#(but i guess that's also that like. the perception of this was already present but wasn't perceived in the actual text. idk)

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

hey sex witch, you’ve talked a lot about porn addiction on here but I have some other questions if that’s ok.

I go to Christian highschool and we often have discussions about porn addiction.

my teacher says that most addicted people start consuming porn at around 9. And that even seeing one naked person or one porn or whatever on the internet can put you at higher risk of developing an addiction to porn.

does absolutely any of this have a base in science? Or is this all fear mongering and what not?

hi anon,

first of all, I just want to say that I think it rules that you're seeking information outside of what's being taught at your school. learning how to question what you're told and seek out answers from other sources is a really important skill that can be VERY hard to even begin if you aren't given the resources to easily go looking for information, and I think it's great that you're taking the initiative of seeking out other perspectives :)

now, let's break this down: the concept of "porn addiction" is one largely discredited by psychologists. while people can certainly develop maladaptive coping mechanisms around sexuality, porn, and/or masturbation, this isn't strictly the same as addiction, and several studies have found that the people who are most likely to identify themselves as porn addicts are people who harbor religious or cultural shame about sexuality and porn use, rather than people who use porn more than the average person. it is, largely, a matter of perception.

while access to smartphones means that many people first encounter pornography at a young age - the current average age is somewhere between 9 and 13, depending on the study - and that can be confusing to a child who isn't given the proper framework to understand what they're seeing, it's also not a new phenomenon. in my role as a sex educator I also get to talk with a lot of parents about their early sexual experiences, and many of them recall encountering printed pornography as children when they find it in gutters, the woods, the bedroom of parents or friends' parents, or even stowed in farm equipment. these adults tend to remember being intrigued and excited along with a little confused or alarmed by this first brush with sexuality, but crucially it did not define them as people. as evidence by the fact that they've grown up to send their children to queer-friendly, sex positive, nonjudgmental sex ed classes, early exposure to porn did not stop them from growing into curious, thoughtful, and supportive parents who want to encourage healthy attitudes toward sexuality for their children. porn alone does not have the power to determine the direction of someone's life.

just seeing a naked person or pornography on the internet also cannot immediately make you an "addict." as you've already guessed, this is what we call fear mongering, using information in a way that's exaggerated to make people nervous to even engage with a topic. fear mongering about sex is common among adults and education systems that don't want to young people to be curious about their bodies; another common one is "teaching" young people about sexually transmitted infections by only showing them pictures of untreated cases that have become drastic and painful while insisting that no STI can ever be treated, which is definitely not the case. but the facts don't matter; the priority is trying to make sure teenagers are too scared to have sex until they're adults and the school system is no longer responsible for them.

(and it doesn't even work; states with higher rates of abstinence only education are CONSISTENTLY among those with the highest rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.)

when presented with absolutist statements like this, it's worth poking holes in the logic. for instance, if seeing any naked figure is bad, what about classical art? do nude marble statues put you at risk of being a porn addict? what about other artistic depictions of nudity? or anatomical illustrations? what about real people just changing clothes in a locker room, or young siblings bathing together? does it not count for people who are nearly or partially nude, like someone wearing a bathing suit or athletic clothes? people changing in a locker room together? what about young children being bathed together? and what about all of those depictions about Jesus on the cross wearing nothing but a loincloth? what's the line between "good" and "bad" nudity, and who's deciding where that line is? can such a line even really exist at all?

the truth is that people are undressed or partially undressed in all kinds of situations, and none of them are a corrosive influence on your brain. just looking at something is not enough to completely rewire your brain and permanently change your behavior. ultimately, you are responsible for your own actions.

I hope this has been a helpful answer, and that you stay curious about what you're being taught.

[red-ropes-of-avalon]

Sukuna is the kinda guy who demands you get the proper amount of respect and will fight for you if it's not given. Absolutely nobody gets away with taking anything that's yours and claiming it as their own- because what's yours is also his.

Modern AU Blurb:

You were always rather unfortunate with lab partners when it was up to luck of the draw. Being a woman in STEM was never labeled as easy, and while your beloved boyfriend was as helpful as possible he couldn't take that burden away. Being a business major meant he knew all the excel tips and tricks, so he helped when he could. While you had never foreseen dating your roommate's older brother, it was an interesting dynamic. Anything you accomplished brought him pride, for your achievements were his too.

Finals week in your room was hectic- your direct roommate Nobara had her interior design papers everywhere. Some pinned on the wall, others strewed all over the floor. Your own Biochem notes sprawled all over a calendar whiteboard. Megumi and Yuji's room was a mess on only one side- Megumi's sources for an English paper written neatly on the whiteboard with checks next to the ones he has cited from, while Yuji's side generally always looked like a bomb had been dropped but now with added notes sprawled around. You were sprawled on the floor writing out an assignment for your Biochem lecture while Nobara sat at her desk above you.

Your email pinged- an email from your lab partner. You inwardly groaned not wanting Nobara to pick up on your distress. He had been emailing you all day for the final project that you'd be presenting tomorrow. The problem though was you had found out he had been using your excel file for the whole semester. All of the hours trying to bullshit excel into working, and all of Sukuna's help had been being used by him. Normally this wouldn't bother you but he was using it and claiming it to be his own work- taking all of the credit for your hard work. You flipped your phone down and turned your notifications off trying to focus on the paper you had to read.

You didn't even realize how many hours you had been working on this paper until Yuji was standing in the doorway. "Yo Y/N are you ok?" Looking up at Yuji you tilted your head slightly, confused why he was asking. "Sukuna's been texting you and you haven't responded. He's calling me and yelling at me." Your eyes widened, how long had you been laying here struggling to read this paper on PEPCK. "He's already on his way over here now. Just I guess be ready to explain why you weren't answering." You nodded quietly and began racking your brain for an excuse. You could say you were doing work, but that usually never warranted you turning on Do Not Disturb. If you told him about the actual problem he could blow it into something more than it's worth. You didn't even notice Yuji had disappeared from the door and Nobara stepped out.

Before your mind could stop running in frantic circles, Sukuna was now hulking in your doorframe. "Hey twerp, why weren't you answering me? Almost gave me a goddamned heart attack."

"Aw you missed talking to me did you?" You teased hoping to distract him.

"No dodging the question brat. You never turn your notifications off, so spill." Sukuna's eyes felt like they were piercing into your soul. You couldn't hide anything from him. His perception rivaled his intelligence even.

"I have a final presentation tomorrow for my Biochem lab. I have to do it with my lab partner and he's just been overwhelming me with emails. And...and I just found out he's been taking all the calculations I've been doing in the excel. Y'know the ones I need your help with sometimes because they take hours trying to get excel to work..." you trailed off eyes down.

"What are you going to do about it then twerp? Because if I don't get a good answer I'm taking that laptop and I'm sending an email to the professor for you."

"I was going to talk to her in person before we have to present. I'm just...y'know nervous." Sukuna sighed lowering himself to sit beside you on the floor, pulling you into him.

"If the professor doesn't handle it, I'll make sure someone else does. Now let me see this presentation. I'm assuming you made it since your one of the few competent individuals I know so this better be good." You smiled softly, switching tabs to the presentation you had formatted. The other group members had all their data in, and your heart dropped to your stomach when you found screenshots of your excel sheet placed in. Sukuna just ruffled your hair distracting you from the panic filling your heart. "At least you know the data is right, don't work yourself up over this or else you'll mess up your part. Don't forget what's yours is mine so you gotta make me proud."

---------

I wrote this while upset because I found out my lab partner has been using my excel sheet all semester and taking credit for all my work hahah. Love being a woman in STEM.

[andbreakmynose]

Sweet Birthday Baby

you and SIAS alex cleaning up your birthday party leads to unexpected feelings and tension

WORD COUNT: 5k

WARNINGS: smut! unprotected p-in-v, oral (f receiving), praise!! lots of fluff and emotions, light angst, mention of body image

The party, your party, had been nothing spectacular. It was your closet friends taking a day off from recording to drink shitty beers and eat a store bought cake with you. It really wasn’t much at all but it meant a lot that they still cared.

When the “festivities” ended and the rest of the guys packed up to go home, Alex, being the polite boy he always was around you, offered to stay over and clean up. How could you say no to that? So here you were sweeping up the leftover confetti they attempted to surprise you with and throwing away empty beer bottles, Alex humming along to whatever song he had put on in the background.

In between this song and the next he looked up at you with a small smirk, the smirk that always seemed present on his face these days. “Can’t believe you’re already 24. You’re a big girl now.” His voice is both teasing and kind, he leans against the counters in the kitchen and continues to watch you as you throw away the last of the garbage.

“I’m only a year younger than you,” you reply with an eye-roll that’s somewhere between playfulness and affection. The dynamic between you and Alex was always more loving teasing than anything else, it really hadn’t changed since you were both 12 and on the schoolyard. “Y’know most of the girls we went to school with are getting married and having babies now. And I’m basically still just a glorified groupie for a band of losers,” you add. The words were joking but there was an underlying melancholy there, sometimes late at night you would contemplate what life would be like if you actually had a job.

“Hey! We are not losers!” Alex acts offended at that part of your sentence, reaching up to poke your cheek with his slender fingers. He, being the perceptive bastard he was, also picked up on the sadness present within your words. Tilting his head a little he continued, “You’re still young, you don’t have to have to think about marriage or babies. Hell, I’m only a year older than you and I haven’t even considered it.” He hopes his words are reassuring and what you need, he doesn’t like to see you sad like this.

“I guess I’m just feeling old. I know it’s stupid.” You shake your head, suddenly feeling embarrassed at your own feelings. It wasn’t that you particularly wanted children, and there definitely wasn’t anyone for you to get married to right now, but you still couldn’t shake the anxiety about falling behind. Alex pouts at you, he hates your anxiety and your self doubt. He almost made you feel guilty about your thoughts. “I’ll just try to enjoy being 24 I guess,” you add to reassure him, a small smile appearing on your face.

“That’s my girl.” Alex’s face lights up at your words, knowing that you’re not entirely miserable, and he brings his hand up to ruffle your hair before turning to the refrigerator. “You want another beer?” It’s not even a question, he’s already gotten two out and is already handing one over to you, to which you oblige. You sit down, opening your beer with your teeth. It was your favorite party trick, definitely one that made you the object of some teenage boy’s attention back home. Alex gives a small laugh at the familiar action and shakes his head, “Damn show off.”

He hops up on the counter behind you, creating some distance between your height and his. He opens his own beer and looks down at you. “I was thinking maybe I could take you to dinner tomorrow? I’ve been meaning to try this new fancy sushi restaurant and I haven’t really had an occasion. My best mate’s birthday is as good of one as possible.” He’s not asking this as any form of date or romantic advance, he genuinely wants you to have the best birthday possible, and he wants an excuse for 50 dollar sushi. It’s not like you and Alex haven’t gone to dinner together multiple times before.

“Just us?” you ask. It was a 50/50 thing usually on if it was just Alex or the rest of the Monkeys around. Part of you hopes it’ll just be you and Alex.

“Just us, birthday girl.” He smirks and reaches down to ruffle your hair again. It was an action that still always made you feel your cheeks heat up, you ignore it by taking a sip from your beer. “It’ll be my treat, plus I really want to go to this damn restaurant. I won’t even try to embarass you.” Key word try, he always found a way to embarrass you. If it wasn’t you getting embarrassed it would almost be adorable how big of a loser he was.

“Oh you wouldn’t dare to embarrass me. Besides, you’ll be wanting to impress all the rich girls at this place.” You smirk and pick the bottle up to your lips, taking a sip from the beer.

“You got me there,” he concedes, nodding once in agreement. “I do like showing off my wealth to pretty girls,” his tone teasing you and giving you a stupid wink. You make a ‘tsk’ noise and shake your head dramatically, pretending to be offended at the idea of him flirting with anyone else (although that did spark feelings in your chest you didn’t quite understand).

Alex raises his hands in defense of himself before gently swatting your arm, “Hey! I’m just fucking with you. You know you’re the only pretty girl I’ll be trying to impress tomorrow.” He tries to turn on that charm he was so well known for to tease you further. It was true though, he loved to spoil his best mate.

The words ‘pretty girl’ almost make you blush, almost, you’re able to fight it off and continue your playful demeanor. “You can impress me by letting me order the most expensive wine on the menu,” you smirk at him. You knew he would give in.

Alex takes a sip from his beer and smirks, even if it may drain his wallet (although let’s be real, it won’t) he really did love the idea of completely spoiling you. “Hey, go crazy. I’ll pay for anything and everything, remember? Order as much as you want, it’s a night of indulgence for my favorite girl.”

The grin on his face mirrors the one on yours, this birthday dinner suddenly sounding like the most appealing thing ever. Fancy food and the best wine money could buy, you were forever thankful your best friend was somehow loaded now. And maybe it’s the copious amounts of beer you may or may not have digested but your next words tumble out of your mouth somewhere between a truth and a joke. “You’re the love of my life, you know that?”

Alex keeps smiling at this, he knows you’re exaggerating and being a tease. But his brain does suddenly remind him of something Matt said the week before while they were drunk… ‘You’re so damn whipped Al, you’re practically in love with her…’

But Alex is in good spirits tonight and brushes that thought away, he doesn’t want to dwell on that and he’s honestly too drunk to do that. “You’re such a damn flirt,” he teases you, lightly kicking your knee with his foot and pouring more beer down his mouth.

