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ladyblogger-margie · 3 years ago

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Playoff Pressure

Pairing: Will “Ironhead” Miller (Triple Frontier) x F!Reader

Summary: Will and F!Reader watch an NHL playoff game together and take their relationship to the next level. Reader is a lifelong hockey fan who cares very much about the sport and their team.

Warnings: 18+ Only (general smut, unprotected sex, oral sex M!recieving, creampie, cum play)

Word Count: 2580

a/n: This is SO self indulgent and written in the spirit of the NHL playoffs happening now. I’m a Toronto Maple Leaf fan, but I’ve tried to keep the fandom neutral for the story as well as keep the aspects of the reader character fairly neutral other than the specifics of being a hockey fan.

MY MASTERLIST

Will came back from the kitchen carrying two bottles of beer in one hand and a box of pizza balanced in the other. You and he were both wearing your team gear as you settled into the couch together to watch the next playoff game for your favorite hockey team. The NHL playoffs were in full swing and there was just something so exciting about playoff hockey.

Will was more of a baseball fan before he met you, but you’ve done your part in bringing out his passion for the game you had loved all your life. Now it was tradition to watch games together, and when playoff time hit, everything else took a backseat to cheering on your favorite team.

You two watched the pregame show with the sound off to fill in the chatter with your own thoughts and predictions. Drinking a couple of beers and enjoying each other’s company. Even though you didn’t live with each other, you basically spent every night together. During hockey season it was at your place, and during the baseball season it was over at his.

As the puck drop approached, your pre-game jitters rose in anticipation. You cared very deeply about the game, and Will knew and respected that. It took you a while to show him that side of you in the first place. In the past your enthusiasm had been met with skepticism or humor, and things with Will were so great you had been scared to open that part of your heart to him.

But when you did, Will surprised you with not only being supportive, but taking the time to learn about the game to be able to experience it along with you. One day you were settled in to watch the game and Will was asking you questions about what ‘offside’ means, and the next he was talking about the ways the team could use a cycle on their powerplay more effectively.

Benny had let it slip that Will had been studying hockey and learning all he could so he could participate in your chatter where you had previously been talking either to yourself or the screen. Frankie had smacked Benny upside the head at his slip up, Will having sworn the guys to secrecy.

“But why doesn’t he want me to know?” you asked, confused.

“He wants you to think he already knew everything,” Benny shrugged.

You dropped it with the guys, but it didn’t slip your mind later that night when you were getting ready for bed.

“Why didn’t you want me to know you’ve been studying hockey?” you asked him.

Will froze as he pulled back the sheets, “What makes you say I have?”

You chuckled, “Benny told me.”

Will’s shoulders slumped, “I just wanted you to think I knew this stuff already, because the person you always thought you’d be with would know hockey.”

You winced, regretting the words you forgot you said on your first date, carelessly, without any real significance. You felt bad he remembered that, especially since you hadn’t.

“You’re the person I want to be with, and it means a lot to me that you’re learning about things I care about,” you said, reaching for Will and pulling him in for a kiss, “I don’t care if you know everything, I’m just so touched you care enough about me to engage in my interests.”

Will kissed you, and that was that. He stopped researching on his own and instead asked you his questions. The whole thing had brought you both closer together.

Which brings you to today’s playoff game.

The puck dropped and you took a large gulp of your fresh, ice cold beer to settle your nerves. Will handed you a slice of pizza and kissed your cheek. He knew better than to try and steal your attention from the play.

When the first intermission arrived, you felt some of the tension release from your body, taking a deep breath to collect yourself as the teams took a break and you muted the intermission chatter.

“This is so much more intense than the regular season,” Will commented.

You chuckled, “Isn’t it great?”

You knocked back the last sip of your beer and set it gingerly on the crappy coffee table under your feet.

“I hate this coffee table,” you muttered, frowning at it, “Yours is so much nicer.”

Will smiled, “We could get rid of this one,” he suggested.

“Then I’d have to find another one, and I’m just not in the mood to spend that kind of money,” you sighed and heaved yourself up off the couch and headed for the kitchen.

When you returned with two more ice cold beers, you saw Will watching the television, still on mute, very intently.

“Did you want me to turn the volume back on?” you asked.

“I didn’t mean that you should go out and buy a new coffee table,” Wil said, his tone hinting at frustration.

You handed Will a beer and took a sip of your own, “Then what did you mean?”

“We could get rid of this coffee table, and I could bring mine here,” Will said, taking his eyes off the screen and locking them on you instead.

“Are you planning on getting a new table then?” you asked, confused about the whole conversation.

Before Will could answer, you noticed the second period about to start.

“Oh, pin in that, game’s back,” you explain and turn the volume back up, your attention completely on the television, oblivious to the tension in Will’s shoulders.

Over the course of the intense and honestly fantastically exciting twenty minutes of play, Will spent most of the time watching you. You found it distracting. You were always so overwhelmed by him, consumed by him when he looked at you that way. He should have known better than to distract you like that. But you were frustrated with yourself to be annoyed by his attention when you knew just how lucky you were.

“Babe,” you said, not looking at him as you kept your attention on the game, “Are you watching?”

You saw him smile and lean into your side to place a scratchy kiss on your cheek.

“Sorry, sweetheart, I’m paying attention, I promise,” he whispered against your skin, sending a shiver through your body.

He started to pull away, but you reached up to hold his face close to yours, your attention still on the game. He understood your intention and allowed your attention to stay with your team as he trailed gentle kisses along your jaw and then to your neck. He sucked a hickey to the exposed flesh there.

Your team scored, causing you to jump to your feet in enthusiasm, pulling yourself away from Will suddenly. He laughed to himself before he got up to cheer alongside you and listen to you break down the whole play and jump around.

By the end of the second period you were full-on jittery. Your knees were bouncing and your heart was racing. When the horn blared you sprung to your feet, muting the intermission chatter and stood in front of the television to begin preaching your thoughts on the game so far and what your team needed to do to send this game home.

Will was a patient and attentive listener. He chipped in thoughts of his own when you paused for a breath, but mostly nodded along in agreement with what you were saying. It was so liberating to be yourself so completely with someone and Will gave that to you.

Just before the third period started Will stood up to kiss you deeply, making your knees weak and your mind go blank. You sank into him, returning the kiss and wrapping your arms around the back of his head, your shoulders propped up on his shoulders. There wasn’t any space between your bodies.

Then he turned the volume back up on the television just in time for the third period puck drop and said, “Let’s bring it home.”

You settled into the couch next to him, gripping his knee tightly with your anxiety over the game. Though you weren’t settled in for long. The game got very intense, and the score was still tight so you ended up on your feet, rocking back and forth on your heels.

When your goalie made a spectacular save, you jumped up and down and swung your arms wildly, nearly clocking Will in the face. Thankfully his reflexes saved you the guilt of incidental contact and your night continued injury free.

In the final few minutes of the game, you were a wreck. Your team was winning, but with a game this quick there was no telling how quickly the tides could turn and you’ve witnessed enough upsets to know better than to count your wins before the buzzer.

Will held your hand and stood next to you as you stood watching the clock intently. When the final buzzer blew you and Will cheered loudly and jumped up and down in celebration. You were so thrilled your team won you couldn’t stop smiling. You pulled Will in for a big kiss, smiling the whole time.

Finally catching your breath, you collapsed to the couch.

“I’ve got all this nervous energy with nowhere to put it,” you laughed.

“I can think of one way to blow off some of this steam,” Will suggested.

“Blow?” you said as you slipped off the couch to your knees and you crawled between Will’s legs.

He smiled down at you and pinched your chin between his thumb and finger as he looked you over, licking his lips.

“You sure this is how you want to celebrate?” he asked.

“Yes, I want to share the good vibes,” you said, unbuckling his pants and slipping his half hard cock out and pumping it in your hand.

He hissed a sound of relief as he grew harder in your hand. It wasn’t long until he was fully erect in all his impressive glory. You licked your lips and took him down your throat until you choked. You hollowed out your cheeks and sucked him down deep and hard, bobbing your head in his lap.

He gripped the back of your neck, pushing himself deeper inside you with a low grunt. You felt the wetness gather in your panties as he took control of the pace and fucked your face with his pulse raising and breathing quickening.

You could tell he was close, and in a tease, you pulled off his dick with a pop. He flopped his head backwards on the back of the couch.

“Sweetheart,” he whimpered, “What are you doing to me?”

You pulled your pants and panties down so you were naked except for your team shirt and you tugged off his pants completely this time.

You kissed him, “Don’t worry, baby, I’ll take care of you.”

You grind your hips against him, dragging his thick cock through your slick folds. His hands travel up under your shirt to caress your breasts. He doesn’t remove it, and he’s still wearing his too so you match in your semi-nakedness and full on team spirit.

You line him up at your entrance, and slowly lower yourself into his lap, feeling him stretch you out as you push down on him. His hands don’t stop traveling over your whole body, pinching, brushing, caressing. When they settled on your hips and he’s got them in a tight grip, he bucks underneath you and drops his head into the crook of your neck.

You feel how he fills you up inside as you grow the friction between your bodies. Your hands tangled up in his short hair. You rocked up and down on his thick cock, your body trembling under his touch. You could feel the heat rising in your core as he pressed against that spot inside you.

He dropped a hand from your hips and snuck his thumb to your clit. He rubbed circles on your bundle of nerves as he bucked up underneath you. You gripped his shoulders tightly, desperate to stay on as he took control.

Suddenly he flipped you off his lap and set you on your knees on the couch. He lined himself up behind you and thrust into you with a wet squelch. You braced yourself against the couch cushion and pushed back against him. He had a tight grip on your hips as he pounded into you.

You felt the heat growing again in your core as he rubbed his finger against your clit in time with his pounding thrusts. When you came, drenching his cock in your slick, you moaned out his name.

He pulled you up to press your back into his chest to thrust up into you. You reach behind you to hold his face in your hand. He bites into your neck, the pressure applied directly over the hickey from earlier.

“Come inside me, baby,” you coo in his ear.

It doesn’t take more than that before he cums inside you, painting your walls as your pussy pulses around him. He holds you close to him as he tries to settle his breathing which blows hot by your ear.

