#COULDN'T HAVE CHOSEN BETTER MYSELF ETC.

[jymwahuwu]

anon who got beaten by covid coming through with more Capitano thoughts.. (no thirsts..yet. I need to coach myself with scenario building..Capitano talks you through every climax. There. That is the most I can write 😭)

Capitano tried to be patient, he truly tried. But he only sighs softly when communication cannot work but force must.

He is a very broad man and it's quite easy for you to spot his looming shadow over you when you had fallen onto the ground, having tried to escape the cabin with only the moonlight as your guide.

"S- Sir.." You look up, tears welled up in your eyes as you try your best to calm your racing heart. You've seen how he has dealt with..most unsavory soldiers. What will he do to you? A lone soldier who has deserted their post?

The man doesn't say anything for a moment, the darkness of his helmet staring holes into you.

"Have I done wrong with you?" He finally speaks, crouching down to speak with you. Despite him trying to match your height..it only makes it more threatening. "I don't believe.. I've mistreated you?"

He's genuinely confused, he can't..register the fact that he's feared by a soldier that he has treated so gently and nicely. "I apologize if I have harmed you.." He tried to make amends anyways.

But then you go and ruin it by trying to run..tsk, tsk, and of course, he only needs to grab your wrist and you're completely immobile. You are a deserted soldier..and unfortunately it seems like you must treat you as the soldier you are.

Even if he wishes you were more than just a soldier.

Bingo. All he has to do is make your punishment..become his bride. He doesn't like phrasing it as a punishment but..perhaps a training session would be better?

You're still training..just..training to be his wife. (Also training to take his very impressive size that he always sighs as he coaxes you into taking every inch of..)

cw: dub-con, forced marriage, yandere, size kink, female reader

Thank you for sending me a story, I really enjoyed it😽💖 You posted it in two parts, and I replied to both here!! (part 1 of the story is here)

Like gentle giant and skittish darling trope! Frightened, awkward you.

Be informed that you have been chosen as a warrior, and that you have given it your all…but, maybe you don't have the talent here. The combat movements are a bit clunky and don't flow smoothly. The vision tied around your waist shines with the light of the elements, but your skills… (such as flowing out a small amount of water, like a spring spring, or just condensing some cheap gems, or electricity like a kitten claws, etc…). Those skills are just not suitable for fighting, you know? Will you use gentleness against Heavenly Principles, against enemies?

After training, failure and frustration have overwhelmed you, and the physical pain and exhaustion cannot be ignored. Not to mention that Capitano in his cape looks down at you like an unshakable mountain. You rubbed your cheek against his palm and couldn't help biting your lip, shedding tears like a little kitten. He pats your head gently and tells you how to improve your movements and use elemental powers. Easier said than done. You nodded, but there was still no way to improve next time.

He's not biased, really. In Capitano's eyes, everyone can fight, but you… may be able to put your talents in other areas, such as cooking and knitting. Your elements are just as gentle as yours. Maybe you can keep that water and food warm. His confession to you is formal and prepared. He asks you in serious terms if you can marry him and spend the rest of your life together.

You… look terrified, hyperventilating from shock. "Me-me?" You pointed at yourself, shaking. Captain wants to marry you? That first of the Eleven Fatui Harbingers? He was just joking, right? You refused and distanced yourself from him like he was a flood.

I like drama🫣😹 so I added some wind and snow. On a moonlit night, you planned an escape, only to fall on the snow and almost be washed away and submerged by the wind and snow. Looking back, I saw that familiar huge figure walking out of the falling snow. He grabbed your wrist a little too roughly, "Sir- Sir?" As always, you looked at him with tears, but fear gnawed at your heart even more.

"You might be dead." There was ice in his voice. He knelt down on one leg and looked down at you. "What are you doing? Did I… hurt you? If you feel that way, then I apologize."

"I-I'm sorry!" You cried, even the tears froze. You know he's right. He is worried about your safety. How is he going to treat you? Will he put you in jail? Capitano carries you in his arms and takes you back to his home. It's there to restore your body temperature and keep you warm. He immerses you in the warm water and towels you off.

If you don't plan an escape, you can still enjoy your options. Since you ran away… you can't return to Fatui, but as his wife stay with him and receive training. Starting from looking directly at his mask, you panicked, but now you can't. You have to look directly into his dark blue eyes, from the depths of your soul. A huge cock stood erect in the middle of his pubic hair and was leaking pre-cum. You stammered, placing your hands on his heated belly as you looked directly at the impressive size of his cock for the first time, "W-What is this? How does this work…!? Can you- can you be a little smaller…"

That's why you need to be trained to accommodate his size. Capitano knew it was unlikely to work the first time. His cock swells against your belly and rubs against your clit, or pushes deeper into you, opening up the tight folds of flesh. The pounding of pulses sends pleasure through your limbs, into your brain as flesh slaps and pops, until the warm cream spurts and rushes into you.

There will be another training next time.

[agirlwithglam]

this will stop your addiction to scrolling.

do you even realise how long an hour is? 2 hours, 3 hours, and it goes on.

in this post, we will be chatting about all things scrolling. learnings from a book i read, sciences, information from articles, the negative impacts of it, and ways to fix it. grab a snack and a warm cozy drink, because this is gonna take a while! ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

many times i sit at home thinking that that i "haven't got enough time" to use a whole hour of my day just doing one thing. but then i open my phone, i impulsively go to youtube shorts. "one video" i tell myself. but its never just one video is it? i ended up on my phone for a bit over 1 hour that day. it was disgusting. it made me so mad. i could have spent that time on a hobby, a skill, with my sibling, going for a walk, reading, doing something, anything else! but i didn't. i was so angry i immediately put my phone on airplane mode and switched it off.

see, the thing with scrolling is that you dont even realise how much time has passed! at first it may just be 2:30 but then the next minute you look at it, its already 4pm. and boom. 1.5 hours of time, valuable time has just been gone, evaporated, into thin air. do you not get disgusted of yourself?

the amounts of negatives to scrolling will easily outway any value it brings. whether its youtube, instagram, tik tok, twitter, etc. whatever value or thing you're trying to achieve from these, there will ALWAYS be a better alternative!

this is one of the concepts in the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. it talks about the philosophy behind reducing the time you spend on technologies. see your time as money- say an app charges you by the minute. would you use it as often? you'd probably try to find different ways to getting that same "value" you think your receiving from these addicting apps.

example (for more older people):

you may tell yourself that by being on twitter for hours on end is useful because it can help you get knowledge, news and new connections with people, but that same value you can get- if not more- from just attending monthly or quarterly events, or having a conversation with people, or hand picking a few honest and effective articles to read for a couple minutes each day. as you see, immediately you start to get the same effects you'd be getting from twitter- but more + with much less the amount of time.

or an example from platforms like yt, tiktok, etc.

if it is planned and you've actually told yourself "i have worked very hard, i deserve having a bit of down time to scroll and switch off." , go ahead. (of course there are ways to get that same brain switch off feeling like doodling/ colouring, writing a diary and letting your mind wander, reading a fiction book, taking a bath, etc. but if you've intentionally made this choice, if you truly think this is whats right currently, go for it.)

but lets be real. a lot of the time, its unintentional. even if we have chosen to do it thinking that it is the best thing to do, are you really willing risk hours of your valuable time? "one more video" we ALL say that. its not new. so dont you ever get tired of your excuses? tired having your time thrown away just because you couldn't control yourself? what is that pleasure we get from scrolling?

dopamine.

scrolling activates the brain's reward center by releasing dopamine. every new mini video, like, comment is always keeping us hooked, making us want more and more until it never ends. until its 10pm at night and you're still here. on your phone.

ok so i know i've yapped on a lot. in fact you're probably too lazy and have to less of an attention span to read it all. (yep, also the effect of scrolling.) so,

heres a list of all the harms of scrolling: to enlighten you, not to scare you. (okay maybe a bit to scare you)

lesser attention span. as i mentioned earlier, scrolling reduces your attention span which means it reduces the amount of time you can spend reading, walking, just sitting idle. or you even may not be able to watch a movie without having something on the side like your phone to scroll on! (guilty😬). when that happens, you know something is seriously wrong. if you want to be able to watch a movie without needing all these different distractions, keep reading.

makes you more bored. yeah! i was surprised by this as well ngl!! this also applies to the point about attention span. scrolling can make you feel more bored because all that scrolling, and your brain being super hyper will make you feel bored at the things you used to feel excited by (ex: watching a movie! , reading a book)

increased anxiety and stressed. imagine not being able to stay away from your phone for even a few hours without feeling stressed. thats just so sad but also a truth for many of us. not just that but it can also leave you feeling overwhelmed and hopeless.

sleep disruption. this isn't new. we all know that scrolling late until night not only can affect your sleep schedule/ sleep timings, but also the blue light from your screen stops your brain from making melatonin (a hormone that helps you sleep), which then also affects your sleep. and we know what that can lead to.

on top of all that, it can make you disconnected from real life, nature, increase comparison, harms relationships, productivity and focus and the list goes on.

but you probably don't want to listen to this anymore. you're here because you may be feeling angry. angry at yourself, at your phone, at the internet for taking away so much time that could be spent living a happier life. you have actually felt the harms and now want a change.

