monetize” it — that is, you have to exchange the fake money for real money.
In the case of cryptos, the main monetization strategy was deception-based. Exchanges and “projects” handed out a bunch of giant teddy-bears, creating an army of true-believer Judas goats who convinced their peers to hand the carny their money and try to get some balls into the peach-basket themselves.
But deception only produces so much “liquidity provision.” Eventually, you run out of suckers. To get lots of people to try the ball-toss, you need coercion, not persuasion. Think of how US companies ended the defined benefits pension that guaranteed you a dignified retirement, replacing it with market-based 401(k) pensions that forced you to gamble your savings in a rigged casino, making you the sucker at the table, ripe for the picking:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/25/derechos-humanos/#are-there-no-poorhouses
Early crypto liquidity came from ransomware. The existence of a pool of desperate, panicked companies and individuals whose data had been stolen by criminals created a baseline of crypto liquidity because they could only get their data back by trading real money for fake crypto money.
The next phase of crypto coercion was Web3: converting the web into a series of tollbooths that you could only pass through by trading real money for fake crypto money. The internet is a must-have, not a nice-to-have, a prerequisite for full participation in employment, education, family life, health, politics, civics, even romance. By holding all those things to ransom behind crypto tollbooths, the hodlers hoped to convert their tokens to real money:
https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/
For Tiktok, handing out free teddy-bears by “heating” the videos posted by skeptical performers and media companies is a way to convert them to true believers, getting them to push all their chips into the middle of the table, abandoning their efforts to build audiences on other platforms (it helps that Tiktok’s format is distinctive, making it hard to repurpose videos for Tiktok to circulate on rival platforms).
Once those performers and media companies are hooked, the next phase will begin: Tiktok will withdraw the “heating” that sticks their videos in front of people who never heard of them and haven’t asked to see their videos. Tiktok is performing a delicate dance here: there’s only so much enshittification they can visit upon their users’ feeds, and Tiktok has lots of other performers they want to give giant teddy-bears to.
Tiktok won’t just starve performers of the “free” attention by depreferencing them in the algorithm, it will actively punish them by failing to deliver their videos to the users who subscribed to them. After all, every time Tiktok shows you a video you asked to see, it loses a chance to show you a video it wants you to see, because your attention is a giant teddy-bear it can give away to a performer it is wooing.
This is just what Twitter has done as part of its march to enshittification: thanks to its “monetization” changes, the majority of people who follow you will never see the things you post. I have ~500k followers on Twitter and my threads used to routinely get hundreds of thousands or even millions of reads. Today, it’s hundreds, perhaps thousands.
I just handed Twitter $8 for Twitter Blue, because the company has strongly implied that it will only show the things I post to the people who asked to see them if I pay ransom money. This is the latest battle in one of the internet’s longest-simmering wars: the fight over end-to-end:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen
In the beginning, there were Bellheads and Netheads. The Bellheads worked for big telcos, and they believed that all the value of the network rightly belonged to the carrier. If someone invented a new feature — say, Caller ID — it should only be rolled out in a way that allows the carrier to charge you every month for its use. This is Software-As-a-Service, Ma Bell style.
The Netheads, by contrast, believed that value should move to the edges of the network — spread out, pluralized. In theory, Compuserve could have “monetized” its own version of Caller ID by making you pay $2.99 extra to see the “From:” line on email before you opened the message — charging you to know who was speaking before you started listening — but they didn’t.
The Netheads wanted to build diverse networks with lots of offers, lots of competition, and easy, low-cost switching between competitors (thanks to interoperability). Some wanted this because they believed that the net would someday be woven into the world, and they didn’t want to live in a world of rent-seeking landlords. Others were true believers in market competition as a source of innovation. Some believed both things. Either way, they saw the risk of network capture, the drive to monetization through trickery and coercion, and they wanted to head it off.
They conceived of the end-to-end principle: the idea that networks should be designed so that willing speakers’ messages would be delivered to willing listeners’ end-points as quickly and reliably as they could be. That is, irrespective of whether a network operator could make money by sending you the data it wanted to receive, its duty would be to provide you with the data you wanted to see.
The end-to-end principle is dead at the service level today. Useful idiots on the right were tricked into thinking that the risk of Twitter mismanagement was “woke shadowbanning,” whereby the things you said wouldn’t reach the people who asked to hear them because Twitter’s deep state didn’t like your opinions. The real risk, of course, is that the things you say won’t reach the people who asked to hear them because Twitter can make more money by enshittifying their feeds and charging you ransom for the privilege to be included in them.
As I said at the start of this essay, enshittification exerts a nearly irresistible gravity on platform capitalism. It’s just too easy to turn the enshittification dial up to eleven. Twitter was able to fire the majority of its skilled staff and still crank the dial all the way over, even with a skeleton crew of desperate, demoralized H1B workers who are shackled to Twitter’s sinking ship by the threat of deportation.
