#whatever its not a big deal its just a little youtube video

[sonknuxadow]

also something feels a bit off about sonic and shadow's dynamic in the new tailstube but i dont really know how to explain it

#i think its the emphasis on the fact that they supposedly fight a lot and dont get along #like yeah theyve never been besties but to say that they cant get along at all and are always fighting. that doesnt feel quite right #these guys havent played shadow the hedgehog (2005) ..... smh #whatever its not a big deal its just a little youtube video #and it could have been worse. when tails told them they had to compliment eachother they were able to do that at least #showing that theres still some degree of mutual respect even if theyre just refusing to admit it 99 perecnt of the time now #tailstube #tailstube spoilers

[humorisstoredinthetits]

The Heathers+Veronica Trip to Disney World

I guess I should probably introduce myself, hello people I'm Heather and I talk about Heathers and thats about it

I made some earlier headcannons about this but I'm gonna be expanding upon them

Now onto the gays TM

PS I'm gonna explain all the Disney stuff for the people who haven't been

Mac had always wanted to go to Disney World since she was little kid

Her parents wouldn't take her because 1 they didn't want to deal with each other for that long and 2 they didn't want to spend all that time and money to go only for Mac to have a meltdown and not want to do anything

But now Mac is an adult and can do what she wants and she wants to go to Greedy Rat Park (also Disney implemented DAS which is for people who for whatever reason cannot wait in line for extended periods of time, it lets people come back to rides at certain times and skip the line)

Veronica was all in for it, she thinks it would be fun and a good time, and despite the fact they have all this money they don't really go on vacation that often

Duke was pretty iffy on the whole thing, it sounded like fun on paper but they would be in the heat and have to wait in lines and people, but she also knows it would make Mac so happy to go so eventually she gets on board

Chandler is the big holdout

She knows that to get to Disney World they would have to go on a plane and she is super afraid of planes, plus she's also not a huge fan of amusement park rides

It gets to the point that Veronica and Duke planned a surprise trip for as a gift for Mac's bday and they just told Chandler they're going, suck it up buttercup

Chandler throws a hissy fit but they remind her that it would make Mac so happy to go

Mac is like Chandler's kryptonite so when they brought that up Chandler decided to just deal with it

They also decide to take a trip to the beach for her at a later time to make up for this

So her bday comes around and it comes down to the final present

Mac opens it and there's 4 Magicbands (Its a bracelet that acts as a park ticket, payment method, room key and more) in their signature colors and a small note saying 'We're going to Disney World!'

She starts happy crying and pulls them into a big hug

She hugs them so tight that it starts to hurt

They plan to go in October bc it won't be super hot but also not super cold, and most of the kids will be in school so there won't be as many people, both of which are chosen to make the trip as least stressful for Mac as possible

Over the next few months Mac spends all day watching Disney World videos on youtube to know what to expect

She orders everyone matching shirts for every day so they can have cute group photos

She packs her suitcase months in advance and it just sits in the corner of her room

In the meantime Chandler is regretting her decisions

She's afraid of planes and Veronica spends a-lot of time reminding her that planes are safer than cars but she's still afraid

She also shows Chandler videos of the rides to show her exactly what they are gonna be when they get there

Fast forward to the night before, Mac is so excited she is bouncing off the walls while Chandler is internally freaking out because she doesn't want to go on the plane

Veronica seriously considers putting some NyQuil in her coffee so she sleeps the whole flight

They drive to the airport and go through TSA and Chandler is still freaking out but she doesn't wanna ruin it for Mac

Mac finally notices Chandler looking upset and they talk

Chandler confesses that she is afraid of planes but she wants to go on this trip bc Mac has been looking forward to it for months

Mac comforts her and when they get on the plane they get out the split headphones and watch Disney movies the whole ride there

Of course they watch Frozen bc it was their favorite movie during their childhoods

In a weird role reversal its Chandler being the one holding on to Mac's arm during takeoff and turbulence

Veronica and Duke sleep the whole way there bc between dealing with the ball of sunshine who barely slept last night and kept tossing and turning and giggling and the nervous wreck who did the same neither of them got much sleep either

They get to Florida and get their luggage and get on the bus to Disney World

The plan is to spend 5 days not including the day of arrival and departure, one for each park and a free day

They're staying at the Grand Floridian (Biggest, most expensive and fancy hotel) bc they have the money so why not

They arrive at their room and get settled

There's 2 queen sized beds so they have to decide who gets to sleep with who

Duke and Veronica quickly take one of the beds for them bc they would like to sleep and not deal with the other two not being able to sleep

They go have dinner at 1900 Park Fare (Restaurant, weird name ik) where they get to meet Aladdin, Cinderella, Tiana and Mirabel

One of the things they decided while planning was to get as much character dining bc they thought it would be something Mac would enjoy, and they were right

Mac makes a plan there to try and meet as many characters as possible and take pictures with all of them

After dinner they go take a dip in the pool before going rest for the night

Day #1: Magic Kingdom

They decide to go to Magic Kingdom 1st because both it and the Grand Floridian are on the monorail so it would be the easiest to get back to the room if Mac starts to not be able to handle it

They get up super super early bc Mac physically cannot contain her excitement

They have breakfast reservations at the Crystal Palace where they can meet the Winnie the Pooh gang which makes Mac excited (Pooh is her favorite bc he's yellow)

From there they go to Tommorowland

I'm not gonna go over every ride bc if I did that we would be here all day and I would have to make 10 posts to contain it all so I'm just gonna do hilights

Chandler usually stays outside the rides bc she's scared but there's a few that she will go on, usually those that are slow

She does go on Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin (shooting ride) and obviously she goes with Duke bc she must beat her

They both fight over who gets to control the spinny stick in the middle

They have special spots that give more points which Duke looked up in advance so when they get to those sections her points skyrocket

Chandler is mad butthurt whenever they exit the ride and Duke is gloating

Veronica actually got more than her but she lets Duke have her victory (She also looked up the special spots in advance)

Mac tries to do literally everything which takes a minute

They go on the Carousel of Progress (show) which occasionally spins to the next scene but Chandler didn't realize this was gonna happen so when it does she screams

After they go on the Tommorowland Speedway (You drive a little car) which is hard to control and Chandler's life flashes before her eyes while Mac goes as fast as she can

They move into Fantasyland where they see Gaston

Gaston goes to Chandler and starts flirting

Mac intersects and asks for a pic and when Gaston poses with his flexed muscles she pulls down her sleeves revealing her toned cheerleader muscles and Gaston's mouth drops

Veronica and Duke are off to the side dying of laughter

When they get to the Haunted Mansion Chandler gets so scared that she has to go through the 'chicken door'

Veronica has never looked more embarrassed in her life when her 20-something-year-old gf has to leave a theme park ride bc she's scared when they went over it before they left

They have lunch at Cinderella's Royal Table (in the Castle) where Mac gets pics with Cinderella (duh), Aurora, Ariel, Snow White and Jasmine

When they go on Jungle Cruise (explanatory) Duke laughs so hard at all the stupid Dad jokes

They finish up the rest of the park and still have some time to spare so they go shopping

Chandler finds a couple of shirts and some cute Disney jewelry but not much else

Same with Veronica, but she buys a couple of pins and other random collectibles

Duke buys some pins of her favorite characters for her office at work plus a few other things

Mac buys so much stuff that she can barely carry it all, shirts, collectibles, pins, stuff for their home and so many stuffed toys

Thankfully they can get it all shipped back to their resort to pick it up when they get back so they don't have to carry it for the rest of the day

They have dinner at Be Our Guest (Beauty and the Beast restaurant) where they meet Belle and Beast

They try the grey stuff (its delicious)

Afterwards they go back and ride some stuff again

Chandler looked up where all the special spots were while everyone was on other rides so she goes for a rematch and she beats Duke and is celebrating but then Veronica shows that she got 100,000 points over her

Duke and Chandler mope for the next 15 minutes that they got beat by Veronica

They go find some of the characters that Mac missed on the first go round like Buzz Lightyear or Jack Sparrow who only come out randomly

They then go get a spot for fireworks which they watch

Mac happy cries again

They then go back to the resort and pick up their purchases

They have to make 2 trips because Mac bought so much crap

They all pass out because as much fun they had, they are exhausted

Chandler's Favorite Ride: Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin

Duke's Favorite Ride: Jungle Cruise

Mac's Favorite Ride: Under the Sea; Journey of the Little Mermaid

Veronica's Favorite Ride: Haunted Mansion

Day #2: EPCOT

They get to EPCOT early

Mac wants to stay at each park from open to close and bc this is her trip everyone agrees

Veronica enjoys the more educational rides like Spaceship Earth (the globe) and Living with the Land (shows off EPCOT's farming) but Chandler and Duke are bored out of their minds

They go to Cosmic Rewind (Guardians of the Galaxy rollercoaster) which obviously Chandler sits out of but while she waits she goes into the gift shop

In there they sell Infinity Gauntlets and she decides why the hell not

She gets one of the Iron Man ones bc its red and thats her color

When they get out of the ride they see Chandler with the gauntlet on her hand they start laughing bc the sight of Chandler with this oversized thing on her hand is too funny

Chandler goes up to them and does a terrible Thanos impression and goes "I am inevitable" and tries to snap but she didn't realize that it physically cannot stop

She gets mad that she spent all that money on it and it can't even snap which is like its whole deal

Of course the other 3 buy one too

They go on Test Track (car ride) where you can design your own car and they create the dumbest looking car possible

The wheels are bigger than the rest of the car, it has all these stupid add ons like spoilers and giant exhausts and stickers

They dub it the Heathermobile

They have lunch at Space 220 (it simulates being in outer space) which is cool but Mac is disappointed there are no characters for her to see

They go around the countries on the World Showcase which also bores Chandler and Duke bc its just learning

When they get to Japan Duke and Veronica buy so much anime crap

They all get kimonos in their own colors

Duke debates buying a samurai sword but realizes that she probably wouldn't be able to put that on the plane

They buy a bunch of Japanese snacks including some pocky

Mac and Veronica play the pocky game, Mac loses bc she's giggling the whole time

At each Pavilion Duke makes a terrible impersonation of that country's accent and Veronica just facepalms every time

They go to the Norway Pavilion and Mac and Chandler are excited bc they have all the Frozen shit

They're slightly disappointed bc on the Frozen ride the faces of the animatronics are projected and they look kinda creepy

But after they get to go meet Anna and Elsa and this was like a dream come true moment for kid Mac and Chandler and they take a really nice picture

When they get home they frame it and put it on the wall

They have dinner at Akershus (princess restaurant in Norway Pavilion) where Mac meets most of the princesses she had already seen plus Aurora

Chandler takes a picture with her bc that's her favorite Princess and Disney movie

They get done with everyone pretty quick bc EPCOT is alot smaller than Magic Kingdom so they decide to go drinking around the world

Drinking Around the World refers to going to each country and doing their favorite activity, drinking alcohol

Veronica stays sober bc one of them has to make sure they get back to the room

By the time they get halfway around the Heathers are all wasted and Veronica basically has to drag them back to the room

Chandler's Favorite Ride: The Seas with Nemo and Friends

Duke's Favorite Ride: Cosmic Rewind

Mac's Favorite Ride: Frozen Ever After

Veronica's Favorite Ride: Living with the Land

Day #3: Hollywood Studios

The Heathers wake up hungover as hell

Veronica prepared for this and got some water and other makeshift hangover cures she could make with what they had in the resort gift shop

By the time its time to leave they feel mostly better

They get to the park and go straight for Toy Story Land

They go on Toy Story Mania (similar to Buzz lightyear) and Duke and Chandler had been researching to see what they can do to cheat and win

Upon finding nothing they both try new tactics

During the third section Chandler realizes she's down so she keeps ramming into Duke to try and throw her off balance

Seeing that Chandler is playing dirty, during the next round Duke kisses Chandler which stuns her for a few seconds which allows her to regain the lead

Duke gets the win but then Mac gets more points than her to the shock of everyone

She takes a victory picture and orders a shirt off of Etsy saying "Toy Story Mania champion"

They head to Galaxy's Edge (Star Wars Land)

They got reservations for the lightsaber building and droid making

They each build a lightsaber, Mac is upset bc she can't get a yellow crystal but she finds out she can buy one so it all works out

Once they realize that if they fought with those they would break they go to another gift shop and buy the cheap toy ones

They also all make droids in their signature colors

They go on Smuggler's Run (Millenium Falcon Ride)

Mac and Duke take the pilot role and Veronica and Chandler are the gunners

The two other people unfortunate enough to be with them have to deal with them all yelling at each other bc the gunners arent shooting fast enough and Duke keeps ramming the Falcon into things

They get a low score and they're all kinda upset with each other but not really, they get over it in like five minutes

They go on Star Tours (Star Wars simulator ride) and Veronica is the rebel spy

After they get off the Heathers keep calling her a traitor to the Empire and shit like that

Mac fucking loves the Muppets and nearly happy cries during MuppetVision3D (muppet show)

They have lunch at Sci Fi (you eat in cars and watch old 50's scary movies

Chandler and Duke sit in the back and are scared of the cheesey old movies while Veronica and Mac just laugh at how obiviously fake they all are

They go watch all the shows like the Indiana Jones and Beauty and the Beast ones

Mac goes meet Olaf which is also a childhood dream of hers

They all go to the Frozen Sing a Long and Mac sings along

The rest of them think its cute

Duke is the only one who isn't scared of the Tower of Terror and she goes on alone

There's a great picture of her screaming her lungs out on the ride that they wanted to hang on the wall but Duke wouldn't let them

They have dinner at Hollywood and Vine (just a regular restaurant tbh) where Mac meets Minnie, Goofy, Pluto and Donald

They go see Fantasmic! (Nighttime Show) at the end of the night

When they leave they're just in awe, Mac is happy crying

Chandler's Favorite Ride: Toy Story Mania (even if she lost)

