#(which doesn’t come from a place of ill-intent and does deserve to be addressed)

[withthewindinherfootsteps]

I do wonder if part of the ‘is WWX morally grey’ debate comes not from disagreement on WWX’s actions and motivations, but from what ‘morally grey’ actually means?

I personally believe that a character’s moral purity (for lack of a better word) is defined by 1) the character's morals and how they’re framed in context of the piece of media, and 2) how strongly said character adheres to this moral code. WWX’s morals are upheld by the text (and tend to be ‘good’ regardless, eg protecting and defending people who can't protect themselves). He constantly strives to do the ‘right’ thing, without regard for gains or losses, regardless of whether others decide to praise or blame — and sticking to this code is one of the most important, if not the most important, aspects of his character. To me, that therefore makes him not ‘morally grey’ (the same goes for LWJ, etc). This stands in contrast to people like NMJ, who do follow their ideas of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ strongly, but these ideas give a very limited and potentially harmful view of the world (eg all Wens, even ones who have done nothing, are evil) and so are condemned in the novel. It also stands in contrast to the many characters who simply… don’t follow a moral code that strongly.

However, this isn’t the view all people have. My view upholds the general and the intentions strongly, and not so much the spefics or the consequences. For example, in that framework, WWX can do some wrong/harmful/ill-intentioned things while still not being ‘morally grey’, because of his orientation towards his code as described above. And I’m not disputing the fact that he does do some of these things — I’d argue that the majority of ‘WWX is not morally grey’ supporters don’t dispute that, either. But there’s room for imperfection, mistakes and nuance in this view before a character reaches a morality which is ‘grey’.

However, to others, specific actions can’t be excused as easily, and so the above isn’t the case — each significantly ‘bad’ thing a person does impacts their morality. So regardless of WWX’s general character, his actions in regards to WC, Nightless City etc do make him morally grey… because after that, how can he not be? Those actions and their consequences happened, and there was a lot of harm done, regardless of WWX’s general character.

I also believe that someone’s moral standing can be different at different points of one’s life. Let’s leave MDZS behind for this example and look at TGCF instead: did XL, in book 4, want to commit genocide against the people of Yong’An by unleashing the Human Face Disease on them? Yes. Does he, in the present, regret that action/intention and strive to do good instead? Also yes. So in my framework, is he morally grey now due to those actions? No. The same idea for me is true in regards to MDZS. Was WWX ‘morally grey’ during his torture of the Wens and in the SSC? I’d personally say yes (by my own standards, definitely — by novel standards it’s a little more complex since I’d argue MDZS doesn’t view revenge against people who wronged you as unjust. But it’s certainly not praising the actual lengths WWX went to, and doesn’t present his actions in a positive light. There’s also an internal comment of WWX’s supporting this reading, when he says he went a bit too far back in the Sunshot Campaign, though note that was referring more to his actions in controlling dead Wen soldiers than to his specific revenge on Wen Chao). But does that mean WWX is ‘morally grey’ at every instance after that, that it taints him forever? No!

But again, this idea is a point of dispute. I know that some people don’t consider ‘moral greyness’ at different points in a character’s life*, instead looking at all the character’s actions and intentions comprehensively. In this view, the torture of WC etc would impact WWX’s moral standing for the entire rest of the novel, as once you’ve done something it sticks with you forever.

Finally, though I prioritise the novel’s framing of morality over my personal thoughts on it, some people are the opposite. And depending on what those people’s personal morals are, it can very much change your reading on WWX’s morality.

So tl;dr — I definitely think it’s possible to have the same reading of who WWX is, while having different views on whether he’s ‘morally grey’ or not. Though I’d argue he’s not, somebody disagreeing with that doesn’t mean they’re automatically wrong about who WWX is — it could just be a different definition of a pretty underfined term. The opposite is also true: just because someone thinks WWX isn’t morally grey, it doesn’t mean they think he never caused harm or acted absolutely perfectly in everything he did. Simply that his actions were understandable enough in context of who he is and his circumstances, to not actually impact his morals and views towards upholding morality as a whole**.

For me, at least, what makes WWX a good person isn’t that he never does anything wrong, harmful, or over-the-top. It’s that he never hesitates to do what’s right, no matter the condemnation he may face — when barely any other characters in MDZS do.

—

*Or rather, they judge it by a comprehensive list of actions the character has done up until the relevant point in their lives. Ie a child version of a character isn’t culpable for what their older self did — however, once an action is taken, that action affects the character’s moral standing for the rest of their life, no matter their views on that action in the present day.

**In terms of moral alignments as opposed to purity, however? WWX’s commitment to doing what he thinks is right is indisputable.

[djarrex]

Hi everyone, just wanted to address what happened last night along with some other things from before that all tie in together.

There’s multiple parts to the following post - please make sure you read all of it if you’re gonna take the time to even start.

It was midnight and y'all were still jumping in on anon and telling me how I'm awful for not commenting, owning up, or taking responsibility - I should have been in bed. I have a life and job outside this app; and with the several of you in my inbox and it being too late at night to address each, I’m gonna do it now. I can’t not say something about all of this. I just can’t keep quiet and ignore the problem - it’s not fair to you all. Deleting one post already has you guys even more riled up and all I wanted to do was offer something better than a “half-hearted apology” (it was very late at night when I wrote that very short apology, and wanted a redo tbh). 

I really didn't want to make a long post like this. I reached out to a select few on here because I care about them (there's more of you, but like I said, it was at the time after midnight and I was fucking exhausted). but I was being demanded for accountability. So here I am.

Allow me to be real with you all, if that's ok. If it's not, well, idk. First I wanna address all you anons, who, instead of speaking to me one on one about all this, want to criticize me and shame me and my writing when truthfully it feels like you haven't even read more than a handful of my work. I didn’t realize that I write the clones all the same way? That I always make them super aggressive and uncaring and dom? “you write every single clone as so dominant instead as unique individual men with their own personalities” Interesting. See, that right there tells me you haven't read nearly enough of my stuff for me to believe that's true. That's one accusation I absolutely will not back you on because I know it’s inaccurate - saying how I group the clones into some overly-aggressive, and uncaring category - that I always write all of them as mean in bed because they're men of color. And hey, if I do write rough smut - which yeah, it's out there and I write it, as do a lot of you - there are warnings at the beginning, aftercare, dialogue, reader sharing their feelings, and most importantly... consent between the two. That’s what warnings are for, so that you know what you’re going to be reading. That’s why I, as we all do, appreciate warnings listed at the tops of fics; honestly, write them sub or dom or switch or however you want but don’t come at me like that. I’m sorry if I'm coming across as rude because I'm usually not, I’m one of the nicest people you’ll meet, but I will not stand idly by while you chastise my writing (writing that is pretty much the same type of stuff a lot of you write & rb with the same characters) that you haven’t read enough of to back such claims.

Next: Sincerely, from the bottom of my heart,

I get it. Really, I do. I fully understand the problem of whitewashing in SW along with almost everywhere else, and I do not agree with it. It's a huge problem, and it needs to be rectified. Now just because I don't speak publicly about it and opt out of publicly shaming TBB, doesn't mean that I agree with what’s going on. Not everyone is comfortable with sharing their opinions on a subject, no matter what that subject is or which side they're on. You live and you learn when it comes to that. 

It has never been my intention to fetishize POC in my writing, which btw, the same people who are saying that it is my intention are the ones claiming I portray all of the clones as the same, aggressive men, lacking their individuality. It’s a claim that is simply not true, and I know I have followers on here to back me up on that. I know what I've written; how about you check it out and tell me that you don't see the words "soft" or "fluff" or "cuddling" or “gentle” or “tender” within my work linked in my ML. Clone character being a good partner and father? Tender love making? Holding each others faces in their hands? “We/you survived” sex? Taking care of their partner? Saying “I love you” to one another? Confirming the safe word and going slow at first? Oh my - riveting and harsh stuff - totally unacceptable.  

Now: My admittedly problematic writings of Rex + Zygerria,

I went into writing that rp fic totally unaware and unknowing of the true implications. For that, I sincerely apologize. When I posted the NSFW alphabet, that’s when I was called out on that rp fic - not when I first posted it. Which the timeline doesn’t matter, I know that, but it concerns me a little bit that no one spoke up about it sooner - letting me dig myself deeper into a hole that I didn’t realize I was inside of in the first place. I've apologized once, and I know that doesn't negate what happened; I acknowledged my mistake back then, but I suppose that wasn’t good enough. I had asked you, anon, to message me to give me guidance, to teach me on what to do about the fic - you stayed hidden. Well, respectfully, what the fuck? I know we're all adults but don't lecture me and avoid me when I’d literally reached out for guidance on how to properly rectify the issue. I fixed my wording in some of my fics (the things I’ve caught upon rereading them) because I recognized and more importantly learned about and from my mistakes along with the unintentional negative implications of how I wrote those characters. Some of y'all wanna tell me that I "haven't learned"? Who are you, my personal blog police? My professor? My life coach? Are you even my friend? If I'm wrong and haven't learned, then fucking educate me. I worked hard on that rp fic, just like I do with a majority of what I write, but it doesn’t matter because I will delete it knowing that it’s harmful to others and I apologize for inadvertently romanticizing slavery with what I wrote - it was unintentional, and I’m truly sorry to those who have been hurt by it. I know it’s wrong, and there’s no proper excuse for it. Can’t go back in time, but consider it gone now.

Since that first wakeup call, I’ve been working hard to ensure I avoid using certain words and ideas when describing the clones in my fics. If there’s still something you see that isn’t correct or is inappropriate, please tell me! Don’t hold it in but then jump on the “attack M” bandwagon. Private message me, or come peacefully off or on anon, there will be no hard feelings. I don’t mind being corrected when I make a mistake - that’s just part of life, we all make mistakes and we live and learn from them. Making mistakes doesn’t = scumbag human. When you hold your breath and choose not to take the time to guide me, and if I appear to still be making the same mistakes, well, idk. I’m telling you right now that I do not mind if you message me with the good intention of pushing me in the right direction. When you come at me with hostility on anon, well, no thank you. To the anons that came without rage: thank you! I read what you wrote, and I have a better understanding as to how my writing had hurt the lovely followers of mine, and tried to address as much as possible in this post. See, angry mob anons? It costs zero credits to be kind and offer up your thoughts and advice with a good heart. I’m not going to hate you or block you if you try to correct me. I don’t block unless you’re a snoopin’ minor. Just don’t hold a knife to my throat.

Now: Why did I delete the tags and then my response to that anon ask? 

Simply put: I felt awful. Deleting it doesn’t immediately mean I’m hiding from it and ignoring the issue. I wanted to come up with a better apology, explanation, whatever you wanna call it, because my followers deserve that. The ones who enjoy my work, the ones who interact, the ones who I call my friends, the ones who know that I’m a good person. Didn’t want to leave the tags/post floating around all night, giving more people time to sharpen their pitchforks and join the mob while I attempted to sleep. Trust me, I know saying that I had no ill intentions when tagging that post doesn’t make it better nor does it make it go away. I’m just trying to show you my point of view, that I knew immediately how I should not have tagged it that way, so that’s why I deleted them. I corrected my mistake. But y’all are too fucking quick I swear.

One more thing:

I know some of you who had called me out with the passive-aggressive inbox messages are still following me, and for what? You don’t like what I post, which is why one would follow another in the first place, so why bother sticking around? Do you feel like you need to police my blog? You want to be there the literal minute I make a mistake? I’m gonna turn off anon for a bit, so if you wanna discuss, message me. Just know that if you’re going to come at me with knives out, I probably won’t reply to you. 

To conclude:

I’m sorry. Truly sorry for the entire Rex + Zygerria outfit + slaver ordeal with both the fic from a while ago and then the tags from last night. We can’t go back in time; the only option is to correct past mistakes that are able to be corrected, and then move on with new knowledge that’ll aid in me working even harder to ensure my writing isn’t inappropriate or offensive, and doesn’t hurt my followers nor the characters I write for. I’m still going to write self-indulgent filth and fluff, post-order 66 Rex, and other misc shit. I enjoy writing fanfic, as I know a lot of you enjoy reading what I write and love to talk to me about it. I hope that this didn’t come off as me being a bitch, because I’m really not. I enjoy interacting with the handful of people on here that I’d call my friends, and I love reading your reactions and tags to my fics when you’re excited and/or horny (LOL). It’s just after lunch time where I’m at, so I hope you have a great rest of the day/night/morning whatever for wherever you are.  

<3 

M

[chessdaze]

Three Wishes Institute - A TWST fanschool

Reposting this as I’ve changed my URL which broke all the links in my previous lore post, and since I’ve gotten a lot of new followers lately and wanted them to be able to read it properly.

First off, as a concept, Three Wishes is a fanschool for twisted wonderland that involves characters that are considered ‘side’ or ‘background’ or even ‘comic relief’ characters from disney franchises. Right now I only have 6 dorms, and characters range from being on both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sides of a story.

Here’s the lore rundown for the main school itself and a brief summary on the dorms and characters I will be designing for them. Under readmore cause this is HELLA long and I don’t want to make people scroll for forever:

The overall story of Three Wishes:

The Headmistress and Master, Amelia Bell and Reed Dearly (based on Anita and Roger from 101 dalmatians), only recently got the school property. Before them, the school was known to be really rundown, a failure, and pretty much on the verge of closing. While it was a school for magic, it was like all the magic was zapped out of the school itself. It was filled with delinquents and very few students who actually cared. Most dropped out if anything.

Amelia was a teacher at the school for a little over a year and the only teacher that students really respected and bothered showing up to class for. She hated seeing the school in the state it was in and tried pleading with the headmistress of the school to try and change things - however was constantly told it was too late and that the school would be closing. It did, and Amelia had to look for jobs elsewhere. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that she could have done more and found herself drawn back to the crumbling school on more than one occasion. She decided to sneak in one day to see if she could find a hint of anything from the old headmistress - who had disappeared without a trace - to see if she could get in contact with her. This wasn’t her idea of course, but her (boyfriend at the time) Reed’s.

Eventually they did track down the headmistress and found her terribly ill. Amelia insisted that the two of them care for her, despite all that the headmistress had done to shun Amelia beforehand. They did, and during that time Amelia explained the hopes she had previously had for the school - she said how she wanted a school that anyone could feel welcome to apply, and not have some special ceremony for acceptance (like the carriages for NRC). She believed people could be equals and that as a magical community they should all help one another. The old headmistress was moved by Amelia’s words and when she back to health she revealed herself to be a powerful sorceress (the enchantress from Beauty and the Beast. No design as of now). She explained she had been looking for a worthy successor for the school and her magic but didn’t find Amelia fitting at the time, but saw the kindness in Amelia’s heart and offered her the deed to the school and the surrounding grounds. She wanted to see what Amelia would do with the school and was interested if she could really bring a community together like she explained. Then, she disappeared.

Amelia and Reed worked to renovate the school, taking nearly 2 years on the project. Amelia comes from a wealthy family, but even then funds were not endless, so a lot of fundraising was done to also raise awareness for the reopening school. At first there wasn’t much interest but it slowly got more and more traction. With donations and family money, they were able to complete the school. The two of them also got engaged during this time. Even with them rebuilding the mainschool and doing some maintenance on the dorms themselves, there are some secrets that even the two of them are still learning, as the sorceress took off before giving them the full details on the school itself.

The school’s aim is to not only teach its students magic, but the foundation of being a good person, being helpful and selfless. The school holds a lot of community and fundraising events, and there is even a mandatory volunteering class where students have to spend a certain amount of hours volunteering for a local community service. This school hopes to bridge the gap between the elite and average magic users, showing that deep down everyone is human and deserving of respect and a chance to grow.

This school doesn't have completely different areas for the dorms and it's all actually located on a large campus ground.The main school building is about 4 stories, there's a greenhouse and an auditorium in separate buildings.

The dorms are all two or three stories and are all relatively distant from each other, enough to give each dorm a good spot of land around it. Think a mansion with a large yard. When passing through the front gate for the dorm there's magic that makes it appear in a slightly different scenery - so the students don't always have the school looming in the background and can relax. The dorm's scenery is different between each dorm and it can change with each 'dorm representative'.