[disclaimer: not all of these tips can apply to you depending on your job, your situation, career, relationships, etc etc. take and apply whatever you can.]

tips to stop scrolling (as much):

delete all the social media apps. anything that you scroll on frequently, delete it. this isn't to say that you can't access it at all, you can have it on your laptop or ipad. but the point is that it will increase the friction between you and opening that app.

switch up your feed. this is the very least you can do. start by pressing "not interested" on anything that isn't providing you any actual value. start following people who do provide value. slowly, change your feed to a more positive, motivational page which just makes you feel more inspired/ better every time you leave from it.

set a screen time limit on your phone + set the password as "i failed". this is something i got from online a while ago and its such a good idea! not only will the screen time limit prevent you from further usage, but also setting a password like "i failed" makes you really feel the impact of betrayal to yourself which will make you refrain from doing so!

slowly by slowly, work to reduce the amount of time you scroll everyday.

find the alternative!! okay so now you arent on your phone, aren't scrolling. now what? if you dont already have things that you can do in this immense amount of free time you have, then of course you'd surrender back to scrolling. fill your days with hobbies, new skills, being with other people, with nature, with meaningful and fulfilling activities. "do more things that make you forget to use your phone."

linking back to the earlier point, GET A HOBBY. ngl, it is SAD to only spend your days, vacations, weekends on the damn phone. get off of it! is your life that sad an empty that you have literally nothing better to do then scroll on your phone? thats actually pathetic.

switch off notifications / put on do not disturb- so you dont get constantly reminded

find out why you start in the first place. for me, it used to be an escape to bad things happening in my life/ around me. once you get to the root cause of why you actually start, work back from there. is there away you can remove that trigger from your life? if not, find a different activity that can help you with that trigger.

keep your phone away from your bed. i do this its actually really helpful because it gets me out of bed to have to turn it off which means i dont go back to sleep. also: if you can get a alarm clock which isn't your phone, even better!

things you can do instead of scrolling:

read a book (if its fiction it may be more enjoyable, but its your choice!)

have a shower

set some goals & a to do list for the day

do a puzzle

wordle

try a new skill/ hobby: crochet, guitar, writing

paint/ draw. and stop making thinking it has to be perfect!! if you see it as perfect, it is.

journal / diary writing

hang out with a friend/ someone

cook/ bake

go for a walk or run

learn something new

put a facemask on

listen to a podcast

sleep

yoga/ exercise

write thankyou notes to people

gratitude list

skincare/ a fun grwm of you!

go to a restaurant

style your clothes

make a wishlist

clean out your camera roll

listen to music & just chill

dance

scrap book- phsysical or digitally!

clean/ organize a space

watch a TV show/ movie- WITHOUT your phone.

go swimming

learn about plants so you can start gardening

other things to read:

Psychology behind it, neuroscience, etc.

why you can't stop mindlessly scrolling + tips

BOOK: Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport

reddit

[a-very-tired-jew]

We have to talk about Leftist Antisemitism

One of the things I have been grappling with since Oct 7th is the rise of antisemitism in Leftist spaces. Often we find ourselves falling into the same old position of blaming the Right for these issues. However, over the past few decades minority voices have pointed out that the Left has issues with bigotry in its own way. For myself, and likely many other Jews, growing up in Leftist spaces I heard antisemitic jokes and lines all the time. However, they were never the overt hate fueled rhetoric I would hear from the Right. Conspiracies were relegated to "The Rothschilds control the world" rather than "The Jews control the world." Regardless of how you feel about the rich, the Rothschilds are a dog whistle for Jews. Hell, my own family members would say this same line because the majority of us are on the Left. So obviously we take a position regarding the ultra rich. However, this Rothschilds line isn't the only dog whistle. Often there were jokes at your expense from outside your in-group. Common refrains that *insert Jewish dog whistle* couldn't be trusted due to *insert conspiracy coded in Leftist language*. That's the issue... The antisemitism on the Left is coded in a language that makes it more subtle than overt rightwing antisemitism. But how did we get here? It definitely predates Oct 7th. We can partly lay blame at this at the feet of something that feels like an old and tired trope at this point: Russia. In particular, the good ole USSR. You see, dear reader, regardless of how you describe your sociopolitical and economics leanings, and regardless of whether or not you reject USSR style Communism, their style and impact still influence you and the rest of the world. As Leftists we often stand opposed to many aspects of Western capitalist ideals, which in turn exposes us to many of the anti-Western writings, philosophies, beliefs, etc... The issue is that the USSR has a very sordid history with antisemitism. Some of you may be saying "but wait! There were Jewish Bolsheviks! Stalin even supported Israel!", don't you worry. We'll get there. While there may have been Jewish Bolsheviks and members of the party post revolution, it does not change the policies and actions that preceded and followed. Robert Weinberg, Dara Horn, David Nirenberg, and other historians have all written extensively at some point or another about this very issue. I highly recommend Dara Horn's latest piece for the Atlantic "Why The Most Educated People in America Fall for Antisemitic Lies". She briefly covers this topic. If you can't access it, well here we go. Zionism as a concept had already been around for a few decades by the time the Communist Revolution occurred, having been solidified by the Dreyfuss Affair in the late 1800s. Zionism is/was also considered Jewish nationalism. While a Jew could be a Russian Jew, German Jew, or any other "nation" Jew, they were still considered an other and thus they could never truly be a nationalist for that country. Only for Israel/Zion. As such, Jews in the USSR were not trusted as it was argued they could not be truly devoted to the Party. Jews were then labeled as Zionists. Zionism was considered anti-Communist, and racist due to the Party purposefully putting out that the "chosen people" line meant that Jews were supremacists and believed themselves to be better than others (The chosen people line actually refers to us choosing to adhere to certain laws). As such, Zionist activities were shut down as they were an act of treason and betrayal. This means that synagogues, shuls, business, and more were shut down as a means to disrupt the "Jewish conspirators". It did not matter that Jews were involved in the revolution, if you were Jewish you were an other and could not be trusted. pt 1.

[zuzsenpai]

Full story (so far) of the work project from hell that's lost me vacation time, lost me sleep and hair, caused a number of panic attacks, and literally gave me my period when I'm not supposed to have periods and haven't had one in a year and a half.

I'll put it under a cut because I'm sure most of you don't want to read all this shit. I just wanted to vent and get it out.

So around the beginning of September, a video project request came into our office. The way it was explained to us by the project coordinator in marketing (who I will call "Sam"), was that it was going to be a TV spot as part of a big campaign that the CEO is requesting. The topic is letting people know that our healthcare network has a zillion awards for all 15 of our hospitals, compared to the other healthcare network in our area (this is a VERY common marketing strategy for us even though it's been proven the public does not give a shit which network has the most awards). It's a very dull "look at us and our awards and stats" video that, again, the public couldn't give a shit about. But the CEO wants it because ego.

We were told the video needed to be produced in two weeks, because the CEO wants to see the campaign ASAP. This means, for my team, that we don't have time to shoot new footage for this campaign. We were given a pretty mediocre script (we do not write the scripts), with directions to get it professionally voiced and to use old footage we've already shot in order to get this done in time.

That's where I became involved. I'm not a videographer (I do the animations and various other things). I know how to edit, and I know how to edit fast. But if this were a piece we had time for (that had a much better script), our video team of FOUR videographers would have handled this. But I got the project because of the bullshit reasons that I "know where all our footage is" and "can edit fast".

This was a week before I was supposed to go on vacation. I was supposed to go on vacation for a week and a half. My manager (who I will call "Betsy") KNEW I was going on vacation, but she still gave me the project. I know I should have given it to the video team and that point, but I didn't. That was my first and biggest mistake.

The higher-ups in marketing took their sweet ass time choosing an ending tagline and creating graphic design elements I could use in my video. I still didn't have them by the end of that week. We had our voiceover guy record half a dozen taglines that were supposed to be chosen from, just so something could be eventually edited in.

I had a draft that didn't include the tagline or graphic design elements ready by the end of the week. Meaning the day before I went on vacation. My second and almost just as big mistake was saying I would work on it over vacation. But honestly, this was for the CEO, and the VP of marketing hadn't approved my raise yet and I am always feeling like I would be the first on the chopping block if we needed to downsize the department. So I wanted to prove myself.

Anyway, while I was on vacation, I kept all the channels open: Teams, Outlook, etc. I had a VERY hard time relaxing because I knew at any moment I'd have to pick this project up. I also have massive burnout and just could not get myself to chill out. Anyway, a couple things happened by Thursday of that week: the tagline was finally chosen, the script changed and a whole 20 seconds was added to the video, and the graphic design elements came in. Keep in mind the project was supposed to have been done in two weeks. Meaning by the literal NEXT DAY. That wasn't happening at this point, so I was given a new deadline of a first draft by the following Wednesday.

I scrambled to coordinate the voiceover guy coming in again even though I couldn't be there. I scrambled even harder to find 20 more seconds of footage while I was over 100 miles away and had incredibly slow access to our video server. In fact, I could barely view or download video at all. I panicked for DAYS trying to get video downloaded, but it was just NOT happening.

I cut my vacation short and got in by Tuesday morning that next week. I had a single day to figure this video out. I was able to manage it by the skin of my teeth. I sent the draft on Wednesday and eventually heard back that Sam, the VP of marketing (who I will call "Ken"), and a few other higher-ups in marketing loved it. Great. The end!

Except the Chief Strategy Officer (Ken's boss), suddenly needed to approve it. I will call him "Ray". So Ray is new at his job and apparently needs to have his fingers in ever single piece of marketing that comes out of the marketing department. This is the opposite of how the old guy who retired used to do it. Ray is also the CEO's son-in-law. So, a Jared Kushner if you will. He's trying to prove himself and in the process, he is micromanaging to the extreme. But also it takes him forever to make decisions. Great combination there, all around.