Duke's Favorite Ride: Tower of Terror

Mac's Favorite Ride: MuppetVision3D

Veronica's Favorite Ride: Rise of the Resistance

Day #4: Animal Kingdom

They get there early like every other day

They get in line for Flight of Passage (Avatar flying ride) and they are just in awe of how amazing of an experience it was

Even Chandler who doesn't normally like rides through it was an amazing ride

They buy little Banshees which sit on their shoulders and its really cute

They have breakfast at Tusker House where Mac gets to meet the whole Mickey Mouse gang

Next is Kilimanjaro Safari (self-explanatory)

Mac has an amazing time seeing all the different animals, especially the stuff they don't have back in their local zoo like hippos and crocodiles and she takes a bunch of pictures

Afterwards they has reservations to go on a closer tour of the ride where they can get a whole lot closer to the animals and they even get to feed some of them which makes Mac so fucking happy

They go to the Tough to be a Bug show and right as the show ends the seat moves like bugs are crawling under it and it scares the crap out of all of them

There's several shows involving birds where they can see him up close and afterwards Mac talks to the handlers about the animals

They go on Kali River Rapids (raft ride) and they all get soaked except for Chandler who wisely sat that one out

They all come back with wet clothes and Chandler just has this 'i told you so' attitude

Mac is pretty disappointed with the Dinosaur area and how low quality the whole thing seems

Animal Kingdom is pretty small and there isn't a whole lot to do so they call it an early night

Chandler's Favorite Ride: Flight of Passage

Duke's Favorite Ride: Expedition Everest

Mac's Favorite Ride: Kilimanjaro Safari

Veronica's Favorite Ride: Na'vi River Journey

Day #5: Free Day

They decide to sleep in and just cuddle when they wake up

Even Mac, who wants to go out and just do things is tired and in desperate need of physical affection from her gfs

They decide to spend the morning at Disney Springs, the shopping center for Disney World

There's plenty of non-Disney shopping to do there like Uniqlo, the Coke Store, M&Ms and their favorite, the LEGO store

They all get a plush M&M with their signature color and they snack on a giant bag of them that they bought

They buy just so much Disney crap bc its their last day

Clothes, Collectibles, Duke buys like 20 different pins, Home decorations

Mac gets a bunch of plushes

When they go checkout at the World of Disney (main store at Disney Springs) the cashier just sees 4 women all carrying as much stuff as they physically can and has to call someone to help them bring it all to the area to ship it to the resort

Then they go to the LEGO store and buy the 400 dollar Disney Castle plus other Disney sets

They go around and eat a bunch of different treats and snacks

They go back to the room to rest for a little while before deciding to go to putt-putt golf

Obviously Duke and Chandler make it a competition which Mac wins

Mac is really good at putt-putt

Then they go back to the room, take a dip a the pool and get some drinks

In the following morning they have to arrange the shipment of all of their purchases to their home which is made more difficult bc Disney needs their receipts to be able to ship so they are just scrambling to find all the necessary ones before the bus to bring them back to the airport gets there

They do manage to figure it all out and they get on the bus and eventually the plane back to Ohio

Despite everything they all had a good time and they're thinking about making it a yearly trip, much to Mac's delight

#heather chandler #heather duke #heather mcnamara #heathers #heathers the musical #veronica sawyer #heathers headcannons #poly!heathers+veronica #poly!heathersxveronica

[metalyre]

What are your thoughts on Infidget (the ship of Infinite and Gadget the Wolf)?

i think its fine? i dont inherently dislike it or anything, and i dont mind seeing it from time to time. the only thing that i dont like is like, a lot of the shipping community's interpretations of it. and by that i mean the people that twinkify and feminize gadget into being a little wooby baby that cant do anything without his big strong man and infinite is just the stereotypical scary-on-the-outside soft-on-the-inside masc/male/im a man/im he him boyfriend. either that or gadget is fine and its just infinite who is extremely out of character. i had a lot of "he would not fucking say that" moments with infinite when infidget was at its most popular bc these kinds of depictions were everywhere and it was really annoying

the only version of infidget ive ever shipped was a lovers to friends to enemies to... somethings type deal where they dont go back to how they used to be by the end but its not vitriolic, they just outgrew each other in their own ways during the events of forces. that or their relationship cant get mended at all and theres no closure bc infinite dies or whatever like he did in canon. and i know this is the best version of infidget bc i made it up, thanks

i actually shipped it before forces even came out bc i thought that that was sort of the route that sonic team was going to take with tying the avatar into the story. it made sense to me for the avatar (or in this case gadget) to have some sort of previous history or connection with infinite bc in my onion, that makes their dynamic a little spicier and more compelling. in my version, gadget and infinite (then zero) used to be very close until zero started getting more involved with a local gang, the jackal squad, which began to drive a wedge between them until they got more and more distant from each other. and then some more time passes and gadget hasnt heard from zero for a long time and then the events of forces start. i think part of the idea was from this dialogue that we got to hear when footage of infinites second battle came out before the game itself:

(image text reads as infinite saying "and those eyes.. i feel like we've met before.")

-which implied that the avatar and infinite had history. which was technically true, but it was within the timeline of the game bc it turned out he was referring to like. the flashback cutscene of the avatar being too scared to fight back the first time they ran into infinite before joining the resistance, so it wasnt what i was hoping for

another reason iirc was uhhhh whatshisface? sega scourge on youtube? they made a theory video about infinite getting his mind wiped by the ruby or something and that added fuel to the fire. its a really cool concept and while i dont think that the avatar wanting to avenge those they lost is necessarily bad, i feel like its just kind of meh for the kind of story forces was trying to tell, what with the friendship-is-cool themes and whatnot. so i thought the avatar/gadgets arc was going to be we get to find out how they and infinite (or at least just the former lol) know each other, and how infinite became infinite in the first place, and gadget wanted to both help put a stop to everything but also get his friend back through, you guessed it, the power of friendship. hooray! i read a really good fic that was like that called til we touch the sun on a03 (that fic still makes me go insane thinking about it) that went with a sidestory for gadget that was quite similar to what i just described

plus the idea of infinite and gadget having shared a past but only one of them remembers it and now has to deal with a monster that looks like who they used to be but is no longer the same in every other regard due to them going dark side (willingly or unwillingly) is super angsty. and i like my ships raw and some degree of brutal for the soul. it keeps me young

but yeah im overall neutral. tl;dr: infidget is a fine ship, i just wish it had more canon-supported flavour and i wish the majority of shippers would stop writing infinite so poorly to make him fit properly into their milquetoast domestic fluff romances, but whatever. we all get enjoyment out of different things, even if theyre wrong :3 (for safety reasons i have to disclose that the previous statement was a joke)

#he said ask #thats my new ask tag. nickisnotgreeners understand the reference #fortywholecakes #engie.txt #infidget #sonic forces #gadget the wolf #infinite the jackal #sth #and i just have to reiterate that i dont think that anyone who does twinkify gadget or any other chars for ships are bad people #i just think its really boring and heteronormative to make a male char excessively feminine just for the sake of a ship #like do we have to talk about how assigning hetero-relationship roles onto queer couples is weird and stupid #or can we not bc i thought that got left in 2015 #i should also add that i have not been in the infidget tag in years so idk what people are up to nowadays #hopefully more progressive than 2018 lol

[marilysugarcoated]

I have no words to describe how I feel right now

All i can really make out of this huge messy ball of unidentifiable emotion, is my unwavering gratitude.

Thank you. so much.

objectively, it sounds dumb and stupid that I’m getting so worked up over the ending of a “silly minecraft series”, but it is so much more than that. To me, this represents something so much bigger, -a hard truth i refused to confront.

Growth is inevitable, and childhood does not last forever. I knew that- I’ve always known that. and still, a part of me had always rejected the idea of change. I’d always described myself as an optimist who was open to change; someone who embraced and relished in it. I held a firm philosophy in not mulling over outcomes you couldn’t control, and i did whatever I could to keep myself in that ‘healthy’ positive mindset. I knew that if I’d done anything differently, the girl from my childhood would wander farther from my reach.

Eventually, the favourite foods id once adored as a kid began to lose its flavour, (I’d briefly wondered if they’d changed the recipe) I began to notice the slight changes in my behaviour and body language; more tentative- almost insecure. The results from personality quizzes did not match with those I’d taken in previous years, I never really realized exactly how withdrawn I’d become.

Reality was rearing it’s ugly head, and we couldn’t have that, could we? -so, I desperately clung to anything and everything that was reminiscent of the little girl I’d grown to know so well. Subconsciously, i started regressing- I found myself helplessly depending on others, unable to go out anywhere without a stuffed animal, frequently putting my hair in pigtails, and engaging in more child-like activities, (at least, more than usual.)

These past few years, I’d felt as though I had lost my sense of self. I would force myself to feel and act accordingly to this perceived version of me. ‘Turns out that this ‘version of myself’ was just the girl I was before. Before the pandemic, before high-school, before I’d learned that the world was not all cotton candy and sugar cookies.- before; where my worries consisted only of stardew and genshin- before; where being happy was my default.

Watching the final episode snapped me out of my delusional reverie, and it felt as though Stampy had allowed me a sense of closure. I was beguiled when his video popped up in my youtube recommendations, not to mention the fact that it was his FINAL episode.

In truth, I didn’t expect it to hit me as much as it did. I mean, I hadn’t exactly planned on spending my saturday night sobbing to a minecraft let’s play vid lmao. Sure, in retrospect this really isn’t as big of a deal as I’m making it seem. And to that I say; yea. lol im even cringing myself out a bit, but hey, i’ve always been one for theatrics. ;)

But really; as I scrolled through the comments (still crying btw), I’d finally allowed myself to mourn, and confront the fact that I have grown up. I could no longer consider myself a little kid,, and that’s okay. it will be okay.

This is the end of an era. further more, it is the start of something new. The real world awaits, and i have Stampy (and others) to thank for the person I am today:)

It has been such a privilege to be part of this community of others raised alongside me, and to have had the pleasure of little-me experiencing the elation she’d felt when Stampy posted a new video.

Sincerely, thank you. Thank you soso much Stampy, for bringing so much joy and laughter to us many young kids— turned young adults

It’s been an unforgettable ride:)

Now, all we can do is move forward.- Take life as it is, and carefully construct our own worlds so that maybe, (just maybe,) they can become as lovely as yours has. ❤️‍🩹🐈

#stampylonghead #stampy's lovely world #stampy cat #stampy #nostalgia #childhood #vent #vent post #mental health #dealing with change #silly little minecraft series coming to an end makes a 16 year old cob uncontrollably at 2am #mcyt #minecraft #adjustment disorder #marilysugarcoated #stampylongnose

[lolexjpg]

director's cut for a collection of statistical improbabilities please? <3

i am so so sorry for taking this long to answer!! as a treat i will share an actual deleted scene!

i say in the author's note that this fic was inspired by the kdrama the lover, but outside of concept it is nothing like the kdrama. the concept of ~foreigner becomes short term roommate, they fall in love but wait! time is running out~ is pretty much all i took, and everything else is different.

But I did write a scene with lolex that I remembered playing out in the drama, and then cut it specifically for that--it didnt add much to the story of my fic, and I liked there being as little as possible from the inspo making it into the fic.

HOWEVER this kdrama came out in 2015, and i watched it in 2015 (it is actually lost media now, only supercuts of the mlm plotline have survived on youtube.) I have not watched it since. I went to look through the video to find the scene I ripped off and it wasnt there!! My brain just made it up and remembered it so I thought I was ripping this kdrama off when it rly was my own lil scene. (even though the cut scene still reads as heavily inspired by the kdrama). I still don't feel bad for cutting it bc i don't think it fits well but its still cute!!

below the cut uwu

Logan nicks himself when shaving. It's dumb, and stupid, and not a big deal, but that doesn't stop Alex from digging through boxes of toiletries to find a bandaid. They're standing in the cramped bathroom, and Alex is so close Logan can feel his breath on his face as Alex applies the bandaid, eyes furrowed in concentration. Logan watches, for a second, as Alex's eyes flicker to his lips, then back down, knowing he's been caught. Alex clears his throat and leaves, and Logan has to remember how to think. Logan lies awake in bed, wishing he'd done something, anything. Tries to convince himself this will all hurt less if they just repress whatever's between them until he leaves.

