#Frankly I was on forums at way too early an age

[youngster-monster]

i was never really on forums because young me was under the impression that forums were for Adults (my definition of adults you ask? i do not know. older teenagers???? i don’t remember) so the closest i ever got was having extensive conversations with people on google+ and youtube comment sections but GOD that really is just what’s happening here isn’t it

i’m trying to think of the most inconspicuous way to tell my sister i’m interested in playing FFXIV now because if i even Imply the reason why i know that i will NEVER live it down it will be Terrible. BUT THE ELVES!!! THE !!! THE ELVES GAME < - - - - does not know anything about final fantasy except that there are elves

it does actually look pretty fun from what little i know about it, so i’m looking forward to trying it out!! who would’ve thought that tempting me with promise of elves in ffxiv was all it takes to get me to play the game…

my siblings won’t answer my wow lore questions because, and i quote, “i literally do not know either” and it is Heartbreaking what do you MEAN you played the whole expansion start to finish and still don’t know what happened????? they’ve been playing for YEARS and i still can’t get my siblings to answer my lore questions half the time!!! i have given up…. on asking them. so now i make them listen to me rattle off the Cool Lore Facts that i spent an embarrassing amount of time reading about as penance for their lore crimes in lieu of putting them in magic jail for 10,000 years

FRIENDSHIP AND ATTENTION!!! u and me BOTH everytime i see you’ve responded to today’s behemoth ask i lose my mind abt it

NOT THE ‘HARROW ME ANYTIME’ TAG rest in pieces oh my god. partially related but i forget that friends have access to my tumblr and one time my friend mentioned a post i reblogged nd i started sweating Bullets what do you mean you saw the posts i was reblogging and by extension the book length tags i attach to them. what do you mean

my internet connection? Nonexistent. My free time? In high demand. I am literally on vacation with friends. But with god as my witness I'm GONNA be answering The Ask

the children yearn for the pen pals system

listen. I'm gonna be real with you. People don't start playing xiv for normal reasons. I think if you told your sister you're doing it for the elves she'd get it like the Heavensward expac just has that effect on people

Putting a slice of cheese under a box propped up by a stick. Pspsps come look at the elves. Don't pay attention to the emotionally devastating story beats. Look! This one is embarking on a journey of revenge where he'll have to dig two graves AND turn into the very monster he's hunting! (Shoves all the Sadness behind a curtain)

Imagine playing wow and not becoming highly Normal about the lore. Couldn't be me

Every wow playing group has the Lore Master and if you cannot find them you must Become them

The mortifying ordeal of friends notificing your blogging... I'm lucky that mine are all freaks (affectionate) so what are they gonna say huh. "I saw you at the devil's sacrament" okay goody proctor 🤨

[pseudowho]

hi mrs haitch, found your nanami donesticity series recently & spiraled down the rabbit hole of your fics. i do not regret it all; your writing is lovely. thanks for sharing them.

i wanted to ask your input (if you have any) on overcoming the feeling of not being capable enough to shoulder the responsibilities & burdens of adulthood. i grew up being left to fend for myself as a child, which kickstarted a cycle of being perceived as independent so much so that when i struggled, no one really believed me and labeled it as attention seeking behavior so i just figure things out alone. now that i’m a fully fledged adult in my 20s, i find myself being scared of not knowing things everyone should already know by now like which credit card to open, what to consider in making financial decisions, etc. & mostly i just feel small & alone to not have anyone around i can go to, things it seems like people know because someone taught them.

i hope this ask isn’t too heavy & feel free to negate it if it is. i just wanted to say before i go how much i love the community you’ve built. it makes me feel warm to read the interactions on here whether it’s you with mr haitch or your readers. reading the comments on your works always make me laugh one way or another. thank you for this space. i hope you and your family are always well. x

Hey! I'm glad you've enjoyed them, thank you so much for reading 😭💕 sorry it's taken me a few days to get to this Inbox, I've been ill!

Firstly, I'm sorry for your rough childhood. Secondly, I know the feeling very well.

But thirdly, and most importantly, in a positive instead of dismissive way, you are capable enough. You've already proven this, by coming to me with this Ask. You have thought critically about the current limitations of your abilities, identified the gaps in your knowledge, and then sought help/research. This level of critical thinking alone, marks you as capable.

Identifying yourself as 'not capable', small and alone, is important; but it's more important what you decide to do, from here. Do you remain under that umbrella, and minimise your attempts to try to learn and do new, unknown things, for fear of failure? Or do you use that critical thinking brain that you've proven to me you have, to risk 'failure' and move forwards?

Adults are never 'fully-fledged'. We are constantly growing and learning. We live in a beautiful age of knowledge, the acquisition of which is exceptionally easier than it was years ago. There are information sources out there. There absolutely are. Financial advisors post in forums and blogs. People who are years on from where you are now, offer their history as an opportunity to learn from their mistakes. I absolutely believe you can find much of the information you're looking for.

Plus, another thing you need to accept, as one who has gone through this herself, is that trying to do this without someone holding your hand is like not having a safety net. You are reliant on you. Now, I've long since given up being reliant on myself making me feel scared. Now that I've gone through what you have, made mistakes, and grown, knowing it's all down to me makes me feel powerful. Once you research, try your best, and find you're more capable than you believed, it's like a fucking superpower.

I actually tend to find that individuals who have needed to teach themselves these things, once they get through the wringer, are more tough and resourceful than their counterparts whose families have held their hand through every difficulty.

This isn't me advocating for suffering for the sake of "toughening up" ("it never did me any harm" etc etc and all that shit). Not at all. It would be a wonderful world if we all had the support we needed to feel safe early on. I don't believe that 'character building' provides justification for suffering, and anyone who believes that is a cunt, frankly.

But, in the light of the world as it is...some of us, like me and you, do not have the support, and we may suffer. It's what we choose to do with this, that makes us who we are. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, we are like teabags; we only know how strong we are, when we're placed in hot water.

What I say to my women, when they tell me they can't do it (usually while pushing a baby out), is this:

Don't get sad. Get strong.

You have a choice now, and it will define you-- you can remain under your belief that you are not capable (when I know you are), and sink. Or you can research, bother people, use your brain to learn, and make hard choices, and swim.

You have come to a brutal believer in being the best you can be. I aggressively want you to fulfil the finest parts of your personality. And I don't think you should do it without support.

I hope desperately that you find your people. If you can be brave and go forth with the knowledge that you will grow and fail at the same time, in a few years, you may well be as fucking annoying as me.

Anyway,

I could apologise for being a savagely belligerent motivator, or, I could just say.

Best of luck little one. Try so hard. I believe in you.

Love,

-- Haitch xxx

[imperiuswrecked]

Have you seen the Mark Waid Doctor Doom manifesto? Someone posted it on CBR Forums (Mark Waid's Doctor Doom Manifesto (plus extra material) (cbr.com), and I thought it was an interesting read. Some really interesting discourse in the comments below, too. Just thought you might be interested! :) <3 Love your blog, btw

Hey, thanks for the love and for the link. I did take time to read it over and I have to say this doesn't change my mind about Mark Waid as a writer. Firstly, I think he's a good writer, he's great with characters, and I enjoy most of his work. Big fan of his Wally West/The Flash run.

However.

I think Waid should stay away from writing Doom forever.

Like I'm so serious, I do not like his Doom writing and I feel his thoughts on Doom are very black and white, he sees Victor as a villain, but not like a complicated villain with shades of gray. He's stuck on the early iterations of Doom's character, and he admits further on that he sticks with what the early stuff was and imo if a writer, especially a comic writer, doesn't take into account the general sum of a character and only focuses on one era ignoring any character growth or developments then that's not a writer I want writing my favorite characters.

By the way, the truism that Victor von Doom is, despite his villainy, a noble man is absolute crap and I can point to about a thousand moments in Stan and Jack's run that bear this out. A man whose entire motivating force is jealousy is ridiculously petty, not grandly noble. Yes, Doom is REGAL, and yes, whenever possible, Doom likes to ACT as if he possesses great moral character, because to him that's what great men HAVE, and yes, we HAVE seen Doom exhibit a sense of honor from time to time— —but when I hear Doom say "it does not SUIT him to" do this-and-such, what I hear is, "it has nothing to do with my hatred for Reed Richards, so it's not worth my time." Remember, most of the reportage we've heard about what Doom will or won't do COMES. FROM. DOOM. I think "Doom the Noble" would tear the head off a newborn baby and eat it like an apple while his mother watched if it would somehow prove he were smarter than Reed.

I know Waid says he's read a lot of Doom, but that last line totally defies the fact that no, Doom would not do that. Doom literally adopts Kristoff as his ward, he's not gonna kill a baby just to spite Reed. And I absolutely hate Waid's writing of Victor and the arc where he has Victor kill Valeria for power and then wears her skin as armor. Then again, I think that if Waid wasn't so set on reinforcing his belief that Doom would do the most vile things and actually put in space to account for character growth then he would actually be a good Doom writer. Doom has a moral code and Waid ignores it.

Why has even the pre-scarred Doom always been driven to be the smartest, the most clever, the best? Look at how he grew up! Gypsies are outcasts, derided and shunned; of course Doom grew up eager to prove himself.

That's not true. Not even in in the Kirby & Lee run that Waid worships. Like literally in Fantastic Four (1961) Annual 2 we see how Victor struggles, he's not doing all that stuff to prove he's the best. He knows he's the best. He works to fight against those who have hurt his family, his people. And that I think is where Waid totally misses the mark, and it's because he restricts himself to just one version of Doom. Imagine if Magneto had been kept the same way as Kirby & Lee made him, if someone wrote Magneto that way, then wouldn't all the fans who read Magneto's growth, or Claremont's additions, be mad at a writer who only chooses to focus on an early interpretation of the character? Why does Magneto get to keep his growth but writers like Waid and Slott are so stuck on keeping Doom as a silver age villain? It makes no sense to me as a comic fan who loves comics and its characters and their stories to see them constantly try to stay true to an outdated version of a character who frankly is so much more interesting when they add the gray in that was present to begin with. Anyways not to rant on but I just pick and chose the parts of Waid's stories that I feel works and ignore what I feel doesn't fit the character. Waid isn't the end all be all of Doom's writing, he wrote one part of an ongoing saga and as someone who prefers to rationalize characters based on the sum of all their parts I just do not care about Waid's thoughts on Victor because to me he's proven time and again that he views Victor through a very narrow lens and can't comprehend that Doom is an Anti-Villain.

[ferociousconscience]

💫 8 javert, 12 simplice, 11 fauchelevent 👀🍷

i know who you are……………. hi ❤️

Original ask game post is here - Please do send me more! LM characters greatly preferred, but I'll take Anna Karenina and other such lit characters, try me!

What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

For Javert - Despise is a strong word!!! I will say that I frankly don't feel altogether too comfortable answering this question in a public forum where I have many people I esteem following me :( But I will say that Javert is sincerely the most misunderstood character in this whole fandom. Pretty much every "Javert Gripe" post I see that floats around (seemingly every week) is just stunning to me, in an "are we even reading the same book?" kind of way. On a more positive note, I have my own Javert-centric historical research meta in the oven, in the same vein as the wonderful @patron-minette 's meta posts (Hi Anna! I'm making it real!). It'll take some time to release anything-- There's much to do, much to read (de Maistre's philosophy my beloathed), much to translate (vidocq's memoirs my beloved)-- but I hope it expands upon this question in a way that both honors the character I love so much and respects the fandom that I'm a part of.

What's a headcanon you have for this character?

For Simplice - This is of no consequence to her as she is in the story, but because of her comparison to Sister Perpetua (a peasant) and the whole "gratifying in a drawing room" line, I do think that her original family comes from some minor (bought) nobility, or at least her parents had some money. Her family probably summered in the Calais region, but had too many daughters, and she was one of the younger ones… so, due to her own deep convictions, she let it all go to join the congregation in MsurM around the same age as Javert joined the service, her mid-teens. I also generally headcanon her to be the same age as Javert, early 40s (vis a vis the "She had never been young and she never seemed to grow old" line. Middle of the road.)

Would you date this character?

For Fauchelevent - No, he's not tall dark and laconic enough but I would have incredibly fond feelings for that tomcat of an old man. He's just so clever!! And funny and witty, that peasant from Picardy. I adore his mind. He'd definitely be one of those old men who I would try to set up with some lonely old woman I know, just for their mutual enrichment.

[lenniedoesthings]

A drunken analysis of fandoms I did on a long flight in 4 thousand words or less

Introduction

Please let me set the scene. It's past midnight, an obscene hour if anyone's asking. There's a young lady, around the age of 16 to 24, in the corner of her room, which is decked out with posters, with the lights off, lit up only by the light of her bedside lamp. She probably has school or responsibilities next morning, but she's not showing signs of going to bed. She's perched at the edge of her spinny chair, eyes eagerly running over the glowing words on her computer reflecting off her face. This could've been 2006, or 2014, or 2018. Frankly, this set-up is applicable as long as the internet existed. There's a lot of pages the girl might be going on, many appropriate and common to the times. Possibly early internet forums, if it was 2006, young and innocent and ready to find friends from afar. Maybe Tumblr, the popular social website of young, introverted girls in 2014, ready to share to the world what was happening in their lives, a breakup or a struggle with themselves or simply to gush over something they liked. And if it was 2018, it could been any social media website you can think of. Truthfully, I can't imagine a girl on a PC in 2018 instead of a phone, so there's the flaw in my set-up.

But no matter what, people nowadays aged 30 and below most probably have a memory of eagerly browsing the internet dead in the night, searching for friends within their loved specific niche that they couldn't find in their day to day life's social circle. But the internet isn't what I'm to talk about today, but one specific niche that most, if not all people on the internet have encountered -- fanatic domains, or fandoms, this gigantic monster of conflicting opinions and shared loves. You might be shaking your head at me, this uncultured swine, don't I know about fan gatherings of the past? People in a web of letters ready to discuss their favorite character of The Hobbit? Yes, very much so, and very much not so. The way the internet is made makes everything available for everyone to share, read, and reshare, making loving something incredibly easy and information quick to consume. In the past, if you needed to find fellow lovers of The Hobbit, you would need to hopefully bump into someone at the store who shared the same interest, who'd introduce you to this other friend and another friend until you've got this group of friends all loving the same book, and all waiting outside eagerly for the release of The Lord of the Rings, buzzing with ideas Tolkien might have for his next book.

There are many more stories to tell of fans of the time, some more vivid and most probably more accurate than my retelling, but there is one constant between them, you needed to be at the right place, at the right time, or you needed to know the right people. Nowadays, however, you could just type 'Hobbit' into whichever browser you're using, and there would be years upon years of information and entertainment for you to enjoy. A precise analysis of the High Elves and their motives along with counter arguments on why they're the best? Look no further than fan sites that pop up, with people dedicated to dissecting the book in detail. An imaginary situation of Thorin and Bilbo meeting in a coffee shop in New York? Well, there are way too many websites for that, early blogs and independent websites or large commercial monsters like Fanfiction.net or Wattpad. Simply a place to gush about Legolas? Forums or places like Reddit and Tumblr will find you a lots of fellow fangirls with a never ending abundance of fan art and reader-inserts. A comparison between the movies and the book? Tumblr has that too, and you'd find fourteen year old girls doing the most precise analysis that's lacking in their English essays. (This is slightly hypocritical coming from a teenage girl analyzing fandoms instead of the themes of Frankenstein)

I could go on and on forever, and this isn't even a fandom I'm involved in. In better words, there's no lack of fellow fans on the internet, too many, if some people would say. Especially with popular books and big fandoms, this gives birth to many subcultures simply of that particular book, along with terminology that seeps into every young girl's vocabulary. It's really beautiful in the way you can observe online fandoms and their evolve from a tiny, niche corner of the World Wide Web to this day's monster of so many hearts poured out, seeping into every corner of the internet, with references even in the wildest and most different of scenarios. In this essay I will attempt to analyze one of the biggest online cultures, it's subcultures and their online culture, and one funny thing called fanfiction, along with guiding you on the path of every Tumblr girl's road of discovery and growth with their introduction to the internet world.

Fanfiction

Fanfiction is such a large sprawling web of interconnected night owls there's a whole subculture just talking about the unique experience of reading fanfiction. Born from early glitchy fanpages to scattered stories around long lost websites such as LiveJournal and short scribbled stories on DeviantArt to the big three nowadays, Wattpad for the teenage girls, Fanfiction.net with the memories and for the classic and old fandoms, lastly Archive of our own with everyone and everything in the most beautiful and horrifying sense. Its something everyone that's been on the internet for as early as fifteen years ago would probably know about. Some with disdain, others with morbid curiosity, and the rest with fond memories. The reputation that fanficition is simply badly written porn isn't wrong per se, just look at any Ao3 (Archive of our own) page, but there's so much more.