He pulls out of you slowly, replacing his cock with his fingers to push around his cum and your slick inside you. He gathered it on his fingertips and pushed it inside of you over and over again. He finger-fucked you through a second, surprise, orgasm that ripped the strength from your body and the only thing keeping you up was his embrace.

He gently spun you around to lay you on your back on the couch. He crawled into your arms and settled on top of you, smothering you delightful beneath him. His head was nuzzled between your breasts as you rubbed his back and felt his cum slide out of you.

“I meant we should move in together,” Will whispered against your skin.

“Hmm?” you asked, not following his thought.

“I’m taking the pin out of the conversation,” he explained.

“The conversation about my crappy coffee table?” you asked, still confused.

“I think we should dump that crappy coffee table and replace it with mine, but I think we should keep my couch, it’s bigger than this one and matches the lazy-boy I’m bringing with me,” he said, still talking against the shirt covering your breasts.

“Wait, you’re serious? You want to live together?” you ask, propping yourself up to your elbows and he lifted his head to look you in your eyes.

“Yes, we might as well since we spend every night together anyway,” he said with a shrug.

You pulled him up by his shoulders and yanked on his shirt to pull him in for a kiss.

“Yes!” you practically shrieked in his ear, “Let’s do it!”

He pulled you into his lap not caring about the mess to kiss you deeper.

“We should get a new place,” you suggest.

“With a den we can convert into our own sports bar,” he said.

“Baseball in the summers, hockey in the winter, beer year round,” you explain with full sincerity.

“As you wish,” he said.

“Come on, let’s get you cleaned up,” Will said as he led you to the bathroom, “We can start looking for a place after.”

Then he led you to the shower and towards the next chapter of your lives together.

Tags: @autumnleaves1991-blog

#will miller #triple frontier #charlie hunnam #will miller x f!reader #hockey #Will Ironhead Miller x F!Reader #will ironhead miller #fanfic

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lightns881 · 4 years ago

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DTeam Tumblr Demographics Survey Results (Part 2):

What does DTeamblr look like, what does it have to do with MCYT history, and why does it look like a rainbow?

I’ll make an educated guess here and say y'all enjoyed my last post (totally unrelated to the way I gained almost 50 followers overnight). Anyhow, thank you so much for the overwhelming support! I’m so glad a lot of you felt you could relate to my deep-dive into the leading personality type on DTeam Tumblr. It took me so many hours to write and research, and as a math major and honors student, it’s no easy feat, so I’m so grateful for the attention it got!

Today we’re discussing the general demographics of DTeam Tumblr and why they might look the way they do. Number 8 will blow your mind! So make sure to keep reading and hit that little grey heart and arrow at the bottom if you like it, so more people get to see it! Thanks for your support! Now, let’s jump straight into the post!

Your Daily Dose of Data

From the 449 responses we received, these are some pie charts displaying the gender, age, and sexuality of all respondents.

Image Description: Female (52.8%), Non-Binary (37.4%), Male (9.8%)

Image Description: 16-17 (37%), 13-15 (31.4%), 18 and over (29.4%), 12 and under (2.2%)

Image Description: Bisexual/Pansexual (54.1%), Homosexual (16%), Asexual (14.7%), Other (7.8%), Heterosexual (7.3%)

Mmhm, delicious! Y'all ready to dig into these stats? Because I don’t know about you, but they certainly don’t strike me as what the general population looks like!

Welcome to Tumblr, the Only Community Where Straight Men are the Minority

So these statistics certainly didn’t take me by surprise. Mostly because the DNF Shipper Survey I took some time ago revealed a similar trend. Not to mention, Tumblr is probably the QUEEREST internet community on the planet.

Funny enough, the survey revealed a shocking number of ZERO heterosexual males respondents. I’ll say it louder for the people in the back. ZERO straight males were recorded out of 449 respondents for this survey!

Now, this isn’t surprising for the Tumblr community by itself, but I can say I’m somewhat surprised in terms of the MCYT Tumblr community. (Obviously, the survey specified DTeam Tumblr, but there is a big overlap between both communities, so I will be using them interchengably when it seems relevant.)

Let’s break this down. The survey reveals the largest age population is 16-17, though it’s not by a great margin in comparison to 13-15 and 18 and older, which doesn’t surprise me either. Some of the major critics of the DTeam Fandom and other MCYT Fandoms love to claim the fanbase’s majority age range lies with children and pre-teens. While it’s an undeniable fact children are drawn to Minecraft, it’s also a misconception to paint it as solely a community for younger viewers.

In the MCYT Tumblr and DTeam Tumblr communities, specifically, we see this is not the case. Only 1/3 of the respondents of this survey are under the age of 16 (you could attribute part of it to the fact younger people might be less inclined to participate in this survey, but it is still a notable difference). I can’t say these age ranges are similar in other parts of the community like DTeam Twitter, Tik Tok, or Reddit, but if I had to make a guess, I’d say Tumblr lies toward the older of the bunch, with Reddit being the oldest and Tik Tok being the youngest (I do hope to perform this survey on some of the other communities, so please stay until the end if you want to help with that).

One of the likely explanations to why the ages for DTeam Tumblr look this way is the fact a big chunk of the community has likely been watching MCYT for a long time (even with breaks in between). I, myself, used to watch channels like PopularMMOs, Aphmau, and PrestonPlayz as a kid, and I presume many of you are familiar with them as well. With the resurgence of MCYT in the past year, it likely drew a lot of the older viewers in addition to the new ones.

But enough about age. What I really want to highlight on this post is the attraction of queer individuals to DTeam Tumblr and MCYT as a whole.

Why is the current MCYT Fandom so queer in comparison to the previous generations?

This is a huge open-ended question and considering I can only capture so much of the DTeam and MCYT community, the rest of this post should be taken solely as a theoretical analysis as opposed to fact.

With that out of the way, let’s start by discussing the shift MCYT has undergone over the years (I promise this will circle back to the question of queerness in the MCYT fandom, but we need some background before we can come up with a decent theory).

When Minecraft was first released, it proved to be a monumental change in the gaming industry. This simple little indie game took the world by storm. It was so vastly different from what the general population generally viewed gaming as (first-person shooters, story-driven games, action games, etc.) Not to mention, it didn’t exactly solely appeal to only a small margin of gamers, those being white cis males.

The gaming industry has notoriously been known in the past for its heteronormative community and general prejudice toward minorities. Though it has gone through a significant change over the decades, we certainly can’t say it’s fully gone.

Yet for whatever reason, the recent MCYT has taken the interest of so many queer people in comparison to other gaming YouTube communities. Why? Why are queer people so drawn to this community? And, more precisely, why does it feel so different than the old MCYT? Lastly, how does this relate to the conclusion about the leading personalities of this fandom we made in the last post?

The Niche Communities of MCYT Over the Years

MCYT has always been a huge, over-saturated genre of YouTube with content appealing to a variety of audiences. It’s dominated gaming content for years, and I think we can all safely say it’s never been bigger than it is today.

So why is it that just now it feels like the queerness of the fandom is popping off? Why now as opposed to say five years ago when MCYT was at another one of it’s strongest stages?

It seems like the community has made a tremendous shift in relation to breaking gender norms and LGBTQ+ subjects, not only in the fans but within the creators themselves. Was flirting and calling a pretty-boy streamer pet names as normal in the past as it is today? Were straight gamer guys putting on dresses and a full-face of make-up as supported back then? Were “marriages” and “pregnancies” within Minecraft boys an everyday occurrence like they are now? How is it that MCYT has dominated a Twitch dating show where flirting with the gay host and among straight contestants themselves is just another bit of entertainment? Where is this all coming from?

Recently, I watched a 2 hour documentary depicting all of the stages of Minecraft YouTube and how it has changed over the years. If you haven’t seen it and you have some time to spare, I HIGHLY recommend it! It’s very informative, and it honestly gave me such a strong sense of nostalgia that makes me choke up every time I think about it. I’ll link it below.

The documentary does a great job at exploring the different niche communities that dominated MCYT since it first took off. Some of such communities include the basic Let’s Players, the team-based Let’s Play channels like How2Minecraft, the roleplay story-centric ones like Aphmau and Samgladiator, the tutorial, building and technical side like Mumbo and Grian, the PVP-centric Bedwars or Hypixel channels, the Machinima community, the comedy side like ExplosiveTNT, the parody music videos, and so many more. All of the mentioned communities have dominated Minecraft at one point or another, many of them still having a rippling effect and/or a loyal community today. All of these communities have certain aspects that define them, some of which parallel the current overtaking content in the present.

How can we compare MyStreet to the Dream SMP?

Taking Aphmau as an example, her MyStreet series had a TREMENDOUS success a few years ago, racking in millions of views and bringing in a lot of money that eventually allowed her to hire voice actors and increase the production of mentioned episodes. The roleplay series was so successful it ran for six seasons!

Now, let’s compare that to the Dream SMP. It seems like a big comparison to be making considering they appear so different at first glance. For once, Aphmau is just one channel whose audience caters toward girls and younger people who enjoy romance. The series is set-up in an episodic-format that resembles more of a TV series than actual Minecraft videos.

Meanwhile, the Dream SMP is a collection of content creators with a mix of improvised storylines and the occasional regular video that resembles more of a Let’s Play series than a RP series.

You could say the only true comparisons to draw out of these two are the popularity they had/have and the profit they brought to their respective creators.

However, there’s two other key similarities that you’ll find not only within these two specific examples, but many other channels and communities as well. Story and characters.

MyStreet’s story aspect is fairly obvious seeing as it’s a episodic series that focuses on a fictional story. The Dream SMP’s story aspect isn’t as clear, but it’s evident there is a story playing out in the foreground and background, whether intentional or unintentional, or improvised or not.

Character is where some of you might start to question me. It’s obvious MyStreet has characters. I mean, it is a fictional story, after all. But the Dream SMP? Light, they’re obviously people!

Well, my answer to that is yes and no--sort of. The Dream SMP’s story heavily relies on roleplay, bits as you might call them. Events that aren’t necessarily planned out as a fictional plot like the typical MyStreet episode is, but they aren’t exactly real. Schlatt is obviously not a villain in real life, he just likes to impersonate as one for the narrative. Wilbur isn’t crazy, but it’s a way to spice up the heroic story surrounding Tommy and him.