#ask #ask game #sorry for the wait hope an actual snippet makes up for this #i rly did not realize until making up this post that the scene i wrote was NOT in the kdrama in the slightest. shook #she writes

[soudakuwunmoment]

expressing my take on dream is how i finally get cancelled but tbh im ready.

so i just watched the moistcritical video on whatever bullshit happened on twitter regarding him.

i wanna establish that im not exactly a dream fan. i dont watch videos of his or really anyone from that part of youtube. i dont think hes that great of a person necessarily.

also, i want to establish that i am an idiot 18yo boy. ight? im not some kind of expert on this shit. its literally just my take. its an opinion. and im putting it on the internet. as people tend to do.

okay. recap. dream allegedly sent snapchat videos of him moaning to a minor. there is zero proof that the video was from him, and zero proof that it was sent to a minor. then the fight between dream and gumballva. oh my god. guys. god i cant even with this bit. alright alright ill get to it

im gonna completely fuckin disregard the snapchat thing. theres absolutely no proof. innocent until proven guilty, as it goes.

about the fight between dream and gbva. holy shit stop taking sides. both of these men are immature man babies whos fame got to their head. "it was a physical fight!!!!!!" believe it or not, drunk slapfights happen sometimes. just because the fight was between two famous guys doesnt make it any more important or significant.

gbva was referring to himself as Michelangelo. he was saying how dream is "miniscule compared to him" like the worlds most pathetic dick measuring competition. he mentioned his "intellectual stature" guys. my friend told me about how the gumball va TOTALLY BURNED DREAM and DESTROYED HIM so i had high expectations. but no. the guys just stroking his own ego and shittalking some other guy, and people are hype about it because the other guy is dream and OOOOOOO DREAM BAD GUYS.... and because gumball is pretty well loved as a show. he called dream a slur. like on one hand, it is INSANE to me that a famous guy called someone a slur and twitter cheered. on the other hand its actually not that big a deal. yes, slurs and homophobia are a big deal. but let me reiterate that this is literally just two drunk dudes trying to roast each other and failing miserably. a slur isnt going to end the world. like it isnt cool that he said it, he shouldnt have said it, but honestly what the fuck ever. people are being killed in mass rn and this is what we're arguing about and im part of the problem so WAHOO.

and then theres the fact that dream recorded it. guys its not that fucking weird. im sorry to burst your bubble but recording arguments or recording when someone is aggressive towards you isnt abnormal. was it a little bit dramatic and incredibly childish to post it on twitter? yeah!!! duh!!! this is dream we're talking about. dramatic. childish. but the thing is, and hear me out, hes allowed to do that. insane as it may be, humans are allowed to be dramatic and childish. humans are allowed to brag about their "intellectual stature" in a cab after a night out. humans are allowed to be flawed. no, i dont think he was recording it due to feeling unsafe. i do in fact believe he was recording it to start drama. i believe whole heartedly that dream recorded the argument hoping his teenaged fanbase would run to his rescue. and you know what? who gives a shit!! are you actually surprised? are you REALLY? because dream very obviously has something wrong in his head. im not saying that the shit he does is okay because of it. but i want everyone reading this right now to imagine how you would realistically cope if you suddenly became famous during the fucking plague at the ripe ass age of 21 in the span of a month and then spent the next 3 years being either worshipped by children in mass or brutally harassed by literally the entire world. because believe it or not, 21 year olds are immature and are not normally equipped to deal with a situation like that. its entirely possible that dream already had issues, and its also entirely possible that he FORMED issues in the past 3 years due to the intense stress of his situation. dream is fucked up. dream has issues.

but listen to me. as far as we know, dream is not a pedophile or a murderer or a racist or a homophobe or any of that shit. sure, hes awful at babysitting each and every one of his bajillion preteen fans, but thats kinda not his fucking responsibility??? if a kid is going around doing awful shit in the name of some guy, blame the kids parents. its their job to teach their kid how to act online and around other people. and sure, dream is very very likely a narcissist and seems to be incapable of criticism and needs attention constantly or else he keels over like a scared gerbil and dies. hes kind of a shitty fuckin guy!! BUT GUESS. WHAT. so is like 70% of the population!!!! most of us are fucking awful!!

i know i cant change shit, i know id get bodied by even a single dream anti. i just wish people would stop giving him attention, leave him the fuck alone, and let him get therapy or spend a year in the woods or smoke some fucking weed idk.

seeing the reaction people have to literally just some schmuck makes me TERRIFIED of putting myself out there. can we all just accept that everyone is flawed and sometimes good people have shitty takes or do shitty things. if you had the same exposure to the world that dream did, how quickly would YOU get cancelled? im just. im fucking begging you to look at this guy (and other equally underwhelming schmucks) with a critical mind and context to why you may see them the way you do.

im not tagging this shit i dont hate myself that much. i dont mind if no one reads this i just wanna rant. just leave the guy be.

[yssjj]

erasing meaning from gangnam style

Since we’re an Asian-interest magazine, I’m going to assume that you know what K-pop is, if you aren’t vaguely familiar with it. Living through the 2000s has been a very exciting time for Korean identities in the mainstream. One could sense the time dependence of my identity in the US; in elementary school, I mostly interfaced with the American joke wondering if I had come from the North or South, which failed to consider that all of my grandparents had come from the North, and would never see their family or friends again due to US intervention. But by high school, my fortunes had turned around! At this point, we were being accosted in Marshalls by well-meaning parents who wanted to ask us about BTS because their daughter looooved K-pop, which raised another question: how did they know we were Korean in a primarily Chinese community? 

But regardless of my personal bitterness, it’s important (to me) to consider how this happened. And it was a gradual change, to some extent, but really a large paradigm shift happened to change the visibility of the Korean identity in the US, around when I was in 6th grade. K-pop at this point had been what my other Korean friend and I watched on old YouTube during playdates for her to fangirl over, and for me to vaguely stare off into. It’s not like K-pop hadn’t had any international success, but it felt limited to the Korean-American diaspora and niche internet communities. “Gee” by Girls Generation is a song I would like to argue really first crossed the border into mainstream success, but I think that’s wishful thinking for an iconic song I happen to like (seriously, go watch it). 

I don’t think it would be a controversial statement to say that “Gangnam Style'' was a really big deal. Statistically speaking, it topped iTunes charts in 31 different countries, it was the first video with a billion views, and it’s still the 11th most watched video on YouTube. But I’m sure just mentioning it brought you back to whatever you were doing while I was arguing about how stupid Harry Styles and Call of Duty were (I wasn’t a particularly critical-thinking middle schooler). Gangnam style was all over the radio, blessing my 7 a.m. rides to school in my mom’s Corolla, and I’d climb back onto my main after-school activity of the desktop computer to see the thumbnail on YouTube before clicking away and watching two very large buff men put together a mega burger made out of bacon instead.

Not that I had a global perspective of things at the time, but what was interesting about the virality of “Gangnam Style” is that it seemed to originate from completely different reasons across the US and its original target audience in Korea. I sensed this as one does through the American cultural hegemony, another middle schooler friend, who confided to me that it was great that Korea would be seen in such a positive light thanks to “Gangnam Style”. I wasn’t sure. I felt a little uneasy knowing that my cultural diplomat was PSY freaking out over a lady’s ass. 

“It’s awesome,” the guy who oversaw our after-school pick-up told me. 

“Did you know,” I said, pausing my round of Touhou 7 that I would bring in on a USB, “that it’s actually about capitalist critique?” I had learned this after Googling the lyrics because it felt a little rude to not know what a song in my own language meant. I wasn’t 100% sure what that meant, either, but they were words I knew went together according to Tumblr. 

The entire video, really, made me a little nervous. Who was I in the eyes of others at school? PSY? Who even was he?

I didn’t really want to be associated with this goofy Korean man who wasn’t very handsome. I wanted to be taken seriously.

We can chalk this up to the nervous identity crisis and desire for acceptance of any middle schooler, but this difference in understanding “Gangnam Style” wasn’t just personal, but a symptom of cultural differences. Not just cultural differences, but a refusal to translate or understand the spectacle of Korean messaging in the US. We can look at this with post-feminist theory as well as the pervasive use of ironic justification in the 2000s-2010s.

Background history

In Korea, PSY was already known for being a runaway success, starting as an underground artist who began to produce hit after hit, starting in 2001 with the success of his first full-length album because of his non-traditional styling (compared to the extremely polished and conventionally attractive looks of K-pop groups), use of comedic lyrics, as well as vulgar lyrics criticizing Korean society. So “Gangnam Style” wasn’t a far departure from that. 

The lyrics of “Gangnam Style” feature a guy who describes himself as “macho” and wants a girl who “looks quiet but parties hard when she goes to party,” or is “sexier covered up than a girl who is scantily dressed.” This narrator’s thoughts lean into the post-feminist sexism of the idea of a “girl who isn’t like other girls,” but PSY openly mocks the narrator’s preferences through the narrator’s parallel ideas on his own looks and perceived attractive features. This narrator brags that he also “can get crazy passionate” and “has bulging brains instead of bulging muscles.” While not necessarily as applicable in the Korean feminist scene during this time period, in the US this can be understood as the attempt to validate “alternative masculinities” that are not based on the traditions of physical power, but instead “intelligence” that became popular in the 2000s and 2010s. 

The hook, “Oppa Gangnam style,” can be understood as the narrator calling himself a cool guy from the Gangnam district, which can be thought of as posturing that you’re from a rich, high-culture district. The classical comparison is to Beverly Hills, but you can also think of people who brag about going to Harvard, being snotty about New York City, or so on. It mocks the idea of constructed masculinity through materialistic attempts at class mobility with commercial goods (the Mercedes car) and images of lifestyle (lounging at a “beach,” going to high-end spas) by showing these as tasteless, corny, and crass. “Gangnam Style” critiques the materialistic culture of Korean youths, who aspire to come off as rich and upper class through elegance and “taste.” But PSY lampoons this through an overtly corny music video that claims that he is portraying these “elegant” people who ultimately are chasing after masculine ideals of being considered attractive and meeting women who are feminine ideals in aesthetics. These men treat women like objects because they believe that they can achieve their masculinity through materialism and class.

But how many Americans know that “Gangnam Style” is a satirical critique of Korean materialism?

At the risk of being unfair, my two examples certainly didn’t know. Most other K-pop music videos have English captions, including the videos that were released before “Gangnam Style” caused a huge growth in interest in the genre. But “Gangnam Style,” 10 years after it’s been released, still has no translations on the video itself. Which seems strange since so much of the music video is guided by the lyrics. If the lyrics are lost on the American audience, where does the international appeal come from?

International Appeal

The answer is that the themes behind the lyrics were never part of the appeal. Most of the appeal comes from the music video. T-Pain tweeted, “words cannot even describe how amazing this video is...”, which is directly linked to the skyrocketing popularity of the video as news sites began to cover it. So the virality of “Gangnam Style” in the US must be studied through the lens of pleasure removed almost completely from the lyrics. Taking the music video at face value, then, we can get a different reading using post-feminist themes of irony, the choice of objectification, masculinities, as well as the construction of the consumer through advertising and sexuality.

The positive response to “Gangnam Style” has generally been attributed to the absurdist nature of the scenes in the video, as well as the dance itself. The Washington Post claimed that “'Gangnam Style' has made an extraordinarily stupid-looking dance move suddenly cool,” ignoring the fact that the dance was chosen to look stupid in the first place.

The Sydney Morning Herald claimed that the video “makes no sense at all to most Western eyes" and it "makes you wonder if you have accidentally taken someone else's medication."

The deliberate removal of meaning from the video is reminiscent of Adorno’s concept of the culture industry. The video loses the power of “psychology” over the “structure” of the music video. The Western viewers thus avoid the confrontation of culture in the music video by brushing the visual themes aside as “meaningless.” So it becomes “uncritical fun” and viewers can thus transcend the need to even know the lyrics. There is a racial aspect to this as well—the Korean-focused message is brushed aside since it “makes no sense at all” to a Westerner. So the minority Korean message is subjugated and destroyed, made invisible by mocking the silly Asian man doing his silly dance. In this way it becomes pleasurable to an audience that may otherwise be alienated by its themes.

Another way “Gangnam Style'' is understood in the US is through sexuality, as advertisements and other video forms have already created this sexualized “set of images.” It is likened to LMFAO, probably in reference to “Sexy and I Know It” for their satire of the grandstanding of masculinity. But LMFAO creates satire through the focus on male genitalia and body humor. The comparison of “Sexy and I Know It” can be understood by “Gangnam Style'' being seen as a video about a satire on male sexuality instead of consumerism, with American viewers focusing on the nudity and Noh Hongchul’s pelvic-thrusting dance. The latter dance is actually a trademark of Noh Hongchul’s comedy acts, but the American audience doesn’t know this, and thus interprets it in the language of images they are familiar with. As Sut Jhally puts it in “Advertising, Gender and Sex: What’s Wrong with a Little Objectification?”, the viewers are informed through the “system of images'' that are present in American society, and also happen to be obsessed with “gender and sexuality.” The one English lyric in the song is “Hey, sexy lady”—which adds to this perception and leads to a later ironic reading of other scenes where women are sexualized.

So of course there is no closed captioning—PSY understands the appeal for American audiences includes taking the lyrics as nonsensical and meaningless.

Another distinctly American reading occurs for the objectification of women, notably the yoga lady image that became the icon of “Gangnam Style.” With the context of the lyrics, it’s clear that this is a direct critique of the sleazy nature that comes from commodifying women. The women present in the music video are also traditionally beautiful, with the woman who seems to be interested in PSY in the music video being an idol herself. Without the context of the lyrics that deconstruct the delusion of a romantic, classy lifestyle where women only have value from being traditionally beautiful, however, this scene is transformed into the post-feminist “irony” that Rosalind Gill talks about in her paper “Postfeminist Media Culture.” American viewers thus participate in the sexualization of these women by the constructed “silliness” of the music video. By making “Gangnam Style” absurdist and bereft of meaning, PSY’s yoga lady scene is seen as “funny” and “subversive” towards sexism, even though the original critique is on materialism and commodification.

The real absurdity is the American response to “Gangnam Style” as a force to “understand Korea” in the US by Obama, and even as a way to hail world peace by the UN.

Even Noam Chomsky was part of an MIT parody of “Gangnam Style,” partaking in “mindless fun.” I felt a little disturbed at the time that this might be the image of Korea constructed for the American mind as actual interest in the culture was swept away by the exaltation of the video as nonsensical and meaningless. As a 6th grader, this wasn’t how I framed it to myself, but the way the Western viewpoint became dominant over the original meanings of the video signaled to me that my Korean experience would become destroyed and overwritten by the white, American viewpoint. The post-feminist mindset also created a post-racial mindset where irony was used to mock other cultures, setting a white gaze in media much like the male gaze asserted by Laura Mulvey in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” That’s why so many TV shows were able to partake in blackface (like The Office and 30 Rock, just to name a few) and take pleasure in unashamed racial violence—to the white gaze, it is funny, because the original meaning of racial violence can be stripped away.

 

References

Gill, Rosalind. “Postfeminist Sexual Culture.” The Routledge Companion to Media &amp; Gender, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203066911.ch54.

Horkheimer, Max, et al. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford University Press, 2020.

Jhally, Sut. “Advertising, Gender and Sex: What's Wrong with a Little Objectification?” (1989).

Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. 1999.

#laura mulvey #male gaze #gangnam style #psy #korean identity #postfeminism #etc. who cares #writing

[kimberly-stocks]

Warning. A long rant about Rory Gilmore ahead.