There aren't really dorm 'leaders' as there are representatives. Normally about two or three for each dorm - though can only be one if the person proves themselves to be capable / no one else is voted. Each dorm will have a meeting once a month to go over things that the dorm needs to address either internally or with the school or other dorms, and then the representatives bring those concerns to a meeting with the school's staff and other dorm representatives. Think more like a student council and class presidents. The representatives make almost all decisions together. Reps are voted for each year within a dorm, and the voting is taken pretty seriously.

The dorm rep duties outside of the meetings is mostly just like a college RA. They make sure people are following the rules, help solve problems between students in their dorm, plan and hold events, etc.

The dorms:

While students are separated into dorms in this school, the headmaster and mistress try to stress the fact that they are all one community. Friendly rivalry is encouraged but ultimately the matter of dorms is just where the students end up living and placing them near people who can better help those around them. The two in charge don’t want the dorms to become too competitive or to alienated from one another - so there’s actually a lot of cross dorm events and even friends staying over at other friends dorms for days on end at times.

As a note, as long as it’s not inappropriate, students are encouraged to wear anything they want as their ‘dorm uniform’. Standard school uniforms are required on the main campus but as Headmaster Reed puts it - there’s no reason for them to tell the students what to wear in their own house. Plus, the school isn’t as well funded as most other private schools, so not having a lot of uniforms to keep up with is better for them in the long run. They don’t even have a formal ceremonial robe like NRC does, but I will be posting about the uniforms in a different post.

Now onto the dorms themselves.

Cinderella dorm: Nightingale Founded on the hard work and dedication of a princess’s companions, members of this dorm are no strangers to teamwork and getting the job done. It’s said that there’s no miracle students in this dorm can’t pull off in a short amount of time. Members of this dorm are close and they will drop anything they’re doing to help another. 

Read the profiles for the students apart of this dorm here!

Snow White: Diamanttobar Founded on the tradition and devotion of miners, members of this dorm specialize in working long hours and putting 100% into everything they do.They might be hard to win over, but once you have their companionship little will shake their loyalty. Students here notice the smaller details and are said to be able to craft nearly anything.  

Read the profiles for the students apart of this dorm here!

Aladdin: Wondrous Founded on the cleverness and protective instincts of a royal couple’s most trusted confidants, members of this dorm sometimes have questionable methods but overall have hearts of gold. Students in this dorm are proactive in calling out unfair rules and try to work for changes and reforms to improve the lives of those around them.

Read the profiles for the students apart of this dorm here!

Mulan: Guardian Founded on the honor and strength of dragons, students of this dorm are known to follow a code of honor and are very protective of one another. They are great with helping other student’s physical and mental well beings, acting as trainers and confidants.

Read the profiles for the students apart of this dorm here!

AiW: Lapinhole Founded on the curiosity and madness of a queen’s subjects, members of this dorm are known to be eccentric and creative. A lot of students in this dorm are mysterious and have a strange method of helping others, but even through the confusion a lot of students rely on students from this dorm for a little more fun in their lives.

Read the profiles for the students apart of this dorm here!

Beauty and the Beast: Servireu Founded on the faith and loyalty of a Beast Prince’s servants, members of this dorm are known to be generous, not judgemental, and helpful to those around them. A lot of these students are at the top of their classes and are known for being excellent tutors for others. Though a little eccentric, they obviously mean well and have good intentions.

Read the profiles for the students apart of this dorm here!

Annnnddd that’s it! I plan to possibly redo my dorm lore dump post aswell as make a separate post for the uniforms once I have them designed. also the staff will be getting their own posts aswell when I finish their designs too.

[shy-magpie]

RQG 156

live blog under the cut

Heads up about half way through I realized I go a bit further into analysis on where Zolf & the Kobolds are mentally than some people might be comfortable with. Just as they trust us to back off if the episode gets to real, I am trusting you to close the tab if my little live blog is hitting you wrong. If it makes a difference I have years between me and the reason I relate to this stuff.

"In Memorium" they are trying to kill us Ah they lampshaded the speed intros Yes Alex it is rather Paris Right to Azu & Zolf. Oh he's jumping right in. And there's my first pause of the episode. No “better” isn't a magic finish line you pass then never find yourself in that place again. No, knowing that doesn't mean you don't wonder if your back at square one every time you realize You Are In A Bad Place and Not Handling it Well. Gosh Azu is good at this. Yeah learning to walk away is hard. Learning to ignore the part of yourself that says "and never come back for their sake" is harder. Symbolic much Alex (Zolf is too small for the room, Azu is too large) Yeah it would be easier to not blame Zolf for last episode if I related to him a bit less. Okay they are talking about Hamid and their concerns for him directly. Yeah Hamid's relationship with power & privilege is an arc; and without the Doylist level of trusting Bryn & Alex, I can see where even if you trust/like him you'd be worried about it. With the best of intentions people misuse power. Azu quoted Grizzop at Zolf. Didn't name him, wonder if Zolf is ever going ask directly about his replacement in canon or if its best left to fic. Its easy to dismiss one's own successes. Okay fair and OW, Zolf isn't up to talking about Sasha; which is the part of this I was most prepared for. Hell yeah! He is coming down but not going to be attempting to lead so as to relieve pressure on himself. Maybe if he can let Hamid step up without making a Kew Garden thing he'll see how much he's grown. Hopefully without that setting off a "Hamid does better without me" thing. Yeah intellectual knowledge and it feeling real on an emotional level are very different things. Alex, why does it matter what order they are in? ALEX? The necklace? The Heart of Aphrodite shaped necklace? Azu got a Sign from Aphrodite approving of her reaching out to Zolf as an act of love. Yes! Blue Black no take backs! Yeah those two (players) know exactly what they are doing: breaking my heart in the best ways and not skipping over the actual work those two (characters) need to put into their relationship with OOC "its all fine now"s. Ok that settles the timeline, Azu went up same night, the device isn't made yet. Yeah Zolf wouldn't, probably best to back off while things are tender while being present enough to assure he isn't planning on leaving. Seriously bless Azu, this has to be at least as hard on her as Helen but she is letting the boys have room to work it out for themselves instead of "trying to help". The last thing either of them need right now is pressure especially on this point. Aw the Kobolds teach Cel draconic. Oh smart kid, not only is it just logical for the Kobolds to work with Cel directly, it might help them get over the "looking to see if the boss approves of how you breathe" stage. Especially if he is clear about not being threatened by them having advantage over him in this area. Heck of a relief this isn't hitting my rank issues. Ooh all the Kobolds are amazing engineers, wonder if its a Kobold thing or if Skraak recruited people with similar interests. Nice rework of the "Kobolds build traps" thing from pathfinder. I genuinely love how instead of pitching the original description of Kobolds out the window, Alex has backwards engineered it. Reputation for traps isn't a dishonorable approach to fighting, its a sign of their skill. They aren't minions, their trauma is interacting with a cultural attitude about rank in weird ways. Oh Cel! Cel is amazing. Under Shoin's orders they: made Magic Steroids, did maintenance (more towards the end as Shoin wasn't taking care of things), built the place initially, sourced ingredients, other Kobolds built the Mechkraken. Damn Shoin, they can't even be proud of all they were able to do in adverse circumstances because he tainted it. If they weren't forced to do it and have it used for ill ends, building the kraken would be impressive. A lot of that sounds like difficult work. Hamid stuff: yeah it is from a place of fear; and they would be hypersensitive and need to try to "defend him" so he doesn't react. Terrified of his anger? Handle anything that even annoys him to cut it off at the pass. And being a good person who doesn't like scaring them, Hamid is going to over do the very "Mary Sunshine" routine that makes Zolf think he doesn't appreciate the gravity of the situation. You'd think Mr "do a grief later" would get that Hamid doesn't have to walk the halls wailing to be aware of the end of the world. Not that the kid can win, if he cried and threw up it would be proof he hasn't grown from season one. Hopefully by taking a back seat Zolf will have a chance to see Hamid's actions and realize being chipper & wholesome doesn't mean stupid. Oh Alex has thought this through, one of these days I'll quit being surprised he actually gets this stuff. Not being able to read the person whose emotions feel like life & death is a Bad Thing. Thank Alex for Skraak. Weird seeing this stuff from this side, of course learning to focus on my end instead of being preoccupied with what was going on in the heads of people who were on Hamid's end of it was rather the point. Perfect balance, Hamid gives them enough space to realize he isn’t going to explode, Skraak "translates" into something clear enough not to stress them out. Like when Zolf snapped at Skraak when he pledged to Hamid; might not be pretty but not knowing what The Powers That Be want? Very bad place. Rank and clear orders are very important when appeasing those who outrank you is everything. Cel has dealt with a lot of young and unsure apprentices!?! Yeah well Cel isn't in their chain of command and gears don't get offended if you have an opinion on the right way to configure them. Cel is great Azu & Hamid talking about Zolf! Helen is wonderful! I thought this was going to be drawn out and indirect, instead they are actually facing things head on and dealing with them. Aw these two are so good for each other. Azu would set aside her own emotions. Hot damn Azu, getting right to it! Hamid can be amazingly open about his self awareness and it surprises me every time. It fits him and is a very good thing, but going from answering "how are you?" with "the Kobolds are doing well" to "I never knew how to help him" without it being jarring made me do quite the double take. Guess I was expecting more deflection. Yeah well you two are redefining your boundaries, entire relationship, and rank in specific, while being the perhaps the only people with enough of the picture to figure out how to save the world. Working out the balance between conflicting views on that, when neither of you knows what the end will look like was never going to be smooth. Oh yes and none of you have directly addressed that half of Zolf's rank & dick measuring stuff is because he doesn't know if he even has a role if he isn't The Boss or The Healer.* Oh the grin in Alex's voice as he tells them there is something else before the brorb interview. Whisky tumblers for each? Quite a sigh there Ben News? Big news? While they were in the institute? They ought to sit down. Wilde get to it. Ah Azu & Hamid are holding hands. Poor kid with his prop. Letter? Ancient Rome? Sasha? Are all the fics coming true? Their founder "Askingus"!?! Oh Sasha, oh Zolf! Lydia! Oh the kids! She named the kids after the party. She even found her faith. A break? How the hell are we only half way through the episode. Also hell yeah Lydia deserves all the awards, that was an amazing letter. XD Ben! Oh Hamid, we reacted that way to the epilogue that way too. It really is okay, it was a good end. Yeah he could use a drink. Poor Zolf. Hamid gives Wilde a hug. "technically I think that makes Sasha my boss". XP be cryptic Alex, The RSB will have it figured out by Friday. Ok Zolf got to read the letter on his own. Azu lit 3 candles, because Helen wants me to cry. Hamid is at Zolf's door with a bottle and two glasses. Lydia this is a compliment to your skill. More direct than I expected from Hamid. Oh these two! Okay he is drunk enough to go there (angry at Zolf for leaving but he gets it). About time someone told Zolf directly he's grown. Aw Zolf puts him to bed. Thank you Alex! Ben! (okay fair, if any of Hamid was left he'd cuddle). Sorry Cel! Lydia wanted to break/heal our hearts more than she wanted the plot to move forward ;) Good plan: take the orb to the anti magic field, only those who have already talked to it can talk directly. Info control. Hive mind/telepathy directly addressed. Finally what Shoin eats is addressed. Ok Cel has some teeth on them. Hasn't fed it, is using the vibration to threaten to explode his brain, (no English doesn't have enough pronouns we are working on it)... Oh good point better feed it. Aw Zolf is possessive of the kitchen. Shoin is still Shoin. Cel is not happy about not being recognized. Nice to hear the boys working together. The Infection might block him from being directly aware of  being infected. Bullsh$% he backed himself up. Good point Zolf even if he does, they are separate lives, this instance can still fear death. Oh all the party have teeth, nice they don't have the "good guys have to be sweet & gentle with the baddies" thing Yeah Cel isn't stupid, the brorbs arm isn't a threat. Oh auto painting that will make the people theorizing on the bio side of how the Brorb works happy. A circulatory diagram, and am ocean of faces. Paints like a printer. A creepy charcoal sketch of London staring at the artist. *I swear on Rusty Tower if they let him hurt himself any worse because he thinks his new role is "a brick wall on wheels" I am joining the line to fight Ben in a Whetherspoons parking lot. Yes it would be in character but so would healing. There are other hills. Although seriously its been great having a character that shows so many of the aspects of depression that usually get left out. That Zolf is also a three dimensional character with a full personality beyond just "the one with mental health issues" while not making it look like those issues are tacked on or easy to handle? Stunning work.  

[tigerstripedmoon]

[1/8] Much in the same way that Ironwood's character (or rather, the potential) was butchered by the writing in order to make him a dictator (despite all logical evidence to the contrary), do you think Salem's character was written in such a way that the ambiguity of whether or her choices are influenced by the pools is inherently miscommunicated? As she's portrayed in the show there's no getting around the fact that she's an abuser. But I also keep thinking about Jinn's throwaway line from V6 –

Sorry for the delay in answering this, but I just took an impromptu 4-hour nap. (I’ve been fairly seriously ill and recovery is slow.) So let’s see how to handle the most problematic woman in RWBY....

I think whether or not you see Salem’s status as poorly-written victim of circumstance, a straight-up abuser, or uwu hit me mommy salami (and if it’s the latter gtfo my blog ew), is largely dependent on 1) how familiar you are with the tropes, 2) how familiar you are with the causes and effects of abuse, and 3) whether or not you see female-on-male abuse as being just as serious as male-on-female abuse.

Let me explain.

First, we do need to address Jinn’s throwaway line re: Salem as a being of ‘pure destruction’. Jinn is, emotionally, an unreliable narrator--we can tell this in how judgmental and harsh she is throughout ‘The Lost Fable’. She talks down to Ozpin, makes snide comments about both Salem and Ozma during her 3D slideshow, and is even shown to be smiling at his despair when giving Mustache!Ozma her ‘You can’t’ proclamation. 

Mostly, we need to admit that Jinn exaggerated things.

Salem isn’t a being of pure destruction. Salem has agency. Salem didn’t do jack shit for centuries after her dip in the oozy jacuzzi. She was perfectly able to love and accept and create--the exact opposite of destroy--when she reunited with Ozma 2.0. Was she destroying and cruel? Yes! She treated the second wave of humanity like roaches, BUT she also adored and doted on her children and husband. It wasn’t until Ozma refused to let her use their children to repopulate the world with their magic babies (which, if you think about it, would have locked him and all his hosts into her breeding stock--and also possibly their children) that she went full-on kill mode. Which....isn’t all that different from what happened when the Gods refused to give Ozma back to her, before the dip in the Grimm goo. She tried to kill the Gods, the people she viewed as taking away what she wanted--just like Ozma did with their children. (He was absolutely right to remove them from that situation, but that’s a rant I’ve made before and won’t rehash.)

The Grimm pool didn’t incite that behavior. It was always inside her. It just amplified it.

So, the pools are influencing her, sure. But they aren’t the sole source of her behavior and I think RT was kind of clumsy in showing that. Mostly because they have a massively shitty track record in portraying male victims of abuse as anything other than butt monkeys (Ozpin, Oscar, Whitley) or people to be reviled (Adam). They’re happy to show female victims of abuse as survivors and as deserving of the sympathy that they (rightfully!) get, but when it comes to male victims of abuse? RT seems to think they deserve what they get, and I’m honestly sick of it.

Anyway, to get back on track: unfortunately, most of the FNDM doesn’t know how, or just don’t want, to think critically when it comes to RWBY. They go no further than the shallow spoonfed ‘what-you’re-told’ top layer without ever looking at what’s really shown. Frankly, initial author intent doesn’t matter if that’s not what ends up on paper or in the show. You might not have intended to portray abuse victims as being laughingstocks, but you did! You might not have intended to say character X is evil, but you did! And now there’s chaos everywhere and people are hurt emotionally and fans are at each other’s throats. Intent only matters insofar as that gets shown in the final piece, to me. Because the viewer isn’t a mind reader and what we may think of as intent could be miles away from the writer’s actual intent. Our assumption of intent is, more or less, as useless as a headcanon without confirmation.

So, back to my initial three points. Would Salem be more sympathetic if she was shown to be more torn, or heavily influenced by outside forces? That would depend on the person and what I outlined. Abuse is a heavy thing and something a lot of us have endured in our lifetimes. It’s a difficult thing to confront in media and do so in an appropriately sensitive way. So let’s go over my three conditions.