People look down on it, call the writers 'unoriginal' and 'illiterate' and just silly 'fourteen year old crazy fangirls'. But it's not, at least, not completely. It's a safe space for people who just want to take these funny little characters of their youth and put them in these either torturous or cute situtations, mostly romantic and homosexual, but also experimental and new and beautiful, with some amazing works of literature coupled with many people finding their love for writing and starting their journey with a 5 + 1 story of their favorite two characters. Fanficiton also varies a lot, from a love letter to the original authors or a beautifully written protest of the story direction, or even just using premade and well-loved characters to tell a personal struggle in different words.

Heck, some of nowaday's popular and maybe slightly morbid terms come from fanfiction, with a simple battle of tongues for dominance or a soft epilogue with your love to being tired of choosing and always having to choose and never getting to choose you. Yes, there's a lot of horrible fanfiction, don't we all know it, and most of fanfiction is unreadable, unless you're really desperate, but whenever you find a gem of a find, with proper punctuation and a well thought out plot that just nails all the tropes which makes you cry and laugh with a pairing you've never even considered before and it's long and unproblematic enough for a reread, those moments are just pure joy, one that you'd never expirence without even a month deep in fanfiction.

One primary counter argument is that these words people smush together of someone else's characters aren't real literature simply because it isn't original, but if we're going there, why aren't we shaming Shakespeare? How dare he write these great fanfictions of Greek myths and publish them, making them some of the most legendary literature of all time. If your whole criticism of fanfiction that it isn't original, I would like you to reevaluate your books, for there are so many popular stories that aren't 'original', and if your definition of fanfiction is a rewrite of a book or story built upon another, there are so many pieces of English literature you would not enjoy.

But the main thing you're here for is to understand what this subculture actually is, so let me get back on topic. Let's start with something simple, give me a show of hands if your first fanfic, (short for fanfiction) was from either the Harry Potter books, the MCU, or the pioneer, the television series Supernatural. Supernatural is a series familiar to me not for it's television merits, having never watched the show, but its impact on this internet subculture. That fandom gave birth fanfiction's many terminologies, short forms, and something that has been splayed on newspages recently along with the rise of AI, many sub-sub-cultures and stories, most famously ones like the Omegaverse (Don't Google this and don't look at the tags) and Coffee shop AUs. Maybe as someone completely separated to this culture you were following along, just barely, but now you're confused, what's an AU? Well, dear reader, that is but one of the many inventive terminologies of this subculture. Let's take a look at this seemingly gibberish sentence: "hp hp/dm otp coffee shop au ewe slow burn meet-cute enemies to lovers"

I hope I have evoked some long forgotten Wattpad Drarry memories for some. The way fanfiction terminology has evolved to suit the needs of readers is a little like a developing language, with constantly being fine tuned until it reaches the perfect sweet spot, but still forever evolving to keep up with the times and climate. Like how early writers needed to specify platonic relationships from romantic ones and thus standardizing the sign & and / respectively. Or how writers loved the characters but craved more for them, thus creating popular AUs or Alternate Universes for them, like ones which are set in the modern day, others without powers, and some in simply a coffee shop meet-cute. Some writers going further with these characters leading to crossovers, letting Hermione volunteer as tribute and Katniss fight along Hawkeye.

As fanfictions evolved to suit the author's desires, readers invented more and more terms for them to group their favorite mush of words, leading to newbies usually browsing some Ao3 veteran's Tumblr blog for correct fanfiction etiquette along with a dictionary of the terminology. By the way, the Drarry story was: "A Harry Potter slash (usually meaning a homosexual romantic relationship, coming from the / sign) fanfic with Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, my One True Pairing, where they meet in an Alternate Universe in a coffee shop after the Battle of Hogwarts, ignoring the epilogue and Rowling's ending, and a slow, gradual romance with them going from enemies to lovers (this is very self explanatory).

Ships

Relationships are always a thing in books and movies, especially romantic ones, but there’s a lot more to it for the fans once the book is over. There are the canon relationships, the ones stipulated by the writers and are thus, canon, and the non-canon relationships, or canon relationships, which are created by fans and do not exist in the canon storyline. They are similar to headcanons but are more prevalent, with many fanfictions centered around the fan created relationship.These can also be called ‘ships’. We’re going to focus on non-canon relationships first. They are usually created by fans who like a specific pair of characters together, which aren’t mentioned in a relationship in the books or movies, and put them together used in a series of headcanons and fanficitions. Ships are very prevalent in fandoms, even when the character is said to be in a canon relationship with another character.

One very popular ship on Archive of our own is Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter with more than 56 thousand stories, despite both of them having a heterosexual relationship already established in canon. One thing that fans use to address or name a ship, both canon or fanon, instead of just saying “X character and Y character” are ship names, using a portmanteau, smushing two words together to make a new word. This originated from the Supernatural ship of Dean Winchester and Castiel, taking the beginning of Dean’s name and the ending of Castiel’s to form their ship name, Destiel. Some popular portmanteau ship names are Drarry and Romione. Another type of ship names, instead of being a portmanteau of their names, but a combination of something associated with them. Take the popular fanon ship of Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, their most common ship name is WolfStar, due to their names having similar ending, it is hard to create portmanteau of their names, and so fans used things associated with them, Remus’ lycanthropy giving “Wolf” to the name, and Sirius being named after a star, giving “Star” to the name. Most fandoms have popular ships, with fandoms of their own of those ships, but there are two types of ships that fall outside of this category: rarepairs and crackships.

Rarepairs are usually a pairing that isn’t popular and usually with a small following or of the author’s creation, such as Cho Chang and Dudley Dursley in Harry Potter. This is a viable ship, able to exist in the confines of canon and would generally be a healthy relationship. However, due to both these character having minor roles and never being seen interacting, this is a rarepair with only one or two headcanons and fanficitions, usually without a following, but just visitors of an author’s fanfiction. Crackships are usually a pairing of two characters that shouldn’t be paired and wouldn’t be in a romantic relationship in a normal setting, such as Bellatrix Lestange and Hermione Granger, based on canon evidence of the two character, it wouldn’t be a healthy or viable relationship, due to their age-gap, moral difference, general unhingeness of Bellatrix Lestrange, and other canon reasons. Crackships usually appear in many forms, such as situations where they act out of character or with different upbringing, humorous situations, one-shots, and straight-up porn at times. Crackships don’t usually appear in headcanon, but rather in fanfictions written solely for the crackships.

One completely separate category of ships are reader-inserts, these appear in text posts, headcanons, and fanficitions. Usually, these are written in second-person with the sole or at least main purpose of the fanfiction is for the reader to engage in a relationship with a specific character, platonic or romantic. Writers use words such as Y/N, meaning ‘your name’, and different things such as YHC (your hair color), or YLN (your last name) to make the reader insert themselves in the story by using second-person and making the character as much as a blank slate for reader to add on to their personalities as much as they want.

One glaring downside, or upside, of the entire shipping part of a fandom are the disagreements. With the inclusion of popular fanon ships, with sometimes the fanon ships gaining much more popularity than the canon ship (such as Marvel’s canon relationship of Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter often disregarded in favor of other ships such as Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes or Steve Rogers and Tony Stark), it leads to many arguments to much ship is the “superior” one, with many apologists going to great lengths to defend their favorite pairing. A very well-known ship disagreements are between the canon ship Romione (Ron and Hermione) and the fanon ship Dramione (Draco and Hermione), leading to many arguments on internet forums and long posts with people either defending their favored ship or undermining the other, with some even bashing the opposite character (Ron or Draco).

Headcanons

Another thing about fandoms which is very similar to fanfictions but in a much simpler way is headcanons. Something that deviates from canon (the established storyline and characters) or something we just don't know about. One example could be 'I headcanon Harry Potter as bisexual' This could be possible, as even though he is only mentioned as in relationships with female characters, his sexuality is never mentioned, and it is often mentioned in the Harry Potter books with Harry complimenting many male character's looks, leaving it in the realm of possibility. Another slightly different kind is 'I headcanon muggleborn students constantly making pop culture references' This isn't in line with canon, as though the story is told from Harry's perspective, a wide spread thing like that would've been mentioned, but instead, there's never a major transitional struggle with muggleborns, even with Harry, who was raised by muggles, showing that most muggle borns adopt their magical heritage and birthright in favor over their mundane one.

Headcanons are fun things to simply state in a Tumblr text post or a conversation between friends, not needing the brainpower to curate a whole story yet letting you to express your love and creativity along with wants for a series and character. Usually, however, some headcanons become so widespread they are adopted as canon, or something mentioned so many times in fanfic that people write it down along with character characterizations. Such as in the MCU, there is always a running mention of Clint climbing in the vents, even though this is never mentioned in either the movies or comics, it in actuality being a headcanon which it's lines with canon has become so blurred it's common appearance in fanfictions can lead me to believe most of the community has shelved this fan made characteristic of Clint along with his canon characteristics. Another notable mention is Remus' love for chocolate in Harry Potter. In the actual books, there are only a few lines of Remus offering chocolate to Harry, and all of them are in medicinal situations, as shown in one line with Madame Pomfrey. However, this is a favored headcanon, this characteristic adopted as canon and appearing in other headcanons and most, if not all, Marauder-era fanfictions. Most readers would be hard pressed to believe JK Rowling didn't intend Remus Lupin to be this cocoa lover.

Another thing that runs along headcanons, cut from the same cloth but different in patterns, are common misunderstandings or assumptions of a character, some incorrectly taken as canon, such as Draco's middle name, which is never mentioned, not in the books nor one of Rowling's websites, but many fans believe it to be Lucius due to a parallel with Harry's middle name and early writers using it as placement and other fanfiction writers adopting the name as the medium. Other things that are similar to this in fashion but are very obviously incorrect facts to canon, but so often used in fan conversations that it may as well be, but are still not confused as canon, such as the widespread use of 'Dan' and 'Emma' to name Hermione's parents, and the belief that the Marauders along with Dorcas, Lily, Mary, and Marlene were one big friend group.

Sub-fandoms

Harry Potter is the best example to use when describing a flourishing online fandom. It has been almost twenty years when the books have first been published, leaving it with ample time to grow a fandom on all platforms, for blogs, fanfictions, analysis, edits, and so much more. Along with movies and a fantasical universe, its a perfect breeding ground for excited fangirls and intricate dynamics. Its such a large fandom that within it, there are unique fandoms of things within the fandom, with fanfictions of fanfictions, edits of edits.There are many things in the Harry Potter fandom that are simply fan made things, but have large renown, as much as the original like the Potter Puppet Pals, an ironic comedy series which lines are often paraphrased for fun.

A great example of this is the 500 thousand word monstrosity on Archive of our own called All The Young Dudes, a slow burn fanfic of the Marauders' time at school. This is such a big part of the Harry Potter fandom that it is a fandom of it's own, with many fanfictions of ATYD, Pinterest pages, text posts, headcanons, and ships set in the ATYD version of Harry Potter yet not following the ATYD version of canon. (For example, the slash ship between Regulus Black and James Potter) It's a big fandom, and one thing that attracted many others from the main Harry Potter fandom was a fanmade movie trailer for ATYD using existing clips of Hollywood movies, but pieced together making it completely believable to exist together in a universe, much moreso a movie. You wouldn't believe Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man has a place in the Harry Potter fandom aside from crossover fanfiction, but one look at that fanmade movie trailer on YouTube will have you absolutely convinced that our favorite web-slinger could also definitely be our furry little problem. There are edits upon edits of the Spider-Man movie on social media platforms such as Tik Tok that are coupled with the right music and excerpts from the ATYD fanfiction that really makes you ask, is there actually a movie of the Marauders? Even Andrew Garfield himself has confirmed his knowledge and love for being a fancasted young Remus Lupin, showing the reach of this niche community within another niche online community within a fandom. You know what they say, never underestimate young girls in love.

References

Another thing highly prevalent in fandoms are specific words that only fans of that specific book or movie series understand what it's referring to, leading it to a running gag joke or a communal nostalgic memory. You only have to type 'calmly' after any Harry Potter text post and there's sure to be many people with laughing emojis and agreements. If you're out of the loop, its a comparison between the book and the movie of the Goblet of Fire in that scene when Dumbledore confronts Harry after his name pops out of the goblet. In the books Dumbledore asks Harry if he put his name in calmly to show his collected demeanor, but in the movies, Dumbledore runs across the room, grabs Harry and nearly yells in his face, leading this to be a running gag in the fandom, usually in the comment section of text post, to demonstrate in an alternate reality that the person has yelled it instead. In truth, and to quote, running gags like these are simply for "shits and giggles", but they are part of an integral communal joy that links the fans and their internet presence together.

Another similar but not completely is the line "Bucky?" commented in almost any Captain America posts or anything related in the MCU, sometimes used to reminisce past times or old fan memory, but usually just to prompt another commenter to reply with "Who the hell is Bucky?", paraphrasing the quote from the second Captain America movie when Steve Rogers meets his old friend Bucky Barnes again seventy years in the future, but in a situation where they are at each other's throats, with Bucky having no recollection of the other. Unlike 'calmly', which can only be used in the Harry Potter fandom for prevalence and is used for laughs as a commentary, the line from Captain America bears enough unique references to be used in scenarios which fans want to comment on outside the Marvel fandom, and can also be used as a calling for a fellow fan's reply.

Ending

We come to the end of this not-so-brief introduction of the world of online fanatic domains. In truth, this essay barely scratches the surface of fandoms. It is not only a place where people talk about their favorite fictional world, but a congregation of people along with our all unique personalities, then all contributing to a communal love, giving birth to a unique language, culture, and reference for online fans to find other online fans in real life. We currently exist in a turbulent world, ever changing, with people around us undermining us at each and every turn, physical or virtual, trying to tear us down, but the existence of online fandoms and communities are a place to let you know, “Yes, your love of this is valid. No, it isn’t something to hide, come share it with us!” Fandoms have led to a birth of many aspiring writers, artists, coders, publicists, and so many more. Though many may dismiss fanatic domains as simply a bunch of “crazed 14 year old fangirls wasting their time” there’s so much more to it, and if you have a book or movie or you’re interested in, I highly recommend you search it up, find a few Tumblr blogs to follow, maybe take a dip in fanficitions, create a few headcanons of your own, and who knows, it might bring you somewhere unexpected, and even if it doesn’t, you’ll have a fun time, I promise.

By lenniedoesthings on tumblr

[fiercynn]

okay. i am someone who is actually very interested in maintaining intergenerational connections in fandom and being friends with and in community with fans younger than me, including teenagers. i was a teen in fandom who had many, many positive friendships with adults in fandom – including people i'm still friends with years later. i also, as an adult now in my thirties, feel lucky enough to be friends with fans much younger than me, including a few teens, and i honestly would love to be friends with more teens and younger fans. these are the reasons why i care about this topic.

and i think there’s a tendency to immediately come to posts like this with some defensiveness and reactiveness, because of the way these kinds of conversations have been super fraught before. but fostering intergenerational community in fandom is going to require us to pause sometimes and be generous in our readings of what people are saying or asking for. and, frankly, while i think that should come from all sides, i think there is a responsibility on us adults to play a bigger part in actively creating spaces that younger fans want to be in, because we are, you know, adults.

so i want to use this to try and take a step back and actually look at what op was saying, carefully, and then look at the way other adults have responded to it. if you’re interested in these goals too, please read my whole post before reacting!

here's the my first question i have when seeing posts like this: is there a legitimate concern or point here? and i think there is.

that legitimate concern is: “teenagers don’t always know when they are talking to adults on the internet, and that can cause problems, so they would like to know when that is happening.”

note that op:

did not say that adults and teens shouldn’t interact online

did not say that teens don’t want to talk to adults at all

did not offer any specific reasons why they think that teens might want to know that they are talking to adults online

did not name what they think are the problems that can arise

so let's start by talking about that legitimate concern.

firstly, kids in general have access to fewer and fewer spaces where they can interact with each other without being under the eye of adults. in many countries, including the u.s., kids and teens are losing those spaces offline – there are fewer public places where kids can hang out, for free, without being subjected to anti-loitering laws or age-based curfews (by which i mean state-imposed curfews, not ones imposed by parents or guardians). and this is a recent development – this wasn’t true, at least in the u.s., for those of us who got to be kids pre-2000s.

the internet landscape has also drastically changed in this regard. @saathi1013 talks a lot about opt-in vs. opt-out digital architecture, which i find very relevant here. essentially, early internet spaces were "opt-in" for the kind of content you saw and the people you interacted with - you had to seek out mailing lists, or forums, or blogs, or livejournal communities, etc etc and join them intentionally. if you were a teen, you obviously still did not always know whether you were interacting with adults – either if they didn’t share that information, or if they were lying – but you had far more tools to set your boundaries intentionally. for instance, when i was a teen on livejournal, i had adults in fandom following me, but i also could selectively lock my posts, and even custom-lock them so that, say, only my friends from school could see a specific post. i also rarely had to see posts from people that i didn’t know or hadn’t actively sought out, unless i had specifically opted into to following a community or listserv where i didn’t know everyone.

now, we are in a majority "opt-out" world where most social media apps want you to see as much content as possible, and you have to set boundaries with increasingly fewer tools to do so. we don’t even have the option to set accounts to private on many sites, let alone custom-lock individual posts. blocking and muting tools are paltry and do not work well on many sites. that's not the fault of the teens.