It takes Ray over a week to even look at the video, during which I start getting other projects with quick deadlines. And when Ray does look at it, he comes back with the unhelpfully vague comments of "it's unsophisticated", "doesn't look like a sleek big city ad" and "is not emotional". So he rejects it and asks for a completely new video to be done, ASAP. Marketing collectively loses their minds in a bad way. The project coordinator (Sam) decides to inform me of this by immediately sending me an email outlining everything that was "wrong" with the video, despite having originally said he loved it. He told me a new one needed to be done and it needed to be done FAST. It needed to look like a polished, high budget, big city ad.

Well that wasn't getting done. I told him this. He didn't care. Ray gets what he wants. Even though Ray did NOT say that's what he wanted from the beginning. Even though I made a good video based on the shitty script I was given. The script that was supposedly approved by Ray himself. The script that had no story, was unemotional, and given an unreasonable deadline to get produced into a video.

This was last Thursday. I had a breakdown in my office, sobbing and hyperventilating. I decided I would finally bring in the video team. I needed one of them to do this. I needed to be done with it. I had 4 other projects with deadlines fast approaching (all of them animations, so I was the only one who could do them). Betsy called an in-person meeting with her, myself, and the 4 videographers.

I was still having a massive panic attack as I tried extremely hard to be normal in that meeting. I tried my best to explain to the team what I needed. The videographers were super angry on my behalf that I was even given the project in the first place, and they were extremely willing to redo the video from the ground up. I was grateful beyond belief. My video was scrapped, which sucks, but I didn't care at that point

A few days later on the following Monday (this past Monday), around 4PM, I was told that Ken decided we were going to go over Ray's head and "just edit the video we already have into a sleek, emotional, big city ad". Using the same script and most of the same footage. Just "make it better". Ken's reasoning was that this video was for the CEO and not Ray. And the CEO wanted it weeks ago.

Because this was an update to the existing video, Betsy informed me that I had to jump back on the project to make the edits. The edits that were a nebulous "make it better". I knew the project already and I can edit quickly. So it's mine again. Again, I had 4 other projects with deadlines of THIS WEEK. I had to send emails apologizing to a few people for not having the projects done.

So I spent Monday evening (at home) and all of Tuesday (yesterday) fucking around with the video. I asked the video team their thoughts on what would make it better and "sleeker", and they came back with things like "no amount of tricks and transitions is going to make that old footage look any better". So, unhelpful as fuck. Sam just kept saying "use tricks from big city ads! Just copy them! make it emotional!"

I did what I could. I found an emotional song, I used some flashy transitions, I slowed down some footage for dramatic effect, and I found a few pieced of stock footage that looked more "polished" than the footage I had. Granted ALL of the footage I originally used was local. It was our hospitals and our doctors and our staff. It just wasn't shot for this video. I tried to keep as much of that local feel in as possible, because I know the CEO likes that. I neglected projects for this. I stressed about this. Couldn't sleep. Got my fucking period after a year and a half on birth control.

I sent out a draft at 3PM yesterday. To Sam and Ken. Didn't hear back, but that's pretty normal (Ken sends work emails at like 10PM). 4:30 rolled around and I got up to leave. Betsy called me into her office as I passed by.

Betsy: I have something I need to tell you.

Me: ?????

Betsy: This morning Ken told me that we farmed your project out to [freelance video production company that we sometimes use].

Me: I'm sorry what.

Betsy: I didn't tell you because I didn't want it to upset you or hurt your feelings.

Me: But... then why did I work the project all day????

Betsy: Because I think we needed to show Ken what we are capable of.

Me: But that's irrelevant. He asked the other company to do it.

Betsy: Yes but I think he really wanted us to do it.

Me: So I sent a draft to Ken after he'd already farmed it out to the other company?

Betsy: Yes. But I sent him an email explaining it.

I didn't know what to say. I was furious. But Betsy is in charge of asking Ken for my raise, so I waited until I got to my car to start crying and screaming. I was in a bad state last night.

Got in this morning to an email from Ken just saying "Please find time to discuss tomorrow afternoon". So essentially a "see me after class". This could go one of three ways.

He could tell me he likes it and here are a few edits (unlikely, though he DID like the original and it's not too different from that?????)

He could tell me it needs a lot of work and changes and I need to do it ASAP (likely and stressful)

He could get mad I wasted my time, which is entirely Betsy's fault (likely and gets Betsy in a load of trouble)

The meeting with him is at 3PM tomorrow. I'm working from home because I need it at this point. I'm so sick of this. I'm so done. I'm even done typing about it right now because I am just so out of steam. I have so many deadlines and I'm so burnt out and I am so exhausted.

[emotionallychargedtowel]

shuffled (sort of)

I was tagged for this by @lurkingshan and it looked like fun, so I made up a way to participate even though I don't listen to music on any of those services that people tend to use for these things. The closest I get is listening to things on youtube so I made a list of songs the YT algorithm suggested to me. That list was a bit long so I used a random number generator to pick ten. Well, I really hit paydirt. I couldn't have come up with a better list if I had chosen it all myself.

And then weeks went by and I sat on this nearly-finished post for no good reason! Now I'm dusting it off and getting it out of my drafts.

I'm never big on tagging people on these things, it makes me incredibly anxious. But after this much time has passed, I really can't imagine doing it. That said, if anyone reads this and feels inspired to do it too, please consider yourself tagged.

Orange Juice - I Can’t Help Myself

One of the best tracks on my favorite Orange Juice album. This is a really good distillation of their sound that shows their influences really clearly (postpunk, classic soul, the Velvet Underground, Chic, the Buzzcocks, etc. etc.) while showing how they did something with them that's completely their own. It doesn't hurt that no one sounds quite like Edwyn Collins.

SZA - Ghost in the Machine

For a couple of years now I've been trading song recommendations with a close friend of mine. In other words, we take turns giving each other a song to listen to. It's been great, in part because our tastes are pretty danged different (though with enough overlap to have common ground). I've found out about a lot of amazing stuff through her but I don't think there's a song that has stuck with me more from this project than Ghost in the Machine. This song just keeps giving me goosebumps after...it's been a year and change, I think.

Taemin - Criminal

Years ago I asked my old internet friend Kate (who I've been interacting with since our livejournal days) about kpop. She has always been better than I am at keeping up with new music and I knew she knew a thing or two about it. She gave me a short list of songs to check out and Criminal was on it. It didn't quite click at first but it stuck in my brain somehow. I came back to it later and boom. It clicked big time. It reminds me of a few things. The la-la-la part definitely has a debt to Kylie Minogue's Can't Get You Out of My Head and the lead-up to the chorus reminds me of Roy Orbison's I Drove All Night. It has a retro quality that probably makes it more palatable to a middle-aged listener like myself but when I hear the synthpop tones of my childhood through a contemporary filter I don't get nostalgia so much as a distorted time-warp feeling (in a nice way).

Brave Girls - We Ride

A while back I was emailing back and forth with another friend of mine who I talk to about music a lot--wow, I didn't know that was going to be such a theme here, but I love it--and we were talking about new and old East Asian pop genres. He made me a list of a few recent kpop and jpop songs that he thought were reminiscent of city pop, an 80s genre out of Japan that's a favorite of his. There were quite a few winners on that list but this song is the one I've listened to the most. There's another theme: sounds from my formative years filtered through a contemporary lens. I can see why my friend associated it with city pop. The combination of disco/funk elements (like that choppy Nile Rodgers guitar part) and soft pop (the harmonies, the synth strings) fits right into that category. These elements were everywhere when I was a kid but they didn't get put together in this way.

Tsunami - Be Like That

This song about a has-been ex-boyfriend is more relatable to me in my 40s than it was when I first heard it in my 20s, but that's how old Jenny Toomey was when she wrote it. I've never gotten super into Tsunami despite liking a couple of their songs quite a lot (this one, and Valentine, from their album Deep End). I should probably revisit them. They always had a way with washy guitars and interesting chords, and Jenny Toomey's voice is legendary for a reason. (The version of I Only Have Eyes for You that she recorded with Grenadine, her side project with Mark Robinson from Unrest and the drummer from the Eggs, makes really good use of that voice. It's fucking exquisite and literally gives me goosebumps.)

Spoon - Me and the Bean

This one's a bit personal. I was active in the indie rock scene in Austin in the early 'aughts when Spoon was transitioning from their status as a cautionary tale of major label abandonment* into the period where they reached greater heights on an indie than that major label ever would have allowed. That scene wasn't very big so it's not surprising that in addition to Girls Can Tell-era Spoon being nearly omnipresent for a period of my life, I also have some personal connections there. Anyway, people seldom notice that this song is a cover. I never saw the Sidehackers, the band who originally performed the song (I'm not sure if they even managed to record it). But if this song ends up being what people remember most about them, it would make a respectable legacy. I don't know the later Spoon stuff as well as this era, but back then, there weren't a lot of Spoon originals that were as overtly emotional as this one. (You didn't typically hear a line like "I have your blood inside my heart" in an original Spoon song.) Britt Daniel may not have written this, but he doesn't hold back in his performance. So I always appreciated how it balanced out the more emotionally reserved style of the other songs on Girls Can Tell.

*They channeled the experience into songwriting to good effect. "The Agony of Lafitte," about the A&R guy that signed them to Elektra before the label screwed them over, is probably my favorite Spoon song.

the Chills - Pink Frost

I feel like so much has been written about this song that there isn't much point trying to say anything about it. It has a truly important place in the history of New Zealand indie music, and the events surrounding it are pretty interesting. But mostly it's just a really well-crafted piece of dark, sneakily poppy post-postpunk. Among people my age with similar tastes to mine, I can't think of a song that ended up on more mixtapes. (Though a friend of mine always used to say he regretted that he couldn't really put it on mixtapes for girls he was interested in because of the whole murdered girlfriend aspect of it.)