It’s video-game improv. Except the actors behind the content just so happen to be real people playing off the personalities and “brands” they have obtained.

Brands. It all boils down to this. In the entertainment business, without a clear vision of your project and a clear way to brand what your consumer intakes, your project will likely not find a lot of success.

There’s a reason why Tommy plays off his loudness, using an overexaggerated laugh that although may not be completely fake, it is likely not the laugh he uses everyday. Or why BadBoyHalo is this supposed innocent muffin who doesn’t understand the crafting table meme and other references that are fairly easy to google and find the meaning of. Or why Sapnap is this chaotic being who loves starting pet wars and we love to paint as an arsonist in the Dream SMP. While all of these personality traits may be a part of their true selves, they’re played up for the camera--for the story. They act as the personas that define their characters in the narrative.

They have a clear brand and vision that appeals to the audience and makes them tune in on the daily to see how they all come together. It’s like roleplaying a more extreme version of yourself, one that brings home the money.

Story and characters run across every entertainment outlet. They define their brand. Aphmau has her characters and series. Hermitcraft has a set of memorable personalities and episodic videos that formulate its own story that is less like a narrative and more of a history of the server. ExplodingTNT has his recurring cast and comedic sketches. Most of these niche communities have a form of story and character defining them. It’s how they achieve a clear sense of branding and cater to a specific audience.

Queer Theory in MCYT

Having said all that, why does the MCYT of today draw in so many queer viewers?

Let’s think about this. In my last post, I ended by mentioning DTeam Tumblr is a sort of safe haven for INFP and INxx types who might be placed in the “other” category by society. INFPs, specially, are predisposed for escapism--one common form of it being fiction and entertainment. Not to mention, INFPs are feeling types who, as introverts, seek a personable connection. It’s why it’s so easy for them to obsess over book characters or fall in love with content creators.

Now, let’s imagine a whole community of LGBTQ+ INFP and INxx types. Actually, scratch that, we don’t even have to imagine it.

It’s what our community looks like today.

And why are so many so drawn to the DTeam and Dream SMP of all things? It’s a personable storyline that essentially forms a direct tie to the viewer. Unlike pre-recorded fictional TV series you tune into on your device, the Dream SMP is a whole load of chaos that blurs the lines between reality and fiction where fans can directly connect to creators and get to know them as people through a storyline that features sub-textual queer themes and non-conforming behaviors.

The MCYT content creator community of today is more non-conforming than ever before, and knowing this whole fact, knowing that many of them might place themselves in the “other” category or at the very least aren’t afraid to break the norms and be seen in that light, is a comfort in itself for LGBTQ+ INFP types. Once again, it’s a safe space that helps you escape from the troubles of real life, one you relate to.

Okay. So although this does answer why the fans look like they do, what about the creators themselves? Are we really supposed to believe this all came through naturally? That a bunch of straight guys suddenly decided wearing dresses was something they wanted to do?

I don’t mean to sound cynical here, and I’m in no way trying to insinuate creators have solely some sort of corrupt ulterior motive. Things are never as simple as they look. However, the truth is, a part of it lies on the attention it’s gotten.

I’ve talked a lot about DreamNotFound and the way Dream uses it as a marketing ploy. I stand by my point. However, he’s not the only one who does this in the MCYT community. Why did Finn suddenly go from wearing a dress to cross-dressing as a girl for a whole week? Why are so many creators suddenly deciding wearing dresses is fun? Why does every freaking straight MCYT actively want to flirt with George nowadays?

Let’s just let Techno’s favorite word answer this for us: clout.

It gets attention from one of the largest historically underserved minority community in the entertainment business. We might not be able to see gay flirting in every Netflix TV show or guys not minding dresses and getting fake marriages, but you are certainly going to get at least one of those in every Dream SMP stream and video you tune into. It gets attention. It brings home the money. And do I blame them? Not really.

Interestingly enough, there’s a lot of analytical posts on the MCYT Tumblr community that discuss the dangers of these tactics and why gay jokes and the way queer subtext is treated by MCYT creators is harmful. Despite this, it still attracts such a huge community of queers. So why exactly would queer people actively watch something that’s offensive or harmful to us?

I have a lot more to say about this topic and the morality behind Dream’s tactics, but I’m out of breath for today, so I’ll talk about it in my next post. What better way to start the conversation about the DNF and Karlnap questions of the survey than a good ol’ discussion on the morality of queerbaiting and the likes?

If you got this far, I’d appreciate it if you liked and reblogged this post if you enjoyed it and/or learned something new! Also, important news, I would really like to perform a similar study on the DTeam Twitter Community to measure the differences in demographics across platforms. I would REALLY appreciate it if you guys could go like, retweet and share the link I posted on my Twitter about it (tweet will be linked in the reblog below) so it reaches more of the DTeam Twitter community!

However, if you filled out the survey yourself here or you associate more with DTeam Tumblr than DTeam Twitter please DO NOT fill out the survey again! I’m trying to make sure it reaches the audience that mains on Twitter, but I need a little help with that since I don’t have as big of an influence on Twitter than on here for obvious reasons.

Anyhow, thank you so much for all your support! I really appreciate y’all and make sure to hit the follow if you want to lookout for the next demographics post! <3

(Pssst, I’m releasing a MCYT DNF superpower AU longfic next month... You should totally go check out the post on that if you’re interested in it...)

#dteam #dteamblr #dream smp #dttblr #mcyt #dreamwastaken #dnf #mcyttblr #georgenotfound #dreamnotfound #dttwt #dream team #dteamblr demographics survey

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kareofbears · 4 years ago

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persona 5 strikers thoughts and feelings

This is going to be a long post. Like, the type of post you’d only really have time to read when you’re trying to sleep but you’re not ready to be unconscious yet so you’re just looking for something to do to spend your time with minimal effort.

So in 2018, a masterpiece was born into the world: Into the Spider-verse was released and it was amazing—it’s honestly the best spiderman movie we have without a doubt, and it’ll be very far into the future before Spider-verse is beaten as the best spiderman movie. Them’s the facts. Then in 2019, Spider-man: Far From Home was dropped. It’s a great movie! Great characters, great continuation of who these characters are and works fantastic as a continuation of a story. It’s really hard trying to take the torch of a previous movie (or in Marvel’s case, juggling twenty something movies) and come up with a new movie that both works on its own, as well as being the next step in this series of films. Thus, with that idea in mind, I think it’s kind of unfair to judge into the spiderverse and far from home, because these are two movies with two completely different objectives in mind.

Okay, so this is still a persona 5 strikers post, I promise, but the idea is the same: Persona 5 could basically do whatever it wanted—new story, new characters, new everything, and it’s just plain old awesome. However, Persona 5 strikers did not have that sort of freedom. It was bound to the original game, and it had its own rules and stuff it had to keep intact, characters they had to work with, and on top of that, it had to justify its existence as a sequel (lets pretend money doesnt exist lmfao).

SO, the big question is: did it do that? Did it justify its existence?

And my answer: holy fuck did it ever do that

I came into this game knowing the extreme bare minimum. I knew there was someone named Sophia, and i knew there was roadtrip, and i knew there were Personas. That’s my knowledge of it before i played it on the Switch. I should also clarify like, early on, that i was not expecting anything from this game. At all. I was the world’s biggest cynic of this game—if you scroll down my p5s tag far enough, youll just see me complaining about a game that hasn’t even come out yet. I was fully expecting to have this be a Waifu show, and any male character that isn’t Akira to just be shoved aside like some kind of nerd in a high school hallway, and i have never been more pleased to be wrong. In fact, i actually owe it an apology, because of how fucking rude i was for no reason!!! Because this game deserves everything to be honest.

Persona 5 strikers is, frankly, insane. Insane in the sense that it got to pull shit off that just would never have existed in the original game, because the original game is scared. It had to be as impressive as possible and garner as much attention as possible. Strikers does not have that problem—every single person who bought that game does not need to be convinced that persona 5 is a good game. They already played it. That means Atlus can just fuck around and have a good time, and man did they have a good time. There’s still scenes that still shock me if i think about it too hard, because i’m used to atlus having to follow this sort of rule set when it comes to persona 5 (or any of the main games im assuming, but i havent played them.) And on top of that, there’s still shit that’s Atlus Trademarked Branded in a good way. The style of story of story telling, and revealing the mystery that is so integral to what p5 is, is still there.

So, to make this even a little bit comprehensible, i will make a list!

First of all, What is this game?

In short, this game is an OVA of an anime. It’s bonus side content that has one thing in mind: to showcase these lovable characters more by putting them in fun situations. That’s it, and it is just phenomenal. That was the main point of, i’d say, like forty hours of the game. It’s just fun times with fun characters.

But to get deeper of what i think is happening, or what they were thinking during the development, is that this is a second opportunity. Persona 5 (as we all know) had a lot of problems, and we were not quiet about those problems. We yelled it all out, made posts, made complaints on every social media platform ever. And Atlus heard all of them, and Strikers is a way to mitigate those mistakes. Aside from being a fun OVA, Strikers also works to be a deeper exploration of these characters—more specifically, the characters that did not receive much in the original game. Creating this sequel is having the ability to redo what they felt (or to be more specific, we felt) in the original game while adding new ones. I will get to that in a second.

The format of the game

Absolutely brilliant to throw them on a road trip. P5V already forced us to experience Shibuya for 200+ hours, and im so glad that they didn’t do that again. Going from town to town, making us experience these new places alongside our favorite characters is so good, and it just makes sense. It’s fun, it’s lighthearted, and it’s actually shockingly good. But one thing i do want to talk about early on is the way the story unfolds and the villains that they use, and what they do with it because it’s very interesting.

So as we explore japan and stuff, we encounter jails, and with those jails comes an antagonist. This antagonist works to be a parallel to one of our characters. That character will find it in their hearts to feel bad for the antagonist, because the antagonist could have been them had the original game not happen. At first I thought all of the thieves were gonna get an antagonist, and i was really hyped for the ryuji one. And then came to hour forty of the game where i realized “yeah that’s not gonna happen. There’s just not enough time.” And i was right, and the game ended. But i am not salty at all, honestly, because the people who got a direct antagonist were: Ann, Yusuke, and Haru. (we wont count zen and sophie).