I was doing a research for a story I'm writing (it's literati fanfiction), and after watching a few clips on YouTube from the show I kinda got sucked into this whole realm of Gilmore girls content. There's literally a ton of videos, and a lot of them are uploaded recently. Which is so fascinating, considering the show aired 2 decades ago. And while I was going through vids on analysis of the show and its characters, I kinda got stumbled upon a whole bunch of them called 'the downfall of Rory Gilmore' and the likes. I watched some of them... And it made me feel weird. I mean, there were several valid points they made about her character, but at the same time, I tried to reconcile them with my thoughts on her the first time I watched the show because they didn't necessarily coincide.

I first watched the original series a year ago, meaning I was 32, just like Lorelai was in the pilot. So, I wasn't a kid watching it when it aired. I was a grown adult with some life experiences under my belt. So I didn't just get automatically sucked into what the creators of the show wanted me to believe. And I remember I kinda liked Rory in the beginning. She was this studious introverted girl, kinda like myself at her age. She had a great relationship with her mom which I could relate to. It was a very cozy show, homey, and it was easy for me to remember what it was like to be 16 again. I had a harder time identifying with Lorelai, even though we were the same age, because her personality is way different than mine, and also she often times annoyed me a little. And I could understand the logic behind everything Rory was doing. I didn't necessarily agree with all of her choices, but I could understand them. Why she stopped spending as much time with Lane when she met Dean, why she didn't tell Lorelai about Jess, why she was mad when she saw him with Shane, etc. I could even understand why she slept with married Dean. Like, it was bad, i get it but I also understood why she did it. She wasn't perfect, and I could see her logic behind what she was doing.

But as the show progressed, I guess I started having problems with Rory's character and have a lot of questions for her, because the more I watched (from the late season 4, and then season 5, 6), the only thought I had about her was 'god, what a waste! What a waste of resources, potential and time'.

Personally, I don't think having negative thoughts about a character is necessarily 'hate'. I thought the writers did her dirty. And here's why.

When I was in college I had two girls in my class who were straight A's students and basically stars of their local schools in their respective small towns. They graduated with honors and whatnot. And one of them, Angy, was like a perfect little girl, her mom was a teacher, she was a straight A's student, she participated in every shindig her school threw, everyone loved her, her picture was even posted on a special school board of best students or whatever. And when she first came into a big city and a big college (our uni had probably more students than her whole town's population combined), she expected everyone to treat her like she was a star just like she used to be in her school, and she acted accordingly. But in a big city and a big school no one gave a damn, nobody knew who she was and they didn't care. That was a serious reality check for her. I remember one time my friend and I passed the exam and we got A's, while Angy went before us and got a B. And when she found out we got A's she got so mad! And she literally threw a temper tantrum like 'why did THEY get A's and I didn't???? I'm gonna go back to that professor and demand a retake' and she said 'they' in such a tone which implied 'such losers', because, my friend and I, we kinda struggled, especially me, so getting an A was a big deal, we were by no means excelling. To her credit, Angy later realized that she had to earn her status all over again, and she kept up good grades, and was even helpful to her fellow students, and later she even helped me when I really stuggled with my math assignments. So, in the end, she realized she had to work to get what she wanted, and it wouldn't just be given to her because she was The Angy. Season 5 Rory hadn't. She met Logan instead.

I don't blame any of her boyfriends in her short comings, it was more her upbringing I feel like. She was a product of her environment really, if you think about it. Her whole town treated her like she was a special snowflake, a gifted super child. Lorelai herself said 'if you see a girl with a halo above her head and a book, that's my daughter, Rory'. Her grandparents told her she was smart and talented and whatnot (which I guess was better than the Christopher's parents attitude), but in the end it didn't really help her in the long run. It's hard to accept you're not as special as everyone told you you were your whole life. And even though Lorelai encouraged Rory to pursue her dreams and such, it seemed like she didn't give her any room for error or exploring the world on her own. Rory was always kinda sheltered and lived in a bubble.

Which in turn makes me question where did that dream to become an international correspondent even came from? I was so surprised to hear that when she told Jess about it in Teach me tonight. She was so introverted, she didn't make any new friends at Chilton. If Paris didn't pursue her from day one, she might not even had any friends at Chilton at all, because she had Lane, Dean, her mom and books. Then at Yale having Paris as a roommate also didn't do her any good. It was a safely blanket. Instead of branching out and finding new people she just stayed with Paris instead. She said she wanted to travel and see the world and be a journalist. But you don't have to be an international correspondent to travel. And sure, she's good at writing, that's great. But why Christiane amanpour? Wars and trenches, Rory? Really? She couldn't even handle her first day at Yale on her own without her mommy. Which was kinda the point of chosing Yale in the first place, and a dead give away of the fact an international correspondent is not for her. The signs were always there, but no one in Rory's circle took them into account.

And then the Mitchum incident. When I first watched it, I thought, "my god, you can't possibly take everything he says seriously. He doesn't want you to date his son just like the rest of his family, that's why he gave you the internship and then critiqued you, so not to be a jerk at first at that dinner, but then mess with you. Isn't that obvious? Am I the only one who sees it???" Why was her first reaction to steal a yacht and drop out of Yale? Would she do the same if she was covering a war overseas, and someone told her, 'there's no place for you here, go away'. And she what, would be like 'oh? Okay'. The first criticism in her life and instead of retreating and regrouping and fighting back, she just decides her career is over before it even started? Like wtf??? There's a lot of different kinds of jobs where you could apply writing. Even if journalism was not for her, she could've figured something out without dropping out, especially considering she was majoring in English, not in journalism. That's a lot broader category with more flexibility. Why wasn't her first reaction to prove him wrong?

I struggled a lot in college. Granted, I was a STEM major, so the experience is not exactly the same, but still, the amount of people who told me I wasn't smart enough, that I didn't have it, was astounding. If i listened to everyone who doubted me, I would've dropped out after the first semester, and would not have a PhD I have today. That's why that storyline was not relatable to me, and I did not agree with her decision. Frankly, it pissed me off. I mean, it's easy to just give up when you have rich grandparents to fall back on, when they're gonna pay for everything, and you wouldn't have to work a single hour to pay the bills. I personally didn't have that opportunity and privilege, maybe that's why it made me react so passionately about it, I was fuming when I watched that episode. I was like 'girl, please! Get you shit together, Gilmore!' Her grandparents and Lorelai are extremely stubborn, but Rory in that situation seemed like she didn't inherit any of the Gilmore stubbornness and resilience. Maybe it's flaky Christopher genes, I don't know. And from then on I kept thinking what a waste of money that was. I wondered if she would throw that away if she had a student loan, or Lorelai was paying for Yale from her own pocket, and not her grandparents who basically just gave her money for free, and refused her offer to pay them in installments when she gets a part time job (Which she never did).

I don't know what's the point of this whole rant. I guess I can kinda understand her story arc was realistic in a way, and her being nowhere near successful in her thirties makes her relatable to the audience, but I still think it was a waste. Especially when you think about guys like Marty who had to bartend to cover his expenses and couldn't pay $70 for a meal. Rory never had to do that.

I guess, it makes me sad that her character turned out to be written that way. And I have a lot of questions to Rory, and maybe to ASP. When I first watched the show, I didn't notice a lot of stuff because I binged it. But after reading a hell of a lot of fanfiction and watching all those analysis videos and reading fan theories and whatnot, I watched bits and pieces more closely, and noticed a lot of discrepancies, which made me question the show and Rory's character. And I wonder if those things were just a sloppy writers' job, or was it intentional, and they dropped hints on what Rory's trajectory would be like all along.

For example, it still surprises me to this day, that Rory only realised she needed extra curricular activities to get into Harvard when Paris told her about it in JUNIOR year!! Like, wasn't it your dream school since you were a little kid? You had at least a decade to do a thorough research on this school, and memorize everything about what kind of stuff and grades and things they were looking for in their potential students. How come Rory didn't know that having just good grades wasn't enough? Like, how? It seemed like Rory's dream of going to Harvard was exactly that, a dream, not a realistic plan. And she kept living in a fantasy world where she's so special and would get into Harvard no sweat just because Babette told her she was smart. How come she didn't have doubts? Also, Lorelai, who encouraged her Harvard dream, how was she going to pay for that if she couldn't even pay for Chilton? It was like Chilton price came as a total surprise to her. Didn't you know the cost before your kid applied to that school in the first place?

I understand that going to Yale was a plot device to keep Rory close to her mom, so that the show could still be 'Gilmore girls', not 'one gilmore girl is going to Harvard and the other opens an inn'. But I think, character wise, it would be better if Rory went literally anywhere else. Maybe not necessarily to Harvard, because I feel like it was more Lorelai's dream anyway, and she already dreamed about it for too long, which builds expectations, that the school might not meet in reality, and that would lead to another identity crisis. I think Rory should've gone to some school that was further away than Yale, so that she couldn't visit as often, and so that she would have a chance to do her own thing, without the pressures of constantly being a perfect unicorn child, or a perfect granddaughter, Lorelai 2.0, where she could just be herself, and try new things and meet new people, and just explore the world outside of stars hollow and Hartford and her grandparents house.

It makes me sad. I understand she had a lot of flaws and did some questionable things, and that made her character so realistic and appealing to the audience, but she had so much potential, and it makes me sad the writers wrote her the way she turned out eventually.

And I guess, it also bugs me that after all those vids it's harder for me to ship Rory with Jess, which I need to be able to keep doing for the sake of my story 😄🙈 because I can't get those mean things said about her out of my head. Also, Jess had the best character development on the show, in my opinion. Of course he did a lot of stupid shit too, and he was by no means perfect or better than Rory. But seeing her so helpless and flailing while he's going steady is disconcerting.

What I liked about the show is that the characters seem very realistic, they have real flaws and great treats as well, they act like human beings, that's why it's such a beloved series. Also, while I was watching i could mostly understand not only Rory's logic but everyone else's logic behind the things that they did. I loved the chemistry between Jess and Rory, and that's probably the reason i shipped them from the start, from the first episode he appeared. I was like 'ooh, this is gonna be fun' 😏 and it was super entertaining and I wanted more, and discovered a beautiful world of literati fanfiction. Which is the only outlet for fans to get Rory and Jess the relationship they deserved. I really hope I won't burn out, and finish the story I started after all. 🤞 Maybe I should stop with those analysis videos 😬

There are literally keyboard wars unfolding in the comment sections of those vids. The comments range from 'rory is the worst, i wish she died' to 'why is everyone hating on rory, she's so sweet'. I guess, my point of view is that I'm not a crazy Rory fan that would defend her no matter what kind of shit she does, but I don't hate her either. After reading so many stories about her and Jess, after discovering so many beautiful plot lines people came up with, where Rory still does screw up and make mistakes, but she learns from it, it makes me more disappointed in the original canon writing, more than anything. I mean, there are so many different ways ASP could've gone, and she chose to go with this? I mean, really? Dude!

I think she said something like she wanted the show to resemble life, and you not always get what you want, and not all of your dreams come true eventually, which is understandable. But the show started as this portrayal of mother-daughter relationship who had this amazing bond, and I feel like, a lot of people don't have that, so it was nice for them to watch that kind of close relationship. But then it turned out like Lorelai only loves Rory as long as she does everything Lorelai wants her to, but the moment she deviates, Lorelai flips out or stops talking to her. What is the moral in that? That motherly love is conditional? That you only deserve to be loved when you try to follow unrealistic expectations of perfection? That's not exactly nice and comforting. It's like the show digressed from being a sweet family show to a depressing therapy-needing mess.

Also, many people view the series as a comfort show, the one they watch to feel better. Of course, ASP didn't intend it to be a comfort show, so she didn't have to do what the audience wanted, but a happy ending, at least to a certain extent, would be nice.

Phew, rant over. I guess.

P.S. I also saw a lot of posts and comments saying that Rory gets way more hate than any other character on the show which isn't fair to her. I guess it's true, but at the same time, she IS a main character, next to Lorelai she has the most of screen time, hence the most of footage and material to analyse her behaviour. And it's a general knowledge everyone loves Lorelai and god forbid you criticize her in any shape or form. So, by elimination Rory gets all the shit, unfortunately.

#gilmore girls #rory gilmore #rant

[unhinged-comics-screaming]

I don't usually watch the Marvel short series or whatever but I was hoping for some crumbs from S2E1 since it's literally "What if Nebula joined the Nova Corps".

Positive and negative notes below! Also spoilers, duh.

This is like, stupid long. Probably longer than the video itself. It kinda makes me want to come back and write a proper essay

Author disclaimers/context: I'm a Nova girly. Duh. Love comics. Have bad memory. Have not watched every MCU thing but have a lot of vibes about it.

I really enjoyed the color...ing? color grading? whatever fancy word is used for the colors of a film. A lot of nice compositions as well. I'm glad there were a lot of visually bright moments.

I generally like the style of What if but the animation/rigging itself is... not great. It's definitely a little chunky. I'm not looking for like, feature film levels but maybe a bit more than 3D animation youtubers.

Plot wise, I understand what they were going for but it doesn't really build well in short format. The ambiance was there but literally "corrupt police chief" is soooo overdone. Also like Howard the Duck and Groot were fun to see but am I supposed to know the other guy? Or like Korg?

I legitimately had to rewind the section where she gets uhhh apparently some Captain Marvel dude? out because his name is goofy and I wasn't sure if I was supposed to recognize him earlier. The end bit where he's next to the other Nova Officer is so funny because its just. Two white dudes next to each other that are nearly identical.

Euch okay not a shining example of the art style. It's okay generally I promise.

On that note, the total lack of uniqueness in the Nova Corps was boring like is this the Nova rapture (vol 4)

Like okay not totally perfect examples but at the very least I feel like it's important to emphasize that the Nova Corps are an intergalactic thing and not like, Humans+. They show some other alien races on Xandar itself but all of the Corpsmen just look like humans.