Veronica Falls - Misery

This song is obscenely catchy. It only takes one listen to get me singing it to myself in the kitchen for months. It's pretty fun to sing to oneself, in the kitchen or otherwise, but I'm sure it would be a million times more so if you could reproduce the harmonies with a partner. Veronica Falls really are unparalleled in the harmony department, and it's even more enjoyable because they usually use those pretty harmonies to sing about morbid, depressing things. And that juxtaposition never feels like a schtick to me, which it easily could in the wrong hands.

Bolbbalgan4 - Dream

I've gotten into quite a few songs because they were featured on kdramas, but this is the only song where it happened the other way around—I liked it first, then watched Hwarang because of it. There was a video for it on youtube with clips from the series and the song made the show seem more interesting. Not to imply anything negative about the series, I think there's a lot to be said for it. But it was this song that made me want to watch it. I love this kind of super emotional kpop song that's so plentiful in kdramas. Maybe it's because during the decades when rock music was de facto banned in South Korea the country's dominant genre was the ballad. Maybe it's because of that particular brand of despair that kdramas excel at so much, coming up in a slightly different setting. This type of song is just more emotional in a certain way that any other genre I've run across. And this particularly example is, to my mind, the pièce de résistance.

Shearwater - Breaking the Yearlings

This is one of the highlights of Animal Life, which is my favorite Shearwater album. It took me a while to warm up to Shearwater. The thing that really sold me on them was going on a whim to see Jonathan Meiburg play a solo acoustic set in front of a tiny audience at the Cactus Cafe. I think maybe some friends of mine opened for him or something, because something must have gotten me in the door. I ended up being really glad I went. Meiburg's set was downright mesmerizing, and I was sold on Shearwater from that point on. This particular song gets in my head a lot because the washing machine in my building puts out this one repetitive tone when you're starting a load of clothes that is really close to the opening notes of this song.

[nabbit-unmasked]

Hey! I am most likely one of the China placekins you've heard before. I reached out on Reddit but I'm pretty sure r/otherkin restricts new users or something. I was so excited to finally know of someone who is both a country AND objectum for another country!!

Excuse some awkwardness here and there. I just wanna rant about being countrykin. It's so awesome to meet you CAR!

I am personally objectum for the USA (she/xe/purr/it) and I introduced my bf to that as well (we're both otherkin.) We wish you and The Gambia the absolute best! The post with the hearts you made with her is my fave.

I have some very strong thoughts on the controversy of being countrykin/placekin, especially since I believe my alterhumanity originates from trauma (not copinglink though) and being China gives me so much strength, physical and mental, and the power inherent of being a giant physical and conceptual entity is so freeing.

It's one thing to be connected specifically to countries/concepts specifically connected to one brutal regime/etc., but as an Asian guy with Chinese descent, it just feels gross and even racist to an extent. I am so much more than my government. I am the mountains that touch the sky, the rivers of life that color the soil yellow, the love and hearts of a billion people, the endurance of a long history, the strength of my flora and fauna. Same with being the CAR. There will always be issues within a place that exists in our physical reality. But we are more than the sum of our parts.

I am just so glad to have another countrykin here. It feels really isolating sometimes. Especially when my kin has affected my identity so much, including my chosen name down to my favorite colors and how I choose to curate my room.

So I am here to say... Please. PLEASE talk, discuss, ramble, vent, rant more about being the CAR. You are awesome. I connect with it so much.

Love from China 🇨🇳 ❤ 🇨🇫

Hey! So, as it turns out, I didn't meet 2 China placekins, and it's just a coincidence that we've found each other twice on the expanse of the internet! You're the only one lol. Also, I do remember you from reddit :3

I've actually talked to Gold before and he mentioned you. He and said that you might have talked to me in the past, so I'm glad we could meet again! I was super excited when I saw you in my notes :)

Thank you so much for the kind words towards me and The Gambia!! We're doing well and appreciate your wishes :) I wish the same for you and the USA and whatever other objects/things you and Tank are loving on ^^

I feel the same way about the whole placekin controversy thing and I couldn't have said it better myself. While man-made things are important to mankind, we are so much more than that. My identity is not human and has nothing to do with being human. I am a place who's human aspects are ran by humans, but that is only one part of me. There are many, many non-human aspects that make me...me. All of my life and non-life share me, a nonhuman entity.

I will continue to speak for myself and other placekin: that's why I made this blog! I couldn't find any other (active) placekin accounts that spoke out about us. Our community was in the shadows and pretty much unknown to the world, so someone had to be a voice for us. Not to from egotistical, but this blog brought placekin together, educated others on who we are, and even allowed others to discover that they were placekin themselves. I'm here to tell the world that we're here.

Happy to meet with you again, China.

Much love 🇨🇫 ❤ 🇨🇳 /p

[rubiatinctorum]

i think a lot of people could be more socially connected, accomplished, and have a better self concept if community-building (especially online) were focused more on shared hobbies, talents, areas of expertise or interest, and connections rather than primarily merely signifying as being a member of an in-group through nature or presentation. It seems like a lot of online communities tend to value 'what you are' these days over 'what you choose to be' and as someone whose primary forms of identification when someone asks to know about me are based on my hobbies, interests, and what i trained in, I feel like it's awkward to be in spaces where none of that matters because people want fixed identity signifiers instead.

Like, great and all if people will like me because I'm bisexual, or neurotic, or a woman, or whatever, but at the end of the day, I didn't really decide that, and I'd much rather be part of in-groups and make connections for what I decide to do and love to do (ex: groups of writers and knitters, where we can bond over shared interests and actions), rather than just because I organically signify an identity that gives me some kind of positive aspect to the online in-group. I was a dice roll when I got random number generated onto this planet, and that's not what I want to lead with or be primarily cared about for.

Maybe it's weird of me bc I'm very neutral on a lot of things that are very important to identity in spaces like Tumblr. I'm generally a couple percentage points positive of ambivalent on my sexuality, gender, body type, etc the way I am about, say, my hair colour or how tall I am. Therefore, I don't really want to advertise myself that way. Obviously, in real life, certain things become more important depending on the time, place, and situation. My orientation will be a lot more important, say, when I'm trying to rizz someone up (actually, when I'm yearning over an instagram photo of my engaged crush) or at the Pride Parade more than it will when I'm scrolling through shitposts on tumblr. Similarly, my body type will be more important when I'm trying to find my damn size in the store when I'm looking to buy a sweater. Personally, I think they're terrible building blocks for making connections online if I'm not online dating or buying clothes. I understand this is not how a lot of people feel.

I think, mostly, though, it feels very reductive to lead socially in this way in general spaces not based around these concepts. It feels like a slide into valuing people for the natural traits they are born with/develop because having the right fixed identity is given priority and moral status, and that just feels kind of uncomfortable to me. I don't want to evaluate the social desirability of others by traits they can't control, nor do I want that to be the main thing I know people for. I don't want to present the idea to someone, "your art, your music, your sports, your work, the things you spend your days and therefore your life doing fundamentally do not matter to me as long as you are [insert identity here], which is what really matters."

There are times and places for identity-based in-groups as one's main form of representing themselves in that time and place. I don't think that's necessarily everywhere, all the time. And I don't know if most people would feel less alone and isolated if they started building connections in a way more aligned with having something chosen in common, but I can certainly say that when I've been socially connected with people who share the same hobby, or interest, or job as me, friendships feel more actualized and we've turned those shared things into experiences worth remembering more often, even through the internet. Meanwhile, the people who associated with me for my fixed characteristics did not value me as a person the moment I couldn't perform that identity for them.

[pochqmqri]

With how OtonaPre ended up being mid and had several questionable choices, I know that there are some, myself included, who are worried about how the MahoPre adult sequel will turn out. Even so, I remain cautiously optimistic, as this was always the one out of the two I was the most excited for.

Going back to the initial announcement for both OtonaPre and the MahoPre sequel, it's interesting to note that they only tentatively call it Mahou Tsukai PreCure! 2. They don't outright call it something like Otona Mahou Tsukai PreCure!, so maybe it's not really tied to the OtonaPre brand.

This would be a welcome change because one of the main problems with OtonaPre was that they tried to juggle a main cast of 8, arguably 10, or even 13, in just 12 episodes. This meant that several characters got shafted in development, notably Rin, Komachi, and Mai. In a MahoPre sequel, we'd only really need focus on Mirai, Riko, Haa-chan, and Mofurun, and maybe a few of the other side characters. Realistically I don't see what other seasons they could try and jam into MahoPre2, like not GoPriPre or KiraPre. MahoPre has such a distinctive style to it with all the witchcraft stuff.

Another thing to note from that initial announcement is that MahoPre2 will be airing on the late-night Animazing!!! block owned by TV Asahi and ABC TV, on Sundays 2:00-2:30 AM. This is quite the unusual choice because even OtonaPre, which aired on NHK-E, aired as late as Saturday 6:30PM. Similarly, Tokyo Mew Mew New aired around midnight when it broadcasted. I don't know what this really means in terms of "adult content" though, because even TMMN was mostly restrained in that regard. OtonaPre aired on a night/afternoon timeslot, but it also aired in the same block that had stuff like Spongebob, so they couldn't get too "adult," the most being stuff like alcohol consumption and climate change.

From this article back in March, Producer Takashi Washio notes that when NHK-E ("E" standing for education) was chosen to air OtonaPre on, he was asked if they could focus on topics related to SDGs, sustainable development goals. This is why OtonaPre has a large focus on climate change and sustainability, despite it feeling a bit out of place. I appreciate the focus on such topics, but I felt like it was taking up too much space in OtonaPre when combined with the topics of adulthood struggles and usual PreCure stuff, especially for just 12 episodes. I also think that the aforementioned Tokyo Mew Mew New, which aired last year and earlier this year, was much better at conveying these topics.

