#I absolutely hate making posts on tumblr that are longer than like one paragraph

[diamantinasfrilledshark]

Roleplay Rules!

Status: Semi-Open as of November 2nd, 2023

Feel free to DM me or ask any questions in my inbox! I can't guarantee that RPs will start right away, but we can definitely start setting things up.

In order to RP with me, you NEED to send me the hidden phrase in here so I know you actually read the rules. If not, I will not RP.

Literacy Style:

Literate to semi-literate. I like to write in multiple paragraphs, both with detail and somewhat dialogue heavy. If you’ve seen my writing, it’s a lot like that! I expect potential RP partners to follow in suit/match.

It seems as of late that I prefer literate with multiple paragraphs and details.

I’ve been RPing since I was like, 10. If I see *she smiles* it might summon rage 💀 /hj

Where We Can Talk:

Just starting off? Tumblr DMs! I won’t RP in the comment section of a post.

You can now ask for my Discord. It’s where I’m most active.

Slots:

Don’t really have a cap off but it becomes too much at once I will be sure to let you know.

Genres and Plots:

Almost anything and everything! However, towards strangers and people I’m generally unfamiliar with, SFW are going to be the topics I steer towards. Adventure, drama, horror etc. are all fine the first go around.

I’m pretty flexible on genres so like, hey don’t be afraid to suggest it.

NSFW, I like writing smut, I just need to like you as well lol. Not a slight on your behalf, but I will let you know whether smut is a possibility or not.

NSFW will only be done with other 18+ adults who have verified they are in fact, adults. I absolutely refuse NSFW to “ageless” accounts and minors.

Honestly I don’t want to RP with minors so if you’re a minor, don’t message me. Don’t do it. Thanks.

Pairings:

Gets a little odd here, I don’t actually ship anything, if that makes any sense? Like, canon character X canon character just isn’t in my repertoire unless they’re already an established couple or the franchise is heavily leaning them that way.

That said, I’m totally cool with self shipping and OCs X Canon characters. (If self ship, it has to go both ways. Sorry I’m a simp too 😔)

Platonic, familial, those work best though especially if I am unfamiliar with you as a person.

Honestly I’m not as veered towards romance unless you’re a good friend of mine.

Do:

When first DMing, send me memes to help break the ice! I’m pretty good about speaking to people, but I understand how awkward it can be

If you’re using an OC, please tell me all about your OC! If you have any reference pics etc, send them so I can describe them during the RP.

If you’re playing a canon character and you’ve changed anything about them that’s notable, feel free to mention their quirks, and the lore building you’ve done for them.

Tell me if it gets to be too much or if you wish to change directions. I want you to feel safe and have a free voice during the chat. If something doesn’t click, tell me.

Please talk to me about the RP plot before we start! That gives me a good direction on what bases to hit and which lines to not cross. Your boundaries are just as important as mine and I want to respect them.

Use brackets or some other notation to let me know you’re speaking out of character! I’m very prone to using []

Understand that you can leave for a while and don’t need to apologize. Genuinely, I know you’ll get back to me. If you don’t think you will or it’ll take longer than expected then let me know. I know people get busy, so it’s honestly no problem.

Don’t:

Do NOT ask to RP if you are a minor. I do not wish to RP with minors.

Send me unsolicited NSFW or a starter without any conversation prior to. It’s just kind of ???? On my end.

Do not godmod HEAVILY. I’m okay with like, “and he helped her up and watched as she walked over to the desk.” But fully godmodding is a no.

Send one liners. Self explanatory.

Wildly deviate from the plot in bizarre ways. Like, making things NSFW all of a sudden or cause angst when there was none. I hate saying “Mary Sue the RP” but do not Mary Sue the RP.

Please don’t be upset when I take a hot minute or two to respond. I’m a person that has a life outside of her phone and is actually prone to migraine if I look at screens for too long. I will always get back to the RP unless I say otherwise.

Be pushy for a character or a pairing I said no to.

Go too OOC for canon characters.

Ask for things like rape, beastiality, common DNI criteria.

I understand RP can be therapeutic but remember, I am not a therapist and the RP we have is not substitute for actual mental health help.

Fandoms:

SCP

Call of Duty

Darkwood

Assassin’s Creed

Grimm

Uncharted

My Little Pony (yeah goin' back to my roots)

My OCs (need to ask about those, there’s,,,, many and they’re all intricate.)

Other Things:

Please use third person, past or present tense. Usually past tense.

I feel it goes hand in hand with literate RP but use “speaking” for a dialogue and ‘thinking’ for thoughts.

Try not to rush anything! Let it happen naturally and it’ll all play out.

Don’t be afraid to talk to me outside of the RP either. Like, it’s a personal thing we’re probably going to become friends.

Some Examples of My RP Style:

Mind you, not all of these are going to be extremely long. Things tend to taper out.

All of these examples were lifted directly from one of my RPs.

November 2nd, 2023: I swear not all of my replies are going to be like this. I'm immensely more busy now.

This is a starter:

A young princess sat on the balcony of her mother’s grand palace. The stars of the night were absolutely gorgeous as her dark eyes peered upwards, tracing constellation upon constellation. There, she could see the proud statue of Amun and feel the loving gaze of the beautiful mother goddess, Hathor. Strings upon strings of stars hung in the sky and bathed the desert in a warm white and blue gold, illuminating the darkness so she could observe the night life of her people. At barely eighteen years old, the young princess had been coming to a very startling conclusion as she stared out at the houses amongst the dunes and the boats and their ferriers on the Nile: that one day, all of this would be hers. The thought scared her, as ruling over such a people with the same authority as her mother and her mothers before her… The burden was crushing in its own right.

Sameera, the current pharaoh of Egypt and seated daughter of Isis and Ra, had been gearing her only daughter up for greatness since she had been brought into the world. The palace had served little as a home and more of a house of education, gearing up the little girl for a future in which all would bow down to her. Sameera has been, and will be considered a bountiful ruler. She ushered in an Egypt in which magick and divine favor rained down on the land, where suffering was lightened, and where pain had been naught but a bruise.

To give her daughter, Tavi, a taste of what it would mean to be the seated pharaoh and begin expanding her power besides running the palace, Sameera had placed her in charge of the Festival of Hathor. The festival in itself being amongst the most important task Tavi has been held in charge of to this date. In the morning, Tavi would be heading out by herself to Dendera, the main site of Hathor’s cult and preside over it, and of course, ensure it passes smoothly.

It sounds so simple: let people get drunk and feast, make merry, and enjoy singing and dancing in the company of others, but Tavi has never been a part of such importance in ritual ceremonies. She’s only ever observed, and even that in itself has been something hidden to her as her mother finds the merrymaking beneath her real education under the watchful eyes of Thoth.

Tavi sighs deeply and rests her arms on the balcony for just a moment more, already intending to head back inside and rest for the night before one of her lady maids interrupts her train of thought.

“My lady,” the finely dressed woman begins. “You have a visitor.”

Tavi’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise as she crosses the balcony through the cool night air to come to her lady maid’s side. “What? Who on earth would come to my quarters at this hour?” She inquires, more curious than angered at the thought she has a visitor.

The woman bows her head in the princess’s presence as if to silently ask her if she should address the visitor. “I believe it pertains to the Festival of Hathor, but it was not my place to pry,” the lady maid continues, her voice soft and sweet. “Shall I tell them to leave?”

Tavi blinks before shaking her head. “No, you may leave. I’ll handle this,” she replies warmly, her hand resting on the taller woman’s shoulder. “Go, get some rest,” she hums.

The lady maid nods, thanks her princess, then exits out the servant’s entrance, leaving Tavi to her own devices.

The young princess brushes back some of her black hair, wondering who would ask audience with her so informally and so late at night. She crosses her limestone floor quietly, akin to a ghost as if to tell her visitor no one is present before stopping just shy of the door. Mentally, Tavi remembers what her mother has said about acting regally in the presence of others, how to stand tall and like a future queen, and physically rolls that onto her stance.

With a deep breath, she opens the door.

And here is another response show casing what RPs tend to look like down the line WITHOUT me RPING multiple characters:

Tavi’s eyebrows shoot up In surprise as the listens to Arya’s words. “That is troubling,” she murmurs more to herself than anyone else as she once again brushes back some of her hair.

Her mind wanders, wondering what the right course of action would be. Of course, they would be moving during the earlier morning before the sun would come up, but with the flowers on the line… “perhaps we should leave earlier,” she hums.

But then that would require waking up the rest of the party—and they needed their rest. “We can discuss this inside, please,” Tavi moves aside in the doorway, gesturing for Arya to enter. “I would despise seeing your work go to waste because of the heat and the sun,” she says, already moving to her table to give Arya a cup of water.

[Howdy, here’s the phrase. “An ocean without unnamed monsters would be like sleep without dreams.” ]

And here is a response showcasing me RPING multiple characters:

Abasi mentally rolled his golden eyes at Arya’s childish gesture as he led Tavi through the halls. He enjoyed the feeling of the princess’s hands on his forearm—she felt delicate beneath his touch, and it made his heart beat just a little bit faster.

The area they had stepped into was absolutely beautiful, gorgeous in every which way. The air was sweet and warm, like a mother’s caress.

“Great mother Hathor,” Tavi murmured, her head bowing in reverence to the goddess. “What a beauty and blessing you are,” she murmured to herself, slowly letting go of Abasi’s forearm.

“Princess!” A priest’s voice cut through. “What a pleasure to see you here,” he said warmly. “I presume you’ve come to make an offering?”

Tavi smiled and nodded, gently telling Abasi that his guard could lower. “I have. What a magnificent job you and the priests and priestesses have done.”

The priest beamed and quickly nodded for one of the lower ranking priestesses to fetch a bowl full of offerings they’d prepared for the princess. “It means the world t hear it from you,” he said. “We’ve gone all out this time for her festival.”

“It shows,” Tavi hummed, silently thanking the lower ranking priestess who handed her a bowl full of spices, jewelry, flowers and sweet smelling oils. Gently, Tavi came to the edge of the pool, kneeling down and offering silent prayers to Hathor, a blessed mother, before placing the bowl gingerly on the water.

It rippled as it flowed on the surface, almost resting perfectly in the middle amongst the sparse lily pads and lotus flowers.

On her way back up, Abasi offered the princess his hand, and she took it.

The priest once again beamed. “The goddess is most pleased with your presence,” he noted, barely able to contain his joy. “Would your companions like to make offerings as well?”

[b-rainlet]

I promised to answer this in a seperate post so here it goes!

(Sorry this took forever but...I think the length explains why ajsnsns)

For @honestmrdual who asked for Alice +/vs/or Jervis!

Slight warning??? For the discussion of kidnapping since I mention Alice and Jervis within my Rotten AU

Also Murder. And Suicide.

Also Incest. Duh.

Jervis vs. Alice

That's...a hard one but also super simple? Like, I don't think either of them would want to fight the other, you know?

Of course Jervis doesn't wanna hurt his love but Alice also would rather avoid a confrontation with her brother.

But since as long as one of them is alive, they're gonna play an eternal game of cat and mouse, it would've come down to a fight eventually.

And even though in canon Alice dies, I think she would win.

Because canon seems more like an accident than a strategic suicide (even though Gordon words it like it's one).

But if it came down to a one on one fight?

I mean, Alice is shown to be willing to shoot Jervis whereas Jervis never truly threatens her.

Like yeah, she's tied up but he doesn't threaten her with a gun (like he does at the Lee/Valerie/Jim tea party for example) and when they meet on the roof he's mostly super happy to see her, he doesn't even think about defending himself??

He just stands there, arms up and obviously wanting to touch/hug Alice.

(Which…I think about often ansnsnsn)

So if they didn't need Jervis around for longer, Alice would've definitely killed him.

Shot him. Stabbed him. Lit him on fire. Whatever she could think of at that moment.

And Jervis probably would be super surprised because?? Alice??? His dear sister?? Why would you hurt him like this if he only wants to keep you safe???

Also I have made a post before about how he never once tries to hypnotize her - possibly because she's immune but that's never outright stated so maybe he also just...wouldn't do that to her. And I lose my mind every time I think about that for more than two seconds).

Also also, if I am already rambling - when am I not - the way it would've given Alice way more agency if she would've chosen to die the way Jim seems to imply she did.

Since he goes 'She would've rather been dead than spend any more time with you' or something like that and you could argue that yeah, she does pull away from Jervis but I think that was more 'I need to get away' and less 'I'm actively choosing to get impaled now'.

Just imagine!!

Jervis once again pressing Alice to his chest, watching Jim and Harvey fight tweedle dee and tweedle dum, when suddenly Alice pushes away, frees herself and stumbles into the room.

And everyone freezes for a moment because she's yelling at them to stop and Jim's telling her to go hide somewhere while Jervis is trying to reach for her without getting shot but she's having none of it.

She's sick of running, sick of hiding, she doesn't wanna live the rest of her life like this, always looking over her shoulder, always ready to vanish again, never truly able to build herself a life, to make any friends, to do more than survive.

Mostly, she wants to be able to wash all the blood from her hands, wants to stop being responsible for people getting hurt, the ones close to her and the ones unfortunate enough to be in her brother's way.

It's her fault Jervis is in Gotham, it's her fault Jim nearly died, it's her fault Jervis manipulated and maimed and murdered his way to her.

Not to mention she's a killer too! It's in her blood just as much as it is in Jervis' and she's tired of it, of all of it.

And it seems for a second she's gonna go to Jervis willingly and stay with him (which is an option she knows, but it wouldn't stop the running and the hiding, wouldn't stop the detectives from coming after them) but no.

Instead she picks up Jervis' gun (that I think he discarded in that scene? If not, he did now ajsjsjs) and she shoots herself.

And everyone would yell at her not to do it, voices shouting and people running toward her before there's this loud bang and then there's silence.

For a very long time.

Anyway, since Alice made it very clear she chose to die, it would be harder for Jervis to delude himself into thinking Jim somehow forced her or tore her away from him (although he would probably still manage, it's Jervis after all) so maybe, they'd actually get to arrest him (because I can see him just...falling to his knees and not moving after Alice is dead. Maybe cradling her in his arms. There's no real reason to go on now after all).

But even if he gets dragged away like in canon, this minor change would've made Alice' death a lot more driven in my opinion.

(And if we still need her impaled then imagine her speech and then she lets herself fall backwards with her eyes closed and her arms outstretched and she still ends up on the pole).

(Plus, because I like multiple endings, two possibilities I would also consider very sexy but wouldn't make sense in canon since they need Jervis around:

Jervis kills himself after seeing Alice die - much like Victor Fries tried to do, because what kind of life is this if the one person worth living for is dead?

 Alice pretends she's willingly going with Jervis but she used the time she had while she was monologuing to acquire a weapon (maybe one of the needles Jervis used to draw her blood) and once she's close enough she goes for a hug and ends up stabbing him in the neck multiple times until he's falling down in front of her, slowly bleeding out, murmuring her name with his eyes open in shock.

Just....some musings you know akjssksm).

Jervis + Alice

Do I even need to answer this? xD

They're on my top ship list, they're right up there next to Jecco and Jerelina, but they also have scenes within canon that make my mind go !!! like Jerome/Lee and Jervis/Ecco do.

They're just....good. Very good.

I have...a lot of thoughts and AUs for them but I think I shared them all already because I can't stop blabbering about them lmao.

Although I gotta say I've been thinking about them within my Jeremiah/Ecco/Jerome AU (aka the Rotten Fic)

Specifically about Jervis being Alice' legal guardian since she was about 10 or even younger (since their parents died very early in her life) and Alice isn't exactly being held captive but everytime she tried to run away while she was growing up, the police simply brought her back to her brother.

Because she was a minor and he was her 'loving and worried' big brother - who also could be very persuasive and knew how to manipulate people in his favour - and soon she was known as a 'notorious runaway' and the people she tried to plead for help only smiled at her in that condescending way people do when they pity you.

'Ah there she is, the little Tetch Girl, poor thing, lost her parents so soon. Now she's a troubled kid, running away, telling lies. She can be thankful her brother is so patient and loving with her.'

And surely all the tales she likes to spin about her brother crawling into bed with her or giving her 'special baths' are simply a sign for her overactive imagination, a hurt child making up all sorts of morbid things to get some attention.

And now she's around 20 and she knows she's old enough, an adult now, they would have to at least listen now.

Or she could simply try and get away, out of town, the police can't escort her back to her house anymore, they can't stop her at the train station and tell her she's a bad girl for worrying her brother like that.

But she also knows Jervis would never let her, he would come after her and he would kill everyone she would dare to care about besides him.

He would find her no matter where she hides.

It's safer when she stays, for her and for all the people out there she will never get to meet.

I simply like the idea of Alice basically being in a kidnapping situation but no one realizes. She's the sweet girl living with her brother, she belongs at home with her brother, what is she talking about being 'at her brother's mercy'.

And it's gotten to a point where he put her out of school with the promises of 'homeschooling' to 'help her anxiety' and oh, isn't he such a sweet and caring brother?

Taking it upon himself to teach her at home, what a big sacrifice it must be for him to completely focus on his little sister like that, to make sure she doesn't get left behind!