“Only for you.” You laugh and wink at his words, just glad he didn’t take anything too seriously. You also weren’t ready to think about the implications of what you had said earlier.

He laughs softly at that, but when he sees your wink any words he could say get stuck in his throat. His heart starts to beat a little faster. “Aye careful, don’t go breaking my heart love,” he jokes with you before taking a drink to distract himself from whatever unpleasantly pleasant feeling was inside his chest.

“Oh I’d never break your heart, I’m not any of your ex-girlfriends.” It was a low blow, he had been through a pretty nasty breakup within the past year, but that was your dynamic. He could handle it, hell he had probably said worse about you during the party. You almost laugh at your own joke, it’s not even that funny. Alex just huffs out a laugh and pretends to be offended.

“Hey! You’re supposed to be on my side!” He pouts dramatically at you, acting somewhat like a whiny child. He puts his beer bottle down to poke your forehead again. You look up at the finger on your head, he had nice fingers. He keeps it there for some reason.

“I am on your side, you’re just easy to tease,” you smirk and respond, still watching the finger on your head. He watches your smirk, a twinkle appearing in his eyes. He can’t deny that you had the cutest smirk in the world. He follows your gaze, noticing that his hand was large compared to the size of your head. And then he realizes he’s been staring for way too long and drops his hand back in his lap quickly, letting out a scoff at your words.

You take a drink from your beer in an attempt to recompose yourself, these are not the thoughts you should be having right now. Maybe it was just the beer talking, maybe you shouldn’t take another sip. You look around the kitchen for something else to say to change the subject, eyes landing on the blue birthday cake Jamie ordered you. “Y’know I wasn’t allowed to have a cake for my birthday after I turned 11? Mum thought it was ‘killing my body,’ whatever that means.”

His eyes widen in disbelief, his words coming out louder than he anticipated, “No cake! You got denied cake! That must’ve been hell, I feel bad for little girlie for not getting cake on her birthday,” He scoffs at the thought of your mum treating you like that, resting a comforting hand on your knee.

“She’d get me blueberry muffins, which was whatever… I guess,” you laugh and shake your head at the memory, looking down at your body for a second. “It doesn’t make sense to me anyways, it’s not like I was ever at risk of being dangerously unhealthy.”

“Muffins?” He says in complete perplexment, still shaking his head at the idea of being denied cake. He loves cake. He takes a good look at you and notices what you mean, you had the perfect body to him. “Your mum seems nutty to me. You were fine to eat cake! I remember what you looked like back then.” He says bluntly, almost offended at the idea.

“She is nutty, I’m perfectly healthy still. I don’t know how she was ever worried about my size.” You give a half-laugh and a shrug, running a hand through your hand.

“You are perfectly healthy. And the only size you are is fun-sized.” Alex jokes at you, reaching forward to boop your nose. He always loved touching your face, it would be annoying if it didn’t make your heart flutter.

You laugh at this, shaking your head again. “If by fun-sized you mean full of anxiety and a functioning alcoholic then yeah,” you joke back with him, also reaching forward to boop his own nose.

“Yeah right. You’re also cute as hell,” He adds on to make you feel better, even if you weren’t that sad. He just liked to compliment you. He swats your hand away from his nose and sticks his tongue out in retaliation. You roll your eyes and smile at his words. It was a genuine smile,, you didn’t get told you were ‘cute’ too much, it was usually some crude form of ‘sexy’ you heard from guy’s lips.

“Thanks, at least someone thinks that.”

Alex feels a pang of guilt at seeing the smile on your face and hearing your words. He knows that guys have used you for your looks and he knows the insecurity it’s brought upon you.

“Hey.” He says softly, reaching a hand up to gently cup your face. “Guys are assholes,” he tells you while stroking his thumb over your cheek. The simple action makes your heart feel things you really can’t understand at all, he was so tender around you sometimes. You have to ignore that and shake your head.

“You’d know a thing or two about that.” You follow your words up with an immediate swig of beer, a self satisfied smirk appearing on your face. It was so fun to tease him.

“Oh shut up!” He huffs jokingly and gently smacks your cheek, not hard at all, more like a tap. “I’m being nice and all I get for it is smartass quips? You’re the dick, you know that?”

You give a dramatic gasp at his ‘smack’, shaking your head in mock disapproval. “Smacking the birthday girl? That’s a real low for you, Turner.” You keep shaking your head and stick out your tongue out at him. If he wanted to act like a child, so would you.

“You’re not as cute when you do that,” he gives a pout and grabs your tongue between his fingers and tugs on it. “See, it’s not as fun when the tables are turned.” He laughs at his own actions, keeping your tongue firmly in between your fingers. You can’t exactly talk so the only way you’re able to respond is by closing your mouth and biting down on his finger. It’s not a hard bite but it’s still enough to hurt. When he pulls his finger away the smirk on your face is the widest it’s ever been.

“You bit me!” His eyes widen for just a second, a soft gasp leaving his pouty lips. It does hurt for a moment but he knows you only did it as a playful warning. He brings his finger (now slightly damp with teeth marks on it) back up to your nose, swatting it. “Bad birthday girl.”

This is about the funniest thing you’ve ever heard and seen. Maybe it’s the alcohol talking but you break into a hysterical fit of laughter for a solid two minutes, just guttural belly laughs. You even place your hand on your stomach in the giggles. When you start to speak you haven’t even fully recomposed yourself, some tee-hees still slipping out. “If you don’t want to be bitten, don’t stuff your fingers in my mouth.”

“Yeah? Maybe I should stuff something else in there to keep it shut.” He says his next words without even fully thinking about them. Feeling his face heat up instantly, cursing himself for blurting that out. God, why is alcohol a demon?

You could get flustered at this, it’d be so easy to get flustered at this. And the thought of sucking him off does pass through your brain, but you and Alex had had a relationship like this for ages so you’re able to push it back enough. “Yeah? I’m sure you’d like that,” is how you retort. Your eyebrows are raised and your tone is cocky. He is NOT allowed to fluster you.

Alex is the one who gets flustered, he’s trying not to become as red as a tomato but a blush is creeping onto his ears. He would like that, he’d really like that. Your pretty little lips wrapped around his… no. He can’t think about that. He’s known you since you were awkward limbs and still losing teeth. The idea of you in any other way is disturbing, even if he’s pictured it before during late nights with his hand wrapped around his long shaft.

You notice the blush on his face and almost feel bad, he was so shy sometimes. You didn’t want to make him embarrassed or uncomfortable, that would be shitty. “Hey no, I’m just fucking with you,” you grin to cheer him up. He nods and his eyes dart away, just the image appearing in his mind is making his jeans slightly tighter.

“Yeah, I was just fucking with you too,” he mutters under his breath, adjusting himself in his seat. Was he fucking with you? He didn’t know at this point, he’s honestly wanted you for so long but he really doesn’t want to ruin the dynamic you have with him, with everyone. If you didn’t want him back then he’d lose his best friend, and the band would lose their best friends. He couldn’t do that.

You’re watching him intensely, like a hawk circling its prey. You notice the hint of fear in his impossibly dark and big eyes, you notice the rose tint on his cheeks, and when you look too much you notice the faintest hints of something pressing against his jeans. You can’t resist anymore so you take his chin gently in your hands, you’re not sure if you’re trying to calm him down or trying to get him to kiss you.

And then, before you can even process it, his lips are smashed against yours. He’s leaning over the table, the wood pressing against his stomach. It’s uncomfortable but he doesn’t care, he’s kissing you. And you’re kissing him back, lips against lips, him gently parting your mouth open with his tongue.

His tongue slips only slightly into the caverns of your mouth before he pulls away, panting. “I’m sorry… I should’ve asked first…” His voice is full of regret and he seems like he genuinely feels bad about kissing you, even if you kissed back. He was such a shy, uncertain man sometimes. You found it endearing.

You take a second to think of the right words to tell him that it’s okay, but they all seem cheesy. A heat is starting to form in your lower stomach and you don’t feel like doing a rom-com love proposal yet, you just want HIM. So you smash your lips against his again, this time harder and with more passion behind it. He gasps into the kiss initially but quickly matches your force, letting his tongue return to wear it was when you left off.

Your belly is now also uncomfortably pressing against the table and the kiss has become a dance of teeth on teeth and tongue on tongue. It’s not pretty but it’s hot, and exactly what the both of you need. He starts to run his hand down your chest when you finally pull away again.

“I want to do this properly.” You say firmly, standing up and already starting to walk towards your bedroom. “I’ve wanted this for long enough. I’m having you in my bed and not on my damn kitchen table.”

He laughs at first but his eyes tell a different story, they’re wide and full of both a shock and desire you’ve never seen. “You’ve wanted me for…a while?” He asks, following you into your bedroom. “I have too… everytime I’ve been in this room I’ve thought about every way I could fuck you in here.” He adds, getting a little bolder now that he knows you want him just as bad as he wants you.

“Then do it.” You reply, voice somewhere between a coo and a whine. You sit down on your king sized bed and start to slowly pull up the edges of your blouse, trying to tease him. But he just tuts and shakes his head.

“No.” He grunts, walking towards you and placing his hands at the hem of your blouse. “I’ve waited long enough for this, I’m taking your damn top off.” And then your top is off. You didn’t think of wearing your sexiest lingerie, you didn’t expect this to happen at all, but it’s your birthday so you decided on a decent pair. While you’re wishing that you wore the pair you bought last birthday, he’s biting his lip and taking deep breaths.

“Gorgeous.” He remarks before he reaches around your back to undo your bra. With the angle his, still clothed, belly button is close to your face, and you can see how incredibly hard he is. You’re about to say something about it when he beats you to the punch. “Perfect fucking tits. Can’t believe you hid these from me for 10 years.” His voice is raspy and his voice makes you shudder, you’ve never felt more turned on from anything else in your life.

He presses his lips against yours but it’s only for a second before he pushes your back against the plush bedding and is hovering over you, tracing his lips over your neck. He practically inhales the skin of your neck into his hot mouth, sucking and biting on you like you’re the best popsicle he’s ever had. When he pulls away there’s an angry maroon mark, which he gently ghosts his fingers over. It’s the most beautiful sight he’s ever seen, you covered in his work.

He then looks down and decides he’s had enough of your neck and attacks his lips to your nipple. You were already a panting mess but this… this sets you off. “Fuck… Alex!” You cry out, feeling how his tongue perfectly swirls around the rosy bud on your chest. He only pulls away to speak for a split second before turning his attention to your other nipple, “Happy birthday sweetheart.”

Your back is starting to arch and you’re wet in ways you didn’t know was possible, you bring your hand into your skirt to try and get some relief, rubbing yourself over your panties. His eyes trail down to your action and he grunts against your nipple before sitting up and, at a speed that seems superhuman, removes his t-shirt. His chest was toned and quite frankly, gorgeous. Everytime the two of you had gone to the beach it had taken everything in you to not just stare at him all night long.

He smirks at the awe in your eyes before grabbing your hand, bringing it to his belt. “Help me out?” It’s not a question, more of a demand. And you oblige, instantly sitting up slightly to undo his belt and then unzip his jeans. The first moment of contact between you and his clothed hardness has you gasping, and you can almost feel the wetness in between your thighs starting to pool on the bed below you. He snickers at this and shimmies out of his jeans, his boxers following just as quickly. He didn’t care about foreplay, he had to have you now.

“I’m going to eat your pretty pussy now.” He says firmly, like he didn’t even think about it. And then his fingers are on the edge of your skirt, pulling it down. He snickers again when he sees the large wet spot on your panties, it was endearing to him. You watch him with lust-blown eyes as he slips those off as well and then runs a finger through your folds, causing you to arch your back and gasp. You felt like a teenage virgin getting touched for the first time, just a gentle ghosting of his fingers has you acting like this.

“Wet.” He remarks huskily with a smirk before getting on his knees on the floor, placing wet kisses along your lower stomach and upper thighs. You can already tell you won’t last very long, just his breath being within proximity of your cunt is making you feel things you’ve never felt before. He notices this and, without warning, attaches his lips to your clit. You practically jolt on the bed, letting out an utterly guttural moan that you’re sure that everyone in the entire city could hear. He sucks at your clit like a man starving, bringing up a slender finger (the same slender finger that poked your face earlier) to enter you.

“Bloody brilliant.” He murmurs against your clit, gazing at your folds. They’re everything he’s ever wanted to see, even prettier than he imagined. He moves his mouth away from your clit to circle his tongue around your entrance, but he doesn’t ignore it. He brings his thumb up to rub the little button fiercely. The mewls this drawing from your mouth being beyond music to your ears.

You fall into this dance for a short while, you’re getting louder and needier with your moans and he’s getting sloppier with his tongue. He can tell your close and he’s eagerly anticipating how your cum will taste in his mouth. “Close… Alex please…” you scream, grabbing a hold of his head to push his nose against your clit. His perfect nose, and it feels even more perfect. He nods in understanding and starts to lap at you faster, even gently grazing your folds with your tongue. He gently pinches your clit and then that’s it.

The orgasm caused by him is a spiritual experience. You’re crying and screaming and feel more liquid leave your body than a damn waterfall. Your vision is blurry and your legs are shaking. It feels like heaven to Alex. You taste like heaven to Alex.