There's not much we know about MahoPre2, but I think I can say for certain that it won't have much of heavy environmental theme to it, and more so focus on expanding the lore of the Witch World. I expect the sequel to have 12-13 episodes like OtonaPre did, so not trying to jam several themes into such a limited scope will be good.

Another thing, that's a bit small is that, personally, I wasn't a fan of the art direction, notably the character designs, of OtonaPre. Toei outsourced the anime primarily to Studio DEEN, so most of the staff, character designer, series director, animation directors, art director, etc. were assigned to people who didn't seem to be that familiar with the series and the final product sort of reflected that. It's understandable why Toei outsourced most of the production, as this year, they also had to focus on the usual yearly PreCure, One Piece, the Sailor Moon Cosmos films, etc., and I expect more of the same next year for MahoPre2.

But I think that, at least in terms of character designer, we might get Emiko Miyamoto, who was the CD for the original MahoPre, back. The reason why Toshie Kawamura, who was the CD for Yes! Pretty Cure 5 and Yes! Pretty Cure 5 GoGo!, didn't come back for OtonaPre, seems to be that she's currently not accepting new work due to her poor health, as stated in her Twitter bio. This makes sense, as Kawamura recently did the character designs for the all-male Dancing Star PreCure, which, as a live-action stage play, had less commitments for her to deal with compared to OtonaPre. In contrast, from what I could gather, Miyamoto appears to be in good health, and she hasn't really done much work since Dragon Quest: Adventure of Dai, which ended last year. She did do some small animation work for the recent PreCure All Stars F film, but that's pretty much it. I think there will be time for her to return next year for MahoPre2, along with other staff like head writer Isao Murayama and series director Masato Mitsuka.

Ideally, I would hope that MahoPre2 has the women transform into adult Pretty Cure, unlike what OtonaPre did, but there's really nothing right now that I can predict, other than that it seemingly not being apart of the OtonaPre brand may raise some hope.

So yeah, these are the reasons why I'm holding out hope that MahoPre2 will still be good. Hopefully they don't do what they did in OtonaPre and have Mirai and Riko be paired off with random faceless men, and instead with each other. They have to make it gayer, with maintext, not subtext, like how they kissed in the manga.

[nancypullen]

Merry Everything and a Happy Whatever

Well, I cam back from Florida with just a couple of days to prepare for the onslaught of Christmas and promptly got sick. The virus that my sister had, some respiratory thing, definitely not a common cold, took me out at the knees. I slogged through the grocery store with my long list (I wore a mask!) and hauled home enough to feed an army. Everyone arrived on the 22nd and I made a dinner of pork carnitas, tortillas, and all the toppings. Rice and beans rounded out the meal and the whole gang was satisfied. The next night was a rotini and meatball bake, extra cheesy. And so it went. I was Typhoid Mary in the kitchen, coughing up a lung, and you'd think spreading disease. Would you believe that not a single person caught it? I'm just now feeling human again and no one else is even sniffling. I have to admit that the Christmas dinner was not my best. I kept forgetting to set timers. The turkey was dry (and I pride myself on juicy roasted birds!), the sweet potato casserole was not quite set, and I left the rolls in too long. I felt like a failure, but everyone ate and no one died.

Christmas was merry, Santa was sure good to all of us - especially a certain little girl. My boys spoil me absolutely rotten, to the point of making me feel guilty. I always cry and act like a doofus because I still see those sweet little boys of mine, and I want them to save their money for themselves. I should be proud that they're both doing so well and are so kind, but I just feel guilt. I'm not worthy! I'm sure a psychologist could have a field day with my thoughts. Anywayyyy, even though I was sick as a dog, it was wonderful to have everyone together. I felt like apologizing for not being more fun. I hate it that Matt flew all the way home and we didn't even play our usual rounds of Song Quiz or go on an adventure. In summary, Christmas was wonderful because my family is wonderful. The Edgewater parents had to go back to work, so we kept Little Miss for a three extra days since she's out of school. She helped me take all of the decorations off the tree (I knew she was dying to get her hands on those ornaments) and we collected all of the Santas, deer, and holiday knick-knacks from around the house. Between the two of us we got Christmas packed away and everything tidied up. Turns out child labor is beneficial. We took her to see Migration and she giggled all the way through. She dressed herself for the movie and I didn't fight it. Better to be overdressed than underdressed, right?

We handed her over yesterday afternoon and I came home and told Mickey that I was takin' to the bed. I don't think I moved for twelve hours. I didn't do much today either. I need to rest up for our big New Year's Eve festivities.

Yeah, I can't say that with a straight face. We have NO plans. I wouldn't go if we did. I don't even have a dinner planned for us. Usually Matt gets to stay through New Year's Eve and I do a buffet of appetizers. We may be eating tuna sandwiches on paper plates. Sounds like I've given up, doesn't it? Lawdy, I'm just tiiired.

Anywho, I survived and thankfully the family seems to have missed my contagious stage. I'd feel really awful if they'd all taken this nasty virus home. Glad it ended with me, good riddance to it. I'm thinking about what my word for 2024 will be and I'm just not sure. Last year I chose the word flourish. I chose it because I was so unhappy here, couldn't seem to make a friend, etc. I was determined to take control and make this my home. I should have chosen a different word. I tried, good grief how I tried. I'm an Army brat, I'm not shy about meeting people or being in new places. I've taken classes, gone to functions, reached out to others, even gone out a couple of times with some local ladies. Apparently I'm still undesirable. I did apply for and finally get a job at the library, so maybe that will help. If nothing else I'll make a little money while the local population rejects me.

Might as well make the best of it. Maybe my word for the new year will be acceptance. It is what it is. I'd rather my word be winner, as in lottery. Did you see that Powerball jackpot? Whew! I'd be outta' here so fast. With that kind of cash I could still see Little Miss every week. Fancy Grancy could jet in for gymnastics practice and dinner. Crossing all my fingers. I'll save one for Denton though.

Maybe that's the cold meds talking. Or not. I've whined my way through this blog post, so I'll end this little pity party. Just wanted to get you all caught up before we hang a new calendar. I'll think about my word for 2024 and get back to you. Anyone else choosing one? I've seen folks opting for simplify, balance, courage, gratitude...in what direction are you hoping to steer your next 365 days? We've passed the winter solstice and we're gaining sunlight every day, let's walk into the sunshine and choose happiness this year. I've always found happiness in small things - a pretty sunset, bird song, little green shoots in the spring. Tomorrow I'm going to get a whole bunch of tulip bulbs (a gift!!) in the ground. I'm planting hope. There's always hope, right? Alright, I'm off to soak in a bubble bath and read the latest Lisa Jewell book. I was on a library waitlist for months and so far it's been worth it. I downloaded it on my new Christmas KIndle. The Pullen men hate it that I'll use the same technology for a decade (my old Kindle worked fine, just didn't hold a charge like it used to). There you have it. It's over. Ladies, we decorated, shopped, wrapped, cooked, and spread joy like chicken pox. The lull between Christmas and the new year celebrations is a welcome relief. Rest if you can, recharge. You've earned it. Sending out loads of love tonight. Stay safe, stay well. XOXO, Nancy

[yurisorcerer]

A friend said yesterday that I seem like I have a complicated relationship with Ishura. This is untrue, I think Ishura sucks but has a few bright spots; that's not complicated. If there's a show I have a complicated relationship with this season it's Metallic Fucking Rouge. What, like, IS this show? Actually? When you strip away all the minutiae and all attempts at allegory, political or otherwise, what is this story *about*? Like, at its core?

With three episodes left on the clock (assuming this isn't a secret two-cour show, but I'd be very surprised if that we the case) I'm still not sure I could tell you.

Metallic Rouge has all these big-brain classic sci-fi influences that it very clearly wants to integrate into its sense of storytelling. That's why there are two competing factions of aliens who we don't really see much of until this episode, that's why there's this whole human oppressor / humanoid robot oppressed class dynamic that the show doesn't quite know what to do with, that's probably a good chunk of why it hops between planets at all. At the same time, this is also a 12-episode anime that needs to deliver solid fundamentals to actually keep people invested. Most people are not me, and will not watch an entire 12-episode series just to figure out what the fuck it's trying to do. I think a lot of people, given how willfully opaque Metallic Rouge is, would / will / have just found it frustrating. The action sequences have been good at staving that off, and I think this episode's was maybe the best yet, but I'm not sure it's enough.

That aside, yeah, this is a series that's worn a lot of hats. It's been a toku-inspired action series, a story about the aftermath of war and the mechanics of oppression, a trippy dream sequence, a whodunnit, etc. Now, in its last leg, it's become like....I don't even know, one of those 90s sci fi movies with CGI aliens? It's been better at some of those than others and I actually think this new turn fits it surprisingly well, but I am left with a frustration and I kind of wish the show would just stick to something.

That said; I can see the counterargument, right? You know, compared to most bad anime that have aired or will air this year, Rouge's problem is not that it has NO ideas, it's that it has TOO MANY, and doesn't execute them well enough. In my head, I've kind of been comparing the series to Lycoris Recoil, but they actually have opposite problems; LycoReco couldn't find enough solid ground to stretch for a full 12 episode cour, and ended up showing its ass when its underlying politics turned out to be embarrassingly basic. Metallic Rouge by comparison is hyperactive and unable to follow through on any of its ideas. I wouldn't be surprised if, rather than turning out to have *basic* politics as I've previously wondered, it just turns out to have none. Who needs themes when you have giant spaceships and can reveal your main character is an alien?