The temptation to enshittify is magnified by the blocks on interoperability: when Twitter bans interoperable clients, nerfs its APIs, and periodically terrorizes its users by suspending them for including their Mastodon handles in their bios, it makes it harder to leave Twitter, and thus increases the amount of enshittification users can be force-fed without risking their departure.
Twitter is not going to be a “protocol.” I’ll bet you a testicle¹ that projects like Bluesky will find no meaningful purchase on the platform, because if Bluesky were implemented and Twitter users could order their feeds for minimal enshittification and leave the service without sacrificing their social networks, it would kill the majority of Twitter’s “monetization” strategies.
¹Not one of mine.
An enshittification strategy only succeeds if it is pursued in measured amounts. Even the most locked-in user eventually reaches a breaking-point and walks away, or gets pushed. The villagers of Anatevka in Fiddler on the Roof tolerated the cossacks' violent raids and pogroms for years, until they were finally forced to flee to Krakow, New York and Chicago:
https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms-9fc550fe5abf
For enshittification-addled companies, that balance is hard to strike. Individual product managers, executives, and activist shareholders all give preference to quick returns at the cost of sustainability, and are in a race to see who can eat their seed-corn first. Enshittification has only lasted for as long as it has because the internet has devolved into “five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four”:
https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040
With the market sewn up by a group of cozy monopolists, better alternatives don’t pop up and lure us away, and if they do, the monopolists just buy them out and integrate them into your enshittification strategies, like when Mark Zuckerberg noticed a mass exodus of Facebook users who were switching to Instagram, and so he bought Instagram. As Zuck says, “It is better to buy than to compete.”
This is the hidden dynamic behind the rise and fall of Amazon Smile, the program whereby Amazon gave a small amount of money to charities of your choice when you shopped there, but only if you used Amazon’s own search tool to locate the products you purchased. This provided an incentive for Amazon customers to use its own increasingly enshittified search, which it could cram full of products from sellers who coughed up payola, as well as its own lookalike products. The alternative was to use Google, whose search tool would send you directly to the product you were looking for, and then charge Amazon a commission for sending you to it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/10ft5iv/comment/j4znb8y/
The demise of Amazon Smile coincides with the increasing enshittification of Google Search, the only successful product the company managed to build in-house. All its other successes were bought from other companies: video, docs, cloud, ads, mobile; while its own products are either flops like Google Video, clones (Gmail is a Hotmail clone), or adapted from other companies’ products, like Chrome.
Google Search was based on principles set out in founder Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s landmark 1998 paper, “Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” in which they wrote, “Advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers.”
http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/361/
Even with that foundational understanding of enshittification, Google has been unable to resist its siren song. Today’s Google results are an increasingly useless morass of self-preferencing links to its own products, ads for products that aren’t good enough to float to the top of the list on its own, and parasitic SEO junk piggybacking on the former.
Enshittification kills. Google just laid off 12,000 employees, and the company is in a full-blown “panic” over the rise of “AI” chatbots, and is making a full-court press for an AI-driven search tool — that is, a tool that won’t show you what you ask for, but rather, what it thinks you should see:
https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/20/23563851/google-search-ai-chatbot-demo-chatgpt
Now, it’s possible to imagine that such a tool will produce good recommendations, like Tiktok’s pre-enshittified algorithm did. But it’s hard to see how Google will be able to design a non-enshittified chatbot front-end to search, given the strong incentives for product managers, executives, and shareholders to enshittify results to the precise threshold at which users are nearly pissed off enough to leave, but not quite.
Even if it manages the trick, this-almost-but-not-quite-unusuable equilibrium is fragile. Any exogenous shock — a new competitor like Tiktok that penetrates the anticompetitive “moats and walls” of Big Tech, a privacy scandal, a worker uprising — can send it into wild oscillations:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/08/watch-the-surpluses/#exogenous-shocks
Enshittification truly is how platforms die. That’s fine, actually. We don’t need eternal rulers of the internet. It’s okay for new ideas and new ways of working to emerge. The emphasis of lawmakers and policymakers shouldn’t be preserving the crepuscular senescence of dying platforms. Rather, our policy focus should be on minimizing the cost to users when these firms reach their expiry date: enshrining rights like end-to-end would mean that no matter how autocannibalistic a zombie platform became, willing speakers and willing listeners would still connect with each other:
https://doctorow.medium.com/end-to-end-d6046dca366f
And policymakers should focus on freedom of exit — the right to leave a sinking platform while continuing to stay connected to the communities that you left behind, enjoying the media and apps you bought, and preserving the data you created:
https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook
The Netheads were right: technological self-determination is at odds with the natural imperatives of tech businesses. They make more money when they take away our freedom — our freedom to speak, to leave, to connect.