so teens not only have a harder time simply finding ways to intentionally interact with other teens, but they are also in an internet landscape where they increasingly do not know who they are talking to. now i want to remind folks that that this has, technically, always been true: there have always been adults who don’t want to share much about their age online, and of course malicious actors who may lie about it.

but in our current internet landscape, that’s not all that teens might have to worry about. they might be drawn into interactions with adults that happen entirely by accident, on both sides. how many times have people gotten outraged about an opinion they’ve seen online, that has been shared onto their feeds, and then gone to op’s page and realized oh this is a fourteen-year-old? yeah. this is not an unheard-of issue.

so. why might teens want to know that they are interacting with adults online?

they might just want to interact with other teens specifically. like. did you always want to hang out with adults when you were a teen? i feel silly even trying to list out reasons why this might be the case! they also might be okay with hanging out with adults, but simply want to know that those people are adults. the friendships that i had with adults when i was a teen in fandom involved both of us knowing that. it's hard for me to imagine that those friendships would have grown as strong as they did if we hadn't known.

also – and please don’t write me off immediately here – there is also the undeniable fact that teens can be harmed by adults. like. it is not a conservative or fascist position to be worried about the harms that teens can face from adults online!

and those, again, can be intentional or unintentional from the adults’ end of things, including smaller harms that can still be super impactful for teens. but we simply cannot take the idea that teens can be hurt by adults – including the potential for sexual harassment and abuse by those adults – as an inherently fascist position.

it is, in fact, the exact opposite, since fascists and conservatives work to uphold rape culture, white supremacy, and cisheteropatriarchy, all of which allow sexual harassment and abuse of young people to thrive unchallenged. conservatives and fascists generally bring up harm to teens as a talking point when it is useful for their rhetoric, not as a true concern, which is why many of them will be fine with child marriage and abuse by spouses even as they spew homophobic and transphobic rhetoric about queer and trans people being groomers.

again, the problem of malicious actors does exist, so even if all adults without bad intentions shared their ages online, teens would still be at risk. but the risk might be lower from those unintentional harms, like potentially being dogpiled for having a bad opinion. or even vice versa: a teen could accidentally flirt with an adult online because they didn’t know their age, leading to discomfort for both of them!

okay, so we’ve established some reasons why the underlying concern op was raising is legitimate. now let’s look at the way that others have responded in the reblogs.

the instinctive reaction that many people seem to have is to assume that op is coming to this from a conservative/fascist rhetoric and intent. i sort of understand where this is coming from: op’s use of the word “lured” seems to imply that they think adults are intentionally trying to hide their ages to draw teens in, and “insidious” could be referring to something like “queer and trans adults are inherently groomers” rhetoric. op also said they think it's "weird" when people over 20 don't put list their ages. and like i said, conversations about adults and teens interacting can be really fraught, so i understand why people would jump to this conclusion and be upset by it.

but – without knowing anything else about op other than what they’ve posted – there is actually nothing to indicate that this is what they meant with their post. the “luring” could be referring to things like teens getting caught up in discussions that get them dogpiled for their opinions. the “insidious” problems could be any of the ones i've listed above. them saying people are "weird" for not listing ages could just be because they believe the underlying concern they've named is legitimate, and they are not aware of the reasons why people might not want to follow it, since op doesn't actually say why they think it's weird.

i want to note, too, that op is not forcing anyone to do anything. op is not even advocating for policies on these platforms that would require adults to put their ages in their bios! op is literally asking for people to do this. they even said please! i guess you could decide that op saying that they think it is "weird" if people don't do this is op putting pressure on us, but let's be clear, op's still not forcing anything, they are just stating their opinion.

and yet, people in the reblogs are accusing op of:

thinking that “everyone over 20 is inherently predatory and creepy towards children”

being a “fed”

“coerc[ing]” people into giving up their privacy on social media

encouraging people to “ignore[e their] own privacy boundaries and discomfort”

“think-of-the-children fearmongering”

thinking that adults who don’t list their ages are pedophiles

“telling people if you don’t do what I tell you, you might be a threat to the safety of our community”

being similar to u.s. president george w. "dubya" bush, a republican, conservative, and in my opinion pretty evil person

saying that adults and younger people shouldn’t interact in fandom spaces

saying that adults and younger people interacting in fandom spaces in itself leads to insidious things

having a “conservative agenda”

“destroying the links between generations”

“do[ing] the masters’ work”

i didn’t even go into the tags or check for other reblogs besides the ones i see here. but let’s be clear. i don’t know what op thinks, obviously, or what they have done or said outside of this post. but in this post, they didn’t do or say any of the things that people just accused them of.

now. there are legitimate concerns that people name in the reblogs as well! one is that listing your age in your bio may not be safe or feel safe even for adults, because it is sharing more of yourself on the internet. another is the fact that truly malicious actors will of course be able to get around what op is asking for.

so with all that in mind, here is how i wish people had responded to op’s post.

firstly, by not immediately assuming that it is a conservative psyop; or that op, by making a request, is trying to impose something on people that they don’t want to do; or that fulfilling the request will destroy intergenerational connections.

secondly, by acknowledging that there is a legitimate concern in op’s post, and that it is in the interest of people who want intergenerational fandom community to try and address that concern.

thirdly, by pointing out legitimate concerns for why op’s proposed solution might not work for everyone, while also acknowledging that it is still not an inherently bad request – there are people who do feel comfortable sharing their ages online, and just because it won’t catch the intentionally malicious actors doesn’t mean it couldn’t be useful for a lot of the unintentional issues and potential harms that i mentioned above.

and fourthly, by proposing alternate solutions that could still get at the legitimate concern op raised, while also being more comfortable for people who don’t like op’s specific request. just a couple ideas off the top of my head: people could put “adult” in their bios without listing their actual ages. people could write and pin a post about their approach to intergenerational connections in fandom - for instance, something like “i am an adult but welcome friendships with people younger than me", or, "i choose not to share my age online but i welcome interactions with people of any age", etc etc, so that teens could then choose whether or not to engage with them. i'm sure there are other ideas that we could all brainstorm together.

finally, i want to name some potential impacts of the way people have reacted to this post.

now, imagine that op is actually everything that people have accused them of – that they are conservative, that their intentions are bad, that they want to impose their request on everyone. that would suck, obviously. but it wouldn’t actually change my reaction to this post.

because the fact that people immediately turned on their post and jumped to these conclusions without any evidence means that a teen who sees this – or anyone else, frankly! – could very well have the reaction, “wow. these adults immediately dismissed a legitimate concern and decided that it was a conservative psyop without any evidence. they could do the same if i raise this concern.”

i’m going to assume good intentions for everyone who has reblogged this, and assume that everyone here genuinely wants to foster and improve connections between teens and adults in fandom and to protect both teens and adults from harm.

but this is not the way to do it. this is not the way to show teens that we respect them and their boundaries, that we care about their wellbeing, and that we would be good friends to them if they chose to connect with us. and if we truly care about intergenerational fannish community, we need to show them that, and live up to it.

@ my fellow adults who use tumblr a lot:

can you PLEASE put your age in your about/sidebar and make sure it’s accessible on mobile. imo if you’re an adult esp 20+ it’s a little weird that you wouldn’t have your age readily available on your blog. if you’re reading this now and you don’t have your age listed, please rectify that. i feel like teenagers get lured into talking to adults in fandom/lgbt spaces that they may not have intentionally sought out because they think they’re talking to other teenagers, and this can lead to a lot of other – much more insidious –problems

[fff777]

what are some of your favourite exo ships & why? it’s always interesting to hear other people’s perspectives ^-^

Thanks for the ask! I’m not sure if this was related to the ask game I reblogged recently but in any case, thank you for the opportunity to ramble haha. I am a filthy multishipper, so this list is going to be quite long.

Yixing and Junmyeon are my favourite members, so a lot of my pairings include them.

Xiuho: Junmyeon is high strung and he takes his responsibility very seriously, and Minseok is the only person in Exo who he can trust to take the reins, because Minseok is his only hyung in the group. Though Minseok is technically Junmyeon’s hyung, I remember reading that Junmyeon is quite close with a lot of people born in 1990, so the formalities are often dropped. So there’s this weird relationship between Junmyeon and Minseok where sometimes Junmyeon is Minseok’s leader, sometimes they act like same age friends, and sometimes Minseok is Junmyeon’s hyung. But overall, I think Junmyeon feels a little more casual with Minseok because there are times when he can trust Minseok to take the lead as the hyung. Conclusion: Junmyeon gets to be baby or bro around Minseok instead of having to be leader all the time. And because Minseok is not only hyung but chill hyung, he calms Junmyeon down sometimes.

Seho: In the early days of Exo, Junmyeon was trying really hard to be the cool hyung, being nice to them, paying for their food, giving them affection, etc. He just wanted so badly for them to like him and think he was cool. I’m obsessed with the idea that Sehun has always quietly acknowledged all that Junmyeon did for him. Their relationship has always been Junmyeon looking out for Sehun and protecting him, and Sehun accepting that care. Even now, their relationship is like this, because Sehun has always been receptive to Junmyeon’s love. Conclusion: Junmyeon just wanted to be liked, and Sehun is saying “I see everything that you have done, and indeed I like you.” I feel so overcome with emotion whenever Sehun shows an ounce of love or affection for Junmyeon, because it’s usually Junmyeon who’s projecting his love for Sehun to the world.

Subaek: Both Junmyeon and Baekhyun have very tight idol personas. When they are on screen, they are ON. While they are both acting as idols, they are also aware that the other is also acting as an idol. It’s a double layer of understanding that intrigues me. When Baekhyun is being annoying and Suho is playing along with him, Suho knows that Baekhyun is just playing it up for the camera, and Baekhyun knows that Suho is too. I am very intrigued about what they’re like behind the scenes. It’s very much theoretical, but shipping has never been about canon. Conclusion: I’m intrigued by what Subaek are like when they are unmasked and no longer need to perform. How do they convince each other that it’s okay to let down their guard around each other?

Kyungmyeon: As I mentioned, Junmyeon just wants the dongsaengs to think he’s cool, but Kyungsoo is literally the toughest customer on the planet. I get the sense that he barely reacts to Junmyeon’s attempts at caring for him. There are so many clips of Junmyeon trying to play with Kyungsoo and Kyungsoo’s having none of it. So what happens when one day, Kyungsoo finally reacts to Junmyeon’s attempts at befriending him? Conclusion: Junmyeon keeps giving and giving and now he gets to receive.

Sulay: I feel like Junmyeon and Yixing feel truly relaxed with each other because they are close in age. I think Junmyeon takes age hierarchies seriously (though it gets blurry with the 90ers). I also think he is relaxed with Yixing because Yixing himself is a chill guy. Yixing takes music and dancing seriously, and he’s whatever about everything else. So Yixing balances Junmyeon out. There has also unfortunately been a distance between Yixing and the other Exos, since he’s the only Chinese member, but I get the sense that Junmyeon makes an effort to reach out to Yixing, and he is receptive to that, he sees that Junmyeon is trying to be nice to him, and he appreciates it and returns it in his own Yixing way. Conclusion: Junmyeon has no chill about everything, whereas Yixing is chill about everything except for music and dance, and they balance each other out. Also they are very soft with each other and their clumsy flirting makes me squeal. I love how Yixing went from calling him Suho-hyung to Junmyeon-ah~

Chanxing: They were the first Yixing ship I really obsessed over, and frankly I think my initial obsession with them was kind of shallow. Basically, it was just because I liked Yixing and I thought Chanyeol was hot lmfao. But there is for sure a charm to their relationship. Like I said, there is a bit a difference between Yixing and the Korean members. Chanyeol can bridge that gap through being a jokester. Yixing plays along because he’s a simple guy, he’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. If Chanyeol is extending funtimes to him, he will accept, even if he doesn’t totally get it. Conclusion: I like them because Chanyeol will use his jokey jokes to get Yixing to loosen up.

Kaixing: I only got into them recently, so my thoughts on them aren’t fully formed. Jongin is very sensitive to others. Yixing is quiet and doesn’t really talk much about himself. So I love the idea of Jongin sensing that Yixing isn’t saying something, and if it’s something bad, he’ll try to reach out and help him. Conclusion: Jongin is a good boy and notices when Yixing is not alright uwu. Flashbacks to that fanmeet in 2015 where Yixing was crying and had to turn his chair away and Jongin stroked his back (with Junmyeon T_T)

Baekchen: Baekhyun and Jongdae are very different kinds of celebrities. Baekhyun fully leans into the fanservice whereas Jongdae didn’t even want to be an idol to begin with. But it interests me how they make an exception for each other. Jongdae will indulge Baekhyun and Baekhyun will tone himself down a bit to match Jongdae. Even though I think Baekhyun plays up his hyper personality for his idol persona, I think that it comes from some truth, that in real life he is probably a relatively peppy and optimistic guy, whereas Jongdae is more of the typical conservative man. I think their shared history is fun too. how they auditioned together and made it to Exo together. It’s nowhere near a childhood friends story, but they have a little bit of past history that propelled them through their early years, especially since they had such a short training period. Conclusion: I’m interested in how two such different people can fit together so well. We saw in the early years of Exo how affectionate they were with one another. It’s changed as they’ve grown older, but I think their feelings are sitll there.

I’m going to throw in some ex-member pairings because I do quite like them.

Laytao: WYF and Lu Han left Exo because they didn’t want to be there anymore, okay, fine. But Yixing and Zitao wanted to stay. From what I’ve read, Zitao had only left because he was forced to work through his injury and his dad told him to leave. But I’m just imagining what it must’ve been like during OT10 era. Did Yixing and Zitao support each other? Yixing is a calm guy, and Zitao is the opposite, very fiery and dramatic. How do they fit together? Though Yixing is calm, he isn’t totally clueless, and Zitao is actually rather sensitive. Conclusion: How do they support each other when they feel they’ve been abandoned? They are very different, but they share something in common in a land where they’re the outsiders. Does that mean anything to them?

Kailu: Admittedly, the support for this ship is weak, but I read a few fics with this pairing and I am a fan. Basically, in Kailu fics, I think they’re more of a power couple. Lu Han is good looking and smart, and Jongin is confident and striking. I was digging through old forum discussions the other day, and I actually think this ship came about because fans thought they looked good together, despite their lack of canon interactions.

(I also used to be a big fan of Fanxing. For obvious reasons, I am not into them anymore. Admitedly the fictional version of WYF was very interesting to read about.)

There are also a LOT of ships that I am cool with, such as Layhan, Sukai, Sekai, and Hunlay.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading!

[shakks]

Thoughts

Happy New Years, I suppose. I’ve got a lot on my mind that I need to say, but I’ve been reluctant to do so. I’ll ramble off-the-cuff for a little bit (a LOT) down below if anyone can be bothered to listen. Just some random unedited and unformatted thoughts about what I’m doing with myself and trying to figure out how life works.

...Seriously, it’s a massive post. Don’t strain yourself if you’d rather not.

I don’t like to speak often, or give excuses. I prefer to let my work do the talking. Actions speak louder than words, right?

It’s funny, I did a search through my blog and found a post where I had celebrated hitting 200 followers two years ago. Curious, I checked my follower count now... And it’s at 206. I think it’s more than safe to say that I’m beyond stagnation. Still, I’m here to see this adventure through to the end, one way or another, regardless of how long it takes.

Actions speak louder than words... I’m sure my inaction is speaking volumes. I’ve always made it a point not to apologize when an update is missed or when I make a mistake. I have a bad habit of holding myself to unrealistic standards, and not only would I be apologizing with every update I make, I would draw attention to issues that few people would have noticed in the first place (such as me forgetting to draw Phobia’s hair in one of the panels from earlier this month). The LuFa from ten years ago would have dropped everything to fix it, and then would have combed through every other panel, worrying about every other possible thing that could have gone wrong. At this point the LuFa from today is just glad that there’s an update to post.

When I made the post last week about not being able to update, it was because just as my Christmas holidays were starting, I hurt my back. I’m not sure how (I’m guessing in my sleep or something), but I’m not able to sit at my computer for more than an hour without taking many breaks. I had intended to continue updating all the way through the holidays, but I ended up spending more time than usual resting in bed and attempting to stretch, walk, exercise, or try anything to lessen the pain. This has killed any creative drive that I had, and rather than power through it, I thought it would be better to stop trying to grind myself against it and take it easy so that I can hit the ground running. I’m starting to feel better now and hope I will be able to get back to the updates as early as next week.

This raises the question of my update schedule. Why the long pauses, and why the sudden rush of updates in December? The pauses are simple, I keep trying to outdo myself with each update. Even though I’m trying to step away from full Flash animations, I still catch myself leaning towards them. It’s not the animations themselves - I’ve caught myself designing overelaborate gifs when just a couple static images would do fine. I let myself get stuck in this spiral where I would constantly build myself up and then tear myself back down. I would get caught up in it and let entire years pass me in the blink of an eye...