(And of course, since Jervis can be...persuasive, no one questions whether he actually has a teaching degree or anything of the like, no, Alice is shoved into his arms with smiles and waves).

And as Alice grew up, got to a point where her words couldn't be brushed aside as child's talk anymore, she learned to play her part. Made some…mistakes, said the wrong thing to the wrong person and had to live with the consequences.

(Consequences the other person can't live with anymore).

So if some newer neighbours notice that Alice is never seen outside? Well, she's a shy girl, no need to be worried!

Her brother is such a gentleman and he does make it a point to introduce the both of them to everyone who moves into their street, did the same when they first moved to Gotham, going from door to door with little Alice on his hand to prevent any rumours from spreading to make a good first impression!

And even if someone does worry, they only need to wait until Jervis is gone for the day to ring the doorbell. Alice will open and invite them inside, will play nice and portray the little sister Jervis told her to be.

The neighbour will come back home thinking 'Oh well, the girl is a shut-in, nothing too out of the ordinary. It's a dangerous city after all' and Alice will remain in her room and fight back the panic inside her, knowing that if she didn't do her job right and they get suspicious....accidents happen all the time.

Of course this routine is gonna get disturbed once Ecco enters the scene but let's not get ahead of ourselves👀👀👀

(Anyways the inherent horror of being kidnapped and used by strangers - aka Ecco and the twins - vs. Being permanently kept in a glass cage that no one else can see except you and no one can ever hear you scream for help - aka Alice and Jervis)

Jervis or Alice

Okay that's a hard one! Like, harder than choosing between Ecco and Jervis because Jervis and Alice are kinda on the same level here.

I love Jervis. You know if you've seen even just a fraction of my blog lmao.

But Alice.....so much potential. Such a good fucking storyline.

(Jervis and Alice as two sides of the same coin? I'd even say they have a big 'star-crossed lovers, one can't truly exist without the other' vibe. I mean, you could even compare them to 'B*tjokes in a way - only the who hunts who down is flipped).

Also Alice is very pretty and I have an obvious preference for girls in pretty much any piece of media I consume.

But then you have Jervis, who isn't only involved in the Alice storyline but is also part of the J Squad.....you have the legendary Jerome/Jonathan/Jervis team up and all three of them being horribly into each other....Jonathan and Jervis basically being an old married couple....the way Jervis looks at Jerome which still has me losing my mind....also you have the Ace Chemicals Episode which single-handedly saved the 5th season......the superb Ecco/Jervis interaction......fuck, this is hard.

I love Alice and I need to talk about her more often but I think Jervis wins simply by having more interactions with other characters (and oh to have Alice around for longer.....have her face off against Jervis on the regular.....Bruce deserves a little ragtag team of protoheroes in my opinion so why not add Alice...).

...But I am getting off track :D

[whaleofatjme1920]

RP Rules

Status: Semi-Open as of July 26th, 2022

Feel free to DM me or ask any questions in my inbox! I can't guarantee that RPs will start right away, but we can definitely start setting things up.

In order to RP with me, you NEED to send me the hidden phrase in here so I know you actually read the rules. If not, I will not RP.

Literacy Style:

Literate to semi-literate. I like to write in multiple paragraphs, both with detail and somewhat dialogue heavy. If you’ve seen my writing, it’s a lot like that! I expect potential RP partners to follow in suit/match.

It seems as of late that I prefer literate with multiple paragraphs and details.

I’ve been RPing since I was like, 10. If I see *she smiles* it might summon rage 💀 /hj

Where We Can Talk:

Just starting off? Tumblr DMs! I won’t RP in the comment section of a post.

You can now ask for my Discord. It’s where I’m most active.

Slots:

Don’t really have a cap off but it becomes too much at once I will be sure to let you know.

Genres and Plots:

Almost anything and everything! However, towards strangers and people I’m generally unfamiliar with, SFW are going to be the topics I steer towards. Adventure, drama, horror etc. are all fine the first go around.

I’m pretty flexible on genres so like, hey don’t be afraid to suggest it.

NSFW, while I am not opposed to it at all, must be talked about extensively if you are not a close friend.

NSFW will only be done with other 18+ adults who have verified they are in fact, adults. I absolutely refuse NSFW to “ageless” accounts and minors.

Honestly I don’t want to RP with minors so if you’re a minor, don’t message me. Don’t do it. Thanks.

Pairings:

Gets a little odd here, I don’t actually ship anything, if that makes any sense? Like, canon character X canon character just isn’t in my repertoire unless they’re already an established couple or the franchise is heavily leaning them that way.

That said, I’m totally cool with self shipping and OCs X Canon characters. (If self ship, it has to go both ways. Sorry I’m a simp too 😔)

Platonic, familial, those work best though especially if I am unfamiliar with you as a person.

Honestly I’m not as veered towards romance unless you’re a good friend of mine.

Do:

When first DMing, send me memes to help break the ice! I’m pretty good about speaking to people, but I understand how awkward it can be

If you’re using an OC, please tell me all about your OC! If you have any reference pics etc, send them so I can describe them during the RP.

If you’re playing a canon character and you’ve changed anything about them that’s notable, feel free to mention their quirks, and the lore building you’ve done for them.

Tell me if it gets to be too much or if you wish to change directions. I want you to feel safe and have a free voice during the chat. If something doesn’t click, tell me.

Please talk to me about the RP plot before we start! That gives me a good direction on what bases to hit and which lines to not cross. Your boundaries are just as important as mine and I want to respect them.

Use brackets or some other notation to let me know you’re speaking out of character! I’m very prone to using []

Understand that you can leave for a while and don’t need to apologize. Genuinely, I know you’ll get back to me. If you don’t think you will or it’ll take longer than expected then let me know. I know people get busy, so it’s honestly no problem.

Don’t:

Do NOT ask to RP if you are a minor. I do not wish to RP with minors.

Send me unsolicited NSFW or a starter without any conversation prior to. It’s just kind of ???? On my end.

Do not godmod HEAVILY. I’m okay with like, “and he helped her up and watched as she walked over to the desk.” But fully godmodding is a no.

Send one liners. Self explanatory.

Wildly deviate from the plot in bizarre ways. Like, making things NSFW all of a sudden or cause angst when there was none. I hate saying “Mary Sue the RP” but do not Mary Sue the RP.

Please don’t be upset when I take a hot minute or two to respond. I’m a person that has a life outside of her phone and is actually prone to migraine if I look at screens for too long. I will always get back to the RP unless I say otherwise.

Be pushy for a character or a pairing I said no to.

Go too OOC for canon characters.

Ask for things like rape, beastiality, common DNI criteria.

I understand RP can be therapeutic but remember, I am not a therapist and the RP we have is not substitute for actual mental health help.

Fandoms:

SCP

Darkwood

Assassin’s Creed

Grimm

Uncharted

My OCs (need to ask about those, there’s,,,, many and they’re all intricate.)

If you mention it and I know it, there’s a chance I’ll go with it.

Other Things:

Please use third person, past or present tense. Usually past tense.

I feel it goes hand in hand with literate RP but use “speaking” for a dialogue and ‘thinking’ for thoughts.

Try not to rush anything! Let it happen naturally and it’ll all play out.

Don’t be afraid to talk to me outside of the RP either. Like, it’s a personal thing we’re probably going to become friends.

Some Examples of My RP Style:

Mind you, not all of these are going to be extremely long. Things tend to taper out.

All of these examples were lifted directly from one of my RPs.

This is a starter:

A young princess sat on the balcony of her mother’s grand palace. The stars of the night were absolutely gorgeous as her dark eyes peered upwards, tracing constellation upon constellation. There, she could see the proud statue of Amun and feel the loving gaze of the beautiful mother goddess, Hathor. Strings upon strings of stars hung in the sky and bathed the desert in a warm white and blue gold, illuminating the darkness so she could observe the night life of her people. At barely eighteen years old, the young princess had been coming to a very startling conclusion as she stared out at the houses amongst the dunes and the boats and their ferriers on the Nile: that one day, all of this would be hers. The thought scared her, as ruling over such a people with the same authority as her mother and her mothers before her… The burden was crushing in its own right.

Sameera, the current pharaoh of Egypt and seated daughter of Isis and Ra, had been gearing her only daughter up for greatness since she had been brought into the world. The palace had served little as a home and more of a house of education, gearing up the little girl for a future in which all would bow down to her. Sameera has been, and will be considered a bountiful ruler. She ushered in an Egypt in which magick and divine favor rained down on the land, where suffering was lightened, and where pain had been naught but a bruise.

To give her daughter, Tavi, a taste of what it would mean to be the seated pharaoh and begin expanding her power besides running the palace, Sameera had placed her in charge of the Festival of Hathor. The festival in itself being amongst the most important task Tavi has been held in charge of to this date. In the morning, Tavi would be heading out by herself to Dendera, the main site of Hathor’s cult and preside over it, and of course, ensure it passes smoothly.

It sounds so simple: let people get drunk and feast, make merry, and enjoy singing and dancing in the company of others, but Tavi has never been a part of such importance in ritual ceremonies. She’s only ever observed, and even that in itself has been something hidden to her as her mother finds the merrymaking beneath her real education under the watchful eyes of Thoth.

Tavi sighs deeply and rests her arms on the balcony for just a moment more, already intending to head back inside and rest for the night before one of her lady maids interrupts her train of thought.

“My lady,” the finely dressed woman begins. “You have a visitor.”

Tavi’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise as she crosses the balcony through the cool night air to come to her lady maid’s side. “What? Who on earth would come to my quarters at this hour?” She inquires, more curious than angered at the thought she has a visitor.

The woman bows her head in the princess’s presence as if to silently ask her if she should address the visitor. “I believe it pertains to the Festival of Hathor, but it was not my place to pry,” the lady maid continues, her voice soft and sweet. “Shall I tell them to leave?”

Tavi blinks before shaking her head. “No, you may leave. I’ll handle this,” she replies warmly, her hand resting on the taller woman’s shoulder. “Go, get some rest,” she hums.

The lady maid nods, thanks her princess, then exits out the servant’s entrance, leaving Tavi to her own devices.

The young princess brushes back some of her black hair, wondering who would ask audience with her so informally and so late at night. She crosses her limestone floor quietly, akin to a ghost as if to tell her visitor no one is present before stopping just shy of the door. Mentally, Tavi remembers what her mother has said about acting regally in the presence of others, how to stand tall and like a future queen, and physically rolls that onto her stance.

With a deep breath, she opens the door.

And here is another response show casing what RPs tend to look like down the line WITHOUT me RPING multiple characters:

Tavi’s eyebrows shoot up In surprise as the listens to Arya’s words. “That is troubling,” she murmurs more to herself than anyone else as she once again brushes back some of her hair.

Her mind wanders, wondering what the right course of action would be. Of course, they would be moving during the earlier morning before the sun would come up, but with the flowers on the line… “perhaps we should leave earlier,” she hums.

But then that would require waking up the rest of the party—and they needed their rest. “We can discuss this inside, please,” Tavi moves aside in the doorway, gesturing for Arya to enter. “I would despise seeing your work go to waste because of the heat and the sun,” she says, already moving to her table to give Arya a cup of water.

[Howdy, here’s the phrase. “An ocean without unnamed monsters would be like sleep without dreams.” ]

And here is a response showcasing me RPING multiple characters:

Abasi mentally rolled his golden eyes at Arya’s childish gesture as he led Tavi through the halls. He enjoyed the feeling of the princess’s hands on his forearm—she felt delicate beneath his touch, and it made his heart beat just a little bit faster.

The area they had stepped into was absolutely beautiful, gorgeous in every which way. The air was sweet and warm, like a mother’s caress.

“Great mother Hathor,” Tavi murmured, her head bowing in reverence to the goddess. “What a beauty and blessing you are,” she murmured to herself, slowly letting go of Abasi’s forearm.

“Princess!” A priest’s voice cut through. “What a pleasure to see you here,” he said warmly. “I presume you’ve come to make an offering?”

Tavi smiled and nodded, gently telling Abasi that his guard could lower. “I have. What a magnificent job you and the priests and priestesses have done.”

The priest beamed and quickly nodded for one of the lower ranking priestesses to fetch a bowl full of offerings they’d prepared for the princess. “It means the world t hear it from you,” he said. “We’ve gone all out this time for her festival.”

“It shows,” Tavi hummed, silently thanking the lower ranking priestess who handed her a bowl full of spices, jewelry, flowers and sweet smelling oils. Gently, Tavi came to the edge of the pool, kneeling down and offering silent prayers to Hathor, a blessed mother, before placing the bowl gingerly on the water.

It rippled as it flowed on the surface, almost resting perfectly in the middle amongst the sparse lily pads and lotus flowers.

On her way back up, Abasi offered the princess his hand, and she took it.

The priest once again beamed. “The goddess is most pleased with your presence,” he noted, barely able to contain his joy. “Would your companions like to make offerings as well?”

[storiesungaa]

mobile rules & information

Since people don’t read rules all the way through i would like to preface this by saying: TRIGGERING MATERIAL WILL BE WRITTEN HERE. THIS INCLUDES BUT IS NOT LIMITED TO: INCEST, DUBCON, SUICIDAL IDEALATIONS, CHEATING, AND ANYTHING ELSE I WANT TO WRITE. BY CLICKING FOLLOW, YOU AGREE TO BLACKLIST THE TAGS PROVIDED IN THE FORM OF (trigger here) tw. DO NOT FOLLOW ME IF YOU THINK FICTION EQUALS REALITY OR IN ANYWAY HAS ANY REFLECTION ON A MUN’S MORAL STANDING. 

HATE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED AND ANY ANON’S I GET ABOUT THIS THAT IS HATE WILL BE BLOCKED/NOT AT ALL ACKNOWLEDGED.

THANK YOU.

about: this is an indie mutuals only rp blog for a multimuse with various fandoms from tv shows, movies, anime, and video games. mun is 25+, genderfluid lesbian, goes by he/him pronouns (but i am genderfluid so i don’t mind she/her pronouns, most just call me he/him) online and name Jay. Previously known as Ares and Snow.

Callout culture: Do not involve me in this. Period. I want no part of it and will block as soon as I see it, tagged or not. I believe it does more harm than good and something like tha is extremely harmful..

content: there will be some pretty heavy material featured here. such as suicidal thoughts, mentions of rape, incest, and anything else I want to write. I will not tolerate hate being sent to me about this and I will block anyone who tries to police me. The only hard limit i have and absolutely refuse to write is pedophilia.

Don’t ever be afraid to ask me to tag something!

side note: if you believe fiction equals reality, please don’t follow me.

discord: is open to those who follow me. simply ask for it. i do not write on discord though. ooc contact is highly encouraged!

disclaimer: i'm in no way affiliated with any of the actors, fandoms, or characters on this blog.  Banners, promos, and icons belong to me. Theme was made by inkfated.  all screencaps used to turn into icons on this blog are not mine and belong to their rightful owners. Lara Croft screencaps come from soulcluster. tsunade icons belong to hellspath. rectangle tsunade icons belong to me. Some psds are not mine. Credit to iconholic for Red Velvet psd. Credit to plutocommissions for psd 183 - wild. some psds used are made by rivercraze

Drama: There won’t be any. I’m too old for tumblr’s drama, if you try to start something, make me choose, or drag me into drama - you will be blocked.

DNI’s will get you blocked. I don’t agree with making people choose between people when there are things like blacklist and tumblr’s own filtering system to help you avoid a person

Hate: Character hate, show hate, etc will get you unfollowed. I don’t have time for that negativity, pls tag it so I can filter it out, thank you.

IMs: pls refrain from sending me multiple messages all at once as I’m autistic and it sends me into sensory overloads!!

follow/unfollowing: i usually follow back pretty quick. if i don't follow within a week, i'm probably not going to follow back. 9/10 i do follow back. i will not follow if i see vaguing, callouts, or any sort of drama on blogs. i also will not follow any under the age of 18.

if i’ve been following you for a month and you don’t interact with me within that time limit, I’m unfollowing. I won’t soft block because I’m totally okay with people still following me but I don’t see the point in following if we’re not gonna write.

If I do not follow you back, do not message me asking to write or become mutuals - you will be blocked.

If I block you, do not come to me asking why. It will only get you blocked all over again. Do not ask why i’ve unfollowed you, either.

DO NOT FOLLOW ME IF YOU’RE A MINOR.

side note: if you’re the type to blindly believe a callout because that’s what everyone else is doing  save yourself the trouble and don’t follow me.

Memes: Send as many as you want for as many muses as you want just be sure to specify muse or they’ll get deleted! Always feel free to turn meme answers into threads, too.

Do not use me as a meme resource. Send something in or reblog from the source, please.

note:  if you send memes multiple times and there’s clearly a way to continue them, ESPECIALLY if we’ve never interacted before, and you keep sending memes but have NO INTENTIONS on replying to them, I will be less likely to respond to them. memes, in my eyes, are used as alternatives to starters. if you don’t respond to them after i’ve responded to quite a few, that’s me putting work into it for no reason really, so yeah.