For many years, even Tiktok’s critics grudgingly admitted that no matter how surveillant and creepy it was, it was really good at guessing what you wanted to see. But Tiktok couldn’t resist the temptation to show you the things it wants you to see, rather than what you want to see. The enshittification has begun, and now it is unlikely to stop.
It's too late to save Tiktok. Now that it has been infected by enshittifcation, the only thing left is to kill it with fire.
[Image ID: Hansel and Gretel in front of the witch's candy house. Hansel and Gretel have been replaced with line-drawings of influencers, taking selfies of themselves with the candy house. In front of the candy house stands a portly man in a business suit; his head is a sack of money with a dollar-sign on it. He wears a crooked witch's hat. The cottage has the Tiktok logo on it.]
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gold-snek-hoe · 1 month
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Hello and welcome to Opinions from an Internet Nobody. Today's essay:
"Ger therapy" is the new "You need Jesus": One Weirdo's Navigation through Cultural Shame
This is a supposedly well-meaning sentiment that is often weaponized against people who are behaving outside of perceived cultural norms. It's a favorite of homophobes who see queerness/transness as a mental illness, but I've been seeing it used to demonize kink (which historically is often linked to queerness), and more generally any "weird" behavior that makes people uncomfortable.
For example, otherkin, systems (especially those with fictives), and people who take fictional characters as partners. Y'know, "weirdos" who "can't separate reality from fiction." And, sure, sometimes there can be a problem with that distinction, but I know as well as you that most internet strangers saying "get therapy" don't actually give a shit about the mental health of those they target. It's code for "your behavior makes me uncomfortable, stop it."
Same sentiment as "you need Jesus."
This has actually taken me a long time to figure out. I've been in therapy for my entire adult life, working through various traumas, severe depression, anxiety, all that. Those were the biggest problems as they negatively impacted, and often endangered, my life. It was only after my hospitalization in 2020, where I was finally put on much needed medication, that I could start to grow into myself.
I changed my name. I top surgery. I came out as polyamorous. I finally got my official autism diagnosis. Now I'm fuckin' married! But... there are still things I'm working through in therapy. Mainly, shame over my "weirder" behaviors. My current therapist has been a huge blessing in helping me accept the things I was too ashamed to admit.
Now, I feel comfortable enough to share.
I'm otherkin. Always have been. My connection to my humanity is tenuous, and I'm sure that's connected to my autism. When mad, I feel phantom horns sprouting from my forehead. I have a tail that swishes back and forth at the base of my spine. In my soul, I am monstrous, and years of therapy has not erased that.
I feel like I'm only half in the physical world most of the time. This doesn't hinder my real-world success (I graduated college Summa Cum Laude, have an IMDB page, and am on my third book), but informs the way I look at the world. There's a whole other universe in my head that hums along with me in my day-to-day. That's part of why I'm so skilled as a writer. To ask me to divorce from that is to tell me to stop existing. Sorry, it's how I've always operated.
Lastly, and this is the one I'm really anxious about, I have a fictional husband. Now, looking at my blog, you might say "yeah, no shit," but I don't just ship myself with him. I mean I practice pop-culture Witchcraft, and the Goblin King is my patron. I mean I have a Labyrinth-themed tarot deck that I talk to him with. I mean I held a ritual to spiritually marry him. Basically, I Snape-wived myself.
And guess what? My therapist isn't concerned. It's not hurting my ability to live my life. I have other interests, hobbies, and goals outside of him, which he actively encourages in all our tarot sessions! I wouldn't be doing this if he didn't support me. My IRL spouse is usually there for whatever magical shit I'm doing, and supports me! Some of my closest friends know, and the only complaint I've gotten is "this guy seems important to you, I wish you told me sooner." Hell, my MOTHER knows and supports me, which is huge, because our relationship was pretty damaged after I came out as trans.
If you have a problem with the way I live my life, when literally nobody else does, take a good long look at why. You don't give a fuck about my mental health. You just don't like that I'm weird.
Tl;dr: My mental health is better than it's ever been since embracing the weird, so leave me and my imaginary husband Marak Sixfinger alone.
