#[ i know this may seem so... well; not creative of an opinion. but i can't quite describe it. i know it's been said before but... ]

[yuelun]

As I'm finally writing more, I needed to just note how much I love Guizhong of Liyue, again.

I cannot describe how much it thrills me to my very core to write a character that is so otherworldly and divine, but is so absolutely humanly curious about seriously everything and honestly, even the little, trivial things that one would think don't matter. And it's the latter that gives me such serotonin to write, to witness in these mental images in my head.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

To clarify,I don't believe in porn makes you evil and I don't believe in like fantasies are evil. I'm pulling this quote off Scarleteen "“If we aren’t both careful and creative we can get stuck in fantasies that don’t mature and politicize with us."" I'm also new to being about to vote, so I'm trying to be careful about what I consume and what stereotypes media perpetuate. Like I'm not moralizing about kink or anything, and my ask was how can I get aroused with media wo my kinks or wo media

hi anon, welcome back! I'm genuinely very glad to hear some follow up.

for anybody who doesn't stay vigorously up to date with all of my anons, this ask is a continuation of this one.

so I went and checked out the Scarleteen articles you mentioned in your first message, or at least I tried to. How to Approach Sexual Fantasies and Desire on Your Own Terms is here, and while I couldn't find anything with the exact title 50 Shades of Abuse, we do have 50 Shades of BS - How to Tell the Difference Between Kink and Abuse as well as 50 Shades Crappier: On Selling Abuse for Valentine's Day, both of which cover how the 50 Shades series isn't a great model of real, responsibly-practiced BDSM.

now, here's what I didn't see in any of these articles: an assertion that anybody needs to, as you've decided to do, avoid any work that depicts anything less than perfectly healthy sexual practices.

the closest we get to that is the quote by adrienne maree brown from How to Approach Sexual Fantasies, which you mention above. now, here's the thing: first of all, I actually disagree pretty substantially with brown's assertions that one's sexual fantasies need to "politicize." I know what my politics are; the fiction that I enjoy can't change that, because I don't have the moral backbone of a chocolate eclair. I actually just talked about that earlier today in another ask.

(also, and this may be an unpopular opinion, but adrienne maree brown is kind of a dork who doesn't really say much of anything in Pleasure Activism that Audre Lorde didn't already say better and more succinctly, and I personally lost interest in Pleasure Activism pretty much the moment she casually dropped that she practices reiki healing because that's a pseudoscientific alternative medicine that doesn't do shit or fuck. but I digress.)

listen, I'm not trying to peer pressure or bully you into watching anything you don't want to watch. your porn consumption is up to you. but what you're doing here is absolutely moralizing, I think maybe because of an underlying assumption that media that involves sex is just, like, innately different than any other type of media, which is in itself an idea that stems from sex negativity!

I don't know, let's just try to play out a little thought exercise here. like, would you consider it reasonable if somebody told you that they've decided not to read or watch anything that depicts problematic behavior because they don't want to normalize it. like, first of all, they're never watching anything but Bluey again. except actually not even Bluey because I just remembered about Bluey in the genocide, which actually makes for a great illustration of how nonsensical and impossible it is to try to only engage with media that is 100% ideologically pure.

and again: that's fine! that's literally fine! it is 100% okay to watch or read or play things with morals that don't totally 100% align with yours. it's okay to enjoy them, even. it's a lot healthier than trying to avoid upsetting or incongruous things entirely, because that gives you the chance to actually think about it rather than trying to shut it out entirely! that article actually provides an entire list of questions you can run through with yourself to critically analyze the things you watch if you feel so inclined! that's a much better skill to practice than avoidance!

I get that when you're new to sex, as you said in the previous ask, this might seem daunting, but your brain isn't just a sponge that will uncritically soak up and adopt anything you expose it to. you very clearly have the ability to research, differentiate between fiction and real life, and form your own opinions! and it is absolutely fine if you want to just watch porn with your kinks!

like, listen, I see what the question is, and the easiest answer is just. do whatever gets you off.

[cafeinthemoon]

It's a Fire - Chapter I

Chapter 1

Wordcount 3,5k

Title Retired Hashira

Fandom Kimetsu no Yaiba / Demon Slayer

Symbols ⭕ ➕ 🖤

Warnings: arranged marriage; age gap; mentions of increasing in criminality and poverty; grieving; non diagnosed depression (the condition wasn't properly understood by the time this story is settled)

Tagging ? (If you want to be tagged in any of my stories, just leave a comment on this chapter or send an ask or a message)

N.A.: So Kimetsu no Yaiba returned and I'm taking the opportunity to finally start posting this story that has been in my list of ideas for several months!

A while ago I made a poll where I included the option of writing a fic with the Rengoku family, and it was this one I was talking about. I know there are other stories I need to work on already, but let me tell you that this very fic just saved me from a creative block, which was caused by what I suspect to be the beginning of a burnout (I'm about to go on vacation and I just can't take it anymore, but I don't want to discuss this rn).

A few words about the ff itself: It's a slow burn, arranged marriage story between reader, who's 27/28 yo, which makes her closer to myself who's a bit older than this, and Shinjuro Rengoku, who's struggling with the same problems we see in canon, but somehow accepts her as his wife: she was the daughter of old acquaintances of his, so the marital contract is sealed to allegedly honor the friendship between the families. However, things are way more complicated in reality.

Of course, because of the things we see in the original media, such as violence, alcoholism and etc., I need to make it clear that my personal opinions on these subjects may diverge from what I'm putting in this story (due to personal family experiences), and each chapter will carry the necessary warnings. Also if you notice similarities with Beauty and the Beast, know that it isn't just a coincidence haha Finally, the title is a song by Portishead, which didn't influence my writing but its lyrics somehow fit this plot 🌹

I hope you have a good time reading this ❤

“You walk a lonely road 

Oh, how far you are from home” 

(Enya, May it Be) 

That fate didn’t care about your preferences and desires, you knew well. 

You wished you had your mother with you for long years, and that your relationship grew stronger as you spent your time together, dedicating yourselves to the art of the sword, but most of her time and energy were directed to her work as a member of the Demon Slayer Corps, and it was like this until the day you received a messenger from Ubuyashiki-sama to inform you about her death: she didn’t fall to the Oni, but couldn’t resist the injuries from a battle against a group of them. 

You also wished your father, after losing the woman he claimed to love, stood up to his remaining family, that is, himself and you, and took reasonable measures to protect his territory and the people who lived in it, but he preferred to lock himself in his office and ignore the demands outside it, firing half of the house’s servants for the sake of saving money and willing to leave the property to the dust and the insects, not seeing this happening thanks to you, who took the task of maintaining everything by yourself, even doing some of the physical work. 

There were, in fact, many other things you wished for, but didn’t have the chance to see them coming true. One of those other things were continuing to live in the house you grew up in, and using your education to dedicate your life to a career of your choice, though your options seemed limited by your sex. But even this was taken from you when, on an ordinary day, you saw your father leaving his office in the company of a man you’ve never seen in your life. You wanted to question him about this strange visit, but you didn’t have to: your father came to your chambers later, and without measuring his tone or giving you time to process such news, explained the meeting’s main subject. 

– I’ve recently contacted an old acquaintance of mine, someone who was also known by your mother – he started – And explained our situation here. 

You knew what he was talking about: after your mother passed away, your lands’ protection has been neglected, and appearances of demons have been reported more often by your servants and the people who live in the villages near. No one dared leaving their houses at night, and the local economy were deeply affected by this, since part of the basic work used to be done in this period of the day; this led to an increase in poverty and criminality. You, on your part, weren’t immune to these difficulties despite growing up in a privileged family. 

Your father addressing this situation to you, however, was something new, and you exposed this impression to him. 

– Things are getting harder for everyone here, that’s true – you agreed – But why are you discussing this with me now? 

– Because I asked this acquaintance for help, and he answered me – he took slow steps toward your window, half opened by that time; he closed it with firm hands, but without making much noise – The thing is that, at the same time our lands are now dangerous to people, specially to young women like you, it’s time for you to take the next big step in your personal life, daughter. After all, you’re almost twenty-eight. 

You frowned. 

Next big step? What is he talking about?… 

Your father might have noticed your confusion, because he soon clarified his words… and you wished he never did it. 

– I’m talking about marriage, y/n – he spat – You declined the last two proposals, and I respect your reasons for that, but this time the circumstances aren’t in our favor. This man who visited me earlier is a messenger from the Rengoku House, and he brought me a positive answer from their head: I offered your hand and a good dowry in exchange for your protection, and in respect to your mother, who worked for the same cause as him, Shinjuro Rengoku accepted you as his wife. You’re leaving the house this week. 

You were speechless. You tried to stand up and show a sign of protest, but your legs didn’t obey you; you opened your mouth to say something, but no word left it. You knew your father have been struggling, but you could never suppose he was becoming insane – arranging a marriage for you without your consent? Other men used to do this to their daughters, but the man who married your mother would never… But, apparently, he was no longer this man. 

Maybe he was expecting some disagreement, but seeing your silence made him frown. 

– Don’t you have anything to say about this? 

You finally seemed to wake up. You gave him a dead glare, murmuring your response. 

– And what do you expect a woman to say after being sold and sent away from her own house out of nowhere? – you moved your head to the side, irony leaking from the gesture – Thank you? 

Your father clenched his jaw. 

– I certainly don’t expect your gratitude – his voice was lower now – I know this isn’t the future you wanted for yourself, and I didn’t want things to be like this either, but… 

– Why marriage, father? – your tongue was released, interrupting his thread of thoughts like a storm – I could stay temporarily with them, work for them, anything! But marrying someone I’ve never met?! Don’t you remember that I’ve declined the other proposals after at least seeing the faces of those men? 

– You’ll meet him on the wedding day, and you’ll have all the time of the world to know anything there is to know about him – his tone was louder again, as his patience was running low – Besides, Shinjuro is an old friend of mine. I give you my word that he’s a decent man, besides being a formidable warrior. He was married to a respectable woman once, and built a good family with her. I trust him, and so did your mother. No problems should be expected from his part, so the same must be expected from you. 

Shinjuro. It was only the second time you’ve heard that name from your father’s mouth, and you didn’t know what to think. In fact, you’ve learned from your mother that among the Demon Slayer Corps there was an elite group known as the Hashira, and one of them was Shinjuro, the Hashira of the Flames. He was the current head of the Rengoku family, but personal struggles – including the death of his wife – forced him to a retirement despite his capacity as a warrior, so that his eldest son, Kyojuro, took his place. However, you also heard that this young man was dead, so it was impossible to tell how things were going for his family members now. And that was the environment your father was willing to throw you into, even spending money in the process. 

You sighed. 

– Father, when was the last time you’ve met this man? I don’t remember you talking about him – you crossed your arms – I’m only familiar with his name thanks to mother, but now you’re telling me that he’s an old friend of yours. How old is he, exactly? 

– Not as old as me, of course – his reply came with a mixture of embarrassment and indignation – I can’t believe that, of all the things involved in this arrangement, this is what concerns you more! 

You scoffed. 

– I’m not that futile, but if he’s old enough to have a son capable of replacing him in the battlefield, I think I have the right to be concerned! – you took a step toward him – If I have no choice, I want to know exactly where I’m getting into. Can’t you even make such a small concession to me, father? 

No, he couldn’t, and you soon realized that. 

Your father decided the conversation was over. He returned to the room’s door and opened it. 

– It is decided, already – and, with a sort of sadness in his eyes – I’m doing what I think it’s best for my daughter. I only wanted her to trust me, at least for once. 

You swallowed the lump in your throat. 

– I wanted this too, father. But you’re making it too difficult for your daughter. 

He stared at you for a moment, then left without any word. 

*** 

Things really happened the way you feared, in the path your father stated they would follow. He said that, but until the end he kept acting like he had no control over the flow of events, in a frail attempt to soothe his own conscience that only served to unnerve you, and not even seeing the disappointment in his daughter’s eyes each time he looked at you was enough for him to leave this pretense aside. Had he no shame anymore? 

During that fateful week, you avoided his company, leaving the burden of communication to the remaining servants and only speaking to him when utterly necessary. What was left for you to talk about when, as he said, everything was decided, and when you had nothing but sadness for him — for him, the adversities he’s been through and for the way he chose to behave in face of them? It was useless to argue on this, and whether you liked it or not, you had little time to put everything in order and couldn’t have the luxury of wasting it: would it be worthy to cause a delay in the arrangements under the risk of leaving a bad impression in your future spouse, even when he was someone you’ve never saw before? 

You sighed at the thought. 

And, as if I hadn’t enough things to worry about, I still have to consider this. 