My triggers: Sharks. That’s it. Just tag pictures of sharks for me please

nsfw: smut will be present here. i can not play the dominant party in smut, please don't ask me too. if you don't feel comfortable with it, we can fade to black, easy peasy. i won't make myself uncomfortable for some smut. All muses involved in smut or ships are 18+. If you think that aging them up is pedophila, do me a favor and get off my blog. Smut may happen with aged up characters but that does not mean it was done specifically for smut. Do not assume.

OCS: I love them. Send them my way, please!

OOC:  I post ooc, sometimes quite a bit, sometimes rarely. I am human and I will act as such. I will not tag ooc posts mostly bc i’ll forget. Sorry if that bugs people but like i said, I’m human and I like to write things down and share things with the dash.

OOC note: please do not flirt with me or ask me to date you, thank you!

Shipping: all muses are LGBT+ in some shape or form so if you want to ship, just let me know. They’re pretty open to anyone, though gay and lesbian muses will stay gay and lesbian. I ship toxic pairings and incest so if that’s your cup of tea, just lemme know, and we can work something out if not? That’s alright too!!

As previously stated, all ships and smut scenes are involved with characters 18+. I will never under any circumstance write something with underage characters. Characters, however, can be aged up but are never simply just for the sake of smut. Smut may happen with aged up characters but that does not mean it was done specifically for smut. Do not assume.

wait time: sometimes i can take months, sometimes seconds, sometimes days. I’m not a fast rper, please respect this.

writing: i generally prefer writing multi-para or novella. one-liners or one-paragraphs usually end up getting dropped or made into much longer threads as i have absolutely no chill. 

edit: from now on any drafts that are below three paras will be deleted, i don’t have muse for short things.

End note: Do me a favor and like this post if you’ve read my rules. Not needed but deeply appreciated. Also below you’ll find important links:

MUSES & NAVIGATION & MUSE INTEREST CHECKER & SHIP INTEREST CHECKER & COMMISSIONS INFORMATION & MOBILE MUSE LIST & THREAD TRACKER

[anti-porn-unicorn]

I’m a girl (18 now) who got exposed/addicted to pornography at a really young age, and I wanted to share my specific story on this blog so that the platform can get it out there.

Under the cut is my full story, and it’s a little long winded, so if you don’t want to read the whole thing, I bolded in purple the general topic/idea of that section. Just look for whichever of those interests you and the section will be about that. The first and last paragraph are good for context and end goal, though.

Thank you.

I don't fully remember my first exposure to porn. I know I was in third grade (6-7 yrs old, I had skipped a grade). The reason I had wanted to share my story, in fact, is because I don't see many stories with circumstances similar to mine. Most I see have at least one of the following 'modifiers', for want of a better word. Most I see have at least one of the following 'modifiers', for want of a better word. Most I see have at least one of the following 'modifiers', for want of a better word. 1. The person is a victim of CSA/grooming. 2. The person was at a generally pubescent age (~11-14). And/or 3. The person experienced porn as a quick disturbance. To be clear, these stories are as valid and important as mine, and I simply think more perspectives make evidence of the effects of porn more airtight. I've never been the victim of SA, harassment, or grooming, ever in my life. My story shows the effects of exclusively porn.

The first memory I can recall about this was actually the first time I got caught. I was 6 yrs old, and very into video games,so on this day, I was playing a 3D porn game on my crappy hand-me-down laptop. I kind of knew that what I was doing wasn't acceptable, so I was sitting in my room in the corner as far from my door as possible. My mom walked in so I just slammed the laptop shut because I wasn't that good at hiding things. My mom obviously asked what I was doing, and I tried to keep her from looking, but it was right there when she reopened it. This is where the battle of it begins.

From ages 6-14 I don't have a good timeline of events but a few pop out that exemplify the severity of the issue. These are very probably out of order.

I got an iPod Touch for Christmas (~6-7), and every night I would watch porn on it until they caught on. I literally still remember some names of the sites, most that don't even exist anymore. My parents have always been amazingly caring. I couldn't ask for more. During the earlier ages (~6-8) I was put with a child therapist for fear of a deeper issue. My parents started either taking technology away in the night and/or setting restrictions on the internet. Unfortunately, between my slight tech-savvy, and my crazed addiction at this point, this wasn't a solution.

The addiction got DEEP. It warped my brain. When I had no technology, I used everything I could find.

Whenever I had access to less restricted internet, I used it. Once I asked my older cousin to use her iPod and watched it on there.(she noticed and told my mom. I remember my mom had asked me "Is there anything you need to tell me?", and I knew what she meant, but I just said "nope!" and walked away. At one point my dad's work provided him with a Blackberry, and I asked him could I play one of the built in little games. Once I had it, I watched porn. (when I gave it back to him he pressed the "back" button, and I was caught.)

I used Youtube. This was when YouTube was way less moderated (back when the app was a little old timey TV). I learned I could look up "striptease" and "nip-slip" and other stuff like that, finding more soft-core videos that could suffice when the internet in general was locked down.

I straight-up found out ways to disable the restrictions. Once I found out my mom's PIN for the controls, I went and disabled them, but changed the PIN so it would look like they were still on, and so that she couldn’t access and re-enable them. (I made it 7399. Spells "sexy". My mind was a mess.)

My parents bought a book called "The Classical Tradition". I'm just learning now as I'm looking it up that it was a Harvard Reference Library book (probably why it was so damn thick) about ancient Greek and Roman culture. I didn't know that. I had realized that sprinkled throughout the book there were pages that were more glossy than the rest, which you could see from the sides of the pages (the book was HUGE). These were the photo paper, which had the classical paintings and sculptures. And because these had nudity (Think "The Birth of Venus" type) I would regularly flip through this book when I needed a "fix". Absurd.

My parents got me an American Girl book that was made to ease worries about the developmental years. The pages on breast development / the anatomy of the vagina were what I looked at the most. When my parents had gotten me the child therapist, there was the logical fear that I might have been molested. The therapist gave me a book where there was a page with two cartoon mice, a boy and a girl. They were wearing swimwear/underwear and the point of that was "anywhere the clothing is covering is somewhere that adults can't touch you without telling.” They might as well have been stick figures, there was NO detail. But since they were in ‘underwear’ I'd always look at that page a lot. Anything barely vaguely sexual.

During this part of my life, I got no real pleasure out of this, I was just obsessed. For the first year I even watched it on mute out of fear of being caught. The lowest point during this period was when I very unfortunately filmed a video of me touching myself. I got nothing out of it and had no intent on ever sending or posting it. I was just emulating what I had been seeing. I deleted it the next day. I was 9 then.

From puberty until now (11-18) is when my sexuality was shaped by it. The addiction was far more controllable, I could spend a couple weeks to a couple months without it, but I'd always come back. Because it was now tied to my body. And while my need for it to be constant was gone, now I had to deal with the tolerance issue.

Over time what I watched became more and more depraved. I had the personal preference of hating anything amateur, because of the low quality, so I managed to avoid anything obviously non-consensual or involving visibly underaged girls, but that doesn't really mean much with the stuff the studios were putting out. During the middle points it got REALLY violent and disturbing. Bordering on torture (extreme kink) and even bodily deformation. As a young woman, I couldn't really tolerate any of the role based Kinks (father-daughter, babysitter, schoolgirl), so more extreme for me meant more extreme acts. Just absolute destruction of women's bodies for the purposes of sex. I moved away from that when tumblr banned porn and I started using reddit for it, and also during that time I was realizing how fucked up of an addiction that this was, even before I found feminism/anti-porn. I actively started trying to quit it, for good. But I always went back.

One big effect is heavy confusion with my sexual orientation. A lot of people face this, but the addition of porn for me really throws things off. Like: Am I bi, and a form of comphet/denial/inexperience keeps me from seeing women in a romantic way? Is it a mix of that and porn? (relatively likely) Or am I just straight, and the porn has completley shaped my mind (likely). 90% of the time I watched solo female content or lesbian content, and could only stand to watch certain specific forms if it included men at all. In real life I find a fair amount of men attractive but their bodies in a sexual sense are tolerable at best, but usually cringe inducing. l've never been attracted to a woman romantically, but exclusively women's bodies are sexual to me. It feels like everything in my brain that I would have been able to use in order to figure myself out has been permanently overwritten with incorrect information. Because of porn.

I've still got it bad. Every once in a while, I’ll read something vaguely sexual, or see a woman in a risque photo, and then the seed is planted. I'll always say "I'm not going to do it, I always feel disgusting after, it’s not even really enjoyable at this point, I can do better than this”. I always give in the end of the night. I'm 7 days off of it. I've been on this earth for 18 years. 12 of those years I've been cripplingly addicted to pornography. Two thirds of my life, and for as long as I can remember. I can never undo it. Just like an alcoholic will always be an alcoholic, only able to achieve remission, I will always be a porn addict. I have to be careful. But I have to hope for the future. And with finding the community that is speaking the truth about this, I'm heartened to do better. To no longer be held down by an addiction to consuming my own oppression.

[storieswrittcnarch]

mobile rules

about: this is an indie mutuals only rp blog for a multimuse with various fandoms from tv shows, movies, anime, and video games. mun is 25+, genderfluid lesbian, goes by he/him pronouns online and name Jay. Previously known as Ares and Snow.

Callout culture: Do not involve me in this. Period. I want no part of it and will block as soon as I see it, tagged or not. I believe it does more harm than good and something like tha is extremely harmful..

content: there will be some pretty heavy material featured here. such as suicidal thoughts, mentions of rape, incest, and anything else I want to write. I will not tolerate hate being sent to me about this and I will block anyone who tries to police me. The only hard limit i have and absolutely refuse to write is pedophilia.

Don’t ever be afraid to ask me to tag something!

side note: if you believe fiction equals reality, please don’t follow me.

discord: is open to those who follow me. simply ask for it. i do not write on discord though. ooc contact is highly encouraged!

disclaimer: i'm in no way affiliated with any of the actors, fandoms, or characters on this blog. Most icons on this blog are made by me using my own psd. Banners, promos, and icons belong to me. Theme was made by inkfated.  all screencaps used to turn into icons on this blog are not mine and belong to their rightful owners. Lara Croft screencaps come from soulcluster. tsunade icons belong to hellspath. rectangle tsunade icons belong to me.

Drama: There won’t be any. I’m too old for tumblr’s drama, if you try to start something, make me choose, or drag me into drama - you will be blocked.

DNI’s will get you blocked. I don’t agree with making people choose between people when there are things like blacklist and tumblr’s own filtering system to help you avoid a person

Hate: Character hate, show hate, etc will get you unfollowed. I don’t have time for that negativity, pls tag it so I can filter it out, thank you.

IMs: pls refrain from sending me multiple messages all at once as I’m autistic and it sends me into sensory overloads!!

follow/unfollowing: i usually follow back pretty quick. if i don't follow within a week, i'm probably not going to follow back. 9/10 i do follow back. i will not follow if i see vaguing, callouts, or any sort of drama on blogs. i also will not follow any under the age of 18.

If I do not follow you back, do not message me asking to write or become mutuals - you will be blocked.

If I block you, do not come to me asking why. It will only get you blocked all over again. Do not ask why i’ve unfollowed you, either.

side note: if you’re the type to blindly believe a callout because that’s what everyone else is doing  save yourself the trouble and don’t follow me.

Memes: Send as many as you want for as many muses as you want just be sure to specify muse or they’ll get deleted! Always feel free to turn meme answers into threads, too.

Do not use me as a meme resource. Send something in or reblog from the source, please.

note: if you send me a meme, the /ask link doesn’t work so you have to use the pop up on the blog! it’s the second link on the theme.

My triggers: Sharks. That’s it. Just tag pictures of sharks for me please

nsfw: smut will be present here. i can not play the dominant party in smut, please don't ask me too. if you don't feel comfortable with it, we can fade to black, easy peasy. i won't make myself uncomfortable for some smut. All muses involved in smut or ships are 18+. If you think that aging them up is pedophila, do me a favor and get off my blog. Smut may happen with aged up characters but that does not mean it was done specifically for smut. Do not assume.

OCS: I love them. Send them my way, please! 

OOC:  I post ooc, sometimes quite a bit, sometimes rarely. I am human and I will act as such. I will not tag ooc posts mostly bc i’ll forget. Sorry if that bugs people but like i said, I’m human and I like to write things down and share things with the dash.

Shipping: all muses are LGBT+ in some shape or form so if you want to ship, just let me know. They’re pretty open to anyone, though gay and lesbian muses will stay gay and lesbian. I ship toxic pairings and incest so if that’s your cup of tea, just lemme know, and we can work something out if not? That’s alright too!!

As previously stated, all ships and smut scenes are involved with characters 18+. I will never under any circumstance write something with underage characters. Characters, however, can be aged up but are never simply just for the sake of smut. Smut may happen with aged up characters but that does not mean it was done specifically for smut. Do not assume.

wait time: sometimes i can take months, sometimes seconds, sometimes days. I’m not a fast rper, please respect this.

writing: i generally prefer writing multi-para or novella. one-liners or one-paragraphs usually end up getting dropped or made into much longer threads as i have absolutely no chill.

End note: Do me a favor and like this post if you’ve read my rules. Not needed but deeply appreciated.

[latetaektalk]

hi there ^^' i'm... kinda new to this whole tumblr thing and have been wanting to write on here for a while but this huge place is kinda scary sometimes haha ;; do you have any writing tips or tricks that would be good to know for newcomers? (also your music taste is immaculate, i love it)

hey love 💕 first of all, welcome to tumblr!! its a fun place,, youre gonna love it, and learn to hate it lol second of all, thank you for complimenting my music taste 😳

now im not quite sure if you want only writing tips or writing blog tips, so ive included tips and tricks for both!

WRITING BLOG TIPS :

have a masterlist. this might seem stupid and obvious, but ive seen people with no masterlist. people are lazy, so if they cant access your writing easily, they will just click away.

have a clean theme. aesthetics are important. they are. people love clean and easy to navigate themes. again, people are lazy, so if you make it easy to click through your blog and get to your writing, youll increase the chance of people reading your stuff!

how to get your work show up in general. putting links in your fanfic might lead to your story not showing up in the search. ive also heard that a banner thats too big can cause that. even using too many tags can lead to your work not showing up. its complicated.

the first five tags. im sure youve heard abt this already but the first five tags are the tags that will actually show up! so if someone follows #bts fluff and you tag your fic with that, your fic can show up on people's dashes as a recommended post!

tag accordingly. speaking of tags, please tag accordingly! theres nothing more annoying than finding a jimin fanfic in the taehyung fanfic tag. i really discourage you from mistagging your stories. if im scrolling through the taehyung fanfic tag and find a jimin fanfic, it makes me want to not read it. just tag your fics accordingly.

reblog your fics. i mean it. seriously, reblog them as much as you want! people live in different time zones or sometimes forget abt wanting to read your stuff, so reblogging it consistently for a week or so to get it on people's dashes helps!

teasers and taglists. i recommend doing both! teasers help to get people excited for your story and taglists ensure that people will read it, or at least remember to!

dont stress abt notes. now, this is less of a tip but rather something i just really really really want to tell you! i know youve heard this before, but please do not stress about notes. tumblr fame does not exists! it doesnt matter if your writing gets 2 notes or 300 or 5k notes! i do understand how getting a lot of notes can be motivating (every fics deserve all the love in the world by the way!!) but in the end, it should not be your motiviation to write. focusing on notes will ruin writing for you. it will. the amount of notes your fic will reach has nothing to do with how good your writing is. dont let something as superficial as notes ruin the fun of writing for you. its seriously not worth it! write for you and no one else!

WRITING TIPS :

write self indulgent fics. i seriously think all fics should be self indulgent. writing fics should be fun, so please write whatever you want! also, theres no such thing as an overdone trope. if you want to write a fake dating enemies to lovers fic, please write it! you might think there are already a bunch out there and its not worth writing another one, but youre wrong! there isnt one out there thats been written by you yet. go write it!

make playlists. now this is a bit specific to me because im absolutely obsessed with music, but making playlists that fit the mood of the fic has always helped me while writing and gotten me out of writers block before!

take your time. writing is freaking hard and when writers block hits, theres rarely ever something that you can do. try not to stress too much abt it! it happens to the best of us!

balance dialogue and detail. its important to find a middle. if im reading a fic and theres paragraph after paragraph after paragraph of detail, the chance of me just skipping that part is really high. because even though i love detail, it does get boring. so use dialogue to spice it up!

reading. okay, this sounds weird because youre asking for writing tips, but reading seriously help your writing so much! if you wanna improve your writing skills, reading a lot is going to be key. now, im not saying reading is necessary, but i do think that it can help you to better! whats even more important though is that you try to analyse people’s writing while reading. when i say you should analyse people’s writing, i do not mean you should write an entire analysis of a book, but to take a second and think to yourself how the authors just did that. how did they convey oc’s sadness? why did they just describe the weather? whats the purpose of this scene?

switch up sentence/paragraph length. shorter sentences/paragraphs = emphasise something and pick up the pace. longer sentences/paragraphs = slow down the story and allow for more detail. its important that you do a mix of both. utilise the length to your advantage. a well placed short sentence/paragraph can pack a lot of punch and turn your sad story in a heartbreaking one.

outline your fics. look this is very personal again because some people dont like to outline their fics, but i recommend outlining your fics. and when i say outline your fics, you can do it as little or as much as you want! it can be a few notes, or a long list of every detail you want to include. i just want you to know where this story is headed. its so easy to write yourself in a corner and trust me, you dont wanna end up there.

allow yourself to be free. this connects to the previous point i just made. even though i do recommend outlining your fics, i am also a firm believer of taking the story somewhere else if you feel like it. ive scrapped complete outlines before. half of the scenes i write also arent in my outline at all. you dont have to stick to the outline. if you think that a specific scene would add something to your story, then please go ahead and write that scene. just always remember where youre headed and dont loose focus.

have fun. i just really wanna reiterate this point again. its just so important to me that you have fun while writing! seriously. its just fanfiction. it should be fun. go crazy. i support you!

okay bub i hope this was helpful 💕 if you have any other questions/want more tips/want me to elaborate on something, please just hit me up! my ask box is always open!