When your legs finish shaking he sits up, his beautiful lips coated in your juices. “Taste fuckin’ delicious babe.” He says with a smirk before hopping up on the bed, “But I’m going to fuck you now.” And then he’s maneuvering your body so that he’s slotted in between your already spent legs, the bed definitely needing a change of sheets.

“But what about what you said earlier? I could suck your-” You’re practically babbling when he interrupts you. You’ll do anything for his large cock in any part of your body. He just laughs at your state and shakes your head, you’re adorable. “It’s your birthday, angel. I’m here to make you feel good. So now I’m gonna fuck you.” He repeats his words from earlier and you nod, too light-headed to think of anything else.

“Good girl.” He smiles at you before pressing his lips against yours again, this one softer than before. He kisses you as he moves his hips further before he gently slides his cock into your hole. At the sensation you gasp and bite your lip so hard you swear you can taste blood. It’s the best feeling you’ve ever felt, pure ecstacy in your body.

Alex checks to make sure you’re okay before starting to move, setting a pace that’s both slow and hard, every thrust reaching a part deep inside you that makes you mewl for more. You start to paw at his back and whimper, repeating the word “harder” a few times. To which he obliges, of course, speeding up his hips until the rhythm is nothing short of pornographic. You’ve never been fucked like this before, every lover before is obsolete to the amount of love and desire in your bed right now.

You can feel his hard cock pulse inside you and both of you know it won’t be much longer, you’ve both wanted this for so long that the emotions of the moment are overcoming you. His cock is still hitting your walls with such perfect pleasure and he brings his thumb back to your clit, making you gasp again.

His thrusts start to get sloppier again and your breathing starts to become irregular, and he pulls away from your lips to stare into your eyes. “Can I cum inside? Is that okay?” Your Alex, as sweet and caring as ever. He’s willing to cum anywhere… but inside of you sounds the nicest. And you seem to agree as you nod and arch your back, using your hands to pull him further into you.

And then it’s like time slowed. If you thought your orgasm from earlier was intense… The one triggered by feeling his hot loads spilling inside of you is earth shattering. He starts to shake and collapses on top of you. You close your eyes and have to take at least 30 deep breaths to stable yourself. His hot cum is spilling out of your pussy and his hot body is still on top of you… and you think you may be in love with him.

After a second of just sitting and breathing he sits up and looks at the mess in between your thighs, “I’ll go get a towel… and I’ll get you something to take care of that in the morning I-” You shake your head and laugh. “I’m on birth control, don’t worry.” You smile at him and he smiles at you before he walks to your en-suite bathroom to grab a washcloth. Even for the thirty seconds he’s gone you feel alone.

When he returns and starts cleaning your thighs up you feel the fondness in your chest that you always feel around him, but this time it’s stronger. It’s… love? “That was nice,” you say softly, watching him with so much awe in your eyes as he gently cleans you up.

He places a gentle kiss on your lips and throws the towel on the ground, “It was nice. You’re nice. And perfect.” He smiles at you again, his warm eyes so kind and gentle.

“You wanna spend the night? And then we can talk about this all in the morning… I’m just worn out.” You give a small laugh and he nods, collapsing on the bed next to you before pulling your head against his shoulder, littering your hair with small kisses as he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. You could get used to this.

“Good birthday gift?” He asks after a moment of silence, running his hand through your hair. You respond by placing a kiss on his jawline. Best birthday gift. You not only got the fuck of your life but now you have him, and you never want to lose him.

AN: this is my first fic!! pls lmk what you think or what i can do to improve! i'm just so obsessed with al <3

[invinciblerodent]

About the altered animations in Astarion's first romance scene

I already knew that there's something of a precedent for large updates to change camera angles and facial animations around a little bit, so, on a lark, I loaded in my save from before the first romance scene in my current, Astarionmance playthrough, just to see and compare it to my recorded version, see if there's been any changes since then.

Well... honestly? My feeling is that the two scenes are pretty much only roughly comparable to each other at this point. Like not to be dramatic, but it's kind of almost a case study in how much body language can alter the perception and interpretation of the same dialogue.

In the version of this that I got originally in my game (on october 21st so in patch 3, through high approval, quite a bit before the party), the short conversation before leaving the main campsite has him wearing sort of a... heavy, darkly suggestive, almost predatory expression. He looks, overall, very serious: head pitched strategically forward so he's both leaning towards- and looking at the PC through his lashes (maybe crowding them a little bit, stepping into their space), his eyes are more narrow and provocative, and he's not wearing even a hint of a smile. I think it makes it very clear what the intent here is: to present Desire™, and show a façade that suggests his impending performance of the "ooh, the sexy vampire is now going to steal you away to have his wicked way with you" fantasy.

Comparing this to the latest version (as of the 4th of december, so shortly after patch 5, which from the patch notes I'm guessing is likely what brought these alterations on), it's... very strangely different.

I had not altered my settings, or the shots in any way (beyond cropping and resizing), the lighting just... seems to have been brightened. But, the most obvious change is that his entire body language is sort of... tipped more back and away from the PC now. His brows and eyes are a lot softer and more open, rounded, more like they appear later on in the confession scene, and he's smiling this.... kind of cordial, unsettlingly friendly smile, that seems (at least in retrospect) very obviously fake and plastered on. I think he's selling the illusion of the rakish debaucher, the dashing scoundrel about to rock your world, a lot less convincingly this time around.

Even though the voicelines have not been altered in a way I can detect, his face is saying something completely different, and it recontextualizes a lot of things for me.

[Also in addition, him breaking character momentarily ("I do mean sex, to be clear") now does also lose a bit of its humor for me. Just because this new way, there isn't as large a gap between the capital letter Performance, and the little side note he gives himself in the middle of it. Now it's somehow... less theatrical overall, and so the aside is less like he knows he sounds unnatural and his real self is peeking out from behind the lines, and veers a twinge more towards "in case you're dense and didn't actually notice that I'm seducing you, I'll dumb it down for you".]

Even as he's waiting for the response in that silly "ta-dah!" pose, his face is very different: instead of that sort of blank, "haughtily and hauntingly sexy", determined kind of look, he's now gazing at the PC with what (in motion at least) looks to me like it's kinda... going rapidly back and forth between almost a pained/unsure look, and... a thinly veiled disgust, maybe?

Like, that's... that's straight-up a grimace, man, I don't want anyone I'm considering sleeping with to be looking at me like that.

Within the scene itself that follows, the animation appears unchanged (or at least not changed significantly enough for me to notice without playing them literally side by side), but the following conversation in the morning is... also a bit odd, and has been edited heavily?

In my original recording, he seems to be making sure to look at the PC more, though only over his shoulder, and his features are harder, more severe again, as it is in line with the conversation before. The whole little exchange, before the arcana check and before it'd segue into talking about Cazador more directily, ends on a bit of an eyeroll and a hidden smile that can be construed as conspiratory, or just a bit sly and self-satisfied.

This kinda straddles the line between "hehe, you're caught in my web now" and "hehe, I'm SO good at sex"- the former being closer to what he's likely thinking, and the latter being one of the more obvious ways the PC can interpret that look. A+ on that, no notes.

But now, (first of all the lighting is overall much less warm, the whole scene looks cool and less afterglow-y) he doesn't really turn to face the PC, not even over his shoulder. This keeps his expressions concealed from them, but open to the player, which is an interesting choice, and his expressions are, again, a lot more in line with those from later scenes, when the relationship is well underway: it's less openly performative, and more just a... a sad, unguarded, almost forlorn, private look. My guy looks like he is speedrunning through all his emotions over the span of like 10 seconds here-

-and lands notably on this kind of unsettling shot, of this expression that's, while somewhat similar to the old one for the line "I didn't want to go too far" (that the PC can halfway see), is both more exaggerated, and kept entirely to himself:

I for one find this one a little.... creepy and cartoonish, tbh???? Which, I guess while it's in line with the whole "I'm such an evil mastermind, they've fallen right into my honeypot" way of thinking he is supposed to have in this precise moment, it, uh.

Listen, it just conjures in my mind a violently clear image of Robbie Rotten from Lazytown. Because it's just such an "I'm clearly being a villainous villain with a nefarious scheme and agendas aplenty" expression, he's all but twirling his mustache, and the fact that it's turned right to the player's face rather than being only hinted at for both person and character, makes it look... pretty heavy-handed. Which I guess is more indicative of this man having a charisma score of a whopping 10, but it takes away from the subtlety of the entire exchange, and kind of creates a rift between what the player, and what the PC can know/suspect.

Overall, these new animations look... very different, bit more like they're trying to drive the point all the way home? Now there seems to be a big neon sign that says "HE IS NOT DOING THIS FOR PLEASURE" over his head, rather than letting your figure things out for yourself later on.

Needless to say, I.... personally prefer the old version of this scene over this new one, lol.

(...... One final, mildly notable change I noticed is that they seem to have taken out the little moan they had my character make as he bit into her neck? In my old recording, there was a tiny, barely audible little "a-aah!", and that's just.... not there now. I'm not sure what that's about, if it's a bug or a feature, and I don't know if they had it for other player voices or not, but prior to now, they did go pretty hard into how getting bitten is, to many, quite pleasurable, so downplaying that now comes off as a tiny bit odd to me.)

(I do like how her tits look less squashed though. They perked my girl's girls up a little bit, which is kinda nice lol.)

Editing to say this: it seems like these animations are the same as the goblin party ones, only... in the daylight? Which, it could be a bug of some sorts. I reloaded it once and it was the same once more, but... it could be that my save is kinda weird there for some reason. Idk. Turning reblogs off because it could just be a bug.

[thecoolerliauditore]

I remember last year finally watching Pearl and Scott's last life and. I think I experienced... the same thing that people who dislike FH did in 3L but with Pearl? I was encouraged to watch it by a friend because they said that gaslight gatekeep girlboss was super wholesome and loyal to each other, and that Scott even turned red rather than hurt either of them. But when I watched it, idk it wasn't as bad as I've seen some people describe FH but I was just struck by how often Scott calls Pearl insane or crazy or unhinged just for... existing? Playing the game? Being just a little bit silly sometimes no more than anyone else? He acted like she was a wild animal he had to reign in even though she didn't do anything crazier than what he did. Sometimes he would just randomly call her insane it felt like. It made me finally understand what people meant by those words being ableist with how often he threw them around! It got really uncomfortable!

I got sold GGG as a very cute wholesome winners POV, and I guess compared to everyone else in LL it was, but only if you compare it to other LL teams. People said he was suddenly mean to Pearl in DL, but he mostly repeated a lot of the things he already said about her in LL! I was expecting there to be some shift in how he treated her. Makes me scared to watch Jimmy and Scott's 3L POV if this is what people consider Scott being wholesome!

FASCINATING. this might be my cue to go rewatch GGG Last Life.

I'll be very open and say it's been a fair amount of time since I've sat down to rewatch LL, so I might be looking back at Scott and Pearls relationship with rose tinted glasses -- I spoke a little bit on the soft manipulation that existed between them still, like when Scott yelled at Pearl to kill Joel, but my impression of them is fairly wholesome. Then again I watched LL first and didn't have the context from 3L so the first time I watched their POV it was just. Haha funny blue man cute accent.

So take the rest of this with a grain of salt, at this point I'm fully prepared to say something like "Scott never hit Pearl" and someone will link me their equivalent of the sugar cane scene from 3L lmao.

So I can offer up some semblance of an explanation, if that helps at all to explain the perception gap. One thing is like you said, they were wholesome in comparison to the rest of the teams in LL, which I'd argue were the most disastrous in the series with the damage the "reds can't team with non-reds" rule did to them.

3L teams were also pretty bad, but when you went to compare FH to other teams you had other duos like DD and Renchantyn that had their own issues but served as a very solid point of reference for how they seemed to genuinely respect their partners. Thinking about the clip where Grian and Scott leave Scar and Jimmy to pull the lever on exploding Monopoly Mountain and Grian is trying his best to say he's worried for Scar through gritted teeth because he's Grian and Scotts just like. Well Jimmys probably gonna screw this one up 🙄 A very one to one comparison point presented directly for the viewer.

Scott and Pearl, on the other hand, were the only duo in LL amongst a bunch of massive teams that were falling apart all around them. It gave them this "us against the world" feeling, so to speak.

Maybe if Team BEST was more honest about being Teams BE and ST then we would've had a better comparison point and Scott and Pearl would've seemed way more insane, but then again I've had people vague to me that LL Ethubs is their 3L FH so I'm biting my tongue on this one.

Another thing that I think is more poignant is the factor of hindsight. Scott calling Pearl insane Now is horrifying because of what he did in DL and his calling her that being very much more serious.

In LL Pearl really didn't have any baggage attached to the word "insane" afaik? Unless she got upset at him and I've just forgotten cus it's been too long which is a very likely possibility.

So at the time it just seemed like. Pearl being Pearl and Scott gripping his head in stress and going aughhhhhhhhh ahhhhhh. Which is like. Fine at least to me. Her antics made his blood pressure go but he still went along with them more often than not and stuck by her side.

"She didn't do anything crazier than he did" is SUPER true btw LL Scott is a menace but I also must point out this is a point in hypocrisy but also a point in Pearls personality rubbing off on Scott that season. He was always a crazy arsonist but now he's a crazy arsonist without the angst.