In fact, you didn’t want to take much stuff from that house with you at the same time you didn’t want to cause any difficulties to the servants, who have already seen their load increase the last months, so you were quick to select essential items and packing them with the help of a maid, from your clothes to the gifts brought by your mother, and instruct her about what to do with the other things: some of them you gave to her, knowing that she had a daughter who was younger than you and who’d appreciate your charity, and the others, such as the furniture, should be sent to the villagers, for you wanted your things to be with people who would make good use of them instead of letting them rot in a place to where you’d never come back. 

Among all of this, the last object you packed was the only thing you made a point about carrying by yourself, and the only thing you didn’t trust anyone to pack but yourself: the sword of your mother, which was sent to your house by Ubuyashiki-sama and now belonged to you. Your mother has been teaching you lessons since you were a teenager, but she hasn’t lived long enough to see if you were going to develop your own Breath; well, until that day you haven’t, but you’ve never stopped practicing even under your father’s disapproval. You didn’t know what you would find once you stepped into your husband’s house, but you wouldn’t want to depend on his protection on everything; besides, having a wife who knew how to wield a sword must be an advantage, right? 

The train of thoughts, feelings and concerns was such that you were robbed from sleep the night before the ceremony. You knew women who had their marriages arranged as well, but you never got to talk to them about it; you had no idea of how you were supposed to feel, or how you were supposed to see the whole thing. How one should feel when they saw themselves trapped in a situation from which they couldn’t get out? Without having answers, you just relied on the feeling that seemed reasonable to you, that is, utter fear. 

The next morning came silent and inexorable, just as the ones before it, and you saw yourself leaving your bed and taking care of your duties without putting your thoughts on them. It was only your body working by itself, saving your soul from the burden of being conscious, or perhaps you were just accepting your fate after a night of tears and rage. 

Having dismissed the maid’s help, you bathed and dressed alone, and left the house where the most important moments of your life took place without one last look. To be fair, your eyes were so sore and tired that they barely registered the appearance of the weather while you walked to the carriage, but you guessed it was a warm, sunny day, though not enough for you to get sweaty. Your father was already in the carriage’s interior; you took the seat beside him with no signs of acknowledging his presence. 

The coachman shook the reins and yelled something to the horse, and the crack of the wooden wheels was heard as the vehicle moved along the road. 

*** 

The ceremony took place in a building in the city of (…), near your father’s property, which served as the head office of a group of law professionals, including the man responsible for your marital contract. 

You wouldn’t call it a ceremony, really: it was more of a sequence of bureaucratic procedures than a social event with the purpose of uniting two families; a mere formality to allow you to move to a man’s house without ruining your reputation. It was quick, direct and cold like a financial operation, and the people involved seemed to make sure it looked like this. 

Your father led you to a sequence of stairs and then through a narrow corridor, until he stopped in front of a door and opened it, entering the room and inciting you to follow him. You did it, and found out you weren’t the first to arrive: the officiant was already in his position, behind a table upon which you saw an open book; at its right, there was a small inkwell and a feather; around him, two officers which function you couldn’t guess and couldn’t care about. And, finally, in front of the table and observing your arrival with a stern glare, the man who was about to become your husband. 

Whatever you were expecting to see, Shinjuro was nothing like you might have imagined, except for the fact that he was younger than you supposed – and, indeed, younger than your father – and stole the attentions among all those men despite the quiet, composed manners. Well, he would do it in any place he’d step in, for his appearance was extravagant, to say the least: on his severe face he carried a pair of orange eyes under two thick, black eyebrows, a wild trait that made you think of a lion; framing his expression and matching his eyes, he had thick, blond hair that decreased to red on its edges, spreading over his shoulders. And, as if his looks weren’t enough to draw the whole room’s attention, he was dressed in sober, dark clothing, more like someone attending a western funeral than a wedding. 

As you walked to the center of the room, led by your father, and took the spot beside Shinjuro, you felt your skin burning in discomfort under his merciless eyes. You breathed deep and, when he nodded to acknowledge you two, you made an effort to greet him, as well as the other men. 

I knew he wasn’t the same person my father claimed to know. He stated that he was good and trustful, but everything in this man screams danger. What kind of hell I’m getting into… 

The officiant announced the beginning of the ceremony, and you turned to him in silence. After a few, composed words to the new couple, he gave you both clear instructions on where to sign your names, and you did as he said, Shinjuro first, then you; you glanced at his hand offering you the feather and took it in a second, taking care your hand didn’t touch his. You tried not to think of your gestures as you wetted its tip on the ink, but a tremble reached your wrist the instant you approached the feather from the paper. 

So… That’s it. I write my name in a book and enter a path from where I can’t go back. 

The realization was too much to bear and time was passing, so you bit your inner cheek to prevent your mind to entertain the thought and scribbled your name at once. When you moved the feather away and put it back on the inkwell, your hand acted by itself, and your arm gone numb once you recoiled it to your side. 

Your mouth was dry, and a hole seemed to have taken the place of your heart. You barely noticed when the officiant and the other witnesses analyzed your signatures and approved them, bringing the ceremony to an end. You refused to believe all of that was real until the man announced you were free to go, and both Shinjuro and you turned away, preparing to leave. He didn’t bat an eye at you while doing so. 

The head of the Rengoku family stopped to exchange some words with your father. You were close enough to hear the conversation, but didn’t want to pay attention; you just wanted to leave this place, even though you weren’t going to a familiar one after it. 

You only understood their conversation was over when you heard your father’s voice calling your name. You turned to him and your stomach curled in disgust when you saw the pleading smile on his face, the only thing that reminded you of home and now a sign of everything you lost. You’ve never felt so alone. 

Later, you’d try to remember his exact words for you at that moment, but you’d find yourself unable to do it. Maybe it was a formal wish of good luck or something. The only thing you remembered was your reaction: you stared at him for a few seconds, then, without a word, you turned your face away, walking toward the door. You knew your husband was observing, but his approval was the least of your preoccupations now. 

*** 

Little was recalled by you from the travel to the Rengoku house, except that it was silent, even calm period. The only abnormality was caused by you: unlike your other belongings, who were sent in another vehicle ahead under the supervision of a servant, you decided you were going to carried your sword with you in the carriage, to everyone’s surprise and your father’s discontentment. 

That occasion was also when Shinjuro spoke to you for the first time. 

— Why are you doing this? 

The question, made when you were already in the carriage, was direct but not devoid of politeness, so you granted him an honest answer. 

— This sword once belonged to my mother, and now it is mine. If my father had his way, I’d never carry it with me, but I refuse to leave it behind — and, glancing at him, — I couldn’t risk him checking my things and subtracting it from them without my consent. 

Shinjuro only murmured an “I see” in response, and the conversation died there. 

You were beside the carriage’s window and might have slept to the warmth of the sun and the constant noise of the wheels in movement, but you weren’t sure if you did. As your body was now avoiding visible reactions, your spirit was suppressing the emotional rush for your own good, since no advantage would come from a breakdown in the middle of the road, right in front of your new spouse who, just like you, didn’t seem all pleased with the whole thing: sure, he didn’t show visible discontentment whether with your appearance or your manners, but you’ve been dealing with middle aged men for too long to sense when they were seeing something they didn’t find appropriate; and, in the present case, it was clear to you that Shinjuro already formed his opinion: to him, you were a stubborn, spoiled brat who didn’t have her way and was decided to make it everyone else’s problem. Yes, the idea of acting like that wandered through your mind for a while, but you thought you were better than this, and opted for a balance between bitterness and decency, not wearing plain clothing and displaying rude manners, but also not being extravagant in anything; still, you couldn’t convince the man of your good nature, and he let it clear with the inquiring about the sword, so now you completely gave up on seeking his favor. 

You were just waiting for the travel to end. 

Chapter 2

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

What do you think about opinions that Chloe’s development was ruined in season 3 finale because Thomas didn’t like that viewers like her more than Marinette? I Don’t think that it’s true, but it gave me idea that Thomas ruined Chloe’s already few character development because viewers liked her more than Gabriel.

I've heard this theory before and it seems like a massive stretch to me. It's always possible, but I don't feel comfortable making accusations like this without some hard evidence and I've yet to see any, though it's not like I follow this guy on Twitter or anything. My knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes is all based on random things that make their way to my Tumblr feed. So if someone has hard evidence, feel free to reblog and add it, but the most likely explanation is just bad writing. Why ascribe malice when incompetence makes just as much sense and requires a lot less motivation?

Think about what this accusation is actually saying. It's claiming that an adult man willfully ruined a major element of his passion project (or even just the show that he's known for, meaning that it will define his future career) because he was salty that people liked a character that he created. That seems like a conspiracy theory take to me.

It's also not like Thomas has full creative control of the show! Head writers have power, but they rarely have total power. They're still employees and a ton of things happen between an episode being written and the final version being aired. Producers, directors, censors, and many others usually okay a script prior to an episode being animated because that's the most expensive element. Plus it's not like he's the only one who wrote Chloe's story. Every season two and season three episode is credited to multiple writers. In other words, it seems like multiple people signed off on Chloe's story.

There's also the issue of the air dates. Queen Wasp and Miracle Queen first aired about twelve months apart (October 6 2018 vs October 15 2019). Production times for animated TV shows are about that long, which would mean that Miracle Queen was probably being written or was even already set in stone around the time that Queen Wasp aired. In other worlds, every element of Chloe's journey was probably at least sketched out before the audience ever saw it start. That would mean that nothing in that story was reactionary. It just doesn't fit the timeline.

While Chloe's season three ending was a total mess, it was hardly out of nowhere. It was glaringly obvious that Chloe couldn't stay Queen Bee from the moment that we met Queen Bee. You can't willfully out yourself to the world and expect to stay a hero (or, at least, that shouldn't be a thing Felix). I was honestly baffled when they gave her back the bee in Malediktator and relieved when Marinette finally acknowledged the problem in Miraculer:

Ladybug: I'm sorry, Chloé. I should've told you this a long time ago. I might never be able to let you be Queen Bee again.

Which was, of course, the setup for Miracle Queen, further complicating this theory because it looks like less than a year passed between the world premieres of Queen Wasp and Miraculer (October 6 2018 vs May 15 2019).

I don't know if this made it to your Tumblr feed, but the Miraculous writing team announced that the writing for season six was done back in late March. The show won't air until sometime this winter, well over half a year later, because that's just how animation works and they've supposedly done things to make the animation process faster this season. I just don't see how this Chloe theory works or why it needs to be a thing when her bad writing falls perfectly in line with things like the absolute disaster that was season five. She wasn't a fluke, she was a warning of things to come.

As best I can tell, the entire Queen Bee plot was just an incredibly awkward and forced way to show how dangerous identity reveals were. Which isn't a bad plot to have, but don't do that plot and then let a bunch of other temp heroes keep their miraculous post reveal! Writers, what are you even doing?

If you want my best guess answer to that, then I don't think that the writers planned to make their story feel massively hypocritical. I think that they just did a dumb writing mistake that I've seen multiple shows do: they wrote a really cool cliffhanger ending without planning how to make that ending work in the following season. And there was no way to really make the ending work, so they end up just kind of ignoring it.

The reason why this happens is pretty simple. Most shows try to end their seasons on cliffhangers so that fans will come back for the next season. It's extremely rare to have a solid happy ending that ties everything together. This can lead to writers making questionable calls because they're pressed for time and have to come up with something that will keep the fans wanting more even if that thing makes no sense. It can also lead to writers making questionable calls because they DO have a plan for how the cliffhanger will play out, but when it comes time to actually put that plan into action, it gets shut down and now they have to scramble to make the nonsense work.

Anyway, what I'm really trying to say is that, as much as I like the concept of a redeemed Chloe joining the team, it was pretty clearly never going to happen in canon. The writing only backed that read for a brief moment at the start of season two where we got a handful of episodes that made Chloe feel less like a cookie-cutter mean girl and more like a true character, but then the Chloe plot really got going and I was just waiting for the inevitable fiery end. I actually thought that Chloe was going to be treated as a tragic character and become a true villain in season four. Instead we got utter nonsense that tossed her character all over the place to the point where I have no idea what they're even trying to do with her.

[httyddragonfox]

Leola's Autism

it was confirmed that Leola was autistic. Autism is a spectrum, and seeing as autism is prevalent around me, I'm going to attempt to analyze hers.

My brother is autistic, but also has a learning disability. Meanwhile, I may be atypical autistic. I've also been to autism walks.

My brother likes to jump in place and kick out his legs at times. I stim on what's in my pockets (a smooth button, and a ball of colorful thread) and occasionally I flap 1 of my hands.