[melforbes]

seaglass blue annotations

hello! i just posted the last chapter and thought i’d put together some ~fun context~ for that fic. it got way way more attention than i ever expected and for something i feel i didn’t put that much effort into i think i did in the end put a lot of effort into it so i might as well talk about it and answer some potential questions.

my favorite book of all time is the sunlit night by rebecca dinerstein (yes, that one) and something i find really compelling about that book is how sparing the prose is, forcing the reader to fill in certain gaps, and i think having to fill in those gaps makes the book a really acquired taste with which either you love it or hate it and there’s not really an in-between

i also really adore how in that book the natural world backdrop comes to life, something i find really challenging to write. recently i even read into thin air, the book about the 1996 mount everest disaster, and even though the writing was superb, i still had to google what the hillary step was because i couldn’t picture it on my own. i don’t know how people write nature because to me it feels damn near impossible, but this sparing approach really worked, so i thought i might try it out. i tend to be longwinded (gestures vaguely at this post) and wanted to have certain parts of this be a lot smaller and more contained without negating impact. whether or not i made it work is anyone’s guess. definitely not my normal style, so to speak

based on the comments i’ve received i think this might be everyone’s favorite part. in my mind age of consent by new order was playing in the background. in pretty much every fic i have a scene like this one and all of them are based on the poem first base gold by rh*annon mcg*vin from her book branches (censored because she has a tumblr and i don’t want her seeing this haha)

i absolutely can’t do the poem justice by describing what it’s about, but the simplest, most basic interpretation of the poem is that there is no better place to kiss than right here, right now, because of the past. i really like that imagery and tend to use it a lot. she as a writer has been a big inspiration for me and if you’ve read my fic true minds i should add that the nonfiction inspiration for that was directly as a result of one of her youtube videos. i particularly love how the last paragraph (stanza? im not a poet) is one big run-on sentence that’s jovial and tongue-in-cheek and colloquial and straightforward. it feels triumphant in a quiet way to me and i love how it’s done. obviously my attempts at something similar are nowhere near as insightful, but still, the most basic image of this is that there is no better place to kiss, and that’s how i felt about the two of them finding pudding in the supermarket

this part is autobiographical; while writing this last year, i went through six months of intravenous drug treatment, a month and a half of which involved long days of doctor visits on every weekday. when you’re on stuff like that for a long time you end up with a central line for better access (potential plot hole in all of this: scully never had one) but for a month and a half i got poked almost every day and strangely enough it got harder over time. the first couple you never feel, but a week or two later you start flinching, and if the needle goes in the same vein each time, it hurts the more it gets prodded. i reached a point toward the end of the in-office visits in which i would bleed a lot every time i got poked, and i can’t watch anything like that happen to me so i was looking away each time, and when i felt that the nurse was done, i would look back over, and sometimes i would be looking down at a pool of blood that i hadn’t expected to see. it’s weird, you don’t actually feel yourself bleeding, i would’ve expected a hot bloody feeling but instead it felt like nothing. and when i say a pool i mean that it would drip down beneath my elbow, stain the sheet they’d put underneath, and i wouldn’t get all of it off until i showered. i didn’t necessarily find it scary, but it was surreal and kind of pulled me out of normalizing the experience i was having. for a very long time needing iv drugs was my greatest fear and i was surrounded by that then and fine, and then, there was blood all over my arm, and like, haha, this is actually not fine. you’d think something else would’ve been scarier, but it wasn’t. and now looking back at this paragraph i wish i’d edited it differently but hey that’s life

i’d never really understood the purpose of religion as a self-driven part of life until i took anatomy in college. i was raised catholic and though culturally i understand having a religion and being raised with one, i’ve never really reached for religion when i wanted answers, and i haven’t personally understood why that’s someone’s first option. and i know there’s been plenty of commentary on the hypocrisy of dana scully as a catholic who believes in science, yada yada yada, i think everyone has read all of that by now. but what struck me while learning anatomy is that there is a kind of neuron we don’t know the function of. there are four kinds of neurons, and one of them is still a mystery to us. and then, there’s all of these different parts of human bodies that exist in a certain perfect way, but why do they exist like that? to support life, yes, but why is it that we can make comparisons? why were irises not the same color? and we name valves of the heart after religious figures. we are so hell-bent on meaning that something literal will never be enough. and all of that made me think that dana scully has god to fill in what science won’t answer, at least not yet. and there’s definitely a bigger conversation about science as denial of indigenous cultures that i am nowhere near qualified to start. after taking those classes, i think i would be more shocked if she wasn’t religious. you can ignore pretty much all of the paragraph above but it was important to me that at some point in this fic she willingly conceded that she didn’t know what would happen and that she didn’t have answers. with illness, there is no logic, there’s no thinking your way out of it, and i think that would plague her for a long time. to me, she only would accept her death when she could say she had no idea what would happen, she has no answers, there’s nothing filling in her gaps anymore, and she’s comfortable with that. and i put all of that in a paragraph about my thoughts on god because it made sense to me. there are times that just feel like you’re in a movie and there’s no one else you can say caused them. it’s not enough to build belief on but it’s enough to bring a certain kind of wonder. also one time my parents insisted on watching stripes because it was so funny and when watching it none of us found it funny at all and my parents grimaced and were like what were we on that made that good back in the day so that’s in here now haha

and now, the biggest question: does she die at the end? when i came up with the idea for this fic, i knew the beginning and ending but not the middle, and i posted this as a smaller project (ie: chapters below 3,000 words) while illness made my bigger projects harder to work on and essentially flew by the seat of my pants the whole time. i wrote the last line a long long time ago and have always seen the ending as written as the concrete ending. when i started writing this, i never intended for there to be a definitive answer to whether or not she dies. i like premature endings (the ending of girls burn brighter comes to mind) and i think that this works better without saying whether or not she lives. and i also have a hard time with giving a definitive answer because this fic very much is about death and having her die would, of course, be traumatic, but showing her living instead i think ruins any takeaways people could have. i’ve never had cancer but as a chronically ill person i think i can speak to how you never actually win with illness; the best you can do is tie, and sometimes, no matter how much effort you put in, you “lose” anyway, you lose spectacularly, and all of your effort was for nothing. i wholeheartedly believe that humans can’t emotionally or logically process natural disasters or illness, hence why much of the talk about illness in this is from mulder’s perspective as he experiences her terminal illness secondhand; that way, he doesn’t need to (but still likely will) find logic or reason or meaning for death from a terminal illness, so his discoveries and his coping mechanisms aren’t as urgently needed. had i written a chapter that describes how she lives, i think that the discussion of death in this would be voided altogether. and i also don’t believe the ending would be much different whether she lives or dies; there’s still the need for death acceptance and talking about dying, whether or not she lives, and none of the story in this fic would have happened had the characters known she would live. the whole point is not knowing.

for a little while i toyed with writing an unofficial sequel of sorts in which i spelled out what i think happens after the ending, but after realizing that that would end up being longer than the original fic and would also have some massive plot holes, i decided against it. i do have my own version and i don’t want to share that version because i never really intended for my version to be some kind of genuine sequel in which every question gets answered and everything is wrapped up and happy ever after and whatnot. it was just where my brain wandered in the same way it wanders when i watch an open-ended movie. all of that to say, if you think she lives, then she lives. if you think she dies, then she dies. it’s your decision. i’d much rather you choose than me. i never marked this as “major character” death on ao3 because, well, she doesn’t die in this fic. whether or not she dies after the fic ends, that’s for you to decide. 

thank you for taking the time to read my writing. i never expected this to blow up (it blew up for me at least, for a while it was my most popular fic ever, with i think thousands more hits than anything else i’d written) and the response has been mind-boggling and wonderful. i don’t respond to comments often because it makes me feel like a pompous jerk (”thank you for enjoying this! i, too, enjoy this thing i have written! oh ho ho!” is how it sounds to me in my head, whereas when other writers respond to comments to me it just looks like thanks man have a good day, feel free to call me a weenie) but i’ve appreciated all of them very much. THANK YOU! i hope your new year is a Whole Lot Less Shit than 2020. i don’t plan on writing more msr because i don’t really have any ideas for them. thank you for making my last time special <3

[whitehotharlots]

Andrea Long Chu is the sad embodiment of the contemporary left

Andrea Long Chu’s Females was published about a year ago. It was heavily hyped but landed with mostly not-so-great reviews, and while I was going to try and pitch my own review I figured there was no need. Going through my notes from that period, however, I see how much Chu’s work—and its pre-release hype—presaged the sad state of the post-Bernie, post-hope, COVID-era left. I figured they’d be worth expanding upon here, even if I’m not getting paid to do so.

Chu isn’t even 30 years old, and Females is her debut book, and yet critics were already providing her with the sort of charitable soft-handedness typically reserved for literary masters or failed female political candidates. This is striking due to the purported intensity of the book: a love letter to would-be assassin Valerie Solanas, the thesis of which is that all humans are female, and that such is true because female-ness is a sort of terminal disease stemming not from biology but from one’s inevitable subjugation in larger social contexts. Everyone is a woman because everyone suffers. Big brain shit.

But, of course, not everyone is a female. Of course. Females are females only some of the time. But, also, everyone is a female. Femaleness is just a title, see. Which means it can be selectively applied whenever and however the author chooses to apply it. The concept of “female” lies outside the realm of verifiability. Suggesting to subject it to any form of logic or other means of adjudication means you’re missing the point. Femaleness simply exists, but only sometimes, and those sometimes just so happen to be identifiable only to someone possessed with as a large a brain as Ms. Chu. We are past the need for coherence, let alone truth or honesty. And if you don’t agree that’s a sign that you are broken—fragile, illiterate, hateful, humorless.

Chu’s writing—most famously, her breakthrough essay “On Liking Women”—establishes her prose style: long, schizophrenic paragraphs crammed with unsustainable metaphors meant to prove various fuzzy theses simultaneously. Her prose seems kinda sorta provocative but only when read on a sentence-by-sentence level, with the reader disregarding any usual expectations of cohesion or connection.

This emancipation from typical writerly expectations allows Chu to wallow proudly in self-contradiction and meaninglessness. As she notes herself, explicitly, meaning isn’t the point. Meaning doesn’t even exist. It’s just, like, a feeling:

I mean, I don’t like pissing people off per se. Yes, there is a pleasure to that sometimes, sure. I think that my biggest takeaway from graduate school is that people don’t say things or believe things—they say them because it makes them feel a particular way or believing them makes them feel a particular way. I’ve become hyper aware of that, and the sense in which I’m pissing people off is more about bringing that to consciousness for the reader. The reason you’re reacting against this is not because it contradicts what you think is true, it’s because it prevents you from having the feeling that the thing you think is the truth lets you feel.

And so she can get away with saying that of course she doesn’t actually believe that everyone is a female, the same as her idol Valerie Solanas didn’t actually want to kill all men. The writers, Chu and Valerie, are just sketching out a dumb idea as a fun little larf, to see how far they can push a manifestly absurd thought. If they just so happen to shoot a gay man at point blank range and/or make broader left movements so repulsive that decent people get driven away, so be it. And if any snowflakes complain about their tactics, well that’s just proof of how right they are. Provocation is justification—the ends and the means. The fact that this makes for disastrous and harmful politics is beside the point. All that matters is that Chu gets to say what she wants to say.

This blunt rhetorical move—which is difficult to describe without sounding like I’m exaggerating or making stuff up, since it’s so insane—papers over Chu’s revanchist and violent beliefs. Her work is soaked with approving portrayals of Solanas’ eliminationist rhetoric—of course, Chu doesn’t’ actually mean it, even though she does. Men are evil, even as they don’t really fully exist since everyone is a woman, ergo eliminating men improves the world. Chu goes so far as to suggest that being a trans woman makes her a bigger feminist than Solanas or any actual woman could ever be, because the act of her transitioning led to the world containing fewer men. Again: big brain shit.

I’ll leave it to a woman to comment on the imperiousness of a trans woman insisting that she is bestest and realest kind of woman, that biological women are somehow flawed imposters. I will stress, however, that such a claim comes as a means of justifying a politically disastrous assertion that more or less fully justifies the most reactionary gender critical arguments, which regard all trans women as simply mentally ill men (this line of reasoning is so incredibly stupid that even a dullard like Rod Drehar can rebut it with ease). Trans activists have spent years establishing an understanding of transsexualism as a matter of inherent identity—whether or not you agree with that assertion, you have to admit that it has political propriety and has gone a long way in normalizing transness. Chu rejects this out of hand, embracing instead the revanchist belief that transness is attributable to taking sexual joy in finding oneself embarrassed and/or feminized—an understanding of womanhood that is simultaneously essentialist and tokenizing. When asked about the materially negative potential in expressing such a belief, Chu reacts with a usual word salad of smug self-contradiction: 

EN: You say in the book that sissy porn was formative of your coming to consciousness as a trans woman. If you hadn’t found sissy porn, do you think it’s possible that you might have just continued to suffer in the not-knowing?

ALC: That’s a really good question. It’s plausible to me that I never would have figured it out, that it would have taken longer.

EN: How does that make you feel? Is that idea scary?

ALC: It isn’t really. Maybe it should be a little bit more, but it isn’t really. One of the things about desire is that you can not want something for the first 30 years of your life and wake up one day and suddenly want it—want it as if you might as well have always wanted it. That’s the tricky thing about how desire works. When you want something, there’s a way in which you engage in a kind of revisionism, the inability to believe that you could have ever wanted anything else.

EN: People often talk about the ubiquity of online porn as a bad thing—I’ve heard from lots of girlfriends that men getting educated about sex by watching porn leads to bad sex—but there seems to me a way in which this ubiquity is helping people to understand themselves, their sexuality and their gender identity.

ALC: While I don’t have the research to back this up, I would certainly anecdotally say that sissy porn has done something in terms of modern trans identity, culture, and awareness. Of course, it’s in the long line of sexual practices like crossdressing in which cross-gender identification becomes a key factor. It’s not that all of the sudden, in 2013, there was this thing and now there are trans people. However, it is undoubted that the Internet has done something in terms of either the sudden existence of more trans people or the sudden revelation that there are more trans people than anyone knew there were. Whether it’s creation or revelation, I think everyone would agree that the internet has had an enormous impact there.

One of the things I find so fascinating about sissy porn is that it’s not just that I can hear about these trans people who live 20 states away from me and that their experiences sound like mine. There is a component of it that’s just sheer mass communication and its transformative effect, but another part of it is that the internet itself can exert a feminizing force. That is the implicit claim of sissy porn, the idea that sissy porn made me trans is also the idea that Tumblr made me trans. So, the question there is whether or not the erotic experience that became possible with the Internet actually could exert an historically unique feminizing force. I like, at least as a speculative claim, to think about how the Internet itself is feminizing.

Politics, like, don’t matter. So, like, okay, nothing I say matters? So it’s okay if I say dumb and harmful shit because, like, they’re just words, man.

Chu can’t fully embrace this sort of gradeschool nihilism, though, because if communication was truly as meaningless as she claims then any old critic could come along and tell her to shut the fuck up. Even as she claims to eschew all previously existing means of adjudicating morality and coherence, she nonetheless relies on the cheapest means of making sure she maintains a platform: validation via accreditation. This is all simple victimhood hierarchy. Anyone who does not defer all of their own perceptions to someone higher up the hierarchy is inherently incorrect, their trepidations serving to validate the beliefs of the oppressed:

I like to joke that, as someone who is always right, the last thing I want is to be agreed with. [Laughs] I think the true narcissist probably wants to be hated in order to know that she’s superior. I absolutely do court disagreement in that sense. But what I like even better are arguments that bring about a shift in terms along an axis that wasn’t previously evident. So it’s not just that other people are wrong; it’s that their wrongness exists within a system of evaluation which itself is irrelevant.

Chu has summoned the most cynical possible interpretation of Walter Ong’s suggestion that “Writing is an act of violence disguised as an act of charity.” Of course, any effective piece of communication requires some degree of persuasion, convincing a reader, listener, viewer, or user to subjugate their perceptions to those of the communicator. Chu creates—not just leans on or benefits from, but actively posits and demands fealty to—the suggestion that her voice is the only one deserving of attention by virtue of it being her own. That’s it. That’s what all her blathering and bluster amount to. Political outcomes do not matter. Honesty does not matter. What matters is her, because she is her. 