Like the POV is haunting to me now that I have the context of DL and beyond and Scott being serious about the "insane" thing but before I got that context it really did just look like. Pearl being some sort of animal that has wandered into Scott's base and started gnawing at the curtains and Scott trying to scare her away with a broom yelling at the top of his lungs YOURE INSANE. YOURE INSANE. But also the creature if it leaves will Take All of His Lives Away so he has to learn to live with her and through her learn to be a little more chill. Which is the main appeal of that POV, to me at least.

compare say. The part in LL where Pearl steals one of Scars crystals and is genuinely being silly and antagonistic by running around giggling. And Scott's thrown his hands up and going "I DONT APPROVE THIS BUT IM NOT HER BOSS DONT LOOK AT ME". To Episode 2 of WL where Pearl is like? A little bit cheeky to Gem and Gem literally scolds Scott for not "controlling" her well enough and Scott apologises and promises he'll do better. <- ?????? Everything I type out this interaction I have to remind myself it's real btw like what.

and I must say they do have a lot of really genuinely cute moments that season that might be blinding me shoujo sparkle style to the horrors. Like their staring into each others eyes ritual thing for boogeyman assignments, for example. Compare that to the um. Axe crits.

ANYWAY. fascinating insight. To rewatch Pearls POV I go (<- clown makeup is locked and loaded)

[weirdplutoprince]

What is Brazil like? What are your favorite things about it, least favorite things, and some day to day experiences that people not from there might not know about? Do you have any tidbits of culture you find interesting or are fond of?

Oh that's a big question! First of all it's huge lol. Unsure how accurate this specific map is, but if you google 'Brazil size' you find a dozen of these 'which countries fit in each states of Brazil' maps, so.

This is particularly relevant to everything I answer further ahead, because since it is so big and so culturally complex anything I say is just going to be a tiny speck compared to different regions.

And besides its size, Brazil had a lot going on colonization and immigration wise - meaning you have regions that have very notable communities from certain countries of the world. A famous example is that, if I recall correctly, we have the biggest japanese settlement of sorts outside of Japan. So that's something!

A funny side effect I can think that relates to this is that in historical novelas (live action television series that air daily and are known for melodrama and intensity) there is always a character that can be roughly described as 'The Sexy Irrevent Italian Immigrant' which is funny lol.

As for my favourite things I think the culinary is definetely a big one!!! There are so many dishes and they are so delicious all the time forever.

Brigadeiros are my favourites from all times, they're this candy made of condensed milk and chocolate powder, thats finished off with sprinkles. It's so yummy, you can also make it into cake filling and a million different things.

I also love Acarajé!! I think properly explaining what they're made off is a bit beyond my english vocabulary but just know its a fried dough that has yummy fillings and shrimp.

Otherwise I think I also like how warm and friendly people are. There's also this humour in how things are handled and seem which I think it's nice. Again, this is a perception I get from the region I live in, so I'm not sure. Though this is something people here tend to complain about when they go to other countries, so I guess it is at least some sort of significant cultural difference!

Least favourite things are the ever present fear of impeding violence and the blatant social inequality.

Day to day things hmmm. I have no parameter for how it goes out there, but I've heard enough stories that indicate this might be a thing: showering multiple times a day lol. I'm from a hot place so there is that, but this does seem to be a cultural thing as well. Like, I've heard of landlords from other countries complaining of brazilians that use 'too much hot water' because we shower a lot.

Just caring about cleaness a lot in general. Like, again I'm not sure which of these things are cultural outliners but from what I've heard, even things like. You go out, as soon as you go home you take off the 'going out clothes' and shower. And you avoid sitting on the bed sheets with 'going out clothes' etc.

Another thing is that is is very culturally acceptable to be late! To the point where being on time is at times more awkward. Like, say, if a party is said to start at 7 PM, people generally arrive closer to 8PM. I can remember a few birthdays I'd attended as a child where if you arrived 'on time' you'd basically be the only guest present and there would be this awkward air of 'Why Are You Already Here'.

I've also heard we say things we don't mean more? Like half heartedely making plans to go out with a friend or be there a certain day - but its kinda expected that neither side will follow through unless you constantly check up with each other during the days leading to it. I think this steems from a general need to be pleasant and friendly so people don't want to say they won't go or just outright refuse things without coming up with excuses etc.

And at last for tidbits of culture: CHILDREN BIRTHDAY PARTIES FUCKING RULE!!! HARD!!! Even if you're middle class or such it is not uncommon for parties to have trampolines, magicians, clowns, children entertainers etc. A shit ton of decoration, little gifts for the guests to take home (usually cheap toys or candy), themed birthday invitations, themed parties with decorated pannels, a shit ton of candy etc. There's even this sorta common agreement that even if you're bored because you'll be the only adult there, it is fun to attend children birthday parties because you'll eat like a king.

I think thats it!!! I hope that answers it! Thanks for the question :3

[reachexceedinggrasp]

I have a feeling you might relate to this or you might have even related this on your blog already, but I was just thinking of that Ghoul quotation water water everywhere and not a drop to drink

I think probably my favourite, maybe ever, quiet point of characterisation in a sort of villainous or Beast love interest is his or her having a poet's soul... whether that is conscious or unconscious romantic meditation. It's like Kylo musing to Rey when he says 'You have that look in your eyes. From the forest. When you called me a monster' I love that sort of wistful observation, especially because it evokes such potent imagery ('when we fought together in the forest and then you marked yourself on my face'). Or more literally something like Ghoul citing a line of literature, even when none around except for Lucy would know what he's referencing, it's for his own arrestment and amusement, this is how he sees/interacts with the world

I guess in that way, it reveals something new about their perspective on the world, even when they're somebody seemingly cut off from it - monstrous, othered, repellent, ugly - when they're able to articulate a certain beauty which other characters may not remark upon. It's sort of covetous in that sense, but I think it also sort of helps explain what might interest them about a Beauty, after all, there's something they long for and value (spiritual, aesthetic, existential beauty).

I thought you might be able to relate 🥰

Oh, totally. And with Cooper and Ben, specifically, which is a parallel I hadn't actually noticed until you've just pointed it out, we're being shown their sensitivity as characters. Not in the sense of being considerate, but that they're aware and alert to beauty and meaning in the world despite currently occupying a narrative role which might make us think they're simply destructive or nihilistic figures. And despite the cynicism they're both ostensibly espousing.

Cooper quotes or alludes to literature practically constantly relative to how little he speaks, always knowing people almost certainly won't understand him, and that's especially fascinating because he didn't make those kinds of references in the flashbacks. We could take this in a whole direction about how he created the Ghoul as a character to shield himself from the things he had to do to survive and is living within a meta-narrative deconstructing the reactionary anti-hero who overtook the white hat sheriff he used to play in his movies. The anti-hero he never wanted to be. He makes allusions because his life has become a story he's telling himself to stay sane. He's his own wry Dickensian narrator making asides to an imagined audience about dramatic irony and social commentary.

And an important part of his presentation to others before the war was painting himself as not sophisticated. Just a cowboy and then just a guy who plays a cowboy in the movies. He wants nothing to do with politics either in an interpersonal or broader sense, and disclaims any pretensions to being savvy despite being in a theoretically powerful position as a rich, well-connected major film star. I think he was genuinely naive, but I also think he often played dumb to avoid social conflict. He was complacent and his image helped him remain complacent. Obviously he was very willing to be confrontational when he saw wrong or injustice right in front of him (he goes after Bud Askins directly to his face about marines getting killed by shitty equipment, he challenges Moldaver when she calls him out), but pre-bombs he mostly uses his empathic perceptiveness and charisma to keep everyone around him happy.

In the wasteland we often see him doing the opposite and deliberately riling people up in order to gather information and assess or eliminate them as threats, but he's also only gotten better at disarming people when he wants to. As a handsome charming film star he pretended not to know anything, as a scary intimidating monster he pretends he knows everything.

What I'm wondering about as far as all this goes is whether Cooper always had a secret nerdy side and read all the classics as a teenager or perhaps while waiting between shots when he was working as a stuntman, or whether he wanted to fit in when he started to make it in Hollywood so tried to become cultured before realising that wasn't what anyone wanted from him. Or if he just spent 200 years alone and read anything he could find as a way to cling to his humanity. We know he was at least a bit intellectually curious before the war, because of his reading and retaining some article about studies on torture.

But YES, him quoting poetry and being so interested and insightful about Lucy, specifically is a huge part of how he's framed as a romantic figure. And he's already by far the most romantic figure in the show. If it were solely about his tragedy, you'd think they would emphasise the contrast between his pre-fallen and post-fallen state by stripping him of his heroic trappings, but they don't. He's actually more romantic post-'curse'.

It also gets me because he's an extremely smart, socially adept person who doesn't let others see him for who he really is both consciously and unconsciously on multiple levels and that layers of identity shit is my crack. He was a profoundly honest man who thought he was simple, but actually he was a glorious maze of contradiction and complexity waiting to happen who has now come into his own as a master manipulator.

[nostalgebraist]

Here are some fun / amusing / potentially-interesting facts about the process of writing and plotting Almost Nowhere, if anyone's curious.

Major spoilers for the whole of Almost Nowhere under the cut.

(There's really no way to spoiler-censor this material without rendering it incomprehensible. If you haven't read the book, do that first before reading this post.)

(1)

A large fraction of the book's eventual plot emerged from my attempts to patch a single, in-some-sense trivial continuity error I made while writing the very first chapter.

The Mooncrash section of that chapter ends with this sentence (emphasis added):

All parties were used to stillness, now, for the Mooncrash was nearly four years old.

And a few paragraphs later, in the opening of the Academy section, we get this (emphasis added again):

For (as everyone knows) the Shroud is upon us and while it tolerates the Academy — as it presently is, as it has been for the last eight years, a chrysalis, preparing itself step by minuscule step [...]

So: The Mooncrash is 4 years old. The Academy crash is at least 8 years old, and indeed older.

Yet the Mooncrash is also as old as the crash system itself! It was made by humans, during the period between the discovery of the anomalings and the mass-crashing of the human race. (This is only shown in the second chapter, but I had it in mind before then.)

How long has the human race been crashed, then? At most 4 years, and at least 8 years? How could that possibly be?

It would have been easy enough to just edit the chapter, but that's not how I do things. Restrictions, famously, breed creativity. I enjoy attempting to solve puzzles I have inadvertently created for myself, and many of my best ideas have been produced through this process.

It would also have been simple and easy to merely say: "OK, I guess time elapses at different subjective rates, in different crashes."

Amusingly, I ended up doing that anyway! But for some reason, this avenue didn't occur to me at first. By the time I started asking myself whether to include this kind of effect, I already had a different solution in mind.

I spent a lot of time beating my head against the figurative wall, trying to resolve the 4-vs-8-year issue. The early parts of my AN notes are full of this stuff.

----

At some early point, I came up with the idea that the anomalings/shades would deal with troublesome crashes by "rebasing" them, rewriting their histories.

I didn't intend, initially, for this idea to take over the plot as much as it eventually did. It was just a fun idea that underscored the huge power differential between the anomalings and their captives, and felt in line with the Cartesian/Wachowskian themes of transcending a "fake"/illusory world, radically doubting one's own perceptions and memories, etc.

But, having stipulated that "rebases" were a thing, I hit upon the idea that they could be used to modify the total quantity of past (subjective) time inside a crash -- turning 8 years into 4, or vice versa, or whatever.

So, I could fix the problem by stipulating that one -- or both -- of the problematic crashes had already been rebased, in this way.

But why? And by whom?

----

Now, at this early stage, I also had the idea in mind that the character "Anne" would eventually escape from her crash, and that she would have a hand in various major events in the story -- including some events that had already occurred, relative to the "present" of the textual PoV.

But I didn't know, yet, what these interventions actually were.

(I put "Anne" in quotes, here, because in the very early stages I casually assumed that only the PoV Anne introduced in Chapter 1 would be a major character, and that her sisters were merely background material for her personal narrative, like the tower itself. Of course, in the process of thinking through the details of things, I realized that this assumption was needless and indeed counterproductive.)

As often happens when I'm plotting a story, I found that two unknowns slotted neatly into one another, each one providing a potential solution to the problem posed by the other.

We need something for "Anne" to do in the past. Something consequential, something that shows off her newfound agency -- but also something that obscures her role from view. Ideally, something kind of weird, esoteric, "advanced"; something that feels buried inside the deep, dark center of the backstory, which the reader will only "excavate" at the end of a long, strange journey.

And we need someone to rebase the Mooncrash.

That answers the "who?" question. But again -- why?

Well, it was already in the plan that Azad would join forces with Michael, when Michael went in search of his lost Anne. That Anne would meet Azad, as a result, and that it would be Azad who persuades her to return to Michael's crash.

I didn't, at the time, have much else planned for the Anne-Azad connection.

As originally conceived, the "Azad convinces Anne to return" scene was about Azad's uncertain loyalties, and about Anne's lack of exposure to other human beings (and to the power of words, as deployed by human beings with access to real human culture). That is, it merely served specific, separate purposes in the sub-stories of these two characters. There was no intent to set up, or develop, a thread connecting these sub-stories, making Azad a major character in Anne's arc and vice versa.

But that seems like kind of a shame, doesn't it? Why go to the trouble of preparing these characters, and bringing them into contact, if I didn't have anything for them to do together?

Anne and Azad.

We need someone to rebase the Mooncrash.

We need Anne to learn about real human culture, somehow, before she leaves. I knew that, already, though I didn't have a mechanism in mind.