Is there a trend??? Yes. these are all characters in the original game that have received the worst treatment by atlus. The three of them are basically cast aside the minute they finished their original arc, and its horrible! BUT that’s why this is the path that atlus chose for them—to give them more depth, and screentime, and a way to show their inner self. That isn’t to say that the ones who aren’t those three (makoto, futaba, mona, akira, ryuji) didn’t get anything. Futaba still has her thing at the end with ichinose, and she was very prevalent and animated during the rest of the game. Mona and Akira have to be a focal points, that’s just the nature of the game. The other two though, I will talk about in depth in a second.

Makoto

Y’all i poke fun at shumako fans sometimes cause its kind of easy and fun, but i honestly love makoto. In my very first playthrough of p5 (my first ever jrpg game, first persona game, i had no idea what i was doing), i had only maxed out two characters: ryuji and makoto. And i know she had a lot of screentime and love in the original game which is great, but i truly felt like she was dissed in this game. Her only roles were

A driver

Someone to tell them “we don’t have a choice. Let’s keep going and see where this takes us.” (seriously, if you replay this game, you will see how much she does this)

Idk, i just wish she had more to do, especially compared to how much love they gave the other characters.

But let’s talk about some of the new characters!

Zenkichi

Damn you atlus. Damn you and your insistence at bringing in cop characters. I was fully on board with hating zenkichi, i was fucking ready for it. I was convinced that there was nothing they could do convince to like zenkichi. I was immune to their copaganda.

And then i ended up loving him, which makes me sad a little bit. I didn’t realize how desperate i was to have an adult who has a persona. Someone who wants the world to change just as much as they do, while still having that aspect of them that makes them adult. Like??? As someone who is technically an adult, its a breath of fresh air. An adult. Who fights. For justice. Using a persona. And god i love akane so much, and her obsession with the thieves (that scene is probably in my top ten fave scenes of the game). Also what i loved about zenkichi is that he fucking hates the cops!! He hates the system of the cops!! And thats why i actually really started to love him!! Because i thought it was atlus saying that the systematic problem of the police cannot be solved by one person, and zenkichi threw away his badge. I actually cried at that part!!

But then he became a cop again, and i was just :/ but as a character, i really love him to bits and would love to do a study on him, or at least use him as an outside pov. But! i absolutely love his persona, since im a les miserables fan hehe

Sophia

she’s probably my favorite new aspect of the game. I was ready to not like her—again, i just suck like that, lmfao—and when i saw her, i was scared that she was just another waifu. I mean, she was very cute after all. But then as the game went on, i thought she was a little too cute. And even further into the game, i finally slapped myself in the face and realized oh my god shes not a waifu. Shes a sister.

That blew my mind, im ngl to you. A female character that isn’t supposed to be romanced? By jove, what a miracle!

And she…is an amazing character. Im sorry, i just love her so much. I love her so much that she probably ranks as my fifth or sixth favorite character which is surprising even to me. Everything about her is delightful and invigorating. She’s funny??? Her comedic timing is amazing, and she has such chemistry with the rest of the team. She’s actually useful to the plot, and while her character design is a little too on the nose for me in terms of cuteness (i mean, good god she’s wearing oversized sweater to show how cute and tiny she is, and her hair has literal hearts in it), she is absolutely lovable.

But what i actually really wanna gush about for a second is sophia at the last stage of the game. You get the idea, i dont really like to get excited over things, so at this point i figured that there was nothing this game could do to shock me.

And then sophia had a persona awakening.

Like. holy fuck did i yell. I didnt realize what was happening until the music had already kicked in. and its just so fucking smart!!! Sophia??? The ai?? With no heart?? gOT A PERSONA???? AWAKENING??? BECAUSE SHE LEARNED WHAT THE HEART IS AND THE PASSION THAT YOU NEED IN ORDER TO GET A PERSONA??? I started crying honestly, because it was just so smart. And looking back on it now, its obvious!! Of course it would lead to this, it only made sense that the culmination of her character arc leads to her getting a persona, nothing else would have been as good. Also, her voice actor is just amazing?? When she was talking to ichinose at the end, i actually got incredibly emotional because of the line reads. Its just so spot on and it really captures the essence of sophia.

Muah. five stars Atlus. You got me.

Ryuji <3!!!!

Oh man. Oh boy. Okay. so where do i start.

Yall know i love him. Hes probably my favorite fictional male character of all time, and he is the one i was the absolute most cynical about in this game. I was expecting literally nothing. Nothing. Like. nothing. I thought he was just gonna keep being used as a joke, or a gag, and he’s gonna be super horny all the time for the other girls and it was gonna make me mad and there was gonna be some insane homophobic/queerphobic jokes in every other scene and i know i was being unfair, but i cant help it.

And then i played the first two hours of the game, and i cried the entire time. Because ryuji has never been better than he is in this game. Its crazy.

The ryuji in persona 5 strikers is who ryuji should have been/how he should have been treated this entire time. From the actual funny jokes (for example, the gold bar joke + his reaction to it in the beginning of the game), defending his female friends instead of being the one people need to defend from (natsume arc), and the fact that he was the one to be there with morgana and akira in the very beginning of the game. Its such a small thing that they didnt even need to do, but it was such an integral part of the original game for me, that i just was convinced that nothing like this was going to happen. But then it happened. Its just small stuff like that that could have been overlooked but it wasn’t because this game? Persona 5 strikers? Fucking loves ryuji.

The actual respect they gave this boy is insane and i wasn't ready for it. Like, they gave the shujin trio lunch, they gave the little charm of the katana when they were in natsume’s jail, and, in my opinion this is the second-best thing that they could have given ryuji is sophia. Ryuji and sophia are the pinnacle of a brother & sister bonding relationship in the game that isn’t akira & futaba. And its really prevalent too?? Small stuff from the beginning of the game (pulling her out of a jail, calling her shorty), but then you have the iconic “shut the fuck up” scene, and that scene was so well characterized and written and voice acted, that somehow him saying “fuck” was the least exciting part of that scene to me. Ryuji is an older brother to her, like its undoubtable, and its only further cemented at the end of the game where Ryuji helps out ichinose because he knows how much sophia cares about her. This game. Love ryuji. And i love. This game.

You know what else i love? Akiryu.

Guys. i was fully prepared to starve in terms of akiryu. But theres just. So much of it. I wont get too deep into it, because i think this aspect of the game for me still needs marinate a little bit. Like, what was that last shot when EMMA died and Ryuji walked to approach Akira so they could relish in their victory together?? And the smile from both of them??? What the fuck. That was amazing. Also Joker being saved by Ryuji when he was about to fall from the cliff to save sophia??? WHAT. The LEADER AND HIS RIGHT HAND MAN? WHAT. anyway. If theres anything i want to keep for myself in my own brain, its the akiryu aspect of this game, so i wont talk too much about that part of things (instead, itll probably manifest in fic lmfaooo).

Sure, there’s tidbits of stuff i dont like that they gave ryuji: sexualizing ann in that one cut scene and making him touch the jails even though it hurts, and i recognize those and frown at them, but for the most part, i am blown away with how they treated him.

Basically, Ryuji has never been better. From the opening of the game with him being the first text message and the one to sling his arm around akira, to the very last cut scene where it was ryuji wordlessly leaving because he’s so confident that they would never be separated for long, this game adores Ryuji and i am so so happy to say that.

The Royal aspect of things

Yeah, i had to talk about this, but itll be a short thing i just wanted to point out. Because the last part of this game...is persona 5 royal. Which is curious. Like taking reality and giving that power to someone else so you dont have to experience suffering anymore? And even like, the final section just looked a lot like the top half of maruki’s palace?? And whats even crazier is that we had a boss fight with sophia, just like how we had a boss fight with sumire? Royal and Strikers have like, the same thesis statement. It’s kind of uncanny.It’s interesting, it’s like atlus came up with these two ideas, and then just decided they liked both of them so much that they just did it twice. I don’t mind though—actually, in terms of how the last Palace/Jails go, i probably like them both about equally.

Though i did love the final battle in this one more than i did in royal. Splitting into teams?? Thats cool as fuck, and really innovative and i didnt see it coming. It also kicked my ass. A lot.

Now for the last stretch: the small stuff!

The music — bomb as fuck. In my heart, Daredevil is ranked the same as Rivers. Axe to grind is also amazing, but Daredevil owns me

Akechi — i really debated whether or not to talk about him, but i figured a bullet point should be enough. Im really shocked that he wasnt in this at all. Like not even a name drop. If this is an OVA, and the point of the game is to please the fans, and akechi is arguably the fan favorite character, i was really ready for something. But there was nothing, except for the pancake hallway if that even counts as a reference. Thats it. Thats all i wanted to say about him.

The humour — FUCKING HILARIOUS im convinced that in my fifty hour playtime, five of that is dedicated to me laughing and unable to continue the game

Akira — so much personality! His lines of dialogue are crazy sometimes (like. Whats up with him saying Ryuji has ‘nice abs’ when they were in bath? Im crazy and even i dont know what the fuck that could mean)

Battle system — oh my god i almost forgot to talk about this. I love it! I kind of miss the turn based aspect just because i found it very comforting for some reason, but this hack and slash style of gameplay is so invigorating because i do feel like it justifies shit like the baton pass and huge attacks. This battle system fully encompases how the Phantom Thieves are supposed to fight, you know what i mean?

Anyway, thats my thoughts on strikers. Loved it. Amazing. 9.3/10, wouldve been higher but Konoe’s Jail almost bored me to death. Also im a monster and i didnt do any requests that isn’t a fun one, teehee. As if i play persona 5 for the persona aspect of things.