Or is it, right? That's the obvious thing, there are still three more episodes. Maybe, somehow, someway, it will find a way to tie all of these disparate elements together in its final quarter and I'll look like a fucking idiot for having ever doubted it. I would honestly love that, I can count on my hands the number of times a show I was frustrated with turned out BETTER than I thought it would, but it's always a really lovely and cathartic thing. But I'm pretty skeptical, I don't know, the fact that the series used so much charged imagery early on and has largely just chosen to discard it makes the entire thing feel poorly thought-out. I am still, in spite of myself, mostly enjoying the show for what it is; I love the action sequences, the incredibly strange bits of hyper-expressive and overfluid animation (seriously, look at this)

and I even kind of love how up its own ass it is, but I think there's a distinction to be drawn there between something being *entertaining* and being *good.* Metallic Rouge is very entertaining, but it's also hugely frustrating and at this point I would be VERY surprised if my main takeaway from it once it's over isn't just that it had a lot of potential it didn't live up to.

I guess we'll see! Who knows.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I saw someone else mention this in the tag but credit to this show for being fairly normal about a plural system. I hope they survive the rest of the show, Alice/Aes are honestly some of my favorite characters.

[kae-karo]

fic writer tag game

saw someone on the for you tab do this (x) as a tag game but obvs i do not know them and did not get tagged and thus i thiefed it 😌

How many works do you have on AO3? 258!!!!

What is your AO3 word count? 3,097,981

What fandoms do you write for? currently 99% blue lock, although i have a wip in genshin and one in bnha that i would some day like to finish lmao

What are your top five fics by kudos? in order they are chosen (x), to love (and be loved in return) (x), little bird (x), feet don't touch the ground (x), and cold devotion (x) wow genshin rly repping out here lmaooo

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? yes basically always!!!! i really appreciate that someone took the time to tell me they liked my story and it feels like the least i can do to tell them that!

What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? hmm it is rare indeed that i write fics with unhappy endings but i did it twice for bnha so it's probably a tie between freeing icarus (x) and to the stars that burn (x)

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? this is a strange question for me to try to answer just cause like. idk i would say a solid 90% of my fics have overtly happy endings? if we're talking happiest compared to the initial vibe, i would say pink light (x) does a good job of starting off angstier and trending quickly toward a very happy ending, but that's just off the top of my head due to recency lmao

Do you get hate on fics? i have gotten hate on fics lmao i've had a handful of hate comments regarding kaeluc, one about how 'disgusting' a certain t/b dynamic was, one about a character's storyline, a few about my portrayal of a canon dynamic, and one complaining about the ship the fic was about and how it's so lame that anyone's still reading it

Do you write smut? If so, what kind? yes i absolutely do sldkjfkldsf all kinds really? pretty vanilla for the most part although i've dipped my toe into a kink or two here and there

Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? nah not really my jam tbh? too much to keep in my head at one time lmaoooo

Have you ever had a fic stolen? not to my knowledge 😬

Have you ever had a fic translated? yes!!!! lots of lovely people have translated my fics

Have you ever cowritten a fic before? one time lmao with my wife back in the day, although we never really 'finished' it (it was sort of a one-shot ongoing thing so each bit was self-contained but we didn't write more than a few of them)

What's your all-time favourite ship? i refuse to pick one skdjflkdsjf not so much in a 'i could never choose!' kind of way but more bc like. my tastes have changed and will continue to change so anything i say is just gonna be my current opinion. which would be ryusae.

What's a WIP you'd like to finish but doubt you ever will? ohhhhh this is a painful question lmaoooo what can i allow myself to let go of. i have a wip that's followed me across fandoms that i think i've accepted i won't ever finish. i am still deeply trying to keep my interest alive in my two other longfic wips to prevent their untimely demises lmao

What are your writing strengths? immersion!!! coincidentally it's also one of my fave compliments, that i was able to make something very immersive/that people couldn't put it down/etc. i think i do a good job of highlighting the pov character's thoughts, feelings, observations, etc in ways that help tie readers to the character and experience what they're experiencing

What are your writing weaknesses? banter/comedy !!!! this is really a comparative one imo cause i know i've done banter and comedy well but i've also seen it done better and i think it's an area i don't particularly excel in apart from once in a blue moon. which is fine by me!

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? i've done it on occasion! i think it can be fun and interesting especially when relevant to the story or for a good bit

First fandom you wrote for? dan and phil

Favourite fic you've ever written? me, staring forlornly at the 258 fics i've written like ummmmmmm. i am supposed to PICK? ldskfjklsdf is it cheating if i pick a fic i haven't published yet? cause i have one i started almost 2mo ago and i've literally reread it probably a solid dozen times minimum since i finished it (it's for an event otherwise i def would've posted it sooner lmao) but honestly i put my heart into so many of my fics in ways that are so meaningful at the time of my writing that it's hard to say that one fic holds the whole thing when they really all hold different pieces

technically this is a tag game so if u see it and wanna do it, please consider this me tagging u (and tag me so i can see ur answers!!!)

[fictionkinfessions]

To the Izuru Kamukura from post/710799369697411072 who used the 🌐🌸 emojis: I've wanted to reply to you since your kinfession was posted, but couldn't figure out what to say, I've figured it out now though.

Hi, it's Hajime. Not your Hajime, because I didn't inherit very many of your talents after waking up. But other than that I think our canons might've been similar. It didn't occur to me that you might have chosen to disappear, I always thought that, when I asserted my determination to wake up, I kind of killed you. And I didn't want that. I didn't want to BE you, or to lose myself, but I don't have anything against you as a person, either. People sometimes act like Kamukura is some kind of Evil Dark Mode Hinata, but just because you're not me doesn't mean you're any worse of a person than any of the rest of the remnants, and they're all my best friends in the world who I love so dearly and am so proud of. You deserved to be given the chance to learn and grow and recover just like everyone else, and I wish it had been possible for you without it jeopardizing my own life. Sometimes I see fics etc where we take turns fronting like alters in a system, and it makes me happy. But at the same time, even though I wish you could have gotten a chance, the idea still scares me, I'm not going to lie. Because if you were still around, how could I ever compare? There was so much shit to take care of, after we woke up, so much research we needed to do and upkeep and medical care. If we were sharing one body, I couldn't practically justify being around most of the time, because you would have been so much more helpful and useful to our ongoing survival and the goals of helping the rest wake up, and I'm scared I would've just been useless by comparison. But that doesn't mean I wanted you dead, ever. Ideally I would have been able to just like, clone myself and one of us could move to that body, or something, so we could both do our own thing :)

I think you could have lived and learned and made friends, I think it could've happened. Even after the researchers 'ruined' you, I think you could have recovered, I don't think a person can ever be really ruined, even if it takes years or decades for things to change, there's still hope for all of us. Obviously it's not something that really happened, but have you seen some of your interactions with people in DRS summer camp? There's some really sweet ones with Kuzuryuu, I think he (and Peko, when she eventually woke up) would especially want to be part of your life and understand and not judge you for your (our) past. And Sonia too, she understands what it's like to be defined by the expectation of perfection and not allowed to be a person, even if it was totally different from how you were tortured. She's really nice and has such a big heart, I think even if she didn't have that understanding she would want to be your friend still.

This is kinda disjointed but what I keep coming back to is this: I never considered that you might have actively chosen to disappear and let me live. I thought it was my own determination, and the hard work of the NWP developers, and the love of my friends (especially Chiaki), but it never occurred to me that you might have given me that second chance. I sincerely apologize for that. You were denied agency by so many people for so long, and here I was erasing it too. Obviously I don't know whether that happened with "my" Kamukura, but it could have, and I still want to thank you for it now, okay? Thank you for caring, and thank you for the well-wishes, but most of all thank you, thank you for letting me live. I wouldn't trade my memories of post-canon Jabberwock for anything, so thank you so, so much. I hope you're doing better now, in this life, and you can be happy.

=

[rosietrace]

🍀✨ for any of ur ocs!

Cracks knuckles I'm about to get a little silly 😈

Warning: Long ahh post

Oc ask game

▹     †𝆤࿙๋࿙࿚⊱【 ♛ 】⊰࿙࿚๋࿚𝆤† Victoria Shard, the beautiful manipulator

✑ 🍀 — What originally inspired your oc?

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I'm glad you asked! And plus, I have her (updated) inspiration board to help me out with this >:]

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Behold! Victoria Shard's inspiration board!

Now..... Onto the explanations >:)

▹     †𝆤࿙๋࿙࿚⊱【 ♛ 】⊰࿙࿚๋࿚𝆤†

[ Upper Left: The Magic Mirror ]

↳ Snow White and the seven dwarfs (1937)

Obviously, we're going to start off with her main inspiration, the Magic Mirror!

But first, I'll give a little fun fact! Victoria wasn't inspired by the Magic Mirror, at least not originally!

During her conception back in October of 2020, Victoria was originally going to be twisted from the Evil Queen's crow instead of the magic mirror

This, however, changed after realizing how much she suited the magic mirror much better (especially with the unique magic I've given her)

Anyway, back to the trivia!

I wanted to take key aspects about the mirror and find a way to put them into Vic as a character.

This ended with these characteristics about the mirror being transitioned into key pieces of Vic's personality:

Honest ➜ Blunt, Incapable of lying (but capable of bending the truth)

Ominous ➜ Intimidating

Reluctant(?) to serve the Evil Queen ➜ Obligated to follow orders from certain individuals (Her grandmother, father, Vil, etc.)