I’m not old, but I feel old. I still have most of my life ahead of me, but it frankly isn’t much longer until I hit middle-age and that is no longer the case. As a child, my parents pushed me to try as hard as I can. They’re the type who want their kid to go to university, become a doctor, and make a boatload of money. I gave them a hard no on the doctor path, so they sent me to university to become an engineer instead. I went through it and got the sheet of paper, but never really figured out what to do with it. I ended up moving across the country and settling for a job that by all metrics I should be overqualified for, but I’m not too sure that I really care. I’m making enough money to live quite comfortably, but I’m still living alone, and don’t really have anything else to my name. It was always hammered into me to be successful, but I never really understood what being successful meant. Looking at other people from the outside, I can make a few guesses that success generally means owning your own place, having a family, and lots of money to make sure you’re still able to support it all. I don’t really know about all of that. I just wanted to be left alone. Mission accomplished, but I still have to figure out what I’m supposed to do with myself...

I used to run forum adventures even before I was aware of MSPA or Problem Sleuth. I remember how happy I made my peers, and how much joy they got from engaging. I started Waterworks in my second year of university, when I had moved into student housing and finally had that loneliness that I had been craving for most of my life. It was strange, but that first year of Waterworks... I don’t think I had ever felt more fulfilled. The act of telling a story to anyone who was willing to listen; it truly felt like this could be something that I could see myself doing for the rest of my life. Not as a career, but purely because of its ability to engage people and make them feel things out of the ordinary. I truly want to keep doing this, even after Waterworks is finished. I can never give a straight answer when people ask me if I’m happy, but to be frank, I don’t think I’ve ever been happier after posting an update, engaging with readers, and furthering the story. It’s a little unorthodox for a life path, but the more time I spend on this planet leaves me even more uncertain of everything. I’m going to stick to what I know.

So, aside from getting stuck in a self-esteem spiral, what prompted the surge of updates this month? Well, I had a little bit of a reality check. The company that I work for was acquired by another company. Normally I wouldn’t have cared, but this has happened several times now. In my short tenure at this company, I’ve seen it grow from a small local operation to become part of a massive conglomerate, and this latest acquisition really had me questioning what I was doing with my life and what I should truly value. My job technically requires me to help people, so I go about my day believing that I’m doing just that - It’s not about the money, or the benefits... I work because it helps others. Meanwhile, board members and investors who I’ve never met - people who control the entire direction of the company and its employee’s livelihoods - are passing it and other companies amongst themselves as if they were trading cards. This forced me to stop and take a look at what I was really doing. I thought I was helping people, but really I’m just making numbers go up and down for the people upstairs. My coworkers are only doing it to take the paycheck and feed their families. I’ve been placing a disproportionate amount of value into my day job, a place where people who I’ve never met could cut me loose in the blink of an eye just because I didn’t make the right numbers go high enough.

I’m not quitting or anything, it’s a great place to work, but it got me thinking about what it means for someone to value something. Bizarrely, my thoughts turned back to MSPA, and what happened to Homestuck. I’m not clear who owns which rights to the adventure, and I’m not saying that you shouldn’t profit off your own creation... but I DO remember when the MSPA forums were taken down, seemingly without reason, and we were all cut loose by someone upstairs, be it knowingly or not. The forums were down for many months, and now a bare bones version of the site that it used to be is up, managed by a publishing company. Thinking about all those posts that were lost still hurts a little bit.

The company I work for being acquired had some eerie parallels to not just Homestuck’s forum situation, but a couple of other projects and franchises that have grown too big and have had their creators cast their fans to the wayside... If I ever manage to rebuild my reputation, I don’t ever want to let anything like that ever happen to anything I make. If Waterworks truly matters to me, then I need to act like it.

[likeabxrdinflight]

Honestly, It's kinda seems weird for me to join ATLA fandom after 15 years. I'm mean, I already watch this show, but It was like 10 years ago, when I was 8 or 9 years old. And as a child, I didn't get an opportunity to watch this show completely, so I don't remember some moments, when I was rewatching the series. Like, the fight between Katara and Pakku, Iroh's story about how Zuko gets his scar, damn I didn't even remember the Agni Kai between Zuko and Azula.

Now, I'm 18. So I don't know, It's just kinda feels like I've missed a lot of stuff. I wish I had join this fandom earlier.

The fandom rebirth has been an interesting thing to watch as someone who was there pretty much from the beginning of the original fandom- when the show first came out in 2005 I was in middle school, but I didn’t really get super involved in the online world until around 07/08, by which time I was in high school. I can tell you a little bit about what it was like, because it was a very different environment back then. You definitely missed a lot of content, but much of it is still there if you really wanna go digging for it. What’s really changed, I think, is the experience. I don’t know how interested you are in fandom history, but the ATLA fandom has a very interesting one. 

For starters, the web was a lot less regulated than it is today (and a lot less commercialized, frankly). Fandom congregated in forums mainly, or on sites like deviantart and fanfiction.net. It was even possible to form community on youtube back in those days, as it was a lot easier for some nobody teenager to throw up an AMV that would get hundreds or thousands of hits. The algorithm back then was much, much different than what you see now, and channels had comments sections and inboxes to go to. And one of the biggest ATLA websites was avatarspirit.net, which had a collection of screencaps, transcripts, and news sources, but also hosted some of the biggest forums at the time. 

So no tumblr, no discord servers, even twitter wasn’t really a thing back then. It was sort of the wild west, in a sense, because the internet was still relatively new. The generation who built the ATLA fandom were not true digital natives the way kids are now- we grew up alongside the internet, it aged with us, rather than being something already around that we grew into. So there was a feeling of “anything goes,” this not helped by the fact that 90% of the ATLA fandom were teenagers anyways.

Because of this, the atmosphere of fandom was quite different back then. Shipping wars were definitely a thing, I’m sure you’ve heard the legend of Kataang vs. Zutara- that’s arguably the go to example of what a ship war even is, and it could be vicious. You almost had to pick a side to be involved with the ATLA fandom at all, it was that pervasive. LGBT ships existed (the most popular being Tyzula and Jetko), but were not a prominent part of the fandom- anything that wasn’t the two big ones were smaller ships like Tokka, Taang, Maiko, and a handful of more obscure ships like Jetara or Sokkla. The ships that are popular today really weren’t back then- Zukka certainly existed but it wasn’t really on the greater fandom radar. 

The discourse was different too. Fandom wasn’t really tied to activism back in the 2000s the way it is now, no one was really talking about shipping in the context of how problematic or non-problematic something was. Certainly there was some discourse along those lines, but not like you see today. I see a lot of newer discourse now about Zutara being racist, for example, that just wasn’t prominent in the early days. Age gap ships also used to be very popular in the old days. Toph and Sokka used to be a pretty big ship that’s all but disappeared in the modern fandom climate, where any hint of an age gap gets people pretty up in arms. Abuse discourse was a lot less complex back then too, for good or ill. I’ve certainly read some Zutara fics in my time that, were they published today, easily would have gotten the authors accused of abuse apologism. 

And I think that’s what stands out to me a lot. When I was growing up, nobody really cared how toxic a relationship was or wasn’t, there was no emphasis on how “pure” or “wholesome” a ship was. And I actually do think that was a direct response to the American culture of the time, which was much more socially conservative (remember this is all happening during the late Bush years). Back then, it was considered progressive to push boundaries like that, to try and write “taboo” ships. It was a rebellion against against the “compassionate conservative” narrative that dominated the social attitudes of the Bush era. Most of the early ATLA fandom were teenagers. We were all rebelling in our own ways against our parents and against the authority of the time.

So for example, Zutara fics that portrayed Zuko as a legitimate villain were actually pretty popular. Some of the most popular tropes featured Zuko capturing Katara and falling in love with her while she was a prisoner. The ship was seen as kind of dark, and that was sexy to people (many of these older fics have aged poorly in the Trump era). Zuko also wasn’t held up as this “Pure Good Boi” that he is now- the myth that Zuko’s Redemption Arc has become has really changed how people see his character. But back then, he was the Edgy Bad Boy for two and a half seasons before finally turning full Good. 

This was also coming off the great Livejournal Strikethrough of 07, in which a lot of fics were taken down from that platform due to “inappropriate sexual content.” This was widely seen amongst fandoms as censorship, and AO3 began to grow in popularity in the aftermath (though ff.net was still the dominant fanfiction site for several more years.) So there was also a feeling of rebellion against that, too. By and large, It was seen as transgressive and edgy to write darker stuff, and in a pre-game of thrones world that saw people literally burning Harry Potter books for being “satanic”, edgy was largely considered a good thing.

It really cannot be overstated how much game of thrones completely altered the way we view fiction, but...that’s another post.

And finally, this was an era that was very...heterosexual. People actually felt the need to put disclaimers on queer fics like “boyxboy/girlxgirl DON’T LIKE DON’T READ NO FLAMES”. We mock those kind of disclaimers now, because they look silly in hindsight, but people really did get hate comments back in the day for writing any queer ships, whether they were “healthy” or not. Literally just existing as a queer person was transgressive in 2005. It doesn’t feel that long ago, but in 2005 only two states had legalized gay marriage, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was still the military policy, it was legal to discriminate against LGBT people in most if not all work places, and public approval for same-sex marriage was hovering around 40%, maybe. There were zero canonical queer characters in American children’s animation. It wasn’t that long ago, really, but it was a different time.

All this to say, things have changed a lot. But if there was ever a time to dive into the ATLA fandom, now is it- content is being created again, people are re-engaging with the series and looking at it from a more modern lens. The fandom olds are still here, but there’s always room for younger, newer fans. If there wasn’t, the fandom would eventually die out, and no one wants that. So if you feel weird about diving into it now, don’t- there’s honestly never been a better time with the Netflix resurgence. 

[aflyingcontradiction]

The Magnus Archives Relisten: Episode 65 - Binary

Tessa: I suppose it isn’t language, not really, because, because language as we use it is about as far from digital as you can get.

I think this was the point at which I first had to start pausing the episode with some regularity because my partner had developed a case of chronic sneer face and I was kinda more interested in the exact reason than in an unbroken listening experience.

Tessa: The way people talk about it, it’s like you have to think you’re saying that our mind is everything we perceive, everything we are. That means you can never know when your grasp might be slipping. I’m not convinced that’s it, though. Or maybe deep down somewhere inside, you understand what’s happening to you and – no. I am, I don’t know which scares me more.

People weren't entirely sure what the Entity involved with this statement was, apparently, and I obviously wasn't thinking about it at the time of my first listen 'cause Smirke's list hadn't actually been introduced yet, but now this intro just SCREAMS Spiral. Of course, there are also strong elements of the Eye, with Tessa being forced to watch Sergey's pain.

Jon: Statement of Tessa Winters, regarding a strange computer program she downloaded from the Deep Web three months ago. Is that accurate? Tessa: Well, first off, I didn’t find it on “the Deep Web” – god, it’s like talking to my grandpa!

Jeez, rude much? Jon's in - what - his early 30s? (Mind, I too was thinking of him as older than that until his actual age was confirmed, though nowhere near grandpa age. He just reads as a lot older than he actually is. And Martin reads as a lot younger, so - not to open a can of worms here - but I'm really surprised I haven't come across 'age gap' discourse with regard to JonMartin - I mean, there's no actual significant age gap, if any, but that usually doesn't stop the discourse. Oh well, I also stay out of the main tag, mostly, so there's that.)

But then the responses start to break down, become more sinister, and keep referring to how much pain Sergey is in. Eventually, the only response the bot gives you is screaming and pleas to be released. The idea is that the chat bot is Sergey Ushanka’s mind, and he doesn’t like being in a computer nearly as much as he’d hoped. If it’s well-executed, it can be genuinely quite unsettling. - Statement of Tessa Winters

Oh, I can imagine that! This reminds me of some weird flash games I played as a teenager actually.

So, when I got a notification from the bot group I’m part of, and it was just a link to a file named your “Ushanka’s Despair.exe”, I didn’t hesitate.

And this is where even I started scoffing. WHO JUST DOWNLOADS AND OPENS A RANDOM EXE FILE POSTED BY SOME RANDO ON A FORUM? Like, at least mention that you had a VM set up or something!

One of them read “helphelphelp”, all run together, and another, “it peels my mind like knives.

Tessa's right, this is fucking unsettling.

It was only at that point that the possibility of malware really occurred to me.

Yeah, nah, sorry, but you don't set up your statement giver as some computer wiz, have her download and open a random exe file from a forum and then have her go "Whoopsidoodle, didn't think of malware" when her computer starts acting weird. My suspension of disbelief only goes so far.

Tessa: Yeah, I figured. I just saw your post and thought, why not? And it does feel good to talk about it. You know?

Oh god, she says this and sounds so relieved and then we learn what happens to all the people who give their statements directly to Jon and this is so PAINFUL in hindsight!

Tim: Oh, sorry didn’t mean to disturb you while you were being suspicious. Jon: It's fine. Tim: No, no, I’ll catch you when you’re not scheming.

Pfffft! Tim certainly doesn't feel he needs to hide his opinions anymore!

Tim: You’ve spent a month staring at that footage.

It's sometimes hard for me to remember that the statements don't happen on - like - consecutive days. This is a pretty elegant way of letting the listener know how much time has actually passed without being too expositional about it.

Tim: No, no, you listen for once. I was fine in research. Happy. Then you asked me to be transferred here...

Huh, Jon asked specifically for Tim to be transferred to the archive? Do we know why that is?

Tim: And the worst thing, the actual worst thing, is that no one here has my back, with any of it! Elias doesn’t care, Martin just wants a tea party, and Sasha – and you –

Oh, that's interesting, the way he breaks off when he says "and Sasha". What exactly has Not!Sasha been doing to fuck with Tim's mind?

My impression of this episode

My first listen was somewhat marred by my partner, who has been neckdeep in philosophy of mind and computational linguistics for years and has OPINIONS, scoffing endlessly at the clumsy intro and general set-up of this episode. Quite frankly, I wasn't super-impressed by the intro either and wouldn't have been if I had listened alone. But the episode does have some genuinely unsettling moments and really raw lines. And the supplemental is absolutely excellent, so much character development for Tim (we've been focusing so much on Jon's PTSD - I, at least, briefly forgot that Tim ALSO got wormed). So much raw emotion. And plot development, too, re: The Magnus Institute and the way it binds people. And the voice acting in the supplemental is just really, really good.

Favourite quotes

The angles cut me when I try to think.

[the-great-tiger-of-mumbai]

To the individual who sent me Anon Asks but requested your message be kept private: no worries, pal. I'll just give you a generally vague response because the details you gave me were also rather unspecified, but I can really tell you're anxious and I don't want you to leave my blog with that dark cloud over your head. So here are my words of hopeful comfort.

When I say "childish drama", I mean drama among young people with little experience and thus nothing to draw on how to respond, thus adding onto the situation with perhaps more bad decisions. In this case, I really AM too old for it... not because I'm better than you (because I'm not), but because it's the same story I'm all too familiar with and I can't give it the response I would if I was at that age again. Fandom trends change and evolve, but at their core, toxicity and madness were always there from the very beginning. As much as the fandom scene in the early 2000s was very different from today, it was only different because of the technology available at the time--slower internet, dial-up, no smart phones, crude coding in fan sites, forums, etc. But things like ship wars, headcanon conflicts, character hate, and all that? Old as time itself. I can't begin to tell you how bad the ship wars of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was like. Or the Fox/Fara vs Fox/Krystal conflict back in the day. And while I was not a part of the Avatar: The Last Airbender and Harry Potter fandoms at the time, boy howdy, they were legendary enough for me to know OF them. So when I see similar dramas in, let's say, Steven Universe, Undertale, Among Us, or whatnot, as much as the fandoms are newer, the DRAMA isn't. If anything, the drama has been amplified because of the accessibility of the social media and people who don't know how to properly socialize and keep fiction separate from reality. 2021 is not the same as 2001.

With all this said, I frankly have no idea what the drama you're a part of actually is--my observations were on multiple platforms between multiple users, and for all I know, I could be conflating several dramas between different cliques as one and the same. Again--I'm not an active part of the fandom anymore, so I don't know who are the who's-who of today, just vague ideas of what memes are most popular. And from what I've seen, once again, it's not anything I'm new to. Accusations of whitewashing Little Mac. Pairing any adult with Little Mac. Pairing Don Flamenco with anyone who isn't Carmen. Pairing the boxers at all. Etc, etc. As I was digging into Tumblr, deviantART, and Instagram to find out what this spicy drama is, so much of it was deleted that I had no idea what even happened, so all I COULD form an opinion of is the old stuff I'm exposed to already. For all I know, the drama I saw may not be yours. And it may actually be childish, as in puerile and trivial. You know, the kind adults should know better not to engage in but still do.