1) how familiar you are with the tropes: I say tropes, but I really mean ‘the way media presents abuse’. Abusers in real life and media tend to be manipulative and grandiose, and see themselves as doing nothing wrong, or doing what they do for the betterment of the survivor. Salem fits the classic abuser archetype pretty well, all things considered. And honestly, I could write an entire meta about how well Ozpin fits into the archetype of abuse survivor.

2) how familiar you are with the causes and effects of abuse:  Abuse changes the survivor--quite literally, as abuse and PTSD causes parts of the wiring in the brain to be remapped and alters the brain’s neurotransmitter levels. This is particularly severe in childhood abuse. As for the abuser, they often come from an abusive background themselves--which Salem does, as we learn in Fairy Tales of Remnant. She grew up in a place where she was stripped of most everything, denied access to people and love by a cruel father, and latched on to Ozma as a result. She also, in the process of rescuing herself, led hundreds of men to their deaths and showed no remorse for doing so.

This is a partial explanation. It is in no way an excuse. In the end, there is always agency--free will--choice. And Salem made the choice to be abusive. She’s still making the choice now. 

3) whether or not you see female-on-male abuse as being just as serious as male-on-female abuse: RT clearly doesn’t see this as a problem, from how they’ve shown it on screen. A good chunk of the FNDM doesn’t either. And this is a huge problem, because it should be taken seriously. People say it’s rare for female-on-male abuse to happen, but the truth is we don’t actually know how often it occurs due to massive underreporting and authorities not taking it seriously. Society treats it like a joke or blames the man, because men who are abused are seen as ‘weak’ or ‘sissies’. In RWBY, we have the dual issue of Salem being depicted as dominant, powerful, with full sex appeal on display, the classic ‘step on me mommy’ fetish dream; while Ozpin is depicted as gentle, cautious, a touch androgynous in look and with all the compassion and care that goes directly against the archetype of the strong male authority figure. I don’t think it’s unrelated that people are quick to blame Ozpin and absolve Salem, when looking at the character personality types.

I should probably add a forth one here: whether or not you yourself are an abuse survivor. I’ve come to notice since v6 that a lot of the people most upset over Salem’s actions are people who have survived (or are still affected by) domestic/familial abuse. I think that knowing exactly what it’s like to be in that position gives a certain... not nuance, but understanding. It also makes it a lot harder to watch, and to be neutral. I fully admit that I have a hard time being neutral on this subject because I am a survivor, and Salem’s actions remind me far too much of the abusive people I’ve known.

I do think it would have been interesting to get a Salem who was actively shown to be fighting against her ‘programming’, so to speak, and had hints of goodness still in her. But that’s not what we have, and that’s not honestly what we were ever given. What we were given was a traumatized woman who leaned into her backstory and let herself become a horrible person even before her dip in the Grimm pools, and who has ridden that train right into abuse territory. Is her story tragic? Yes! Do i feel bad for her? Yes, only inasmuch as I feel bad for, say, Adam. Adam had the hints of what had to have been an awful childhood too, but that doesn’t absolve him of his crimes or mean he deserves to have the redemption story. It’s nice to think that everyone deserves it, but they 1) have to acknowledge that what they did was wrong and 2) no matter how much they work to fix it, that doesn’t mean that the people they wronged has to forgive them. Forgiveness is not a guarantee nor should it be. They should want to be better people because they want to be better, not because they want to hook up with their dead lover. 

So, is Salem culpable? Depends on whether or not you think she’s in control of her actions. To me, she’s absolutely culpable. Irredeemable? Mmm... maybe not? I don’t think I’d mind too much if she was shown about to start some kind of redemption, but leave Ozma/Ozpin/Oscar the fuck out of it. An abuse survivor should never, ever be required to redeem their abuser. That’s just sick. It’s like... if an alcoholic killed your kid, and the court turned around to the kid’s parents and said ‘oh hey, BTW, I know this guy killed your kid but you have to pay for his rehab and make sure he goes’. Gross, right? Same principle.

How you view Salem is up for debate. What we have isn’t that ambiguous, but... in the end, I’m not really even that interested in her story. I’m interested in seeing how her victims learn to thrive despite her.

[whitetickle-sl]

slur/slər/

Learn to pronounce

verb

1.speak (words or speech) indistinctly so that the sounds run into one another."he was slurring his words like a drunk"Similar:mumblespeak unclearlygarblestumble overstammermisarticulateOpposite:enunciate

2.MUSICperform (a group of two or more notes) legato."I can play it if I don't slur the notes"

noun

1.an insinuation or allegation about someone that is likely to insult them or damage their reputation."the comments were a slur on the staff"Similar:insultslightslanderslanderous statementlibellibelous statementmisrepresentationdefamationaspersioncalumnysmearallegationimputationinsinuationinnuendo

2.an act of speaking indistinctly so that sounds or words run into one another or a tendency to speak in such a way."there was a mean slur in his voice"

So I’ve gotten in trouble for daring to mention the N word when asking about a black girl who commanded her white sub to call her by the N word that ends with the letter A. which is a variant of the one that ends with er. So I’m bring in some facts for everyone. and I’ll merely link t o the dictionary description for the original down below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro

Here is the vidio with a Black girl tickling a White Girl as her lee. She was basicly upset wit the White girl. Now the black girl treated the N word like it’s some kind of badge of honor and wanted the White girl to call her that. Apparently I’m atacked for trying to even dare  say the word. I can understand callingsomeone that being bad but now it’s like we’re treating the word like Voldimort, he who should not be named.......I just now discovered the video has been taken down. Well just great. just when I had an example it’s taken down. Whatever it was  Black girl  dominating a white girl being mad at her about something. Now the white girl did get cheeky and call her the B word which got her tickled worse, that’s what you get when you insult your ler and I think she deserved that.

But with the info I have atleast provided you all, with while slur can be an insult it’s usualy running a word together. The Origanal term meant Dark Skinned. Nothing degrading there, the more infamous one came from the portigese and spanish and apparently became more used instead as a means of respect....I don’t know who they were trying to respect because obviosly no one feels respected being called that, even though it literaly just means the same thing. Guess I will have to look deeper into the history of this. Because so far now, We got the classic neatral which I think we need to just need to push for making it neutral, because I feel it’s only an insult because it became bastardized over time which is the second more commonly recongised reaction, then there’s being an honory black where only blacks get to use it and your only allowed to use it if your given the blessing of the black community. That’s like me saying you can’t call me white because of what the Barbary pirates did. Ok it’s more understandable with the word slave I guess because that’s literaly a slur for Slav who used to be slaves to the Ottomons and other people once upon a time and before that term became world wide there was other words for a slave. Slasve is a very modern term and meant different things in history and so there are even translations that even kind of miss us the word. Trying understand what people meant when making the recordings helps us to retranslate what they truely meant. and then you got the 4th use of the N word which apparently has the word promoted to a master role?

So how does the N word work as a neutral term for Blacks, an insult one instance, a friend or equal the next instance and master and superior in the next?! How can I call you a master with an insult or Insult you with a compliment? and then don’t get me started on the new white rule that whites can’t even utter the word from their lips even if they aren’t calling anyone or referring to anyone by the word.... Just Grade stupidity right there. I understand it has it’s awful history and I’m not trying to make light of it, rather I simply want to just de bastardized a word that was once common and once had no insulting meaning. If you remove the sting of a word it no longer has power over you. Now it seems it’s become an entitled word. You know what I call it? I confusing word! There is literally no other word that bounces back and forth between insult and compliment and neutral, and permitted and tabooed without warning or control than the N word/ The N word is utterly chaotic and disruptive and it’s being used to create even more division now not simply as an insult but as a taboo word! There are alot of taboo words but you literally have one right here that is upsetting to not only culture but even language itself! 

You know what I think? 2 wrongs don’t make a right and a word that only one race can use and just easily change it’s meaning like that is not justified. It doesn’t heal the wounds of the past. I hate that I am having to address this word again, just one post is all I should ever have to post and I have a right to make such posts. I have a right to address the issue.

So why am I talking about it again? Well since I was accused of using a slur in the other post rather than continue to deny it I recalled what a slur is supposed to be in the first place. That’s why I went on Google and posted the definition in this post. As you can see the term slur while can be involved in insulting someone it seems to be more involved with words mashing together or being said wrong. I won’t bother saying the original word and it’s many different slurred terms, I’ll just mention that you got versions that end in O, er and a. Now given that the word technical has been said differently over time and there’s both not only a negative slur but even a slur that’s treated more positively it’ technically is a slurr. So yeah I guess by that Logic I still used a Slur. fine caught me red handed. HOWEVER. What makes the word evil is when it’s used as an insult and I didn’t. However Telling me I can’t even adress the issue  behind the word that I can’t even say neutrally IS JUST AS EVIL Because 2 wrongs don’t make a right. Here I am trying to resolve a problem and people are atacking me for daring to use the word. Well a broken clock can ring once or twice correctly a day but just because you could argue that I was using a slur doesn’t make you right about me. Because I think it would of made more since to atack me for using the word to insult someone. However I didn’t use the word to refer to anyone let alone black people in general. I was talking about a black girl but she  was calling herself that AND WANTING A WHITE GIRL TO CALL HER THAT. Yet I didn’t call her that but I did repeat what she said. That’s not the same thing though. Now if Anyone of the Black community was in fact insulted by that post if you saw it, then I’m SORRY IF IT PUT A BAD TASTE in your mouth but please know I wasn’t trying to put anyone down. I was just curios about the Black girl’s use of the word. Her use of the word confuses me and I think it helps fix the problem to address it and negotiate about it rather than lay down some segregationally rule. Because that rule is Hypocritical and it will domino effect into something as evil as what happened in the past. You can’t right a wrong with another wrong and ignorance and taboos don’t fix anything. So I don’t apologies for speaking my mind but I do want people to know I do care about your feelings but sometimes I can��t make promises. and it’s not fair to me if I can’t express my own concerns and curiosity because I have to worry about walking on egg shells. 

To be honest I didn’t even like addressing the word in that post but I’m not going to delete it either. That would seem like surrendering to a stereotype of who I am and what haters want to make of me plus it would seem cowardly. I made my bed and so I will sleep in it. I knew the point I was trying to make, and I knew I didn’t mean no ill intent. Plus if I get rid of it I have nothing to show myself why stuff happened in the first place. So I will be keeping that post around, both because people actually like it looks like and for me it’s a teaching platform. Someone tried to trip me up and I’ve made mistakes of erasing posts before and it never helps in big arguments. So deleting posts won’t solve anything if you know for a fact what you meant. If anything the hater’s arguments actually kind of help this case even more and only prove just how big a deal this actually is. It also seems to teach me just because people attack you doesn’t mean you throw in the towel, doesn’t mean you just get mad and scream back at them either. I mean I’m still expressing my emotion on the issue but I’m also bothering to looks stuff up so I can reproach the argument. The thing is their arguement is the word is a slur so I shouldn’t say it. No that’s a terrible excuse, because slurr just means to say a word wrong and say it as a different word. So now I’m challenging not even the meaning of the N word but the meaning of the Word Slur. Thank goodness I can at least say SLUR ^^ that’s how much a headache this is I can’t even say the other word it’s so maddening! I mean I can say it no one’s really stopping me from saying the N word...I just don’t want to say it! Yes I would get harrassed for saying it  in another post but the thing is I’m gonna be harrased anyways so it makes no big differance. But anyways just because it’s a slur does that realy make it bad when a slur is technically just a mispronounced word? and when I’m just talking about the word and it’s history about how it used to be neutral back when it wasn’t controversial does it even count as an insult then? like if you were tak about the word cracker and how people come to use that in reference to white people but your not constantly using it to deliberately speak negatively of white people then is it an insult then? Not only that but by this definition is even Cracker realy a slur? It’s being missused but is that a slur? I suppose you could argue that a slur is a word used to speak negativly of a a person but that’s only if you are doing that directly. In otherwords it would directly mean an direct insult. But when I used it I wasn’t being direct so it doesn’t count. So If I was talking about the term cracker well I’m intentionally referring to whites as such just on how they are refered to as such by certain people. But if I’m not using it directly as the word for them and not contently calling them that, then I’m not using a direct insult. A controversial word maybe but not a direct insult. and since  Cracker isn’t a miss pronunciation of another word, it’s not a slur in that since either. The original N word is not a slur because it’s not misspronounced it simply has bad press. and until it becomes more excepted as neutral again I will keep to my promise that I will not be using it again in future posts..if I can help it. The original word is technically viewable by the link much to my discomfort but I will not take responsibility for the word being uncencored by links. Now Gigmig technical is a slur since it’s mispronounced version of Giggle Milkee as I merged the 2 words together. However Gigmig may be a slur but it’s not controversal. hehe well I mean the topic is controversial to hates I suppose but not the the Gigmigs themselves. To be honest though I invented the term Giggle Milkee trying to come up with terms for White lee or ticklish White. It doesn’t have to emply to slave, however most of the Giggle Milkees in my band don’t seem to mind the idea of being tickle slaves themselves. Infact it’s rather popular to them. But I do understand not all people are big about that, So that’s why Gigmig actualy has a neutral meaning, by default it means ticklish white person or White lee tickled by other races. It can be used for slaves but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s inherently more neutral in that it can involve concential tickling as well as concential, it can be used towards a perceaved equal or towards someone seen as property. However I don’t see it ever being used to describe a superior in any form. Giggle Milkees are never masters, only equals or less. What do you expect their lees when is the lee ever the one in control? when your the one being tickled your either putting your trust in the tickler or your at their mercy.

Anyways guys I hope to never have to address the N word again I realy hate that topic, but I’m also stubborn ;p and not  ashamed. But I would appreciate other people tackling this issue more from my perspective and helping in the cause to weaken the the power the N word has so all sides can be free. As for me I just want to move on and have fun with my fellow Gigmigs and fun with future grabber friends or future Grabber masters~ Also to would be Grabbers I am trying to find a word for ticklers of whites who are white. Grabbers technically emply you capture people and that’s the only thing bothering me realy. Some suggest new term words for diverse ticklers who tickle whites or anything involving this them would be appreciated. Or just let me know if your ok with the term Grabber and how it comes to be used according to lore and what other additional Alternatives you would suggest being used along with the term Grabber or in it’s stead. I got a few ideals myself for giggle Milkees and grabbers but I’ll save those for another post. I’m getting tired this note is to long as is and I just to move on.

Please share if you like and support this Post ^^ and yes I do appreciat hearing people’s concerns, just watch about dictating me on what to do.

[athetos]

i apprciate that response to my anon, tysm!!!! i am also wondering what you think of the take “something good about enemies to lovers is that the villain is seen at their worst, so somehow, that makes it more organic when they start acting romantically to each other” this is horribly paraphrased, with a hint of salt. maybe in an enemies to lovers done correctly, with accountabilty and care to the hero’s experiences and feelings. but the ppl i see rb that post this is even about are c/a shippers, so i am so?????????? there shouldn’t be that big of a price to pay just to see someone’s vulnerable side.... i am sorry this is so rambly;;;;

Of course!

Listen - if that’s someone’s worst, I never want to see their best. I don’t really get that argument at all. It kind of falls into “if you can’t handle me at my worst you don’t deserve me at my best” mentality which isn’t inherently bad, but IS fucked up when abuse comes into play. “If you can’t handle me physically and emotionally harming you, you don’t deserve me at all.” Like... no? There’s a difference between someone lashing out, unintentionally, and apologizing, and someone physically injuring you with ill intent, gaslighting you, etc.

Nobody owes you forgiveness if you hurt them, even if you’ve apologized or have become a better person. You have to accept that. You can’t undo what you’ve done, and you can’t hold it against someone to not want you in their life anymore. It doesn’t matter if your actions were born from a place of trauma or fear. Being traumatized or mentally ill doesn’t excuse you for abusing someone else. My abuser was also an abuse survivor! Does that mean I’m obligated to forgive her? Hell no. The reason I put up with her bullshit for so long was because I kept saying to myself “she’s been through hell, she can’t help it, she’s going to get better. If I call her out or leave, I would become ableist and an abuser.” That’s such a shitty mindset that society impresses upon victims!! That the victim can “save” their abuser. Absolute bullshit.