Obviously one or two of these three reasons may or may not seem far fetched, but that's mostly because of how twisted my logic can get 😭

For obvious reasons, the Magic Mirror is also incorporated into Vic's unique magic: Mirror Mirror. It allows her to persuade others into telling the truth to whatever she asks, but can also alter their psychological state(similar to how the Mirror calling Snow White fairer than the Queen essentially made her vanity/envy transition into wanting to kill Snow White out of spite)

And although I can't spoil anything about it, I will say this: Mirrors play a really big role in Vic's main story, and I had to create a new dimension for her story because of it.

▹     †𝆤࿙๋࿙࿚⊱【 ♛ 】⊰࿙࿚๋࿚𝆤†

[ Upper Middle: Kafka ]

↳ Honkai Star Rail (2023)

Okay.... It sounds odd on paper, but I have a reason for this, I swear 😭

I can't exactly spoil anything about why Kafka's one of Vic's inspirations, since it's crucial to her behavior in an unspecified main story, but I can tell you one other reason!

Her voice. More specifically, her English voice.

Cheryl Texiera, voice actress for Kafka in the English dub of Honkai Star Rail, also happens to be one of three voice actresses for Vic's EN voice.

I know, three voice actresses for one character is fucking weird, but I couldn't help myself and it was hard for me to choose between the three options chosen 😭

Really, the only thing I can say is that the calming sound of Kafka's voice fits Vic's more casual nature with those she's close with.

So, for now, that's your only answer as to why Kafka's one of her inspirations ^^;

▹     †𝆤࿙๋࿙࿚⊱【 ♛ 】⊰࿙࿚๋࿚𝆤†

[ Upper Right: Medea Solon ]

↳ Your Throne (2019/2020)

So, Medea is one of my favorite manhwa characters.... Ever. And, while reading Your Throne around the time I was redeveloping Vic, I legitimately thought: “Hey, why don't I just... Give Vic certain aspects of Medea's character?”

So I did just that, like I did with the Magic Mirror.

List of traits Medea and Vic share:

Manipulative nature

Skill in combat(More specifically, swordsmanship)

Political knowledge

Cunning and Ambitiousness

Color palette

The last one is slightly significant, as before Medea, Vic looked a lot more like.... A taller, more mature, female version of Epel with long hair. Thankfully, I didn't go through with that 😭

And, not-so fun fact: Medea's backstory was one of the inspirations for Vic's backstory ;-;

▹     †𝆤࿙๋࿙࿚⊱【 ♛ 】⊰࿙࿚๋࿚𝆤†

[ Middle Left: Arlecchino, the Knave ]

↳ Genshin Impact(2020)

This inspiration mostly came about after the Fontaine teaser: “The last feast” 😭

I couldn't help myself! Arlecchino's voice, wardrobe, and way of speech was just so..... Victoria.

It felt way too perfect to not incorporate a bit of her into Vic ^^;

Erin Yvette did a fantastic job voicing her in both the Fontaine teaser and A Winter Night's Lazzo, and I don't regret adding her as one of Vic's EN voice actresses.

With the way Arlecchino acts in both trailers, I can most definitely see Victoria acting in such a way whenever she's in a particularly more manipulative mood. More specifically, when she wants to assert control over others.

▹     †𝆤࿙๋࿙࿚⊱【 ♛ 】⊰࿙࿚๋࿚𝆤†

[ Middle Right: Raiden Ei/Shogun ]

↳ Genshin Impact(2020)

Okay, so for obvious reasons.... Raiden, more specifically the Shogun — rather than Ei —, inspired a lot of stuff for Vic.

Her color palette, her personality, way of acting, etc. And especially her voice. Miyuki Sawashiro is just- Chefs kiss

The fact that she voiced two characters who Vic was inspired by just amplified how much I don't regret making her Vic's JP voice actress 😭

I could go on and on about how Ei and Vic also share similarities, especially with Vic's softer side, but if I did? This post would be longer than originally intended 😭

▹     †𝆤࿙๋࿙࿚⊱【 ♛ 】⊰࿙࿚๋࿚𝆤†

[ Bottom Left: Momobami Kirari ]

↳ Kakegurui

It sounds far fetched like Kafka, I know, but I only really based Vic off of Kirari for two key things about the character.

Her voice

Her intelligence

Kirari is also voiced by Sawashiro, and frankly, Sawashiro's performance as Kirari and Raiden Shogun fit Vic perfectly.

Kirari has this calming, yet unsettling kind of voice that can easily put anyone on edge, and that just happened to be a voice I wanted Vic to have! And as said before, I'm never going to regret making Miyuki Sawashiro Vic's JP voice actress.

Plus, with how intelligent Kirari actually is, I can also vividly see Vic using her intelligence to play around with those around her. Especially with what I have planned for her character arc.

▹     †𝆤࿙๋࿙࿚⊱【 ♛ 】⊰࿙࿚๋࿚𝆤†

[ Bottom Middle: Keira Parvis ]

↳ I am the real one(2020/2021)

Keira, more specifically past Keira, was a major inspiration for Vic's behavior as a child. Which is to say Keira didn't have that much of a good life 😭

Desperate to please her father, Keira strived for his attention in the same way I imagine Vic doing as a child. Except in Vic's case, she's desperate to please her grandmother, rather than her father.

Keira in present day is also manipulative and intelligent in her own right, but her level of intelligence is more suitable to a much younger Victoria.

▹     †𝆤࿙๋࿙࿚⊱【 ♛ 】⊰࿙࿚๋࿚𝆤†

[ Bottom Right: Claudia Chamberlain ]

↳ I became the Male lead's rival

And finally, Claudia! Funnily enough, the character shares a name with one of Vic's servants

Unlike the other characters, I didn't take much inspiration for Vic from Claudia except for pieces of her appearance.

Personally, Claudia is how I always imagined Vic to look like with white hair. And I've been brainrotting about white haired Vic many times 😭😭

As for her behavior, Claudia doesn't seem to share many characteristics with Vic's general personality. Her softer side, maybe, but not so much with the personality we know Vic to have.

───◌┈┈───♡⃝───┈┈◌───

✑ ✨ — How did you come up with your oc's name?

Good lord, this post is going to get even longer.... Sort of.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

For reasons — Those reasons being spoilers — I can't reveal the meanings behind three of Victoria's names: Regina, Amarantha, and Annabella.

These names play a really significant part in her main story and the unspecified main story, so for now, it's best if you don't know anything behind the symbolism of those name choices.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

The name Victoria was chosen because she wanted to win. Always. Never lose, only win. But she can't always do that.

It's already been really well established how much Vic loves winning. Getting what she wants brings satisfaction to this woman's veins, and losing just takes that away from her

To Victoria, losing meant failure. And by being a failure, she's failed her family. Her title. The very thing she's worked her ass off, her whole life.

As told by Grimhilde, “Losing shows weakness, and a Shard shan't show weakness”. And Victoria still tries to go by her grandmother's word.

She's willing, and I mean willing, to do whatever she wants to get what she so desperately wants.

Even if it means hurting those around her.

➜ The name Victoria also happens to be the name of the Roman Goddess of Victory, also known as the Roman counterpart of Nike. As such, in Latin, the name translates to ‘Victory’.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

A Shard is bound to shatter. And with time, Victoria will as well.

➜ A ‘Shard’ is a broken piece of glass created after having done something to damage the glass just enough, for it to shatter — and eventually fall apart.

Obviously, with her motif of glass and mirrors, the last name was fitting for Vic. Especially with her connections to mirrors and glass in her own lore.

However, the name also serves a more symbolic purpose of portraying Victoria as a character.

She's fragile.

No matter what she does to deny it, no matter the victories, no matter the honor such victories bring her; She's still fragile. As fragile as any other mortal, despite not being one herself.

At the end of the day — what happened to Victoria only happened because Grimhilde chose to hurt her when she was only a kid.

And by hurting that little girl, she continued to hurt the young woman she so desperately wants perfection out of.

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Interpretation of meaning: ‘A broken victory’

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[struggle-but-its-all-ocean-floor]

I feel the same as you regarding Seven and the performances… I‘ve accepted it’s just not a song for me so I’m not even really disappointed anymore but I really hope I’ll be able to connect with his next single. It can do so much better, it’s a bit of a waste imo but if he’s satisfied and happy then I feel like I can’t really complain.

Scratch that ask if you already talked about it but what do you think about the similarities between Seven’s promo and Jimin’s LC? I didn’t put too much thoughts about it first but the parallels in terms of styling, photoshoot etc are quite undeniable at this point… I have a hard time thinking it wasn’t intentional, but I don’t get the point of it. Do you have any toughts or theories about it? I don’t want to fall too much into a shipper’s mindset (though I personally do think there’s something between Jk and Jimin) but I don’t see Jk just blatantly ‘copying’ Jimin or their stylists being that lazy and repeating the same style for both their solos, so I wonder if it’s something that was planned between them both? Am I reading too much into it?

Thank you for relating! He is really happy and I'm happy for him but I could be happier for myself, like other Armys are, lmao.

I only noticed the similarities in styling because Jikookers pointed it out. The song, lyrics, MV and choreo are all different, but what they do have in common is a desire to "shock" fans out of their comfort zone, and break away from the clean idol image a bit, more so in Jungkook's case.