I joke about enjoying drama mostly because I'm a wrinkly old coot who would prefer to laugh instead of cry. But if actual people got hurt--if actual harassment and death threats are being thrown about--then it stops being funny. I don't like reputation smearing as much as anyone does. One of the worst fandom experiences I've had here was when a friend was accused for being racist when she did Animal Crossing interpretations of the boxers and used a gorilla for Mr. Sandman, and being young and not American, thus unaware of the implications of such a depiction. It could have been a situation that can be easily deflated by a gentle talk about why drawing Sandman as a simian is inappropriate and the artwork changed, but no, their reputation was dragged through the mud despite never displaying any actual racism in their interactions and content before. I hated it, and I will never forget it. But that was long ago and I doubt the Tumblr fans of today would even know I'm talking about. They've grown up. I've grown up. We know how to deal with this sort of drama now. But not everyone does, can, or cares to. And you know what? I hope to give you solace by letting you know you are not alone and you do not, at all, deserve the harassment that came your way. Regardless of what happened that brought it on, you are a valid human being deserving of kindness and compassion as any other human being does.

If you ever feel the need to talk to a grizzled veteran of fandom drama, I'm always about. I may not be that active, but I'm on Discord daily--I'm just not a chatterbox and I may be slow in responding because I’m a working adult. Don’t take my silence as snubbing you--I’m naturally quiet even among my family and close friends. But as you can see with my last blog posts or so, when I do have something to say, I can say a lot. I just kindly ask folks to be patient with me.

[xenoredux]

The Legend of Silver Fang - Episode 2: The Invasion

If you haven’t read episode 1 yet, you can do so here.

As mentioned before, the major story beats and overarching plot are the same. This is written under the supposition that, in fantasy land, this is a mini series with episodes that run about 2 hours in length each.

Some things to be aware of going in:

This story is violent as shit!!! CONTENT WARNING FOR: Animal and human injuries, firearms, other weapons, animal death, and just a whole lotta spilled blood. Basically if any form of violence upsets you, it’d be a good idea not to read ahead

I was trying to achieve a decent adaptation that combines the strongest elements of the anime and manga. It will not be precisely like either and will occasionally totally deviate from both

This isn’t meant to be “better” then the canon. It’s just the way I’d go about rewriting the Akakabuto arc if I had that level of ungodly power lol

Character designs made to represent several mentioned characters can be found here and here. Others will be left up to the reader’s interpretation. A link to the next episode will also be provided at the end. If a link isn’t available, the next episode just hasn’t been posted yet!

HAVE FUN READING OR ELSE!!!

Everyone has just recovered from Daisuke's nasty fall when Gohei has a fall of his own. The old man's antics (and his drinking too lbr) have finally caught up to him, and he collapses in the snow. Before he slips away, Gohei's mind is filled not with the hurried voices of those around him but with images of Gin.

He imagines Gin fully grown, a silver clone of his father. Imaginary Gin is leaping across a gorge like he did while bird hunting, and once again he falls. Except this time as he falls he morphs into Riki, and a trail of blood follows him during his descent into the void below.

Gohei's eyes snap open, and he's greeted with the electric hum of hospital overhead lights. He's greeted by not just the harsh white walls and flurescent lighting, but by Daisuke and Gin, who Gohei realizes has grown substantially. Daisuke explains that the old timer bit shit and has been in a short coma, but he's under the care of Dr. Hidetoshi now. As if summoned, Hidetoshi enters the room, reassured Gohei that he'll be overseeing his care for the next few months, and allows the three the privacy he'd initially interrupted.

Gohei pouts in the way only elderly men can at the knowledge that he won't be able to haul ass outta here while flipping off the doctors again. He's too weak to get out of bed now. Daisuke promises him that he'll be taking Gin's training into his own hands.

Oldie McGee appreciatively places his hand on Daisuke's shoulder, then on Gin's head. He looks down at the dog, relieved to see he's still got silver brindle fur instead of the red from his dream. Gin licks his hand affectionately.

Daisuke is just about to leave and take Gin home when he notices something out of the corner of his eye. He turns a corner to find Hidetoshi's indoor archery range, cementing just how much disposable income the good doctor has. Hidetoshi fires an arrow right in the middle of the target across the room. The customized red, purple, and blue tail of the arrow bobs rapidly as it strikes the back wall.

Daisuke gapes in amazement. Hidetoshi laughs and tells the kid not to underestimate how powerful a bow can be. Daisuke enthusiastically grabs for the bow, and Hidetoshi allows him to, but soon the child finds he doesn't have enough arm strength to so much as pull the arrow back.

Daisuke is disheartened, but to make up for his abysmal performance, Hidetoshi says he'd like to show him something. He allows Daisuke and Gin into his office, which contains a multitude of taxidermied animals, photos of the man's hunting trips across the Western world, and a couple of dog beds. One of those beds contains John, and he smugly rises to meet everyone. John smirks as Gin stares at the photos of John adorning the walls, all of which showcase the dog sitting or lying beside a dead animal twice his size.

Hidetoshi elaborates on the adventures he's had with John, many of which he used a bow during. His face then falls as he explains something a lot less riveting: Gohei's meatsuit is too fucked for him to return to his old life. He'll never hunt again. He wouldn't be able to handle the physical strain. He will never get to kill Akakabuto.

Daisuke and Gin leave the hospital. Daisuke is struck with an existential crisis about what meaning Gohei's life will have now and how he'll never get to avenge Riki's death. Gin whines supportively, watching as Hidetoshi and John enter their car and leave. As soon as they're out of sight, Gin runs back into the archery range and snags up Hidetoshi's bow. His intention may have been to play fetch, or it may have been to stop the kid from crying, but Daisuke takes this as a sign that Gin and he will simply have to kill Akakabastard themselves.

For the next few months, Daisuke and Gin both work hella hard to improve their physical prowess. Daisuke jumps rope, goes for runs, lifts weights, and probably punches rocks or whatever it is body builders do. Meanwhile, Gin joins him on runs and, in his own time, makes an honest effort to leap across the rooftops of houses as if they were his mortal enemy: cliffs. The two boys do everything to get ripped shy of frequenting body builder forums and subreddits, and that's just because the internet isn't a thing yet.

The two have made amazing strides since they began their regimens. Daisuke has arms freaky large for a kid his age, and Gin, now just over a year old, has the most profound dog pecs anyone who hasn't experienced Ginga has ever seen. It's a good thing, too, because they'll need the strength. Though Akakabuto never truly rests, he's not the only thing frequenting the forests now. Winter will soon be over, which means that hibernation for the other bears will be over too.

One day Diasuke comes to Hidetoshi requesting to use his bow. Amused, Hidetoshi allows it. Daisuke finally manages to pull the arrow back and let 'er rip, hitting the target dead on. Hidetoshi is stunned. He knew Daisuke was tryna get beefed up, but he didn't expect the boy's self discipline to get him this far. He praises the boy for his achievement, and so does Gin. Gin and Daisuke have become inseparable outside of their individual training regimines, cementing their brohood more then ever before.

As Daisuke and Gin are walking home, they're met with a surprise. It's Gohei! The stubborn cuss has once again decided he's tired of waiting around inactive, and he commands Gin to come with him and hunt bears. But the ancient dude can barely chuff out the last few words before he collapses to his knees both real and artificial. He topples over, out cold.

Daisuke rushes to his side and tells Gin to retrieve Hidetoshi. Gin  understands because frankly he was gonna do that anyway, and he takes off like a rocket (or should I say a shooting star?) to find Doc. As Gin books it, Daisuke does the weirdest flex of all by lifting the old man unassisted.

Daisuke manages to carry Gohei halfway to the hospital when Gin arrives back with Hidetoshi. After some running around in a fuss, Doctor x Hunter has Gohei settled back into his own bed. The old man is murmuring something to himself about Akakabuto, but nobody pays it much mind. Hidetoshi thanks Daisuke for his help and allows him to go home - he'll stay beside the wacky ole spitfire tonight to make sure he doesn't get up to his old tricks again.

As Daisuke and Gin leave, Daisuke decides he's had enough. Tomorrow he and Gin are going into the forest and they're not coming back out until Akakabuto is Akakadead, Bro. Gin appreciates the conviction in the young man's voice, but shit dude, you sure?

Tomorrow arrives, as it usually does. Gin and Daisuke depart super early in the morning so the parentals don't notice. They only stop to borrow Hidetoshi's bow, taking care not to attract any attention. They've just entered the woods when their first roadblock presents itself.

The bridge across the river has been busted up. The heavy snow has begun melting into the now overflowing river beneath it, and the raging current finally did the shitty wooden walkway in. Now the two will have to go upstream to cross. Before they do, Gin pauses and snarls at something across the way. Daisuke notices several dark masses moving through the underbrush.

It's a mother bear and her two cubs, and it's instantly clear who their father is. Each twin bearbabe has a streak of dark, shiny red fur running from the top of its head to the tip of its tail. Daisuke is certain the family is taking a field trip to Daddy Bear's territory, so he and Gin follow the bears alongside the stream as they make their way to the pass.

Having risen only a little later then Daisuke, Hidetoshi is having a lark of his own. He, John, and a few of his friends are all packed into his Jeep and heading into the forest. This trip isn't for pleasure, though. It seems as if some of Hidetoshi's friends' livestock has been mauled to death and stolen, and nobody wants to stand by and let that happen.

The men come across the same thing the two kiddos did, the busted up bridge, and groan in frustration. However, just before they can start heading to the other pass, Hidetoshi pulls out a rope and passes it to John.

He begins giving John commands in English, commands which I wish I could understand, and John jumps over the stream and secures the rope around a tree. Hidetoshi also uses this show-offy moment to teach us all a valuable lesson in being overprepared by producing a pulley from out his Jeep. The other men are having a hard time knowing what to do with this information, but at least they don't have to hike up a different trail.

A ways away, Daisuke and Gin have finally located Akakabuto's territory. They know this to be true because they've found a freshly plopped pile of bear poop. Daisuke has never been more afraid of a pile of shit before, his knees quaking and his breath quickening at the sight.

He decides now is the time to take a breather, so he and Gin settle beside a tree to have breakfast. But Daisuke's anxiety has given him a gut ache, so he just passes the dog his food. Gin tries to enjoy the rice when a torrent of noisy crows descends upon the trees. The birds caw incessently, their calls blaring in Daisuke's overwhelmed noggin. Some of them even begin to land and try to steal from a snarling Gin.

Daisuke's overstimulation has reached its peak, and in an effort to get the flying vagrants to fuck off, he takes out the bow and fires a warning shot at one of the birds. Only it's less a warning shot and more a bullseye.

The arrow plows right through the bird's greedy guts, and though it does scatter the other bothersome thieves, it wasn't what Daisuke had in mind. He's never killed before, and he gets a hard hitting rush of guilt, shame, and astonishment in the pit of his gut. He comes to realize he'll have to make peace with this feeling if he's to slay Akakabuto, so he swallows his emotions and tells Gin to hurry up. They've got a bear to kill.

The two trod through the forest before a drop of moisture hits Gin's nose. Then one hits Daisuke right in the eye (he totally wasn't crying you guys). Daisuke looks up. Just their luck - it's started to rain. Perturbed, Daisuke says he and Gin should find some shelter. Gin begins looking for a cave to hide in, and he has the good fortune of finding one. Psych, did I say good fortune? I meant THERE IS A BEAR IN THE CAVE.

Daisuke almost pees his pants at the sight of the thing. It's not nearly as big as Akakabuto, but it IS massive, and it looks pretty peeved. Gin's prey drive kicks into high gear and he starts wailing on the bear, snapping at its face and leaping around its body to land a few good bites. He's actually managing very well for himself despite his lack of hands-on experience.

Daisuke, on the other hand, ain't doing so hot, having collapsed into a hyperventilating mess beside a fallen tree. Who knew life and death situations would be so scary?!

Elsewhere, Hidetoshi's squad have found one of the missing horses. They're surprised to find it alive... kinda, sorta, for a moment. When they get a better peek at it through the foliage, they see it's barely breathing, mostly because its neck is being chomped on by a bear.

This bear is not Akakabuto, but unlike Daisuke's find, it's almost his size. It takes one look at the men before turning tail and galloping away, leaving the corpse of the horse behind. The men ready their guns while Hidetoshi commands John to tail behind the animal, which the dog does without a moment's hesitation.

The battle between Gin and the bear rages on. In between his blows, Gin repeatedly looks over his shoulder at Daisuke, urging him to join the fray. Daisuke is too busy going into panic induced shock to help, so Gin is forced to keep up the brawl alone. He throws himself into the bear repeatedly, snapping and snarling and trying to draw blood, but the animal is too much for him to handle alone.

With a well placed swipe of a gargantuan paw, Gin is sent whimpering to the forest floor. A rivulet of blood follows him in his descent, the sight of which finally snaps Daisuke out of his stupor. Lightening strikes somewhere nearby. The bear's roars are indistinguishable from the thunder above. Gin stumbles weakly to his feet, blood dribbling down his face as it mixes with the falling rain. Four deep, long gashes span the length of Gin's forehead.

Daisuke stops wallowing in his own fear long enough to begin thinking of how to save the dog from the fiend that just performed minor surgery on his scalp. Through tears and sobs, Daisuke tries to remember what Gohei once told him about bear hunting. The center line. He needs to hit the center line.

While Daisuke is having a callback/bruh moment, Gin is still getting his ass handed to him. The bear sweeps all four of his legs and sends him flying once more, the poor poochie yelping miserably. Gin crumples to the ground, the blood from his mauled forehead running into his eyes. The landscape goes red as Gin sees Daisuke finally take some goddamn initiative and aim the bow at the bear's face. Daisuke doesn't manage to hit the illusive center line, but he does take out the animal's right eye.

The bear reels back in pain, even more furious then its default state of being. It swipes at Daisuke instead of Gin for a change, but Gin recovers from his bloody stupor and drags Daisuke out of harm's way. When the two are a safe distance from the bear, Daisuke realizes that he'd dropped the bow, and now it's too close to the pissed off wildlife to retrieve.

Gin doesn't take notice to this because all his brainpower is focused on getting back to ass kicking. The dog returns to baiting the bear just long enough for Daisuke to snatch up the bow and let loose one, then another, then another arrow into the animal's face.

One arrow pierces a nearby tree. Another enters the bear's left nostril, drawing more blood. The last lodges itself dead center in the animal's throat. The bear topples backwards, scratching wildly at the projectiles stuck in its skin, which causes the arrow in its throat to shoot sideward and pierce its jugular vein. As the two youngsters watch, the bear collapses to the ground and bleeds to death.

Daisuke practically passes out beside the fallen tree, and Gin howls victoriously into the rainy night sky. At that moment, the clouds depart and the rain ceases.

Gin licks Daisuke's face to rouse him. Daisuke hugs Gin, crying out happily at their amazing victory. An unfamiliar sound joins in with Daisuke's whoops of jubilation, and the two lads turn to the forgotten cave. Within it they see two sets of shining eyes gazing back at them. Two small shadows rush from the cave's entrance and half run, half waddle to the fallen bear's side. It's the two red-backed cubs they'd seen earlier. Daisuke and Gin have just killed their mother.

Elsewhere in the forest, Hidetoshi and Company have just managed to down the bear that was chomping on the horse. Hidetoshi praises John for his involvement in the hunt before going to reload his rifle. John seems almost dismissive of the compliment. Of course he did a good job, has he ever failed before?

Despite it's magnificent size, the dog's ego isn't large enough to blot out the smell of something else in the area. Something that smells awfully familiar. While the men are distracted, John heads deeper into the woods.

Back at the new monument to matricide, the bear cubs are trying to awaken their mother and scare off Daisuke and Gin with pitifully small snarls. Gin stands and stares slack jawed at the orphaned twins while Daisuke sobs an apology to them. He can't help but connect what he's done to the cubs to what Akakabuto did first to Riki, then to Gin. Maybe this hunting thing isn't all it's cracked up to be.

The sound of a dog barking fills the air, and the two turn to see who's making all the racket. It's John, snarling and running towards them. It takes them a moment to realize that John isn't actually running at them, but at the cubs huddled by the dead bear.

As Daisuke tries fruitlessly to scare the cubs away, Gin yells demands at John to stop in the name of all that is good and wholesome. John doesn't know the meaning of the words, but he is familiar with snapping animals' necks, which he now does to one of the cubs.

John then flings himself headlong at the remaining little bear only to be intercepted by a flash of silver. Gin knocks John on his ass and away from the fleeing cub. He scolds John for the cruelly and proudly killing infants, but John doesn't seem to care. All he does is snort, gaze silently at the new scars on Gin's head, and then lunge at the Akita. He introduces Gin's cheek to his hind foot and sends him flying. Gin almost swears he hears John utter "Ha, gottem" before he tears the throat out of the remaining cub. The baby had been too slow to outrun him.

This starts a scuffle between the two dogs with, to John's amazement, Gin gaining the upper hand. He flings John ass-side up, asserting his dominance via animu protag posturing, and the two have a staredown. While they toss schoolyard insults at each other in their hackles-raising contest, Daisuke has other things on his mind.

If John is here, Hidetoshi is sure to be nearby. Daisuke begins yanking arrows out of the dead bear, then calls for Gin to join him in escaping the scene of the crime. The two pound pavement (or the forest equivilent of) as John barks for his master's attention.