(I also knew, by this point, that causing Azad's appointment as translator was another one of "Anne's" consequential moves. I had conceived of this, at first, as a relatively impersonal act, done only for its historical significance. Indeed, that would have been enough -- but the more the merrier, theme/motivation-wise.)

Problems paired up, interlocked, and became each others' solutions.

(1b)

As is obvious from the above, I didn't have the scenario planned out in very much detail when I wrote the first chapter.

At the time, the story had been gestating in my head for a while, but only as a bunch of vague inklings and intentions.

The proximate cause of writing-the-first-chapter was a sudden and unexpected burst of inspiration. I was riding the bus to a social event, and suddenly my mind was awash with crisp, never-before-glimpsed details about Anne and her tower, the Mooncrash, the Academy, Cordelia's blue dress -- all the stuff of Chapter 1. It felt like a crucial message was being beamed into my brain, VALIS-style, from the Muse / Higher Power.

I had an urge to bail on the social event, turn around, ride back home, and start writing immediately -- what if the magic went away, as suddenly as it had arrived? I resisted that urge and made a perfunctory appearance at the event, but then went back home and wrote as much as I could before falling asleep.

So, when I was writing that chapter, stuff like "four years" and "eight years" wasn't based on any single coherent picture, just vibes and vague inklings.

(I think 4 years probably sounded like the right amount of time for G&A to have been in the Mooncrash, character-wise. Meanwhile, Hector's ascension from the Academy had to be long enough ago that there would be no direct overlap between Hector and any of the current students. The "Bad Old Days" had to feel like something you'd only hear about in rumors, or from authority figures who probably weren't telling the full story.)

(2)

Like TNC before it, Almost Nowhere was originally conceived as relatively simple and straightforward story, only to become something much weirder and more complicated as I fleshed out the details.

As I said above, I only had a very vague "plan" at the outset of the writing process. But I kinda knew where I was going with it, in very broad strokes.

The original arc, insofar as it existed at all, was something like:

The bilateral / anomaling tension is introduced.

The bilateral PoV characters come to an understanding of their situation.

Many of the bilateral PoV characters join up with Hector Stein, who is already trying to defeat the anomalings and free humanity from the crashes.

Azad temporarily sides with the anomalings, and Anne temporarily returns to her captive state. But both them "come around" eventually.

Anne eventually triumphs over Michael, delivers a dramatic monologue castigating him for imprisoning her (etc.), and mounts a successful escape.

Shortly after Anne's escape, some (TBD!) resolution to the main conflict is achieved. Whatever it is, it is proposed/spearheaded by the bilateral faction (and specifically Anne herself), and it somehow exemplifies "the bilateral way of thinking/being."

The humbled anomalings conclude that "the bilateral way of thinking/being" has its advantages, both practically and morally.

So the story, as originally conceived, was much more straightforwardly about the "good" PoV humans fighting back against aliens.

It unabashedly took the bilateral side in the conflict, and it ended with a "beauty of our weapons" sort of moment in which the bilaterals are both victorious and righteous, and in which these two kinds of success are closely linked and almost merged.

I have to imagine that, even in counterfactual worlds where some things went differently, I never would have stuck to this version of the story all the way through.

Because, one way or the other, I would have eventually realized that.. like... this version of the story kind of sucks, right?

I mean, why go to the trouble of introducing these aliens, and trying to make them interesting, only to say "nah, actually these guys were just wrong, it's us and our existing 'ordinary' pre-conceptions that are right, and that's what the story was about all along"?

It would have been "inventing a guy to be mad at," as the saying goes.

Not a great foundation for a story. And the least interesting possible direction to go in, given this kind of setup.

It also presents a seemingly unresolvable tension, for the writer, about how to portray the distinctively "bilateral" nature of the bilateral side in the conflict.

If "bilateral" is as broad a category as the anomalings say it is -- if you and I and all of us, whatever other qualities we possess, participate equally in this sin -- then it's hard to strike a note of emotional triumph around the quality of "bilaterality" that doesn't feel wrong, vacuous, or bloodlessly abstract.

"Woo, yeah, humans are great!" I mean, are they? All of them? You don't get to say "well, only the good ones," here, or "in their ideals if not always their acts," or anything like that. Everyone is included in the relevant category, except for the guys-who-aren't that were invented for this specific story.

It's difficult to make this land properly, in the same way it would be difficult to write a story that inspires "carbon-based life pride" or "having-DNA pride" or the like in its reader.

So this version of the story was dead on arrival. And indeed, by the time I was thinking through the stuff chronicled in (1) above, this version of the story felt like a provisional placeholder, at best, in my mind.

Nonetheless, there are various echoes of it in the story I eventually landed on.

For example, in the original version of "Anne's" escape -- conceived in a much more straightforwardly positive way -- I had Anne reading "real" books in secret, drawing moral strength from them, and then including a bunch of literary quotes in her big dramatic monologue to Michael. (I took inspiration, here, from John the Savage reading Shakespeare in Brave New World.)

And I had the idea that "Anne," being an autodidact, would read omnivorously without making culture-bound distinctions familiar to you and me; that her selection of quotes, in the monologue, would put low culture alongside high culture, infamous books alongside famous ones, etc.; and as a particular case, that it'd be fun if -- before going on to quote Shakespeare and co. -- she began the whole thing by quoting Ayn Rand.

And that one idea stuck, even if the rest of it didn't.

(Or, consider how the idea of "a powerful move in the conflict that exemplifies the bilateral way of thinking/being" actually crops up multiple times in the finished story, right up to its last scenes. One can see traces of it in the "trick" that obsesses Michael, in the use of autobiographical writing to build up nostalgium, and in Annabel's improved crash design.)

(3)

I came up with the Mirzakhani Mechanism relatively late, in between writing Chapter 13 and writing Chapters 14-15 (in which the MM is introduced).

The MM was a product of looking back at the sci-fi elements that already existed in the story, like crashes and rebases, and trying to invent some single underlying explanation that covered all of them in a relatively parsimonious way.

This basically "worked," I think -- it certainly worked better than I had been expecting, after playing the dangerous game of "write a bunch of weird stuff and hope you'll be able to explain it all later." (I remember talking to one reader who was shocked that I hadn't had the MM in mind from the very beginning, which was flattering.)

It also had unintended consequences that kinda took over the story, but largely in a good way.

Earlier, I had planned to have the post-rebase crash timelines "screened off" from the outside world somehow, so that rebasing a crash wouldn't mess up the timeline of the outside world. But, once I'd fixed the idea that "rebasing is an MM event" in place, I realized that this wasn't consistent with the way MM events were meant to work. Instead, the exposition in Ch. 15 directly implies the stuff about rebases that Grant realizes much later in Ch. 41.

Once I'd noticed this, it was obvious that it was extremely important, and I re-incorporated it into the broader plot.

On a related note, I eventually decided that the account of the anomalings "going backward in time to our era" in Ch. 15 didn't really make sense. This meant I needed a different, more viable way anomalings and bilaterals to exist at the same point in time.

This line of thought, along with several others (like "what happened to all the nonhuman organisms?" and "which parts of the MM multiverse are real?"), eventually led me to invent Everywhere-Heaven and the beasts.

That happened right at the start of 2022, between Chapters 21 and 22.

It quickly became clear that the E-H/beasts stuff could be put to a lot of valuable use in story's third act, which was largely a worrying blank space in my head (even at this point!). From thereon out, I worked on fleshing out the third act behind the scenes while writing the second.

Not coincidentally, Chapter 22 contains a ton of E-H-related foreshadowing, and also some hints that human scientists (like Aidan in Ch. 15) had never fully understood the anomalings.

The use of Maryam Mirzakhani, a real (and recently deceased) mathematician, was a weird choice and arguably one in poor taste. All I can really say in defense of it is that it came to me suddenly, and had a number of properties that fit the vibe of the part of the story in which it appeared, and I have a policy of "going with my gut" when it suggests such things to me.

I felt similarly about this choice and another thing introduced in Ch. 15, the nuclear attack intended to kill scientists. Both of these things underscored the fact that the story took place in an alternate reality. And both felt sort of "edgy," "too dark," "too close to the real world" compared to the tone of the story so far. But I wanted to take the story to new places in the coming acts -- "darker," "more real" places -- and something felt right about introducing these elements at this exact point, as signposts providing an indication of where things were headed.

(4)

The phrase "NOWHERE TO HIDE" was originally "NO MERCY," in my notes.

And the abbreviation "NM" for "NO MERCY" was used throughout my notes for Nowhere-To-Hide related stuff, e.g. "NM Annes."

This wasn't the product of much thought, just the first thing that came to mind that had roughly the correct vibe. I almost immediately concluded that I'd have to replace "NO MERCY" with something else in the work itself, since it would seem like an Undertale reference that I didn't intend to make.

"Moon" was originally just a placeholder name -- a shorthand for "the 'NM Anne' who rebased the Mooncrash." But I liked the idea of actually using it, once it had occurred to me.

The corresponding placeholder name for A11 was "Ling," as in "linguist" (but also an actual name).

(5)

I went through 3 different outlines of the third act.

Really, there was a first outline, which was really bad, and then there were two slightly-different versions of a very different outline that mostly corresponds to the finished draft.

The first, bad outline was amusingly titled "notes-satisfying-ending.txt", because I explicitly used this post about "satisfying endings" as a guideline while writing it.

(To be clear, I don't think the linked post was to blame for the badness of that first outline. I didn't ultimately find the post very helpful as writing advice, but the "satisfying ending" outline wasn't even a "satisfying ending" in the post's own terms, and was also bad in unrelated ways.)

I don't want to go into much detail about the bad outline. It was really bad, and also really different from what eventually occurred. It's honestly a pretty embarrassing document.

A lot of the key ideas were there (E-H, etc.), and the very end of the story was roughly the same. But it had a ton of needless flaws that I later corrected. Various existing character arcs and motivations were dropped and never picked up, or suddenly diverted in some new and unfruitful direction; way too much time was spent on getting characters and objects from point A to point B, or otherwise sort of rambling about in a way that didn't matter in the end; it included a lot of whimsical "fun ideas" that weren't necessary and would have added clutter to an already very full canvas; etc.

I never got to the point of building a chapter-by-chapter version of this outline, but I'm sure it would have much longer than the existing third act, also.

The existing third act is pretty long, but it was actually the result of an aggressive pruning and tightening process.

If the "satisfying-ending" outline had a single greatest flaw, it was terrible pacing. Lots of slack, lots of empty space, and when big things did happen, they came out of nowhere, not really prompted by what came immediately before them.

The next draft of the ending resulted from taking the raw materials of "satisfying-ending," purging all the dross, re-thinking all the obviously flawed stuff, and then trying to rearrange the pieces in front of me in a way that was maximally "tight" and interconnected, with questions and tensions introduced and then resolved in a rapid-fire manner, and without any major thread "sitting around in the background" long enough to feel stale, or get forgotten.

That outline was in a file called "notes-good-end.txt."

Much later, I tightened up the plan even further, merging some things that were originally in separate chapters. This was in a file called "notes-true-end.txt", and -- true to its name -- was the version reflected in the book itself.

So there was "satisfying-ending," which sucked; "good-end," which was good; and "true-end," which was slightly better.

(I realize the multiplicity of the ending, and the account of deliberate "tightening" etc., is in apparent tension with my recent account of working by direct inspiration.

There are a few things I can say about this tension.

For one, it really is true that the third act of AN was more deliberately reasoned-out, and less directly-inspired, than some of the earlier stuff. This is kind of inevitable: you don't get to do anything after an ending, that's what an ending is, and so you have to deliberately try to make the final act of a story fully work as a thing unto itself, rather than writing checks in the hope of cashing them at some later point.

And separately, I do think the final version of the ending feels "more real," "more true to the work" than the satisfying-ending draft.

I think I was aware, even while composing "satisfying-ending," that it felt off and wrong in some ways. But it was only after going through the exercise of creating a complete ending -- some sort of complete ending -- that I was able to look back and say "OK, this fits, but this doesn't fit," and distill something that actually felt right.)

[isa-ghost]

Phil and bagi hcs?

YOU HAVE JUST ENABLED A MONSTER.

I AM SO ABNORMAL ABOUT THESE TWO.

Also these will apply to AMFMN!! Because SURPRISE, if no one has checked the fic tags, her name is listed as a main character. ;) She'll be arriving in Chapter 6!! :D

I cannot fucking WAIT to expand upon their dynamic, which is funny because by the time Bagi shows up, Phil is possessed so it won't be exploration through direct interactions until the recovery period waaay later in the fic. Nonetheless it'll be hype! :D

qPhil headcanons masterlist

Phil is a member of the "Bagi can do whatever she wants forever" club. He supports her rights and wrongs and fully believes she could kick his ass no matter how unbalanced of a fight it'd be in his favor (disclaimer I don't actually know Bagi's exact pvp skill level 🤔)

Bagi is a member of the "God I want Phil to take me on a flight some day, I am so sad his wings are fucked up" club. (She would probably be terrified /pos)

I don't know what it is about their friendship but I feel like Bagi is so much more attuned to the way Phil thinks than the average islander. I guess I'd say it's because of how perceptive she is in general, especially with how she's a detective? Whatever it is, Bagi just has this talent for reading Phil like a damn book. And she won't hesitate to call him on his bullshit either. She's much like Fit in that regard. Crow man can't hide SHIT

Like fr if Phil ever gave Bagi reason to be concerned the first thing she'd do is start cornering those closest to him and either ask what's up or be like "hey Phil's on some shit rn, we gotta go force him to confess whatever stupid shit he's shouldering on his own and bottling up"

Phil has definitely been whacked with the frying pan for not venting and acting like he has to brave the horrors alone btw. Bagi's the type of friend that'll kick your fucking ass if you're not self-caring or being mean to yourself. (I am projecting LMAO)

Bagi isn't as Holy Shit We Could Die Any Second about things as Phil, but they're both very protective people, which can manifest in very volatile ways when they're hurt or angered by something (ie: Feds). I would not want to experience their individual wraths simultaneously.