I don't really have any theories... Jungkook and Jimin have been wearing the same brands, but Jungkook's ripped jeans at the back were worn by Suga on tour, and today V wore Acne, which is a brand Jikook have been wearing a lot. I think they all have the same stylists and access to the same clothes, so there is often an overlap. Jikook's tastes, and the images they want to project as soloists, overlap quite a bit as well, which is why they may have chosen similar outfits? But choosing some of the same clothes for their debuts is rather unheard of... I don't want to read too much into it either. On the one hand, Jimin jokes that Jungkook's his copycat and there is some truth to that - in the sense that Jimin inspires Jungkook. On the other hand, they share the same team and we don't know enough about how that team works. I'm a bit torn between thinking it was intentional in some way, because Jimin in particular is very thorough, and Jungkook was very hands on as well, and not wanting to assume too much because BTS share clothes all the time and this is all speculation. There isn't much "evidence" to support either theory? Like you, I don't want to be "delulu" nor dismiss Jikook's intentions, because I know they're both very careful about everything... Yeah, I don't really have a theory haha. I usually don't have theories about concepts and stuff.

Thanks for the ask!! Sorry I couldn't really answer your question! Maybe someone else who reads this will?

[grandhotelabyss]

speaking of Ulysses, on a semi-related note, can you recommend any novels that portray the relationship between a mother and son? Why does it seem there are fewer mother-son novels? For whatever reason, Bovary and Anna Karenina don't feel like strong examples. As I Lay Dying?

As I Lay Dying is good. I guess Sons and Lovers is the canonical example, maybe illustrating why others avoid this subject matter: the canon's incest motif, which Freud hardly invented.

The Greeks give us Oedipus and Medea, the incestuous son and the murderous mother; the Hebrews give us Sarah, Rebecca, Tamar, etc., the mothers ambitious for their sons as proxies; and Christianity, our first pass at synthesizing Athens and Jerusalem, gives us on the one hand Christ's hostility to his mother as a blockage of the universal and on the other hand the mysterious icon of the virgin mother.

So the tradition renders the whole thing difficult from the start, first of all. Then, as long as there were "separate spheres" for men and women, male writers replicated Christ's repudiation and female writers were mostly childless women. In the transition from Stephen Hero to A Portrait, Joyce excises his mother from his bildung only to have Stephen cry out in Ulysses, "No, mother. Let me be and let me live." At the other end of the century, Roth buries his mother's death, however movingly, in the first Zuckerman trilogy, while his father's death gets a whole memoir. Then this, in the second Zuckerman trilogy:

You don't have to murder your father. The world will do that for you. There are plenty of forces out to get your father. The world will take care of him, as it had indeed taken care of Mr. Silk. Who there is to murder is the mother, and that's what he saw he was doing to her, the boy who'd been loved as he'd been loved by this woman. Murdering her on behalf of his exhilarating notion of freedom! It would have been much easier without her. But only through this test can he be the man he has chosen to be, unalterably separated from what he was handed at birth, free to struggle at being free like any human being would wish to be free. To get that from life, the alternate destiny, on one's own terms, he must do what must be done.

Jesus couldn't have said it better. Except for the pointed example of Mary Shelley—and the bitterly ironic one of Charlotte Brontë, who died of morning sickness—Morrison is the first ultra-canonical female writer to have been a mother, and a mother of sons. But though Morrison wrote both the novel of maternity in the American canon and one of the best male bildungsromane, there was never a mother-son novel.

This article tries to "puncture the myth" of the childless female writer, which begins with Woolf, but its examples of female writers who had "plenty of babies" are mostly second-raters, as Woolf could have told them; Gaskell is the best they can do until the Silent Generation. The great male writers who had children, by the way, fucked their kids up pretty much to a man—even Hawthorne, by all accounts a model and devoted father with none of the problems exhibited by Dickens, Tolstoy, Joyce, Hemingway, etc.

Anyway, the thing to keep in mind about the childless writer is the allegorical significance of Homer's blindness: it means that, being blind, he could hardly have been a warrior, but he possessed the poet's second sight to grasp and capture the essence of the warrior's existence. Thus I myself write from the maternal point of view all the time.

Now that men and women no longer live in separate spheres, now that more mothers are major writers, now that fathers are expected to tend infants from birth, now that nobody has any children at all, now that universal queerness obsolesces the very word "mother," etc., the whole structure of the question may change. I am agnostic about whether the social developments of the last half-century are able to be stabilized by technology and economic growth or not; if not, then they mark the end or decadence of an imperial cycle, and we'll return to a barbarous stage when only warriors and mothers will matter at all, and nobody will do much writing, and men like me and women like Woolf will for practical purposes cease to exist, slaughtered on the rocks as useless to the tribe.

Until the grid collapses, though, here's a good idea for a contemporary narrative: a son who wants to be a great artist has a mother who is a great artist, and this in a time when male achievement per se is disparaged. In other words, the mother in the paternal role of the oedipal triangle—or both roles, I guess. Maybe I'll write it!

(It occurs to me—Mr. Rieff, if he reads this, will have to forgive me—that this is part of Sontag's story, too. Perhaps I'll put it in my play.)

[pekkhum]

This is partially an agreement, but also an extension, with my own story:

I managed to repress my nature for 37 years, partially because there were a few outlets for that energy. I hit my low when my marriage fell apart (not really a surprise, now that we each know what we were going through) and I nearly acted to stop there. Ultimately, I realized this would leave my daughter seeing that neither parent had chosen to stay with her and I wasn't having any of that, but in that decision, I never actually decided to live.

I went most of a decade in this state, basically trying to die without technically doing it, very Intentionally making choices that lead me into ever growing states of risk and legitimately daydreaming about ways to handle dangerous situations that would risk everything in a reasonable way, while making sure my kid had whatever she needed. It isn't like I never seemed to have fun, after all I wouldn't have been a good parent that way, I just made sure that I had good life insurance and correctly selected beneficiaries at all times, while slowly destroying my body.

Thanks to COVID, I wound up at home all of the time. My hair grew long and I got a thrill and the feeling of it brushing across my back, or the weight of it in the shower. My nails got longer and I decided to shape them, instead of trimming them. I had always enjoyed stopping to look at gorgeous or cute dresses, but I suddenly was struck by a sadness, knowing that the way I had treated my body, I'd never be able to wear the ones I loved... Not that I wanted to, or anything, you understand, I'm just starting to work out and eat better so that I could, okay?

It was around this stage of denial and discovery that r/egg_irl content started to hit the front page, because of a few particularly good memes, I loved them and interacted a bit, so the algorithm decided to keep sprinkling them into my feed. When they scrolled by, I would giggle and upvote and feel happy for a few moments.

Eventually, I subscribed and spent more and more time reading those, r/traaa, r/mtf, etc. and one day, I just couldn't resist responding to a comment that resonated with me. Before I knew it I was talking about my trans experience and joking and picking a name.

It was three days later that the understanding sunk from my surface thoughts and actually hit home. I had been reading on what it is to be transgender and everything kept hitting home, hard, but what finally broke down that wall was reading about internalized transphobia. Every line was familiar. Each effect was my experience. Finally, I broke down and cried wailing about how I didn't want to be trans (who wants to be hated and hunted), but once I was done, I finally felt better.

From that day forward, it has been like a future actually exists. There is a life that I actually want to live out there and I am heading toward it, in spite of the fear my society imposes on me. I actually want to live to see it!

In my case, the knowledge that transition exists did save my life and does so in a continuing manner. Not only am I finally truly alive, but I'm no longer carefully trying to accidentally die.

But, the habits aren't gone. I still barely live, much of the time, I still fear troubling others, I still fail to reach out. I still cut myself off and try to disappear into the background.

I literally discussed keeping in touch with a lovely freshly omnigendered person that I met because we got along so well and you know what: neither of us has reached out. I fear that xir likely also thinking of what a bother they must be and how she can't initiate, in case the other is just being nice. I know that's what I'm thinking.

I am getting a little better at accepting that I'm allowed to want things for myself and every now and then I convince myself that I can "waste" the money on me. It is usually clothes that manage this, unsurprisingly, but everything else tends to just fill my bookmarks.

But, I have yet to accept the idea that I deserve to exist. I'm something wrong, something unwelcome, something unlovable. It isn't that any of this is true, logically, it is that I believe it at such a deep level that my logic can't touch it. I struggle to accept an invitation to help or to shared time, because I'm clearly just a burden to the person who offered it. I wouldn't want to trouble them by taking their outstretched hand,,,

so many of the transfems i know spent their time pre-transition performing a kind of lifelong exercise in self-deprivation. the goal, for them, was to find out exactly how little a person needed to live. they starved themselves, dressed carelessly, shunned friends, and hollowed themselves out so as not to be burdens on anyone but themselves.

i see it now, too, in the girls around me. i'll ask if they want care – a home-cooked meal, relaxed company, sex without the expectation of reciprocation – and they say no, no, thank you, i don't need it; what would you like, what do you want, because in their head they're still doing that awful calculus, still training themselves to disappear in the eyes of the people around them.

i don't think i'd have died without transition – not in the conventional sense, at least – but to take that leap, i had to stop thinking of myself as a human experiment in fuel-efficient living and start nurturing the anemic, atrophied flame of desire in my heart. i had to learn to eat well, to exercise, to style myself beautiful, but harder than that, i had to learn to ask the people around me to work on my behalf in order to enrich my life and give me the things i wanted.

and i did it; i learned. and it was agony, but courage is a muscle you can train, and every day i get better at accepting gifts with the hungry gratitude i never learned in my years and years as a sad, scared, lonely boy.

so be patient with the trans girls in your life. better than that: be proactive, attentive, generous; be forceful, if you have to, and learn to distinguish real discomfort from the terrified reflex of self-deprivation that so many of us learned to rely on.

and if you are so lucky as to love a trans girl, you must insist upon her. you must insist upon her happiness, her comfort, her pleasure, and her rest, because she may still not yet know how to make those demands for herself. if you can devote any amount of energy to becoming an engine that nurtures the flame of even a single tgirl then there is a place for you in trans heaven, which as far as i'm concerned is the only one worth going to