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cowboylane24 · 8 months
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has anybody said this yet
crowley & aziraphale's relationship is queer not as in they are both men (neither of them are, in fact) but as in their love threatens oppressive systems of power that have been in place for a very long time!!!
i've always seen their relationship as queer, although i think in the beginning it was because they were two masc-presenting figures on tv and i was glad to have another gay ship to root for, but it's just hitting me that their queerness actually goes much deeper.
in the good omens universe, as we've seen, outward queerness is never questioned. there's no coming out, no homophobia, no questions or stumbling over pronoun usage & gender-neutral language. so, of course, it's no problem for crowley & aziraphale to be together on earth, because they don't face the hardships that queer people in the real world face today.
rather, they face these hardships from heaven and hell (but mostly heaven).
queerness of the earthly kind is so hated by conservatives who want so desperately to cling to the structure of the nuclear, anti-social family (oppressive in its own way, that's for another essay) because it poses a threat to this structure. queerness allows for so many more possibilities, not only romantically but interpersonally in general. it inherently goes against the idea of a romantic couple as a necessarily biologically reproductive unit and expands the definition of family to include a much wider community than the strict blood lineation that has traditionally been defined as "family." this also, of course, has all kinds of consequences for capitalism and the labor force that i won't go into here.
we see that crowley & aziraphale's relationship threatens heaven & hell in the miracle they perform together, barely trying, which sends alarm bells in heaven screaming because a power like that should not be possible. the system that has been in place for millennia is a strict dichotomy: heaven vs. hell, angels vs. demons, "good" vs. "evil." but when the two mix, when morality turns gray and the two sides work together, that whole system is naturally upended.
so naturally the metatron is going to try to pull crowley & aziraphale apart. their power combined is dangerous enough to rival both heaven and hell, but even more than that, they threaten the way things have always been. and metatron, geniusly cast as an old white man, cannot stand to see it.
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trigunbookclub · 6 months
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TrigunBookclub Afterparty!
Hello there! As bookclub winds down to a close, there a few things to announce:
Bookclub Afterparty!
Bookclub may officially be over, but the Trimax brainrot continues! There are some bonus comics, the Multiple Bullets anthology (with all its great and terrible stories), and some folks have fallen behind, have essays left to write, or have things they wanted to create or share and haven't had a chance. I myself fell behind since life has been a bit hellish on my end, I'm two volumes behind--and I don't seem to bethe only one in that position!
So, I want to invite people to keep using and watching the tag until the end of October! Discuss, share theories, thoughts, art, shout-out posts and ideas that you love, just have fun! You can discuss the entire series and all related materials--hell, you can even do a read/reread it if you want to. Whatever goes, so long as it follows the guidelines.
Bookclub 2.0!
I've been talking with the @trigun-manga-overhaul team, who we all know has the best Trigun manga translation out there--but it's about to get better with Overhaul 2.0! When it drops probably next year, it will be at the pace of a chapter a week, and I plan to run the bookclub during that time to celebrate! This gives much more time for discussion, comparing, analyzing, and keeping up with posts. Since it will be a longer reading time and it's round two, spoilers will be allowed, though I will ask that they be tagged.
I also highly encourage everyone to feel free to use the tag when the hardcovers from Dark Horse are released to celebrate and discuss!
Bookclub Archive!
Since social media has a tendency to be ephemeral at best, the lovely @versaphile has taken it upon themselves to archive the bookclub posts of everyone who gives permission for them to do so! This way you can binge meta and posts and find everything much more easily. You can find the archive here, and see an example of archived posts here. If you're interested in or okay with being included in the project, please contact @trigunreferencelibrary!
Bookclub Stickers!
Multiple people have talked about wanting a badge of honor for participating in/keeping up with bookclub, and I think that might be a bit tricky... but how about some stickers? I figure that this way, the shipping is affordable even for international folks since I've seen a good amount of people around the world participating and lurking! I'm going to try and find printing for as affordably as I can (if anyone out there knows any good distributors for smaller batch sticker orders, please shoot me a DM!), and it won't be something to profit off of--just in memory of a great time! The only thing is I have two options, and I don't know if either of them are even what folks want. So...
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And that's all that I can think of for now! I'm a bit exhausted and run ragged at the moment, so feel free to ask for any clarification on anything. When I started this project, I honestly didn't think I'd get many if any people following through--I know people lose their focus easily (myself included). But instead it turned into a huge celebration of a beautiful manga that is finally getting the attention it deserves after kind of getting buried by time. I've met some absolutely amazing and brilliant people throughout this event, and I just want to say thank you to every single person who made a post, supported others, and/or just lurked. You guys are fantastic and made this an amazing experience.
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eriexplosion · 16 days
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Here's How Shrimp Trooper Theory Can Still Win
This is as fringe as it gets folks.
I've done my very serious Tech lives essay now it's time for my actual wild theory. Plus @katara-stan-club wanted the shrimp trooper essay and I will take any opportunity to yammer. Please don't take this extremely seriously as it is just something that I'm spinning up for entertainment and is almost certainly not true. (Unless!)
So the opening to Confined is... Odd to me. I've mentioned this in a post before but just to recap, it is definitely the odd man out of the three season starters.