Time to say something extremely controversial. If I watched she ra when I was with my ex, I would have loved catra/adora, because it’s the ultimate fantasy for 19 year old me - the idea that the abusive girlfriend I was in a toxic relationship with deep down did everything because she loved me - she always had - and we could be together, in a healthy way, and everything she put me through would never be addressed again. It’s such sad wishful thinking, and unrealistic as hell. Fiction impacts reality - I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that it could very well, if I had seen this onscreen at the time, further contributed to me staying with my ex despite the constant degradation and abuse. Because look! They got a happy ending! Why can’t we? It doesn’t matter if I had physical and emotional scars from her - she’s better now, she apologized briefly, she made a single offhand comment about working on her anger problems, it was my fault in the first place for not staying - etc etc etc.

Look, I could go on. I just think that the glorification of abuse in modern media is appalling, and I’m tired.

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

Practicalities of Censorship

Every so often I see a thread cross my dashboard arguing about censorship with relation to AO3 - in particular people claiming that AO3 is bad because it allows basically any story regardless of content, that people are bad for supporting it, or that AO3 should implement some method by which problematic fics get taken down. These complaints are usually met with explanations around the history or AO3, why it was implemented the way it was, and why thinking that AO3 is fine the way it is does not equal being a pedophile. I want to tackle this from another angle - practicality.

Let's assume for the sake of this post that the people making these arguments are correct and that there are some things which shouldn't be allowed on AO3 (or an an alternative fic platform set up to be a better version of AO3 without all the bad stuff - I'll mostly be taking about "fixing" AO3 in this post but the same problems would apply to setting up a new and "safer" fic site). There are a lot of arguments against censorship to do with quality of works produced and whether this results is less good art when people are scared to produce things that might get banned, or whether there is artistic merit to works that display despicable actions. Let's just imagine for the moment that the whole argument is settled and the "let's purify AO3 for the sake of the children" crowd are correct. What would need to happen next? This isn't something I've seen addressed in these posts.

There are a lot of problems with censorship. Skipping over the ethical discussion of whether censorship is good or bad and in what circumstances it should be accepted, let's focus on two practical aspects: deciding what should and shouldn't be banned, and how you would implement such a ban. Let's start with problem one: where do you draw the line?

Let's assume we have some scale of rating from absolutely sickeningly awful deserving of destruction to perfectly clean and innocent with not the slightest thing wrong with it. Somewhere between these two endpoints is a line and everything to one side of it is bad and should be banned/blocked/deleted from AO3, etc. Everything on the other side of the line is fine and should be left available for people to read. Some things may seem easy to define. Fic A is incest porn, where a child is graphically raped in a way that's cleanly meant to titillate rather than horrify and the abuse is glorified and justified in text, and it's full of poor writing, spelling and grammar mistakes, and has no artistic merit as a work (how you judge artistic merit would need a few thousand words to explore as a subject on its own right). Let's stick that on the bad side of the line since that's the sort of thing that people on Tumblr are crying out to be banned. Fic B is a fluff fic where a character makes another character soup because they're feeling ill and they watch movies together. Nothing remotely sexual, just two adult characters being sweet to each other. So we'll put that on the good side of the line, right?

But the problem comes in deciding where that dividing line should be and what should be done about the things that sit close to the line. You could come up with some simple rules. Let's say, "Everything involving underage incest is on the bad side of the line." Seems straight-forward. But what if you have a story dealing with someone's recovery from incest and CSA? The story has a character who was abused in the past and the narrative deals with them getting therapy and overcoming their trauma. None of the abuse is shown in the text of the story, it all happens off-screen as it were, and the story sends a message that incest and CSA are bad but offers hope to former victims. Surely that story would belong on the good side of the line? So maybe we amend the rule to, "Everything involving graphic incest is on the bad side of the line." That would let us keep the story about overcoming the trauma on the good side but block anything that uses incest as porn. But is consenting incest between grown adults treated the same as abusive incest?

And what if you get a story that's more about the trauma but that has a handful of flashbacks about the rape that would count as graphic. These flashbacks are meant to be horrifying not sexually exciting. Would that be okay? Is it the intent of the scene that matters? But in that case, what happens if the author writes a scene that's intended to be horrifying but a reader interprets it as arousing? Would it be okay if the author includes a disclaimer in the notes saying that this is a terrible thing and shouldn't be done in real life? Is it the intensity of the scenes shown directly in the story? In which case, where do you draw the line between something described explicitly and something merely eluded to? Is it the precise terms used? Which terms? Or how many times those terms are use? Is a subtle allusion to an event okay? In which case, what happens with a slightly less subtle allusion?

The stories that are far away from the line are easy to place, but the ones close to it become a challenge. Any attempt to define straight-forward rules starts to fall apart quickly and you get to the point where you have to argue on a case-by-case basis for each story, which would involve a massive amount of time invested to check each of these stories and decide whether or not they're allowed. Once again the practicalities of "how would you enforce something like this?" rear their ugly head but that's a question we'll address later.

We also have the problem that where I might draw the line between the bad and the good might be different from where you would draw the line, and would be different from where someone else would draw the line. Let's go back to Fic B as described above, our perfectly innocent fluff story. I might think that's perfectly acceptable, but if those two characters are both the same gender, there will be some homophobic people who will say that it's wrong and corrupting innocents because it sends the message that homosexual relationships are good. Or even if the characters are different genders, some highly religious people might think it sends a bad message if those characters are unmarried and living together in a relationship, even if nothing explicit happens within the story. Or what if the characters are married but it's an interracial marriage? A KKK member might say that sends a bad message. Different people have a different idea of what counts as bad content.

In the real world, there have been cases of books that address racism being banned because they use the n word. Harry Potter has been banned by religious groups. According to the website www.banned-books.org.uk a sweet children's book about two penguins hatching an egg was banned by a lot of schools and libraries in the US because the two penguins are both male - even though this story was actually based on a true story. The book Black Beauty, about the experiences of a horse, was banned during the Apartheid in South Africa simply for including the word "black" in the title. If you look at that site, a lot of books have been banned for a lot of different reasons and a lot of good literature has ended up caught up in the censorship usually because religious groups objected to in on moral grounds.

You could say "don't let the bigots and racists be in charge of the censorship," but historically, when censorship has come into play in the past, the people who tend to end up the worst for it are minorities. LGBTQ+ groups and people of colour tend to get censored more than straight, white men. Stories about their experiences often deal with problematic issues and therefore they get banned. The groups that generally end up making decisions about what is and isn't okay tend to be the groups that have the most power to begin with, and the end result is silencing of minority voices. This is one reason I'm very wary of anything to do with censorship, because the people who usually end up the worse for it are those who most need their voices heard.

But let's imagine all of these problems are magically overcome and we come up with a perfectly clear set of rules about what counts as good and bad fic and the dividing line is agreed by good, rational people who aren't remotely bigoted and who are able to define the criteria for what should be banned in a way that will only ever block the harmful stuff.

We still have to deal with the practicalities of enforcement we set aside earlier. We've built our perfect set of rules to define good and bad fics and now we want to put them into practice to ban any of the awful stuff. How would you go about doing it?

We could try and get machine filters to do censorship by looking for keywords and particular tags or using more complex algorithms to judge what a piece of content is about, but this ends up with chaos like Tumblr auto-flagging a lot of perfectly clean content, or YouTube blocking videos that just happened to be by/about LGBTQ+ people. Any software based implementation would struggle because someone talking about a thing as a problem contains the same words as someone glorifying that thing, and machines tend not to be great at picking up tone. You would get a massive amount of errors with things being falsely flagged as bad and things being falsely let through despite breaking the rules.

And people would be sneaky. Someone wanting to include their graphic story wouldn't tag it as for over 18s because tagging something as for over 18s would get it banned, so they would tag it as something else. The terms "lemon" and "lime" used to describe fics by older members of fandoms started from exactly this sort of thing. Websites decided to not allow adult content so people continued to post adult content but they used the citrus scale for tagging it so people would still be able to find it. Which works when people know the terms to look for or avoid, but which doesn't work for people not in the know. Is a "lemon" or a "lime" fic more explicit? Do you know what a fic being tagged as "grapefruit" would mean? By their nature, these tags are coded, which is not great for clarity.

Any sort of system that just blanket bans key words or tags would result in people just not using those keywords and tags but posting the stuff anyway. It would actually make the situation worse because there would still be incest porn and the like, only now it wouldn't be tagged. As it stands on AO3, people use the tagging system very well and people who don't want to see the incest porn can do things like exclude that tag from searches, or just not open fics they see that have the tag. If there were rules in place to not allow anything with that tag, then people would stop using the tag, which would actually mean more people would see incest porn they didn't want to because it would no longer be tagged properly, or it would be tagged using code words which only mean something to the inside group. It would be much harder to avoid the things you don't like.

So let's say we don't let a computer decide what's breaking the rules. Let's say there is a system by which readers can flag a fic as being inappropriate to get it banned. Human beings get to decide, but what's the threshold? Does a thing get banned as soon as someone reports it? Or does it need to be flagged by multiple people to be banned? In which case fics written in tiny fandoms might slip through the cracks because not enough people are reading it to them flag it. This is also open for exploitation. Someone who takes a dislike to a particular person might encourage others to flag their fics as inappropriate, regardless of whether or not they are. Someone might create fake accounts or log in anonymously over proxies to spam a fic with flags.

And even if no one acts maliciously to abuse the system, not everyone will be careful about checking the precise and perfect rules defined to mark the difference between acceptable and unacceptable work. People will flag things incorrectly, based on their own viewpoints of what should or shouldn't be allowed, which we've already said is a problem because everyone will draw the line in different places based on their own beliefs.

So what's the alternative to a community-driven method for managing content? You could have specific people whose job it is to go through content and decide whether it adheres to the rules. Maybe a computer system or community flagging could funnel fics into a review channel where human beings check every one carefully. These people would understand the rules and be certain to always judge fics accurately according to the magically perfect rules defined earlier, which are guaranteed to only ever block bad fics but never block a good fic.

So problem solved, right? We have our perfect rules perfectly implemented.

Except where humans are employed to check whether content is acceptable or not, it involves a large number of people checking through basically the worst content out there. Some social networking sites do this sort of thing now and it can be hugely traumatising for people who do that work. It's not good for them mentally to have to be exposed over and over to the worst content being put up online. There tends to be a high turnover in those jobs because they burn out fast, and that's where people are being paid for this stuff.

A site like AO3 relies on volunteers so it would require a large number of people to volunteer to look at the darkest most gruesome content and decide if it breaks the rules or not. Either you have people who hate those sort of fics doing this out of a sense of duty to maintain the purity of the content, in which case they will probably struggle with having to read a load of stuff they really, really don't enjoy. Or you will have people volunteer because they really like those fics and this is the way for them to read them. And that probably defeats the point of doing this, because it means that the people who would be seeking out those stories anyway would be the ones reading them to see if they break the rules.

There are a lot of problems with censorship, both ethically and practically. Even if you are fully on the side of censorship from a moral standpoint, you have to address the practical concerns if you want to propose an implementation.

As it stands, I think the current system works. There is stuff on AO3 that I would not in a million years want to read, but I don't have to. AO3 is brilliant for its tagging system and I can look at the tags and nope past fics that are full of my personal squicks or that I think endorse something terrible. Readers can exclude tags they want nothing to do with or just not click on ones that include elements you dislike. You can curate your own experience, which actually works with the whole idea of everyone drawing a line in a different place. You and I will have different stories we want to avoid, and we can both choose to avoid them based on author's tagging for them, rather than some other person decreeing what is acceptable for either of us to see.

If you still think that AO3 should be blocking or banning certain content, have a think about how this would work in reality. Because when ideas like that are implemented in the real world, all manner of problems happen.

I think the fact that this post is still a couple of thousand words long with me skipping over several parts of the debate is a sign that this is not a simple problem that can be easily fixed.

[janevillanueva]

jane & rafael: telenovela loves & true love interests.

disclaimer: this post/essay will discuss michael, but it’s not meant to open the door to anger or discourse. he’s just part of the story. this is not an anti-anything post and he will not be tagged, neither will the ship. if you are gonna argue, please don’t. this is meant to be a civil post. thank you! ♡

jane the virgin is a cw show based on the 2002 venezuelan telenovela juana la virgen. while some factors are altered for american television, jtv carries the same key elements as it’s telenovela counterpart and for all intents and purposes is a telenovela. under the cut i’m gonna get into what that means and how/why it shapes the show and jane’s love story. this is long so apologies if you’re on mobile.

a common misconception among non-latinos is that a telenovela is simply a soap opera in spanish. while the two share similarities a telenovela is a condensed story told over the course of about nine months. it is usually a story of rivaling families and/or a love story in the vein of cinderella or pride and prejudice. a telenovela has to be a balancing act. it has to be unpredictable and ridiculous, but have a soft landing at the end. it throws endless drama and twists at you, but the ending is always fundamentally the same. you know the story - and that is not a bad thing.

because of this, if you are familiar with telenovelas, you immediately know that jtv is jane and rafael’s story. jane and rafael’s relationship being messy is what makes them the main couple. telenovela couples are a disaster, and we love them for it. we eat up their forbidden romance, their fights in the rain, their longing. now, with that comes a lot of “problematic” and “toxic” behavior. it’s a staple. there are age differences, power imbalances, fights, potential incest, MURDER. you name it, there is a telenovela plot. if you look at it from a telenovela pov jane and rafael are actually pretty tame. but they still are a telenovela couple. and some of those trademark things are part of their story because they are an ode to the genre. and the drama is their driving force.

for me, being team rafael was never about who the better man was or who “deserved” jane. it was “this is a telenovela and this is their story.” rooting for them was about the culture i know and hoping the show would respect that and the source material. it was “THIS IS THE STORY.”

what i love, however, is how they also challenge what that means. yes, they fight. jane is judgmental of other people and rafael shuts off emotionally. they scream at each other. they do all of that. and it turns some people off. but what they also do is is talk. they communicate.

think about early s4, probably the worst raf has ever been. he fucks up big time. but it’s a learning experience for him. the show does not excuse him. he gets hit by a car, he sits with jane on the floor and acknowledges that he fucked up. he cries to her, with her and realizes he has to do things differently. and this is just one example. later that season he reads jane’s writing and finds she wrote about michael, he feels shitty - but in the end they talk, he apologizes and gets her a private writing space. every fuck up, every choice, is something that brings jane and rafael closer and makes them change toward becoming right for each other. i have no doubt they were in love in season one, but they weren’t right for each other yet. 

this is where jane and michael come in.

i say this with no malice: michael was a false romantic lead. he was a plot device. i always knew this. it sounds mean, but i don’t mean it to. it’s just a fact. that isn’t to say people who ship them are invalid, but in no way were they ever cheated or lied to by the writers. they just misunderstood the story.

the very crux of the jtv love triangle is being practical and safe vs. following your heart and being brave. i’m not going to deny jane loved michael, just like i’m not gonna deny she loved adam. love often comes many times and teaches us things every time. but a lot of jane’s love for michael came from having a plan and it being simple. from what xo and alba wanted for her, not what she wanted for herself. it fit in a binder. with michael she had settled into the idea of being a teacher, which was not her dream, and by age 23 (a baby!) she was looking forward to marriage.