Bagi is one of the top people Phil shows his gift giving love language to. Be it resources she needs, pictures he's taken of her/Em/Tina or of weird island shit, the means to complete cookie tasks, etc. She's one of the first in mind.

GOD Phil wants her to teach him how to wield a frying pan so badly. He's an excellent swordsman and bowman, but PAN?? The enjoyment he'd get out of it would be infinite, he'd love to be kicking ass while getting a laugh out of it bc pan go BONG when it hits a motherfucker.

If one needs something the other says yes no hesitation. They might ask each other a couple questions, but as soon as they have 100% clarity, they trust each other with the rest and know that if something goes wrong, whoever is present at the time will unleash hell on the person or monster that caused it.

I've somewhat already hinted at it but GOD the mutual admiration they have for each other!! Their wits and way with words, their natural sense of leadership, their determination to defend what they believe in, what they think is right, and the people they love, their specific expertise, the list goes on. They just think the other is so fucking cool and brilliant.

Tbh I think in the right circumstances they'd teach each other some lowkey fucked up tricks they have up their sleeves. Like Bagi giving Phil insight on manipulating people into giving the answers you're looking for by asking the right carefully worded questions, or Phil teaching Bagi the best spots to hit/hurt a person/mob to really do some damage just purely as a "hey if you ever find yourself in a Situation, here's a tip" thing

I don't know how better to show this without explicitly saying it: These two are not the other's fucking caretaker. Phil is not Bagi's father figure and Bagi is not Phil's mother figure. Yes, they can scold each other when the other is doing something dumb (cough, 7 hcs ago, cough). Friends do that. They support each other and call each other on their bs. That is not parenting, that's being a good friend. And they are to each other.

On that note, it hasn't come up too much yet but when shit sucks (like when the eggs were lost or lost lives), they're good at distracting each other. But like without halting the process of dealing with their emotions. If they're sad, they'll be sad together, but they're good at picking the right conversation topics to lighten the mood. If they're mad, they'll be mad together, and they'll plan what to do about it with each other.

I think I've sorta demonstrated it well enough in a couple of these hcs already but AUGH, they're just. So on the same page with each other almost all the time. And when they aren't, they're so good at giving each other perspectives they didn't think of before. Which, I don't mean to compare Bagi to her brother here, but is also how Phil and Cellbit can be with each other too; though they've somewhat fallen out of that sync post-Purgatory. The way the Mystery Siblings are so on the same wavelength as Phil makes me so *slams fist on desk*

Phil is normally a very Just Vibin' kinda guy but Bagi can get him into some really deep intellectual conversations sometimes and it's so 🍿🍿🍿 to watch

[dungeons-and-dictions]

I GUESS I’m just going to do a million analyses on Hazbin Hotel, everyone! My hot take on judgement!

SPOILERS UP TO EP. 6

First, I was wrong about Hazbin Hotel being The Good Place’s antithesis; it’s the logical conclusion. Here, it’s worse than accidentally not knowing how to fairly count good and bad in relation to situations in someone’s control. Not even the head angel knows how anyone ends up in Heaven! If people just randomly pop up on the list, then it’s not about good and bad; it’s about order and chaos. People in Heaven are good because they are treated nicely up there by angels, or act as they perceive they should in a holy place.

Next, Lucifer is walking proof that anyone can be ascended or damned. He’s already one of the nicest characters in the show with being present in a single episode. Lucifer was never mortal, and fell just for questioning Heaven. Yet, he retained his angelic wings and power, rather than having it turn evil or losing all of it. And of course, confirmed that Vaggie is fallen (her name origin is exactly what I didn’t want, thanks Adam), and she was punished for having MERCY on a sinner.

Adam might already be using the arbitrary nature of entrance to Heaven to his advantage. He might have a free pass as the first human, but if the populace of Heaven know it’s potentially an elevator based on your own progression, he would fall so fast. It also implies that the extermination exists to fear-monger sinners; why try to be good if they can never ascend, and their end will be by an exterminator anyway? Thus the perception that Hell is evil persists through sinners’ hopelessness. That keeps sinners from becoming better, and other angels from questioning, which keeps Adam in Heaven.

But, why might Adam know such a thing and no one else? Because, he might be the actual big bad of the world. We all know he is abhorrent and Sera doesn’t like him. Now that we’ve seen other angels, the exterminator helmets are obviously based on him. He’s got horns, and pitch-black skin, very different from everyone else. He’s much more demonic than angelic in palette and features.

Adam might not be the poster boy of bad in the Hazbin universe, but he may have at least helped introduce evil and chaos into the world. Whether or not he is playing the long game of fooling everyone in Heaven into arbitrary judgement or not, it seems likely that his demonic appearance is due to eating the fruit in the first place. Please let this dude get punished.

A few more short questions and thoughts:

When did Lilith and Lucifer split? This could imply other things about Alastor’s (now confirmed) own contract.

If Lilith didn’t make a deal with Alastor, who gave him his power all those years ago?

Why can Vox’s programming be accessed in Heaven? It’s not an exterminator’s business to know the sinners they kill, so there’s no other reason for Adam to know who Angel Dust is.

Is Charlie half-human, half-demon, or is Lilith’s side something else? Lilith was/is definitely running the show, not Lucifer.

The fact this is a musical might mean everything is being manipulated by Lilith to us the viewers; she used music to bring Hell to power.

[ckret2]

I was wondering, do you plan on including Bill's phobias from the website in the fic?

Additianlly, since it was confirmed that his parents are triangles, would that change how Bill reacts to his hair since it's a pretty often mentioned plot point?

Ruminating on it.

TV static is easy, I can slide that in no problem, we get an explanation for why it makes him uncomfortable in the book and I can easily think of a way to expand that, I already had an entire plotline based on Bill seeing weird stuff in TV static so I can just meld that in.

3D glasses make no sense aside from "well his parents were red and blue." And? Lots of things are red and blue. The explanation can't even be the 3D of 3D glasses because 3D glasses don't make things more 3D, they give you the illusion of depth perception. I'm going to call them "fake depth perception" glasses for the rest of this post to emphasize their actual function. If you look at a flat image (as in, on a piece of paper or a TV) that's set up to work with fake depth perception glasses, then it tricks your eyes into thinking that flat image is popping out because of how your binocular vision works...

... which means, one, anybody with two eyes wearing fake depth perception glasses in the second dimension COULD ALSO HAVE THE SAME DEPTH PERCEPTION ILLUSION if they were looking at a "flat" image (on their piece of paper or TV), it wouldn't make things look "3D" to them, it'd just give the image depth...

... and, two, fake depth perception glasses WOULDN'T WORK ON BILL IN THE FIRST PLACE because HE ONLY HAS ONE EYE. Without two eyes, all you see when you look through those glasses is a lotta red, or a lotta blue.

So unless I've totally forgotten something from the book where he brought up fake depth perception glasses there's two possibilities. One: either he has a phobia of fake depth perception glasses for poorly-conceptualized dumb lore reasons; or two: he has a phobia of fake depth perception glasses for reasons we're incapable of guessing because we haven't been told anything about it.

I can't think of any explanation for Venetian blinds that's based on info we've received as opposed to random speculation, and I haven't seen one from other fans yet either.

So, yeah, TV static is no problem, I can do that easily. The other two? Until/unless someone finds decent explanations for them, I'll probably just not mention 3D glasses or Venetian blinds in the fic so I don't have to worry about it. Which is fine, because I wasn't making any plans to mention them anyway.

I've got at least three week to figure out what the fuck I'm gonna do about the fact that his parents are triangles now. The hair thing isn't coming out. Only 50% of it had to do with the fact it looked like his mom and the other 50% was the fact that it looks like an actively rotting corpse. I've just gotta figure out a way to re-present it that doesn't make it feel like 50% of the symbolic weight has been ripped out.

[rottinghyacinth]

More,Laito Sakamaki

Headcanons/thoughts

Tw:child abuse/sexual abuse/trauma/laito sakamaki/assault

So I wanted to talk about Laito sakamaki in a bit more depth,specifically when he's a child/his childhood growing up

So we know that with the sakamaki brothers they all kinda grew up together,in the same house I'm pretty sure

We see this in the flashback in the anime of their childhood (I haven't played the game or read the comics)

It looks like to some extent they bonded,at least until a certain age

But in present day their relationship is strained,and I can guess it happened around their actual teenage years(before going into the hundreds)

Laito's relationship with his brothers is even more rifted when he started being molested by cordelia

Because his view of love was so tainted,mistaking lust and abuse for love he isn't exactly sure how to properly bond with his brothers now that cordelia has ruined his perception of what love is supposed to be and look like

I also read somewhere (and headcanon) that his brothers found out that he was in an incestuous relationship with their mother when they were still kids and feel guilty about

In present day its obvious the brothers don't bond and don't ever plan to,but even with all their trauma and misconceptions in life they can still feel horrified learning that cordelia was molesting and grooming their brother

As kids the rest of the brothers couldn't exactly do anything about the situation

I read that ayato found out by hearing laito sneak off to cordelias room late at night and feels tremendous guilt about it

Despite the abuse the brothers already endured I imagine it would still be extremely traumatic to acquire that information

I think that being sexually abused by his mother has (obviously) never felt truly good

In the comics,he says that love is something that feels good (referring to sleeping with cordelia,concluding that this is his perception of love)

Yet I think that it never truly felt because because it isn't natural nor okay

Of course his body responded naturally to sexual pleasure and adding on that he doesn't exactly know it's wrong,your brain still knows deep down is wrong

I think when he got older he realised it wasn't a normal thing to do but he refuses to acknowledge it because of how uncomfortable it is to think about

He isn't really in touch with his emotions

He just feels something and goes with it

But he hates being vulnerable

Which is why he chooses to make others vulnerable unstead (I'm in no way excusing this behaviour,simply bringing it to light in order to explain my thoughts on his abuse)

I also believe that cordelia physically forced sexual in counters on him multiple times,which could also explain his violent controlling,impulsive behaviour,because it was shown to him (I know he didnt have a choice as a child and was coerced,just saying that maybe he didn't comply at first so he was possibly literally dragged or hit/restrained)

He was also surrounded by adults who knew about it (karlheinz I'm convinced he knows everything that goes on at all times,richter),but didn't nothing,which was probably extremely suffocating

Knowing that you could be helped,but weren't

I don't like them (all sakamakis) though because of their history as notorious abusers,torturers,assaulters and most likely rapists,not to mention killing the brides

Remember that just because you were abused,it is not an excuse to abuse other,break the cycle

[valle-de-sombra-de-muerte]

Homestuck Reread: Act 3, Part 1/3 (p. 760-891)

Read the previous post here.

Time for the beginning of Act 3! An inauspicious start, since the Act begins with Jade's introduction.

So I guess the "reader" is still acknowledged as a thing. And they're actively attempting to manipulate Jade. I wonder how much longer this will last for.

Jade has so many interests, you guys! So many! And I'm sure each and every one of them will be relevant to her character as well!

Also, she needs reminders so she doesn't forget about the things she's interested in? What?

Why does Jade have so many variants of fetch modus when none of these will ever show up again? Actually, the whole modus system continues to be really dumb and that's probably why it's rarely mentioned in the later acts.

Jade's precognition again being treated as just a fun lil' quirk. Gosh, she's just so quirky, right fellas? So many modi, so many interests. She's just so silly and fun, right? Right???

Honest confession time. When I first read Homestuck, I had no idea that a "eureka lemon" was an actual variety of lemon. Of course I've heard of crab apples, key limes, and mandarin oranges, but it never occurred to me that a eureka lemon was also a real thing. I didn't figure this out until years later.

Wait wait wait. Hold the phone. Jade is a fan of old cartoons? When is that ever referenced again outside of the occasional mention of Squiddles (a show that isn't real)? What the fuck? John likes movies, has posters in his room, and name drops his favorites on a regular basis. Why does Jade not talk about any cartoons she likes???

Physics, gadgetry, and gardening are all shit that aren't ever mentioned again either, but I was at least aware of those things being related to her, at least on a surface level. Jade's whole thing (well, what I assume Hussie ostensibly intended to be her thing) is that she's this genius wiz kid. And her username is gardenGnostic, so of course horticulture has to be somehow related to her character. This whole cartoon thing is seriously new knowledge to me, though.

Grandpa Harley was a real renaissance man with a multitude of interests, so it's natural that Jade takes after him. The problem is that Grandpa is dead and he's less of a character than he is this mysterious symbol that Jade both admires and resents. It doesn't matter whether or not he's fleshed out, but Jade is a main character, so by necessity she must be or else she comes across as half-baked.

Jade has two pages dedicated to her interests, yet none of them are relevant to her character. She never talks to anyone else about gardening or anthros or anything like that. She doesn't use her scientific knowledge to help solve a problem. Her guns only serve the same basic combat purpose as the other kids' kind abstratus, but beyond that she isn't a gun nut.