Season one of course we intro with Caleb, who then leads us directly to meet the batch and get our first character appearances, along with convenient introductions. A fun, action packed little scene before things immediately go to hell.
Season two we intro with the batch in the middle of a job, which gives us another fun action scene that shows us how much Omega has grown, as well as the current status of the batch itself.
Season three though? Season three starts us off with a ship going down in a lightning storm and all the stormtroopers inside assumed to be eaten by the giant monsters that lurk in Tantiss' jungles. (Going by Omega's tally marks later in the episode, we're about 20 days post plan 99.) Nothing to do with the batch at all, though we do get a glance at what's in the jungle, and a tiny bit more of Hemlock being a bastard of course.
Now, seemingly, this scene is the set up for episode three, when they make their escape and head for the downed ship.
Except it's completely unnecessary. When they get to the ship, it turns on but it's incapable of flight and the comms are still down and non functioning. The ship they end up taking and using to escape is the ship that came in pursuit of them. The plot would have gone down exactly the same if they had just picked a direction and fled without the downed ship. It's a complete red herring for how they ultimately end up escaping.
So why is it important enough to open the season on if the ship essentially functions as nothing more than a destination point?
Enter Shrimp Trooper Theory.
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Going back to the stormtroopers. We have four of them inside the ship, the pilot and three others. We're going to be focusing on our boy on the far right of the second picture.
The pilot speaks before the ship goes down so we can confirm he's a rando. Our fellow in the middle speaks next, identifying himself as TK-343, another rando. The one on the far left talks about wild beasts proving himself, you guessed it, a third rando. But our boy on the far right doesn't talk at all through this whole scene, leaving his identity up in the air.
So we'll take a closer look at him and brighten the scene up a bit.
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Now, seeing this guy hobble his way out of the ship, I thought that he looked somewhat familiar. Specifically.
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That shitty ass posture. (Forgive the sloppiness of the edit I did this comparison once before and I am not remaking it)
We do not actually see the troopers all get eaten, we cut to the interior of Tantiss before it happens. Theoretically there is nothing stopping this shrimp shaped man from being Tech.
The timeline of shrimp trooper theory:
Tech falls from the rail car and manages to survive the landing but he's severely injured. He crawls away/gets scraped off the ground by Saw.
Roughly 3 weeks pass in which he is recovering and healing yet unable to comm out as, per episode 4 of season 3, Imperial planets monitor long range communications. But, he is able to gather information from the flights going in and out of Eriadu to determine which ones are being assigned to Hemlock's secretive lab. Once he is able to confirm this, he steals some stormtrooper armor and boards.
Ship goes down because gravity hates him in particular and he is almost eaten by a Beast.
Now stranded in the jungle on Tantiss, Tech finds his infiltration plan foiled by the fact that he is being continually hounded by even more Beasts.
Several months later, Batcher is released and for some reason goes straight for the wrecked ship. Somehow she survives out here, but we're not sure how - potentially she had help?
Tech IS the mystery clone X that we see but rather than being brainwashed he has finally managed to get inside Tantiss and yet again begins to Steal Clothing from others.
Crosshair and Omega immediately break out without him leaving him stranded in Tantiss where he presumably still is, attempting to avoid detection and continue to gather information that will aid in the eventual liberation of the other clones.
Is this unlikely? Yes! Is it overly complicated? Absolutely! Am I endlessly entertained by it anyway? You bet!
Benefits of Shrimp Trooper Theory include, but are not limited to:
A living, non brainwashed Tech! The most important feature one could have!
An extremely ridiculous Only In Star Wars series of events!
Retroactive explanation for why the ship going down was an important scene to start on.
Hemlock ruining his own life by not sending someone out to recover the team and just assuming they'd totally be taken care of by the wildlife.
More giant monsters than Wrecker could shake a stick at.
The possibility of Tech and Batcher offscreen shenanigans.
Tech thinking he's finally found Crosshair and making plans to retrieve him when, SURPRISE, OMEGA'S HERE TOO AND THEY'RE ESCAPING. RIGHT NOW.
Seriously just imagine the epic sigh Tech would let out as they flew away completely unaware of his presence. His life is a series of difficulties.
He can simply turn up with the coordinates to Tantiss because god knows how else they're going to manage to get them.
This is my conspiracy theory that I'm allowing myself to believe in as a treat. It will almost certainly not be what occurs but the thought of it makes me happy.
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orionsangel86 · 11 months
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I'm sorry but why do you ship them so hard? They just have 1 episode together.. I watched the sandman expecting destiel and it was literally almost nothing there. 1 episode. Idk how you guys got so much ship content out of that.