This is the inevitable result of a discourse that prizes a communicator’s embodied identity markers more than anything those communicators are attempting to communicate, and in which a statement is rendered moral or true based only upon the presence or absence of certain identity markers. Lived experience trumps all else. A large, non-passing trans woman is therefore more correct than pretty much anyone else, no matter how harmful or absurd her statements may be. She is also better than them. And smarter. And gooder.

Designating lived experience and subjective feelings of safety as the only acceptable forms of adjudication has caused the left to prize individualism to a degree that would have made Ronald Reagan blush. And this may explain the lukewarm reception of Chu’s book.

While they heaped praise upon her before the books’ release, critics backed off once they realized that Females is an embarrassingly apt reflection of intersectional leftism—a muddling, incoherent mess, utterly disconnected from any attempt toward persuasion or consensus, the product of a movement that has come to regard neurosis as insight. The deranged mewlings of a grotesque halfwit are only digestable a few pages at a time. Any more than that, and we begin to see within them far too much of the things that define our awful movement and our terrifying moment.

[crazycookiemaniac]

Omg why are you losing so many followers youve been drawing gay shit for forever??? (Or maybe i as a gay was just interpreting it that way)

Because I literally spammed people every day for one week lmao. And also, a lot of people follow others for specific content. The moment I stop drawing that exact thing they followed me for, they unfollow me. There are also accounts that follow just to make you follow them & if you don’t, they unfollow you after a while. There’s people who followed me for haikyuu & weren’t interested in BC content, and there were people who followed me for BC content but got showered in gay art instead and that was not their cuppa tea. 

But mostly, i start appearing on people’s feed the more I post. So having me post incessantly for one week made me show up on feeds that I hadn’t shown up for  a good while, so there were probably people who forgot they had followed me in the first place & me posting was a reminder to unfollow.

Truthfully, follower counts are dumb. Yes, it is important for you to have a high follower count for you to get attention, but the amount of people actually following you if you don’t have a consistent art style & rarely ever post something with different vibes than your usual ones, is equal or less than 1% of your total amount of following.

My instagram tells me I have 43k. I do not have 43k people following me. I’ve had 43k that once saw my account & pressed the follow button, but their feeds are filled up with other people’s accs that interest them more than mine (as well as my own feed does not show all the content of the 200+ something people I follow, unless I scroll down till the depths of hell to find every single post on that day and then do so on the next day as well).

Essentially, 95% of your followers are there because of content. They want to see what entertains them. Most of them don’t care about the artist and don’t interact with them at all. Many of them are scared to, given the high follower count. Social media & big accounts make people forget that there are other, real, living & breathing people that are behind them all.

So, to many, I was just a random artist they found and “lol”ed at one of my comics & pressed follow without thinking about it. Most of them don’t go to my account and see all other art I’ve posted to see if they actually like what I do, or me as a person and as an artist at all.

People who don’t know this get really discouraged when they don’t earn a lot of followers, or when they lose a lot (like I did). And some people think you gotta have hundreds of thousands to be famous. I’ve seen accs going around that paid for ads, that had over 150k followers and less than 1k likes on their posts.

Truly famous, loved, growing and/or steady accounts have an amount of likes per post proportional to their follower count. For example, if someone has 150k followers, most of their posts will vary from 20k to 100k likes.

When I was growing my account because I hopped in the fandom bandwagon and stupid little me didn’t know that would only make me crash later, I had like 20~30k and some of my posts reached more than 20k likes (because people liked my stupid comics). Nowadays, I’m not part of the fandom that made me grow anymore. I’m part of a very underrated one (Black Clover), as well a I am drawing a very underrated ship (LuGna) that above all else is getting hated on. I have everything against me in this, so it’s no wonder I lost so many followers.

They didn’t wanna see gay art. They didn’t wanna see Black Clover. They didn’t even know what the fuck was going on. Not everyone paid attention or kept up with my warnings. Despite me explaining multiple times in multiple posts what the Thunder Flames project was about, a lot of people still didn’t know what I was doing that for.

The thing about being a big follower count is that, unless you’re actually loved for what you do (and to do that, once again, I need to emphasize that you need to keep a steady rhythm, a steady vibe, a steady you. Because people follow you for your first impression on them, and you gotta keep up to that first impression if you wanna keep your followers.

I’m unsteady. One look at my gallery and you’ll see how disorganized everything is. Oh, lookit, a 1 min speedpaint of a random drawing I did on an old piece of paper! And right on the left there’s a stupid random comic I did–on the right there’s this super detailed, shaded drawing I’ve done that actually looks terrible to me and I will 100% archive it later, and then there’s B&W mixed with gray shaded, flat colored and fully shaded characters of different fandoms + OCs from commissions and whatever else. 

The thing is, I made my follower count based on a fandom, and now that I’m not there most of that follower count does not have me on their feed. And most of them do not want me on their feed. Now, I’m trying to build a follower count for who I am as an artist, because the few people who have actually stayed and followed me throughout the years know how inconsistent I am in terms of art style, fandoms and everything else.

A solution to this would me either keep creating/posting the same thing all over again (just in different patterns), or creating original content (which I do plan on doing at some point). But for now? Since my follower count does absolutely not reflect on how many people actually like me and/or my art, I’m going to be as chaotic as fucking ever and do whatever the fuck I want.

So yes, I do find it comical that I lost 1k followers over this and am not fazed in the very least, especially because I literally foreshadowed losing 1k and hit the fucking jackpot.

The only reason I’m talking about this at all is because 1- it’s impossible not to notice my follower count decreasing, especially because every new 1k I thank people publicly through stories; 2- some people were actually worried I was upset over it and I have to 3- show that I am not, while simultaneously trying to show people that just because you’re losing followers doesn’t mean you have to stop doing what you want to create content to please people. It doesn’t mean you should be upset, and it doesn’t mean that what you’re doing is bad or wrong.

It means you’re fucking renewing your followers & you’ll now grow for what you’re trying to grow for, bitch. That’s what it’s all about.

Obviously, people do take a great risk doing this. I am taking a great risk doing this. I could’ve lost 5k, I could’ve lost 10k. But I only lost 1k! And that’s because I believe in the project I worked on; I knew there were people out there who enjoyed what I was doing and it’s on them that I was focused on. On the people who supported me AND my art, not just that one single funny comic post I did 3 years ago.

This answer is 100% a lot longer than what you could’ve possibly expected for and I am typing this while being awake for more than 24h so I’m sure that I’ve repeated myself a lot and that there are a lotta typos or w/e and I apologize for that!! But I’m too lazy to go back to read everything over & turn this into a neat post & I’m pretty sure I could answer your question in the first paragraph.

Oh and also. Yes. Yes I have been drawing gay shit ever since I’ve become an artist because I’m so fucking pissed at the lack of canon gay content in a way that it’s depicted as a normal fucking romantic couple instead of having eeeeeeeeveryone point their finger to the gay couple and scream “HEY THAT’S GAY!!! THIS CAN’T BE PART OF THIS VERY HETEROSEXUAL SHOW WHERE EVERYONE IS OBVIOUSLY HETEROSEXUAL EVEN THOUGH NONE OF THE CHARACTERS HAVE EVER SAID THAT EXPLICITLY BECAUSE WE KNOW THAT THE CREATORS ARE EITHER HETEROSEXUAL OR TOO AFRAID TO LOSE AUDIENCE IF THEY TREAT GAY PEOPLE AS NORMAL PEOPLE!??!! WHAT SORT OF ABSURD NONSENSE IS THAT??!! GAY PEOPLE AREN’T NORMAL!! THEY’RE GAY AND THEY SHOULD HAVE A GAY SHOW JUST FOR THEM IF THEY WANNA GET SCREENTIME” and yadda yadda yadda.

I’m tired of this bullshit. Ever since I was an artist I’ve been rooting for gay ships in shonen manga while knowing they would never happen just because they were gay, and now that we are in our Blessed-By-Satan, Pandemic-Chaotic, What-The-Fuck-Is-Going-On, We-Don’t-Know-If-We-Wanna-Go-Back-Or-To-The-Future-Or-Just-IDK-Fucking-Die year 2020, in which the LGBT community is thriving and being louder than ever to fight for our rights, Me, in my twenty four years of fucking age, having gone through several fucking disappointments ONLY regarding this matter, am sitting here on my ass, hopeful as all galactic, glittery shit that for some fucking reason, my new OTP formed by very underrated characters from this very underrated franchise in the southern and western communities, becomes canon because my stupid eyes can see chemistry between them even though those stupid haters’ can’t. But that’s because they’re stupid and homophobic, and they really should just shut the fuck up. I don’t wanna dream, I want to believe. Let a bitch pray in peace.

But even if I’m getting ready for disappointment, I’m gonna make this project happen and I’m gonna have a shit ton of artbooks from this Thunder Flames project inside my fucking garage if no one wants to buy them. But I am going to invest a shit ton of money in it and I am going to have these artbooks come to life. Because I am spiteful and petty and homophobes should shut the fuck up, and I wanna do what I wanna do bc as an independent artist, I’m building my future with my own two, very toned and buff by now from all the drawing I did, hands. 

God fucking damn it.

Jesus christ I’m just rambling at this point, I’m so sorry. If anyone ever reads this out of context people are going to be so confused.

But that’s fine. They won’t. You know why? Cuz I got almost 11k followers here on tumblr but less than 0.5% gives a shit that I’m here, so I’m safe.

Have a nice day, drink your water and fuck homophobes. Peace

[songbookff]

Hi, I just came off your Ao3 page. I've started your Elusive Spirits series and I'm just in absolute awe.

Your writing is just so moving. And in all seriousness, can I pick your brain on your process? How do you even start? How long does it take you to finish a story? Do you follow an outline? Tips or tricks you use for a better creative does?

I have these sporadic ideas that I want to bring to life as well as you have. And I'm finding that my work apparently lives and dies with dialogue. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I've just started writing fan fiction, but I would love to be even close to your level!!!

Keep up the amazing work and thank you!

Hello! I’ve been so happy reading your reviews all day! (I see you’re almost to the end)

I absolutely love to talk to people about anything, especially my writing. So I’m going to try to answer everything you’ve asked here, but if you want to discuss more, just dm me or send another ask! 

1. How do I start? So specifically, with Elusive Spirits, I wanted a Lin story, specifically a Kyalin story that was an entire overarching plot. There are great fanfics out there, but at the time, I had read most everything there was for Kyalin, so I decided to write my own. I plan out the main points in my head for the most part and then once I steadily have the same plan for a while, I’ll start my outline. 

2. Do you follow an outline? Yes. Very much so. When I first started writing fanfiction in high school (prob jr high if I’m honest), I did not use outlines. I just wrote whatever came to mind, sometimes one-shots, sometimes chaptered fics. I didn’t care too much, I just loved writing. However, I didn’t always finish what I started and I HATE when I have a WIP that is never finished. So, I made myself promise that I wouldn’t publish anything anymore without knowing how it ended and how I was going to get there. 

That being said, there is definitely something to just free writing. I find that when I’m in need of inspiration or am stuck on a chapter, I write something I don’t have planned out. Sometimes those end up as oneshots, sometimes tumblr prompts, or sometimes the world never sees them. And I highly encourage people to start writing this way. Just write what you want to. I use outlines because I can’t stand not finishing something, but that’s not for everyone. 

I also write out of order sometimes. This can be tricky when you are writing a large chaptered, plot driven fic, as you have to make sure that your writing style and the plot points line up. So even if I think I have a chapter written, I will often do heavy edits or even re-write entire sections. But because I suddenly have ideas for specific scenes, I will write them as they come to me. 

3. How long does it take you to finish a story? So this depends. If you noticed, I posted Elusive Spirits back in 2017 (although I probably started messing around with the plot in 2016-ish). I didn’t officially finish it until this year. Years ago, it could take me a year or two to finish a long chaptered fic, mainly because I didn’t use outlines. Recently, life is what gets in the way sometimes. Which is what happened to Elusive Spirits. That being said, I’ve written 20 chapters of the prequal/sequel Spirits Intertwined since July. And there are approx 10 more, I think. 

How long it takes me to write a chapter varies on my mood. Some days (or more likely nights), I can do an entire chapter at once. Others, I’ll work on for weeks, slowly piecing it together. 

As far as one-shots go, most in the Kyalin Collection (Or the Spirits Universe), I did in a day or two and then spent some time editing. I like to write something, leave it alone for a day or two and then go back and reread it. That’s not a general rule though: sometimes I get excited and want to share it right away. 

(I also have an entire folder of unfinished WIP from various fandoms that will probably never see the light of day...but they’re fun for me to write and read again)

4. Tips and Tricks. So as I said before, I like to randomly write things. I found that prompts are a great way to do this. Sometimes I take suggestions, other times I just give it a go. And I don’t spend a lot of time on them. Maybe an hour or two. This helps me to focus on the important plot points sometimes, or some other aspect such as dialogue, mood, or description. 

Lastly, I’m a scientist by nature and trade. Writing has been my creative outlet for years. I have fun. If it feels forced, I stop writing. Because as much as I love the people who read & review my fics, I write for myself. I have struggled with anxiety disorders for years and through it all, writing is something I can rely on. I like to write, but I don’t like writing to be a chore. And I stopped trying to judge my own work years ago...I write what I want to read. And I write what I love. And some days (and some chapters) are better than others. But at the end of the day, I got to express myself and that’s what matters to me. 

Advice for you...I know a lot of people say that the only way to become a better writer is to write. Unfortunately that’s true. I’ve been writing fanfiction for a lot longer than I care to admit. Pre-dating A03, that’s for sure. However, you can burn yourself out. If you feel like you’re forcing the words out...it’s time to take a break. 

If you’re worried about your dialogue, or really any other part of your writing, read it out loud. Sort of act it out. Use your own voice to put feeling into it. (You’ll also catch typos this way). As far as your sporadic ideas, just write a few. Even if they aren’t finished or no one ever sees them. Write just a few paragraphs or  line of dialogue. Sometimes you’ll know that you don’t really want to pursue it any further. Or maybe you’ll find the inspiration to keep going. 

[purplesurveys]

1055

surveys by lets-make-surveys

1 - Surveys aside, do you use Tumblr for any other reason? Not anymore. I used to have a main blog, but it’s been years since I opened it; this is it (excuse the bad word in the URL lol, I thought it made me look like an edgy teen) but as I got older I used it less and less frequently until I no longer remember the password to log back in. These days I stay on Tumblr precisely because no one really uses it anymore, so it’s the perfect spot to hide this blog in.

2 - Do you have a lot of social media accounts? Do you update them all regularly? Depends on what you mean by a lot; I have all the basic ones - Twitter, IG, Facebook, YouTube, hell I still even have my Snapchat alive lol but I haven’t used it in like three years. I use YouTube the most but I don’t update it per se, like I just use it to watch videos. Facebook I’ve used a lot less often since the breakup, but I’ve shared a handful of posts since September. I’m probably on Twitter the most, but even then my usage hasn’t been the same.

3 - Does it bother you when your socks don’t match? What about your underwear? I don’t care for either situation, especially for underwear. Why would I care about something no one is ever going to see and even think about?

4 - How many times a year do you go on vacation? Do you tend to go to the same places each time? My family plans at least two trips, at least in non-Covid circumstances. We will sometimes repeat provinces but we never repeat hotels or sites, and we seldom repeat cities. The only places I remember visiting more than once are Baguio, Tagaytay, Albay, Subic, and Baler.

5 - How many times did it take you to pass your driving test? Just one. I could not afford to fuck it up; I was at the LTO for 8 hours and was not willing to go through that shitty long wait, so I absolutely had to pass that exam and do my best with the shitty car I had to work with.

6 - When you’re in trouble, do your parents ever “middle name” you? Nah they never used my whole name. My mom’s trademark is to add an -ah sound to my name when I’ve done something wrong though, as in Robina lol. That’s a sign I should know I shouldn’t have done what I did, whatever it is.

7 - Which family member do you look like the most? Which one do you resemble the most in terms of personality? People are always shocked to hear my mom is actually my mom and not my sister, because 1) we look very much alike, and 2) she looks young for her age. As for my personality, I’d say I’m a perfect split of my mom and dad. I exhibit an equal amount of traits they both have and I can’t tell which one I act like more.

8 - Have you ever been arrested? Never.

9 - Do you prefer Apple or Android? Apple. Would rather pay more than be stuck with an interface, camera, and emojis that I personally don’t like.

10 - Does getting sweaty or dirty bother you at all? If so, has it ever put you off doing exercise? I don’t sweat a lot, so I really do hate it when I feel beads of sweat on my temples or when the back of my shirt starts to feel damp. It doesn’t have anything to do with my feelings about exercising; I don’t like working out, period.

11 - Have you ever broken a bone? What were the circumstances that led to this happening? Never happened, hope it never happens.

12 - If you could change one thing about your appearance, what would it be? I wish I didn’t get the hairy gene so that I didn’t have to shave too much; my hair to be a little livelier and bouncier; and my front teeth to be straighter.

13 - When was the last time your computer crashed or froze? is this something that happens often? It must’ve been around a month ago. It just got too busy, so it froze for a few seconds. My laptop’s a trooper and doesn’t crash/freeze a lot.