Autism you like to fixate on something, my brother it's large animals, for me it's storytelling.

We are both sensitive to loud (in my case also sharp) noises. My brother would occasionally sort beads, movies, his Figurines, etc. When I was younger I arranged all the picture books in front of me, to see and feel them all, I also sorted my fake food into groups, my lego into colors, my barbie objects into groups.

Details need to be exact, my brother (thanks to his learning disability) a fact is a fact, an opinion is an opinion, and it never changes. For me, things have to be done a certain way. If someone gets a detail wrong for something I like I get upset, and if something isn't done how I usually do it I get irritated (applying to protocols at work).

There's also when we get overwhelmed. I have an anxiety disorder, so normally when I'm very stressed I can't breathe and I clench up. My brother when gets frustrated or stressed he folds his ear. I feel calm when i muffle my ears.

There's a difference between high and low functioning autism, as well as male and female autism. I'm high functioning, but my brother has a learning disability. I've seen lower functioning autistics who can hardly talk, and higher functioning ones who choose not to.

I'm sensitive to certain things touching my skin, and I'm not sure about my brother. I don't like jewelry at all, meanwhile my brother seems to not like tight clothes or hair on his limbs. He prefers sandals, but wears boots when he feels he should.

That's all I know about Autism. There's Leola...

She had many friends, which is not easy for autistic people to forge bonds. However, she is female autistic, and they are more in tuned with their right brains (feelings and creativity), hence why my focus is storytellingand my cousin's is art. Girls are prone to be more emotional beings, so that might explain why she is so loving and accepting.

My brother only takes hugs because he was conditioned to be okay with them, meanwhile I love hugs. Which is probably why Leola sought physical comfort.

If I had to guess, Leola is a standard autistic, not atypical. She was also feminine autistic, so she's not closed off. Her focus maybe was on the stones of magic. When it comes to what we fixate on, we tell everyone we can about it. My brother loves spouting facts on large animals, I love sharing knowledge of stories as well as my own with others, so if her focus was the primal stones and how they connect to magic, of course she'd share it with humans. She'd want to share it with everyone.

[raccoonfallsharder]

There’s been a few rumours that the Russos (and one of the writers from Infinity War/Endgame) may be coming back for Avengers 5/6! I’m curious about what those movies will be like, because they’re going to be even MORE crowded with a gazillion characters. 😅

And particularly, I wonder what the role of the Guardians is even gonna be in them… or at least Star-Lord, if no one actually has any plans to bring them back — which seems to be the most likely outcome. Personally, I wouldn’t actually mind too much if the new Guardians were brought back to join the final battle or something like that. It might be nice as a last hurrah for Rocket, maybe!

But what do you think? I know your opinions on those movies, so… I know what you have to say will be very interesting. 😁

oooooh boy. this just unlocked a whole bunch of competing thoughts in my head. i hope i can make sense of them enough to type them up.

here's the thing. i don't trust the russos or the IW/E writers but i am a person who (1) believes that people can grow and become better at damn near anything they want to, and (2) i am happy to be wrong. maybe the russos and whichever writer who is coming on board will have taken good lessons from the last five years since endgame (five years holy shit) and they'll come out stronger, better, more respectful storytellers. maybe they'll listen to other, better, more respectful storytellers on the team. hell, maybe disney will even let them be better (disney properties seem to be at their best when the mouse is least invested in controlling its indentured creatives). and of course, quality and effective storytelling won't only be on the shoulders of the russos et al. it will also be on the people who are working on the adjacent, intervening movies, and whether they are capable of and permitted to create compelling narratives and fully-developed characters along the way.

now, another thing i think will be tricky is if they choose to do another massive ensemble-battle (like the final endgame fight). i'm just not sure almost anything they can do will be actually satisfying to anyone who identifies with the characters who aren't the main focus. the reason that so-called "girl-power" moment in endgame was so fucken dissatisfying for so many of us was because it was unearned. condescending. you can't choose to feature so few of these women in the course of the whole movie, kill the only one of them with more than like three lines, and then throw every woman left alive into thirty seconds of battle choreography and think that your target-audience will see that as anything but patronizing. if the russos go for that level of sprawling battle-pageantry, that's what will happen, on some level. we just can't pay attention to every character the way they truly deserve when the cast is that massive.

and... i imagine this is exactly how the guardians would feature, if they aren't picked up by anyone in the meantime: one second of screentime in the background of a big fight, maybe with rocket's signature word as his new team advances to ultimately be lost in the ranks. or a singular star-lord, fighting on the side of the new avengers.

now, i'll let you in on a little and possibly controversial secret: i don't need more of rocket in the mcu. i think the mcu might fuck up a beautiful story. if they were to bring him back - unless it were a complete alternate timeline like a new cartoon - i almost think it would need to be a wholly different genre. here are the best ways i think disney could bring "mcu" rocket back:

fuck copaganda but brooklyn-99 had a distinctly guardians vibe in terms of a bunch of well-meaning dysfunctional idiots coming together under extremely exhausted but HIGHLY effective leadership. we could take this ride through space in a star-trek-esque adventure-of-the-week approach or base it in knowhere so we can really see what it looks like to be a guardian in that community, and meet some of the characters like xlomo smeth, ssssaralami, hoobtoe, the broker, HOWARD, etc.

mst3k but it's like, movie night on knowhere. they project some disney movie on the side of one of the bone-buildings and rocket and groot are always making commentary. but they're not the only ones. nebula's there, and for kid-appropriate movies drax and the kids are too. sometimes howard comes along and he and rocket get drunk and compete to be the harshest critic. adam tries to crack jokes sometimes but he's bad at it.

nebula and rocket during the snap. IN SPACE. mostly. i'll accept occasional visits to terra check in on thor. i suspect we see a lot of kraglin on the third quadrant and maybe spend some time helping with reconstruction in knowhere.

a super-ironic self-aware parody of some old sitcom like full house. i'm open to rocket being the father-figure and the new guardians being the chaotic fam, but i'd also be open to it focusing on the star children, calling it "drax the dad," and having rocket be the uncle-jesse-character. which brings me to my last option, which is

actually center the show around a singular someone else, like adam or phylla, and have rocket occasionally make an appearance as an important background character: a father-figure, a mentor, a captain, a guide, a beloved pain-in-the-ass. occasional conversations over the comms where he's like "are you eating enough? are you cleaning your cannons like i taught you? you still closing your eyes when you squeeze the trigger 'cause i told you to stop fuckin doing that. when are you coming home? nebula misses you and your brother is driving me fuckin crazy"

i do think there are other things that good writers could make work but these are the ones my heart rests on because i just don't trust disney/marvel very easily these days

WHICH IS ALL TO SAY

of course i'm gonna watch whatever disney/marvel puts out into theatres and/or on disney+, especially if the guardians are in it. and especially if my guy is in it.

but i'm also fully expecting to have my heart broken. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

as i said, i'm a person who is happy to be wrong.

[roseaceae]

and i won't forget to put roses on your grave

 ִֶָ ᯽ .ﾟ https.inthefieldofanemones.com is the debut mini album of south korean boy band BLUE ROSE.﹙02.13.16﹚

released in the bruising winter of FEBRUARY 2016, the debut album ‘IN THE FIELD OF ANEMONES’ seems to function as more of a return than the debut of a group consisting of well unknown people. the countless creative decisions and specifically designed structure made most question if this album was originally recorded for someone else, how does a group just debut with this? extensive electric guitars and all. true to the spirit which would become synonymous of the group, the album is a look on the feeling of melancholy in all of it's truest forms, a piece of work detailing the cruelties of toxic love, and how, life doesn't always work out the way we may want it to.

though not a smash hit in it's original days, often blasted for ‘trying so hard to be different’, it was clear from the get go that the album was something truly special, a combined collection of five tracks that completely encapsulated how it felt to get kicked down. the album had quite the resurgence in 2018 after each individual track abruptly went viral in their own right, skyrocketing the sales from their previous five hundred fifty thousand to one million. it's safe to say, even if the album didn't exactly fly when it was released, it's remembered as an arguably great piece of music.

 ִֶָ ᯽ .ﾟ . . STATS !

RELEASE DATE 02 / 13 / 16 PROMOTIONAL PERIOD 3 WEEKS UNITS SOLD 1M WINS 1

 ִֶָ ᯽ .ﾟ . . THE TRACKS !

FLOWER ROCK WRITTEN. 梅沢謙三 & 나해일 PROD. 梅沢謙三 & 나해일 WITHERED WRITTEN. 향나무 PROD. 나해일 BLUEMING WRITTEN. 케레스 PROD. 梅沢謙三 & 케레스 A MONSTER WRITTEN. 파란 장미 PROD. 梅沢謙三 & 나해일 REI WRITTEN. 梅沢謙三 & 나해일 PROD. 梅沢謙三 & 나해일

 ִֶָ ᯽ .ﾟ . . the general consensus of the public is that this album is a four (.5) out of five

 ִֶָ ᯽ .ﾟ 𖦹 insight from an anonymous user 021716

‘IN THE FIELD OF ANEMONES’ is a sure fire debut album, an unprecedented identity usually not seen in newly debuted groups.. or bands i suppose you could call them. the album is a weird mixture, because in the never ending winter depression, that's exactly what this album delivers? it's a strange way of expressing “i fucking hate everything” through catchy electric guitar tunes and insanely well shot notes. i'm not sure that the groups exact goal was to attempt relatability through their constant complaints regarding life and everything about it, but if it was, sign me up, it's not something i even knew i needed, but now that it's around, i simply can't stop listening to it.

the opening track, which also happens to be the title ‘FLOWER ROCK’ is so fucking insane i had to check a few times if this was actually a kpop album or not. this song, along with two others on the album, was written and produced by the strangest duo to come out of the second generation of beloved boy groups KENZO & CZR, but even with their questionable friendship that includes the strange ways they refer to each other (it's clear their ‘friendship’ can best be described as ‘a dangerous feat of codependency’), it's clear that the two know music, and the two know how to conceptualize music in a certain way. ‘FLOWER ROCK’ isn't the most telling song, it doesn't have an overarching message, it's simply a catchy rock song with crazy vocals (i greatly commend cupid & ceres), it was the perfect take for title in my opinion, as the general public would probably have a heart attack with any of the other tracks being chosen.

the second track ‘WITHERED’, written by member juniper, is horrifically gloom-ridden. the song delves into the topic of suicide, seemingly more of a diary entry that was turned into a song to spread some message. i have to admit, after the title track got me pumped up, looking up the lyrics of this song really made me sink back down into my seat. it's a harrowing look into the minds of idols that are typically deemed to be “perfection personified”, it's somewhat of a breath of fresh air, something that you don't exactly expect from a debut album. the song also isn't your usual ballad, no, it's fucking aggressive, it screams in your face, it screams the whole way out until it's done. in a way, it's agonizing, but in a strange way, the agony is worth it. i was genuinely surprised, but i suppose that's the point. the song usually bounces between top 3 and 2 for me, but it never goes below that.

track three ‘BLUEMING’ is a cute tune that i would listen to on a friday when classes get too bad and i need to hammer back a few ones (for all intensive purposes that was a joke!). i could dance to it, really, i might just make up one right now. it's definitely a crazy jump, considering we went from a singing about dying to singing about love. the attention to gender neutral lyrics is something i didn't click until my second listen (okay ceres i see how you play..), but it's also kind of cute? thank you ceres we appreciate all you've done for society!! it's not my favorite song on the album, the lovely (pun intended) lyrics give a different look to the album that i assumed would be all sadness. of course not all of the lyrics are.. happy, i assume this song is dedicated to an ex lover of sorts, but if you go into it blind, it seems pretty fun! i'll dance to it in between drinks!! i'll make sure to!

our second to last track ‘A MONSTER’ is a song written by all of the members, and good lord it has no right to slap as hard as it does. the rap?? the instrumental?? maybe we should all just die because who does dione think he is? anyway, my death aside, the song is an amazing contender for title, and should've been at least a promoted bside, i would literally pay for that, i still will pay for that!! (luxe design contact me). it admittedly takes a good getting used to, especially if you aren't exactly in tune with the style they were going for. the instrumental is so strange that i question how they made it work as well as it did, i hope it becomes their thing, i need to hear ceres sing over tweaked soundcloud beats more, but alas.. it's a good song, i'm almost sort of ashamed to enjoy it.

and finally, the final track, ‘REI’, one of my favorite kpop songs of the year by far. coming from one of the many meanings of the name, “soul” or “spirit”. the song is actually so surprising in the sense that you hope it would be cute, but it isn't. again written and produced by our favorite pair of homosexuals (do not sue me for that i totally believe that kenzo and czr have a completely normal friendship), “rei” seems to be a placeholder name for the person who hurt these men, and honestly what the actual fuck did rei do because they are DEVASTATED, who even sings like that!? this track quickly takes it's place as my favorite on the album, stealing the top spot away from ‘WITHERED’, who is really just having a losing battle with ‘A MONSTER’. with all that said, ‘REI’ is the spitting image of heartbreak itself. it's crazy, someone must've really hurt ceres, did you HEAR those notes? give him some therapy!!

all in all, the album was spectacular for a debut album, it feels like these guys have already been around for years, they all seem to have so much experience. i have never seen a debut album like this in kpop, a song about suicide in winter is INSANE, i guess the winter depression is hitting them hard. not to mention, the music videos were like watching some feature length film, i have a lot of hope for blue rose, their name is super cute, and their concept seems promising. though some of the songs had points i couldn't exactly wrap my head around, it's all pretty good music. my formal ranking of the tracks on this album is rei, a monster, withered, flower rock, and blueming. a good start to a hopefully promising career.

