Other fandoms I'm in undercut (or js stuff I've read or watched) :
anime/manga : csm, tshd, jjk, mob psycho 100, sk8, death note, banana fish, demon slayer, takopi no genzai, veil, bsd, kotaro lives alone, hunter x hunter, haikyuu, given, tgswiiwagaa
webtoons/manhwas/manhuas : orv, mdzs, hand jumper, nevermore, not so shoujo love story, marionette, our walk home, tged, the normal duke
games : mouthwashing, bloodmoney, omori, tsp, ddlc, miside, ENA, little misfortune, all of studio investigrave games, bad things, poppy playtime, fnaf, kinito pet, underworld office, manny's, sky colt
tv series/movies : good omens, stranger things, IT, but im a cheerleader, alice in borderland, nimona
webseries : alien stage, lacey's flash games, collinlock16, a regect, the mandela catalogue, the walten files, dhmis, generation loss
[the list goes on and on so uh I can't really put them all here lol]
favourite music artists/bands : will wood, mitski, gigi perez, queen, jack stauber, tv girl, rio romeo, flavour foley
The wildest thing about Ben 10 is that it took until 2005 for someone to have the idea "what if a kid could turn into a bunch of aliens" like this isn't obviously the coolest and most marketable premise for anything ever. Each design is a new toy. A new powerset. Come on.
But to prove that it wasn't a fluke, they continued to have the best ideas for every aspect of it. How does he transform? A cool watch you can also sell as a toy. That watch's name? Omnitrix. Say it. It's so satisfying. How many aliens? Ten. Nice round number. The kid's name? Ben. The show's name? Ben Ten. His full name is Benjamin Tennyson, a normal, plausible name, but he also turns into 10 aliens.
Bigger brands dream about this synergy. Better writers would kill for this coherence. So holistic. So intuitive. The identity alone!!! The retro alien sound motif? Chilling. The green? Any other color would be wrong. The kirby krackle pattern? It seems so obvious in retrospect. The roadtrip format? Genius. Lesser writers would've done the spider-man high school thing. His arch nemesis being Cthulhu darth vader? Inspired, iconic, intimidating!
The execution has its highs and lows, but the idea??? Game changing. So self-evident that it seems inevitable. If Ben 10 didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
I’ve seen like three pieces of fanart where Rocky somehow gets connection to earth and finds out Grace is in the tumblr Sexyman contest and has no idea what that is or what that means and asks Grace, but I’ve yet to see anything of Grace explaining it to him and I’m now imagining a fic where Rocky finds out about the tumblr Sexyman contest and that his human made the contest and Grace has to explain everything
scene from a regect season 2 episode 5: how the shadow is clear
personal ramblings below the cut
(NOT) fun fact i'm uploading this from camping. like sleeping in a tent camping. and it's been snowing for 3 days straight.. SOS SOS SOS im going to DIE (joke)
im going to draw ze with my problems as soon as i get back to my drawing tablet its the only way to amend this tragedy
aroace grace is so important to me because yes, he experiences all of the things that make being aroace feel so isolating, but more importantly, these feelings and these experiences are actively used against him.
it is specifically his lack of relationship that gives stratt the ability to whisk him away to work on the hail mary. in every aspect of his life he is seen as replaceable.
take him out of his classroom. there are other teachers. put him in a hazmat suit and see if astrophage kills him. there are other biologists. fly him to a military base to work. there's no one wondering where he is. (not even a dog.)
it's a critical part of his story that his life is perceived as lonely, as sad, and that its not a problem to uproot him, solely because there's no one waiting for him at home. stratt knows this, knows the optics of it, and knows that it makes him a better candidate than anyone else.
so little consideration is given to grace's life by anyone - he barely even considers it himself until it's too late. and that's so real, so important, because i promise you every aroace person in your life knows how it feels to be dehumanized, and seen as less-than, to be seen as disposable, because you want to live your life a different way. because every single one of us would have fought stratt tooth and nail to not go up on that ship and we all would have lost.
grace's life was different, but it was still worth living, still worth enjoying, and worth loving. because he did love his life - he loved it enough to leave it, even if no one understood what it meant. even if they used it against him, in the end. he loved his life and he deserved to live it how he wanted. but he didn't get to, because no one saw his life as something worth sticking around for.