14 - Do you ever have problems with your sleep? It’s mid-sleep I’ve been having issues with; I get nightmares almost every night. I don’t have a problem falling asleep as I’m able to do so pretty quickly.

15 - What was the last thing you ate for breakfast? Is this a normal breakfast meal for you? Angel sent over a small box of chocolate chip cookies as a Christmas gift so I’ve been enjoying that :) I’m currently having it with warm coffee. My normal breakfast is no breakfast, so this is a treat for me. Before this I also had to eat my leftover Chapaghetti that I couldn’t finish last night.

16 -  Have you ever thought about how you want to spend your retirement? That has not come to mind a lot, actually. I think more about death than I do my retirement...but this question tells me I should probably take a few steps back. I’d simply love to live in comfort with the person I end up growing old with. For now, that’s all I see myself wanting.

17 - When was the last time you got a new tattoo or piercing? Do you have any plans to get either in the future? A little less than 22 years ago; my mom had my ears pierced when I was a few months old. Haven’t gotten any new ones, nor tattoos, since. I’d love to have a couple of tattoos. Some of my ideas are two pawprints for each of my dogs, a plate of nachos, and lyrics that are personally meaningful.

18 - How would you describe your personality? Oof, what a loaded question. Hmm, I guess I’d generally label myself as hardened until I get close with someone? I’ve always kept a wall up and as friendly and extroverted as I can be, I don’t enjoy letting just anyone in. I value my personal and private space, and it’s important that I don’t lose it. 

From another angle, I also like to keep doing nice things for other people, even at the expense of my own happiness and comfort. I have to keep making people happy to keep me pleased with myself and the world. Maybe it’s rooted in the fact that I’m the eldest daughter in an Asian family? Idrk, but all I know is that I’ve never had a problem putting other people first.

19 - Have you ever heard of “hygge”? is this something you enjoy or participate in at all? I have no idea what this is and I’ve never come across this word before.

20 - What colour was the last vehicle you travelled in? Does this vehicle belong to you or someone else? White. It’s the car that was given to me for college, but when all is said and done it’s not mine.

21 - Would you describe yourself as healthy? Why or why not? In some senses yes, in other senses no. I don’t exercise or actively watch my diet, and I certainly eat too much junk; so proactively speaking, I’m not super healthy. But generally, my gene pool has been pretty fortunate with health. Other than heart conditions that run in certain branches of the family, we’re relatively a healthy bunch.

22 - Would you describe yourself as messy or organised? Is this something you would like to change? It’s a balance of both. I’m very organized at work so I allow myself to let go in my personal space, like my closet and car. I do clean up from time to time and I still like my space to be neat, but I’m not as neurotic as I normally would be with my workspace.

23 - Do you miss anything about being a teenager? If you are a teenager, what’s your favourite thing about it? The innocence. It was a period of being ideal, being a dreamer, being as romantic about life as I wanted to be. It was also a period where you were allowed to make mistakes, because fucking up when you’re younger lets you off the hook. These are the biggest things I miss, but I don’t really find myself pining for my teenage days. I still like where I am, even if things are realistically a little duller in adulthood.

24 - Are you patriotic at all? Why/why not? No. It’s hard to be when your country is shit.

25 - Have you ever had to wear a white lab coat before? Was this in school or for a job? Yeah we had lab coats in Lab class in high school, but they were green. We also needed safety goggles, and if I remember correctly if we had neither of these things we had to sit outside and skip out on the session.

26 - Would you ever want to do the same career(s) as your parents? I can see myself going down somewhere in the secretarial path like my mom as I’m good at organizing things and keeping internal affairs in order, but I don’t know if I would find it fulfilling. But in general, I wouldn’t want to be in the hotel and restaurant industry. I don’t have any attachments to it and I’ve always felt like I belonged in media and communications.

27 - Do you believe in aliens? Is there a reason why (or why not)? Yes. For the most part, it’s more comforting to think and believe that we’re not the only beings around.

28 - Which animated film would you most like to live in? Does it have to be a film? I’d love to be in the Fairly OddParents universe and have fairy godparents of my own.

29 - When was the last time you got into an argument? Have you made up with that person yet? Gab. I don’t know. She’s ignoring me.

30 - What are you going to do now this survey is over? Take another one.

--

1 - Have you ever had your computer or e-mail hacked? Did anything bad happen as a result? No but I had bad viruses on all of my Windows laptops before. The worst virus I got involved my laptop typing out some long-ass Vietnamese paragraphs for me at the most random times. It was like a horror movie lmao. Every time I Googled the text I never got any leads from it, so I never knew what it meant or what the virus was. 

2 - Do you prefer the company of people or animals? I don’t really have a preference when it comes to these two because their companionships are individually different. I like that animals can be playful and sweet; but I also like cracking jokes and having meaningful conversations with people.

3 - Are you a religious person? Were you raised in that faith or did you discover it a later date in life? I was born and raised Catholic, and still legally am. I never saw the appeal of the idea of being saved or of reading the Bible or anything that has to do with Christianity; and the idea of praying was weird to me even from childhood. A lot of Christians/Catholics I know are hypocrites anyway, and to me that says a lot about their mindset when it comes to religion.

4 - When was the last time you went to the beach? What did you do there? August 2019. My friends and I had a day trip to Nasugbu so we could have some fun before the semester started; we mostly swam and caught up with one another. August is a low season so we literally had the beach, the pool, and the poolside bar to ourselves.

5 - With all the COVID restrictions in place, would you feel happy/comfortable travelling abroad right now? Why/why not? I’d be happy, but not comfortable because of the swab test I would have to take hahaha. The selfish part of me is itching to go to other places already. I know my parents would put a million roadblocks to keep me from getting on a plane though, so me traveling is purely theoretical.

6 - How would you describe your dress sense? I like wearing flattering pieces but nothing too flashy or bright. I get items that are currently in style and make sure they match with the rest of my wardrobe, but at the end of the day I still like to blend in with the crowd and avoid neon colors, flashy labels, or whatever it is that would make me stand out.

7 - Do you wait until the sales start before you buy non-essential items? I never really pay attention to sales. It’s led to some pleasant surprises, like the other day when I was looking for a gift for my aunt. There was an H&M purse that caught my eye and it was so pretty, but way above my budget. I decided to get it anyway because that aunt throws amazing Christmas parties over the years and gives us lots of money, so I thought it could would be my way of giving back (especially since her company got hit hard by Covid). Once I got to the cashier the register showed it was like 60% off, even though there were no stickers on it and there was zero promotion anywhere in the store.

8 - What kind of milk do you prefer to drink (if you drink it at all)? I don’t drink milk, but I’m able to consume it in other dishes. I haven’t tried any types other than whole milk.

9 - Do you prefer blonde hair or brunette hair on your preferred sex? I don’t have preferences when it comes to hair color. We’re not really conditioned to consider this factor, since Filipinos have black hair.

10 - Would you be embarrassed to own the same clothing as one of your parents? No. I borrow stuff from my mom all the time. My sister also borrows some of my dad’s t-shirts, at least the ones that can fit her.

11 - When was the last time you wore some kind of fancy dress? Like...a gown? I’m not too sure. It must’ve been Alena’s debut three years ago since that’s the last fancy party I went to.

12 - Do you enjoy dressing up (ie. in suits or smart clothing)? When was the last time you did so? I like dressing up and making myself look cute, but dressing up formally not so much.

13 - What’s worse - being overdressed or underdressed? Personally, underdressed. I’d rather look too prepared than looking as if I didn’t care to look decent for whatever event I’m headed to.

14 - What do you think would be the worst thing about being stuck in solitary confinement? Not having any options or activities to do.

15 -  Have you ever owned an unusual or exotic pet? Would you want to? Nope. I would not want to have one. Unusual pet is just a euphemism for animals that shouldn’t be pets.

16 - How old were you when you learned to tie your shoelaces? I was 5 and had to learn it for a test in kindergarten.

17 - Do you enjoy decorating for the holidays? Sure, it makes me feel festive :)

18 - Would you rather go into a restaurant or just go via the drive-through? These days it’s more wise to use the drive-thru, but to be frank I’ve missed dining in. I would opt for the restaurant but make sure to follow safety protocols in the area.

19 - Do you like having your teeth cleaned at the dentist? I’ve actually always found trips to the dentist soothing, even as a kid. The only time I ever really freaked out was when I went last year to have a tooth removed and I was told that I needed an anaesthesia shot on my gums; even then, I didn’t even feel anything when it finally happened.

20 - Have you ever had a gun drawn on you before? Maybe? My cousins and friends and I doodled on each other a lot as kids.

21 - When was the last time you went to a petting zoo? I’ve never been to one and idk if I can go to one.

22 - Do you bite your nails? Could you physically bite your toenails if you stretched enough? Sometimes I’ll gnaw at my nails and then scrape them off. I’ve found it more satisfying than biting them all the way off. I could definitely bite my toenails, but I choose not to.

23 - How old were you when you first started using Tumblr? Have you had the same blog all that time? It wasssssss 2010, so I was 11 at the time. Nah, I deactivated that blog only after a year of using it and then I shifted to a wrestling blog.

24 - Are you a fan of practical jokes? If I’m watching celebrities pull it on another celebrities, yeah. Most of the time I get anxious that the recipient would react negatively, so I don’t watch a lot of pranks.

25 - How many years older and younger than you would you consider dating? Is this a concrete thing or would you make an exception for the right person? It will still depend on the latter condition, of course; but theoretically I would like to keep seeing people my exact age. No more and no less than the year 1998. Growing up with relatives in such close age to me makes me feel like I’d be dating an older cousin if it was someone a year older, and my sister if it was someone a year younger.

26 - Who did you vote for in the last US elections? If you’re not in the US, who would you have voted for? I don’t live in the US; I would have voted for Biden.

27 - Are you a fan of reddit? What are some of your favourite subreddits? Sure. I don’t visit it as much as I used to, but I still go on there when I’m bored and in need of entertaining or educational content. r/AskReddit is a classic fave of mine, but I also go on r/interestingasfuck, r/todayilearned, r/mildlyinteresting, r/dataisbeautiful, r/SquaredCircle, and r/goodmythicalmorning. Sometimes I’ll visit the r/AmItheAsshole sub as well to have some fun lol.

28 - Have you ever watched those YouTube videos of people popping their own spots or zits? Do you find them gross or fascinating? Not those, but I’ve looked up earwax extractions and blackhead removals before.

29 - What’s a food you hated as a kid but love now? How about vice versa? Chicken curry is probably my best example because I’m obsessed with all kinds of curry now, whether it’s Indian butter chicken, Thai green curry, or Japanese curry. I didn’t understand the complex flavors as a kid, but I’m got to appreciate more and more as I got older.

30 - Do you prefer socks, shoes or going bare foot? Idk, I feel like all these choices are useful and convenient in their own different situations? I’m barefoot when I’m at home but put on socks when it’s chilly, and I wear shoes when I’m outdoors.

[vierafication]

Last night around 4 am, I reblogged a certain post about "villainous rp" and added my own two cents to what had been discussed within it- mostly just venting about behavior I'd seen in the past. I didn't think much of it until I saw the next day it had been reblogged, and reblogged again, and again, by some folks who seemed pretty unhappy about what I'd said. I was told I needed to get a life, that I clearly can't separate IC and OOC, that maybe I shouldn't be writing at all. That hurt. I was irritated, then, feeling like I'd had words shoved in my mouth, like I was being purposefully misinterpreted. I typed up a clarification post explaining my previous points and pressed send, but it was seemingly ignored.

I talked with @damankjol about it later. He's the best, if you didn't know. And he rp's villains! I don't think he's a sociopath! He's very empathic and honest and understanding and cool, and he helped me realize that people weren't just angry at me, they were genuinely hurt by what I'd written. I went back and reread what I posted, as well as the responses, with a more critical eye. And... yeah. What I typed up wasn't clean, organized, or coordinated. I was venting and the tone that came off was irritated and rude. While not my intention, what I wrote sounded pretty fucking disrespectful and downright mean. And, frankly, my intentions don't matter, anyway, since I wasn't able to convey them properly. I just put some angry bullshit up on tumblr way too late at night, and I didn't expect anybody to even look at it, let alone reblog it- but I should have. Tumblr is a public platform and I should have approached my post the same way I'd approach any other one during the normal hours of the day. Thinking critically is always key, but audience is too- a vent post is a vent post, but I should have thought before I vented about a topic other people were sensitive to, and properly indicate specifics instead of vague generalizations. So, yes, I really wanted to apologize to anyone who that post hurt. I’m genuinely sorry. I should not have generalized like that. It wasn't even my intention in the first place. I was disrespectful and now that I think about it, incredibly hypocritical to boot. So yeah. I really am sorry. I respect @damankjol and @miqojak a lot as writers, and it would never be my intention to tear them down. Or anybody else, for that matter- rp only works when you rp with others, after all.

Once again, I'm sorry, and I hope you won't hate me for eternity or anything. Storytime and critical analysis under the cut.

One of my first, and worst, experiences in the ffxiv rp community was a good couple years ago. I was describing my character to a “friend,” and that character happened to be Lionnet Blodoint, my Ishgardian chirurgeon. Lionnet was not a good person by a long shot, to begin with, and from his time serving during the Dragonsong War, he’d developed quite a bit of PTSD relating to any and all things draconic. He hated dragons. He didn’t even like Au Ra. “Wow,” said the so-called friend at the time. “Your character is a nazi.”

“What? No!” I exclaimed. I tried to explain that he was NOT a nazi, he was just a traditionalist Ishgardian who hated dragons because they had been, at one point in time, absolutely hell-bent on destroying his home and everything he knew. I thought it was a pretty reasonable character trait to hate, or at least fear, dragons after serving in the Dragonsong War. The core of how I’d planned to develop him would be overcoming or at least coming to terms with his trauma, and no longer seeing it in every dragon or Au Ra he met. “No,” they said. “Your character is terribly written. They’re awful and nobody would ever want to rp with them. They’re boring because they’re so full of negative traits. They’re racist and thus, a nazi. And you are just as bad, because you’re defending them! You’re a nazi too!”

So yeah, they are NOT my friend anymore. But that whole convo really stuck with me, and I was afraid to bring out Lio afterwards- it took me another year before I actually began to use him in rp. And he turned out wonderful! His story became one of my favorite rp character stories of all time, and he had great relationship development and a happy ending. He’s still around, canonically, but I have a different main toon now.

So it shocks me that what that person told me about Lio is more or less the same as what I wrote in that post. I’m honestly dumbfounded at how I could just casually type that up and post it, when it draws so many parallels to the way I was bullied back then. So yeah. Huge hypocrisy right there. I swore to never act like that. And to an extent, I suppose I have. But that post I made was pretty fucking close- just directed at a vaguely generalized audience instead of a singular person and character. Maybe that’s actually worse. And I am sorry. I guess because it wasn’t directed at anyone but the void (even the op’s url doesn’t exist anymore), I just didn’t think about it. Which sounds like a lame-ass excuse, but... it’s true. I just wasn’t thinking. I was just venting. It’s really fucking with me that I could’ve hurt somebody so much completely unintentionally, to be honest.

So, what did I say- or, to be more clear, what was I attempting to say? What was my intention, and what wasn’t? I’m going to go over that now, more for my benefit than anyone else’s. Please note that I am not trying to make excuses or shove any blame elsewhere. I am just trying to clarify what I meant and address the issues that made my post so negative, for my own sake.

To begin, I’m gonna link this post by @lilac-memorials. It goes into detail about the trouble with “villain” discourse, and addresses a number of issues from a much more unbiased standpoint, far more eloquently than I could. Also, it seems to reference (the worse) parts of my posts at some points, or maybe I’m just paranoid. Regardless, it’s a much better post than the trainwreck that was the original one, and I agree with every bit of it. It also addresses the difference between a “villain” and an “antagonist,” which is something I attempted to go into but failed miserably.

Anyhoo. My post began with this paragraph:

Seriously. I do not trust anyone who refers to themselves as a “villain” rper. A character can take an antagonistic role in another character’s story arc, that’s fine, that works. It goes back to the “everyone is the hero of their own story” sorta thing. But playing a villain, only as a villain… what’s the point in that? It’s just someone roleplaying as an evil asshole that expects to be treated as stronger than other characters, expects to be feared. It reads like some twisted power fantasy. It doesn’t sound fun and it sure isn’t fun for the people rping with you. Like dude, calm down.