[sideprince]

I wrote a reply to this post but OP has deleted it and even though I should probably leave well enough alone, it got to me that I could have sworn I saw this post months ago and then realized it was actually from yesterday. This is a long reply so I'm putting it under a cut, but after I went to OP's blog and saw a post from them complaining how mean everyone was to them on this post, I replied to say I'm sorry if they got any anon hate I don't know about but otherwise none of the comments on this post were mean or hateful, they just disagreed with OP. I pointed out that this is partly because they cited non-canon events as canon, and OP immediately blocked me (this may be why I can't reblog the post even from another user, though that's not how tumblr usually works so who knows). I can't help but feel that OP's post was made in bad faith, as a result, and I've seen enough people on this hellsite who are more interested in protecting their egos than admit when they could have been approached something more thoughtfully, so I'm diving in. If you're going to say a character "is very interesting to study" while doing the exact opposite, then you'd better have the critical analysis skills and textual evidence to back it up.

I think OP has some misconceptions that are frustratingly common, and seem to stem from people not having read the books, or not read them for a long time, and conflating the movies with canon. While I mostly agree with the replies above, I want to take this opportunity to cite the text to refute some of OP's points. I often forget details from the text, but I choose to either look them up before asserting unconfirmed points as fact (Potter Search is a great tool, or you can just do a ctrl+F search if you have the books digitally), or else I usually state clearly that I'm not sure if I remember something correctly and don't have the spoons to look it up.

I saw OP say in the comments in response to someone arguing their points:

"that's your interpretation, I have mine, I think both can coexist within the material we are given."

It doesn't sit right with me that so many people think that referring to their subjective memory of what the text meant to them is the same as actually citing it and offering an explanation. OP's interpretation can't exist within the material given, because some of it doesn't exist in the material at all, and you can't interpret what isn't there. OP is essentially claiming to have done critical analysis, and although no one is required to always critique a text analytically on a tumblr post, I find it upsetting when people claim to do so while failing to cite a single source to support their argument. To me it sounds like someone trying to pass off a creative writing essay as an academic research paper, and in an age of rampant propaganda and knee-jerk reblogs that eschew critical thinking, I feel an almost compulsive need to go through OP's reply and argue it with the textual evidence they conveniently avoided, if for no other reason than to show why it's important to discern between loosely formed opinions and informed ones.

I also want to explain why I don't accept the films as canon, because while I do think that canon can exist across several mediums (such as with Good Omens, in which at least one of the writers of the text is directly involved in writing the TV series), I don't think that applies to Harry Potter because the original author was only marginally involved in the films, in only a consultant role, and had little input on the writing. The HP films are an interpretation as written from the perspective of Steve Kloves, except for OoTP, which was written by Michael Goldenberg. I've gone into it on other posts, but suffice to say these interpretations did not prioritize story and character development and were often influenced by pressure from the studio to prioritize marketing opportunities over storytelling. Important elements like foreshadowing and themes were not carried over from the text to the screen. These changes affected the storytelling significantly and left out crucial elements. This, combined with the films having been written with little to no involvement from the original author, is why I feel the films can't be taken as canon. This doesn't mean they can't be enjoyed by any means, just that they scenes that appear in the films but not in the text, or are presented differently on screen than in the text, are not a reasonable basis for character analysis.

And now, on to OP's ask:

"I think he is a very good representation of a man who felt insecure in his manhood; his male ego was permanently wounded by James' bullying and he decided to make it everyone else's problem by being the most insufferable teacher at Hogwarts."

The first thing we have to establish is that the books are told from Harry's perspective, so we have to take narrative bias into account. Calling Snape "the most insufferable teacher at Hogwarts" is a subjective statement and I can only assume it's based in Harry's biased perspective as narrator, given that he and Snape have a bad relationship from the outset. I have a brief analysis here about how Snape dislikes Harry because in their first class together he interprets Harry's ignorance of the course material as a lack of curiosity and appreciation for his gifts as a wizard, while also recognizing something of his own experiences with childhood poverty and abuse in Harry. Harry, being ignorant of these factors, just feels singled out for hate by a strict teacher, and their relationship deteriorates throughout the rest of the series, until the end of the final book.

To pull back from the narrative bias, let's look at some of the other teachers are Hogwarts:

McGonagall:

“Miss Granger, you foolish girl, how could you think of tackling a mountain troll on your own?”  Hermione hung her head. Harry was speechless. Hermione was the last person to do anything against the rules, and here she was, pretending she had, to get them out of trouble. It was as if Snape had started handing out sweets. “Miss Granger, five points will be taken from Gryffindor for this,” said Professor McGonagall. “I’m very disappointed in you. If you’re not hurt at all, you’d better get off to Gryffindor Tower. Students are finishing the feast in their Houses.”

Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 10.

“I’m disgusted,” said Professor McGonagall. “Four students out of bed in one night! I’ve never heard of such a thing before! You, Miss Granger, I thought you had more sense. As for you, Mr. Potter, I thought Gryffindor meant more to you than this. All three of you will receive detentions — yes, you too, Mr. Longbottom, nothing gives you the right to walk around school at night, especially these days, it’s very dangerous — and fifty points will be taken from Gryffindor.” “Fifty?” Harry gasped — they would lose the lead, the lead he’d won in the last Quidditch match.  “Fifty points each,” said Professor McGonagall, breathing heavily through her long, pointed nose.

Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 15

In just the first book we see McGonagall punish Hermione for successfully defending herself against a troll and take house points, then sends her back to her common room without getting medical attention, as if a ten year old can be responsible for assessing how badly they're hurt. A few chapters later McGonagall takes several hundred points from students in her own house (more than we see any other teacher do at one time throughout the series), and assigns the students detention on top of it. As we later see in the same chapter, the detentions aren't even served with her directly, but instead the children - again, ten years old - are sent into the Forbidden Forest at night with only Hagrid to protect them, to hunt down whatever creature is vicious and cunning enough to kill unicorns.

Although it's said that Snape favors the students in his own house, he doesn't seem to be the only one:

“Potter's been sent a broomstick, Professor,” said Malfoy quickly.  “Yes, yes, that’s right,” said Professor Flitwick, beaming at Harry. “Professor McGonagall told me all about the special circumstances, Potter. And what model is it?”  “A Nimbus Two Thousand, sir,” said Harry, fighting not to laugh at the look of horror on Malfoy’s face. “And it’s really thanks to Malfoy here that I’ve got it,” he added. 

Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 10

Not only did McGonagall make an exception to school practices and allow Harry on his house Quidditch team despite being a first year, she used either school funds or her own (unclear) to purchase a first-rate broom for him. We know the school has brooms, as first years are not allowed their own and they are provided for flying lessons, and because “Harry had heard Fred and George Weasley complain about the school brooms” (PS ch. 9). And yet, McGonagall ensures Harry has his own broom, and an expensive one, new enough to be the show model in a shop window in Diagon Alley a few months earlier:

“Several boys of about Harry’s age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. ‘Look,’ Harry heard one of them say, ‘the new Nimbus Two Thousand - fastest ever -”

-Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 5

If we're discussing which teachers are Hogwarts are the most "insufferable" then we also have to talk about Hagrid, who might mean well and be affectionate, but is also irresponsible and dangerous.

In Philosopher's Stone, Hagrid:

Punishes Dudley, a child, for his parents' offenses, the final straw being his father insulting Dumbledore (Ch. 4). While Hagrid acknowledges that he shouldn't have lost his temper, he also admits that his intention had been to turn Dudley fully into a pig.

Hatches a dragon in his cabin (Ch. 14), tries to raise it illegally and against the animal's need of care, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione (again, ten year olds) have to fix the situation and get Ron's brother to find some friends to take the dragon away safely and prevent Hagrid losing his job (Ch. 14). In the process Hagrid endangers himself as well as the children, and it's because of this that McGonagall gives them detention and deducts hundreds of house points. Hagrid not only allows the children to endanger themselves for his sake, but to be punished and subsequently ostracized by their peers also for his sake.

The reason he even has a dragon is, as we find out in Ch. 16, because he was foolish enough to accept it from a faceless stranger in exchange for unwittingly divulging the secret to getting past the three headed dog guarding the Philosopher's Stone (and the stranger later turns out to be Quirrel/Voldemort).

In Prisoner of Azkaban, Hagrid:

Starts his first lesson with a volatile creature (Ch. 6) and, although Malfoy acted irresponsibly, Hagrid was nevertheless the teacher and responsible for providing course material consistent with the experience level and maturity of his students' age.

Gets drunk and has to be taken care of by Harry, Ron, and Hermione (again, children) (Ch. 6)

Skipping ahead to Order of the Phoenix ch. 30, we find out Hagrid

Compromised his return from the mission Dumbledore sent him on by bringing a giant back to England.

Brought said giant into the school grounds and left him in the Forbidden Forest.

Asks Harry and Hermione (still children) to look after him if Hagrid is sacked.

Although Hagrid means well, his actions are consistently thoughtless and irresponsible, requiring those around him - often Harry, Ron, and Hermione - to fix the damage he causes. Although I think it remains subjective which teacher at Hogwarts is the "most insufferable" I think Hagrid is a strong enough candidate to qualify OP's interpretation of Snape holding that title as extremely contestable. Of course, since the books are presented through the lens of Harry's narrative bias, and he's fond of Hagrid, respects McGonagall, and dislikes Snape, an uncritical reading could lead one to OP's conclusions. However, a more objective analysis of the text shows that many teachers at Hogwarts are strict, punitive, biased, and wreak havoc on students in ways that make the Snape's actions look fairly tame, or at least the norm. And this is excluding an analysis of various DADA professors like Lockhart and Crouch/Moody, who were insufferable in their own rights (Lockhart was smarmy and dishonest to the point it risked students' lives; Crouch/Moodly transfigured a child into a ferret and humiliated him with torture as a disciplinary measure and deliberately triggered Neville's trauma in class).

OP continues their reply to say:

Add to this that he is a halfblood and only his mother was around, iirc?

They don't recall correctly. Snape, whose father was a muggle and whose mother was a witch, was indeed a half-blood (as is evidenced by him being revealed to be the Half-Blood Prince - I assume I don't need to cite a source as this is a pretty well-known fact and the literal title of an entire HP book, but should you need a reference it's in Ch. 28 of HBP). Both his parents were around in his childhood:

Snape staggered - his wand flew upwards, away from Harry - and suddenly Harry’s mind was teeming with memories that were not his: a hook-nosed man was shouting at a cowering woman, while a small dark-haired boy cried in a corner …

-Order of the Phoenix, Ch. 26

‘How are things at your house?’ Lily asked. A little crease appeared between his eyes. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘They’re not arguing any more?’ ‘Oh, yes, they’re arguing,’ said Snape. He picked up a fistful of leaves and began tearing them apart, apparently unaware of what he was doing. ‘But it won’t be that long and I’ll be gone.’ ‘Doesn’t your dad like magic?’ ‘He doesn’t like anything, much,’ said Snape.

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

We know that Snape's father was around because he's mentioned both in Snape's memories in OoTP that Harry accidentally invades during an Occlumency lesson, and when we see in Snape's memories that he gives Harry as he dies. Lily asks about his home life by referring to both his parents, implying that his dad is a consistent presence at home. We also know from JK Rowling that Snape's father "didn't hold back when it came to the whip" but this is supplementary and not mentioned in canon, so I don't expect anyone to refer to it when analyzing the text, I'm just adding it as bonus material.