Hidetoshi's crew come to find John and are taken aback by the sight of a dead bear and its two cubs. At first they believe that John somehow managed to slay them all, but Hidetoshi notices something that changes their minds. He draws attention to the arrow sticking out of the tree trunk nearby. It's impossible to miss the arrow among the desaturated greens and browns of the forest because of its red, purple, and blue tail.

Hidetoshi and friends begin their own trek home. Both the men and the boys share a similar experience while leaving the woods. While leaving, both Gin and John notice a peculiar smell coming from the surrounding mountains. Both are too distracted to pay the faint whiffs much mind, but without their knowing, they are being watched by at least 100 sets of eyes, all gazing down at them from the mountain cliffs. Tens of four-legged shadows disappear from the clifftops just as swiftly and soundlessly as they'd appeared.

Daisuke and Gin make it back to civilization first. Daisuke tells Gin to make believe they've been here in Hidetoshi's shooting range the whole time. Gin doesn't understand how he's supposed to aid the illusion, so he just sits and chews on himself. Shortly after, Hidetoshi and John pull up in their Jeep. John leaves the car and settles down beside it to rest. Hidetoshi enters the hospital to inform Gohei of what has just transpired in the woods.

Daisuke is pretending to practice when Hidetoshi enters the room. Daisuke greets him nonchalantly without meeting his eyes. Hidetoshi greets Daisuke by telling him he forgot something as he produces the abandoned arrow. Daisuke just about shits.

Hidetoshi scolds Daisuke for his recklessness, tells him he's too irresponsible to use weapons, and bans him from using his bow and arrows ever again. Daisuke responds like any mature young man would by throwing a temper tantrum and storming off with his dog to run through the streets and holler about how nobody understands them. We've all been there, kid.

Later that night, Gin stands atop Daisuke's house, gazing off into the abyss of space. His head is throbbing from where the bear got him, and Daisuke's parents had angrily let their son know that each mark would forever be a scar carved into his loyal friend's head.

Gin wasn't afraid of having scars. At anything, he decided that from now on he'd consider them a trophy from his first real victory over The Enemy. Before he climbs down for the night, he watches as a shooting star crosses the speckled black sky.

The next day, spring really starts gettin' sprung. While this would normally be a relief to the village people (not the band, the phenomenon) no snowfall means no more hibernation for the wildlife, which means all of Akakabuto's allies are sure to be around. Daisuke and Gin are especially aware of this, and Daisuke's feeling the pressure to do something about it.

That said, Gin's mind has been wandering elsewhere. A strange smell from the mountains has been wafting through the village. Gin can't quite put his finger on what it is, but it's neither bears nor God lettin' one rip. Something strange is occupying the woods.

Daisuke and Gin go to visit Hidetoshi. Daisuke plans on begging Doc to let him borrow his bow so he can help stop the ever growing Winnie The Pooh Lookalike Competition sweeping the forest. When the two arrive, they find Hidetoshi and his friends loading back up into the Jeep. They plan on going back to the forest and bringing back both the bear they killed and the one Daisuke killed. Hidetoshi greets Daisuke with a disapproving glare, and John matches Gin's annoyed expression.

Before Daisuke has a chance to ask, Hidetoshi reads his mind and tells him no, he can't have the bow, but yes, he can instead fuck off. Daisuke has proven he shouldn't be allowed to have it, and Hidetoshi, being a doctor, doesn't feel comfortable purposefully setting someone up to get hurt.

As the men depart, Daisuke regresses to 5 years old again. He stomps his feet and screams every obscenity he's ever learned. From his hospital room window, Gohei is looking down at the kinder, his face unreadable. All he thinks is that the little shit sure is serious about this bear killing thing.

Meanwhile, The Master Blaster Squad has reentered the forest. John leads the men back to the bear he helped slaughter, but his reaction is unexpected. His hackles raise and he utters vaguelly panicked sounding barks, two things he's usually too full of himself to do.

The men instantly see why - the bear's carcass has been stripped clean of fur and flesh! All that's left of the animal is a few scraps of muscle on its skull and a slimy pile of white bones. John continues snarling and barking as he gazes at something on the nearby cliff's edge. The men look up.

It's dogs. Dogs of all different breeds are lining the cliff as if in military formation. Everyone becomes more then a little anxious, concerned about being surrounded on all sides by feral animals. The dogs gaze down at the men for a moment (one of them totally does that "I'll be watching you" gesture with a forepaw) before departing, swiftly disappearing from sight. A strong feeling of What The Fuck lingers in the air.

Back in town, Daisuke has stopped screeching long enough to come to an obvious conclusion: couldn't he just, like, ask his dad to buy him a bow? He and Gin head home to ask pops if he's willing to drop a few yen on a deadly weapon for his 12 year old when Momma Daisuke makes them aware of the fact that Dad is outski. He's at a town meeting that's been organized to sort out the whole Man-Eating Bear business. Daisuke, overcome with a need to be involved again, invites himself and his dog to participate.

The meeting is more enlightening then most town meetings are. Akakabuto is obviously mentioned, as are the sightings regarding his children, but so are two newer threats.

Another bear named Madara ("mottled" or "spotted", guess what she looks like) who was originally being hunted in neighboring Miyagi has made her way to Akakabuto's territory. She's not known for picnicking on people, but she is aggressive and willing to attack anything in her way. She's powerful, too, refusing to die even after getting several bullets stuck in her gut.

The other bear is named Mosa. He's traveled here from Iwata, and the easiest way to recognize him is by his missing right foreleg. He's infamous for having killed several lumberjacks and woodsmen on his trek over. It's believed that both bears are making the effort to move into Futago Pass, aka Redhead Central, for good.

Daisuke and Gin have been watching the meeting from a window. Daisuke is seething with hatred at all the beary big invaders while Gin is trying to image the heinous power of three giant killing machines tearing through the mountains. All the men in the meeting are too chickenshit to wanna confront the bears, so they just sorta shrug and say "What can ya do?" This pisses Daisuke off enough to get him to yell at the men from outside, calling them out for not wanting to die in bear maulings.

The dude leading the meeting opens the window and begins scolding Daisuke for rudely interrupting when another rude interruption barges in and tells everyone to shut the fuck up. A rude interruption by any other name is Gohei Takeda, and he's hobbled here from the hospital, getting up the moment the words "bear" and "meeting" were used in the same sentence.

Exhausted from the walk there, Gohei pants to everyone in the room that Akakabuto and his ilk will not stop until they ruin everyone's lives forever. Then he tumbles into the meeting room table, swearing. Several men get up to help him as he tells them, and especially Diasuke, that no matter what, Akakabuto MUST die.

Unbeknownst to the human populace, Futago Pass's Fight Club has just opened, and it's first participants are Akakabuto and Madara. The bears have the arm wrestling match of the century to prove if Madara's allowed to walk around wherever she wants.

Akakabuto defeats her, but he allows her to hang around under one condition: she and any bear she either recruits or births must fall in line as Akakabuto's body guards. She figures that's not a bad deal for free room and board, so she agrees to be his right hand bear. With any luck, they'll all be enjoying human hamburger very soon.

Gohei has been taken back to the hospital, much to his dismay. Hidetoshi is trying to comfort him, saying that he'll get revenge enough for both of them. Gohei doesn't seem pleased at the idea of being left out, but he's actually less concerned about the ego bruising and more worried about Daisuke.

That damn kid has got it in his head that he can kill a 10 foot tall bear with a bow he barely knows how to use and a dog who's not fully grown yet. Hidetoshi says that Daisuke's lost his bow privileges, but Gohei doesn't care. He doesn't believe being disallowed the doc's toys will stop the stubborn child.

He's right to think so, because Diasuke and Gin are hauling ass AND their snowmobile into town. Diasuke barges into the weapons shop and strikes up a trade with the man behind the counter: the snowmobile in exchange for the most bitchin' bow and arrow set he's got.

The man can barely stop himself from laughing, taking Daisuke for an overzealous kid who can't tell the difference between a toy and a deadly weapon. Daisuke strikes up another deal almost instantly: for the bitchin' bow, he'll give the dude the snowmobile AND prove he can fire an arrow himself.

The Weapons Seller is about to protest that the traveler cannot handle his strongest weapons when he schanges his mind and takes Daisuke up on the offer. If Daisuke can hit the tree out back from the other side of the yard, he can have the bow. As expected by everyone who's reading this, Daisuke strikes the tree without breaking a sweat, and so he and Gin hop, skip, and jump home with a new, genuine bow and arrow set of their own. It's time to prepare.

Daisuke and Gin head into the forest in the same fashion they log into Disney.com - without their parents' permission. Daisuke is so overjoyed at having his own flying spears that he's firing off into tree trunks like it's no one's business, making believe each one is a monster bear.

Gin's not paying any mind, though. Not because he's seen Daisuke do this before, but because that strong, unfamiliar scent is even stronger here. His hackles raise and he begins growling involuntarily. There's a power to the strength of the scent that he can't ignore.

In an instant, Gin takes off after the weird smell. Daisuke is confused before scrambling to his feet and following. The sound of snarling and... is that barking? fills their ears as Gin follows the scent. Along the way, they find the battered body of a dog who's clearly picked a fight with a bear.

The dog is white with brown spots, and its head has been crushed as if stomped on. Gin gazes sadly at the corpse for a moment before continuing after the smell. The dead dog isn't the only unusual thing out here.

At the end of the scent trail, the two come to a small hollow in the woods. In a little sand embankment is a young Japanese black bear snarling at a large pack of domestic dogs. The dogs are standing over the body of a freshly killed deer, no doubt telling Tubby Teddy to back off 'cause they ain't sharing. The bear doesn't take the hint, so the dogs begin their attack.

A particular dog, a dark fawn great dane with a collar of red beads around his neck, barks commands at the others. Team 1, attack the legs! Team 2, go for the arms! Team 3, see if you can reach the eyes!

Gin and Daisuke watch spellbound as the dogs organize into units to slay the bear, downing it in mere minutes. Daisuke can't understand what the Great Dane is saying, but he gets the idea of how clever the dogs are. Gin watches spellbound, amazed at the pack's organization and power.

Unable to contain himself any longer, Gin slides down into the hollow to meet the canine coterie. The Dane's gaze meets his first, and every other dog turns and snarls at the Akita. Gin utters a weak "Hi" before the entire pack starts growling at him in warning.

Daisuke's understandably scared, but he knows there's not much he can do against a pack of this many animals. Luckily, the dogs' attention is torn away from Gin by a howl in the distance. Everyone turns to look.

Standing atop a nearby hill is the silhouette of another dog, a dark splotch against the setting sun. His howl is powerful and visceral, and it instantly draws the attention and command of the pack.

Gin is especially taken with the sound. He can't pinpoint why, but the voice stirs up something primal and powerful inside him. He wants to follow it. He wants to follow the pack.

----------

End of episode 2, wherein we finally see where this story is going. More mysterious dog antics are yet to come, which is what I know all you dog weebs are actually here for.

Episode 3: The Soldiers

[transrightsjimin]

I'm asking as a confused trans and gay person regarding some of your recent posts saying aphobia doesn't exist, etc. Do you consider asexual people to be inherently LGBT even if they are cisgender and straight (heteroromantic)? I don't want to discriminate at all, I'm just confused because I see people fighting on here all the time about whether aces are part of the LGBT community or not. Do you have some insight for me as an ace nonbinary person? Thanks in advance!

no it’s fine lol dw!

i’m not sure how to explain this w/o being too extensive in what i say bc i’ve talked about this before but more in private conversations (and maybe some rants in tumblr posts) nd i tend to ramble abt it.

first of all i do not actually like the common conception that there is one way to define LGBT or the idea that everyone should fall within that category term or not, for example because the English language is colonial and rigid and does not reflect on experiences of all cultures, bc being gay or trans are not distinctly different experiences everywhere while they would be divided into different categories. so whereas i was more insistent on saying ‘you must be gay / bi / lesbian / trans to be LGBT / suffer from homophobia or transphobia’ i’ve come to realize now that this argument is rather exclusive of many gender diverse identities that do not correspond to all experiences or cultures. so i will stay away from using that argument.

however, i am speaking from my experience with online LGBT and asexual communities and have seen how the latter has tried to force itself into the other. i think a large issue with the asexual and aromantic communities is that they are partially based upon the creation of AVEN, an online forum founded by a homophobic and antisemitic man, and partially (though related to the former) by just blatantly made up statistics and history. not once have i seen a good argument or research or even personal accounts that illustrate very well why aphobia is a thing. i am asexual myself but do not want to take the lack of discrimination i faced for it as proof. there have been accounts of ‘aphobic’ discrimination that are either 1. much more a general concern with the OP facing misogyny and girls being sexualized, 2. someone making a remark based on a misconception of OP’s experiences or 3. misappropriation of terms and applying them to asexuality, e.g. ‘corrective rape’ was coined to refer to (African) lesbians who were assaulted under the presumption that it would turn them straight. asexuals have appropriated this term years ago to claim asexual people face rape on a large scale because perpetrators try to force them into liking sex. some people don’t even know the original meaning of the term because of this. i’m also not a big fan of this new interpretation of the term anyway, because legit sexual attraction is not the main reasons people commit rape; it is to seek power. this kind of mindset of asexual people being inherently vulnerable to sexual violence due to lack of feeling sexual attraction is seriously harmful; in the crime show Law and Order SVU, a suspect was let off because some main character said the suspect was asexual and this couldn’t have done it. people can be and sometimes are raped by an asexual person, because it is about taking advantage of someone and not attraction. the sole fact that so many authors of overly fetishistic fanfiction are asexual should prove this much, but instead the lack of attraction is used to distance oneself from the harm one can still cause.

and yes, asexual people can face discrimination, especially if you’re a girl you’re expected to be sexually submissive, which is pretty horrifying on its own. but this is not the same as targeted discrimination on a mass scale or institutional whatsoever. we are not thaught as we grow old that asexuals are disgusting, are a joke, or need to be violently murdered. my biggest issue with the asexual and aromantic community that we (as i have removed myself from it years ago) keep telling it that anecdontal accounts of being mildly discriminated is nowhere near the same as risking being kicked out of your house, being violently attacked due to the way you appear or having a partner of the same gender, being systematically discriminated by all sorts of institutions in society and being thaught that what you are is bad from an early age on. and then the counterargument is that LGBT is more recognized but asexual and aromantic isn’t, so ‘ace / aro’ people deserve to be included because they are underrepresented in media. but that is not the case at all. the speed at which asexuality has suddenly been incorporated and included into LGBT spaces, also offline, has been ridiculously fast. nowadays when you see a bunch of LGBT flags you see the asexual one being included a lot, sometimes in 3 different versions, while the lesbian flag is nowhere to be seen. lesbians are consistently excluded from their supposedly own community and they are not included in LGBT due to a need to change underrepresentation or lack of awareness, but because they face their own version of homophobia. the most mind-boggling thing about cis / cishet asexual and aromantic people being told that they are not oppressed, is that the response is not relief (’oh i’m glad i don’t face systematic oppression for this thing’) but anger (’how dare you not let us into your group!’). LGBT is seen as a fun party that is unnecessarily mean to anyone it gatekeeps, as if it is not actually necessary to keep out cishet people who benefit from their privilege and can use that against the rest in the group if they join.

my largest issue with the asexual community however, and i’ve touched upon this a bit before in the post, is that it victimizes itself, to such a degree where it puts itself oppositional to ‘allosexuals’. the whole idea that people who experience sexual attraction to another person are inherently privileged over abd hold power over asexual people is just not true (and the same goes for this rethoric for aromantic people). this idea is so wrong and the whole concept of the ‘allosexual’ as oppressor collapses once you consider that people who are attracted to the same gender are actually in danger and oppressed for their very attraction. not only are those who experience attraction (that isnt platonic) to other people portrayed as oppressors, but also as perverted freaks. once i decided to stop associating myself with acearo people and instead interact with LGBT people with other experiences, i realized just how much stigmatizing abd frankly, homophobic and transphobic bullshit i’ve adopted within the spaces i used to be in and that i still see gather a lot of traction (now their harmful points are also used on twitter and IRL in the public domain). the community has a huge issue where it teaches you to be puzzled and grossed out by people who want to date / kiss / have sex with other people, and this results in GSAs that now include asexuals to prohibit kissing your partner per request of asexual / aromantic members, asexual people showing up at pride with ‘can we just hug?’ signs, the common serophobic jokes (’at least we dont get hiv!!’ blergh), and for me it led to a great discomfort with kissing and sex imagery and it wasn’t until i left the community that this was in fact subtle homophobia because so much content on here is lgbt themed and to combine that with the increasing aversion to romance or sex without critically looking at that is... very toxic to say the least.

so where it’s standing right now, i don’t think including asexual or aromatic people in LGBT spaces on the basis of those identities is a good idea. one community advocates for the acceptance of sex, whereas the other is stigmatizing it and painting off those who are in fact oppressed for their transness or homosexuality, as the oppressors. it clashes and it doesn’t work. the ‘ace / aro’ community (quote unquote bc i see ‘ace’ being used a lot to imply superiority over ‘allosexuals’ like, theyre being the ace at something) has too many issues, which it is largely based on, to figure out. it can be a community on its own and i do not think you need to join LGBT to have a valid identity that has something to do with sexuality or gender and deals with a form of stigma.

it woukd be a rant, i warned you lol

[talesfantastic]

Mun Things and Fandom Notes

about the mun. fill this out  &  tag a few people you’d like to get to know better !

tagged by the lovely @vetlanwrites tysm tagging some people I haven’t tagged before: @amalgammuses, @animus-inspire​, @kychchc​, @rotinthedark, @warofthebeasts & YOU!

name: my name is [ loud music interrupts ] nickname:  you can call me Kat or KF! preferred pronouns: she/her age range:  30+ favorite animal:  cats pets: cat and a dog tattoos/piercings: I had my ears pierced several times and they won’t stay pierced so I gave up on anything -shrug- star sign: virgo! I’m an August bby how long have you been in this fandom?: doing just the ones I currently have muses for, and not the ones I’ve only talked about -

Dragonball(Z) - I’ve been writing in DBZ since... oh geez, the late 90′s? I think the first fic I ever posted was DBZ and it was around that time. I didn’t start rping it until like, early 00′s though.