Ah nonny, I'm sorry but if you go into anything expecting Destiel you are gonna be dissappointed. Destiel is a behemouth of 12 years worth of gradually escalating gay subtext, queer coding, and romantic tropes. Destiel is the ship that people go into expecting that Tumblr exaggerated only to be blown away by how ridiculously gay it is even when it tries so hard not to be.
But remember, once upon a time people shipped Destiel after only a few moments of interaction. The first Destiel fic was written 30 minutes after Lazarus Rising aired...everything has its time.
When I joked that Dreamling was the "Destiel of Sandman fandom" I meant in terms of popularity compared to everything else about the show. The ships share some similar traits when compared on a grand scale - think ancient cosmic entity that has very strict rules slowly changes and starts to become more "human" thanks to their friendship with one dude who just so happens to be a hedonistic stubborn ass who refuses to die - but are otherwise very different.
But if you are wondering why people ship Dream and Hob so hard, well, this post goes some ways to explaining it.
But basically, look this may only be a half hour of television, but it doesn't equate in universe to half an hour of interaction. This half hour of television spans the course of 6 centuries for these two characters. There is a totally untapped potential hidden in the gaps between centuries to explore, and on top of that, the final meeting is left completely up to the imagination of the audience. Its a sandbox ship. Its a dozen fanfiction gaps laid on top of each other. It's at least 20 different prompts for fans to sink their teeth into. Its the potential. It's the what if.
Then on top of that, if you follow the comics, you know that the future Dream x Hob meetings also have a hell of a lot of potential to turn romantic. Dream going out of his way to hunt down a specific bottle of wine that doesn't exist on Earth anymore to gift it to Hob in his dreams, the very fact that he visits Hob in his dreams (hello common Destiel trope right there). They don't meet too many more times in the comics, but each time the tension is palpable. The meeting in the Kindly Ones is heartbreaking, because you can tell desperately how much they need each other at that moment, but they are both too distracted or consumed by grief and depression to truly reach out to one another. The comics never reveal why Dream sought Hob out at that point, but given everything happening to him at the time, its not hard to assume that Dream was seeking comfort from his friend - the only person he could really turn to for comfort at that point.
Then we have Hob's dream. One of the final stories in The Sandman original comic run. After everything else has happened, after the climax and all that takes place, after the smoke has cleared and you think everyone else has moved on and you are certain the ending is set in stone, you get to Hob's dream, and your mind is once again blown, and suddenly you have a thousand more questions. So many fans hopes and dreams rely on Hob's dream right now I can't even begin to express how important that particular comic issue is to me.
It's all about the potential. There is so much potential.
Plus the 30 minute scene we got was loaded full of subtext, romantic tropes, and queer coding. I dunno if you picked up on it, but I have an extremely long meta essay still in the works that goes through everything that 30 minute sequence gives us in terms of shipping fodder (I really need to finish that). Its not just the romantic tropes, the break up and make up, its the acting choices, the eye fucking, the freaking song choices in 1989 holy fuck could they be more on the nose.
Also, consider this thought experiment: Crowley and Aziraphale in Good Omens are a hugely popular ship, where their creator Neil Gaiman has confirmed that theirs is a love story. Whatever else you may believe about Crowley and Aziraphale, their story is a love story. Creator confirmed love story.
Now, Crowley and Aziraphale are the leads of Good Omens and interact throughout the entire 6 episode show. But consider the first half of episode 3. Imagine a version of Good Omens where Crowley and Aziraphale don't really interact outside of that 30 minute opening sequence. That the story was much more focused on the Them, the Horsemen, and the other characters. Imagine then seeing that 30 minute sequence which shows Crowley and Aziraphale slowly warming to each other and becoming friends over the centuries, shows them getting to know each other, do each other favours, come to each others defence, get into fights and break up with each other, only to make up later...
Would you still ship them? Even if that 30 minute sequence was all you got? I guarantee if I asked any Ineffable Husbands fan that question they would say yes. Because THAT 30 minute sequence is what solidifies the importance of their relationship and its what MAKES IT a love story.
Guess where Neil Gaiman got the idea for that 30 minute sequence in Good Omens from? Ah Neil, plagiarising his own work all these years later!
If Neil Gaiman thought that Men of Good Fortune would work well for a canonical love story in Good Omens, I wonder what he was thinking when he then adapted Men of Good Fortune for television?
THE POTENTIAL.
I ship Dreamling that hard because it has more potential than any other ship I have come across. It has 6 centuries and all the future of the Sandman show for me to explore, to tweak, to play with. Besides they just suit each other ya know? Like Dream is notoriously bad at relationships, but Hob is literally perfect for him. The more my mind dwells on how perfect Hob is for Dream the more I want to scream about it. Give the sad wet cat man a boyfriend who is literally his opposite in every way. Dream is a character looking for a reason to keep living, and Hob is a character who refuses to die. Dream is a pessimist, Hob is an optimist. Dream is afraid of change, Hob literally changes constantly with the times. Dream is desperate for love and someone to stay by his side, Hob just wants to love someone he doesn't have to eventually leave.