Continuing on with OP's reply:

Snape, Voldemort and Harry all act like foils of each other in that sense, but whereas Voldemort fixated on his blood status as the main reason for his insecurities, Snape fixated on Lily.

So much to unpack here. Firstly, all of this should be backed up by examples from the text, as they are subjective readings that have significant bearing on character analysis.

Snape, Harry, and Voldemort don't act like foils of each other. For one thing, a character doesn't act like a foil, a character either is or isn't one. That being said, I don't know OP's background and there could be a language barrier because English isn't everyone's first language, I'm just being pedantic. Even with that in mind, the statement remains incorrect. A foil is a literary device - a character who contrasts with another character, often with the protagonist. It is not a choice a character makes or an action they take.

In Philosopher's Stone Snape is set up as a foil to Harry in order to misdirect the reader from suspecting the real villain, Quirrel/Voldemort. Snape is presented as secretive, sneaky, and nefarious, contrasting Harry's role as a protagonist who is outspoken, honest, and brave. As the series progresses, Snape, along with Voldemort, are eventually shown to have more parallels than contrasts with Harry. Snape and Voldemort were born into muggle poverty, and although Harry was raised in a middle class home by the Dursleys, they thrust poverty and neglect onto him in a way that parallels his childhood of neglect and want with that of Snape and Voldemort. Snape's father was abusive, as was Harry's guardian, Vernon Dursley. Harry, Voldemort, and Snape all had traumatic experiences growing up in muggle environments. If anything, Snape and Voldemort might be foils to Harry in that they both harbored resentment for their muggle fathers in ways that signified the separation between the wizarding and muggle world, while Harry's experiences with the Dursleys didn't color his image of muggles in a comparable way.

The contrast between Harry, Snape, and Voldemort is in the way each of them deals with their trauma. As Dumbledore says:

"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

-Chamber of Secrets, Ch. 18

This becomes one of the overarching themes of the HP series, Harry, Snape, and Voldemort are all examples of how their choices took them to such different places in life from their comparable childhoods.

At school Voldemort was a handsome boy with talent, intelligence, and the recommendations of his teachers, but he chose to pursue power instead of success:

“He reached the seventh year of his schooling with, as you might have expected, top grades in every examination he had taken. All around him, his classmates were deciding which jobs they were to pursue once they had left Hogwarts. Nearly everybody expected spectacular things from Tom Riddle, prefect, Head Boy, winner of the Special Award for Services to the School. I know that several teachers, Professor Slughorn amongst them, suggested that he join the Ministry of Magic, offered to set up appointments, put him in touch with useful contacts. He refused all offers. The next thing the staff knew, Voldemort was working at Borgin and Burkes.”

Half-Blood Prince, Ch. 20

Snape chose to become a Death Eater for reasons we can only assume. We know he was in Slytherin during an era when Voldemort was in power and many of his allies had children in Slytherin house. At least two of Snape's dorm-mates, Mulciber and Avery, are canonically acknowledged to have become Death Eaters (both are present at the Ministry when Harry and his friends fight the Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries in OoTP Ch. 35). It's unclear whether Snape chose to become a Death Eater out of admiration for them or out of peer pressure, or perhaps a lack of other options, while at school:

'… thought we were supposed to be friends?’ Snape was saying. ‘Best friends?’ ‘We are, Sev, but I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging around with! I’m sorry, but I detest Avery and Mulciber! Mulciber! What do you see in him, Sev? He’s creepy! D’you know what he tried to do to Mary Macdonald the other day?’ Lily had reached a pillar and leaned against it, looking up into the thin, sallow face. ‘That was nothing,’ said Snape. ‘It was a laugh, that’s all -‘ ‘It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny -‘ ‘What about the stuff Potter and his mates get up to?’ demanded Snape. His colour rose again as he said it, unable, it seemed, to hold in his resentment.

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

It's unclear what Snape thinks of Avery and Mulciber, as his reply to Lily is downplaying but doesn't defend their actions. We see Snape's indecisiveness later in the argument he has with Lily after he calls her a Mudblood:

'It’s too late. I’ve made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends - you see, you don’t even deny it! You don’t even deny that’s what you’re all aiming to be! You can’t wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?’ He opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking. ‘I can’t pretend any more. You’ve chosen your way, I’ve chosen mine.’ ‘No - listen, I didn’t mean -‘ ‘- to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?'

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

Although Snape does ultimately choose to become a Death Eater, we see in his reply to Lily about both Avery and Mulciber and later her assumption that they all want to become Death Eaters that Snape doesn't argue for or against her accusations, but instead is evasive and unsure of himself. He opens his mouth to speak when she accuses him of wanting to become a Death Eater, but then closes it again without saying anything - he can neither argue against her point, nor state clearly, let alone with any kind of conviction, that this is indeed his ambition. It can be argued that it's the passivity of his choice that lands him with a Dark Mark on his arm, and it's the active choice he makes to risk his life in order to defect from Voldemort's ranks and turn spy that defines his character and without which Harry could not have defeated Voldemort.

Harry, as the protagonist, is also significantly defined by the theme of choice:

'But, sir,’ said Harry, making valiant efforts not to sound argumentative, ‘it all comes to the same thing, doesn’t it? I’ve got to try and kill him, or -‘ ‘Got to?’ said Dumbledore. ‘Of course you’ve got to! But not because of the prophecy! Because you, yourself, will never rest until you’ve tried! We both know it! Imagine, please, just for a moment, that you had never heard that prophecy! How would you feel about Voldemort now? Think!’ Harry watched Dumbledore striding up and down in front of him, and thought. He thought of his mother, his father and Sirius. He thought of Cedric Diggory. He thought of all the terrible deeds he knew Lord Voldemort had done. A flame seemed to leap inside his chest, searing his throat. ‘I’d want him finished,’ said Harry quietly. ‘And I’d want to do it.’ ‘Of course you would!’ cried Dumbledore. ‘You see, the prophecy does not mean you have to do anything! But the prophecy caused Lord Voldemort to mark you as his equal … in other words, you are free to choose your way, quite free to turn your back on the prophecy! But Voldemort continues to set store by the prophecy. He will continue to hunt you … which makes it certain, really, that -' ‘That one of us is going to end up killing the other,’ said Harry. ‘Yes.'

-Half-Blood Prince, Ch. 33

There's a clear point made by the author through Dumbledore as her proxy here, that choice is what matters, not fate. It's Harry's choices that make him the person he is and lead him to eventually defeat Voldemort. While Snape, Voldemort, and Harry all can be contrasted through the lens of their choices, this does not make them foils, as it is the the theme of choice and how it is exemplified by each character that makes them unique, but their experiences and many of their character traits (boldness, bravery, a personal sense of conviction) that make them parallels of one another. Each of them occupies their own place on the spectrum between the light and dark that the series establishes, Voldemort at the dark end, Harry at the light, and Snape in the grey area between them.

OP goes on to say:

His character is all about male entitlement, he was obsessed with her at Hogwarts and then showed to have no boundaries as he went into her house to cradle her dead body in front of her traumatized kid.

There's a lot to unpack here, and it's particularly challenging because you can't provide textual evidence for something that didn't happen in the text. After the above scene from Ch. 33 of DH in which Lily ends her friendship with Snape, we never see them interact again:

'No - listen, I didn’t mean -‘ ‘- to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?’ He struggled on the verge of speech, but with a contemptuous look she turned and climbed back through the portrait hole … The corridor dissolved, and the scene took a little longer to reform: Harry seemed to fly through shifting shapes and colours until his surroundings solidified again and he stood on a hilltop, forlorn and cold in the darkness, the wind whistling through the branches of a few leafless trees. The adult Snape was panting, turning on the spot, his wand gripped tightly in his hand, waiting for something or for someone …'

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

The scene in the corridor in front of Gryffindor Tower between a fifth year Snape and Lily leads directly into the scene where Snape begs Dumbledore to protect the Potters (which I wrote an analysis of a few months ago but is too long a subject to derail this post for). We see no more interactions between Snape and Lily, and therefore there is no canonical support for the idea that Snape behaved obsessively or failed to respect her boundaries.

There's also no mention of Snape going to Godric's Hollow at all after her death. Snape holding Lily's dead body is only shown in the film version of Deathly Hallows, and as mentioned, the films are not canon. That moment doesn't exist in the text and can't be considered in an analysis of Snape's character. The scene on the hilltop leads directly into the scene of Snape crying in Dumbledore's office:

The hilltop faded, and Harry stood in Dumbledore’s office, and something was making a terrible sound, like a wounded animal. Snape was slumped forwards in a chair and Dumbledore was standing over him, looking grim. After a moment or two, Snape raised his face, and he looked like a man who had lived a hundred years of misery since leaving the wild hilltop. ‘I thought … you were going … to keep her … safe …’ ‘She and James put their faith in the wrong person,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Rather like you, Severus. Weren’t you hoping that Lord Voldemort would spare her?’ Snape’s breathing was shallow.

-Deathly Hallows, Ch. 33

This is the only depiction of Snape immediately following the Potters' deaths. The scene of him cradling Lily's dead body was Steve Kloves' invention and has no basis in canon. If anything, Snape's actions in canon can be interpreted to show that he respected the boundaries Lily set, and that even when her life was at risk he chose to go to Dumbledore - who he thought might kill him on sight - rather than talk to her directly after she ended their friendship. In addition, in all the information the text gives about the night Voldemort fell in Godric's Hollow and Hagrid collected Harry to take him to Privet Drive, there's no mention of Snape whatsoever.

There isn't much in the text to support the interpretation that Snape exemplified male entitlement either. So far we've seen him being as strict, if not milder, than other teachers at the school, his favoritism is also comparable to that of other teachers - implying it's more of a norm than an example of entitlement - and there are no canonical examples to support the argument that he was obsessed with Lily or violated her boundaries. Snape struggles to argue with Lily when she accuses and berates him, and the usual markers of patriarchal entitlement - silencing women, gaslighting, dismissing women's opinions, talking over them - are all nowhere to be found in any of their interactions. The only time we see him lash out at Lily is when he calls her Mudblood (OoTP Ch. 28) which, while inexcusable, he does under traumatic duress, and is not indicative of his usual interactions with her, as exemplified by the fact that she ends their friendship over it. As cited before:

'No - listen, I didn’t mean -‘ ‘- to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?’

There's a clear implication that Snape has never called her this before. An argument can also be made that it speaks volumes of Lily's own biases, or perhaps her own affection for Snape (who, not long before this, was still her best friend), that she excused this behavior from him when it was directed at others, and only took issue with it when it was directed at herself. That, combined with Lily's own acknowledgment that they were "best friends" shows that Snape's relationship with her was a balanced, consensual one even when it became strained, up until their friendship ended.

Continuing with OP's points:

He only saw Lily as a trophy to be possessed, which you can see from the way he hated Harry, because Harry reminded him Lily wasn't his and that Lily had sex with another man.

There's no support for this in the text anywhere and is pure conjecture. I can appreciate it being OP's headcanon, but it's certainly not a result of studying the text and relying on it to form opinions, but rather seems to be OP projecting pre-conceived notions onto Snape as a character and trying to find justification for it. I've written a whole post extrapolating Snape's first class with Harry, but the tl;dr is that Snape, who grew up in muggle poverty and knew Aunt Petunia enough to guess that Harry didn't fare well in her care when he showed up at school bearing signs of neglect, likely expected Harry to have the same hunger for learning that he himself did at Harry's age. Instead, Harry couldn't answer a single one of his questions and showed no curiosity or enthusiasm towards being a wizard as far as Snape could tell.

Nevertheless, even though Snape did seem to dislike Harry, hate is an awful strong word given that it is revealed at the end of Deathly Hallows that Snape has risked his own life to protect him. This isn't particularly surprising when you consider that this goal was established as early as Philosopher's Stone, when Snape protected him, which Harry initially interpreted as Snape trying to kill him:

Harry couldn’t take it in. This couldn’t be true, it couldn’t. ‘But Snape tried to kill me!’ ‘No, no, no. I tried to kill you. Your friend Miss Granger accidentally knocked me over as she rushed to set fire to Snape at that Quidditch match. She broke my eye contact with you. Another few seconds and I’d have got you off that broom. I’d have managed it before then if Snape hadn’t been muttering a counter-curse, trying to save you.’ ‘Snape was trying to save me?’ ‘Of course,’ said Quirrell coolly. -Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 17

Again, the story is told through the lens of Harry's bias, but that doesn't mean his opinions of Snape reflect Snape's character. As another example, there's an implication in OoTP that Snape, having seen some of the Dursleys' abuse of Harry through his memories during Occlumency lessons, passed this information on in an effort to protect Harry, and that this is the reason why several Order members (Arthur Weasley and Moody in particular) show up at King's Cross at the end of the schoolyear and threaten the Dursleys to stop mistreating him. There seems to be no other explanation in the text for why these adults are suddenly aware of the abuse Harry experiences, except that Snape, who was abused as a child himself, and who is an Order member himself, is the only adult in the series who we see witness Harry's mistreatement firsthand. At no point in the narrative do we see Harry complain about the Dursleys to the adults he trusts or ask them for help, merely to spend his holidays away from them without explanation.