#cant believe im done #but you know what?#i was actually at peace when i finished it #so i consider that a good healty thing #p5s #alex plays p5s #mine #p5 #my moon and stars #the leader and his right hand man

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hongism · 3 years ago

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hi caly boo its ur 🌊 anon! i finally finished the most brilliant darkness and oh my lawd i’m in spain without the s. to put it shortly: U DID NOT DISAPPOINT BESTIE, and it seems unreal that u and ur mind and this fic even exists bc every moment is just polished to perfection, while simultaneously every character is polished to a sort of imperfect perfection(?). i have so many questions and things to say idek where to start, and tho im not good with words and even worse at deciphering hidden meanings, here are just some of my thoughts that i remember from the story.

hello my dear!!! eee im gonna answer separately since i think i’ll be very long-winded as usual but first of all thank you so much :(( this fic is actually very full of subliminal messages and hidden nuances that are weaved throughout which i think could be quite confusing so i apologize for that! if i had managed my time better, i would have adjusted when i started the fic to account for managing those aspects of the fic but alas i’m terrible at time management and i suck so. anyways.

first of all, ngl halfway into the story i lowkey forgot this was a wooyoung fic bc SANNN and also bc wooyoung appeared like 3 times lol. even after it finishing all that, i still had my doubts as to why this is a wooyoung fic, or more like why is san this significant in a wooyoung fic. im still a bit slow on these pls forgive me and im just curious why u made it like that.

i think yeah the most interesting thing about this fic is the emphasis on san over wooyoung. and when looking over it yeah i could have switched san and wooyoung’s characters and called it a day, but wooyoung really in my mind acts as the integral turning point for decisions made in the story.

the goal with the fic wasn’t really to be hyperfocused on the pairing itself, but rather the emotions and thought processes of each character (aside from wooyoung). wooyoung was kept intentionally mysterious and a bit set apart from the rest of the fic because his role in story was moreso an abstract of hestia, the goddess of the hearth and home. wooyoung’s character appeared in times where y/n was struggling with the thought of home or adjusting to the new changes in her life! wooyoung’s pairing itself was actually intended to be solely platonic at first, but as the story went on i thought having mc develop feelings for him added another turning point in the fic!

moving on, the second biggest question i had is the whole hestia!wooyoung and cafe aurora situation. i did a bit of reading on hestia and only found out that she was the goddess of hearth, which might explain the fireplace and the kind of homey feeling to the cafe. and ‘cafe aurora not really existing to most’ part, which was already hinted at wooyoung randomly disappearing, mc never seeing the cafe before or wooyoung only bringing people he wants into it. i get that him inviting mc must suggest her significance to him, but why was he so adamant about his friends not mentioning him or the cafe to mc before that? wooyoung is quite a mysterious character i think, and given that this fic is supposed to be about him, it’s a bit odd that there’s still so many things left unknown, but its kinda cool that way nonetheless and im guessing u would also like to explain that further outside of the story too.

i think my biggest regret about this fic is the fucking summary.... i wrote that summary well before i even started writing the fic thinking it would go in that direction but it didn’t. and since this fic was for a collab, i left the summary as is because i genuinely cannot for the life of me figure out a better one. but i’m trying to figure out a better one. but i really fucking hate the current summary because it’s not at all what the fic is truly about and i hate it.

however, i don’t hate the fic itself, and the reason why i don’t is because i got to play with both my writing style and how i displayed the story. for this collab we were asked to pick a greek god and one of the seven deadly sins, and i selected hestia and sloth. and initially i had intended to have sloth be represented by the reader’s depression, and wooyoung be a more ‘real’ depiction of hestia. i shifted gears very early on in the fic but what it became is moreso abstract realizations in the characters.

san’s character is meant to be this idea of sloth, and it’s mentioned several times that he doesn’t want to move forward, he wants to go slow, he wants to stop moving so fast through life, and those things point to him being a depiction of sloth

wooyoung’s was harder to encapsulate in a more abstract way but you hit the nail on the head really with the homey feeling of the cafe. beyond that, mc talks about just naturally feeling at ease and comfortable with how things are with wooyoung and being around him, and he takes up this role of being the likeable, warm, cozy, comforting character. it all comes to a head in the last scene where he brings both y/n and san into the cafe.

and again wooyoung’s character is meant to be most mysterious and abstract, but if i had had more time to fully flesh out the fic, i think i would have liked to touch more on him. at the same time however i left it more open-ended and open to interpretation. the significance in him inviting mc in and not being mentioned by the others sooner is twofold. one; the others never really had any reason whatsoever to mention wooyoung. he was a friend outside the circle who never joined in with them when mc was around. i personally in my own friendships don’t mention friends outside the circle by name or anything, just kinda vaguely talking about them unless im certain the people know who this person is. the concept of wooyoung having to invite mc in was more nuanced and vague as well, intentionally so, but that was moreso meant to represent this idea of ‘you can’t make a home somewhere where you aren’t invited’ so y/n couldn’t fully make a home of the place she was in without being invited in and welcomed in, but again that’s something i wish i had more time to fully flesh out.

the hongjoong speech about love (and also the interaction with seonghwa after that) deserves a standing ovation of its own 👏 unfortunately, or not, im not actually going through the emotional turmoil regarding love the same way as hj or mc to be able to fully relate to his words, but the whole ‘if you dont love what u see in the mirror then u dont love it’ mentality really hit me hard, and i’d like to hang onto that when i make decisions in the future haha thank you wise caly! seonghwa and hongjoong’s story is also beautiful, and just like mc said, the more i look at it the more it hurts :’)

the hongjoong speech about love was meant to be something very jaded and specific to his worldview. it actually isn’t wholly how i view love personally, but it was a perfect description to how both he and y/n perceived the love in their own lives. mostly thanks to their own emotional turmoils. the mentality of the mirror quote is something that i think i also struggle with, which is why i included it. it’s hard to do, but even in friendships, i think it’s necessarily to stop and look at the person you were before this relationship and then the person during this relationship. if you don’t love the one you are now, then maybe it’s a sign to reflect and see the bigger picture, so that was a lil reminder to myself and i’m glad it touched you as well!!!

“do you love him, or do you love the idea of being in love with him?” - haha i see what u did there (or maybe i didnt please dont laugh at me if i didnt). its still so good everytime i see it bc i keep finding myself loving just the idea of things time and time again even when this makes total sense to me oof :/

heh yeah again with the more abstract concepts this one was more direct and ‘cliche’ but i fully wanted that cliche in the fic because i thought it suited the situation where mc was constantly struggling with a version of san that she thought she loved vs the version of san she got every time they were together

despite how enlightened she seems to be, mc still made the same choices, and i wanna smack her for it and pat her back at the same time. and maybe also bc of the fact that she feels so differently for the two men that i feel like no ending could really justify her decision, so ending in the vague is probably the best. your ending might kind of allude to someone more than the other already, and tho i still don’t think he’s the best one for her based on just my pov on love, i kinda agree with you. but again, this raises the question of, why a wooyoung fic and not a san fic?

and yeah the whole knife in the chest at the end of it all is that she was still too scared to face the music so to speak. but really i would say she made the same choices up until the conversation on the balcony with san. and you’re absolutely right, the reason i chose the ending the way i did was because either way, there’s no justification. and actually although it might seems like i was alluding to someone specific, san being in the cafe at the very end was moreso to represent that as much as they fought, he still very much loved her and wanted to be loved by her. it was kinda an open casket ending there were no nails in the coffin, the choice between wooyoung and san still stands and an argument could be made for either of them! i think this is a fic that i could see myself revisiting one day with two endings - one for san, and one for wooyoung.

something i didn’t mention earlier about wooyoung’s character being left intentionally mysterious was that he was representing a new and budding love. the honeymoon phase where you’re falling for someone you don’t even really know. you are the reader aren’t meant to really know who wooyoung is because of that beyond what you read about him, so his past and such was left out intentionally to represent that idea of ‘hey wow im in love with a stranger!’ whereas san was this gritty love that’s bad for you. and there are pros and cons to each just as with anything!!

so,,,, why a wooyoung fic and not a san fic? well i picked wooyoung for my collab so he was one of the main focuses of the fic regardless of which direction i took with it. as for why wooyoung wasn’t more forward, i already answered that but !!! i view it as both a wooyoung fic and a san fic. both are highlighted characters with main pairing roles!

i literally just woke up to write this and am going back to sleep ahaha so i apologize if this makes no sense. i somehow felt like i’ve read so much yet so little at the same time, maybe bc there are still so many things i havent fully made sense of, and that’s where i hope you come in and enlighten me. i still stand by my word that this fic deserves so much more recognition despite the lack of explicit smut bc of how much more you’ve explored through character building. love you caly and thank u for working so hard <3 — 🌊

no worries my beloved i hope you go back to sleep and get lots and lots of rest!! and i hope my response helps enlighten the not so clear things as well dgjdklfg but really thank you so much. it was a long fic and hard to get through at times, but as a whole, i’m proud of it and what i created, so thank you for recognizing my efforts and appreciating them 🥺

#🌊 anon #fic; the most brilliant darkness

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fate-hates-faraday · 5 years ago

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Dress-Up

Wherein Thomas has more influence over the Sides than he realizes.

(Warnings: uhhhhhh dodging questions? Could be gaslighting if you stretch the definition. Reference to forced silence for like two sentences. Minor angst)

“Until next time, guys, gals, and nonbinary pals. Peace out!”

Thomas smiled as he turned off the camera. His Sides had already left, and, honestly, it had been a fairly productive and positive conversation. All he had to do now was prepare the video for uploading.

“Thomas.”

Thomas was not ashamed to admit he’d jumped at the unexpected voice. He turned to see Deceit stepping out from the shadows beside Patton’s space.

Ah. His Sides, excluding Deceit, had already left.

“Hey - I thought you sunk out a while ago?” It was more the unexpected voice than Deceit himself that had startled him. After all, Deceit had been attending their discussions a lot more lately. Even when he admitted he held no stake in the topic, he would hang around and only occasionally interject. Sometimes, when discussion got too overwhelming, Deceit would briefly silence everyone and ask Thomas who was allowed to talk first (”...how about everyone?! Deceit!”). Despite his concern for Deceit’s methods, he appreciated the sentiment and it had proven helpful for the especially tense moments. Somewhere along the way, Thomas had realized that, while he didn’t enjoy deceit, he had come to accept Deceit and that idea didn’t scare him at all.

“I had considered it.” Deceit was actually in his living room right now, he had to focus on that. The Side was conspicuously studying his fingernails through his gloves. “I wanted a moment of relative privacy, however, and post-recording seemed ideal.”