I mean, on the whole the Nova Corps aren't fleshed out which is fine since we don't have a Nova focused thingy yet but I feel like the MCU on the whole misses iconic things in favor of just omitting details that they can't handhold. Nothing about Worldmind, the Nova Force or anything. In general they just aren't setting up any MCU folks to root for them at all. Like imagine a Ko Rel cameo in the scene where Nebula is getting beat up by a bunch of unpowered by virtue of lack of explanation dudes and Ko Rel has some compassion and helps her out. Imagine knowing anything about the Nova Corps beyond "space cops".

On the hand holding, I get that some of the over explain-y-ness is a bit eg. *shield closes in on a ship with big explosions* "the shields are closing on the ships!!" but like all of the writing is just. So much. I probably could've listened to the whole thing like a radio play.

A lot of the writing felt like it was trying to be self aware eg. *wow person breaking into something talks to lock* "why are you talking to the lock it doesn't even have actual mechanisms" which is at least a fun Nebula line but it felt even more cliche. I probably could've guessed how most of the lines in the movie were going to go. Also everything with the comic relief group. I like Howard the Duck calling Nebula 'Nebby' but every bit in the casino/bar was unfunny and boring. Why is Korg here aside from the Rock, Paper, Scissors joke.

God the stupid "aren't you a big deal baddie?" bit was so long and painful. ugh. made worse by the fact I haven't seen Captain Marvel.

Anyway. After making an essay longer than the episode itself. Sandwich time. More good uh I don't like Nebula because of how far removed she is from her comic self but hey. It works and I actually quite liked her. Space cop cars were cool. They included one Hala star which satisfied my curiosity of "how are they gunna look near the nova stars".

Wow I should like, make essays proper instead of going full stream of consciousness on everyone's ass. Maybe if I did video essays I could give you a consolation prize for getting this far from one of my sponsors. I really didn't mean for this to get this long I just started having feelings

[troca88]

Crazy internet rabbithole

this page isnt a vent page, despite my other posts. This is supposed to be a place where i just talk about whatevers going on right now, amd it just happens to be that these past few months have been a big emotional rollercoaster. Ill bring you something happy today tho. Just found out about this obscure internet celeb with some crazy ass lore. How only one person has decided to make a video about it on youtube is crazy to me. So around a year ago i had a fascination with old internet videos. Ebaumsworld albinoblacksheep type shit. Im just barely 17 so i was nowhere near that stuff so learning about it is interesting to me. So while im sitting there watching all sorts of different videos i come across this one video titled "fredryk phox video" or some shit like that and this one stuck out to me cuz it was the only video on the ABS youtube that wasnt an animation. Im like oh ok cool and didnt really think too much about it until 3 days ago. Decided to rewatch the video cuz the opening scene has some crazy ass effects and i thought they were cool. Eventually i decided to find out more about the guy and holy fuck, this dudes lore is wild. Its almost chris chan level intricate and crazy so i cant tell the whole story but ill go over my fav parts in chronological order. Ok so like 2003/2004 he starts making videos where just does dumb shit in front of a webcam and they end up on ebaumsworld and they blow up. These videos are fucking surreal cuz theyre like the most y2k shit ever but with a ton of gay furry shit in it and theyre all shot in the dark and in 144p on some fever dream shit. Around this same time the guy and his whole friend group casually get addicted to fucking heroin and start finding ways to make money to support the habit. The guy decides to sell a bunch of dvds of his videos and these tapes were absosutely fucking wild. Nazi symbols and white kids saying the n word everywhere. Then one of the friends takes over the dvd sales to support the heroin addiction and everyone except fredryk eventually dies from an overdose. The guy then gets sober and goes to art school and now hes a gay furry married to a man and apparently he is the creator of "a fox in space" which is like this starfox fan cartoon. Apparently its a big deal with nintendo fans but ive never heard about it until now. I just find it fucking wild how this dude went from making funny videos with his plushies to selling dvds of him saying the n word holding a nazi flag to support a heroin addiction. Theres a shit ton of little side stories tho that are equally as crazy tho. I didnt even mention the fact he had some beef with eric bauman back in the day, or his surreal ass pre-fox in space animations. Anyways its getting late and this post is getting long. I just wanted to share real quick cuz holy fuck this lore is deep. Good night everyone. Hope i have more positive things to talk about later.

Written august 24th 2023 10:14PM

[terrydarden]

TerryDarden-Vanity Metrics of IFCJ

The IFCJ- International Fellowship of Christian and Jews is a charity that is near and dear to my heart. I believe in caring and sharing when it comes to anyone and all but from my Christian life and walk this one took my heart. The plight of the Jews and the atrocities they have suffered have been great.

I asked myself "How do you measure the vanity metrics of a charity" when the notion of vanity is completely opposite to its content and purpose. I have read what our textbook says about these metrics but also looked up a neutral definition of what vanity metrics really meant. Vanity metrics (def.) Forbes.com-"The key metric for every nonprofit and for profit is expense to revenue. No margin. no mission. It doesn't matter how many grants you win or how much money your fundraiser brings in if you overspend your budget."

This dynamic in the case of what is to be measured only plays a small part in this case because their hard numbers and impact are not truly seen. We have been asked to measure their presence and impact within certain social media outlets.(Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube) I will only focus on two. Facebook and YouTube.

The measure of the metrics are to be as follows:

1.) One advanced metric

2.) One channel metric

3.) One behavioral metric

The overall metrics on IFCJ Facebook account were pretty good. They displayed well the advance metrics of showing the attitudes, behaviors, and opinions of their contributors and members concerning the importance of helping poor and suffering Jews, not just in Israel but from around the world. The charity shows you there situation. They don't ask outright for money but the buttons to donate and give are highlighted. Testimonials and real-life pictures with commentary from volunteers is clearly seen and the urgency of what they are asking is immediate in the way it is displayed. The actions they are asking their viewers is to donate to help. This site is very focused on the Christian. A what would Christ do aura radiates from it's presentation. The poor widow at the well picture is what I believe they are seeking to engrave in the observers mind.

The advanced metric of opinions of the audience members could be better if they included more than just the overwhelming pictures of poor destitute older Jewish women. I think they should depict more children and whole families and their conditions. This change in their metrics I believe would lead to more donations.

The channel metrics are measured on this site by numbers of those in need either highlighted or written in big letters.These examples are "This is Lena a precious 94-year-old Holocaust survivor..." "$ 392 raised for the...", "THERE'S STILL TIME!" Everything is listed in a time frame that is urgent and time-sensitive. I think this could be improved by just showing the situation as they do. No need for huge banner like words or exclamation are necessary. The pictures speak for themselves.

The behavioral metric that deal with actions users are taking is done pretty well also. There are many campaigns and different projects that link to one another. On display are personal contributions and appreciation for all those that have given whether the amount was small or great. This is a great strategy. This could be improved by lessening the amount of sub-charities to donate to. All should be put in a central account under whatever name they decide and dispersed to whatever need is needed at the time. This method would also lessen the feeling of being overwhelmed by the need. This feeling I got automatically when I first visited and donated my first time. I had no idea where to put it or where the money was needed the most.

IFCJ: YouTube:

The overall metrics of IFJC YouTube are very well done. Without subscribing to their channel the same metrics that they use for their Facebook account is evident here. Mostly all visual with videos that highlight the need of the Jews. The temperament is a little lighter here. The woman at the well theme is replaced with videos of younger women and cheerful children who have been heiped by the donations and contributions given. The videos are on site so that the actual work and efforts to help the Jews is clearly seen. The "ABOUT" page gives you insight into the nature of the charity and its clear intent to help Jews in dire need. The tone is the same as well. It's clear that all can donate but to the Christian this is as much a responsibility as it is your duty. What would Jesus do is clearly evident.

The same metrics apply here as before for Facebook:

The only suggestion that I would make on the advanced metric of opinions offered by its audience members is to lessen them just a bit. I have watched the testimonials and they sound like a broken record. Maybe not the same people but they are saying the same things repeatedly.

The channel metrics that are measured on this site by a number of testimonials on how great those are in need. The words and phrases: Dire, "She and They need your help now", Donate now and we'll send you a special prayer shawl" or whatever items of religious significance fits the season at the time. I actually have no criticism with this just to offer that the seasons should be plainly laid out so as not to miss one that an individual may have their heart on giving to.

The behavioral metric reads pretty much as it does in Facebook but they are testimonials and gratitude for the amount that was given and the number of individuals that were helped. Instead of big numbers being displayed it is clear they want you to notice by pronunciation that "THOUSANDS!" of desperate Jews both women and children need your help. The total family and the plight of older poor men Jews and young Jewish men are all but missing. The husband and sons of the women they depict in their videos is just as dire. That needs to be balanced out. All Jews men women and children are suffering the same fate no matter what country they are in. This would help them improve this metric on this platform.

All of that being said, I love this organization and what they are doing to help the Jews. My critique only comes for the sake of this assignment and they can definitely expect my rest of my life support and contributions.

[dinosaurtsukki]

haikyuu!! buzzfeed unsolved AU

OK THIS IS THE LAST BUZZFEED UNSOLVED RELATED HEADCANON SET I PROMISE 

[edit: check out the link at the bottom of the post for more buzzfeed unsolved au content :)]

hinata and kageyama:

90% of the show is them yelling and nobody watches it with earphones on

both of them believe in ghosts but that doesn't mean they want to see one

hinata will literally go to the bathroom five times before going to the spooky house and kageyama gets mad at him for it but there is Fear in his eyes

producer: 'were you scared?'

kageyama: 'pfft, no'

cameraman: *points camera down to show that kageyama's legs are shaking*

they also bring a shit ton of food with them when they stay the night at a place and they'll deadass be eating while talking about the history of the place

‘this house *crunch crunch* was built in *crunch crunch* 1972'

the producers tell them to stop bringing snacks but fans of the show love it

sometimes they'll shoot a mini mukbang video

SPICY, BARBECUE POTATO FRIES | Mukbang at the Waverly Hills Asylum'

hinata: *looking up how to do a seance on wikihow* it says we gotta offer some food for the spirit

kageyama: *spills the doritos he was eating on the table

*after 20 minutes*

kageyama: fuck this

hinata: *starts eating the doritos*

producer: ...

the ghosts: ..................the, audacity

tsukishima and yamaguchi

pretty much a ryan and shane duo right here

yamaguchi: we'll be visiting this place as part of our ongoing investigation on the question, are ghosts real?

tsukishima: *shakes head*

yamaguchi just wants to see the look of fear in tsukishima’s eyes at least once

yamaguchi: *hears a random thump sound* fUCk tSuKkI a gHoSt!!!

tsukishima: *sees a chair being tossed across the room* huh, the wind is pretty strong today

he likes to stick his head into attics to scare yamaguchi

yamaguchi always carries a water gun full of holy water

yamaguchi: i have holy water with me and i'm not afraid to use it! but i'm also sorry you had to die such a horrible death i hope you find peace soon

tsukishima: *walks into a basement that is supposedly a portal to hell* fuckin’ take me already

so many 'yamaguchi being an angel and tsukishima being a demon for 10 mins' video compilations 

daichi and sugawara

a very chaotic buzzfeed unsolved duo

suga, who is satan’s child himself, and daichi, who needs a raise

daichi: hello everyone! this is daichi,

sugawara: and suga

daichi: and you’re watching...

sugawara: jackass!!

daichi:...buzz...buzzfeed unsolved??

daichi started out being afraid of almost every place he had to walk into but after having to deal with the chaotic mess that is suga for an entire season, he no longer Feels Fear

this is because suga will deadass film a tiktok dance video no matter where he is

daichi: suga, someone was literally axe-murdered there

suga: *dancing along to ‘I’m a Savage’ or whatever that tiktok song is called*

daichi: *at cameraman* do you see what i have to deal with every day?’

suga is only genuinely scared by ghosts when his followers point out that a ghost was caught on camera in one of his tiktok videos

suga: *watching the video*

that was the end of suga’s tiktok career

tanaka and nishinoya:

another bunch of loud bois but they are much louder than kageyama and hinata

they’re very much into proving the existence of cryptids and are most known for that episode they spent hunting bigfoot by dressing up to look like bigfoot

tanaka: ‘you know that thing they do in cartoons where they stack on top of each other under a coat so they look like just one big guy?’

nishinoya: ‘ryuu i love you so fucking much’

other guy there who is also trying to catch bigfoot: oMg ItS bIgFooT *takes picture with the blurriest camera he could find*

both of them are very committed in their investigation of the supernatural and they’re very unconventional approaches

nishinoya: *lying on the ground in a creepy basement* EAT MY HEART DEMONS! WE’LL PUT THE VIDEO ON YOUTUBE!

tanaka: *takes out a spirit board* *spells out O-M-A-E  W-A  M-O  S-H-I-N-D-E-I-R-U*

ghost: *spells out N-A-N-I*

tanaka and nishinoya: *screaming*

kuroo and kenma: 

kuroo deadass flirts with any ghost or demon they encounter and kenma would sleep over in a haunted asylum for ten bucks

kuroo: *sidles up to the infamous annabelle doll* hey there little lady, what’s a pretty thing like you doing in a locked, glass case with a ‘don’t touch’ sign like this?

kenma: kuroo, there’s a demon inside her

kuroo: well, i’m a bit of a demon myself

kenma: she attempted to choke a guy in his sleep

kuroo: oooh, choking. i can get behind that...

kenma: *looks at camera*

the demon in annabelle: d-daddy??