While Snape did indeed dislike Harry and often compared him to his father, his dislike for James had much more significant roots in bullying and trauma than in his concern for Lily's relationship with him. It's established in canon that James Potter and Sirius Black dislike Snape from the outset (as in the scene on the Hogwarts Express in DH Ch. 33). In their fifth year, Sirius - annoyed that Snape is so curious about where Lupin goes each month - tricks Snape into following the tunnel under the Whomping Willow to the Shrieking Shack, as Lupin tells Harry:

'Professor Snape was at school with us. ... Sirius here played a trick on him which nearly killed him, a trick which involved me -‘ Black made a derisive noise. ‘It served him right,’ he sneered. ‘Sneaking around, trying to find out what we were up to … hoping he could get us expelled …' 'Severus was very interested in where I went every month,’ Lupin told Harry, Ron and Hermione. ‘We were in the same year, you know, and we - er - didn’t like each other very much. He especially disliked James. Jealous, I think, of James’s talent on the Quidditch pitch … anyway, Snape had seen me crossing the grounds with Madam Pomfrey one evening as she led me towards the Whomping Willow to transform. Sirius thought it would be - er - amusing, to tell Snape all he had to do was prod the knot on the tree-trunk with a long stick, and he’d be able to get in after me. Well, of course, Snape tried it - if he’d got as far as this house, he’d have met a fully grown werewolf - but your father, who’d heard what Sirius had done, went after Snape and pulled him back, at great risk to his life … Snape glimpsed me, though, at the end of the tunnel. He was forbidden to tell anybody by Dumbledore, but from that time on he knew what I was …'

-Prisoner of Azkaban, Ch. 18

From this we can deduce that Sirius intended for Snape to die, or at least get severely injured, and that even as a grown adult Sirius doesn't regret trying to mete out this punishment to him as retaliation for curiosity. We can also deduce that Lupin was unaware of Sirius' intention and did not consent to be used as a weapon. For his part, Snape never did reveal that Lupin was a werewolf while at school, or even during that school year, until after Lupin ran amok on Hogwarts grounds, endangering others' lives, including Harry's.

There are other meta posts that go into Lupin's insecurities and vulnerabilities, but in short, he was grateful just to be allowed into the school as a student, let alone to have friends, and was in no position to challenge James and Sirius. Even as a prefect he didn't curb their behavior, as we see when he allows James to bully Snape later that year after their O.W.L.s:

'Leave him alone,’ Lily repeated. She was looking at James with every sign of great dislike. ‘What’s he done to you?’ ‘Well,’ said James, appearing to deliberate the point, ‘it’s more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean …’ Many of the surrounding students laughed, Sirius and Wormtail included, but Lupin, still apparently intent on his book, didn’t, and nor did Lily. ‘You think you’re funny,’ she said coldly. ‘But you’re just an arrogant, bullying toerag, Potter. Leave him alone.’ ‘I will if you go out with me, Evans,’ said James quickly. ‘Go on … go out with me and I’ll never lay a wand on old Snivelly again.'

-Order of the Phoenix, Ch. 28

James acknowledges that he has no real reason to bully Snape and uses violence as a bargaining chip to coerce Lily into going out with him (James' behavior reflects much more entitlement than Snape's, in my opinion). He also chokes Snape with a bar of soap and then assaults him by dangling him upside down and removing his trousers (threatening to remove his underwear but we don't see it happen).

Lily herself refers to James as arrogant, and it's this trait, along with the trauma from James' bullying of him, that Snape perceives in Harry. He doesn't resent Harry for looking like his father because it reminds him that Lily had sex with another man, he resents him for it because of all the trauma James inflicted on him. The conflict-laden relationship between Snape and the Marauders is a significant driver of the story through several of the books and OP seems subjective to the point of being problematic in ignoring it completely and instead focusing Snape's dislike of Harry onto an invented idea of sexual jealousy that doesn't exist in the text.

It's never stated whether Snape had romantic feelings for Lily, or vice versa, only that they were friends. The closest we see to a hint of this is when “The intensity of his [Snape's] gaze made her [Lily] blush," or when “The moment she [Lily] had insulted James Potter, his [Snape's] whole body had relaxed, and as they walked away there was a new spring in Snape’s step …”

Lily's blush could be interpreted as implying she was attracted to him, or conversely that she didn't and felt awkward thinking he might be attracted to her. Similarly, Snape's relief at her insulting James can be interpreted as indicative of his attraction to her, or of him simply being worried about a friend hanging out with people he perceived as dangerous and was relieved to learn she wasn't putting herself in the way of danger by becoming friends with them. Although JK Rowling has said that her intention was for Snape's affections towards Lily to be romantic, and that she may have returned his affection had he not chosen the path he did, this is - like the note about Snape's father whipping him - extratextual and more of an interesting fact than a bit of canon to be extrapolated from the text.

Finally, OP says:

His interest in the Death Eaters was only secondary to his obsession with Lily and I think Lily rejecting him pushed him toward joining the Death Eaters, because, once again, his male ego was bruised and he needed to replace it with something else.

We've already seen that Snape's interest in joining the Death Eaters was a big part of Lily's reason for ending their friendship. Therefore, logically, Lily's decision didn't push him towards becoming a Death Eater, but rather isolated him from having any support system outside of the DEs. She didn't reject him, because rejection is the refusal or dismissal of another person's advances or proposal. They were friends, meaning they had a mutually consensual platonic relationship. Lily therefore didn't reject Snape, she ended their friendship and, as already stated, nothing in canon implies he didn't respect her boundaries.

As we have also seen in canon, Snape was bullied at school and had, at best, a neglectful and dysfunctional home environment in his childhood. In addition, he shared a dorm with students actively interested in becoming Death Eaters, and his one social lifeline away from them was cut off when he called Lily a Mudblood. What OP interprets as Snape's male ego being bruised is actually a much more complex set of social and emotional factors being described throughout the series to eventually reveal the profile of a character - young Snape - who was a vulnerable youth primed for radicalization by a violent faction of zealots. Although the enforcement and upholding of patriarchal norms is often a huge element of these kinds of social movements, that didn't seem to be the driving force for Snape based on everything we learn about his character. Instead, what we see is a boy who comes from abuse, lives in abuse at school, who loses all the support systems that might give him an alternative to the fascist cult he's being radicalized into which - if it's like most hate groups - would have been more than welcome to both take him in and help him cut his ties to anyone else in his life he might escape from them to.

It also goes against the argument that Snape was sexually obsessed with Lily that he continued to risk his life in order to protect her son an defeat her murderer for almost two decades after her death. He knew it would neither bring her back from the dead nor bring about forgiveness, and it goes without saying that sex was no longer an option. Framing Snape's motivation as obsession dismisses the realities of the complex and meaningful relationship we form as people, and the lasting, transformative influence we can have on each other, which is what Snape and Lily's story illustrates.

Finally, OP concludes with:

He remained mysterious up till the end and his back-and-forth with treason was very compelling to read about. So I hate him (as a "person") but he is such a good character narrative-wise and he is very interesting to study

OP openly admits to hating Snape, ie. having a bias against him, while stating he is "interesting to study" - except no part of their answer has shown that they've actually done so. Their arguments are unsupported in several ways, one being that they don't offer any evidence, and the other being that none can be found in the source text. What's ironic is that OP seems to resent Snape's subjective bias against Harry (and misinterpret his reasons for it in baseless ways) while also showing the exact same kind of bias against Snape themselves. You don't have to like a character by any means, but claiming that the kind of unfounded, superficial, and unsupported opinions that OP stated in their response have a basis in any kind of study of his character is ludicrous and an insult to the intelligence of anyone reading it.

[lullabyalikpoptarot]

Seventeen Comeback Energy Reading

Although, I did want to get to some other readings for them. They are making a comeback!, so I thought I would celebrate by doing a reading on their energy for it, as I like to do for my favorite groups when they make a comeback, so let's look at the energy. I will skip Jeonghan for this, since his energy will be more focused on the Military. I don't see the point in doing his energy for this. I also realized Jun isn't really going to participate either but going to leave him. I am really enjoying the new album! My favorites being their TT and Rain! Okay, let's get to their energy.

Overall energy (4 of Cups) Well, this surprised me. There could be some missed opportunities here when it comes to this comeback. They may feel a bit apathetic about it. There isn't a lot of members with wands, so there could be lack of creative passion here. Ya'll the avoiding distractions keyword on the card got me, like is this being used to distract from the HYBE drama? lol I can't, this is why I love my deck with these keywords, because overall they don't seem invested in it with this overall energy.

S.Coups (Ace of Pentacles) So this comeback is an opportunity for him with something tangible. It is a start to something regarding his career and money. I just look at the kid smiling in this card. He is happy for this opportunity and the value it can bring. He feels this can being him money and security. I guess more than what he has. It is like he sees the golden opportunity here.

Joshua (3 of Pentacles) He seemed to have invested well in this comeback. He seems to like the collaboration and effort put into this comeback. He may have even liked collaborating with DJ Khalad on this one. He feels like it was worth the effort and he and the group were able to show their skills off very well. It was a great collaborative effort. He feels the work will be successful. I don't know I feel he may get some recognition for some work he did, or he feels the group will.

Jun (Knight of Swords) Boy is a Gemini, so this is basically his energy lol. He may be very opinionated about the comeback. He may have a lot to say about it and want to share his opinions on it. He seems very motivated and determined. He seems pretty sharp mentally as well. This could also be geared towards his acting pursuits as well. Boy is a chatty one. For a Gemini, this boy doesn't say much though lol or he is good at protecting his energy. I think I know why, when I eventually post their thoughts on being an idol reading, you may too.

Hoshi (Queen of Pentacles) He will be standing with pride for this comeback. He will be standing in his power. He sees the value and opportunities of this comeback. I am not sure why Golden by Jill Scott is popping up here. There is a sense of pride he has with this comeback. He feels it can make them a lot of money. He definitely has the capabilities of handling whatever comes his way for this comeback. I just see him glowing this comeback. He just seems confident in his abilities, and he knows his skills. He also creates the dances, so I am seeing that as well as to why he has this pride in his work.

Wonwoo (8 of Wands) The first one that has a sense of passionate energy here. It seems there will be lots of activities and movement for him that will be exciting for him. He may enjoy all the activities that go into the comeback, and he seems pretty excited about that. He may be looking forward to all the performances that lie ahead.

Woozi (Page of Wands) Not surprised he got a wands card as well, interesting to see the Page and not the King. There is creative work he has put into it. It may have been something new for him, or a bit out of his comfort zone. I am not getting he showed his full potential here. There is a lot for him to learn creativity wise for this comeback. But he is curious what can come out of this comeback. There is a new zest for life with this energy. A refreshed and rejuvenated energy. Like I am getting amateurish vibes here, which he is not, but he may have felt a bit like that for his comeback. Maybe he liked trying something new and refreshing.

Dokyeom (The World) He seems happy the work is complete. He feels they accomplished a lot and achieved all they can for this comeback. He seems happy with the results, and he is ready to share it with the world and see what the fans reactions will be. It is like he is waiting for it to be released. He is happy that chapter has ended and now the chapter to promote is beginning.

Mingyu (Page of Pentacles) It seems he did all the prep work for this comeback. He seems more than ready to start the promo period. He seems focused on the task at hand. He feels he did the work to prepare for this comeback. He may feel really excited to show his work. He is showing up as a Page, so he may not be fully prepared to be honest. It is like he knows there is more work to be done, like we did the prep work, but now it is time to show the work and complete this process. But he is showing he put in the work, like yay I did it lol And he is ready to show off his work. Mingyu is making laugh here.

Minghao (9 of Cups) This is like a wish fulfillment here. Some wish came true for him with this comeback. He is really satisfied and happy with the results. He is in good spirits here. It is like all that he wanted to happen happened in this comeback. Maybe that everything just went smoothly for him. Yeah, not much here, short and sweet.

Seungkwan (Strength rv) He may need to be careful of his physical and mental health for this comeback. His energy may not be the best here or he is feeling very insecure and vulnerable. This comeback may be a bit difficult for him. Not much else to say here.