Final Fantasy - I actually dabbled in 9 a little bit around the time it came out in ‘00 (my friend had it!) but I wouldn’t say I really did much until I really got into 7, and that was around... geez, ‘05? I rped it a little with a friend around then but I didn’t really start writing it much until nearly ‘10. #latetotheparty Yet I do consider it my “home” fandom - I always come back to it.

Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons - early ‘00s! My first HM/SoS game was Friends of Mineral Town on my trusty GBA and I love it so much to this day. SO excited for the remake!

Legend of Zelda - I really, really loved Ocarina of Time from the get-go when I got it on the N64 in ‘98 (I got it again for the GameCube and the 3DS and would totally buy it for the Switch, just sayin.) Majora’s Mask creeped me out a bit and was stressful but I liked it, too. And then of course later titles like Twilight Princess were just... -chef’s kiss- but I didn’t really dig into the fandom until ‘10-’11 when I started rping Link with a friend and briefly tried joining a forum rp group (shoutout to ZRPG!) with an OC

Marvel Cinematic Universe - I want to say around ‘12, when Avengers came out? Like, I’d seen Iron Man but I didn’t really dig into it until then.

Pokémon - late 90′s / early 00′s because I first started my Pkmn journey playing Gold and Crystal. While I didn’t write fanfic or rp it, I definitely had headcanons and a lot of feels.

Sailor Moon - early 90′s! I first watched the anime as it came out, though I’ve since forgotten most of that and only have the manga/crystal in my head to run interpretations off of. It was so pretty tho.

Stardew Valley - a newer fandom for me, I really only started getting “into” it about a year ago, but man... I love it, I really do

Star Wars - despite early access to the OT as a kidlet, I didn’t actually get “into” Star Wars until the Prequels in ‘99 (fite me) when I fell in love with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan and promptly, voraciously, dove into fixit and timetravel fanfic. By the time KOTOR came out in ‘03 I was hooked.

Threads of Fate - I think I got into this one on the ground floor, so to speak. My friend had just gotten it and I borrowed it from her and my brother’s PS1 in ‘00 and that was it, I was in love.

why did you choose this specific character/s?:  under a cut bc I have like... nearly 30 muses now

I’m doing alphabetical order (by fandom / first name) bc it’s just easier to go down my list:

tl;dr I picked them all because I love them. Read on to find out why. Click their names to read their bios!

Dragonball Z

Vegeta - oh man, actually one of the first characters I ever rp’d or wrote in fic, and that’s saying something. I picked him because I love him. He’s an absolute ass, but he grows so much throughout Z. (I have yet to see Super, hoping to one day remedy that but we’ll see!) I guess I picked him up for nostalgia’s sake? I really love the character and think there’s a lot of growth yet to see buried under that pride and ego. If you can unearth it.

Final Fantasy

Angeal Hewley (FF7) - actually my first muse on Tumblr, back in... oh, 2013? The blog has been deleted, but he was the first muse I ever played seriously out of FF7. There’s parts of Angeal that really resonate with me, enough that - when I was a less experienced writer - I got tangled up in him a bit too much, made him a bit too personal, and I realized I had to take a step back from writing him. But I love Angeal, and after some time had passed, having written him in various fics, I’ve felt confident adding him... even if I haven’t done anything with him here yet.

Cait Sith (FF7) - I know a lot of people see Cait Sith as all sorts of negative things, but frankly I adore the little guy. And I guess I took him on partially because I couldn’t take Reeve on and not take Cait on, but partially because I see so much in him that could be interesting to explore and would really, really love to. (Any Reeve’s or AVALANCHE - or Turks! - come at me!)

Chaos (FF7) - I picked Chaos up on a whim, as far as Tumblr goes. I really enjoy rping him/Vincent off Tumblr and writing him in fics, and I suppose I just wanted to present a different side of him than I usually see. I’ve even had a thread that has a great deal of promise so I think it was worth it.

Genesis Rhapsodos (FF7) - my third FF7 blog, I think? It’s still up, though obviously not in use, just because I’d put so much work into it. I really adore Genesis, and love writing him. I love his sass and flare, but I love that he’s deeper than all the fire and flamboyance, if you’re willing to look past that. I’m lucky that I’ve had some lovely partners to explore him with, though I’d still kill for an Angeal to throw him at. XD Or a Sephiroth, for that matter.

Lazard Deusericus (FF7) - Lazard, my second FF7 blog and an unexpected love. I picked him up because I had recently started writing him in earnest with an off-Tumblr rp partner ( @thegeeksqueaks ) and was really enjoying him, and hadn’t seen him on Tumblr yet so thought I might get more partners that way. (It turned out there were a couple but they were inactive.) His first blog was accidentally deleted - over five years worth of character development and relationships - so after briefly working him up again solo I brought him over here. He’s not getting the same level of attention but it’s worth it not to be juggling blogs.

Reeve Tuesti (FF7) - pre-Remake, most of the Reeve rpers had gone inactive (shoutout to the fabulous @engineering-robotics and @animus-inspire for coming back!) and just... I love the character too much not to see him in the RPC. Of course, I love to write him period myself so I’d love more threads there but regardless he’s so much fun.

Tristan Pierce (FF7 OC) - Triiiiiiiiiis. Tristan was actually born as an NPC off of Lazard’s blog, who took a life on his own because he was just... so full of life. He actually had his own blog, too! I’ve barely done anything with him here, but I still keep him just because he gives me feels and he’s just neat. (He does still appear in the background of Lazard’s threads though.)

Harvest Moon / Story of Seasons

Iris (SoS) - I actually picked up Iris as a muse first for a fantastic HM/SoS/SDV/etc rp group I’m in a couple years ago, and liked playing her so much I thought I’d bring her here. Elegant lady novelist? Yes please.

Neil (ANB) - unlike Iris and Trent, I haven’t written Neil anywhere else, but he’s my love from A New Beginning and just... he seems like he’d be fun to write? I’d love to flesh him out.

Doctor/Trent (FoMT/MFoMT; DS/CUTE) - Trent, like Iris, is one I write for the rp group and I legit picked him up because of the opportunity for h/c I am not sorry. But seriously though, he’s grown on me so much and I love my awkward doctor.

Legend of Zelda

Midna (Twilight Princess) - TP is one of my absolute favorite Zelda games, and Midna a favorite character. There’s just so much to her you don’t get to see that I was really hoping to get to dig into, still hope one day to. We’ll see. Worth keeping on roster.

Revali (Breath of the Wild) - my newest addition! I keep saying in complete seriousness “Genesis with more feathers” but seriously, I may have a type? I love him so much and wanted to see more of him, and by god if I have to do it myself so be it. (I have been playing a ton of BOTW lately which probably has a lot to do with it. XD)

Sheik (Ocarina of Time) - I love them so much. OoT didn’t have a ton of character building, but the sheer implications of the character speaks volumes that I want to explore. I’m lucky enough to be getting the chance to, too.

Marvel Cinematic Universe

Tony Stark - did I mention I have a type? I feel he makes a good argument for it. I originally picked Tony up because I just fell head over heels for the character in the first couple Iron Man movies + Avengers. I... am less in love with him in the later movies, not gonna lie, and am so far behind on lore that I’m considering dropping him. But yeah, originally picked him up just because he had so much potential. Thx Disney, great job there.

Pokémon (gameverse)

Lily Hart (HG/SS OC) - another OC of mine, this time for a fandom that... I only really know through the games, as opposed to manga/anime. I picked her up because I really liked the idea of doing events or little ask things with her, and still may try to initiate some more of those. We’ll see?

Sailor Moon (manga/Crystal)

Ami Mizuno/Sailor Mercury - I actually picked Ami up because of a plot with @magicalxgirlsxrp where we were splitting up the Inners and the Shitennou for some mega threads. XD But yeah, I do like her. Even if she’s a challenge to write sometimes because she’s very much not like me, and very much smarter.

Kunzite - Kunzite I have always loved, always, and I’ve had him on here because I really wanted to explore him more. I love him even more after the teasing in Crystal of what might have been, be still my shippy heart.

Mamoru Chiba/Endymion/Tuxedo Mask - super fond of Mamoru, too; I didn’t care for him so much in the 90′s anime, but in the manga and Crystal I really became more fond. I do a few things differently, I think, but don’t we all? I picked him up for that very reason, in fact.

Minako Aino/Sailor Venus - Minako is really interesting to me because there’s so much more to her than her airheaded, bubbly persona that fits her like a glove... but is just as superficial. I mean, she’s sunny and happy but she’s also the OG Senshi, the leader of the Inners, a powerful, commanding fighter - she’s complex, and I really wanted to explore that + getting to have fun with her bubbliness.

Nephrite - another picked up from @magicalxgirlsxrp‘s enabling. But I do find him really interesting so it works out well. Haven’t done a lot with him, but we have plans. Plans I’m looking forward to.

Stardew Valley

M. Rasmodius - I knew I really wanted to do something with SDV, once I got to playing it, but I wasn’t sure who. I thought about Sebastian and Elliot, but already had interacted with a couple who were just fantastic. So instead, I did a good fallback of mine - because I never, ever get tired of playing mages. Ever. XD

Star Wars

HK-47 (KOTOR) - the attitude. I wanted to write HK entirely because of the scorching levels of sass from this droid.

Liana Raine (SWTOR f!JC) - the Jedi Consular storyline is one of my favorites out of all of SWTOR (tied with the Inquisitor, but I’m revamping her) and I really just wanted to keep playing with it even once I’d done the dedicated storyline.

Revan (KOTOR LS!F) - give me female Revan you cowards. -ahem- I have feels about Revan, okay? I love her so, so much - she even had her own blog, I love her that much. I would absolutely love to do something more with her but I will hold on to her if for no other reason than to make sure at least one black, female Revan exists in the world. (I want all the timetravel and crossover threads, hit me up.)

Tharan Cedrax (SWTOR) - another for attitude, really, and also definitely my type. XD He’s charming, he’s snarky, he’s sassy, he’s brilliant... I very much like Tharan and really felt he, like most of the companions, deserved more screentime. So, I’m here to give it to him.

Threads of Fate (Dewprism)

Duke - he’s so cool. I mean, he’s a dork, but his powers are amazing and he’s just a fun, incredibly upbeat character to play. And well, anything to spread my love of that teeny fandom.

Fancy Mel - Mel hits all the sweet spots for a mage character. She’s got flavor, she’s got amazing powers, and she had room to create a fantastic backstory with amazing crossover potential. Is she a bit OP? Yes. But she has no intention of using it for anything but her amusement/whimsy.

Rod the Bladestar - I love Rod. I love his oddly genteel manners, I love how he’s unwittingly sexist but quickly cleans up his act when put straight, I love how driven and passionate he is. Could do without such a typically-Square-outfit, but you can’t have everything. (In the right artists’ hands, he might even be pretty amazing, actually.)

Did you read all of that? Amazing. Any of them strike your interest? Hmu and maybe we could plot a thread! :eyes:

Also I sincerely apologize to mobile users who had to read all that because Tumblr can’t get it’s act together.

[forte7]

Forte’s Fan Character Flashback Friday - #7

Name:: Valarie Masters Series: Danny Phantom Background: Holey moley guacamole! I missed Fan Character Flashback Friday! I mean... today is a Friday, but I was supposed to post this last week! Dangit! I'm sorry! Things are kinda crazy on my end still and it only dawned on me today that I had forgotten to do something - and it was this.

A thousand apologies for my tardiness, but going on about that still won't get this posted.

I've actually been waiting to post this character because I KNOW I had old art of her SOMEWHERE around and I cannot, for the life of me, find it, and unfortunately, I'm down in Texas right now to help out my aunt and uncle so I can't even continue looking for the physical copies of said old art if it even still exists. I KNOW it exists, because I used to post art for this character on a Danny Phantom fan forum I would RP on and heck, I even found that old forum, managed to log in to see if any of those old links still worked, and NOPE.

Guess I deleted them off the Photobucket I once had them on at some point and where the physical copies are, I'm not sure, because I don't remember seeing them when going through my old drawing binders.

It's really quite frustrating.

Anyway, this is Valarie, who I named forgetting about the actual Valerie Grey character from the series, cause the name fit the general bad fan character naming system of "it starts with the same letter of the character I like and is kinda similar, so I'll go with it".  I kept it anyway, cause little me reasoned, "well, this Valarie spells it with two As while the other is with an A and an E, so it's fine."

Just kinda funny that they're both linked to Vlad though, so yay, I guess? Hahah, I dunno.

Anywho, Valarie was set up/designed to be Vlad's daughter, but not even his biological daughter, though not a clone like some of my other fan characters, though with things that happen later in the actual series, it would actually be... possible/viable. Instead, she was a extraordinary creation of the Ghost Zone and was more or less "born" of the supernatural energies that construct that dimension.

I guess you can kind of compare her existence to that of Maria from Silent Hill 2. The Born from a Wish scenario kind of implies that Maria was manifested by the town using James' subconscious memories and feelings regarding his wife. Valarie, in the same vein, was manifested by the Ghost Zone, for whatever reason, to help placate Vlad's need and want for a family of his own.

Mind you, this entire backstory was cobbled together before Kindred Spirits introduced Dani Phantom and her entire storyline... which... is.... kinda the same, really, to Valarie's, and I remember at the time, was kind of mad about it back in the day.

Speaking of Dani Phantom, I remember how a lot of people were mad about Butch Hartman's apparent laziness in her character design and creation, cause it was pretty akin to many "bad fan characters" that you see out there, which, hey, I won't deny; that's what this whole Flashback thing I do is about, but you know, this just serves as a good example of the fact that pretty much... everyone does this. Everyone makes bad fan characters, even for their own things, so I think it's just more healthy for people to realize this and embrace it, hahaha.

Going back to Valarie - she's more or less a person who exists to help Vlad chill the fuck out and maybe not ruin things for everyone or everything. A more recent reason I came up with for this was that Clockwork and/or The Observants that are seen in the Ultimate Enemy special with Dark Danny foresaw Vlad's ambitions proving to be too troublesome in the future, so to prevent this from causing way more havoc than it's worth, even with Danny around to stop him or whatever, they're like "hey just throw him a kid; that'll keep him busy a little, right?"

Even with her supernatural origins, Valarie is half-human and half-ghost like Vlad and looks much like him thanks to just her being a physical manifestation of one of his subconscious desires. Physically, she’s about seven or eight years old and generally acts playful, though polite, but can occasionally come off as spoiled.

She shares many of her father’s sentiments towards various issues and people, though it’s safe to assume she doesn’t fully understand his reasoning for those feelings due to how young she is. For example, she harbors a dislike for Jack, though finds his clumsiness more amusing than idiotic and only really says she hates him because Vlad does.

In regards to Danny, she likes him and finds him fun to play with, but in her terms, that means toying around with him. Despite her small size, she can hold her own in battle and has a good handle on her ghost powers and won’t hesitate to use them to pull pranks or harass other people, especially if she has or is told to. Her antics can be described as impish while in ghost form, though she likes to feign innocence if caught.

A big point of curiosity with her is her memory; she has no memory of a time before not “being” and has no real answer when asked about her childhood. She doesn’t seem bothered by this lack of knowledge and usually shrugs it off, intent that she exists because she does; she feels no need to question it further. For her things are simple: if her father is happy, she’s happy. Be this just some childish thought process or some more ingrained sense of purpose because of her strange origins is up for debate.

More was actually done with this character than others and like I said, there used to be old sketches of her about. If I ever find them (and I hope I do, really), I’ll be sure to post them.

But aside from that, like I said, I did role play with this character on a Danny Phantom fan thread and boy was that a cringy time. I will admit now, that back then, when I was like 12 or whatever, I was an obnoxious brat who didn’t know how to really socialize or what she was doing on the Internet. Hahaha, when going back there to find the old image links, I ventured onto some of my older posts and…. Whooooo boy, no thank you.

I know at that point I did also write short fanfics from time to time, but I think those might be locked on boot drives from our old computers and don’t have a way of looking for them now either. For those, if I ever do find them, I might also post them, but it all depends on just HOW much cringe I want to trudge up and share, hahaha.