(sidenote: lbr, she wanted to have sex. from a narrative pov jane marries michael so early in the show so she can have sex in future seasons while still keeping the traditional telenovela wedding series finale. it’s a bridge and a way to extend the long journey to her finding her way to rafael again.)

none of this is to say a simple life is a bad life. but we know that in jane’s heart that is not, and never has been, the life she truly wants. she loves telenovelas because she loves the idea that two people are meant to be together, she loves romance novels and she loves writing. jane plays it safe because she has the catholic mindset drilled into her by alba, and has tried not to repeat xo’s mistakes. her life is about caution, but that isn’t what her heart wants. she has big dreams. but no one who pushes her outside of her comfort zone to follow those dreams, or even simply acknowledges her as a writer. until rafael. 

and rafael is not michael. they are very, very different relationships. raf is not simple. he is a complex character and a flawed one as well. he is a telenovela lead. “i’m your romantic hero. i may be flawed, but i’m yours.” in season one jane and rafael love each other magnetically. they love each other because of their destiny. and at that time, it’s not enough. they BOTH have to change. rafael more so, of course. but even rafael being the one who changes his reality to have a life with jane is foreshadowed in season one with alba’s story about grandpa mateo giving up his money to be with her. when you look at it from a telenovela lens, it’s wonderful to see rafael go from someone who is drowning in money and doesn’t know how to ride a bus, to someone who takes a real estate job and a one bedroom apartment to support jane’s dream because he WANTS to. because that’s who he has become. does he have selfish moments? yes. but everyone does. everyone on the show fucks up and is shady because that is the dna of the show.

but rafael is a character who is ironically overlooked by parts of the fandom because of his looks and how it’s “all we like about him,” when his looks aren’t what make him interesting. to understand rafael, you have to pay attention to his entire arc, not just parts of it. he’s someone who has carried trauma and abandonment issues since he was a child. his mother left him and his dad treated him like garbage. he fundamentally believes everyone will leave him. and as much as we adore her now, petra was his wife and cheated on him - after they lost a child. and he had cancer.

rafael has known loss and that shapes his behavior. it’s why he makes the mistake of pushing jane away end of season one. and it’s also why he holds on so tightly to the hotel. because for the longest time it was the one thing that was his. and the idea that he could lose that too drives him crazy. because what else does he have? that doesn’t make it okay, but it makes it understandable. and i think so much hostility for rafael/jafael comes from misunderstanding.

on the other hand, michael is probably the main character we know the least about. outside of being jane’s love interest we know basically nothing about him. we meet his family briefly and in passing. who is he outside of the context of jane? what was his childhood, what are his own issues? we never see them. the most he changes is in montana, off screen. this isn’t to talk shit, it’s to point out that he was never the true love interest.

when michael ��died,” i knew there was no way in hell he was actually dead. it’s the oldest trick in the telenovela book. michael’s death was to bring jane back to rafael. but it’s important to remember that she doesn’t run right back to raf, and he doesn’t expect her to. jane mourns, she grieves, and dates around while rafael undergoes his own journey and growth. michael’s false death taught jane that life is unpredictable and can’t always be planned for. it’s only after years that she and rafael fall back in love. and those years of growth allow for them to become friends first and foremost. friendship is the most important aspect of a relationship and what they were missing season one. they really KNOW each other, which was the argument michael had before. that they didn’t know each other.

rafael is not the same person at the end of the show as he was in the beginning. we see that change happen. we know his family, his past, his issues. and that doesn’t mean he doesn’t backslide sometimes because of the fact that. 1. recovery and healing is not linear. and 2. again, telenovelas thrive on drama. but his core values have changed drastically to match jane’s. at the end of s5 they are at a place they can openly discuss their problems before they become bigger and we know they will have a life filled with joy.

jane and rafael’s romance is all interconnected. season two and five in particular. season five people thought rafael was being unfair, and perhaps he was a bit. but him shutting himself off isn’t just because michael came back. after all, he brought him back. it’s because michael came back, jane assured him nothing changed and then things… started to change. (and i don’t fault jane for having to explore.) he sees what happened in season two start to happen all over again and he’s scared. he doesn’t shut himself off to hurt jane, he does it to save himself and his mental health. he is, quite literally, triggered. because he’s mentally ill. and while they could have done it better, the show does address it. which would never happen on a telenovela.  where a original telenovela lead would say, “leave michael or i’ll just fucking die without you.” rafael says, “leave me so i can survive you choosing him again.” no one should feel like a second choice and it isn’t inherently selfish for him to put his mental health first. the fact is this: people contain multitudes. rafael did help jane through her grief, that doesn’t go away. but when circumstances change, they change.

after jane married michael rafael felt like a second choice. but i think he was always her first choice. if he hadn’t ended things in season one, things would be different. but he did. and she went back to what was easy, and chose to try to act like her old life hadn’t been changed. but it had. even if michael hadn’t died she still would have found her way back to raf. and if rafael hadn’t taken her back, she wouldn’t have gone back to michael. that doesn’t mean marrying michael was the WRONG choice at the time, but it’s not her choice anymore. michael coming back had to happen because it let jane have full authority over her choice and let her choice have meaning. jane had practical before and CHOSE to be brave. she grieved and moved on to find happiness again. she saw the life she wants to have and wants to have it with rafael because he has become her best friend and person that knows her reality best for four years.

i spent a lot of years thinking about what the petals falling mean. obviously, they were foreshadowing a wedding. their wedding song is “una flor” by juanes. but more so, flowers bloom naturally in miami, while snow had to be manufactured. jane and rafael are also centered around water. water symbolizes fertility,  freedom, change and rebirth. 

jafael is about them seeing each other, and loving each other. even the bad parts and even through the hard times. it was about them coming to KNOW and love each other and help each other be the best and fullest versions of themselves. it was about them finding even ground after the long struggle for it and finally finding commitment and compromise between two very different and stubborn people who were destined to be together but chose that destiny as one they want to live and make it a reality. in the end they are soulmates, lovers and friends.

what i’m saying is that you don’t have to like jane and rafael. but i wish there was more respect for the fact that their relationship is tied to a long and well loved culture. and they themselves are an ode to a very well loved relationship in an already existing telenovela. jtv is a retelling/remake. them ending up together and their journey getting there was made for a latino audience first and foremost, who (mostly) would know and understand the story in it’s messy glory. jtv is jane and rafael’s story, told by their son, with symbolism and foreshadowing the ENTIRE show. it is layered, and the opposite of “superficial.”

tdlr: they honor the telenovela couple by being messy, but they challenge them by always lovingly cleaning up that mess afterwards. and i love that. there’s nothing wrong with loving that.

[gumheel]

“hi! sorry that this is so long aaa it’s kind of a complex situation that i have mixed feelings on so i couldn’t word it very concisely… also i hope you have a good day! ty for being so nice about this

also this isn’t meant to be a “you guys are horrible and i can’t believe you wrote this!!!!” b/c i don’t think it was intentional at all, just had some bad connotations… but w/ blanche’s writing i. hm i hope this is worded well but i feel like making him mentally ill kind of didn’t mix well w/ his narrative role as someone who’s supposed to be irredeemable/bad, especially b/c he also comes off as specifically someone dealing with low empathy and difficulty recognizing others as real/tangible people who can be hurt + difficulty knowing what to do When he’s hurt others which (as someone with multiple cluster b personality disorders) is a big issue when you’re cluster b.”

i’m putting the rest of this under the cut not to minimize what was actually done but so the root and answer can be easily addressed! you don’t have to apologize for it being long you spoke very concisely and worded the issue well and i appreciate it being brought up a great deal :] i’m also happy you brought this up because this was something i was struggling with a lot being blanche’s player and i do have a lot i would like to say that will hopefully explain, but that isn’t really necessary reading and the main thing i and the other mods want to say is that we are sorry for pushing that kind of narrative. there are more reasons behind this that i’ll go on to talk about below the cut, but at the end of the day an author’s issues with oneself like... should be addressed via other means and not worked out through a medium like this, it leads to a reading that, as unintentional as it may be, is still present and we’re sorry about that.

“and kind of contributes to a narrative of mentally ill people who’ve messed up/hurt people multiple times due to their illness/don’t automatically become better people when their negative actions are pointed out, especially when the character is shown to be in a neglectful home/recieving no treatment/is 16 (which is when a lot of us can start developing our more severe symptoms/cluster b pds really start showing up), are like. irredeemable/shitty people/don’t deserve sympathy. especially b/c a lot of cluster bs end up doing shitty things/hurting others without meaning to before we’re able to recognize what we’re dealing with, idk it’s just… hurtful for the narrative seen in media to be that we can never change and become better, even if we’re shown to want to (which blanche does at multiple points- i could go more into this/different points where he’s shown to regret what he did, want to change etc but i don’t want to make this even longer than it is hh)

and of course this doesn’t mean everyone had to make nice with him or that he’s perfect or even necessarily a good person, the narratives that people Can change/heal and aren’t inherently irredeemable and bad and the fact that people hurt By those people don’t have to forgive them, associate with them, be nice to them etc don’t contradict each other (especially b/c the mods Do kill blanche physically and kind of just go. whoops, our mistake, oh well)

and i want to end this with: again i don’t think this was intentional, and i can’t speak for the mental health of any of the writers, but as a cluster b reading that, it really felt as though the message of dailyaes was that people who fuck up and hurt others who aren’t instantly sorry and doing everything to fix it don’t deserve sympathy/can’t change, even if they do eventually try to change, and it really hurt to reread it (and honestly reading it a few years ago when i was a lot less in recovery contributed to my own internalized ableism, looking back)

i’m so sorry again how long this is!! i really hope i explained this well enough hh”

thank you again for bringing this up, and there are like.. three/kind of four key points that i’d like to explain here because these are relevant to what wound up happening and it does like... it does suck, waht wound up happening, and i’m sorry that that was the ending, i hope this can like... assuage some of that and assure that that isn’t the ending people who struggle with those issues deserve

the first is that uh.. blanche was conceptualized as a... kind of self insert at a time when i was struggling a lot with what it meant to be a person and more importantly a good person. that reading of his character (mentally ill & neglected) came explicitly from things i was unsure and in denial of, and low empathy/struggling to recognize others as individuals were they not immediately tangible was a large part of that. as a result, thsi character who i cast as a sort of inverted self insert (ie. encompassing what i felt was bad about me at the time) took on a lot of aspects of what you called internalized ableism which is. a really good term for it. i’d come out of an environment where i felt as if i was not stretching myself thin to help others then i was not being a good person, and blanche turned into a sort of representation of that. this does not like, excuse what ended up happening to blanche, but i hope it comes of some comfort to learn this did not come from a place of external hatred rather than genuine issues with myself. they still should not have made their way into being that kind of a representation of a character with those issues, and i’m sorry for that.

the second ties into why one of the mods ended up being cast out of the group altogether, which was being a shitty person all around, one facet of which was like. a Lot of hatred towards blanche. it’s not my place to speculate or speak as to why, but it was definitely a big part of why they got as shitty an ending and treatment as they did -- efforts at suggesting or even joking that blanche was not like. a  Bad Person were met with immediate shutting down and vitriol. that behavior wound up being part of why we cut ties with them, but it still worked its way into the final form that dA took, and for that i’m sorry. as much as it sucked we still became complicit in that, and we should not have been; we apologize for that.

the last thing i’d like to say here, and i hope it will give some hope for the future, is that, if i’m being honest, blanche’s story is an incomplete one. the since deleted third part (due to how heavily it was tied with the mods we disassociated ourselves with) provided some minor resolution, but still an ending that felt unsatisfying and incomplete. another mod and i are also working on a true third installment with the aim of proving blanche is capable and worthy of love and happiness and with a true and satisfying conclusion for their character, because the truth was those things you picked up on of regret and desire to change were like... real. i wanted to and tried to write blanche with that note of someone who is capable of apologizing and changing for the better, and the next part that we’re working on now will hopefully really show that and provide a resolution that doesn’t feel so cruel and hopeless.

thank you again for sending this, it isn’t like. rude or out of the realm of possibility at all, they were a mentally ill character who was treated unkindly by the story we told and we’re sorry for that. i hope this can provide some bit of reassurance and hope for the future, and this was a really great chance to reflect on shortcomings in our work and take stock of the effect it had. i don’t know how much this will mean but like... being past that point of young and neglected and feeling beyond help, that isn’t like.. how it is. your symptoms don’t make you evil or undeserving of happiness, and we truly are sorry for winding up with that reading of the work. i hope the actual final installment of this story, should you choose to follow it (which, of course, you do not have to -- it’s understandable if the work as a whole is spoiled) will reflect that

[miraculouscontent]

I'm gonna take a wild guess and say you didn't like Onichan.

lol I wasn’t aware I had snarky anons. :3

My reaction to both episodes that aired was a hard meh. I mean, they were basically what I expected. I knew about Kagami’s salt over Lila due to the leaks and I have unfortunate experience with family-centric plots, so I knew how Bakerix was going to turn out.

Knowing about the plots themselves don’t inherently make them bad episodes, of course, but Onichan and Bakerix don’t provide a lot for me.

I feel like “Bakerix” needed a few more laughs. It spends a lot of time with this grandfather character who spends 90% of his screentime shouting. I mean, I suppose if that’s funny to someone, the that’s great for them, but for me, it’s just a grouchy old man that I’ve been given no reason to care about. It’s like… he’s family, so what? I don’t see why him being family means he deserves anything. Heck, we don’t even see how Tom is affected by his father not being around; Sabine just brings it up.

By the way, why do both of Tom’s parents dislike him (or, well, Gina favors Sabine at least)? I know I criticize Tom a lot but still, dang.

Maybe it was supposed to show that Marinette’s family isn’t all sunshine and rainbows (not that I thought that in the first place), but I feel like the grandfather thing could’ve been mentioned in passing, like if it was an episode about Sabine’s father and Marinette asked about Tom’s father at some point. I’m not against the idea of a “bad relative,” but if they’re supposedly worth redeeming, I need a reason to like them aside from blood relations.

Anyway, point being, if Marinette’s grandfather is too stubborn to listen to reason and would rather live out the rest of his life alongside the three not-blind mice, that’s his business.

As for “Onichan,” I feel like it needed more structure and focus. I appreciate that it established what Kagami did with the rose and that Gabriel is considering Adrien’s relationship with Lila (I actually guessed that would happen eventually so that was something), but I think it gets bogged down by the fact that it’s spilling a lot onto its audience. Akumatization episodes try to have focus on the characters being akumatized (with very few exceptions, such as “Sandboy”), but Kagami can’t be afforded that attention because the episode is busy with the “Marinette following Lila and Adrien” plot.

And without the Marinette’s side of the plot, I feel like this would feel a lot more fresh, but since the episode spends time having Marinette chase after them and try to sneak in, it means less time on Kagami and less time developing the Adrimi dynamic.

I’m not going to compare it to “Silencer” because I don’t feel like that’s fair. “Onichan” threw a lot more into its episode than “Silencer.” For one, we have Lila added into the mix. For two, unlike “Silencer” where we hardly needed at all, “Onichan” needed Marinette since she’s the main-est main character.

The fact that it didn’t balance these things despite the obvious reasons for an audience to compare it to “Silencer” though? Yeah, that’s definitely something to critique.

For example, Marinette didn’t need to follow Adrien and Lila. She needed to be tied into the plot, yes, but not to waste time with stuff we’ve already seen her do.

That’s where Kagami comes in, because in the episode, Kagami is just kinda mentioned and then just shows up when the plot needs her. We also get a very brief interaction with Tomoe to show that she’s strict (we could’ve already guessed that, but okay, I’ll keep it in mind anyway).

So, here’s my pitch…

Kagami gets a tear in her red fencing uniform. We are relayed this information in the episode itself as Adrien’s phone goes off right at the end of class. We see Kagami’s contact icon, a few messages (presumably explaining the situation) then an image of the tear in question to show the severity.

Adrien considers this (as Lila is trying to peek at Adrien’s phone), then glances over to his side. Lila thinks that he’s going to speak to her at first and opens her mouth to greet him, but then Adrien calls out to Marinette.

Marinette (who was talking to Alya at the time) is surprised to be addressed, but rushes over to his side. Adrien shows her the picture and, in a hushed and begging tone, asks if it’s possible for her to fix Kagami’s outfit.

Marinette is at least happy that Adrien thinks highly of her sewing skills, but a little put off that he’s talking about Kagami in front of her.

As Marinette begins to ask why she has to do it (just because it seems weird for a rich girl like Kagami to need someone who isn’t a professional), Lila cuts in and starts rambling to Adrien as she does in the episode, wanting to go to Adrien’s house with him.

As Lila starts leading Adrien outside, Adrien gives Marinette a glance. Marinette, both knowing that they haven’t finished their conversation and that Lila around Adrien is a solid nope, follows them out to the limo. Lila gets inside (much to Marinette’s surprise), and when Adrien looks back at Marinette, he points sheepishly to his phone to remind her of Kagami’s uniform.

Marinette hesitates, staring at Lila in the limo. She doesn’t trust Lila around Adrien.

…But, Adrien also asked her to do something important.

With a smile, Marinette nods her head. Adrien, obviously very grateful for that, smiles back and gets into the limo alongside Lila. He’s seen typing on his phone (presumably texting Kagami back) just before Gorilla closes the door.

As the limo is driven away, Marinette takes one last look at it before racing back to the bakery.