“I - I guess, yeah.” He could almost feel the others settling in to relax, barely attentive to Thomas himself. The two of them would be left alone. Why did Deceit want them to be left alone? Only idle curiosity accompanied the question much to his surprise. “What’s up?”

“I wished to talk.” Deceit paused. “It is important you specifically knew that and not at all a stall tactic.” Ah. Thomas waved Deceit over and, without the invisible walls made by the camera, Deceit was able to follow Thomas to the couch. He refused to sit though, even when Thomas patted the space beside him.

“Alright. So now I know.” Was he helping Deceit get more time to be comfortable with whatever he was planning? Was he subtly calling him out? Thomas wasn’t sure himself. Deceit had a habit of seeing the worst in others so, in case he’d assumed the latter, Thomas added, “So, uh, pretty curious what you want to talk about. Just take your time - we both know I have nothing planned for the rest of the day except watching The Office.” At that, Deceit snorted.

“I am quite aware.” The tone was harsh, but the human corner of his lip was upturned in a smile. He glanced around. He took a deep breath. He scratched behind his ear. He dropped his gaze to the carpet. He exhaled, the air coming out in a soft hiss.

Deceit’s nervous. Now, Thomas’ curiosity morphed into concern. While Patton and Roman especially hid their insecurities and uncertainties, Deceit always projected confidence that whatever he had to say was important and he deserved to be heard. What could leave him hemming and hawing? Thomas himself debated whether or not to speak up when Deceit fully looked away.

“On reflection, it’s hardly worth the breath required to speak it.” Deceit’s voice had grown hard with an edge of condescension, and Thomas’ gut tightened. It wasn’t the tone, though. He could tell: Deceit was actively lying to himself and to Thomas. “I have better things to tend to. Enjoy your show.” Deceit began to sink, and Thomas reached out, stumbling from his seat. The action seemed to catch his Side’s attention and he rose back up, hands raised. In defense, in surrender, or in case Thomas actually fell, it wasn’t clear. Thomas took a moment to regain his balance, feeling Deceit’s incredulous gaze on him. Yes, yes, he was being weird.

“Look, if you think it’s important, I do too. That’s how this works. If you’re not ready, that’s okay, but I can tell it’s important.” Deceit scowled.

“I am quite ready, thank you.” Oh. That sort of backfired, didn’t it. Deceit seemed to realize the trick he’d played on himself and rubbed underneath his human eye. He took another breath and, this time, began talking. “Well. I have been considering that, as of late, you seem to be ... viewing me differently.”

“I mean, I guess so.”

“You recognize that our appearances, in a large part, dictated by your personal views.” Thomas cringed at that.

“I - I never really thought about that.” He looked at Deceit, gaze resting on the scales that marred his face. The implication settled in and tinged his next words with horror. “Am I - that’s why-?”

“-you see me as a ‘slimy boy’? Correct.” Deceit didn’t sound as bitter as Thomas expected, but he swore something cold tinged the words. “That said, as your views seem to have changed-” Thomas swore he didn’t blink; Deceit simply transformed that fast. Gone were the scales, the slit pupil, even the capelet and yellow gloves. Deceit’s clothes now more resembled what he had worn in the courtroom, the yellow shirt’s hue turned pastel and long white gloves covering his hands. He tilted the bowler hat back to better expose his face and the pale patchiness on its left side. Both human eyes met Thomas’, and his lips curled up in a small smile. “Well, it appears now my true appearance can change as well.”

Thomas couldn’t respond verbally, only able to step back to better view the new look. He had never seen a Side change so drastically while still being, well, himself. It was as if Deceit had left altogether - wait, he hadn’t, right?

“Deceit?”

“Who’s she? Never heard of her.” The familiar retort confirmed that at least.

“Right, right. Just wasn’t expecting this.” He had to take another moment to study Deceit, who seemed to be relaxing under his gaze.

“What can I say?” Deceit twirled, showing off the new look, and Thomas caught sight of coattails as he did. Relief relaxed his shoulders. That was a weird reaction. Relief? “I’ve heard surprise is the greatest gift you can give someone. It was something like that. I think Remus remembers the full expression.”

“Huh. Wouldn’t expect Remus to know that.”

“Yes, well, he’s picked up all sorts of quotes about surprises and shock. They help him think more ... coherently.” Was that implying Remus could be worse? Yikes. Thomas decided to not think about it, lest he summon the Side accidentally.

“Got it. So,” Thomas said, gesturing at Deceit, “this is you?”

“I thought we just established I am me.”

“I mean, your true form.”

“That’s one way to describe it.” Deceit was checking a pocket on the suit jacket and pulled out a couple of black markers. “Oh, I was wondering where I’d left those.” Thomas nodded in thought. He had to admit, he liked Deceit’s new appearance. It just seemed more open and inviting and, though he could be imagining it, seemed to make Deceit himself more open. So what was bugging him about it? Why did it seem... dis-relieving? “Well, Thomas,” he said, pocketing the markers again, “since you seem to approve, I won’t be going anywhere - I’m obviously still needed here, you see.” Deceit clasped his hands together. Wait. Deceit began to sink out once more. Wait, wait.

“Wait a minute.” Thomas rubbed at his eyes. He thought he saw a flash of frustration cross Deceit’s face as he rose back up, but his expression was neutral when Thomas looked again. “Just, I need a moment. Hang on.” Thomas stepped back until he fell upon his couch. Deceit made no move to follow. “What do you mean, ‘I seem to approve’?”

“I would think it means exactly what it sounds like. I know that you know what words mean.”

“That’s not an answer.” Thomas mentally rewound their conversation as he kept talking. “I - you never actually answered my questions. They sounded like answers, but they really weren’t.”

“Hm. It sounds like Virgil’s acting up. I know he seemed fine when he left, but-”

“Deceit. This isn’t Virgil. We know that.” Thomas made eye contact with Deceit. “I just - is this really you?”

“I can hardly imagine anyone who’d want to imitate me.”

“That’s not-” Thomas groaned. “Deceit, is - is this what you want to look like, or is it what I want you to look like?” It hadn’t been the most eloquent phrasing, but it seemed to make his point.

He received no answer.

Deceit seemed unwilling to break eye contact, keeping his face emotionless, but that was a sort of answer in and of itself. Thomas felt his shoulders sag.

“...do you like it?”

“Of course.”

“Because I like it?” Again, Thomas received no response. He broke eye contact to lower his face into his hands. “Crud.” He sighed. “Is.... what is this?”

“It certainly wasn’t a waste of time and energy” Deceit's voice took on a sharp edge. Oh boy. “It’s not like it hasn’t been repeatedly made obvious how repellent you’ve found virtually every aspect of my appearance.” It sounded like Deceit had taken a few steps away. “Besides, why is it any different than, say, the others changing their appearances? Because I ever-so-clearly recall you questioning their changes like this.”

“Because they wanted to. They didn’t change because I wanted them to, or they thought I wanted them to.” He looked up and, as expected, Deceit was adamantly refusing to look his way, arms crossed over his chest. “So I’m not a big fan of snakes or bright yellow. I’m also not a big fan of spiders, and Virgil decorates his room in them. He’s even got a pet tarantula, I think. And it makes him happy. You know the things I want deep down, right?” Deceit seemed to be looking at the floor now. “Then you know what I really want is for every part of me to be happy. I don’t want you squishing yourself into something you don’t like because you think it’ll make me happy. I was kinda hoping none of us had to do that anymore.” Thomas let the words hang in the air as he watched Deceit for a response. Finally, Deceit scratched behind his ear and spoke.

“Just so we’re clear: if you don’t accept now, then I won’t lock in and this will be the last time you see anything like this from me, voluntarily.”

“Alright.”

“I do mean it. You’ll be stuck with a half-snake Side for the rest of your days.”

“I know.”

Again, Deceit’s appearance changed as he turned to face Thomas again. Thomas blinked as he realized Deceit hadn’t quite reverted to his previous form: most noteworthy, his capelet had taken on a slight purple tinge and his visible scales were now a warm shade of yellow with viridian speckling - almost like freckles, Thomas decided.

“Consider this your last chance.”

“Deceit, I wouldn’t want to imagine you any other way.”

The human corner of Deceit’s lips twitched upwards in an asymmetrical smile.

“Well, Thomas, as you insist.” Deceit then seemed to notice the slight changes and took a moment to examine himself, tugging at the capelet and peeking underneath his gloves before ending with a mildly confused ‘huh’. Thomas shrugged, grinning.

“Well, you did say I influence how you look. Do you like it?”

“...I lo- like it, maybe. I suppose I can learn to like it.” He looked back to Thomas. Thomas had to focus to notice the slight signs of unease and wondered for their reason. “I suppose then I should be going - I mean, I plan to stick around.” Then it clicked: Deceit had thought he was doing him a favor, only to realize he’d just stressed him out more. No wonder he now almost seemed pressured to sink out. Before Deceit could vanish, Thomas spoke up for the third time.

“Uh, hang on.”

“I swear, you can be-”

“Wanna watch The Office with me?” Thomas again patted the empty space beside him. Deceit blinked.

“You do know we are at least somewhat aware of what goes on out here. I hardly need-”

“I know, but I wouldn’t mind some good company while I watch.” Thomas worked very hard to bite down a laugh as the human side of Deceit’s face blushed. “So, you in?”

“...I suppose I can take the time out of my very busy schedule for an episode or two.” Finally, Deceit closed the gap between them and sat down next to Thomas.

“So - are we gonna start from the first one and go in order, or skip around to the best ones?”

“....let’s skip around.”

#thomas sanders #sanders sides #deceit sanders #thomceit #if you squint #imagine Deceit not hating his snake features #janus sanders

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carewyncromwell · 4 years ago

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I don't know if you want to talk about this (and feel free to ignore this if you don't want to answer), but I wanted to ask which side of the Ethren mess you're on? I know in the beginning you were on his side, but I've seen so much hate and so many accusations and I don't know what to believe anymore, and I trust your judgement

I have to be honest -- when I first saw that a blog had been created with the specific purpose of “calling out” someone in the HPHM fandom...I blocked it.