I know I’ve been ranting a lot now and it’s already now past Friday, even for the time zone I’m in, but I’m gonna go on a little side story as… an apology, though it just means a bit more ranting.

When I said I RPed on this site, I can’t actually say a lot of actual character development happened. I don’t remember what the system was for RPing canon show characters and the times they did pop up, it was on a situational basis, because more people were interested in playing their own character and pretty much everyone on that forum had half-ghost, half-human characters that had their powers for one reason or another.

There was one thread that was particularly popular though that I spent a lot of time in with most of the other players, called Halfa High, so it was just kids in high school. Characters, like mine, that were younger than high school age, had various reasons for being there, like they’re super geniuses or they have a sibling there they’ve come to see or something like that; it’s a fandom RP so anything can happen. Most of the stuff in here, because it was 12-14 or whatever year olds, was just characters pairing up with each other, cause I guess that’s just what kids care about, hahaha. I don’t know, I’m just an old lady now.

Anyway, this thread went on for a good number of pages and eventually they started a second one. And then they had one where everyone went to summer camp, so other weird adventures could be had without the confines of going to school.

This was the one I remember doing the most in though frankly, I don’t remember what the overarching storyline was at the time, though I don’t think I knew what was really going on back in the day either.

One of the big points I do remember was the fact that many of the people on this forum looked up to one particular member, who I’ll call Susan, because that was her character’s name. I’m pretty sure she was in her early 20s at this time, so a lot of the younger people gravitated towards her because she was mature and knew how to keep things moving in terms of RP story; she was more or less the main storyteller of the Halfa threads, coming up with a lot of the plot points and twists. She was also just popular cause she had been there for a while, I think, and she was a pretty good artist on the forum.

She wasn’t necessarily a bad person and usually always open to adapting an RP to involve suggested ideas, but I remember at the time, I was super jealous of her. One, because she did have really good art and I felt like a poo-poo artist and two, because she seemed to have a lot of sway in terms of what she wanted to happen in most scenarios, so much so, it was treated as forum canon that her character was married to Dark Danny and had two kids with him.

Nowadays, of course, I don’t give a damn. Whatever. But back then, it was annoying to me. And I guess some part of me wanted to pair my characters with Older Dan. I remember actually being openly mad about it on the forums and to her in private messages about it and did get in trouble for being a salty, little brat for it. One time, I even wrote a bitter fanfic that was less than subtle in regards to it, but I remember cooling my jets enough for them to not just full out ban me.

Like I said, I was obnoxious back then; it’s a phase all kids go through I guess, cause I see it in kids that age even now.

Anyway, this actually developed into a story point in the RP when I agreed to not be such an Angsty Annie about the whole thing and the Halfa Summer Camp thread took some weird turns. Besides the usual pairing of everyone’s characters with one another and other summer camp-y hijinks, it had time travel, an evil group that were named after the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and political unrest regarding a ghostly royal family.

The royal family, of course, consisted of Susan and Dan, and their two kids. They had a son and a little girl, who I don’t remember the names of in the slightest. Susan got crowned? Queen of the Ghost Zone after she and some members of some Ghost Council? Were able to seal away Pariah Dark… and in that timeline, Dan was a fugitive, so they got married in secret and still managed to have secret relations enough to have their two kids.

But see, that was in the future of the Ghost Zone, which was like 20-30 years away from the time of the events of the actual RP. Why they were going back in time, I don’t remember, but I think it was something to do with Clockwork sending them back or something, who knows.

Valarie, however, is also technically part of the Ghost Royal Family (cause that’s a thing here…. hahaha), because I guess Susan was… Vlad’s niece? Somehow? So that made her and Valarie cousins, but because Susan was the one who sealed the Big Bad away, that meant she got to be Queen, just… because? There will be a lot of uncertainty with this recollection, cause again, heck if I actually knew or know what happened then.

Anyway, I guess in the uhm… present timeline, Susan was going to summer camp and this was before her and Danny were even a thing, cause doesn’t happen until they’re adults? I think, but she runs into a version of Dan that’s… in between him being a teenage and the future version that’s married to Susan… and… there was some contention with that, but again, I don’t remember what…

But eventually, everyone’s future selves end up appearing at summer camp, again for their own various reasons, along with Susan’s future kids, who get caught up in things, mainly because of misunderstanding and people having grudges and just wanting to kill other people without talking it out.

This loops back to my annoyance with Susan getting her character paired with a major canon character and the aforementioned political unrest, because it led to Older Valarie being a quiet, hardened soldier with a hidden, strong, but deeply unrequited love for Dan, which of course, causes a bit of tension with her and Susan, who is the Queen in the future. Also, apparently, I guess? There was a Ghost War or something? In the future or at some point that they set up a Royal Guard and Army, cause Valarie was more or less the Captain of all that, along with the personal trainer of the eldest son of the Royal Family. Future Susan, of course, is fine with her being in such a position of power cause I guess she’s proved it by this point and she doesn’t know of Valarie’s feelings for her husband, so it’s all right as rain as long as she just… stews about it silently to herself, because that is totally the healthy thing to do.

Older Valarie also goes back in time though, because eventually, people start coming across the aforementioned Four Horsemen, which aren’t really horsemen, because they don’t even have horses, but again, are named after them and are supposed to be the “living embodiments” of their namesake. So we have super powerful characters named War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death running around for… reasons? That I can’t even remember. Certain members’ characters are actually the younger versions of the Four before they’re… corrupted? Or something like that and given those names and most the people who turn into whichever, of course, have to fight their evil, older selves cause that’s cool or whatever.

Younger Valarie, at the time, was just hanging about and I guess fawning over a teenage Danny or the in between Dan (this is just as confusing to remember as it is to read, trust me), and I think makes friends with the Future Prince and Princess, who again are running around. I think the Prince was there to try and find Dan, because he believes he? Killed his father? Even though Dan is his father? And Dan was there anyway to protect the younger version of his future wife…? And the Princess was there just cause she wanted her mom, which is Future Susan, who went back to… do…. Something…?

But anyway, Younger Valarie ends up getting approached by her future self, who had originally come to serve her duty as Captain of the Royal Guard and protect Future Queen Susan, but eventually starts to realize that she could perhaps mess with the past to change things to the way she really wants them (even though I know now that would probably create some annoying paradox but please don’t get me on time paradoxes cause we’ve been here long enough already), so she starts to put it in her younger self’s head that everything going on here isn’t fair and she should do more than just be obedient and trusting and take whatever Susan says without question, because by not being more open and honest about your feelings just leads to a life of misery, pain and loneliness.

However, Younger Valarie just doesn’t get why she would say these things and rejects that line of thinking, which kinda makes Older Valarie snap and be like “okay, fine, I guess I’ll just go kill some peeps and then you’ll see what I mean”... I mean, I think? She does try to stop influencing her younger self and try to take matters into her own hands though.

Because at one point, we did have it where Older Valarie confronts Older Susan about her deep, dark hidden feelings, and they get into a fight over it, especially after Older Valarie threatens to go kill the Prince, but being a trained soldier and the Captain of the Royal Guard, Older Valarie does kick Older Queen Susan’s butt, but I think… is interrupted by one of the Four, that being War.

I think Older Dan also comes in at some point and chides Older Valarie for her actions, but heck if I remember. To be honest, if I fully cared and wanted to really relive some cringe, I could probably go to the forum and just read over the whole thread, but that was like 200+ (if not more) of pages and I…. do not feel like doing that, hahaha.

Anyway, Older Valarie and War end up getting into a fight, because it turns out War himself has some issue with Older Valarie. And it turns out that he used to be like her second in command? Or something? Who disappeared while on a mission and ended up into some spoopy, dark, dangerous, evil place, where he got corrupted and turned into War and it turns out he was okay with it, because he was also angry and bitter, cause surprise! He himself had feelings for Older Valarie, but poor guy got friendzoned and his attempts went unnoticed because she instead had feelings for Older Dan, because love triangles are also a cool plot twist to do, cause why not, I guess.

Uhm… I think during this fight was when Older Valarie started to notice the error? Of her ways? Or something like that after seeing one of her closest subordinates fall into darkness, so her story shifts to trying to get War to remember who he used to be. This character did have an original name, but I totally forget what it was… Anyway, War claims that there’s nothing she can do because he embraced and was more than willing to give up his soul or whatever for the power to actually make Older Valarie notice him or something.

I… actually don’t remember much past this point, though. I want to say she did end up getting through to him, but that might just be me rewriting history. That character, though, was more or less being set up to give someone for Young Valarie to pair with and I do thing there was a present day or at least an uncorrupted version of that character pop up at one point….

But besides that, I don’t even remember if that RP was finished, mainly because I think I started to stop going there as much and lost interest. The RP itself, actually, I think started to slow down, mainly because people got busy with other things, especially Susan and because she was again, more or less the driving force behind most things, it petered out.

I’m actually uncertain how old I was when there, because I will admit, when I was in my first year of college, I toyed around with some of the concepts from this RP and wanted to repurpose it into a story. It was mainly the stuff that took place in the future with the Royal Family and with the Four Horsemen, where basically, it would follow Older Valarie (hell, the “rewrites” character name might have just been Valarie for simplicity sake) as she dealt with her feelings with the Royal family and her relation to it, trying to protect the Kingdom and its people, and eventually deal with the disappearance of her Second in Command and his reappearance as a giant threat later on.

…. Really, I still kinda like the idea…

ANYWAY, I have talked long enough and am tardy enough with just this post as it is, so I’ll leave it at that. According to the Google Doc where I’m writing all this before actually posting, this is six pages long, so even more apologies for my rambling.

Still, hope you liked this month’s look back in time and look forward to the next one!

[modernlcve]

*  —  stats —   kelsey dyer !

* — basics !

full name:   kelsey nicole dyer. nickname(s):   none standard. age:   twenty-two. date of birth:   december fourth. place of birth:   boston,   massachusetts. gender:   female. pronouns:   she / her. sexual orientation:   bisexual. level of education:   high school graduate.

* — physical !

tattoos:  none. piercings:   ears pierced twice,  right cartilege pierced.   used to have her belly button pierced, but she’s someone’s mom now. notable features:   big ol’ doe eyes. weakness(es):   too trusting :pensive: scar(s):   a faint one,   right above her left eyebrow.

* — domestic !

occupation:   front end clerk at the superstore. residence:  lives in an apartment with anthony. social class:   upper middle class. parents:   joseph dyer,   age 49,   a contractor,   he can’t relate to kelsey on much, but they try their best to get along. heather dyer,  age 48,    the parent kelsey has historically been closest with. siblings:   joseph dyer jr,   age 26,   the most supportive member of her family by far.   he takes being the oldest serious.   cameron dyer,  age 9,   a fundamentally good kid,   even if won’t stop getting caught drawing dicks in the window on the bus. children:   indigo harding,   who is born the second i post this.    she’s an aries destined 2 overpower kelsey One Day. extended family:  her father has 3 sisters,   they spend holidays with her paternal grandparents and then all her cousins and stuff.

* — personality !

positive traits:   lively.   big-hearted.   encouraging. negative traits:   naive.   judgemental.   holds a grudge. myers-briggs ( x ):   enfp,   the campaigner. temperament:   sanguine. moral alignment:   neutral good. horoscope:  sagittarius,   the archer. hogwarts house:  gryffindor.

* — favorites !

movie:    uptown girls. tv show:   america’s next top model. book:   the wizard of oz by l frank baum. drink:   cherry cola. food:   mac n cheese. animal:   raccoons. color:   lavender. song:   long live by taylor swift. artist:   britney spears. celebrity crush:   chris hemsworth.

* — impressions !

first impression:  she makes a decent first impression. she lacks a filter and can sometimes cross a line with things she says without realizing it,  but,   for the most part,   she’s pretty bubbly and friendly and all that. self impression:   she’s got a healthy self esteem,   for the most part.   she thinks she has a good head on her shoulders and a strong moral code.   she thinks she treats people well,   and that’s what really matters. lover impression:   she’s a good girlfriend,   i think. supportive,   tries to relate to their interests  ( even if she simply cannot get baseball ).   she thinks there’s power in little things and rolls with that.

* — et cetera !

turn ons:   tall people.   ambition.   kindness. turn offs:   condescension.   hipsters.   mustaches. drink/drugs/smoke:   yes/weed/no. dominant hand:   left,  but claims to be ambidextrous,   her right hand just sucks. clean or messy:   messy. early bird or night owl:   night owl. hobbies or special talents:   she did ballet for years,   she’s a pretty good dancer.   she’s also double jointed and can do that thing where u flip ur eyelids inside out.

* — QUESTIONNAIRE !

01. where was your character born? what brought them to boston? what do they like most about the town?

kelsey was born in boston.   she’s stuck around because of circumstance,   she couldn’t afford to go off far after she graduated,   and her family needed her to stick around a little,   but she doesn’t know if she would have left,   even if she could.   she doesn’t think about it much anyway,   because she knows boston is where she’s meant to be:   if she hadn’t been here,   she wouldn’t have met anthony,   she wouldn’t have had indigo,   and it just feels like it’s where she really truly belongs at this point in time,   at least.

02. who are your character’s friends and family? who do they surround themselves with? who are the people your character is closest to?

in the past year,   kelsey’s really been Figuring this out.   her relationship with a lot of her friends and family changed after she got pregnant.   she’s never been exceptionally close with her father,   and he’s tried his best to be cool about all this,   but it took a toll on her relationship with her mother.  they were always close,   but her mom is just Simply not jiving with the decisions kelsey’s been making.   her brothers have passed less judgement,   and of her actual family,   she’d say she’s closest to them  ( even her mom has Limited her access to cameron lately ).   but anyways all that is part of the reason she’s so apt to call her palls from the superstore her family.   she really does consider them her closest friends,   as they’re people who didn’t start treating her different.   she feels like nobody skipped a beat.   outside of that,   there’s anthony,   of course,   and by extension of him,   the college Gang.   she doesn’t feel as Welcome among their ranks:   she knows she isn’t as fancy or smart as most of them and just tries to keep to herself when they’re all out.

03. what is your character’s biggest fear? who have they told this to? who would they never tell this to? why?

kelsey’s current biggest fear is that her mother is right,   and she is messing up her life or anthony’s with having this baby,   or that she just generally won’t be a good mom.   most of her is confident she’s doing the right thing:   she’s excited to be a mom,   she loves anthony,   she feels like they’re gonna get through this.   but she knows it won’t be a walk in the park,   and she’s not stupid enough to not realize that people don’t see her as the Most Competent.   she’s ready to give it her all,   and work to make it all fall into place,   but she’s worried she won’t be enough,   and she’ll screw up indigo,   and ruin things for anthony,   and mess up her life.   she’s probably pretty open about this,  in the kind of way where she’s looking for validation.   its a conversation she’s had with anthony more than once.   she’s never tell her mother this,   she’s not about to give her the satisfaction.

04. has your character ever been in love? had a broken heart?

kelsey had two “”serious” partners before anthony:   a high school sweetheart  ( a football player who proposed to her before they graduated,   prompting her to call it off )  and a Grown Up relationship  ( a girlfriend she had fresh out of high school,   she dumped kelsey before she studied abroad,   didn’t want to be held back ).   she thought she loved both of them and felt pretty heartbroken after they were out of her life.   being In Love with anthony has definitely  made her reconsider how intense she thought those relationships were,   but ultimately,   she doesn’t discredit them because they were so important to her at the time,   she’s taken the thank u next approach.

06. it’s saturday at noon. what is your character doing? give details.

if she’s not working,   she’s probably either goofing off on youtube enjoying a grilled cheese or,   in recent weeks,   she’s taken to scouring mommy forums online that,   quite frankly,   scare the shit out of her.   she’s been trying to do things like take midday naps and go see rated r movies while she still can,   so maybe she’s out there just fucking around and enjoying her freedom.

07. what is one strong memory that has stuck with your character since childhood?

kelsey did ballet for most of her life,   from age 5 through all the way through high school.   she remembers sitting in her mother’s bathroom before one of her first recitals,   getting all dolled up in the mandatory makeup:   mascara,   lipstick,   all that jazz.   she remembers how grown it made her feel,   even if her eyes watered and ruined the mascara twice,   and it frankly stands out to her more than the recital itself.

09. what is something that upsets your character? where do they go when they’re upset?

kelsey is a Bit Tender and a lot of things make her upset,   at least on a surface level.   but it takes more to actually get under her skin and make her Truly Upset.   its mostly people related,   rude little comments with bite,   feeling like people don’t like her or judge her/someone she loves.   she’s protective of her brood.   when she’s upset,   she likes to curl up in bed with junk food and watch a little mindless tv.   maybe it doesnt fix things,   but its a distraction.

10. when your character thinks of their childhood kitchen, what smell do they associate with it? why?

her dad is one of Those Guys that has a special chili recipe he’s Very much a diva about.   he made it at least weekly,   and the smell of it all sitting out to simmer for hours stands out to her.   she liked to help him with it,   it was one of the few things they could bond over.