Vernon (2 of Wands) Another one with passionate energy. He may have really enjoyed the collab with DJ Khalad. It may have been something he wanted to do. Because 2 of Wands gives me working with someone overseas or someone outside his normal bubble. It is like he learned a lot from this effort. He feels this is a step forward in a good direction for them, maybe to get outside exposure and try something new. I see him wanting to work with another artist overseas to be honest. It seems he is passionate about collaborating with others to try something outside their bubble and reach new fans.

Dino (10 of Swords) Umm, this may have been mentally tasking for him and very exhausting, maybe the prep work of it all. There was a lot of mental exhaustion with him here. But we are at the 10, so things are coming full circle, things are improving, and a new cycle will begin, improvements will come. The mental strain is near its end. Not sure why this was stressful, or he just finds the process really tasking. I just keep getting tasking in my head, it was or is very demanding for him. Aww poor thing, glad he is coming to the close of this now.

Overall, the energy is not so bad, but I find it funny that it may be some distraction tactic lol But hey, just a girl who reads cards. This was fun! I will be enjoying the new music! Good luck to them on this comeback journey.

[pubbamoon]

Hello, I'm sorry for disturbing you or anything but I'm new to this destiny of matrix stuff and I'd like to know some stuff.

My question is: Are my astrological natal chart and my destiny of matrix chart supposed to have things in common or are they different things? Because my karmic line is 9-12-3 and from what I've learned that's supposed to mean "Lonely woman", and basically I won't feel happy in relationships or won't find love, which scares the shit out of me!! In my natal chart i have Jupiter in Sagittarius in 7th house with the ruler being in the 7th house and a very well aspected Venus in Libra in 5th house with no squares or conjunctions or opposites. Only trines and sextiles. My Jupiter too, no squares, but i do have it opposite my ascendant. I do have Pluto in Sagittarius in 7th house but i don't have bad aspects there either! Could you help me understand please? And sorry for the long question but all this buzz makes me anxious...😓

Hello! I'm not disturbed or anything similar. Your question seems to be justified, actually.

In my opinion, I think that astrological birth chart and the destiny matrix chart can have things in common. I'm gonna use my example. So, I have number 7 (The Chariot) under the heart icon. The Chariot card is associated with the Cancer sign and in my sidereal birth chart, I do have 7th house in Cancer. I also have number 22 (The Fool) in my love line. The Fool card is associated with the planet Uranus and in my tropical birth chart, I have 7th house ruler conjunct Uranus. So, I really think that astrology and the matrix of destiny can be aligned at some point.

Anyway, let's get into your case. Having the 9-12-3 code as a karmic tail means that you were rejected and isolated from your partner in your past life, which explains why you don't want to be in relationship. But when you learn to love yourself first, you might start having healthier relationships, something like that. This karmic tail tells me that you might need to heal yourself from your past relationships.

Having a Jupiter in the 7th house in its own sign Sagittarius, ruling your 7th house means that you're natal Jupiter is domiciled and strong. Having a 7th house ruler in its own sign and aspecting Venus in Libra really means having luck in relationships. Jupiter is about morals, ethics, luck, expansion, higher education, spirituality etc. and influencing your 7th house might indicate having a moral, wise, educated and even wealth partner or even husband, since 7th house represents marriage and long-term relationships. Venus is also in its own sign in Libra and in your natal chart. Since Venus represents your actual partner, it means that you might have a chance to have a very harmonious relationships in this lifetime. Venus is placed and is ruling your 5th house and the 5th house is associated with romance, creativity, dating and short-term relationships, which means that you may have a luck in these spheres. Your partner might be creative too.

To conclude, I can't really say if your astrological natal chart and your destiny matrix chart are aligned with each other, because you didn't share your love line from your Destiny Matrix chart to me or you somehow forgot about that. You can send me that privately, so I can answer that question to you. Thanks for trusting me and I hope you find this understandable and accurate. Have a great Friday tomorrow!

Best regards, Paky McGee

[rainy-astrology]

Mercury signs

My view on mercury ruling different signs. Mercury is the planet of communication - the way you talk, the way you think and make decisions. May change/add to this later.

Aspects to Mercury, house placements, and degrees can affect how your mercury expresses itself

If you like kpop and astrology, I do chart readings on idols. List is here

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Aries

Aries mercury people seem to be very blunt and straightforward. Although, all fire mercuries are like that...Honestly can't tell which one is more honest: Aries or Sagittarius lol. Not afraid to argue, seem easy to anger and saying anything in the name of "defending" themselves.

I have a sibling with an Aries mercury and another with a Sag mercury... They can both be quite mean ngl. I think Aries mercury is more prone to getting mad and yelling, whereas a Sagittarius mercury will just sass and insult you. In my experience anyway...

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Taurus

Such nice voices. Often make for amazing singers (iirc, a lot of singers with amazing range and tone have Taurus mercury). They like to take their time to think through things and make firm decisions. They are decisive and may be stubborn.

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Gemini

Mercury in Gemini is domicile. Curious and knowledge seeking individuals, always wanting to learn and do new things. Lots of mental energy, their brains never shut off. They prefer to detach from their emotions and remain rational and logical.

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Cancer

Cancer in mercury are often very intuitive and sensitive. Can read other's moods and emotions very well. Soft spoken and quiet. People often seem to be very comfortable with sharing deep, personal stories with us even if we've just barely met. Also may have lower/deeper tones.

Cue all the times people have randomly trauma dumped on me lol. Not too long ago, I had a customer tell me a traumatic event from their childhood while smiling. I didn't say or ask them anything that would have led them to tell me that. Mind you, I am just training as a nail tech, not a therapist or anything. Funnily enough though, I did consider and still do consider becoming a pyschologist...I think a lot of Cancer mercuries are just a natural at drawing people's deeper emotions out.

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Leo

Honey type of voice, loud, and noticeable. Have loud laughs especially. Voices are usually deeper. They can be natural leaders who don't mind taking initiative and center stage. They may be really creative people. They're emotional people and don't mind showing it.

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Virgo

Mercury is exalted in Virgo. Studious, particular way of speaking, and perfectionistic. Articulate and detail oriented. They can have great focus and motivation when it comes to working on anything. Can be quite meticulous.

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Libra

Very friendly and smooth, can definitely be flirtatious. They just know what to say to get others to like them, very charming. They can also be good at calming tense situations down, since Libras value harmony and peace. They may be a bit indecisive as they see every side in situations.

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Scorpio

Investigative and deep, wants to know everything. Don't lie to them. Often have good memory, so definitely do not hurt them in any way. They will remember for life and hold that against you. They're prone to overthinking.

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Sagittarius

Detrimental under Mercury. Sagittarius likes to focus on the big idea and go on from there, while Mercury wants the little details and to be exact. Blunt and honest people. Also very funny. Open minded and honestly don't really care what other people think.

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Capricorn

Capricorn Mercuries are generally quiet. Disciplined and always ready to achieve whatever they set their minds to. Realistic and maybe slow speaking. Likely the type to give you advice and solutions rather than be emotionally comforting.

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Aquarius

Can be a bit judgemental, make strong opinions and judgements. But they are willing to change them if they want to. They're somehow both stubborn yet flexible about their beliefs.

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Pisces

Mercury is fall in Pisces. Pisces mercuries seem...confused whenever they talk. Tendency to space out and get lost in their inner world. They seem to struggle with articulating their thoughts. May be forgetful or remember things incorrectly

Reminds me of a post I read some time ago...The person mentioned having a Pisces mercury in their chart and how it was a struggle for Pisces Mercuries to word their thoughts precisely. I could tell bc that person's explanation was very confusing. They could have explained it in one-two sentences instead of a messy paragraph... I don't mean to be mean though - that was just a really good example of how disorganized a Pisces Mercury's mind can be.

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If you like kpop and typology, I do typology profiles for idols on my main blog @rainymbti

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Other planets

Rising | Sun | Moon | Venus | Mars | Jupiter

[eresia-catara]

Let's say we get a proper movie or series about Dante, like a thoroughly researched and well-written adaptation of his life by people who actually give a fuck. How would you want them to portray his relationship with Guido? Beatrice? How would you like them to portray Dante as a whole? I feel like a lot of adaptations fail to make him human-like, with flaws and strengths.

Oh interesting question...

The main problem with movies about Dante is that it seems the writers and directors sort of get a 'performance anxiety', in the sense that they so desperately want to go over the top and shock and amaze everyone that they end up with total disasters; and this is partly because Dante is the most important intellectual we have in italian literature so it would be tragic to let down the public (and yet it's what they do) and partly because it's just modern culture to want to produce extravagant movies.

My opinion is that we need to briefly take a step back from all these dreams of grandeur and look at things inside their context once more, because it seems people don't really know where Dante's greatness lies, they just know that he was great. At the same time, everybody knows Dante was human, he was an ordinary man with his flaws and virtues, but does that mean we have to show the public that Dante had sex and ate and whatnot? No, because that's a lowly interpretation of humanity, that's actually portraying a generic living animal (cough cough looking ad Dante 2022). Then do we have to show a hallucinating outcasted genius who's above everybody else? No because that's a kind of mystification that actually ends up belittling his greatness. The fact is that Dante was great exactly because he achieved what he did as a human. He struggled a lot, he had his contradictions and moments of weakness and yet what he ended up gifting to posterity is a message of unconditional love and a new look of wonder onto the world. If there is something that needs to be central in a portrayal of Dante then it has to be his love for humanity. Not Beatrice (as in an actual woman), not a crazy love delirium for Jesus. It is through catholicism that Dante manages to accept all the bitter events of his life and thus find beauty in life in itself. I think this is the fundamental thing one has to keep in mind.

So Dante has to be shown — like in any biographical movie — in his different moments of joy and struggle. You can't just skip his youth years in Florence during which he meets some of the (if not the) most important people of his life (Beatrice and Guido), but you can't even skip his travels across Italy during his exile, because it is then that he actually faces life and the difficulties through which his very capacity to love changes and evolves. We need to show Dante as an evolving, dynamic character whose thoughts and opinions change through time, not a static genius who had One thought and pursued it for all his life from start to finish. Is it complex to portray? Yes. But can you make a 2-3h movie? Yes, if you do it well (looking at Dante 2022 once more).

In relation to these considerations, I think the interpretation of Beatrice and Guido also needs to radically shift from what we're used to.

The way I see it is that Beatrice Portinari may have interested Dante in his youth, but after her death, when Dante started to elaborate new ideas and thoughts he chose her as the right figure to embody them, not because his was a desperate love for this woman but it was for his ideals and as a good little medieval man he needed to materialize it through allegories. So Dante's relationship to Beatrice was mainly intellectual, she was the vessel of his creativity and should be represented as such. No salivating after her, no hallucinating about her during sex (do I still need to mention Dante 2022?) because it wouldn't make sense. The thing is that he idealized her because he never knew her that well as a person (because of the customs Dante rarely saw her, speaking to her was even more difficult), and this should be reflected in the movie. You cannot, in fact, intellectualize and abstract a relationship this much if you truly know someone. So the abstraction of Beatrice needs to become the embodyment of the voice of his conscience, of his perfectionism.

With Guido it's more complicated simply because unlike Beatrice he was actually present in Dante's life, he was his actual friend, so he has played both the role of human and of Idea; as such, we cannot think of a black or white relationship like we did with Beatrice. I think that first of all we need to understand their friendship. Dante saw a great man in Guido because the two shared a lot of qualities and passions. They were both poets, inclined to pensiveness and speculation but most importantly both were free thinkers: neither could ever be satisfied by common sense or common ideas, both always looked to find truth by themselves regardless of any convention. This, I think, was the core of such a tight bond. I think the two could truly share all thoughts with each other and such cases can truly create a dynamic that can border on what today we percieve as a romantic bond. It is therefore understandable how disagreements could then be felt more intensely compared to those with other more casual friendships. So Words are the key to their relationship. Guido shapes Dante as an intellectual, we can't marginalize him to the typical two shots of their first correspondence and of his exile. Everything that happened in between is what truly matters. I believe that through Guido Dante saw Man at the apex of his glory and misery because Guido was also heretic and, I believe, self-destructive. So he was an exemplum of both the good and bad. We need to show this. If I were to make a movie I would treat the story of Guido as a tragedy within a biography whose finale gets dragged beyond his death up until the end of the movie, because after all that's what Dante did. So we need to see the human and the ideal mixing.

[dead-dolphins]

Oh, since I can share my writer's problems here, I want to tell my story.

Let's start with the fact that. Well. I can't write, ha-ha.