I come to this fandom largely to escape from the real world. It’s been one of the few remaining sanctuaries I’ve had during this quarantine and from my own mental health problems. I’ve made a lot of friends in this community, and I feel very strongly about putting out more positive content than negative, as well as trying to digest more positive than negative. I don’t like the thought of a stranger posting stuff online about someone else who -- let’s be honest -- nobody truly knows unless they actually physically know them IRL. Unless one wants to go down an entire rabbit hole of getting to know a person uncomfortably well, there’s not much anyone can do to prove what’s true. And I know it sounds really immature and selfish of me, but...I was never that interested in learning much about this fandom’s members’ personal lives, excluding what the friends I’ve made have been willing to confide in me on a case by case basis. I have plenty of my own drama happening over here on my side, and I just want to have fun roleplaying with people’s characters and making content for both mine and theirs. It’s been one of the few things that helped me fight back my untreated and severe chronic depression after being furloughed from my job thanks to the COVID-19 shutdown. My job had been my escape, and without it, I was drowning -- one of my only life preservers was making content for this blog. So for my own mental health, I shut out the negativity, because I wasn’t emotionally or mentally able to deal with it. And admittedly, it felt to me as though this sort of thing really shouldn’t be handled online when -- again -- this sort of thing seems like it’d be better handled in the real world and the legal system, rather than in the court of mostly anonymous public opinion. And it also feels kind of nasty to reblog content from people online who simply liked the character Ethren Whitecross and made fan content for him, just to harangue them for it. It’s like attacking all Harry Potter fans for being transphobic just because they enjoyed something created by a trans-exclusionary radical feminist -- particularly when in the case of Ethren, the vast majority of us don’t know Ren personally. One could’ve related to Ethren’s story without knowing anything about his creator, and people did, often not because of any kind of malevolent reasons.

After receiving this message, though, I unblocked the blog in question and read some more of their posts. When I’d first blocked it, the only post of theirs I saw in the HPHM tag came across as rather hostile, and combined with Ren’s blog saying that an ex was stalking him, I don’t think it’s unsurprising that some people were initially warded off by it. But reading some of the other stuff written on that blog since...I must acknowledge there’s a lot of troubling stuff there. It made me very upset, and made me kind of regret that I’d initially jumped into making a stance without hearing both sides. But at the same time, considering that someone from outside the fandom had arrived specifically to target someone in the fandom, supposedly on behalf of someone else who also had no ties to the fandom, it looked a lot like cyberbullying to me at the time. Now it’s very clear there’s more to the story, and for that initial leap to judgment, I am sorry. I wasn’t in a place where I understood fully what the discussion was about before I took a side, and that’s something I should know better than to do.

But I think this comes down to, in the end, my answer to your question, regarding sides.

I don’t want to take a side -- because I didn’t come to the HPHM fandom to fight people. I came here to be happy.

I know someone could read this as cowardly and ignorant, but please, understand that I thought long and hard about this. This place has been a safe space for me, and I understand it has been for others as well -- a place where we can go to enjoy art and fanfiction for something we enjoy and roleplay as new, interesting characters with other people who have similar interests and creative leanings. I thoroughly understand that it can’t truly be a safe space if we allow people who would threaten other people’s safety into it, and I also thoroughly understand that people can include problematic aspects of themselves into their characters along with good things (just look at how J.K.’s apparent subliminal views on the LGBT+ community influenced how she’s handled Dumbledore). Both things are definitely things to be aware of, and it’ll be an ongoing struggle to try to propagate a truly welcoming and positive, and yet safe and supportive community. There will always be shadows and dark spots that aren’t easy to see, just like with all fandoms, and it’s good to now and again take the time to examine them.

But to quote a line from one of my favorite songs, “it’s hard to light a candle, easy to curse the dark instead.” I cannot log onto my computer and into this fandom every day and think about openly attacking someone else, regardless of whether they deserve it or not. This feels like something that the victim should handle herself in the real world, and I truly hope that she finds peace in whatever path she takes. But that is her story to tell, to write, and to play out -- it’s not mine. Mine is a story I have written and am still writing, where I’ve tried to find a way to be happy and be a good person despite everything in my life that has made that so difficult. And so I truly feel the only way I can approach this situation is to not let the things that hurt and drain me have power over my life, and put my energy toward things that build me up instead. I try not to visit tags or places online that could be triggering, and simply enjoy the things I do like. I’ve stopped spending money on things Harry Potter-related because of Jo’s stance on transgender rights, but still engage in the HP fandom and celebrate what is good in the original material and especially what its fandom has made out of it. In this case, I will simply do the same, particularly since from the look of things, Ren’s blog is no longer around for anyone to interact with anyway, positively or not. I’ll engage with blogs whose work I can still enjoy and give me some light when I most need it, and try my best to keep creating more light of my own for others. I will light candles, and little by little, I’d like to think the room will be bright enough that the dark will be significantly smaller and less scary than it was.

I understand if any of you disagree with or are angry about anything I’ve said. I know “playing both sides” is not a great thing to do, and I truly don’t mean to. But I’m afraid I do have to take my own side here, for my own mental and emotional well-being. I responded to this Ask because I felt like saying nothing would’ve truly been the cowardly thing to do, by pretending the issue isn’t there at all. I’m not pretending it isn’t there -- but I do think it’s a battle I’m ill-equipped to engage in, not because of my personal morals, but because I don’t feel emotionally able to play the role of judge, jury, and executioner in this court of public opinion.

#ask me #personal #fandom issues #opinion #*heavy sigh*#hphm #hogwarts mystery

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bigskydreaming · 3 years ago

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Continuing on that observation because I forgot to add this part, as a gen z I'm glad you understand that we or young people don't invent new ways to be evil, but it's not completely true. You aren't seeing new forms of online abuse in every platform, I doubt second hand information is going into details as well. Also the fact that you are a white man, there are things being said and done to poc in various online communities that I don't expect you to be privy to. Harassing fans of color and poc media has become a lot more common and normalized which parts of the fandom at large will never see. I don't know if anon did all of the thinking before saying "gen z bad" but they're not completely wrong looking at the kind of mass bullying behavior literal kids are exhibiting. They are learning from or being encouraged by older people but that shouldn't take the focus away from them to blame only the older people.

And my ask regarding Barbara, you assumed I hadn't thought about if my disdain for the character could have come from ableism. I had tho, granted you couldn't have known that and it was surely a possibility, so I'm not saying I'm mad about it, I was at that time a little bit. But you could perhaps give your anons a little more credit sometimes. Sometimes people know what they're talking about, you don't need to explain other possibilities to them each time.

Once again, sorry if this came off as very rude I just needed to share that observation and among many other instances these two were really highlights and kept bothering me. My issue with Barbara goes in a different direction than anything to do with her appearance and I've personally faced online abuse from people younger than me in ways that technologically, even politically, wasn't possible or as easy a few years ago, so you can maybe see why...

Please keep in mind that whatever context you have for yourself or your ask when you come into my inbox on anon......I have none of that. You have an awareness of yourself relative to whatever you asked me. I literally only know an anon by the words they put into my inbox and nothing else.

Also please keep in mind that every anon I answer, I do so in the larger context of my own interactions with tumblr overall. I have a lot of precedent with things I say being taken out of context, misrepresented or even just me not conveying myself as well as I like.

So the combination of those two things is that a) I literally just don't KNOW what any anon does or doesn't know and b) If I'm going to answer an anon, I tend to want to answer as fully and clearly as possible.

I can understand it coming across as being talked down to, so I'll work on that, but I would ask people to remember the above and keep that in context too when weighing my responses.....am I actually being condescending in every case, or does it simply feel that way because I'm including stuff you already know in my response? And if its the latter, is THAT something I COULD know about you without knowing who you are or you as a person and not just a paragraph sent in anonymously?

I'd rather be safe than sorry, and so from my POV since there's no harm in somebody seeing someone cover information they already know as PART of their overall answer or response, like, there's no reason for me not to include whatever I think is relevant and just expect readers to decide for themselves what about my response, if anything, is helpful, and like....just ignore the rest, y'know?

Also, just for the record, I am ADHD and I save my medication for when I'm working or writing or have stuff I absolutely need to get done, which doesn't include my usual blogging. So I'm usually posting while not on my ADHD meds at all, hence the rambling tendencies and the length. Another aspect of ADHD that doesn't get talked about much ime is we tend to over-explain, part out of just excitement/interest in whatever it is that has our attention, and also in part because we're used to people not necessarily following the leaps our minds take when jumping around rather than proceeding in an orderly thought pattern.....so, part of why I break things down so incrementally is I literally just don't know where my way of looking at things diverges from the way neurotypical thinking views things, so I want to draw as detailed a map as possible in order to ensure the most people possible can follow my thought process, just in case.

(And again see, this is something you might already know, and hell, you could have ADHD yourself, I just literally have no way of knowing that so rather than just mention it and be like "oh and also I have ADHD and so that's something to keep in mind" I'd rather explain WHY I feel that's particularly relevant to your question, since I'm kinda like, why not answer as fully as I have the spoons for? People can stop reading at any time if I go on too long. Its fine).

As for the specific asks you're referencing - my response to the gen z anon was not meant to convey that the sort of things you're describing don't occur among gen z, so sorry for giving that impression. Its actually the opposite of my point, which was simply that I don't think its a generational thing, or that anything is gained by treating it as a generational thing. This kind of behavior exists in gen z, yes, but it also existed before gen z. Its not gen z SPECIFIC, or limited to just that generation. That's all.

And the other ask, the one you made about Barbara - to be honest, I don't have anyway of knowing for sure which one you meant, and there are a couple it could have been, but if its the one I THINK you're referencing, I believe you asked how to stop people from assuming you dislike Barbara for reasons rooted in ableism when its because of other things? If that's the one, then I mean, the thing is....I DID answer your question, in as much as anyone could. I addressed the perceptions other people might have of your stance there, but basically - there IS no way to ever ensure people take you at your word or any kind of guarantee you can present your POV in a way that won't be misrepresented or misunderstood. So ultimately, I just had no real useful advice for that?