Time passes, with Marinette talking to Tikki and wondering why she did this because Kagami probably hates her and–

The conversation is cut off as Sabine shouts up that Marinette has a visitor. Marinette calls back to tell Sabine to just send them up to her room.

Enter Kagami, and Marinette notices immediately that Kagami’s demeanor is… different.

Kagami’s steely gaze is shaken; anxious. She avoids Marinette’s gaze, but it’s obvious that something’s wrong.

Trying to be considerate, Marinette just gestures to the uniform in Kagami’s hand.

Kagami glances at Marinette, then walks over and hands it over with care.

Marinette inspects the uniform, observing the tear for a few seconds, then realizes that Kagami hasn’t sat down yet. She offers to let Kagami sit on her chaise, but Kagami insists that she’s fine.

The atmosphere is a little tense and awkward, but Marinette goes to work. Seeing how Kagami’s eyes are practically glued to the uniform, Marinette supposes that it must be important.

Cut to Lila and Adrien arriving at Gabriel’s mansion and everything continuing roughly as it did in the episode.

Return to Marinette and Kagami, the latter of whom is still awkwardly standing beside Marinette. Curious on the matter of the uniform, Marinette asks why Kagami doesn’t get a professional to fix it.

Kagami replies, a little too quickly, that… no! She can’t!

A pause.

Kagami collects herself, reluctantly explaining that her uniform is special and thus, her mother would be furious to know that she was “reckless” enough to let it happen.

Marinette is a little put off by that as a future fashion designer, observing that the uniform, while clearly given care, can’t hold up forever. Honestly, she doesn’t think any type of clothing can. A little wear is natural and things happen.

Kagami looks surprised that Marinette just tried to make her feel better, but makes no comment.

Marinette continues work on the uniform, though does get a bit discouraged and brings up that Adrien can probably relate to Kagami’s problem.

Kagami asks if Marinette has some sort of motive for mentioning that, to which Marinette insists that she has none; Adrien and Kagami just have a lot in common (as much as it pains her to admit it).

Then, we get the important piece of the Adrimi puzzle, as Kagami eases into talking about Adrien and why she is pursuing him, filling in the gap between “Riposte” and “Frozer” with interactions they’d had. This allows Marinette and Kagami to understand each other and know that neither have any ill intent with Adrien; Kagami even shows Marinette the pressed rose and Marinette shows Kagami the Lucky Charm that Adrien made for her.

As Kagami nears the end of her story (still holding the rose in her hands), she mentions the ice rink in “Frozer.” Marinette flashes back to that time, recalling Adrien holding the door for Kagami as Kagami got inside her limo, then flashes to Adrien watching Lila get into his limo, as it happened not too long ago.

Marinette asked what Kagami thinks of Lila, since Lila tries to be around Adrien often so surely Kagami must’ve met Lila at some point?

Kagami responds that, no, she doesn’t know anyone by that name, then questions what that girl has to do with Adrien.

Marinette looks hesitant to tell, as talking to anyone about Lila never seems to go well, but now Kagami seems set on hearing.

Marinette begins, but the scene cuts back to Lila in Adrien’s room, essentially showing roughly what Marinette would tell Kagami about as Lila lies, invades space without asking, and then gets “fake evidence” to prove a claim she’s made (I know Lila is bad about that last one but we all know that she should be doing this).

As Lila sends out the picture of her kissing Adrien’s cheek, the scene cuts back to Marinette and Kagami.

Kagami is sitting down on Marinette’s chaise, looking more like she belongs in Marinette’s room and isn’t so nervous anymore.

However, now she’s annoyed. Her grip tightens on the rose she’s holding. She tells Marinette that, if Marinette is speaking the truth, then Kagami is furious that such a lying, evil girl exists.

Marinette is honestly shocked to have someone on her side–and for it to be Kagami of all people–but she isn’t complaining.

Then, just as Marinette is about to tell Kagami that the uniform has been patched, their phones go off.

They see the picture. Kagami is now fuming.

Before Marinette can explain, Kagami already assures that she’s aware that Lila is deceiving people. Why else would she just send this picture to everyone except to brag?

Kagami isn’t mad because Adrien is hers or Lila is trying to steal Adrien. No, Kagami is mad because Lila is using Adrien.

Hawk Moth sends out an akuma. Akuma flies into Marinette’s room. Marinette tries to stop it by swatting it away and remaining calm, but it manages to land on the pressed rose that Kagami’s holding.

Cue Onichan.

The rest of the episode plays out mostly as normal, though with time tweaks here and there to make up for any lost/added time from the changed scenes.

By the end, Adrien still scolds Lila, but Kagami shows up to greet Adrien at the door. Marinette and Alya are walking towards the doorway at the time, and manage to see Kagami taking Adrien away from Lila, insisting that they have important business to attend to.

She shoots a smug glance at Lila then a fond glance at Marinette. She walks away alongside Adrien while Lila just stands there, stunned.

Alya is entirely confused, asking Marinette what happened and why Marinette isn’t concerned about Kagami being near Adrien when Marinette freaks out when it’s Lila. Like, what happened to Adrien being “in danger?”

With a smile, Marinette simply says that her and Kagami had a heart-to-heart and she knows Kagami has a good head on her shoulders. She starts to add on something else, but stops herself upon realizing that she’s talking to Alya, who wouldn’t understand. Brushing off the comment, Marinette instead starts heading back home. On her way, she gives a glance back at Lila, who’s walking in the other direction, clearly irritated that Kagami just swept up Adrien and took him away like that.

Oh yeah, that was definitely worth it.

[pleasuringmyprincess]

Love Letter

I wrote the following In July, but decided not to share it at that time. it's now October.  Circumstances change.

________________________________________________________________

I know this isn’t going to be easy for me, so please bear with me.

I’m looking for a new dom for my sub.

I’ve know Ren for six months or so, in a long distance relationship through circumstance rather than design. Circumstance being that I live in California, while she lives in England. This is not a full time LDR, work and family (I’m also from England) bring me to the UK regularly. So in the time we’ve known each other, I’ve travelled to England every 10-12 weeks, staying for 4-5 weeks each time, and I have two more trips scheduled for between now and the end of the year.

When I met Ren it was supposed to be just for play, but we found we had so much in common, so many shared interests outside in the real world, so much chemistry that a serious relationship quickly developed. 

Ren isn’t just a delightful sub, she’s a wonderful mother to two lovely children, she’s fantastic company, intelligent, fun loving, really smart, caring, upbeat all the time, but... there’s always a but, and for Ren it’s a big one.

Let’s start by saying if there was ever someone who didn’t deserve the deck she was dealt it’s Ren. Over the last 6 years her self-esteem has been shattered by her prior partners, (I’ll say no more than that they have one way or another treated her badly) and as a consequence she has suffered from severe depression, has Generalized Anxiety Disorder, has self-harmed, and most recently has been diagnosed and is now being successfully treated for severe Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD).

Pause a moment there - this is the same woman, the woman who has been shit on by the world is also the wonderful mother, the delightful, intelligent, fun loving, smart, caring woman. My unicorn.

Ren’s seen a few big changes recently, most significantly she finally was able to divorce her husband and move to a new home. Two big steps forward, but at a cost of greatly increased anxiety. Just after this she heard that she was losing her job - she’s highly skilled but works in a poorly paid profession and because of the need to care for her kids, can only work part time. And she’s just lost her dom. We’ll come back to that in a minute.

In a scene, Ren is delightful, absolutely exquisite. I couldn’t ask for more, it breaks my heart to think of letting her go. Outside of a scene though, she can be very hard work. It’s more a question of providing support and encouragement over discipline. I have lost count of the number of hours I’ve spent helping her through the pain she feels. When she’s particularly low, it can be 3-4 hours a day. That’s not a complaint, I’d do it all again in a heartbeat even now while I’m writing this. It’s just a sign of the level of commitment you need to make. And just so it’s clear, Ren knows she has these problems and spends a lot of time in self-care activities and while it helps, it’s not enough.

Ren’s a working single mum, on a budget, she’s already very disciplined, very ordered, but she still struggles with some things and I have not been as successful as I would have liked in helping her address these issues (although today she has just proved to me that she can do this unbidden when motivated). I’ve not got to the bottom of why this is, and frankly it’s not been a high priority for me. I’ve been focused on helping her improve her self-esteem, manage her anxiety and encourage her to seek treatment for her PMDD (yay me!). This has really been my primary goal. And while it’s too soon to be sure, it really looks like we have succeeded, her anxiety and PMDD are both under control now. She is far far stronger today than she was three months ago.

Unfortunately, helping her get treatment for PMDD may have been my downfall.

After six years in the wilderness Ren is becoming whole again, free from her past, independent, far stronger than she has been for many years. Strong enough to tell me that she wants to move on. Ren needs someone full time, I know this, we’ve discussed it at length, and I had already put plans in motion to return to live in England to be with her. Now Ren has told me that while I am returning to England, it's not soon enough for her - she doesn’t want to wait. She also has concerns about my marriage. I am divorcing, she knows this, but right now I am married, and my divorce is something that Ren does not want to feel responsible for - she’s not responsible, that ship sailed long ago, but she says she will still feel responsible, and that’s enough. And my age, I’m 14 years older than her, too old in her eyes for a long term commitment.

Now obviously I’m not too happy about this, we are/were amazingly good together and had I not worked so hard to help her through her problems I might not be in this position today. I do feel significantly responsible for Ren’s recent improvement. For giving her the support she needed; for helping her apply for jobs; for showing her that there was a man who would fight for her, accept her for who she is, respect her for it; for being the consistent and reliable dom she needed; and most significantly for getting her back to the doc and having her PMDD addressed. 

This is where I get a little twisted - one of the side effects of the medication Ren is taking for PMDD is possible impaired judgement. And there's part of me that thinks, dumping your dom like this wasn't the wisest thing to do right now. So the treatment for PMDD that I helped her get, might possibly be responsible for Ren taking what I think is an ill-judged decision in deciding that she’d rather seek out her perfect Dom than accept this one with all his flaws. I’m not blind to the fact that there’s part of me that thinks ‘Hey, I did the hard work in putting her back together and it would be nice to enjoy some of the benefits’, OK, I fully realize that’s selfish of me, but it’s understandable, I’m a dom, not a saint. To be clear though, it's not the decision I have a problem with, it's the hurried way she approached it.  But we serve at our sub’s pleasure, and so here we are.

As it is, and I’ve never shared this with anyone, not even Ren, until now. I made a promise to myself that I’d help her come what may. And if that means 'setting her free' and helping her find a dom who’s worthy of her, that’s what I’ll do.

And so I’m looking for a new dom for my sub.

If you think that you might possibly be able to be the dom Ren needs, I’d like to hear from you. Before you all shout, as you might have gathered, I hold Ren in very high regard, and I will not let her settle for anyone who isn’t good enough. And just to be clear, I’m not going away. Ren and I have every intention of remaining friends.

So can this be you?

Let’s see shall we.

You’ve got to accept that Ren is a rich multi-faceted human being. If you are looking for a fuck toy, stop here.

She’s looking for more than just a play partner. Listen to Lou Reid singing Perfect Day, if you can’t offer that, you can stop reading here. Married guys (like me), guys in poly, or any form of relationship with someone else, you can stop here, she wants exclusivity. Btw, if you’re separated, divorcing, or whatever, you’re still married, so you stop here too. You don’t drink sangria in the park with Ren, and then later when it gets dark go home to your wife (read the lyrics, it will make sense).

Age 40-50, no exceptions. You will be fit and healthy, height/weight proportional.

No diseases, you will provide current STI test results, and you will always use a condom.

It will help if you a pro-Remain, if not, you need to be able to offer a coherent argument against. Intelligence matters. 

As a submissive, Ren has specific needs, and specific limits. She needs pain, she needs to be spanked, mild to moderate use of a riding crop and paddle is OK, but not severe caning. She needs bondage both for the restraint and the art. Obviously there are other things as well, but she can share that if you meet, and I’m sure there are things that we’ve not tried that she will enjoy. She has limits and you will respect them. You will not humiliate her in any way, not even name calling. Not in play, not as punishment. There are other things you will not do, obviously, and again she can share them if you meet.

You must be an experienced Dom, having a fetlife account or a tumblr blog doesn’t count. You will meet me first. You will provide government photo ID, and references, and I will follow up on references in person.

Ren needs a Dom who is close by, someone who can see her 2-3 times a week without fail and who will remain in close contact when apart. Long distance relationships don’t work for her (ask me how I know), she needs to know you are close by, which means you must be within daily driving distance. No, she will not relocate. She has joint custody of her kids with her ex and that’s not going to change.

You’ve got to accept that she is not at your beck and call. She’s a mother, her kids come first and always will. You don’t even rate second place; like I said, she has a very demanding self-care program that takes a lot of her time, that comes next. She also has a cat. You might aspire to a position above the cat in her hierarchy, but I wouldn’t count on it.

________________________________________________________________

Don't take this as anything other than a mile marker down a road already travelled.

Applications are not currently being accepted. 

[nemossubmarine]

Warhammer 40k: Wrath & Glory RP #4

We pick up following Coco and Ranan who make their way through the city towards the Cathedral. Ranan picks up a sniper’s nest for them to assist in the curbing of the ork invasion. He is surprised to see the state of the Cathedral, and Coco merely says that shit went down. They take sides and get to sniping.

Ranan says he’s got few things to tell to Coco, and after that she can ask as many questions as she needs to. First thing, is that Ranan didn’t want this to happen, he loved James like his own, and he and Helios were friends, he bore no ill-will towards anyone in the group. Second thing is that there are questions he can’t and won’t answer, as he is trying to look out for his elderly mothers and other family members still on Coco’s family’s ship. Third is that someone on board provided Ranan with a vox caster he was ordered to exchange with the comms’ officer’s vox caster, and that someone most likely is on Coco’s team.

Coco is in disbelief about this, she has been living with the thought that she had made a mistake which led to her brother’s and his team’s death, but Ranan dryly remarks mistakes usually don’t end up with people melted with melta weapons. But he is sorry that he put Coco in this situation. Coco asks who was responsible, but Ranan says he wasn’t there when the party was attacked, he was delivering the vox caster to a location that he was told.

But basically Ranan is being blackmailed by someone named the Devil, and either the person on Coco’s team is blackmailed as well, or they wanted James to die. Coco can’t quite believe that someone would want Jim dead, as he was by all accounts a total sweetheart. But Ranan points out there was hardly anyone else important in the group worth going to trouble to kill, and that includes the Marines Errant who were merely soldiers.

Ranan says that Coco deserves to attempt to find out what happened, if she wishes to, and Coco affirms that she does. Ranan says he and Six are after Ranan’s blackmailer, the Devil, so Coco can join the team. Coco asks if Six is Hackney, and Ranan says she is, and then asks Coco to not hold her trapping them down in the sewers against her, as she was merely protecting Ranan, not knowing who Coco is. Coco promises she won’t, if Hackney doesn’t do it again.

Meanwhile, Izarak has been helping people around the city, keeping himself quite busy. [Insert #1] Izarak wakes with a jolt and realizes he’s been walking in his sleep. A Dark Angel has caught him, near the destroyed cathedral. Izarak thanks the Dark Angel for waking him and makes his way back to the bunker.

Meanwhile, Julo lets Larry and Alice know that they’ll mission is to assist another ship with a pickup. The three of them plus two gangers named Gunhildr and Cusmaan will be taking a smaller ship. Larry is doing the piloting, and he asks Julo to sit in the co-pilot’s seat, while the others are at the back (Gunhildr and Cusmaan man the guns, and Alice will be used to carry explosives if needed). Larry does some cool stunt tricks while flying, and Julo comments that he wasn’t lying when he said he was good. Larry tells him that he was second top of his class, and Julo says his teachers must be proud where he ended up in, and Larry clarifies it was not an actual school.

There’s few orc encounters, but they’re no trouble. In fact the whole thing is no trouble, until the ship is hailed. Julo instructs Larry to pick up, and he does, after which he hears a mechanical voice requesting assistance. There’s apparently a Mechanicus squad in engagement with some orcs on the ground and they could really use some assistance, and the gangers’ ship is the closest. Larry brings this up to Julo, who orders Alice to start getting bombs. It quickly becomes apparent he is planning to bomb both the orcs and the Mechanicus.