“kuroo flirting with demons and kenma looking at the camera for 5 minutes”

kuroo’s actually a huge fucking scaredy cat and kenma secretly tries to push him over the edge

kenma: *plays computer-generated screams of the damned on his phone*

kuroo: WHAT WAS THAT?

kenma: ...I didn’t hear anything *looks at the camera as if he was on the office and plays the sound again*

kuroo: i was too scared to close my eyes last night

kenma: i was actually able to catch a bunch of pokemon last night. who knew the winchester mansion is such a hotspot

producer: did you catch any evidence of ghosts?

kenma: ...i caught a gastly

bokuto and akaashi:

bokuto is a die-hard mothman fan and akaashi is emotionally involved in proving that ghosts exist he will stop at nothing

akaashi: all of the evidence on the shadow figures and orbs spotted in this place can only suggest one thing...

bokuto: mothman did it

akaashi: no

bokuto: yes

akaashi: mothman is literally five states away

bokuto: he has wings

during their individual investigations, akaashi has already foreseen how bokuto is going to react

producer: it’s been quiet for a while. do you think bokuto’s no longer scared?

akaashi: oh no. he should be screaming right about now...

bokuto, inside the haunted house: *screams and waves his flashlight around*

akaashi:  and then he’s gonna call for help

bokuto: AKAAAAAASHIIIIIIIIII

*few hours later*

bokuto: i saw my life flash before my eyes in there

akaashi: *muttering incoherently near his ‘evidence wall’ full of blurry pictures and red string*

bokuto: i must’ve stared into the abyss at one point

akaashi: this place is fucking haunted. can i go back? it’s for sale right?

ushijima and tendou:

ushijima’s knowledge of ghosts is based on hollywood movies and tendou has exorcised places just by vibing

ushijima: *brings out a pottery wheel* if there are any ghosts in here, you know what to do

he’s actually never watched Ghost he just knows That One Scene

tendou: *naruto-running through the goatman bridge with a go-pro strapped to his head* IT’S MY BRIDGE GOATMAN, IT’S MY BRIDGE!!!

the Goatman Himself: i’ve never felt so fucking scared in my entire fucking life

ushijima believes that chanting in latin will Summon the Ghosts and tendou takes full advantage of that

tendou: *handing ushijima a slip of paper* here, apparently this will summon a full-bodied apparition

ushijima: thanks *begins chanting*

producer, interviewing tendou to the side: okay, what did you make him read this time?

tendou: i typed out ‘let me eat your ass’ in latin on google translate and went from there

cameraman: *zooms in on ushijima chanting*

the ghost haunting the castle: *is confused in French*

in the end neither of them get evidence on ghosts

ushijima: well, we'll have better luck next time

tendou: maybe even revisit this place ?

the ghosts: i know i'm dead but this is the first time i've been scared for my life

[EDIT: for more buzzfeed unsolved au content written by me, check out The Search for the Mysterious Mothman, a headcanon set feat. bokuaka]

#haikyuu!! #haikyuu headcanons #haikyuu!! buzzfeed unsolved AU #kagehina #tsukkiyama #daisuga #tananoya #kuroken #bokuaka #ushitendou #kageyama tobio #hinata shoyo #tsukishima kei #yamaguchi tadashi #sawamura daichi #sugawara koushi #tanaka ryuunosuke #nishinoya imagine #bokuto kotaro #akaashi keiji #kuroo tetsurou #kozume kenma #ushijima wak #tendo satori

[enduracarrotchips]

YouTuber AU

Hello welcome to Dating Scandal but with Twitter Involved (nightmare)

A little exposition here: 

Link, Zelda, Sidon, Revali, and Riju are the most popular group of youtubers on the internet and have a huge fanbase that likes to theorize, draw fanart, and write fanfiction about them. Disclaimer, I don’t actually interact with real-person fandoms myself lol there’s just too much potential for drama and misunderstandings & they’re always bound to end in a dumpster fire but that is sort of what this au is about so.

Impa, Mipha, Daruk, and Urbosa are family friends that appear in a lot of their videos/streams. 

(This is an art blog I swear)

enter vidcon 20XX

Link: 

blows stuff up/sets stuff on fire with a side of cooking vids and gaming

most are filmed outside, he does those challenges where you try to cook stuff with limited ingredients/materials

has the largest fanbase of all of them, but not the most…intimidating.

does a lot of collab videos, mostly with Impa, Daruk, and Riju because they have similar interests/channels, but Zelda appears in his videos and is seen filming and the stans read too far into it

simps. i’m pointing at you.

Most popular videos are “shield surfing on rock!—how I broke my leg” “can Daruk eat Impa’s motorcycle?” and “how to inhale ranch dressing.”

Twitter handle is @ arsonistslullabye because he’s a hozier fan

45m subs

Zelda:

theories, analyses, conspiracies, and the occasional e x p e r i m e n t

she once got link to eat a frog for 50 bucks.

most people argue that she’s better than more popular YouTubers because she actually has quality content to give to the world and she has a lot of defensive supporters

She used to get a lot of hate before Urbosa spoke up about it and scared the bejeezus out of everyone

has an actual posting schedule

“Happy Sunday everyone, it’s Zelda Hyrule and today we will be talking about cryptozoology and why blupees exist, you cowards.”

Twitter handle is @ zeldaofhyrule and she is pan. just so you know. One of those calm extroverts that mystify me to this day.

18m subs

Sidon:

fashion/life hacks. Like gourmet troom troom but if they were real people.

Has the 2nd largest fanbase

most of them are girls

Sidon has a boyfriend though, which he told everyone at VidCon a few years ago

cue the drama and shipping and the entire fandom trying to figure out who the boyfriend is. A well known reddit thread emerged that presented the common guesses being Link, Sidon, and Zelda.

“But it can’t be Zelda, Sidon’s gay.”

“I’m not in the fandom but I thought Zelda was a boy??”

“Did you just say Sidon? Is that a typo? Are you saying that Sidon’s dating himself?”

Sidon x Sidon became a fandom joke.

Don’t look at me I’m just setting up all the worldbuilding. every fandom has their weird dark sides and Sidon x Sidon is the Linkcest of the Sidon YT fandom.

Mystery BF is actually Bazz, a pretty inconspicuous guy who appeared in a few of his videos. This was confirmed a year ago, but everyone still ships him with other YouTubers because they’re convinced he was lying to throw them off his scent. He really can’t catch a break and this is why you should not ship real people.

Twitter handle is @ officialprincesidon

says “beguiling” a lot

21m subs ᕙ( ͡❛ ▿ ͡❛)ᕗ

Mipha:

Sidon’s sister, hasn’t posted a single video but just has the channel for show because she appears in so many of Sidon’s videos as a model for his makeup tutorials and whatnot

has 328k for that. Everyone loves her, she’s great. @ mimipha

Revali:

Link’s sworn rival

Link thinks they’re friends

He kept popping up in link’s Twitter threads and making snarky comments until zelda called him out for not even following link (so why was he stalking his acc) which kept the Twitter drama to a minimum

Revali was the catalyst of a few popular memes and that’s where most of his subs come from.

drags link into a few challenges that always get a ton of views because of how competitive they get

“ITS JUST ASININE” is a running joke that everyone tries to get him to say. His @ is itsjustasinine as well

Urbosa is the only person who can win an argument with him

5m subs and growing rapidly. newer to youtube than everyone else.

Impa:

Doesn’t have a channel she’s just a mutual friend of Mipha, Zelda, and Link

Rides a motorcycle, so she is used in a few of Link’s videos.

@ ihaveamotorcycle because she thinks having a motorcycle is a personality trait. the most unruly on Twitter when it comes to replying to fan’s stuff, leaking upcoming videos and generally causing chaos.

Mipha’s girlfriend. That’s how she met Zelda and Link.

Urbosa:

Is actually a model, but she has a ton of YouTuber friends because she’s known Zelda since birth.

when she entered the youtube community she didn’t realize she would be adopting like 15 children

5m subs. her videos are professional & related to her modelling career. @ urbosasfury

I feel like she would do unboxing vids. I’m not sure what she’s unboxing.

Daruk

Just a friend of Link’s, fun guy. yells a lot. once ate a rock and had no reaction.

people are scared of him for that reason

Riju:

yoga & gymnastics & “ha look at how flexible I am its eAsY” videos

you know the type

she also does reactions and is sponsored by save the sand seals charities which she is very enthusiastic about. She’s also Urbosa’s niece and the only minor in the gang (15). I like to think that the champions YT community is actually not creepy so everyone respects her a ton

doesn’t post frequently, she mostly appears in Link’s videos to jump out of airplanes or whatever. And sometimes Zelda’s if she’s interested in the topic. 500k subs, but she’s always really popular when she appears in Link’s videos.

VidCon:

In the months leading up to VidCon, some fans on the internet made a few discoveries: first of all, that the inside of Link’s house is painted green. This is a big deal because all of his videos are filmed outside either in his backyard or on trips that he and the brosquad go on to do…whatever bros do. explosions. idk. The point is he had some announcement about VidCon and filmed it inside. Only the wall and a potted plant were shown.

However, the colour was similar to the the shade of Zelda’s living room. Fans dug through years and years of old videos and found a clip of Zelda walking through a hallway, where there was an open door and a glimpse of a houseplant.

There were 2 types of responses to the theory:

“They could just be roommates guys calm down”

“and they were ROOMMATES?”

others pointed out that Link could just not have a house and had to crash in Zelda’s

Some guy on reddit claimed he had a botany degree and declared that the houseplants in the clips were not of the same genus. Normal people pointed out that the plant would have grown 4 years between the clips and would look considerably different.

#Zelink trended on twitter for a while and people posted other old clips from both of their channels and the frog video blew up again

Impa retweeted a post tagged as #zelink with “rofl” and later publicly apologized for causing confusion.

Fans noticed that in the “can a motorcycle drive over my arm” (it was clickbait he’s fine) episode 2 years ago, Link was eating out of a paper lunch bag with his name written on it in handwriting that a few people claimed to look like Zelda’s, leading people to believe that she had packed him a lunch.

However, this theory was shot down with the counterargument that Zelda can’t cook. although. i mean how much skill do you need to make a sandwich.

No one knows what tumblr is doing at this time

Zelda wore a scarf in her “Save the Sand Seals” video that matched identically to the scarf Link wore when he travelled to Hebra to film a shield surfing video, but it’s been debated wether it’s actually the same scarf or not.

Neither Zelda nor Link has spoken up about the theories, and besides Impa’s one slip on twitter, neither has any of their friends. Zelda received a lot of backlash for the assumption that she was dating Link because he has a lot of delusional fans that didn’t want her to “steal their man” or whatever the hell that type of fan would get mad about

Oh yea and bolson & karson run a zelink fanpage on twitter sorry I forgot about that

after that whole mess, everyone was even more anticipant of VidCon in the hopes that some of their questions would be answered.

The whole batch went to VidCon this year: Link, Impa, Daruk, and Riju are a gang while Sidon and Mipha go together and Zelda & Revali each go separately. Urbosa is there for supervision moral support

Zelda has always been much better at dodging questions that she doesn’t want to answer than anyone else, so her Q&A went without a hitch. When asked to confirm the rumours she said “which one?” and then moved on to the next question (without actually confirming any rumours).

Link is generally a more awkward person but eventually said that he had filmed the video in Zelda’s house because it was nicer and didn’t realize it would cause such an uproar. Fans were disappointed, but Bolson claimed he saw Link and Zelda exiting the hotel elevator on the same floor after Link’s Q&A session. No one believed him.

Fans went back to theorizing over who Link, Zelda, and Sidon were all dating, because apparently they can’t just be dating unknown people and have to be with other YouTubers

Sidon and Bazz got engaged about a week after VidCon, making at least 4 preteen girls cry

actually try 4 million

Sidon x Sidon made a brief comeback but Sidon spoke up about his fandom for the first time ever on twitter and told everyone that no, he was not dating himself. eventually, everyone settled down and accepted that none of them were in a relationship save for a few loud fans.

Link and Zelda still got the occasional “when will you tell us who you’re dating?” comment but most of them were joking and the people who still hardcore shipped them were generally frowned upon. Zelda’s popularity went up after VidCon and she regained the 200k subscribers she’d lost after the first theory dropped.

Two months after VidCon, Link posted a video titled “Zelda and I’s House Tour!” and gave around 45 million people a heart attack

as revealed in the video, they had actually been dating since they were 16 and everyone’s just a fool.

the potted plant is named Hestu.

#listen. listen. youtuber au #idc if u came here to see genderless art this is what I am posting today #genderless art in the future though #anyways I'm so sorry #sidon x sidon trends for a few days and I feel bad for the ppl who have to handwrite the trending descriptions on twitter #like what would it be #reddit user @ steponmeurbosa makes a spelling error and sparks shipping between beauty guru sidon and himself #if someone tries to start discourse about YouTube fandoms on my post I am blocking you #headcanons #opinions #youtuber au #botw #zelink #breath of the wild #legend of zelda #thank god I got this out of my notes app

[forthegothicheroine]

The King in Yellow, 1949

Much of this story is true.  Warnings in the tags.

When I had pneumonia in my early teens, my mother brought home an armful of VHS tapes from the library to alleviate my misery.  Knowing my snobbish preferences, she had grabbed copies of whatever she found in black and white.  I remember something musical that I suspect was Busby Berkeley, I remember Mildred Pierce (a bad choice, as it turned out- the plot includes a young girl dying of pneumonia), and I remember a period piece called The King.  I faded in and out of consciousness while I watched it, but it soothed me while I was awake and filled my fever dreams with sparkling images.  I could never find it at the library again, nor at Hollywood Video or even early Netflix (once my father got the subscription service where you could order practically every DVD.)  It was a bit odd that it seemed to be so obscure, given that it starred old Hollywood legend Ingrid Bergman (and, although I initially forgot it, Marlene Dietrich.)  But even big stars make films that fall by the wayside in public memory, and it seemed that this was one of them.  Google was no help, and at the time that was that.

I didn’t see the film again until I was watching Turner Classic Movies at my grandparents’ house.  I loved watching that channel with them while filling out the crossword puzzle that came in their little TCM catalogue (all of it based on movie trivia, the only kind of crossword puzzle I’ve ever been any good at.)  I recognized a certain scene where Bergman stood on a balcony, looking sadly at the moon.  Her face had an expression of unutterable melancholy, and the crescent moon reflected in each of her eyes, giving the impression of two moons in one sky.  I had very little time to catch up on what I’d missed before we had to go meet my cousins at the local Italian restaurant.  I knew logically that the movie would be long over by the time we returned, but I turned on the channel anyway.  Of course it had moved on to the lesser known Alfred Hitchcock film Stage Fright, but then I heard Marlene Dietrich sing before I could reach the remote to turn the tv off in disappointment.  I knew that I had heard her sing before, and I knew it had been in The King.