Let them meet in the middle.
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fruitwaterz · 2 months
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JFabe/AbeFK: The Ultimate Queerbaiting (short essay n rant)
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(Clone High Season 3 spoilers,,, beware!!!)
Hey everyone it's fruit/juno/nova aka MTVyaoi BACK with another banger essay
So if you guys didn't know already (but I'm pretty sure everyone in the Clone High community does), season three of Clone High, also known as season 2 of the Clone High reboot just premiered yesterday. Thanks to a mutual handing me over their Max account, I was able to watch the episodes in one day, and it's safe to say that it was WAY more better than season 2, despite its ups and downs.
Of course, the reboot boosted some ships into popularity, such as JoanFK (rip), Kahlopatra (rip), Tophabe, but one ship that never really came around to being popular was Jfabe, the relationship between JFK and Abe in the Clone High series.
In the very last episode of season 2, many speculated that JFK and Abe would somehow possibly get together in season 3 (while others just,,, thought they would remain friends). I made an analysis about JFK himself, and in the end, I included a bit of some Jfabe speculation. And during the time the reboot had ended, Jfabe shippers and Tophabe shippers were technically at war. But in the very end, no one was really happy, I would say.
With the new season out, and especially episode 3…yeah, there are some things that need to be discussed. Because let me tell you, I am actually. so mad
Many of the Jfabe shippers collected context clues, hints, and everything that could've hinted at the two becoming canon, only for those to be contradicted really quickly when it came to the Mary episode and the finale. Hell, when the trailer came out, most of us feared the idea of Abe not getting with JFK (actually, this would be most Abe shippers worst nightmare) and getting with someone who we never even knew.
Before I actually do get into the Mary episode, however, I wanted to bring up my favorite episode out of the series, and that is Bible Humpers: A Much Needed Praycation.
Season 3 Episode 3:
Bible Humpers introduces a subplot in which JFK gets tired of partying and having a concerning amount of sex with girls, reminders that…this is during his 17th birthday (from what I could remember), and that's sort of why he was feeling like that. From there on, he decides to become catholic and join The Prayer Pals club, hosted by Lady Godiva, a new character. However, Abe is upset about this because he believed that JFK would change so much that he would eventually forget about Abe. Abe was planning a 6th month Boy-nniversary for the two, and due to JFK being too busy with his newfound hobby, Abe steps in to stop things.
Now, this episode is agreeably, one out of the three Jfabe episodes to exist, the others being Clone Alone and Litter Kills: Literally (The reason why I count Clone Alone as a Jfabe episode, is mainly because of the scene where JFK and Abe become friends…a duo of bros that'll remain friends for the rest of their lives, more on that later, though).
Something about the episode was suspiciously fruity, with Abe being worried about JFK, giving him a new wristband to match his, pulling him really close, offering to let him take his virginity, and even went out of his way to bake a giant cake for him. Hell, at the very end of the episode, he leaves a box with the purity ring in it on JFK's doorstep, and we could even see JFK's soft smile when he read his note.
(Also pspspsp we could see two doves in the sky all while Abe is walking to JFK's house. Two doves represent love.)
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(thanks to my mutual)
Next, the Mary episode. In the middle of the episode, JFK offers to have sex with Abe, even taking his shirt off and still asking Abe if he wants to go through with it. Stuff like this was mentioned in the beginning of episode 1. Not gonna go into the sex too much, because they're just teenagers.
It seems that the dynamic between these two are quite literally back and forth, they could be friends, and they could go back to arguing. Abe wants to make JFK happy, JFK cares for Abe, but either gets too riled up or feels like Abe’s ruining things for him.
So with all of this build up and hints, Jfabe was surely gonna become canon one way or another, right?
Well…I wouldn't exactly say that. Because during the finale, Abe suddenly catches feelings for Joan again, and JFK randomly ends up with Harriet, despite the fact that they both established that they didn't feel much for each other! And this was back in season 2 episode 6, where they both kiss again in a classroom, but come to the realization that they actually don't like each other at all. I like the idea of JFK x Harriet, but it just happened way too fast, and I really wish I could ignore that.
Which brings me to my argument: we were queerbaited.
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(And if random jfabe dislikers come and tell me that it was bound to happen, I'm gonna lose my mind.)
We are sitting here, begging for some sort of MLM relationship. We've already had Kahlopatra, which is a same-sex female relationship (Good day for sapphics, I love that ship to bits and was disappointed in the fact that they broke up). So it wouldn't have hurt to at least have two of the main male characters date each other. But oh, yeah, let's have them being suspiciously fruity to each other as humor and nothing but humor, because in the end, it was basically just watered down to that.