To begin with, yes, I am indeed a little distrustful of people who label their characters first and foremost as villains, before anything else. I am more suspicious of engaging in rp with them than I am with other types of characters, because I have seen some pretty crappy villains out and about and I just don’t wanna deal with that. Next, I go on to try to draw the line between a villain and an antagonist, and how I am much less suspicious of “antagonistic” characters than straight-up “villain” characters. “But playing a villain, only as a villain... what’s the point in that?” I ask. Very rudely. Insinuating that their is no point whatsoever in playing a villain. Which I didn’t intend to. But honestly, I don’t know how else that would’ve translated- I don’t know what I was thinking. I go on to describe this “villain” as somebody who is an evil asshole with a power fantasy, and how it ruins fun for anybody. Which can be read very easily as saying “all villains are like this.” No, they are not! I was describing the bad type of villain rper. The rper who “plays a villain, only as a villain,” and not as a character. Do you get what I mean now? The controlling, toxic, power-hungry rper that plays a villain as an outlet to be further controlling, toxic, and power-hungry, moreso than they ever could in reality. We all know that type of person exists. We’ve met them, somewhere. Sometimes they aren’t playing the villain at all, anyway. They’re playing the hero, or somebody else entirely. But here, I am just venting about that type of person. They are what my post is about. The key line should’ve been “playing a villain, only as a villain,” but it was shoved into a passive-aggressive question addressing self-worth instead of a proper sentence describing the difference between a well-written villain and a badly-written villain. And thus the post begins as if it had been rudely addressed to all villain rpers everywhere, labeling them as the evil asshole with a power fantasy, instead.

Next is: Anyway hot take but maybe the reason people kept trying to “redeem” and “change” OP’s character is because their character is boring af!

Yeahhhh, that one’s just mean. And, given the first paragraph, easily able to seen as an attack saying that if you are a villain rper, your character is boring af. They’re not! The op’s post is a little much, to be honest, and I guess I thought I was feeling spicy at 4 am. Now I think I must’ve just been being mean. Aurelia explains what’s wrong with the initial post here, though, instead of trying and failing to poke fun at it in that special pseudo-mean tumblr way like I did.

Lastly, Like, honestly! Play a character as a foil to another, play to fucked up ideas about morality, play an antagonist arc to a protagonist character, play a character who makes bad decisions. But don’t play a “villain.” Don’t play a character whose core personality traits are simply being cruel/evil. Don’t play a character whose sole focus is to kill npcs, be scary, and lord over other players’ characters. Don’t play a character who never develops or changes, and doesn’t facilitate change in other characters. Just don’t be an asshole edgelord. Don’t be flat and one dimensional. Don’t use rp to live out your fucked up power fantasy. Get therapy instead.

Honestly, I think this is the most clear part of my entire post, and also the worst, at the end there. I just am listing off behaviors that this figurative “bad villain rper” exhibits, and what offsets them. Play a villain that’s complex, had depth, nuance! I’m saying don’t play the “villain,” and then listing off what this specific hypothetical villain is. The opposite of deep and nuanced. The “bad villain rper” type the whole post is a vent about.

Then comes the dreaded “ Don’t use rp to live out your fucked up power fantasy. Get therapy instead. “ The villainous power fantasy. No, I do not think everyone who rp’s villains is like this. Yes, I believe there are people like this, who are INCREDIBLY few and far between, and if they solely use rp as an outlet to harass others both ICly and OOCly, that is bad! And maybe they should get help! And even, then, that was only half-serious! But therapy is a serious subject and I should have known better, and done better. Did all of that come off as intended? Hell no! Instead, it was the final nail in the coffin.

So! That’s what I was trying to say. Badly-written villains are a pain. If I had written up a post like I am now, with this long-ass thing, actually trying to be eloquent and clear. Not 4 am word vomit. This 4 am word vomit instead has gotten me to be read and interpreted as:

-being completely unable to separate character and player to the point where i think every villain’s player is a Real Life Bad Person and/or needs mental help

-saying all villains are boring because they’re not heroes, and thus are incapable of being complex and nuanced

-saying people who play dark/antagonistic characters are, in general, living out their fucked up power fantasy through them

-thinking that villainous characters are incredibly boring and just plain terrible

No! None of that is what I think! Absolutely none! I’m not going to go in and refute each of those claims, because, like I said, I’m not trying to make excuses here. But I WILL end this thing with what I do think of villainous characters and their players:

They’re fucking great, okay? A good story is made a gazillion times better by having a good villain in it, be the story a book, a movie, or an rp scenario. Well-written villain rpers are a TREASURE, and need to be appreciated! It is often harder to find rp with antagonistic toons, to begin with, and their players may find themselves getting shit on more often than others, which should absolutely not be the case. Characters that are complex and deep and nuanced are great no matter what their alignment is.

There ARE some pretty shitty villain rpers out there, too. And, in my own personal experience, they tend to be much more obnoxious than shitty hero rpers. A badly written hero will ruin a villain’s rp. A badly written villain may well try to ruin everybody around them’s rp.

Badly written villains suck. They’re the worst. And they make things worse for those that dedicate a lot of time and effort to crafting complex and cleverly written, compelling villains! Badly written villains are something I can and will complain about, just as well-written villains are something that I can and will praise. But I’ll try not to complain or vent on this platform anymore, to start.

And I do NOT blend IC and OOC. That’s the rper’s taboo! I will critique others who do it, though, which ironically is what I was sort of trying to do- complain about those specific villain players who do that. But anyway. If you’ve read this far, good for you! This has been way too long.

And. Please. If I do say or do something that hurts you in the future, regardless of what type of post it is, talk to me! Tell me what’s up! Thank you!

[allofthefeelings]

Hi. I forgot that sad endings exist, and now, I'm scared stupid after your last BW movie post. She's dead already! I want something close to happy! (Oh god, I hope the fanfics come through 😭😭😭)

(Before I begin, I would also like you to know that, while this is over 4000 words long, I did cut a several-paragraphs-long digression comparing the BW movie to Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas. You’re welcome.)

I know I’m once again outing myself as an optimist here, and I’m sure I’ll also end up getting smug asks in four months when much of my speculation is wrong, but what the hell. If I was on this tumblr to be right I would have made a LOT of different decisions.

So.

I really, truly don’t think we’re going to get a sad ending.

But the question is, how does it achieve a not-sad ending? Or, to completely re-frame and re-structure: for a character like Natasha, what exactly is a happy ending?

Buckle in, because this gets long.

I think we can all agree that, by definition, we’re starting the movie from a point of melancholy at best, just because we know that in 2023 Natasha will be dead. She doesn’t get to ride into the sunset in any way, shape, or form. Every other solo movie- even the ones with tragic endings, like Thor Ragnarok’s destruction of Asgard and a large portion of its people- have given characters a path forward and the odds that even if this won’t give them a happy ending, it gives them a way towards one. It ends with hope. There isn’t room for that here, for obvious reasons. But what there is room for- and this is, ironically, achievable because of one of the major flaws of IW- is the idea that she did achieve growth, and then had six years to live the life she wanted.

Or, not the life she WANTED, which probably would not have been one part on the run/five parts half of society obliterated by Thanos. Let’s say she had the chance to live a terrible life self-actualized.

IW’s complete and utter lack of meaningful characterization for 90% of the cast means that we don’t really have a sense of where Natasha was in that movie. That gives a lot of room to play with, to put Natasha at the end of the BW movie in a place that she wants to be in. In other words, they can retroactively argue that the reason Natasha isn’t given room to grow in IW is that she had achieved her growth in between CW and IW.

Which, look. Doylistically this is beyond bullshit. Doylistically this is actually offensive, and if they’re looking to retroactively placate us about how Natasha’s arc went, it really doesn’t work. I’m not talking about what was intended, or what was achieved; I don’t think this is either of those. I’m talking about what we can choose to read into it.

And, frankly, as a Natasha fan, that’s pretty much all we do anyway. I can argue (and clearly have argued) her arc for ages, but that’s all the work I’ve done, and you (collective, Natasha fans) have done- not the work the text has done.

None of this is remotely answering the question. But I think it’s necessary groundwork to begin to answer the question.

Because what the BW movie can give us is that growth arc that takes place in the negative spaces of canon.

Well, first of all, the BW movie gives us the fact that things happen at all in the negative spaces of canon. I know I’ve discussed this already, but it’s worth mentioning again: the way audiences are supposed to read texts is that everything pertinent happens on screen. Even supplemental texts that are considered canonical (cut scenes, novelizations, official tie-in comics, movie scripts) are deemed inherently less valuable because they aren’t on the screen. This movie affirms that important events are happening off-screen, to everyone- or at least everyone who isn’t front and center.

This is, again, infuriating, and I feel like when I say this I’m inadveretently contributing to justification. That is not my intention. Natasha’s growth should have been on screen and should have been seen as important. I hate that it’s reduced to a single movie after ten years and the character’s death. I don’t think this justifies it. AT THE SAME TIME, I think this opens space for us to look at lots of characters who haven’t gotten the screen time they deserved.

(Like, they may never give Rhodey the movie he deserves, but at least no one can tell us that if he did something worth seeing it would have been on screen. This movie’s existence is a rebuttal of that. This is a digression but one I’m gonna keep making until everyone starts casually referring to awesome shit Rhodey did off-screen because WHY THE FUCK NOT, YOU CAN’T PROVE IT DIDN’T HAPPEN, “IT DIDN’T HAPPEN ON SCREEN” IS NO LONGER PROOF OF ANYTHING EXCEPT THEY HAVEN’T DONE THE SET-IN-THE-PAST MOVIE YET. Y E T.)

But we also get the possibility of growth, and to analyze what growth means for Natasha’s character.

So here is an issue: I can tell you, with a frankly absurd amount of confidence, what I read Natasha’s arc as. I can lay it out from film to film, I can point to key growth moments, I can read a lot into every scrap that made it into the final cut and I can tell you exactly why, and I feel like if you dig into my history you’re going to find a lot of me citing specific scenes to make my point so I’m not going to go too in-depth on an already-long post that is getting exponentially longer. I think that Natasha’s key arc is in figuring out who she is and what she needs, and how to be a person rather than a reflection of what is asked of her. I think that the mirror imagery in the trailer and in the SDCC/D23 BW footage lends credence to this being a key theme of the movie.

But I have absolutely no idea if I’m right, because the MCU has never considered Natasha to be important enough to be the focus, and as a result I read her arc mostly through the ways she mirrors other characters’ stories, usually to show their strengths by comparison. I do my best to make arguments that are textually supported, but at the same time, it’s like describing the sun entirely from the way that its light reflects off the moon.

So I can say that for the BW movie to be satisfying, it needs to offer completion to her arc, which is then capped in IW/Endgame but would have reached its climax in the BW movie. But since I cannot confidently tell you what her arc has been so far, I can’t figure out exactly how that arc could be satisfactorily completed. Which means, after SEEING the movie, I will have to retroactively figure out how they saw her arc, and then figure out if this was a satisfactory way to end it.

But an argument done in hindsight is colored by what I’ve already seen, and that’s a cheat. So let’s start over.

Here is what we know:

Natasha was taken from her family very young (Endgame: didn’t know her father’s name). As a child, she was abused and manipulated by the Red Room (Agent Carter; Age of Ultron). She was trained to be a Black Widow, did terrible shit for them for a while, defected, became a mercenary, did terrible shit for the highest bidder (Avengers). Clint was sent to kill her but made a different call and brought her in to SHIELD (Avengers). Natasha quickly rose in the ranks and became one half of a STRIKE team watched over by Fury’s right-hand man, Coulson (Avengers). Natasha also became very close with Nick Fury, the head of SHIELD (IM2, Cap2). At some point in there she was shot by the Winter Soldier (Cap2). She was one of the people behind putting together the Avengers Initiative, identifying Tony Stark as not qualified (IM2), and recruited into the team herself (Avengers). She did not leave the Avengers teams for the next 11 years; she was on the first iteration (lasting through Age of Ultron), the second (Age of Ultron through Civil War), and then the Secret Avengers (which we can now assume starts post-BW through Infinity War) and Avengers 3.0 (five-year gap team), as well as the Quantum Realm Team-Up Team right up til she got yeeted off Vormir.

We’ll set Secret Avengers and Team 3.0 aside for the moment, as they’re things that will exist post-BW movie canon.

Natasha’s narrative role has often been to be so amazing that when she’s bested, we know the other person is really good. The best way for me to pull this together into a coherent throughline is that Natasha tends to be bested by people with passion and emotional stakes. When Natasha is just doing her job, but Pepper cares about Tony or the Dora Milaje care about T’Challa, she is outmatched. In Cap2, when Natasha cares deeply about SHIELD and who she’s loyal to, she is able to outmatch everyone she faces, but since she’s a secondary character and her act isn’t as highly visible on screen, her heroism isn’t as spotlighted.

(That said, make no mistake, WE WILL BE COMING BACK TO HER HEROIC MOVE IN THIS MOVIE.)

Her role has also been, as I mentioned earlier, to be a mirror to the white male heroes. She mirrors Tony in IM2, Clint in Avengers, Steve in Cap2, and Bruce in Ultron. I can make a strong argument, that I feel is supported by each text, that each of these mirrors is about moderation, and both the white man of choice and Natasha finding that the ideal is somewhere between both points: the space between how and why Tony and Natasha handle secrecy; between how Clint and Natasha handle guilt; between how Steve and Natasha handle trust; between how Bruce and Natasha handle self-hatred. That the writers and directors often disagree with my read of this does not, in any way, dissuade me from believing it, but it does mean that this may not be the arc we’re looking at in the movie.

By the arcs that I’ve traced, though, they have a fair amount of leeway to give a satisfying conclusion no matter what the plot is. By having other characters mirroring Natasha, she is centered in a way she never had been, and simply being the protagonist of her own story is part of Natasha’s journey we haven’t seen. We know that this is going to in some way revisit the Red Room, and that means that we’ll get to see a story where Natasha is passionate about and personally connected to what she’s fighting. We also know that whatever the story is, it will not be Natasha mediating someone else’s approach to the world, but Natasha’s approach to the world with someone else (I’m guessing Yelena?) mediating her worldview, in a way that gives Natasha growth but does not undercut her as someone who had so much to learn from the REAL hero.

All plot to the side, simply because Natasha is the protagonist, there is an element of satisfaction inherent, both textually and metatextually, because Natasha’s role of being sidelined is both within the text and within the media landscape a struggle she’s finally able to overcome. There is also a metatextual satisfaction just in cleaning up the bits and pieces of canon that we’ve gotten that were left hanging. For example, in her heroic climax in Winter Soldier, Natasha- who was so focused on being able to transform into whatever was necessary- released a fuck-ton of national security information on the internet, including her own history, that made her both immutable and knowable. (Do you ever think about how this means that people living within the MCU know more about Natasha’s background than we, the audience, does? Because I do, c o n s t a n t l y.) Natasha went from working undercover and in the shadows to being an Avenger and releasing not just her own and not just SHIELD’s but also the Red Room’s dirty laundry in public, and that has never had narrative consequences; this is a great opportunity to use that, closing a loop that most people probably forgot even existed.

Speaking of closure.

I think this movie HAD to be designed with that specifically in mind. I don’t think they necessarily expected the backlash they got from Natasha’s death (I’m going to be honest here; I didn’t expect it from anyone but Natasha fans), but at least they had to know that people who had been promised Natasha would get her due in canon would be frustrated and want some sign that the complexity of the character that had been talked up for a decade was actually part of the story they put on film. Marvel wants to placate fans, yes, but they wouldn’t waste millions upon millions of dollars on a movie to get us to shut up; their job is to bring in money, and it’s not like they haven’t gotten ten years’ worth from us. They’re also savvy enough to know that for a character who’s no longer alive in canon, they need to do things that make their story relevant even without them having future appearances- and I think we’ll see that in Yelena and Taskmaster- but also to make this story have stakes.

Yeah, we never spend a Marvel movie saying “Oh geez, what if the hero dies?” (well, aside from Civil War, because comics oontext), but right now we’re going in knowing (or, bare minimum, thinking we know) exactly what happens to Natasha. Where she’ll end up just under two years from when the story starts is set in stone (NO PUN INTENDED). So we need another way to give the story stakes. Natasha’s life and her future aren’t up in the air. Her past is, I guess, but they’ve been clear this movie isn’t about her past. And where that leaves us is the emotional journey. I outlined above what I think that is, but it doesn’t have to be that to be satisfying- it just has to be some way to leave Natasha changed in a way that surprises us as audience.

And, sure, that could be loss- that could be betrayal from everyone in this movie, leaving her alone and with no one to turn to but the Avengers- but I don’t think that is. I think that’s looking at Natasha’s story like she’s still a secondary character, rather than the protagonist. The basic structure of a superhero movie (and specifically a Marvel movie) is that the protagonist suffers defeat but ultimately triumphs, internally if not externally, having learned something that takes them farther on their emotional journey. Since (as far as we )know this is the only movie Nat’s getting- she’s not getting a trilogy or a Dis+ show- this needs to take her farther than most single-protagonist movies have.

In terms of another kind of closure: If the movie doesn’t offer at least a hint of a way Nat could come back (and I’m still hoping for that no matter how unlikely it is, and if it doesn’t happen I’m hoping for it in the Dr Strange sequel, and after that I’m sure I’ll find another path), I think there’s an excellent chance the post-credits scene will be a funeral for her. Given that they have SebStan and Mackie and Emily Van Camp shooting together right now, it would be very easy to at the VERY least get us a scene of them mourning her. It’s not the same as Tony’s giant lakehouse memorial, but it’s about half the characters who were close to her when she was alive (the others being Clint, Maria, and Fury, and I’m pretty sure they could have put an hour of time on the FFH set to the latter two having five seconds of looking solemn). I think that, given the backlash to Endgame, they need something like this: we need to see, on screen, conclusive proof that Natasha’s life mattered, not just for the audience, but for the world she lived in.