One can point to stuff like John's interest in programming or Dave's love of photography as examples of extraneous character traits that don't ever manifest later on in the comic. But in Jade's case, it's nearly all of them. Hussie could've filled these pages with anything he wanted, but nothing would alter the existing perception of Jade being nothing more than "silly, upbeat girl who can see into the future." This is what I meant when I said earlier that she doesn't have any character to speak of. Or rather, she's just extremely shallow.

And because Jade doesn't have enough quirks already, her shirt randomly changes designs. Wow! Incredible!

These "manthro chaps" are honestly more unnerving and sexually charged than the smuppets. I don't ever see anyone reference them nearly as often, and probably for good reason. Unlike the smuppets, they're too close to resembling humans and are very uncanny. This feels like a deranged fetish thing, but it's being played off as more silly, quirky bullshit. "Slop trough" is a phrase I never want to read again.

Right. Hating furries was very much en vogue back in 2009, I'd say more so than the present. However, Hussie is going to great lengths to portray Jade as one of the "good ones." Her interest in anthros is non-sexual in nature and she does not partake in "cringe" furry activities like wearing fursuits and engaging in sexual activities with other furries. As stated before, the manthro chaps are being depicted as wholesome make believe, not in a feral/pet play context (despite the fact that that's exactly what it looks like).

This is just Hussie taking pot shots at a subculture that has historically been a very easy target for ridicule. I'm not even sure why he decided to make Jade a furry in the first place if he was going to draw lines in the sand like this. What an incredible dickhead. And since this is written from Jade's perspective, it makes her a dickhead too.

There are a few times later on where Jade comes across as rude or judgmental, coming at odds with her otherwise unflinchingly polite and optimistic disposition. Needless to say, this does little to endear her to me.

Like John, Jade also has a chest full of shit that doesn't end up mattering. Come to think of it, this whole intro sequence feels extremely drawn out, kind of like John's. John at least had the excuse of being the first character and he required a long intro in order to establish the tone and mechanics. We've gotten a good handle on things by the time we reach Rose and Dave, so their intros weren't nearly as involved. So why the fuck is Jade's taking so long? We know this whole routine, we've done it three times now. Can we get the fuck on with the story already!?

This is a really bizarre sequence of pages where the "reader" is forced to match the memory cards of Jade's modus, only to fail at it repeatedly while both Jade and Hussie judge them for it.

Man... I know it's a common fandom notion that Jade is the most neglected and underutilized of the main cast of kids, but you seriously wouldn't have guessed that based on all these early pages. She feels more like Hussie's favorite, if anything.

Every passage he seems to talk about her with affection and a total absence of snark, not like the other kids who are regarded with bemusement at best or mockery at worst when they do something foolish. Here the derision is solely focused on the reader for their apparent cluelessness, and both Hussie and Jade are on the same side. C'mon, Jade's just offering the reader to play this game and they fail because they're obviously not as smart as she is. Serves them right for that earlier, boorish suggestion that this wonderful girl might be a, gasp, disgusting fursuit-wearing degenerate!

There's something a little off about how this then-30 year old man created this 13 year old girl who's so sweet and perfect in every way, and whom he dedicates so many pages showing us every single one of her quirks and all the amazing things she has in her home. But I don't really want to dwell further on this, so I'll be moving on.

"But he does like his steak well cooked."

"He does prefer his steak rare after all."

Well, which is it??? Does he like his steak well or rare? Does Hussie not know the difference between these terms? Has he never cooked a steak before?

Dave Strider? More like Dave Simper. He is incredibly down bad. She's obviously not online, dude. Get out of her DMs. He's also facetiously engaging her with furry roleplay. God, Dave, get a clue! ERP is something only cringy furries do and as established previously, Jade is most definitely not one of those types of furries!

The Midnight Crew get their own dedicated flash. These guys sure are getting teased a lot, despite just being characters from an in-universe webcomic. I wonder what it could mean...

FINALLY we get to the Strider fight. Well, it's more like Dave vs. Cal rather than Dave vs. Bro. Not to try and crack open more Bro discourse, but the idea that people will try to equate Dave getting clowned on by a puppet with actual child abuse is absurd. I don't see how this is any different than the previous strifes John and Rose had with their parents.

FUCK it was only for one page. We're back to Jade again. You know, if I had a friend who knew whenever I was about to have an internet outage and acted all smarmy about it, I would probably stop talking to them.

"Grandpa Moreau over there on Hellmurder Island" is a good line. Thank you Rose for providing some levity to this slog of pages I've been enduring.

Another GameFAQs page, but this section is written by John for some reason. He brings up a great point about how nobody is reading these damn things. If you're some nudnik who truly gives a shit about how punch card alchemy works, oh boy do I have a page for you!

Jade dislikes hunting and it was mentioned earlier that she'd never shoot an animal. It strikes me as odd that she has such a passion for guns, but not hunting. What does she shoot then? She's a "skilled markswoman" but do we ever see a shooting range or anything to practice her skills? I can't imagine there's much else to shoot on this island aside from wildlife.

Grandpa Harley says Jade will grow up to be like the women in the photos he gets off to. I uh... I don't know how to feel about that. Other than perhaps it's for the best this old man is dead.

Wow! Who's this rude customer? What a crazy guy! Oh well, he was blocked so I don't think we'll ever see him again.

Finally at this point we take an extended reprieve from Jade. For the record, we're 99 pages into the Act. It took Rose 25 pages from her intro before the plot returned to John, and Dave 48 pages from his before turning back to Rose. (I'm not counting brief cuts to other characters for these counts, because the main focus is still on the recently introduced character). Nearly 100 pages of Jade showing off her house before going back to the plot. Augh!

Anyway, Rose actually reaches out and grabs the captcha card, which isn't something we've seen up to this point. This whole inventory system is weird, man.

I think it's all but directly stated that Mom Lalonde became an alcoholic because she has known the exact date the world was going to end. A sad detail.

Part 2 of the Strider fight ends with Bro yeeting Dave down the stairs. Again, I can't see this scene as serious representation of legitimate child abuse, especially with the fucking SBaHJ jokes at the end. The tone is so comedic and outrageous I don't understand anyone who takes it seriously.

Honestly, the earlier scenes with Dave roaming the apartment, being surrounded by weapons and sex toys, making comments of how he has difficulty accessing food, and being videotaped for Bro's fetish films paint a much better image of an abusive household than any of this strife shit. I don't want to try and argue that Bro isn't a bad guardian, because he definitely is, but there's this notion in the fandom that he does all this because he hates Dave and wants him to suffer, and I don't think that's true at all. His actions read more like neglect and carelessness, not malice.

You can make a list of all Bro's crimes, but hating his brother is not one of them.

John wins his fight against the ogres. There's an earlier page where we see him getting the tar kicked out of him (with the same over the top slapstick animations during the Dave vs. Bro fight, mind you), but it's only after Nannasprite and Rose join to help that he's able to achieve victory. He really can't do anything on his own, can he?

How about a "thank you, Rose, for beating those ogres for me"? Dickhead.

No "thank you" for Nannasprite, either. Instead he asks her to carry him to the gate, since he already knows Rose can't do it. This kid really sucks.

Now that I'm a third of the way done with Act 3, I have to say Jade is some honest to god Mary Sue shit. I don't like using that term because it's been misused to the point of uselessness, but come on. Compare Jade to the three previous kids and tell me that this girl isn't the most ridiculous character in this lineup.

We have John, the goofy cornball that likes pranks and watching bad movies; Rose, the smug pseud that likes the occult and writing lousy fiction; Dave, the aloof hipster that likes rapping and making shitty comics; and Jade, the genius manic pixie furry girl with a randomly changing wardrobe that can see into the future, lives on a private island full of crazy hi-tech gadgets, was raised by a radioactive dog, and likes physics, gardening, sharpshooting, bass guitar, and inventing.

Fuck me. If I was DM for a DnD session and someone submitted a character sheet like that against three normal ones, I'd tell them to leave. Why can't she just be a normal kid like the others? It's all so jarring!

Suddenly I'm wishing I was back reading Act 1 again.

Read the next post here.

[invinciblerodent]

yknow, no, i'm not done thinking/posting/being deeply angry about the whole "bbuuuhhh Astarion is gay and was made playersexual as a game mechanic bbbuuuhhhhhhh" garbage some people still spout.

like this type of sentiment is always annoying and wrong, but it's specifically this character for whom it's especially annoying to me, just because on top of all the regular host of issues, it also deeply contradicts what I believe is the central theme of his whole goddamn story.

(excuse the rant please.)

Like, my skin already crawls at that term, "playersexual". I hate it, and find its use either vaguely ignorant at best, or blatantly pan/biphobic at worst. but even just besides that....

This character is a man whose narrative intentionally shows his presentation of himself, and of his masculinity, as being contradictory with convention. This character is one whose entire arc is about discovering who he is beyond the boxes he was assigned: a spawn, a monster, a seducer, a tool, a predator, a plaything, a victim, a sexual object... these are all identities that were forced onto him. And if he's given space to discover them, turns out, none of them are things that he actually wants to be. if you give him space, and affection (romantic or otherwise), and acceptance, and help him attain closure and catharsis, he expresses desire to be... an adventurer, a lover, a friend, a protector, so many things, but all of them in his own way. That's the point of his story, control vs. autonomy.

How.... myopic does one have to be to see that story, to play that story, to play an active, participatory role in that subversion, that search for the self beneath the masks, and declare that actually, they made him this other box for him to fit into, so... it's fine, i guess, to ignore what he says?????? it's fine if they pick and choose among his expressed traits which ones to use and which to disregard, because they decided (based on frankly homophobic and rather misogynistic stereotypes) that he cannot be different from their perception, despite him literally saying otherwise????????

Astarion's entire figure is a succession of trope-subversions. I could write essays about all the ways in which, in the romanced spawn game, the narrative sets up tropes (primarily in act 1), only to then purposefully knock them down and contradict them as the game progresses.

Like..... He was to take revenge by taking power for himself (like he thought he wanted, like Cazador did to Vellioth): ended up taking his revenge and rejecting the power that could have come with it, and despite that having a price, being content and grateful for it (and realizing that the alternative would have had an even greater price he would have paid unknowingly). He starts out using sex and sexuality as a weapon, and a tool of manipulation, like he did for many decades: ends up expressing discomfort with being seen as a sex object, resuming his sex life by saying "I love you" before his partner would have, and proposing sex with them as a beautiful metaphor for his own rebirth.

His whole story starts out with him thinking he requires protection from the player and that the only way to get that is through using his body and looks as a bargaining chip: later he discovers in himself a desire to be the protector himself, which he talks about more than once, and expresses varying degrees of discomfort at the thoughts of both using his body to gain something, and needing a protector.

There's the "this is what I'm good for" type of attitude towards sex morphing into "I am so much more than a thing to be used". There's the whole thing about how important his looks were to both him and his "usefulness" back then, despite him not being able to even fucking see them, (which also kind of includes that silly lovely gremlin-face he sometimes makes), but those are just the ones off the top of my head.

The story, and the romance plot, is about... it's about him regaining ownership of himself, it's about autonomy, his whole recurring "what do you want" line is about respecting his choices and letting him find his way to them, it's about letting him show you who he is, believing him, and loving the man behind the facade.

how absolutely fucking short-sighted does one have to be to then take that incredibly reductive stereotype of "femme-leaning man with theatrical mannerisms who cares about his looks; must be exclusively homosexual and any attraction he shows to women is just a mechanic/fanservice/flattery" (which, that's so fucking insulting to gay men, and bi/pan men, an any man who might express masculinity in a less than conventional way, and to the women who may love them [eta: and of course nonbinary people, and the people to whom masculinity means something wholly different]), and assign it to this character on their own accord, despite him literally telling the player otherwise? despite him verbally expressing attraction to multiple women, and contradicting that stereotypical interpretation wholly and out of pocket??????

like, hello??????? did we play the same game????????? did we play the same fucking game??????????

like don't think for one second that it isn't the pan/biphobia that annoys me more, it absolutely is, but this character is such a particularly egregious example, it's almost fucking poetic.

[cringengl]

"Delusional fangirls": the 'never ending story' of the dismissal of byler being rooted in misogyny.

As someone who is passionate about both feminism and fandom culture, when I got sent this ask a little less than a month ago, it made me ask myself the question on why shipping byler has been viewed in such a negative light, and you'll never guess, but it's rooted in misogyny.

Even if this ask is a troll, it's clearly replicating what can be seen not just in the Stranger Things fandom, but in general fandom culture, showing the prevalence of this issue. Although this post will be looking specifically at byler, what I'm discussing in this post isn't an issue specific to byler, even if I will be considering some things that are byler specific, such as the likelihood of byler endgame.

Before we start, I just want to talk about why I'm talking about misogyny instead of homophobia (though homophobia will be discussed a little later but it's not going to be the main focus of this post). Homophobia and why people dismiss byler has already been talked about a lot (for example, I've seen posts about people saying that making byler endgame would be a 'risky' move and as Stranger Things produces a lot of money for Netflix, therefore they won't do it, the belief that they wouldn't/shouldn't break up a heterosexual ship for a homosexual one or the failure to put Will outside the 'tragic story of a gay kid that falls for their straight best friend' box).