Both Alice and Larry attempt to persuade Julo out of it, but Julo seems rather overly paranoid, saying that this must be a trap. When the two try to bring up the fact that this could make the Mechanicus be indebted to the gang, Julo says they’re in so deep shit if they get caught that they’ll be instantly made servitors. Finally they manage to calm him down enough, and merely offer the assistance to the Mechanicus, no bombing required. (much tot he disappointed of Cusmaan and Gunhildr)

They get to the pickup place, where the pickup turns out to be a teenage girl, holding a backpack against her chest. She seems a bit apprehensive, but starts moving towards the ship. A beat-up man rushes after her, asking Lady Ada to wait. Julo orders Alice to stop the man, so Alice shoots at him, though she misses. Julo says that with her fists. The man reaches to grab hold onto the girl, and says she “can’t do this”. Alice grabs the man, tells him never to touch a lady and punches him so hard he nearly loses consciousness. Ada gets into the other ship and so the gangers’ mission is complete.

A day or so passes, and the warring moves away from Asphodel because of the arrival of the Imperial Knights from a nearby planet as well as two separate Mechanicus armies.

Hackney finally joins Coco and Ranan in their little snipers’ nest. She is quite surprised to see Coco, but Ranan says she is alright, and should be let in to the situation, to a certain extent at least. Hackney asks Coco what she knows of the Devil, and Coco must admit not much. Hackney informs that the Devil was an old friend of hers and Ranan, a woman now working in the shadows of the Dimmamar eccelsiarchy. Now that the cathedral is destroyed they don’t know where she might have gone. Hackney asks if Coco could contact the priest she was with at the sewers, and Coco thinks she could do it. Hackney tells to ask him of Origenes Antonius, a priest with rumored contacts to the Devil. It’s a place to start, at least. Coco sets out to find Izarak.

Izarak in his travels through the city runs across some people wearing the same crests as he spied in the house he kinda broke into. He stops to ask if they need help, and the speaker asks if he could show them to a Mechanicus camp so they could step up communication. Izarak does so, and while he does, he asks where the people are coming from. One of them replies that they’re from the nearby Knight world of Dutonis, part of the Navaros family’s retinue. Izarak mentions seeing signs of violence in one house with the same crests, which worries the man he is talking to. The man excuses himself, saying he needs to contact Lady Rebecca or Lord Roberto.

He soon comes back with a screen where Izarak can see a woman’s face, which turns out to be an old friend of his, Lady Rebecca. Rebecca is pleased to see Izarak again, after so many years, though the circumstances could be better, as it seems that Izarak has ran into a scene of a crime, Rebecca’s god-daughter and the out-of-wedlock child of her husband Ada seems to have been kidnapped. A ransom letter has been sent, but there’s still time before drop-off of ransom. Rebecca asks if Izarak would be willing to help, as she is quite tied up with fighting. Izarak of course agrees. Rebecca tells him that some local gang seems to have been involved, so perhaps he could start there. If he needs any backup, he shouldn’t hesitate to ask, apparently Rebecca has quite a bit of clout (the Lady Rebecca part may have something to do with it). Before they part, Rebecca comments that Izarak has gotten older, though it’s not a bad thing, and Izarak replies that Rebecca seems to not have changed a bit.

The gangers’ time is mostly spent on looting and helping here and there. Alice and Larry decide to work on their own as Julo seems to have been getting antsier about them.

Alice takes to looting weapons’ stores. She is on her way back to the base, when an Arbiter calls out to her. She freezes, lets him approach her and then stabs him in the chest. The Arbiter is, to put it mildly, upset about this. But before this can escalate into violence, Alice defuses the situation by saying that she understood him having some bad intentions. The Arbiter says he was merely hoping to ask some questions, namely that Alice has been seen with a ratling, and would she know where he is. Alice says she has no idea. The Arbiter thanks Alice and asks if he may have her address so he can maybe apologize more profusely for scaring her? She gives him an address to a local bordel. 

Larry attempts to find a place where Astartes might have been fighting, in hopes of better loot, but the place he stops to search seems to be yielding a little. And then he is approached by a Mechanicus, a Skitarius in Martian colors and with sergeant’s pips, who says he isn’t judging Larry for looting, he just needs to ask a question or two. Larry says he is not looting (and it’s technically true as he hasn’t found anything of interest). The Mechanicus shrugs, and says that he is looking for a man who has stolen something from the Mechanicus. He describes Julo pretty much to a T. Larry says he is sorry, he hasn’t seen anyone like that around. The Mechanicus thanks Larry anyway and turns to discuss something with his companions in the Cant Mechanicus. As he puts his hands on his hips, Larry notices a familiar looking rune hanging from the man’s belt.

He asks about it, and the Mechanicus comments he got it from a Fenrisian friend. Apparently the man usually lives on Fenris, as an assistant to the Iron Priests, but he’s here until this mission is over. It turns out that Larry also has a similar rune, and that they’ve gotten them from the same person, someone named Gorm (whoever that is), though the Mechanicus admits that he hasn’t seen the man in years.

Larry asks if he could somehow contact the man, not to talk about Wolves, but in case he finds this thief. The Mechanicus says Larry can use the ship to vox him, and mentions there being a reward if the item is retrieved. Before the Mechanicus leaves, Larry asks him his name and the man says that since his Mechanicus name is a bunch of numbers, non-Mechanicus usually just call him Vivek.

Once Larry has returned back to the base, he sneakily gathers Alice and Iris (Iris being Larry’s Mechanicus friend) together into a toilet to have a meeting. Alice and Iris know each other, as both have been in the gang for longer than Larry, but have never talked much. Larry lets Iris know that Alice is alright, and then mentions that they really need to get out of the gang, as Julo has clearly gone off the deep end, what with wanting to bomb Mechanicus and being suspicious of Alice and Larry. He mentions running into a Mechanicus, who was offering a reward for returning the stolen item in Julo’s possession. He also says that it should be someone that would be familiar with Iris, namely someone named Vivek. Iris does recognize the name, Vivek’s an old friend, but is a bit surprised to hear him in Martian Mechanicus garb, as he left with a Wolf to live on Fenris. The Wolf’s name was something like Wulfr(?), Yffi(?), Uffe(??). But it seems like a good way out, provided Vivek can be trusted. 

Iris is a bit worried about leaving loose ties, and Alice mentions that if she wants to leave the gang, she’ll have to kill Julo, which she is apparently quite willing to do by herself. There might be some upset gang members for Julo’s death, but Alice knows few possible candidates to take over Clan after Julo is gone. So now this thievery-murder combo just needs to planned and put into action.

But more on that next time!

[haztory]

don’t think twice, it’s alright.

based off of the request: “Can I request imagine with Matt Murdock where y/n has some troubles and she goes to him and they just sit on the roof at night. Then she says she wished they were madly in love with each other because it would be easier. Just a cute moment between two best friends? Thank you”

A/N: entitled after a bob dylan song that i listened to when writing this. i’m very sorry for my disappearance. i will be trying to make a comeback. just got out of a manipulative relationship and it has taken a heavy toll on me. i hope you all enjoy.

warnings: mentions of a crappy boyfriend, slightly insensitive comments

(3,888 words)

"So do the sounds ever overwhelm you? Like, to the point where you wanna shoot yourself in the head?"

The door hasn't even closed behind him completely when he is confronted with the question. The rusty spring at the top prevents it from shutting quickly, instead slowly bouncing its way back to a closed position behind him with a resonating croak.

Your voice stuns him, stopping him in his tracks as he reels in from the suddenness of it.

It should feel rather awkward, what with him standing atop of the gravely rooftop of your apartment building holding two small plastic cups and your third cheap bottle of wine in his hands, still dressed to the nines in his formal attire from his earlier session in court.

But, with the wind bringing in a slow breeze that cools the exposed parts of his heated skin and gently displaces his hair, while the nightlife of the city begins to play it's lively anthem in the background, it strangely doesn't. It floods him with nostalgia, images of two giggling children sneaking out of their apartments way past their bedtimes popping into his head.

"That's a bit insensitive, don't you think?" Matt asks, with a wry smile on his face, whether at the question or the lingering memories, he doesn't necessarily know. His feet stay glued in his place near the roof door, his blind eyes seeing a vast array of memories from his youth. It gently pulls at his heartstrings and his cheeks begin to tingle from his incessant grin.

"You didn't answer the question." You respond back in a teasing tone from your position on the blanket. You lie on your back, contentedly staring up at the dimly lit stars in the sky.

He can hear your even breaths and the gentle thrum of your heartbeat from where he was standing. It beats steadily, like a metronome, keeping him balanced in his place while his surroundings begin to swirl and his focus seems to pull in and out at a more rapid pace.

"I love this city," He says nonchalantly, his words slurring slightly as he begins his slow saunter towards your supine body and the worn-out blanket you were laying on. There was no need to rush over to you, not when the moment was perfect, as it was now. If he rushed or moved too fast, he would ruin the ambience of this rare moment between you two; He would ruin the peace of it all.

And he might throw up.

You scoff, tilting your head upwards to turn your gaze from the decorated nighttime vista towards his face. You took note of his face as he stood above you: He had a scratch on the underside of his chin, something remarkably tame considering the hell he is usually put through. His smile remained unwavered, shining brighter than the full moon in the sky. He wasn’t wearing his usual red glasses allowing his eyes to meet yours perfectly.

Iris to iris, pupil to pupil.

You'd think that after all these years, you'd manage to get used to it.

"That still doesn't answer the question."

"What kind of an answer are you looking for?" He shuffles around in his still posture, swaying forward and backward on the balls of his feet, his hands still holding the drink and cups rather tightly. "Obviously not the one I'm giving you."

You sit up, letting out a small grunt as you change positions, an instant relief being placed upon your back as you no longer lay on the rough concrete. You're sure that you could place a hundred blankets on the floor and still feel the gravel on your back.

You raise your hand up, opening and closing your fists rather quickly, motioning to him for a cup. He indulges. "Exceptional deduction skills, counselor."

"That's what I'm paid to do."

He sits beside you on the rather thin comforter you've placed, listening intently to the sound of the cork popping out of the cheap bottle and the  wealthy amount of the liquid you were pouring into your cup. He holds his out to you, silently asking for you to fill it.

"What are we toasting to?" You ask with a drunken giggle, holding Matt's arm with your own to steady to his slightly trembling hands. He scoffs in response, shaking his head with furrowed brows and a smile as he stares off to the side in question.

"Well, our first toast was for thanking Fridays--"

"Praise our heavenly father for making such a momentous day--"

"--Our second toast was to ‘Cheez-Its’, so I think we should make this one pretty serious."

You can’t tell whether there was sarcasm in his voice or not. His face gives no indication to the question either.

"Is that supposed to be a joke?"

He rolls his head over to you, his brown eyes once again finding yours immediately, with pinpoint precision. Despite his drunken fidgeting, his eyes maintain a still gaze, never darting around or looking off to the side, indicating his seriousness.

Matt manages to always-- with little to no hesitancy, mind you-- find your eyes instantly in any situation. Whether surrounded by a crowd of people, or separated at the opposite sides of a room, a quick glance upward and you could find his gaze staring right back at you. It still startles you at times, to be talking rather candidly with him about something or other to then find him staring straight into your soul as though he actually could. It catches you off guard sometimes, seeing his beautiful eyes unabashedly watching you without actually be able to see.

You wouldn't trade it for the world.

You snort, "Alright. You do the honors."

You release his arm, having filled his cup to the brim. He quickly raises it in the air, spilling some of the contents while he looks over the ledge of the roof as if he were addressing a large crowd seated before him. The corners of his eyes crinkle and the lines around his mouth deepen as the grin widens. He clears his throat.

"To (Y/N)'s promotion!" He calls out to the imaginary group, pride seeping through each syllable he speaks. His face resembles one of pure joy and if you knew any better, you would think he was the one who received the promotion instead of you. Matt wore it with more pride in two minutes than you did in two hours.

If you could have frozen time and lived in a moment for the rest of your life, this would be it.

You'd live in the constant memory of this Matt, with a smile brighter than the moon above you and cheeks tinged pink from the previous bottle of wine he drank. His sleeves messily rolled up his arms with no care in the world as the various snack you have brought surround him at this midnight picnic in the city you both love.

There were few moments in life when you saw Matthew Murdock truly happy. Those times came far and few nowadays, what with the world seemingly being placed upon his shoulders every time he donned that damned suit.

Ironically, you can't make the distinction between which suit: his fancy three piece suits, or the red leather one. They were both devilish in your eyes.

The two worlds collided in more ways than one, always leaving Matt as the injured party in their vicious war between each other. You could see him grow more tired with each day that passed, if you at all even got to see him that day. His body was permanently decorated in scars and bruises and his job never felt done.

They took your Matthew, chewed him and spit him out, crushing every pure and precious part of him, leaving the hollow silhouette of the man you once knew.

But, in all the dark fog comes a sliver of a joyous moment, like this one. Where a smile washes away all the hurt and the virtuous man you loved rises from the shadows.

You wanted more than anything to freeze this moment, and keep Matt in this suspended nirvana for as long as possible. You would be content to sit and watch him for hours. Anything, anything, to give him this slight moment of happiness.

The happiness he deserves.

You hadn't realized you'd been staring until his head turns to you again.

A laugh slowly dies on his lips, his smile disappearing as he notices you studying him. A comfortable silence befalls the two of you.

A pause seems to come over you two, the surrounding environment slowing down to a complete halt and only your heartbeat resounding in his ears, beating like a drum. It was loud, but not overpowering, drowning out the sirens and horns of the city below you two. Just a present reminder of your company and your liveliness. It calms his breathing and the frazzled thoughts his tipsy mind brought forward.

It reminds him of the months after his accident, when you purposely skipped school under the guise of a feigned illness just to spend time with the young and aggravated Matthew. Even as his anger and frustration consumed him in those trying months, your heartbeat managed to calm him down more than any words of encouragement from his father could.

It was the first time he learned to be appreciative of the heightened senses he adapted; It got him closer to you.

In this still and tranquil world, Matt felt all the weights that seemed to take permanent residence on his chest disappear. There was no Daredevil here, no lawyer, no rules based on his faith that he needed to abide by.

Just you and him. He and you. How it's always been. How it always should be.

But there's something off.

He doesn't really know where he feels it or why, but he does. He knows you're looking at him, but your attention isn't on him. There's something beneath the surface.

Is that attributed to his heightened senses or just knowing you that well? He doesn't know.

"Penny for your thoughts?" He gently asks, his hand reaching upwards to tug lightly on your earlobe.

You slowly blink, your attention being drawn away from the thoughts you didn't realize were consuming you, "Hmm?"

"What's on your mind?" He asks again, letting his hand drop from your face and move towards the box of ‘Cheez-Its’ laid between you two. He grabs a couple and pops them into his mouth.

You open your mouth and close it, only to open and close it again. You let out a breathless laugh, shrugging your shoulders and shaking your head. You turn your head towards the view of the city, eyes darting around the numerous figures until fixating onto the neighboring building.

"I don't think I'm going to take it."

Matt suddenly inhales, a piece of the cheesy cracker sucking into the back of his throat, forcing a string of coughs out of his mouth. He hunches over, trying to breathe through his numerous coughs while you hit your hand repeatedly on his back.

"Jesus Christ, Matt!" you laugh out, finding his cup of wine and handing it to him. He graciously drinks it between coughs.

"What-- what do you mean you're not going to take it?" His eyes are wide when they meet yours, shock written over his face at the prospect of your news and from seeing his life flash before his eyes.

You keep a steadying hand on his back until his breathing returns to normal, keeping your voice even as he recuperates. "I'd have to move halfway across the country for this job. I'm not going to leave everything I have here for that."

You explain this to him as though it was normal, like he was the crazy one. His face contorts into one of deep confusion, the skin wrinkling between his eyebrows and his mouth agape as stares at you. He loosens the tie around his neck.

"But, you worked so hard for this." There's a twinge of desperation? disappointment? in his statement.

You take your hand back, fiddling with the stray threads on the blanket below you that have become ten times more interesting than the piercing eyes of the man beside you. You can feel his judgement creep up your shoulders and it becomes very clear that you've made the wrong choice to tell him this. While he was drunk. After he just so graciously celebrated with you.

Queen of good timing is what you are.

"Yeah, well, y'know," you grow quiet with each words, a sheepish tone taking over, "I realized I've got everything I want here."