Okay, fr I'm really exaggerating. Usually I write fics out of. Anger? Because I don't find anything in the fandom that warms my soul, or what I see does not meet my expectations or even insults the characters in my eyes, and I want to write something that I would like to read myself. And I write. But.

My first problem is that I can't make a plan or a script. I can only write impromptu, and I find that my thoughts float away and transform into something completely different from what I originally wanted to convey. But that's only half the trouble, at least in this case I can save the idea and transfer it to later.

My second problem is that I write very vanilla, very loving and very (in my opinion) sensual porn. You know, porn for soul, lol. And I don’t know how to stop until I feel that yes, this is the end. I was once advised to try to justify long sex scenes with non-human biology like the omegaverse one, but now it turns out that not counting the plot part, I get about 20k words of one big piece of a very long smut that I cannot split. Should I worry about this? Should I write what I want to write, even if from the outside it seems like VERY drawn-out sex and hardly anyone will read it? And how can I force myself to write a damn script, lol?

First, let me just say that writing from a place of passion (or in your case, anger, haha) is valid. In fact, some of the best stories come from that need to create what you want to see in the world. So don’t be too hard on yourself for that, it’s such a powerful motivator!

As for planning: not everyone is a planner, and sometimes, writing on the road leads to the most authentic work. But if you feel like your thoughts are drifting too much, you could try jotting down, mini notes, nothing too structured, just a few key points that you want to achieve in your writing. You don’t need a full script, just a rough guide to keep you on track while still letting your creativity flow. Sometimes those tangents lead to gold, so don’t worry too much about going off-course.

Now, about the "porn for the soul" (I giggled here, I'm sorry!) ! If long, sensual scenes are your thing, own it! There’s no rule that says you have to keep things short or cut down on the intensity if that’s what speaks to you. Readers who appreciate your style will totally vibe with it, and sometimes, especially if they’re well-written (which I’m sure yours are). As for the word count, it’s only an issue if you feel like it’s a problem. If you enjoy writing it, others will enjoy reading it, there’s definitely an audience for everything.

Forcing yourself to write a script? I'm telling you, it's not necessary as it may seem but, instead of diving into a full script, why don0t you try outlining just the next chapter or small scene? Break it down into smaller chunks so it doesn’t feel so overwhelming. Sometimes the thought of a whole script can be paralysing, but working bit by bit makes it more manageable. Just find what works best for you—no right or wrong way to do it!

[bonearenaofmyskull]

This will be my one and only post on the subject of post-s3 canon-compliant Hannigram...

...unless ofc the show gets renewed, which, at this point--it won't, lbr. Martha de Laurentiis was the show's champion and navigator of the rights issues, and she has literally died. If anyone else is championing it, I don't know about it. Maybe something can come through eventually as the new company leadership gets shit figured out, idk. But I'm not holding my breath.

That's the key point here which most of these asks don't seem to recognize: they want me to give an opinion on the state of the relationship, and whether or not Hannibal and Will can be together for a long term and maintain contentment in their relationship with each other: the Happy Ever After Question. But what these asks are most notably NOT doing--even though the askers always frame it as if they are--is asking me about the kind of storytelling would be likely in a continuation of the show: the Plot? What Plot? question. They want to have their plot cake and happily eat it ever after too. And it just doesn't work that way.

These are really very, very different questions. And what would happen if the show actually did come back has as much to do with what would have to happen to resurrect the show out of rights oblivion and then negotiate endless contracts AND how the creatives own lives and circumstances may have changed them and their points of view over the years, as well as the years themselves.

And because the show is very likely never coming back it's really a moot point now. Fantasize however you want. Write fic however you want. It's your damn story now, not the creatives. So in answer to the first, Happy Ever After Question, yeah, sure, why the fuck not. Let Hannigram have forever. But wait--you like plot with your porn? Then by all means give them some conflict. Tear them from the seams, their skin, their bones. Does that make you happy now?

But stop pulling down other people who are doing it in a different way than you're doing it, even if you can't understand it. Yeah, you know who you are....

As for the ~cANoN~ question, let's also be real for a second. If the show were renewed TODAY, it will have been more than a decade between seasons three and four, and Bryan Fuller has been pretty clear that Hannibal and Will are together during that time. So CAN they stay together for a period of years? Yeah, sure, why the fuck not. Obviously they HAVE.

But also--if the show were to come back, would they be destined for angsty shit and conflict and, yanno, PLOT? Again, obviously. It's a ridiculous notion that the show would continue without it. Flip side of that, though, is the equally ridiculous notion that seems to be floating around that if they can't be Disney princesses in their happily-ever-after together, then they can't be together at all, or at least, not for long. That's also absurd.

So let's touch base with what we know, and not what we each individually prefer.

Let's pretend--perhaps ambitiously--for a minute that if the show did ever come back it would be following the plan that we were left off with. It would stretch into 3 more seasons, with Cuban, Korean, and Cajun dishes iirc for episode titles. Bryan Fuller was pretty clear that season four would dive into an untapped portion of the books, revisit season one in a "really interesting way," and be pitched as Angel Heart meets Inception. Will might achieve happiness but not till the ending of the whole thing. That's what we know. Sorry I can't cite any of this; I haven't looked up a Hannibal article in half a decade.

So, leaving aside specifics and just getting to the question at hand, what we do know from season 1 is that Hannibal and Will were together. So, logically, they're probably together in any theoretical season 4. And OF COURSE they would be--they just spent all of S3 apart. You gotta vary this shit up. And they have to have internal and external conflicts, because writing 101. And the internal conflicts are meaningless--as would be all the rest of the preceding show--unless they're deeply and passionately invested in and love each other. That was the whole frickin' point of S3.

I don't honestly even understand how any of this is a question or a debate. Why are y'all even arguing in this the year of our lord almost 2024, and making me grumpy by sending me endless asks about stuff that's been answered for years and years. Why did I have to read with my OWN TWO EYES that someone who joined the fandom in 2016 (!!!) is so #FandomOld that people are afraid to argue with them????

...

So, y'all, this is all I'm willing to say about a potential continuation and ending of the show:

In a simple sense, the pattern the show was setting up is S1 & S4 Hannigram is together and solving crimes (at least in some weird Angel Heart way), S2 & S5 is semi-together, semi-apart Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane thing (with other stuff), and S3 & S6 on-the-run culminating in Something Big (probably at least partially apart). That doesn't mean this is the way the show would go, but it'd be very easy to write Clarice or an expy coming into the story to chase them down and end up mentored by them (either one or both) with this format.

As for the very final ending of the whole thing, the ending *I* would write may not be the same as what Bryan Fuller would write, but to me it seems both obvious where the show should go and that it would be completely and utterly satisfying to shippers and non-shippers alike. And I have run my theoretical ending by devout Hannigram shippers, and it met their approval. So if I can come up with something that both works for them and works for my sense of completionism in storytelling, then I'm sure Bryan Fuller could. He's way more practiced than me.

I have consistently said that I do not relate to the notion that it'd be better to have them together in one's imagination than it would be to actually see Mads and Hugh acting together in the ACTUAL SHOW, regardless of how that ends. Because here's the thing: my imagination is boundless and endless, and I can get an unlimited amount of Hannigram doing whatever the fuck I please whenever the fuck I please. More show, on the other hand, is rare as hen's teeth. I would take that miracle if I could get it.

The End.

[leebrontide]

Some thoughts about dedicated writeblrs

Ok BEFORE ANYONE EVEN STARTS This is completely my own opinions. I have 0 control over what you post and I am completely content with that. If having a dedicated writeblr is working for you, then none of this needs to impact you in any way.

But, it seems to me like a lot of people are creating a dedicated writeblr, and then finding that they get very little engagement, and feeling sad and down that their writing doesn't seem to get anyone's attention. That hurts!

People want community, and are met with crickets.

I don't really like dedicated writeblrs, and I follow very few of them.

We all get hit with SO MUCH advertising. If all I see is a product, even an interesting product that's still in development, you feel to me like a brand.

I'm not saying everybody needs to come on Tumblr and spill their guts and be vulnerable and exposed. Please do not put more of yourself online that feels comfortable and safe. Please be thoughtful and intentional about what you're comfortable with strangers online seeing.

But we've all gotten used to tuning out brands, haven't we?

We are drawn to people who seem to know something about the world- people who seem to have something to say that I want to know more about.

I've accumulated a bit over 5000 followers in not a lot of time. I get a few follows a day- most of them even seem to be human these days, which is lovely!

Rarely do they follow me after I've posted about my books.

They follow me because I talk about something I know something about, be it family or cops or gardening.

Then, once I've established that I have a perspective that they have an interest in, they may check out my work. They may become invested in my creative projects.

Even if your written work has a great concept- and my god MANY of you have some amazing concepts! Well, we've all seen a great concept fall flat in the hands of someone who just didn't have much to say about life.

Give me a reason to think you have an interesting perspective, and I am suddenly vastly more interested in your work.

And yes, a lot of you have a dedicated writeblr and then another blog where you post everything else. But I, personally, am never going to remember to link those things in my head. I have a worse than usual memory, so take that with a grain of salt, but that sure is my experience.

So if you're not finding the community and engagement you're hoping for, maybe consider what of yourself you're comfortable bringing for people to interact with. You don't have to make yourself into some airbrushed instagram celebrity. But write an essay! Show me a garden! Show me something that makes you feel like a human who I can interact with outside of advertisement of your work.

You can't participate in a community if you yourself aren't present.

Again, closing out with anyone can ignore this and if what you're doing works for you then keep at it! This is one humble writer's perspective.

But I would like to know more of you, as people.

[biteghost]

Hi, I have a question as a fellow OC haver and serial doodler : how do you get people involved in your OCs before beginning your Big Project with them ? Do you post character sheets ? Random tidbits of info now and then ? I do post art and doodles but I can't seem to get any interest...

Have a nice day !

Hi Anon! This is a sentiment I've seen and heard a lot over my years of being on the internet. I cannot give you tried-and-true, works-100%-of-the-time advice or anything, though. I can only share my own experience. Here's a list of some important ways to create original work on the internet:

1: Don't care if other people are interested in your original work. I know this is extremely hard on the modern day internet... but at the end of the day creative hobbies and careers rely on personal dedication and enthusiasm in order to thrive and be consistent. Relying on the feedback and enthusiasm of others is a slippery slope, because that enthusiasm can wane and you cannot control it. Being totally obsessed with your own work truly is the only way I've found that makes creating art fun, fulfilling, and exciting after years and years of doing it!

2: Draw whatever you want, when you want to. Invest your time into honing your craft, storytelling and draftsmanship. Your time is limited in life, and it becomes an incredibly valuable resource the older you get. Don't use your time stressing about how to gain an audience. Just make what you want to make and eventually your people will find you. Get so good at what you do that they can't ignore you!

3: If you only care about numbers getting bigger (followers, likes, shares): draw fanart. Characters and Intellectual Properties that are already familiar to an audience makes the barrier to entry extremely low (depending on how well known the IP is). Doctor's note: This approach may creatively drain you and leave you unfulfilled as the years grind on. Side-effects include one day waking up to find you resent the audience you courted by relegating yourself to a single interest for all your years... But hey, it's easier than putting in the work to become a master of your craft!

4: The Bait-and-Switch method. This is a less soul-crushing way to do #3. It goes like this: Draw fanart (or illustrations which don't require context and can be appreciated on their own) to attract an audience. Then share your original work in-between to get the audience that sticks around to care about your original ideas and characters. Classic bait-and-switch. (Note: This is what I do! It's not as calculated or sinister as it sounds, though. I'm an artist with lots of interests, and drawing is how I express my feelings about things that emotionally touch me. I create fanwork when I want to, then go back to drawing my silly little characters in their silly little scenarios when I have scratched the itch.)

5: Unfortunately, you have to make the dang thing. If creating characters is something you find fun and relaxing but you don't want to actually make a story with them, that's fine. Not every creation needs to have an epic tale that goes along with them. Not every character has to have their world put down on paper. There's nothing wrong with that. However, if you DO want to make a story with your characters, the best way I've found to get people interested in them is to actually make their story. Just as you are invested in characters as you read a book, watch a movie, tune in to weekly television programs, or play out their story in a video game so too will audiences find interest and intrigue by reading your stories. Context is the best hook, in my opinion!

6: I'm serious, stop looking at numbers and equating them with value. I've seen breathtaking artists with less than 10 followers, and I've seen artists whose work I would describe as 'schlock' raking in hundreds of thousands of hits. It doesn't mean anything. Just create in your space, and create it the way you want to create it.

7: Hey if you're making a webcomic send me a link so I can read it.