Dietrich’s singing often comes across as somewhat campy today, with its Rs pronounced as Ws and it’s up-and-down tone.  Madeline Kahn parodied it brilliantly in Blazing Saddles, such that it was a bit of a disappointment when I finally saw Dietrich’s western Destry Rides Again and found it to be lifeless and inconsistent next to the parody.  Still, we remember her voice for a reason, and when I remembered it that night, I knew that its sardonic loneliness had rung through The King and made me shiver in my dreams.

The TCM schedule didn’t list The King in its time slot, but something else.  If I had taken down the name, maybe it would have helped me find it.  Sometimes the same movie runs under multiple names.

I didn’t see the film all the way through for many years, after I graduated college.  I had found a web page that listed public domain film noir, including one called The Masked Guest.  The website described it as a costume noir, and I curiously clicked on the link.  Once I took in the credits running on the youtube window, my eyes grew wide and I did not move from my place on the bed until the movie had run its course.

The credits did indeed list it as The Masked Guest, but I recognized the strange repeating design on the title cards.  They told me that in addition to starring Dietrich and Bergman, it was directed by Fritz Lang, and a character called The King was credited to “???”  (I hadn’t seen that kind of credit since the first Karloff Frankenstein.)  When the King finally appears on screen, though, it is unmistakably Orson Welles’s voice that booms out from behind his elaborate costume.

Here are the things I understand about The King, or The Masked Guest, or The Man in Yellow, or any other title I’ve found for it on public domain archive searches.  Dietrich and Bergman play princesses named Cassilda and Camilla, respectively.  Though Dietrich’s accent is German and Bergman’s is Swedish, they blend together to give the film the impression of being set somewhere on the map that I can’t quite find.  The scenery and camera angles are very Freudian, with a great deal of archways and pillars.

The first act of The King involves frankly dull romantic plotlines, and the only thing that really saved it was the feeling that the suitors were supposed to be insipid, a suspicion lended credence by the fact that the love interests were listed so low on the credits.  Dietrich is the scandalous sister and Bergman is the responsible one, though each takes on aspects of the other as the film goes on.  Dietrich sings her song at a party, dressed in a fake 17th century gown and leaning against a piano.  Although just a moment ago she had been laughing and joking with her gentleman friends, her song takes an abruptly serious tone (not seductive, not sentimental) as she tells the story of a city lost to time and memory.  Bergman slips away from the party and onto the balcony, where we see that wonderful shot of the moon in her eyes.  Is she mourning?  Is she longing?

Dietrich cuts off the song by abruptly screaming “Not on us, King!  Not on us!”  She flees the party weeping and shaking, and from there on the film goes mad.

Though uncommon, it is not unknown for movies to switch between black and white and color, done most famously in The Wizard of Oz.  The film The King recalls here is the silent Phantom of the Opera, which had a masqued ball scene tinted in shades of red and green that tried to provide a whole spectrum of color.  The effect is even odder in the masqued ball scene in The King- the only color that appears is yellow, highlighting things like candlelight, Dietrich’s hair, a passing gown, a vase of tulips.  It also highlights one particular masked figure, whose expressionless mask was decorated with a black pattern against a sickening yellow canvas- the same pattern I had seen in the opening credits.  The color of his costume causes him to stand out from the crown even when he is far off in the background, just one head among many others.  It must have taken long and painstaking hours of work to color in every frame.

Dietrich still seems broken up days after her song, though Bergman tries to coax her into joining the dance.  Finally, at midnight, Dietrich goes out to face the party, but only to demand that every guest remove their mask.  The yellow man with a voice that once warned America about a Martian invasion tells her that he wears no mask.  Bergman reacts with disbelief, but Dietrich starts laughing like a woman unhinged.  As she laughs, the yellow hue seeps out of the King’s clothing and face- if that really is his face- and begins to color the entire ballroom crowd.  I think that what follows is bloodshed, but if there is any carnage (doubtful under the Production Code censorship), the blood must be tainted yellow and splashed across the camera like daubs of paint.  Dietrich’s laughing face is doubled and tripled on screen until it dissipates, but even when it has faded offscreen, it feels as if her ghost continues to watch the proceedings.  

By the end of the scene (filled with German Expressionist camera angles and mad violin screeching), only Bergman remains alive, cowering behind a grandfather clock.  It does not hide her for long.  The King steps towards her and extends his hand.  Reluctantly, but with a fatalistic expression, Bergman takes his hand.  They walk away together hand in hand.  The screen shifts back into black and white, and then the credits roll before we can get a good look at all the bodies in the scene.  The credits say it was based on a play called The King in Yellow, although Raymond Chandler of all people apparently had a hand in the screenplay.

As I said, that’s what I think I understand.  It’s an oddly experimental art film for the era, and it may be awaiting rediscovery by the film festival crowd.  I feel as if I alone know about it, though that obviously isn’t true.  It is my little secret; I tell myself that my husband doesn’t need me to show it to him, it would be too odd for his taste.  I’ve rewatched it many times, even if it seems like each time I search for it I have to find a different video platform or torrent.  Naturally, no subscription site has it available.  Maybe I am the last person who will ever watch it.  Maybe no one will ever think to look for it again after me, and it will be completely forgotten.

When I was hospitalized, they let me use my laptop at night before I went to sleep (no power cord, though, in case I tried to hang myself.)  I found a youtube link for The Man in Yellow, and I watched it every night.  It wasn’t a soothing sort of movie, but having it in my mind all day and then watching it in the evening allowed me to think as opposed to crying endlessly while the other patients shot me awkward looks.  I clutched the childhood stuffed animals my mother brought me when she visited, and I always held them extra tight when the masquerade scene started.

I watched the movie when I had to move away from my beloved San Francisco.  I watched the movie when I lost the last of my grandparents.  I watched the movie when a doctor unwisely took me off my medication and I couldn’t manage to eat for a month.  I watched the movie when the whole world got sick and we all locked ourselves away from each other.  I don’t mind that I don’t entirely know what it means.  I don’t mind the nightmares.  In the hospital they kept telling us about mindfulness exercises, and maybe the fact that I can focus on every aspect of the film so closely that all else falls away is the reason I keep coming back to it.  I’m being mindful.  I’m not letting any stray thoughts invade my head.  I’m just watching and waiting for the next beat of every scene, leading inexorably to that yellow-stained bloodbath.

Streaming media doesn’t last forever, and each time I find The King, I worry that it will be the last time I ever can find it.  My efforts to download it have so far been unsuccessful, odd considering that it is in the public domain.

When I watch The King, I am once again a child in my bedroom being cared for in the throes of agonizing sickness.  I am once again sitting on the couch with my grandparents in front of the tv, both of them alive and lucid again.  I am once again in the hospital, all alone except for my stuffed animals and the staff trying to keep me alive.  The film reflects in my eyes like the crescent moon in Ingrid Bergman’s gaze.  It sings to me.

I am determined to find a way to obtain The King under any name so that I never have to worry about losing it.  During some of the worst times in my life, it is the only thing that has kept me sane.

#the king in yellow #cw mental illness #cw disordered eating #cw institutionalization #cw suicide

[nbrook29]

Kiss or Slap

Sander doesn’t remember when exactly their group made the riverside near the Scheldt their new hangout spot, but he couldn’t be more grateful for it as a cold breeze washes over his overheated body, providing a momentary relief against the scorching heat falling from the sky. It’s probably why the park is fuller than it usually is on Thursday afternoons, packed with people spread on their picnic blankets, searching for a bit of shadow under the big trees and desperately craving a bit of wind. 

It’s so hot he doesn’t even feel like sketching, preferring to just lie on the grass without moving a single muscle, and dying in peace. Even the enticing smell of cinnamon rolls that Noor brought with her isn’t enough for him to reach out and take one from the basket, the action requiring too much movement on his part.

“Guys, come on, we have to start or we’ll never get it done! Sander, get your lazy ass up.” He grunts when he feels Leon’s merciless fingers jabbing him in the ribs.

“Can’t we wait until it gets a little less hot?”

“No, cause that’s not happening in the nearest future and we need new content,” Nathan butts in, followed by Noor, which makes Sander officially outvoted. So he heaves a deep sigh, puts his shirt back on and ruffles his hair to make himself more presentable, rolling his eyes at Noor’s appreciative whistling.

“Someone’s gonna snatch himself a bunch of kisses today with that smoldering look,” she teases, pretending to give him a once over.

“Is that your way of telling me you want one for yourself, sweetheart?” He’s immensely proud of himself when her entire face scrunches up in disgust.

“Eww, no, feels like incest at this point.” Which is kinda true given the fact they’ve known each other since kindergarten and became best friends making sand castles. He fires an obnoxious wink at her, fully anticipating a shove which comes as expected within seconds, with Noor calling him a creep in between laughter.

“Who should we start with? Senne? Wanna go first?” Sander watches as Leon takes out his camera equipment and checks the settings as the rest collects their things.

“I guess, yeah. And then Nathan after me?”

“I’m not doing it, man, you know Britt, she’s gonna flip out.”

“Be a good reason to break up with her,” Sander mutters under his breath, not really feeling apologetic when Nathan shoots him a glare. It would be a long time coming, and honestly, Sander can’t wait for that moment to come. Just being in her presence gives him chills, she’s that much of a horrible person. A few years ago, he read something about alternate universes and sometimes when he looks at her he can’t help but think there’s a history there with the two of them, in a past life or something. At least it would explain that weird energy between them.

If it’s true, he feels very sorry for that Sander. 

He roots for him to run far away from said devil’s spawn.

“I can go next, I don’t have the ball and chain,” Noor says innocently, but she’s smirking over Nathan’s shoulder at Sander who pretends to high five her in their shared hatred for Britt.

“Yeah, us lonely birds will sacrifice ourselves and take the hit for the wellbeing of our channel,” Sander laments playfully, making Senne snort.

“Dude, you’re on your own by your own choice.”

“And pickiness. Don’t forget pickiness,” Noor adds smugly.

Sander huffs in protest. “I’m not picky! I just...” He cuts off because he’s not about to just explain it all now.

“Just what?”

“Specific about what I want.”

Brown curls, brown eyes, shortish, lean, pierced ear, cute giggle, elegant hands and a smile brighter than the sun. 

To be exact.

“Yeah. That’s picky.”

“Whatever,” he replies grumpily, and decides to ignore Noor’s knowing look. Sometimes he feels like she has a sixth sense and can read him like a book. Or she’s just less oblivious than the boys in their friend group. That’s a totally possible option too.

Thankfully, she doesn’t push him further (she’s awesome like that), though Sander has a feeling she’s gonna grill him later when they’re alone. For now, she checks her lipstick in her phone as they all briefly plan the video.

Not like there’s that much to plan; a few days ago, they decided to shoot a kiss or slap challenge for their YouTube channel because it had been wildly requested by their viewers.

Sander still doesn’t quite know how he became a part of a YouTube channel in the first place, always considering himself to be a bit more, well, sophisticated than that? But Leon was into it from the beginning and made them all participate in exchange for free beer, until one day one of their videos blew up.

If you can call getting 100k views on one video blowing up. 

Anyway, they got semi-popular amongst Flemish teens and even managed to snatch a sponsorship with Mentos (however small the offer was) that paid actual money. And he had just managed to move out of his family house so any money coming his way he welcomed with no questions asked. 

So they’ve kept shooting silly challenges slash anything else that’s a trend at a given time and have been able to cover their art supply needs with what little they earned. And, though Sander refused to admit it in the beginning, it’s actually kinda fun. It’s definitely better than his part time job at Pull&Bear where he has to deal with obnoxious customers on an almost daily basis.

They record a short introduction near the river, quickly going over the rules and explaining that the three of them will be competing in who gets more kisses versus slaps. 

“Hey, you know what, this is actually unfair cause you both can kiss anybody,” Senne points out all of a sudden, receiving four pairs of unimpressed glances.

“No one’s stopping you from getting kisses from boys too, dude,” Sander is quick to shut him up, shit-eating grin on his face as he gives him his first (light) slap to the cheek. 

They follow Senne around the park with a camera as he turns on his charm and smiles sweetly at the girls he chooses for the challenge, doing surprisingly well on the first few attempts. But when they venture deeper into the park and he tries his luck with college girls, he gets 5 slaps in the row to the rest of the group’s utter delight. In the end, his results are a blow to his pride and even Sander feels sorry for him, giving him a pat on the back while trying to hold his laughter in at Senne’s grumpy face.

Noor does much better, naturally, as her upbeat personality and a wide smile have always made boys and girls turn their heads. She gets a kiss after kiss, blush after blush, and two phone numbers in the process. Senne argues again that it’s unfair because no one’s gonna slap a girl anyway, but Leon just calls him a sore loser while Noor shamelessly flirts in French with another girl right in front of the camera.

Sander’s very proud.

Taking a quick sip of water, he gives Leon a thumbs up and starts his round, coming over to three blond girls chilling near the skateboarding ramps, trying very hard not to come off as creepy and clarifying the kiss part being only a cheek kiss. The girls erupt in giggles, but they all grant him a light kiss. One of them tries to flirt with him after, but he shoots her down before she can get too into it.

“Such a heartbreaker, you,” Noor coos at Sander’s pained face when they all walk away.

“That’s you, and you actually enjoy it,” he quips back, sticking his tongue at her.

“I do not, shut up!”

Fifteen minutes and fourteen kisses later he’s officially in the lead, sealing his victory with a kiss number fifteen he receives from a cute redhead. He’s gloating in Senne’s bemused face about nobody choosing to slap him when he stops in his tracks.

It’s the proof of his hopeless infatuation that he’d recognize that laugh everywhere.