You still don't meet his eyes. He is still looking at you like you've crushed his dreams.

He is adamantly unhappy, but he can at least understand the sentiment behind your reasoning. He feels it in some ways too, whenever he is confronted by the nightly tragedies both of his jobs seem to throw at his feet. Hell's Kitchen isn't the greatest of places, but it holds everything near and dear to his heart.

He's still displeased with this decision and will continue to argue against you, but he understands it.

"Besides," you resume, and you can hear the little voice in your head to stop where you are. To not go any further and ruin the advantage you have (sentiment for the city has and always will be Matt's weakness). But you're too drunk to really listen to the voice and it ends up tumbling out of your mouth, "David's still getting his feet on the ground and I can't do that to him."

Again, the absolute queen of good timing.

You can literally sense the waves of anger rolling off of Matt's body and you're stuck in the middle of the tide, unable to swim off to the side to get out.

He groans loudly at the mention of your boyfriend's name, the confusion being replaced by disbelief and rage. It settles over him like a mist, putting a dampen on his mood instantly. His teeth grind against each other and his fists instinctively curl up.

You wince at his sudden rising from the blanket, watching him resort to his stereotypical "lawyer stance" with his hands placed upon his hips and an intense frown etched on his face. He slightly sways from the quick movement, swallowing the bile that rose up his throat with a contortion of disgust on his face before returning to the stern father persona he tended to don whenever your disappointment of a boyfriend was mentioned.

You really should've waited.

"David's been 'getting on his feet' for the past four years." Matt spits out, tapping a hand lightly onto his chest to help ease the acid that made a quick appearance back down his esophagus.

"You good?" you ask him as he releases a rather nasty burp, silently wondering if you were going to have to make a quick run down to your apartment to grab some cleaning supplies.

"Yeah, 'm fine." He grunts out.

"You sure? I can go get a bucket if you want."

He sternly points a finger at you, "Stop changing the subject."

"I'm just worried you're going to--"

"(Y/N)!"

You sigh, letting your head drop down. You wish you didn't mention the name of your boyfriend, knowing now that you were going to have to justify the reasoning behind his incompetence in life, and even you knew there was no way you could positively spin his inadequacy.

You place both of your hands over face, rubbing your eyelids deeply, wanting to wake up from this self-inflicted nightmare.

"He's just having trouble, is all." It sounds pathetic in your head and even more so as you say it. You cringe with each word.

“Cause he's an idiot."

"Matt--"

"Come on, (Y/N). You're going to give up the promotion of a lifetime because some loser can't handle you actually being better than him?"

"No! Well, yes and no."

"What?!" Matt's voice raises a couple of octaves, disbelief coating the question like paint.

"He would have trouble adjusting to L.A. and I just want to make things easy for us. It's just one of the things you have to do for love."

Matt, who had been pacing during this conversation, suddenly stops in his tracks. His head snaps towards you and you can imagine the sound of a whip accompanying the curtness of the movement.

"Love?!" He asks loudly, "You call that, love?!"

It was your turn to groan, flopping back down onto your blanket as you have to repeat the same argument you've had with Matthew since you first started dating David five years ago.

"Love is not holding your partner back from success based off of your own insecurities, which he has done to you multiple times might I add. Love is not dragging your feet in the dirt because you didn't get what you want, (Y/N)." Each word hits you like a knife; Whether it was the alcohol or the reality of the situation suddenly hitting you doesn't really matter when you realize that the stinging you felt in your eyes was actually due to the tears suddenly springing forth to the surface.

David wasn't a bad guy; He could be funny when he wanted to and particularly kind on a good day, but there was nothing more than that. You dated him out of attraction and combined with the desire to escape from the constant feeling of loneliness, you began to put up with the negatives in favor of a relationship.

"He doesn't love you because of the kind of person you are," Matt continues his tirade, his speech fast and unrelenting as he releases his pent up frustrations, "And you don't love him because of who he is, because we all know what a massive dick he is. You love him because you're in a relationship with him!”

You forcefully lie back down onto your blanket, keeping your focus trained on the stars above than Matt’s anger. You can hear him kick some gravel off the ground.

“You need to be with someone who cares about you, and wants you to live the life you deserve and get all the promotions in the world. You need to be with someone who is willing to go all the way to L.A. for you, or even maintain a long-distance relationship for fuck's sake! I'm tired of seeing that bastard use you because he can!"

Matt opens his mouth to add onto his spiel until he hears the low sniffles emitting from you. His throat dries up and he realizes just how much of bastard he's being. He always tried to approach the situation with a gentle attitude, aware that there was a definitive power struggle in the relationship that just couldn't be solved with tough love. He's done enough cases to understand even the basics of that idea, alongside many classes of psychology.

Apparently drunk Matt didn't care about that.

He runs a hand through his hair and down the front of his face, moving to rub the back of his neck. Shame encompasses his body, replacing the adrenaline shot the anger provided. He kicks his feet around the gravel, uncomfortably listening to your sniffles grow before forcing himself to sit beside you on the worn out blanket.

"I'm sorry," he breathes out.

"No, no," you wipe away the tears and wipe your nose with the back of your hand, "You're right. I just-- I don't think I can do it."

There's too much wallowing in your tone for him to feel any happiness about the revelation you've just made. Instead, it makes him feel like the biggest piece of shit.

Rightfully so.

"Leaving David would mean that I actually have to do something with my life. It would mean that I have to take the job in L.A. and have to leave home and my family and I'd have to leave you. And I can't do it,” you whisper.

He can hear your heart break when you say it, because his does too. The thought of you leaving is unfathomable to him and it's much too depressing for him to even think about it. He can't remember a time in his life when he wasn't with you. He finds that he doesn't want to.

But he has too.

"Yes you can," Matt tells you sadly, his eyes once again finding your red rimmed ones like a boat finding the lighthouse in the dark. "If anyone can do it, it would be you."

He grabs your hand, holding it tightly, "You're going to accept that promotion, you're going to go to L.A. and make a ton of money-- and I mean a ton-- and you're going to come back here and make sure I'm still alive every couple of months."

A watery laugh bubbles out of your throat and Matt responds with a small laugh of his own. A bittersweet smile falls over your face as you look at his soft, unstressed one. "You're gonna be happy, (Y/N). And you're going to forget all the pain David put you through."

You remove your hand from his, placing it on his cheeks and rubbing your fingers over the light stubble he's been growing. He leans into your touch, mirroring your sad smile.

"Y’know, we could've avoided all this if we were in love. Probably would've been so much easier," you murmur to him like you were the only two people on the world, and it doesn't feel too off.

"Who knows? We've still got a couple years left."

"It's been twelve years, Matt. If it hasn't happened yet I don't think it's gonna happen anytime soon."

"Never say never." He takes the hand placed on his cheek and places a soft kiss against your knuckles. He holds it with such delicacy and warmth as though if he tried hard enough, his love could fix all your problems and heal all your pains. He doesn't realize that his presence already does that.

He turns his body, lying down beside you on the comforter, already feeling the gravel poke and prod on his back but he doesn't mind it. He won't until you do. Your fingers intertwine together and you've suddenly been transported back into your days as a youth, gazing up at the sky when you were supposed to be in bed. But like before, you’ll deal with the consequences of your actions tomorrow, much too immersed in the silence and tranquility that comes with being at Matt Murdock’s side.

"You're still going to dump David though, right?"

You laugh loudly, the comment eliciting a hearty giggle that shook the entirety of your body as though you had never laughed before. It clears all the toxic waste that held you down, filling you instead with bubbly liquid that warms your chest.

You lie there in a still silence, breathing in the chill breeze and relaxing in the geniality of each other. On the rough concrete protected only by an old blanket where no pain or hurt can touch either of you.

You have each other, and that was all you really ever needed.

tag list: @mooniessuniverse

[heartoftherium]

PSA

For a while now, I have wrestled how best to address something concerning a major change in my life. To most of you, this will come as a shock. It is not my intent. If it doesn’t, well you might know me better than I know myself. However, there really is no other way to express what I’m dealt with, why I sought help, and what has taken place in doing so. It has taken many rewrites, and, though, knowing what I’m about to share, will be controversial for some and difficult for others to digest, and for others a simple acceptance and change of behavior toward me.

I felt it was needed in order to close out this chapter in my life, though in reality, in a way it is the beginning. To ease concern and worry, I am not ill, nor dying. This is purely a simple down to the point best I can to express something that has been weighing on me for some time now. They say, never judge a book by its cover. Well, in my case, you were just seeing the cover and not what’s inside. No one knew the internal struggle, or the confusion and pain I have lived with most of my life, including my own family. Deep inside, I was hurting and lost but could not tell anyone out of fear of many things.

In short, my brain does not; has not; nor ever will; identify with my anatomical sex assigned at birth. To put it simply, I’m not a female and have never truly felt as such. I am transgender, and I am a boy. They say the hardest step in fixing a problem is admitting you have one. I had one, but I couldn’t face it. Time and time again, throughout my life I tried to ignore from it, but it wasn’t going away. Since early childhood, I tried to mirror my behavior like that of my female role models, thinking my actions would ultimately program my thinking. It was a false assumption, but for a child, I knew no better.

This carried over into adult life as well, thinking if I just overcome the next hurdle; sooner or later, my brain would be normal. I hoped it away, suppressed it, and tried my best to accept it. My brain could not relate to females, yet I kept going through the motions, playing a role so that I could be accepted. Over time, it has taken a toll on me to the point I was beginning to check out on life.

I spent a considerable amount of time studying “Gender Dysphoria,” seeking answers to what I was living with. Psychologists, therapist and other experts in these fields gave me insight as to why I was suffering. I now know who I am, and am actively changing to express how I have felt inwardly to match that of what I show on my cover or this book that makes up who I am.

It means that I will be undergoing a long and tedious process to shift every bit of Identification related to me to reflect my male identity, which will, of course, include a change of name. The name I have chosen to be known as from now on is Gavin Cole Carmen and would like to be called that from now on. For those of you wondering, yes, you may still call me Jarvis. In fact, that name has become a title of sorts and I have decided it will become my stage name of sorts to use for Cosplay and other things.

This is the part where I want to make clear that this is not a choice. I am not deciding to become a boy. This is who I am allowing myself to be who I am, and it is the only route that I can take, because I am done feeling this way about who I am, and I want to be comfortable in my own skin.

To you, my friends and family who are reading the news for the first time, I am sorry if this has hurt you in any way. It was never my intent although my heart and desire is to remain your friend; I recognize to some this may not be the case. I am okay with that. I can’t ask for acceptance from everyone. I don’t even really expect it. I just want everyone to know. However, I want you to know, you will always have a special place in my heart and I will treasure the memories.

For the near future, know that my transition is underway right now. Things will be changing about myself, my mannerisms, my voice, my looks – but keep in mind that beneath it all I’m still the same person. Same likes, same dislikes, same jokes, same taste. I know it’s going to be strange, I know it’s going to be different, and I know most of you have never had to go through this before. It’s okay I haven’t either.

I know there will be awkward situations. I know I’ll be accidentally called Chauntel and referred to as a female, and I know it will feel weird having to correct yourself when it comes to these things. I expect it, and I’m fine with it. I also expect questions, lots and lots of questions, and I want them to be asked without fear. I’m an understanding person, and I understand how weird this might be for some of you, and I want to minimize that as much as I can—for everyone’s sake.

I’m writing this to all of my family, friends, and acquaintances new and old, but it is the people that I’ve known the longest that this will probably affect the most. People who I’ve known since freshman year of high school, or even before, who have seen me grow as a person and see me change many times in many different ways, but never this much.

I do feel like I should say sorry to you for keeping this a secret for so long, for building up a wall between us that I led you to believe didn’t exist. I’m not sorry for who I am, yet I am sorry for who I made you believe I was because that was only a fraction of who I truly am inside and always have been.

Again, all I can do is ask for your understanding—but if I don’t receive it, I’ll probably live. Since coming to terms with all of this, I’m already a happier person. I am taking my short life into my own hands, and I’m going to live it the way that I deserve to live it. I refuse to go on acting as I’ve felt the world would like me to.

This is my story, and I’m going to take the pen write myself the way I want to be, because, in the end, that is truly what makes me, me.

[wxldchxld]

Are you a Gold Star lesbian? (Just in case you don't know what it means, a Gold Star lesbian is a lesbian that has never had sex with a guy and would never have any intentions of ever doing so)  

Who sends me this shit? Like I want to fuckin know because I’ve gotten this message multiple times. I addressed it once, and I have ignored it the others, and it fucking pisses me off because the message is offensive enough, but the fact I keep getting it is starting to make me boil.

First off, who anyone has fucked is never anyone’s business and going around asking about it is crass and it makes you a piece of shit.

Second and most importantly, it is not your place, my place, or anyone’s place to rank or define the sexuality of others and cause division in the LGBT community. 

This question doesn’t deserve an actual answer. Last time I kinda blew it off. But this time, I’m going to give one because I feel like it’s become relevant to people in my life.

It’s important to realize that people change over their lives for a plethora of reasons. I spent many, many years trying to be straight and be happy as a straight person because I grew up in a highly religious household. In fact it’s only as an adult that I look back on my childhood and go “holy shit... I was gay AF.” And I was. I was attracted to women a lot as a young girl, but I was manipulated into believing those feelings were caused by jealousy or just an aesthetic appreciation of other people (the first is bullshit, the second is a thing but definitely not what was happening).

Not to be too TMI but I had no sexual education. For a very long time I didn’t know anything about sex at all. Literally. I knew it happened, and my mother told me it wasn’t fun, it was just something women did to make men happy. So of course when I was a teenager trying to force myself to be straight, I never slept with any men, but I did do things that made me incredibly uncomfortable, and I thought that was normal. When I told this to the therapist I had at the time, she told me that I didn’t like women and that if I did it was only because I was mentally ill. And this did an enormous amount of damage to me as a young woman.

As I got older and I slowly broke away from how indoctrinated I was, I became a little more flexible. I started to realize that I just couldn’t deny the fact that I liked women on more than a “wow I wish I had her boobs” level. Which sounds ridiculous, but it’s a verbatim quote from that therapist I mentioned a second ago. So now I was living in conflict. I was unable to change who I was and the realizations I’d come to, but I fully believed I would be eternally tormented in an afterlife and likely violently attacked by my family in this life who is very anti-gay and prone to violence anyway.

When I was twenty-two I went into college for a second time and near the end of my first semester I started to spiral. I couldn’t take living in this state of constantly fighting who I was, and also not even understanding who I was because I’d never been taught anything and I had no one I could have an honest conversation with without putting myself in danger. Luckily my psych teacher realized I was falling apart and took me down to the school councilor who helped me find a therapist.

...Who turned out to be a lesbian. The first person to ever sit me down and ask “do you even like men at all? when you look at them, do you feel sexual attraction?.” I said I thought so, and then I said I didn’t know, and finally after actually thinking about it and discovering that I’d found a safe space to think about it, I told her no. And I remember her telling me that was ok, and that it wasn’t unnatural. 

Finally being able to say the words “I’m a lesbian” made a profound difference in my life. It’s why I don’t let anyone call me “queer” and why I even prefer it to being called gay. Other people can reclaim whatever the fuck they want, I don’t care, but for me it really, truly means something to be able to claim what I am at all. I am a lesbian woman.

And that’s where that stops. No one gets to put a number, a rating, a percentage, a scale on me. I have spent my entire life being told what I am, and I’m done with it. I define me. And so does everyone else. Some people don’t get the luxury of having it easy and always knowing/understanding what they’re feeling and even if they do, that doesn’t mean they are necessarily allowed to live the life they want. But if you’re only attracted to women and you identify as a woman, you’re a lesbian. Doesn’t matter if you’ve never slept with a man or if you’re married and have kids. I don’t get to say what you are and neither does anyone else.

The LGBT community is about creating a safe, inclusive space because straight people have been really fucking shitty to us, because they don’t understand us, and if you’re going to try and cause division in that community then you can get the fuck out. You aren’t a part of us, because clearly you don’t understand us. You aren’t welcome here. Not on my blog, not in the LGBT community, and hell not even in the lesbian community. 

So in closing. Goodbye and fuck you. I’m not going to answer this again, and if I ever find out who is sending me this fucking bullshit I won’t just block you. I’ll make sure everyone knows what a piece of absolute garbage you are.