The dismissal of byler as a 'valid' ship is just as much down to misogyny as it is homophobia and it's an issue that I haven't seen as talked about, likely due to how byler is made up of two guys. If anything I've seen way more people call the byler community misogynistic, and whilst these things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, I do want to open up the conversation about how misogyny deeply affects the public perception of byler and byler shippers as well as talk about how ingrained misogyny is in fandom culture.

The average dismissal of byler as a ship tends to look like this:

All bylers are teen girls.

All bylers are stupid and delusional.

The motivation to ship byler is born out of a fetish of mlm relationships.

Not only is this a summary of what that anon sent me in May, but it's also a rhetoric that can be seen across multiple anti byler statements/posts/comments etc. It's way more common than you may think.

So what is the fangirl stereotype?

A fangirl by Oxford dictionary definition is mainly characterised by the word "obsessive", which has been constantly portrayed in a negative light by the media, and isn't exactly a new phenomenon, with Beatlemaniacs being called "the dull, the idle, the failures" in a 1964 New Statesman article. In fact it hasn't been until the 2020s where the epidemic of constantly making fun of teen girls has finally been criticised.

The most common stereotype of a fangirl is someone who is screaming, crazy and rabid, with "rabid fangirl" having its own Urban Dictionary definition.

Even fangirls of fanbases that are most notorious for 'crazy, rabid fans' have come out and said that they have been misrepresented, such as the comments section of this documentary about One Direction fans made by Channel 4 in 2013.

The stereotype of having a fetish for mlm relationships.

Another common stereotype of fangirls is the fetishization of mlm relationships. Whilst this is a very real issue that needs to be addressed properly, I very clearly remember seeing women talking about "getting off" to scenes in Call Me By Your Name when the movie first came out, however this accusation is often misplaced, meaning it loses it's power as an accusation, leading to the perception that it isn't as big of an issue that it actually is.

Girls, women or even afab or feminine presenting people who ship two men together are often seen as people with fetishes and accused of such. Not only is this sexist as it assumes that women's interests are sexually motivated, but it also reduces women's intelligence by suggesting that the only reason that they are interested in it is because of a sexual factor. This also ties back to the oversexualisation of gay relationships due to traditional, religious, conservative roots- classic homophobia.

And whilst this might sometimes be the case, this ideology ignores something extremely obvious: not all fangirls are straight (which clearly shows why we need lesbian visibility day haha).

This era we are in right now seems to be the dawn of LGBTQ+ rep that seems to be more and more prevalent and the amount of mainstream movies and TV shows that have positive and well developed queer rep is growing day by day. However, queer representation had been previously very hard to find and even now is not perfect (remember that one lesbian purple cyclops from Onward that appeared for like 10 seconds, said the easily censorable word "girlfriend", and was then never seen again??).

Whilst fandom spaces with TV shows and movies such as Stranger Things may have lots of female or female presenting/aligned people, there is also an abundance of queer people in almost any fandom, especially one with existing queer characters or ones that claim to be "an anthem for the marginalised and imperfect", which of course leads to the abundance of queer women, and can also be seen in the byler tag.

However I do want to point out that obviously not all people in fandom spaces and the byler tag are female and/or queer, but a lot of them are and this does vary fandom to fandom. Furthermore, I really don't know the actual ratio of different genders specifically in the Stranger Things and byler fandom- however I feel that it doesn't matter as shipping and other fandom traditions have been associated with teen girls and women anyway. The suggestion that all bylers are teen girls is a sweeping overgeneralisation and the fact that it's used as an insult and a way to demean this ship is sexist.

Queer representation and shipping mlm ships- even if they are not canon.

So how does this link to the abundance of shipping male characters? This is clearly something that has been going on for a long time, as illustrated beautifully through this reddit post:

And you might be wondering that if there are a lot of queer women in these spaces, then why isn't there more sapphic ships? And of course the answer is misogyny.

Women in TV shows and movies are so often underdeveloped and fall victim to millions of sexist stereotypes that make them unlikeable and boring, such as 'damsel in distress', 'strong and unfeeling' or they just have a 2D personality. Furthermore, female characters in media are just less numerous in media. All of this is is we have measures of the Bechdel test.

This is also not helped by the constant cancellation of wlw shows after only one season, which does not allow for the development of the characters or their relationship (I Am Not Okay With This, Warrior Nun, First Kill, Willow, Paper Girls etc).

This idea is only supported by the arcane fandom, where the most prevalent ship is Caitlyn/Vi on pretty much every social media site and ao3, likely due to the focus and development on their relationship.

Moreover, male friendships often have a lot more focus on them than female characters and their relationships. This was particularly obvious and blatant in My Hero Academia, where despite Deku and Uraraka (the het ship) being set up to be endgame, the main relationship that has the most focus and development is the one between Deku and his friend turned enemy turned rival turned best friend (??) Bakugo.

Whilst positive and intricate male friendships are never a bad thing, it does become very annoying very fast when those pieces of media also push female characters to the sidelines (and then also oversexualise them, which is often seen particularly in anime and manga such as mha).

So it's no coincidence when mlm relationships become more popular through the want for queer representation, female characters being ignored and the male characters and friendships having better development (as well as the use of queerbait to bring in a wider audience). However, other fans with little critical thinking skills and the general audience tend to jump to the conclusion that the amount of mlm ships that include straight men (even though these 'straight' men are fictional and don't have confirmed sexualities) is due to fetishization and fans being "weird and delusional".

Back to byler.

So let's link this back to byler. One thing that drew me to make this post is due to how bylers have been called "delusional" which was a specific word I saw byler shippers being called a lot in the June/July era.

Even the word "delusional" implies a detachment from reality and one of the most common sexist views is that women can't lead or make good decisions due to their supposed inherent irrationality, which is apparently caused by hormones and being over emotional (despite testosterone being used as an excuse for cheating- high sex drive- and aggression issues as well as anger not being counted as an emotion. One of the biggest reasons that the stereotypes around fangirls are rooted in misogyny is due to the polar opposite treatment of male sports fans, which if you remember the insane violence that occurred when the fake Tubi ad appeared to disrupt the Super Bowl, this idea is insanely hypocritical).

It confused me as even from a general audience perspective, it would seem that byler at least had a decent chance of becoming endgame, so why is it being so easily dismissed?

It is because shipping, especially mlm ships, are strongly associated with fangirls and are therefore seen as weak, delusional and irrational, not something to be taken seriously and likely the product of a fetish.

Not only is this harmful for the perception of mlm relationships in media, but it also promotes internalised misogyny- distancing yourselves from "rabid fangirls" as soon as possible so that your not seen as one and are instead seen as more rational and sensible.

The powerful arc that Mike and Will have gone through for four seasons now doesn't matter, nor the fact that El's independence is linked with Mike's absence or even what the implications of mleven endgame for not just a queer audience but a general audience would be. None of that matters as ships like byler aren't taken seriously, they're dismissed, due to misogyny (and homophobia).

In conclusion, fuck the patriarchy, let's change fandom culture for the better.

Links to things I watched/read in order to help make this post (not including the misogynistic and homophobic is reddit/tumblr/twitter posts lol):

(Do bear in mind that these tend to talk more about music fans/fandom rather than TV shows)

Frailty, Thy Name Is Fangirl: Misogyny and Fandom Culture

Shaming Fangirls: A Practice Rooted In Sexism

How misogyny-laced comments, actions in fan culture can drive others out

Ted talk: For the love of Fangirls | Yve Blake

From Beatlemania to the Beliebers, What Makes a ‘Fangirl’?

The Channel 4 Crazy About One Direction documentary and the ad for the documentary

Fetishizing Gay Relationship: When Ship and Fan Fiction Turn Toxic

[that-ari-blogger]

Simple Answers

Who is Luz Noceda?

If I was to ask you this question after only seeing a scene or two from the Owl House, your answer would probably be very different to if you had watched the entire series.

This isn't groundbreaking, it's what happens when you spend time around any person or character, they start to appear more complex to you as you get to know them more.

But that's kind of the point here, because the Owl House is a series about embracing your weirdness and individuality in contrast to first impressions. A single question like "who is x person" is inadequate, and others should be added to understand the nuance there.

The First Day asks two more questions. "Who does everyone else think Luz is?" and "Who does Luz herself think she is?"

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The Owl House has a thing for introductions. Luz gets so many over the course of the series, and it's fascinating to see how she changes just by the way in which she gives her title. She is the good witch, or the human, or hero, whatever she decides.

The opening scene to The First Day is interesting to me, because it's an audition. Luz is being asked to present her skills, but I don't think that's what she is being tested on.

"Spells cast with paper, I've never heard of such a thing. But is it enough to pass the exam?"

Bump deliberately leans into the theatricality here, messing with Luz's confidence to see what she does. The series has established that all Luz needs to do to pass the exam is cast two spells, so why is there a stage? And why does Bump ask this question?

Because Bump wants to know who Luz is. His first impression of her has been a troublemaker, and he has seen some skill, but what else? He wants is to see how she reacts to stress, is she resourceful? Is she imaginative? In my reading, Luz had already passed the test and Bump wanted to know more about the student.

This is an episode about breaking moulds and meeting expectations, and so we are introduced to the primary conflict of the episode, that being the track system. Students can only learn one kind of magic, or they are branded as troublemakers and can't learn magic at all. You have to colour within the lines, and make what kind of art will get points.

That works backwards into the test as well. Where at first glance, it is a test about skill, it is actually more complex, just like the students undertaking it.

The school is also trying to appeal to a perception as well, with the inspector. The school only shows its best and brightest, who have achieved exactly the point of their classes. This is what the school teaches, isn't it so perfect?

The basilisk scene is also interesting on a side note because it is why I like Bump so much. For all of his flaws, the second there is a student in danger, Bump interposes himself between the student and that danger. It doesn't work, but it's an attempt, and it kind of foreshadows later on in the episode, which I will get to in a bit.

If you are studying creative writing at a High School level, you have probably been told that first impressions are everything. You need to introduce your characters well, you need to open in the action, or with a question. And this isn't wrong, I literally opened this post with a question to grab your attention.

But if you are familiar with my blog, you will probably have guessed that I take issue with this advice. Write a story how you like, it doesn't have to be good, you just have to tell it. There are rules of art, yes, but they are more like guidelines, and often the way you make something incredible is by doing your own thing. Maybe what you want coincides with the rules, maybe it doesn't. It's art, do what you want.

I can't speak for other countries, but the Australian system for teaching literary studies is seriously lacking. You get told themes to analyse your texts with, instead of forming your own reasoning. I distinctly remember a teacher telling me that "your personal voice will be shown by how you write what the HSC wants." And this is understandable as a system. It's not agreeable, but I understand why it is what it is. The HSC is designed for evaluating thousands of students quickly and efficiently. It doesn't do personability because it can't.

This carries over into creative writing. If you want to do well in that area, you need to write from your own experience. The story has to open with action. It needs to be realism, so no weird fantastical elements. The marker needs to be able to check of elements of the story. It is draconian, but from what I have heard, it is somehow a more efficient system to certain other countries.

So, why am I ranting about school? Because The Owl House is a fantasy, and the fantasy it is exploring is "what if you could change the system?" And part of that is Bump, because Bump is a character who fundamentally has the students' best interests at heart. So when he clocks on to the system being unsuited, he changes it.

"I'm smart enough to know when I'm wrong"

But perceptions go both ways, and Luz has spent the series so far battling her own preconceived notions about what the story is about. When she enters the detention track, she immediately dismisses it as boring and that comes back to bite her later.

Viney keeps coming up when people mention first impressions, and I will mention her again when that happens. Her character design actually has a cool little detail that hints at that, and its her earring. It's quirky and weird, a fishhook through her ear. But its only on one ear, meaning that when she is introduced and she is leaning on her hand, it isn't visible. But when Luz makes her smile, she turns her head and the audience can see that earring and reveal something interesting that Luz missed.

Where the coven system stands for actively restricting people into areas, the track system stands for refining people into those boxes. Its a parody of the house system in a certain book series that I am dodging around the name of. In said book series, there are four houses that students are sorted into based on core personality traits - brave, clever, evil, and boring - and that system is scuffed as all hell, because not only does it not account for the fact that the character traits aren't mutually exclusive, it forms a self fulfilling prophecy.

Evil house students are assumed as villainous unless proven otherwise, so naturally they are outcasts who want to shake up the system, some are genuinely terrible folks, but at least one is only mean because he is expected to be. And the headmaster of that school explicitly notes that its a problem and doesn't make any attempt to change it.

So, what happens when you find a person who is both brainy and brave? Or a student who shows a skill for both healing and beast magic? What do you do?

Well, you stop relegating people who are complex as "troublemakers" for one, but you also stop forming stereotypes of people.

Final Thoughts

The First Day is a sound episode of the Owl House. It's fun and engages with the themes of the series in a neat way. This is the episode when then story makes itself clear about how it is engaging with archetypal storytelling, that being how actively it subverts it. This is also the episode with some of the funniest references in it, specifically the choosy hat is a favourite of mine.

Bump is a fan favourite character for a reason. He listens, and he adapts. This is an authority figure who gets called a dingus and his immediate reaction is "maybe I am a dingus."

Also, Basilisks are extinct. Remember this, this will come up again. The basilisks were dead to begin with, as dead as a doornail.

Anyway, next week I will be looking at Very Small Problems, so stick around if that interests you.

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