He looks around for its source, but he comes up short. Then, his eyes focus on the skatepark area and his heart starts beating faster.

Because it feels like a sign. Like the universe is giving him a chance to finally do something. Make a move.

“Hey, can we shoot one more try?” He asks the guys, trying to sound casual while glancing furtively in the direction of brown curls.

“You’ve already won, but I guess?”

Nobody questions him about his reasons, they just follow him to the ramp.

And he’s so fucking nervous. 

It’s incredible, really, how he generally has no problems talking to people he’s interested in, conversation flowing without him even trying, gaining easy smiles and appreciative looks wherever he goes, some natural confidence to him. 

But that boy. That boy is something else.

He makes him question everything he says, makes his palms sweat and makes his deep hidden shyness come onto the surface.

Sander saw him for the first time during Open Day at the Academie in may, strolling casually through the hallway with his friend, completely oblivious to the turmoil he was causing to Sander’s heart.

That was the day Sander saw an angel. 

Fate placed him on his path again sooner than he could’ve hoped, the boy participating in a 2 week film course at his school only several days after he saw him for the first time. And he tried so hard to convince himself to talk to him over that time, but he only managed a few smiles while passing him by in the hallway. 

That and that one stupid joke he said to him while they were waiting in line at the cafeteria that makes him cringe in despair just thinking about it. Seriously, it’s like his entire cool evaporates when he’s near him.

But, the boy laughed at it. So maybe it wasn’t as horrible as Sander is making it to be. Or he was just being nice. 

Robbe. 

Robbe, who he’s been crushing on ever since that fateful day in may.

Robbe, who was at the same party he was last weekend.

Robbe, who he talked to at that party and managed to calm his nerves enough to be charming and funny.

Robbe, who giggled, blushed and bit his lip at Sander’s dumb jokes that evening.

Robbe, who slipped through his fingers because Sander blacked out soon after.

He almost never drinks, but that one night he did, celebrating the beginning of summer break, and not realizing his usual abstinence meant he was now officially a lightweight. What an awful timing.

Robbe doesn’t notice him right away, having his back turned to him while talking animatedly to his friends. Taking a deep breath and plastering a smile to his face to hide his nervousness, he approaches them.

“Hey guys, got a second?”

He notices the recognition in Robbe’s face right away, and Sander shoots him a quiet “hi” when his eyes meet his, an unsure smile blooming on his face.

“Hey, what’s up?” One of the boys nods at the camera.

“I’m Sander, and we’re shooting a video for our YouTube channel, the kiss or slap challenge,” he quickly explains, the boys’ faces lighting up.

“Hey, we have a channel too! I’m Moyo, this is Jens, Aaron, and Robbe.” Moyo reaches out to bump his fist with him and damn, Sander has to find that channel if Robbe is a part of it.

Jens levels him with a look. “So, you want us to kiss you or slap you?” 

“Pretty much, yeah?” Sander chuckles because he’s aware it’s ridiculous, but he’s a man on a mission here, give him a break.

“I think Robbe should represent all of us, don’t you think so?” Moyo proposes, tongue in his cheek as he checks with the rest of his friends. Sander catches the death glare Robbe sends the boy before looking back at him and crossing his arms, looking a bit out of place. And, fuck, the last thing Sander wants is to make him uncomfortable.

So he asks softly, “you’re in?” and waits for agonizing five seconds as Robbe watches him, eyes narrowed, before his features smooth out and he smiles at him.

“Sure, why not.”

Relieved, Sander lets out a chuckle and tries to keep his cool. “Okay then - kiss or slap?”

Robbe squints against the sun and makes him wait another few seconds before he answers, but Sander’s not worried because there’s a soft smile on his face and obviously his angel wouldn’t-

“Slap.”

Wait, what.

He can hear his friends bursting in laughter at this unexpected turn of events while Sander can only stare in shock because how could he miscalculate the situation this much?

Gulping, confused and heartbroken, he asks, “you’re sure?”, to which Robbe nods with a poorly hidden glee.

“But you have to close your eyes cause I can’t hit you while you're looking at me.”

Heaving a deep sigh and trying to save a face despite the humiliation flooding his body, he nods and closes his eyes, steeling himself for it.

But it never comes.

Suddenly, he feels a hand cupping his cheek and he flinches a little, but then soft lips touch his in a kiss so gentle he blinks his eyes open, not knowing what’s happening.

“That was payback for you promising to call me and not keeping your word,” Robbe whispers against his lips before leaning away, something sad and wistful passing through his face. Sander is left completely dumbfounded, ignoring the hollering from the two groups as his eyes fleet all over Robbe’s face.

It’s difficult for him to collect his thoughts because holy fuck, Robbe has just kissed him and he’s internally freaking out. He finally manages to get his bearings when the remnants of a smile slip off Robbe’s lips.

“I-, Robbe, you have no idea how much I wanted to call you, but I don’t have your number.”

“I gave it to you. At the party?” He doesn’t look like he believes a word Sander is saying.

“Um, I kinda blacked out and don’t remember much after like one-ish?”

“You saved it though, I saw you typing it in,” Robbe argues again, but this time he doesn’t look so sure. “Wait, what’s your number?”

Sander watches him entering digit after digit before hitting call. He fully expects a plain number to appear on his screen, eyes widening when he sees what pops up instead.

zk bambieys 🥺🦌👁️💘🧡💖💞 calling

“Fuck, you did give me your number.” He’s not fast enough to hide his screen from Robbe, but he can't even feel embarrassment once he notices the frown disappeared from his face.

“Bambi eyes?” There's a teasing note in his voice, but his pink cheeks sell him out.

Sander scratches his head. "I was very drunk, you can't hold it against me. Also, your eyes are really beautiful," he clarifies, winking when Robbe laughs at his shameless flirting. "Hey, I tried to find you on instagram, but nothing came up. I was really hoping we're gonna bump into each other again. Sorry for being a dumbass and not realizing I had your number this entire time?”

“It’s okay.” Robbe shoves his hand into the pockets of his jeans, swaying on his heels. Sander decides to put them both out of their misery and take the initiative.

“So if I asked you out, would you say yes?”

It looks like Robbe’s about to nod, but then he bites his lip, an almost cheeky smile directed at him. “I guess you have to call me to find out.” And then he gets on his skateboard and casually skates away to the nearest ramp, pulling a surprised laugh out of Sander.

If he was intrigued before, now he’s totally smitten with this wonder of a boy, because damn. 

Their friends finally seem to regain their voices and speak over each other at what just happened, but Sander doesn’t pay them any attention, just takes out his phone again and pressing the call button. 

Watching as Robbe comes to a full stop at the top of the ramp, he cocks his head with a grin and waits until he picks up.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Sander.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Robbe laughs into the speaker.

“Will you go out with me?”

He meets his eyes across the skatepark as Robbe makes him wait again.

Then, with a smile so radiant it overshadows the sun, the boy finally gives him his answer.

“Yes.”

#wtfock #my fics #i think i prefer writing sobbe in canon #i kinda struggle with the AU versions of them #😫

[a-wildemusing]

The Three of Us: Sugar Daddy. 

word count: 1291

genre: fluff, humor?. Kenma x platonic!reader, Kuroo x Platonic!reader. there is a a little time skip and if you squint, it seems like it could be a kenma and y/n might have a thing but its very slight. 

warnings: nothing I can think of. probably any mistakes.  You and Kuroo play fight a couple of times. 

summary: Y/n exhausted from having to go to school, working their part time job, and doing some side gigs. They tell Kuroo and Kenma that a solution to their money problems is to get a sugar daddy. 

a/n: this is part of a series I’m doing, called the Three of Us. Its made up events and adventures with being best friends with Kuroo and Kenma. Very just slice of life kind of stuff.  Hope you enjoy! 

The Three of Us.✨ Masterlist ✨

--

“Okay, but let’s be real. I just have to remind myself that this is all going to be worth it.” You dramatically fall onto Kenna’s bed. Just overall exhausted from school and working your part-time job and doing some side gigs for extra money. 

Trying to save money for university has been a priority for you. The family is probably able to help, and there are many scholarships and financial aid options. All of that was still so worrisome. In addition, you also still had an additional year because you were a second-year student. But you couldn’t help but overthink and stress out.  

A sigh escapes you.  Kuroo leans back from the small table he and Kenma were studying from the floor. 

“Hey, hey. Listen Y/n. Everything is going to be okay... You are doing great so far. Your grades are good and you've been saving up.” 

You smiled at everything Kuroo was saying.

He grinned and added, "Plus, I'm stressing out myself and your stress is making me even more stressed out. So I need you to stop. You are also beginning to get wrinkles. There's one right there." Kuroo teased and poked your face gently. 

Those earlier smiles no longer exist, and you deadpanned. Kenma’s pillow is a weapon you use against Kuroo. And hit him in the back of the head. After a little playfight, you forgot about your worries a little bit. 

Taking a break from studying, Kenma looks at both of you sighing. 

“Y/n. I think you shouldn’t worry too much. You might get sick from all the stress. And I don’t want you getting sick.” Kenma tells you. 

“Awe! See Kuroo. At least Kenma cares about me.” You smile at Kenma. 

“Yeah but it’s only because I don’t want to take care of you if you get sick. You’re dramatic.” You gasped. And throw the pillow at Kenma. He catches it. Kuroo is laughing and you start laughing too. 

“Wow, I feel so attacked right now. I didn’t know it was bully Y/n day today.” You pretend to be offended.  

The three of you laughed together. Stress was long forgotten. Then a thought pops into your head. 

“The answer to my money problems just came to me!” You shouted. As the laughter died down. Kenma and Kuroo both looked at you. "I should find a Sugar Daddy!” Kuroo laughs more fiercely than before, almost cackling. Kenma also laughed, but not as hard. 

“Yeah right! Like anyone would want you as their sugar baby.” Kuroo finally can say. 

“Whatever!” As you play-fight with Kuroo again, you say, "I was joking." 

Kenma looks at his two closest friends, he lightly sighs, shaking his head.  

After the laughter has died down again. There's a comfortable silence among the three of you. While you look through your phone, the other two continue to study. 

Another thought springs into your head. You laughed a little at this.  

“Okay, but listen Kenma just radiates sugar daddy vibes.” 

 “Wait, what about me?” Kuroo said, almost offended.

Kenma turns his gaze to you. Blushing a bit.  

“What do you mean?” Kenma finally speaks. 

“Kuroo. Come on, think about it. I’m pretty sure we will get good jobs and incomes or whatever after high school...But Kenma..” You got off the bed and sat down next to Kuroo. “Just think about it.” 

Kuroo and you looked at each other, then back at Kenma, then at each other again. Then everything becomes clear. 

“Kenma! Please be our sugar daddy!” You and Kuroo shout in unison. Both of you are trying to tease your friend. 

“No,” Kenma deadpans and tries to go back to studying. 

“Oh come on! At least be mine.” You softly nudge Kenma’s leg with your foot. 

Before Kenma could respond. Kuroo and you were messing around again. The night continued until it was time to part ways. Kenma reflected on your words that night.  

*years later after high school*

It’s been a while since you saw Kenma. Kenma was busy with his YouTube videos while you were attending university. He was also getting into other things, but you didn't have the opportunity to ask him about them yet. A majority of the interactions were via text message or brief telephone calls. All three of you tried planning more outings and just spending more time together. Tonight Kenma and you hung out alone. As Kuroo's job required overtime, he was working long hours. Recently he was hired to be part of the Japanese Volleyball Association's Sports Promotion Division. That's why he couldn't make it this time. 

“Kenma, I already told you I could pay. I'll pay." You reached for the check, smiling. Kenma always offered to pay for you and brought you things. All you wanted to do was repay him in a way for all those times. About to grab the check, your hand lingered on it.

“No, I got this. I mean I am your sugar daddy aren’t I?” You felt the heat rushed to your face. 

“Kenma!” You whispered loudly. Glancing at the neighboring tables at the restaurant. Checking if anyone heard him. He took this distraction to move your hand from the check.

Kenma smirked, “What did you forget?” 

You remembered that night when you were both still in high school. Remembering that you asked Kenma to be your sugar daddy. 

“No…” You blushed. 

You and Kenma ended up just splitting the check. After leaving the restaurant, you both stood outside trying to decide what to do next. As you pondered what Kenma said, your mind was cluttered. There was a slight sense of guilt, thinking about all the times Kenma brought things for you and bought snacks and other things for you. There was no one-sidedness to it, you knew. However, you couldn't help but overthink what if it were true. The idea that he was a sugar daddy was a joke. That he should be your sugar daddy was a joke.  

“Do you have room for dessert? I’m kind of craving something sweet.” Kenma says about to start walking. 

You grab his arm. “You know I was joking right?” 

“About what?” He turned and looked at you then it clicked, “Oh. About the sugar daddy thing? It’s no big deal. I don’t mind.” 

“But Kenma…” Your hand slowly slid down from his arm to his hand. Your hand is now lingering close to his hand. Fingers almost touching. “I just-I wasn’t using you or anything like that it was all a joke-

“Y/n.” Kenma cut you off, sensing you overthinking. “I know you were joking. But I still wanted to do those things for you. You are one of my closest friends. I didn’t mind paying for you at times.” 

He continued, “And since you worked so hard since we were kids, and I don't spend much money anyway, I wanted to be a little bit helpful to you. And I didn’t want you to be stressed out about money anymore. And well, like I said before I didn’t want to take care of you if you got sick from the stress.” Kenma smiled at you. 

You smiled back. Kenma interlaces your fingers with his and closes the gap between your hands. Your cheeks blushed. 

“Come on,” Kenma says and walks alongside you. As you walk beside him, you look at him and then forward. 

"But dessert is on me!" You tell him, “Plus, you would have taken care of me either way.”

“Sure.” He says teasingly. You give him a slight bump with your shoulder. 

Kenma laughs slightly, he smiles. Kenma rubs the back of your hand with his thumb, still keeping your hand interlocked with his. Despite your blushing, you remained silent. That's new, you thought.

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