My dream would be for the entire movie to use a frame story OF her funeral- people talking about her, different memories and different understandings, that combine in different ways to collectively show a whole. Fucking Rashomon that shit. But we all know they’re not going to do that.

I recognize I am still talking satisfying and not happy.

But what exactly is happy? What exactly is the happy ending Natasha might want?

She’s not a character who wants to retire or settle down somewhere. As much as we in the audience talk about wanting her to get a break, we’ve never seen that from her, and we also don’t see a world that could really offer that to her; especially post-Cap2, Natasha does not have the luxury of escaping her past even if she did want to.

We don’t know her goals. We don’t know what she wanted outside of making amends for her past. We’ve gotten that from almost every other character- say what you want about Steve’s Endgame ending (god knows I have), or about Bruce being a public figure that kids love, but at least there was groundwork laid for it.

i think the best argument we have for what makes Natasha happy is in Civil War, when it’s taken away. Natasha is willing to give up things that are important to her (her autonomy) in favor of not losing her team; being together is the priority for her. By the end of Civil War, she’s lost even that; she’s seen to have betrayed her entire team and has no one. By IW we know that she re-finds her group, that she and Steve and Sam and Wanda are a tightly-knit unit, but we have to piece it together ourselves, and we have no way to know that it’s by choice rather than necessity. (The BW trailer is really the first time we get evidence that Natasha has more resources than just the Avengers or SHIELD; even fic has tended to just posit she has empty safehouses, not living people she can go to.) The BW movie could give her that team, and retroactively make her appearance in IW a reward for her- having found the team she wanted- rather than just the natural place for her to end up.

But I can’t see how that would even work without at least some of Chris Evans, Anthony Mackie, and Elizabeth Olsen appearing in this movie and showing on screen that Natasha has her people. We haven’t seen evidence they aren’t, but at least I haven’t heard any rumors they are, the way we’ve heard rumors about RDJ.

And there’s something awful, to me, in Natasha constantly being supporting in other people’s movies, which exist to seem self-contained even if they’re not, but then in her movie her emotional fulfillment relying on things that happen elsewhere- the implication that her emotional arc can’t even support a single movie.

In terms of what we’ve seen achieved, Natasha seems happiest when she’s solving a problem, when she’s fighting and winning and being the hero she doesn’t quite believe she is. But that’s not something that can be an end to an arc, of a decade or even of two hours. No matter how great that is, it’s a momentary thing, and it’s fleeting. That’s happiness but not narratively satisfying

This remains not an answer to the original questions.

I think part of the issue is, it’s not necessarily that we need Natasha to be happy, for her to have a happy ending. It’s that we, the audience, wants to be happy- and frankly, I don’t think that’s unreasonable; we’re not going to blockbusters to have our hearts torn out (and I think that after Endgame especially, Natasha fans are not ready or willing to do that again). And so we’re looking less at how Natasha can be happy, but how we can be happy. Selfishly, I’d even add: how we can be happy without doing the work. How we can be happy without conspiracy-theorizing our way to a satisfying narrative, but rather, a narrative that’s already on the screen, that we can just roll around in and enjoy.

I realize how bizarre this is to say after 3000+ words, but: I want the opportunity to be a lazy viewer. I want the chance to take things in without having to take responsibility for making them into something I want to see. I don’t want to have to reverse-engineer her story; I want to dig into the minutiae that is maybe actually intended.

On some level, that’s going to be the happy ending for me. Just having a whole text to dive into is a gift. (I am probably monkey-pawing myself just by saying this, which is the same kind of bullshit I argued for Age of Ultron- but then, I still can rewatch Ultron and find a lot that I like.) And Natasha getting a narrative win- which, as protagonist, she kind of has to- will be a happy ending for me.

But I’m a Natasha fan. This is expected.

What I think is the real question under all of this- what I’ve been struggling to tease out from my own feelings, and maybe now I’m finally getting to it- is a different question entirely: how can Marvel craft a story that sticks with their formula of giving a protagonist a win and something like a happy ending, while telling a story about a character who has been sidelined for ten years until they killed her off? Setting aside those of us who are overly invested in Natasha’s arc, what is the path to telling a story that the majority of the audience- most of whom haven’t traced her history, many of whom are casual fans, some of whom probably didn’t even see Endgame- finds fulfilling and happy?

The hero has to win, obviously. The hero has to triumph. Natasha has to come away having saved the world (stopping a villain from destruction), her world (protecting those close to her), and her internal world (some kind of emotional progress/catharsis). There will be moments intended for the audience to cheer. That’s a formula that you can find in nearly every superhero movie, and with good reason; I can’t think of why it wouldn’t apply here.

So looping back around, the question about the sad ending really is just for those of us who are deeply engaged. It’s not “will Natasha triumph?” because yes, she will- of course she will. We are going to get a movie where the world will be saved by Natasha (which has happened before) and the text will acknowledge that (which it really has not). The real question at hand is “will Natasha’s triumph be enough to mitigate the substantial losses she’s had in the other movies, or will it be bittersweet, her success here just underscoring the way that her biggest narrative win was to kill herself for no recognition?”

Which, of course, on some level, will vary from audience member to audience member. But I think that, with the awareness of how Endgame worked, and the knowledge of exactly when this movie is coming out, they have to at least try to give her- and us- this.

It’s now 5:15 AM and this is over 4000 words long and if you’ve read all this you deserve a medal. I’m happy to clarify or expand on anything in a few hours when I get up; I know that I circled a few points rather than clearly making them, but I’m no longer even completely sure what is common knowledge and what is me projecting. Hopefully this can at least start a conversation?

ETA: And anon, I am sure no matter what happens, fanfic will have our backs.

[deamaia]

Thoughts on kat?

is this gonna be long? idk let’s see (spoiler: yes. yes it was)

i used to love her. like fr i once did one of those asks games of what i reminded people of and most people said “loving kat/kat”. one of my friends in this fandom who is no longer on tumblr would refer to her as my wife. so yeah i liked her a lot. 

however, her attitude of trying to be positive all the time really bothered me i didn’t know why, i mean there’s nothing wrong with being an optimistic person, that’s just who she is. 

but then the blm protests started. and ohhh her posts showed her absolute true colors. now im not saying people that like her are bad or anything but her attitude toward the movement bothered me to say the least. to the point where i ended up unfollowing her on everything because that was the last straw.

when she made her first few posts i was like ok you could do more you have a huge platform but ok i won't like hold it against you because you are at least talking about it... and then she made her huge rant about blm. where she spoke about HER experience with racism, and how yeah everyone around her was racist but her family taught her love and acceptance. i didn’t finish reading, i couldn't even get past the first paragraph, but the comments clearly had the same opinion as me, she was making the whole thing about her experience as a white person who passively saw the racism around her. also while never giving out links to donations or petitions. it made me feel weird, and here’s why, and also why i mentioned her “love no hate” attitude, she has this mindset of “fight hate with love” and continued to push it even as the protests were (and are still) happening. 

she kept making it sound like oppressed people could be the bigger person and spread love instead of hate. as if it wasn't communities of color who have the most love for their communities, as if it isn't communities of color who do the most for poc.

of course she wasn’t saying to not go out and protest, but she was acting like racism can be solved by with “love no hate”. her entire attitude toward the issue was upsetting because 1) is she saying this to the cops that continue to violently kill and harass poc especially black people? as if racism was fixed by these cops understanding love??? as if it was something so easy to deal with, her inability to see real social issues as anything other than “don’t bully people that’s bad” is annoying 2) is she saying this so poc???? the poc who are being targeted??? should they just “love” instead of going out there and letting their government know they are tired and angry and hurt and in pain??? should they just sit and sing kumbaya and dance around because that’s gonna fix the issue? 3) is she insinuating that the people who are out protesting are the same as the cops who are killing and injuring civilians???.

but anyway i think she deleted that post and then followed it up by saying that’s what she believes in and that’s what she stands for, which shows how little she was willing to listen to people openly telling her “hey maybe you take on racism, as a white person isn’t necessary”, she just had to insert herself, because and i know this is gonna sound mean but she is a very self centered person, and obviously also an entitled white person who can’t sit down and listen to poc when they are talking (without having to insert herself).

i don’t think she is a bad person. i just don’t like how she views the world as a “we should all love each other” type of place, like yes we should all be kind to each other, but her way of thinking is “doesnt matter how much someone is hateful we should fight hate with love” and that’s a no from me. i don’t like her, but i don’t hate her, she is just someone i used to really like who ended up disappointing me because at the end of the day she is a celebrity lmao and honestly that’s on me

[indigopurple]

Basically a review of OP episode 503 ig

Currently rewatching post-war arc (in the dub so I don't have any screenshots for u guys sry) and theres a few things id like to point out.

During a conversation Dadan once had with Garp, they were talking about Roger. Garp said that even if they were facing powerful enemies, he would never run away because he wouldnt dare leaving his comrads behind; it wasnt an option for him. Obviously we see this in Ace. But ALSO, isnt this what he did with Katakuri? It was a little different cuz of the setting mostly, but he separated himself from his crew to fight off katakuri, and lied to them about being okay so they didn't worry (he was already getting his ass kicked by then, so he just made that stupid smile and told them not to worry (or smth like that, I can remember the exact line) (that smile was so gross and fake cuz he fucking sucks at lying). Also he said roger destroyed a buncha soldiers cuz they mouthed off his men. That's what Ace tried to do but instead he died. :(

"The pain he went through just made him hold on tighter to the ones he loved" -Garp, about Roger. "Despite his flaws and his bad reputation, his crew still trusted him completely." -also Garp, about Roger. These both sound a lot like Luffy AND Ace.

When Dogra got home and told everyone about Sabo's ship being shit down and him dying (which we all know didnt happen, thank fuck), (by the way the absolutely lost looks on Ace's and Luffy's faces with the sudden silence hurt like a bitch), Luffy started crying and said "WE SHOULDNT'A LET HIM GO, IT'S ALL OUR FAULT". Which fucking says something about him (thinking of episodes 913-915 when he goes fucking berserk, but before that he learns that Kaido probably killed Tama and he says "I should've escorted them..!" (*ugly cries*)). Ace also reacted pretty similarly-- "Sabo...why didn't we go back into town and bring him back here?! We're so stupid!" And he gets mad and asks where he could find the bastard that killed him (obviously not getting a good answer since it was a fucking celestial dragon ugh). That is what Luffy does, in present time. He results to anger first, not sadness. Not sure when he learned to do that but I'm 99 percent sure it was from Ace. Also the blaming himself thing? High chance thats ALSO from Ace. Who else would teach him that self hating behaviour?!

Dadan pins Ace down to stop him from going after the Celestial Dragon to calm him down, telling him he cant do anything, he's not big or strong enough to do anything and he'll be killed as soon as he tries anything, especially since it was the whole country -the whole WORLD- that killed Sabo. He can't do anything. And then they tied him to a tree outside to let him cool off. Oh yeah then he also told luffy to stop crying like a little girl or else he'll- (and he didn't finish the sentence). ...Ok maybe thats why luffy started being more angry than sad.

This is where things get a little more :( . Ace reads the letter Sabo sent them before he died. As he reads, he walks to the end of the forest, to a cliff overlooking the ocean. And starts fucking bawling (btw the voice actor who had Ace's childhood part did not do a very good job, no where near as in character and real as Coleen Clickenberg did with all of Luffy's crying scenes. She was spot on.) ...do you see where im going with that? He isolated himself before letting himself feel sad. It was all rage and then calm beforehand. Y-you see where im going with that. Dont make me say it.

"How's Luffy doing, is he any better?" "Well...he hasnt been eating much, but he still eats twice as much as we do". Oh look, That's what happened after Ace died too. There's a behavioral pattern that hasnt gone away. Not sure why it wouldve tho.

Luffy is mopeing, lying on the ground in a similar setting ace was at when he cried. Hes thinking about some of the things Sabo said, like how theyre gonna sail the seas together, and he clenches his hands into tight, shaking fists. After Ace shows up and hits him, and talking abt some other stuff I don't feel like relaying, Luffy tightens his grip on the straw hat and tells ace, whimpering, he wants to get stronger (and stronger, and stronger, and stronger and stronger and....) And he wants to be the strongest in the world. "And then, I'll protect everyone. I won't lose anyone I care about". He gets stronger mainly to protect the people he loves. And then he asks ace to promise he won't die. To which he hits Luffy again and tells him he should be more worried about himself dying first. And then the famous line that hurts like a bitch- "I'm NEVER going to DIE!" And then this hopeful music comes on (fucking damnit funimation, u gotta do this? Really??) Also he says he wont die as long as he has a wussy little brother to protect. ...FUCK. Ok, the fist clenching is a thing he does all the fucking time, usually when he gets mad. This was different because he wasnt mad, he was sad. He clenched his fist because thinking about it hurt. Which, huh, sounds a lot like his whole episode after waking up from his 2 week coma on the polar tang. To try and stop the mental pain of those horrendous memories, he resulted to physically pain. He hurt himself. So, He clenches his fists in times like these to fight off the mental pain and the urge to cause himself physical pain. Guys, our boy is bad at emotions, help him. ....ok this paragraph is longer than I anticipated so ill dumb down the rest of it ig. Next part, him asking ace to promise he wont die. The music, the body language, the over change in mood- this comforts him. He stopped hiding his face and silently sobbing after ace said this. OH YEAH! didn't he tell jinbe not to die when they parted ways in Totto Land? And then, hes missing still in Wano and we see Luffy is worried....but convinced Jinbe will show up. Again, this comforts him. Hes nervous cuz someone KOFF KOFF ACE broke that promise once. But jinbe is his crew mate so he trusts him, thank god.

"-But whoever did it, they must be opposed to freedom." The whole freedom thing? That runs through Luffy's blood and spirit.His brothers fought for it, his dad is the man who strives to give everyone freedom basically, and Luffy himself has seen enough of the OPPOSITE of freedom to be so, so much more than just against it. Hence why he of course was so eager to free the slaves in Sabaody, the kids in punk hazard, the toys in dressrosa, the country of Wano from Kaido's tyrany. The apple doesnt fall far from the tree huh.

I dont think Luffy would remember his promise with Shanks if it werent for his brothers putting feul to his dream. It was a stupid bet at first; he just wanted to beat Shanks, right then. But after meeting Sabo and Ace, he found the opposite of freedom and human rights. And then he wanted, REALLY wanted, to become the free-est man in the world; the pirate king.

Last one i promise ok? This one is less connected to whats going on in the episode at this point, but something I noticed (its so obvious everyone has seen this ok) was when luffy cries, his posture is always open. He doesn't curl in on himself like many people would do (I know I would, lol). He doesnt hug himself, protect himself. He's just, opened up to whoever is watching, literally. This has a little more to do with something I haven't talked about much in this post yet; his self-destruction issues. I said he tried to hurt himself when he felt mental pain, which is definitely similar. But he cries and doesnt try to protect or comfort himself, like he doesn't have that programmed into his mind. Reminder that he only wants to live because of his dream, and if he doesnt have his dream, he wants to die. (Whoa.). Ok, so no self preservation mechanism at all rlly. Hes basically ride or die. So, when things hurt so much that he cries, he has no hope left. He just kinda...dies inside. So this was mildly different after sabo died. Yes we saw him just standing there, sobbing. But the next day he's still crying, and instead he's laying on the ground. I saw that and the voice in the back of my head told me he wanted to be a part of that lifeless dirt beneath him. Then, Ace walked over. And his words made him feel the hope that I told you about earlier, and he sat up into a sitting position. And HUGGED HIS LEGS TO HIS CHEST. There's some self preservation! Some hope! Some will to exist, to live! Something we saw none of as he sat in front of his brothers corpse, shutting down. He sat there, open to his enemies, incapable of protecting himself. Practically anyone couldve killed him right then and there. I think he mightve liked that, at that moment. Like thank god he has that stupidly good luck cuz if he didn't I swear someone couldve thrown and axe or FUCKING ANYTHING AT THAT MOMENT and hed be dead becuase he never physically or mentally prepared himself. On purpose.

Our poor boy needs some fucking attention and therapists. (Insert my rant post about how jinbe is on the crew primarily for anger management and therapy, not just being a helmsman.) Ugh, smh ugly cries

Aaaaand thats about the end of the episode. Theres so many little tics and peesonality traits that you notive thru this episode, and I only noticed them cuz im rewatching this part of the show for like the third time. I don't react as much as the first time of course but some things are definitely sadder after knowing what's going on and what will happen later on.

Moral of the story (post)? I think luffy is almost equally as alike -if not, more similar to roger as ace is. Also, high key genuinely think Luffy met like NO ONE but Garp before he met Shanks and his crew. What the fuck was his first like 5 years of being alive like? (He wantd to be a pirate cuz Garp didnt want that. Rebellious baby asshole. And then shanks made things worse, in a good way for luffy. And then ace and sabo made that worse thing worse for a good reason. Luffy lives...for those influences. And that is fucking it. Why.

Oh thanks tumblr for moving my picture to the bottom of the post u fucking idiot