It even makes me confused in a way, because what was the point of “Duo of bros who'll remain friends for the rest of our lives?” What was the reason? Did they hint at something, only to throw this away at the very last minute? Seriously, we could see background male characters get into relationships, yet not have two of the main characters get together. It's odd, yet not surprising.
Clone High has this tendency of making up random relationships, Harriet x Toussaint, Joan x Confucius (which I like however, don't come for me), Mary x Abe, just fuck all. And now, it's JFK x Harriet. Yet, it seems as if it would hurt them to make a hinted at relationship…canon. It confuses me. Are they gonna make them date in season 4? Are we even gonna get a season 4? Because the show has to get renewed in order for that to happen.
I am not mad at the writers for not making them canon because of the ship dynamic itself, I'm angry because there were so many hints, so much build up only for them to go nowhere with this. Because personally, I think it would've made the show a bit more interesting. To have two of the main male characters date. That's all I asked for, and we got nothing out of it.
You could say I'm seething over a cartoon, but I don't care!!! Cartoon or not, the ship is really important to me and most Jfabe shippers, so seeing their relationship go nowhere and the two randomly getting into M/F relationships sort of hurts. And I'm saying that as someone who isn't even a veteran Jfabe shipper, I shipped them days after season 2 ended. Both the original JFK and Abraham Lincoln (theoretically) were bisexual, so it just makes me even more puzzled.
I'm not exactly making this essay to cancel Clone High just for a silly ship, this is really just a healthy way to take out my sadness and disappointment. A vent essay, if you will. And it really is just what happened, so many interactions that could be taken as romantic, only for them not to get with each other.
Honestly, if the show writers didn't intend to queerbait us, I can only ask…“How?”
Anyway that's the end of my short essay about me screaming and crying about a ship between two white boys, subscribe and hit that notification button for more screaming and crying about a ship between two white boys. fruit signing out
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spiderlandry · 9 months
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random (mostly non-gf) ethan landry headcanons 💭
watches your favourite shows with you, even if some of it isn’t his thing
if you love yellowjackets he definitely gets invested with you. (playfully argues with you about which ships are better. he cried over laura lee’s death btw)
you watch his favourite shows in turn (he likes procedurals a lot. the type to like corny 2000s cable shows like psych but you still watch with him)
glued to his phone when you began talking to each other. when you weren’t there he was either texting you or calling you. he was scared you’d think it was annoying so after he feels like he’s too overbearing, he held back and sent less messages to “play it cool” but you send him a text saying i miss you :( so now he’s sending double the texts
study dates being how you spend 80% of your time with him. you’ll just be sitting near each other, going over notes or working on an assignment
during these study dates it’s mostly just silence, but occasionally either of you would break the quiet by asking the other one what they think of a certain line in an essay, etc.
if you like to cook, he would definitely try to learn from you. he’s very attentive but can get super distracted by your hands you are very good with them
(gf!ethan being fascinated by the way you handle knives for a different reason)
prefers to eat with you at yours or his apartment because he’s way more comfortable when you’re both alone (even if sometimes chad would interrupt)
surprisingly good at baking—he’s a natural and you’re even surprised when he tells you he’s never done it before. he has good baking instincts
you can’t help but kiss him when you come home early and he’s making you cupcakes for your birthday. he’s kinda sad tho bc he wanted it to be a surprise :( he made the buttercream and everything
after you become more comfortable w each other and get past that awkward stage, he cannot keep his hands off you. literally loves laying on you and putting his head in the crook of your neck
FOREHEAD KISSES
keeps a secret list of things you like even before you start dating. also some important information about you like if you have any allergies, dislikes, likes
he’s scared you might think it’s creepy but after you start dating you catch him typing on his phone while you’re talking about a pet peeve and you think he’s not paying attention so you sneak a glance at his phone and this man is literally typing it into his list
you grin so wide it’s kind of concerning, he tries to hide it from you but you pepper his face in kisses and that’s the first time you say i love you
he wanted to say i love you first but is kinda glad you beat him to it because he probably would’ve taken way longer
watches gordon ramsay shows with you (specifically kitchen nightmares and hotel hell)
right before senior year of college, your lease is about to end and at this point chad is about ready to move in with tara so ethan would have to look for a new place soon
you notice that things line up, and you’re both laying in bed talking about the future and it just clicks. you look at each other in unison with the same question on both your tongues.
“are you thinking what i’m thinking?” you ask.
he nods. after a momentary pause, he clarifies, “wait, you’re thinking we should move in together, right?”
you laugh. “yes, ethan. that’s what i’m thinking.”
“okay, good.”
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