And so I expanded into the only thing I think anyone CAN control, aka their own thoughts and words, and suggested that you just double check to be sure of your own possible biases that others might read into your words without you being aware you were putting them in there. That wasn't meant as an insult or to suggest you hadn't already examined yourself for possible ableism - it was simply saying it never hurts to check again, y'know? We don't always catch everything every time we do a self-review, and internal biases are inherently tricky to pick up on ourselves. And it just loops back into the fact that I really had no way to know what you had and hadn't already considered, you're essentially a blank cipher to me....and in my experience, a lot of people are a lot more ableist than they realize.

And this isn't an insult either! It applies to me and I'M physically disabled! I'm constantly to this day unpacking new realizations about how I still have more ableist views and opinions than even I realize, even after about five years of living with chronic pain, vertigo, nerve issues and associated problems stemming from only half a working mouth lol. I'm not trying to insult people by asking them to just do what I do every day and just like....make sure I'm not the problem when other people have a problem with me. Because sometimes, even after reflecting as fully and genuinely as I can, I think they're still wrong! I don't have to agree with their conclusions! But that doesn't mean that they're never right.

And for the record, I do think its still worth examining on your end, because I don't love that you said your issues with Barbara have nothing to do with her appearance, when we're talking about ableism specifically. It very well could be just a poor word choice on your part and not a reflection of your actual views, but it could also be a suggestion that you tend to think of physical disability as something that's limited to there being a visual sign of, and there's a lot of invisible symptoms and changes to the ways a disabled person interacts with society and society with them that don't alter a disabled person's appearance in anyway...and many of these things are the exact stuff a lot of unacknowledged ableism revolves around.

So I'd like to give you and other anons more credit and the benefit of the doubt and assume you know what you're talking about and don't need things broken down as much as I tend to break them down to - but keep in mind I don't OWE you that, and its a lot to ask someone to take you on faith when you've already made the conscious choice to present yourself to them anonymously, and deliberately limit how much a person even CAN know about you before answering, when you have an equal opportunity to present yourself by name, allowing someone the full context afforded by your blog, that they can use to familiarize themselves with you and what you likely do or don't know before answering. I don't think its entirely reasonable to anonymize YOURSELF and then expect people to still give you the benefit of the doubt.

Especially when not giving you the benefit of the doubt only really results in me over-explaining something you don't think you need explained in certain ways or in as much depth. Its not hurting anyone, and you're not going to be the only one reading this response and maybe that over-explanation ISN'T something other people know and it could still be of use to someone else, y'know?

But lastly, please keep in mind that you came to me, and I just answered in the way that made the most sense to me. If that didn't work for you or wasn't what you're looking for, that's fine, but like. You knew way more about me going into this interaction than I could possibly know about you, and assuming good faith of you and your interest in my response and giving you as much of a response as I did in the first place, let alone now, IS giving you the benefit of the doubt in the sense that I'm assuming you can find some way in which these responses are of use to you.

And if not, like....just don't send me more asks? LOL. I kinda feel like you just didn't expect the answer you got, and that's sitting weirdly with you. Which I get, to be honest, but I don't particularly think that's a me problem, because that has nothing to do with anything I can control.

I can only give the answer that occurs to me when I read and think about an ask. I can't guarantee it'll ever be the answer the asker actually WANTS.

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letterboxd · 4 years ago

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How I Letterboxd #10: Chad Hartigan.

Filmmaker Chad Hartigan talks to Jack Moulton about his prescient new sci-fi romance, Little Fish, why radio silence is worse than a bad review, and his secret system of Letterboxd lists.

Chad Hartigan has won prizes at the Sundance Film Festival and the Film Independent Spirit Awards for his acclaimed films This is Martin Donner and Morris From America. He’s also been a Letterboxd member since way back, joining what he proclaims as “my favorite website” in 2013. Hartigan has always been an obsessive logger: he has transcribed all of his viewing data since 1998 and continues to work on filling in the gaps in his downtime.

Like many ardent Letterboxd members, Hartigan is a diligent list-maker, keeping tabs on his best first viewings of each year and assembling an all-time top 1,000 films over the summer (with an accompanying 26-minute supercut). Perhaps unusually for a member of the film industry on Letterboxd, he’s unafraid to hold back his opinions and regularly voices his critiques on even the most acclaimed films.

Hartigan’s newest film, Little Fish, is a sci-fi love story starring Olivia Cooke (Sound of Metal) and Jack O’Connell (Unbroken). Written by Mattson Tomlin, it’s set during an imagined pandemic—shot long before our own actual pandemic—wherein a disease causes people to lose their memories. It was set to premiere at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, and then postponed due to Covid-19. It’s now out in limited theaters and on demand, and we were delighted with the excuse to put Hartigan in the How I Letterboxd spotlight.

Olivia Cooke as Emma and Jack O’Connell as Jude in ‘Little Fish’.

You made a pandemic movie before the pandemic. How do you feel about accidentally hitting that unfortunate zeitgeist and now consequently being asked questions like this one? Yeah, strange. The questions are fine. If it wasn’t this one, it would be another that you would have to answer over and over again. One of the things that drew me to the project was that it felt like a fantasy that wasn’t necessarily rooted in reality in a way that my other [films] were. I liked that it’s old-fashioned in its attempts to purely take you somewhere and wasn’t intended to hold up a mirror to our times—but then in the end that’s exactly what it’s doing. I’m curious myself, and I’m checking Letterboxd to see the reactions from people because I really couldn’t guess what it would have been like [now].

Are there any prescient details you’re proud of getting right? I’m so grateful and happy that Jack [O’Connell] is wearing his mask correctly. That’s the number one thing that I’m glad we got right. I think it was very smart of Mattson to focus the movie on [the relationship] rather than the details of this global pandemic. I feel the reason it’s not in bad taste is because it dealt with those things as a backdrop and instead focused on people just trying to remember what’s important and clinging onto those that they love.

Onto our own favorite memory aid, Letterboxd. How did you discover us and how did you manage without us? I’ve been on since 2013, so I’m probably one of the earliest people to jump on it. I love the interface and the diary, just aesthetically it was really fun. I’ve been keeping track of what I see with analog [methods] for as long as I can remember. I have diaries and planners so I logged all that old information. If I was running for president, my platform would be that everybody is required to use Letterboxd comprehensively, because I just love to know what everybody is watching all the time.

Do you talk about Letterboxd in the real world with the other filmmaking people? Yes, and I’m often trying to convince them to join. Other filmmakers are more concerned about having their opinions on peers be public knowledge than I am, I guess. I’ve made four films now and each one’s been bigger and more widely seen than the last. The very first one was a total no-budget affair that couldn’t get into any festivals and I was very excited when I finally got it into the Hamptons Film Festival. It was about half-full and one or two people came up to me afterwards and said they liked it. This was pre-Twitter so I spent the whole next day Googling to see if anybody had written anything. I was so curious to see what people thought and there was nothing—not a review, not a blog—just total emptiness.

When the next film got into Sundance, there were people tweeting their reactions and actual reviews and I read everything. People were asking if the bad reviews hurt me. Absolutely not—nothing can be worse than the radio silence of nobody caring about the first film. The fact that people care enough to sit and write about this movie—good or bad—is a win, and I’ve carried that onward. I like to see what people think, it can be helpful in how you view the film as a success or failure. You learn and move on.

Jack O’Connell at least remembers how to wear a mask in ‘Little Fish’.

Some filmmakers have told us they’re kinder to films after making their own, but you’re not shy at all about being critical. How did making your own films change your perspective as a critic? I don’t consider myself a critic so that’s why I’d be less concerned with someone reading what I thought. Why should they put any stock into what I think? If they get hung up on it then that’s their own stuff because I’m not a critic. Like everyone else on Letterboxd, I just love watching movies. Obviously I can appreciate and understand some of the technical aspects maybe moreso than people who don’t make films, but at the end of the day, rarely that’s the thing that makes you love a movie or not. There’s a great bit in Francis Ford Coppola’s commentary track for Finian’s Rainbow where Fred Astaire’s doing a dance number and [Coppola admits] he totally messed it up because Astaire’s feet aren’t fully in frame. He’s very honest about his mistakes because it’s one of his earliest movies. Then he goes on to say that he thinks there’s the same number of mistakes in Finian’s Rainbow as there are in The Godfather, it’s just that he made mistakes on the things that don’t matter for The Godfather. No film is perfect, but if it can latch onto this one magical aspect that connects you to it, that’s what makes you love it or not.

You had a project where you chart the best films made by directors at certain ages as you reached that age. Tell us more about it. That was a great project. I got the idea when I was 26. This was back when I had a Netflix DVD subscription and it was just hard for me to randomly choose DVDs to throw in the queue. I needed a system. I decided to watch movies from directors when they were my age and see if there’s some common denominator, something I can learn. At that point, there weren’t many, there were films like Boogie Nights and Fassbinder films. Not many people had made stuff when they were 26 or 27, so it was very feasible. Every year there were more movies and more directors to add to the list and it became time-consuming. I did it all the way up until I was 34 and the reason I stopped was because I had a son and there was no way I could continue this level of viewing output.

My favorite part of your account is the fact that you log every viewing of your own films. You know for a fact that you’ve watched Morris From America 26 times and Little Fish fifteen times. Why do you log them? What counts as a viewing? I’ve clearly watched those movies many more times in little chunks but I’ll only log it if we’re sitting down and watching it from beginning to end. I have a ticket to see Little Fish in the drive-in on Saturday, so it’s going to be logged again. Why do I do it? Like I said, I wish everyone was required to use Letterboxd comprehensively. That’s what it’s there for for me, an accurate log of what I watch. This is psychotic behavior but I’m tempted to have a Letterboxd account for my son. I’ll do his views for him once he starts watching movies until he’s old enough to take over. It’ll just be, like, Frozen a thousand times but he’s not old enough to watch anything yet, so we’ll see.

Have you discovered any films thanks to Letterboxd discourse that influenced your approach to filmmaking? For sure, I can’t maybe say specifically, but once I dropped the directors my own age system I didn’t replace it with nothing. I’m a Virgo and I have a little bit of OCD, so I have to have some system. I’ve replaced it with a new complicated system where I pull from different lists and that’s now my main source of how I choose a movie to watch. I have like ten or twelve different lists, each about a thousand movies with a lot of overlap. One of them is my own list of every movie I’ve seen in a theater and I’ll go and look through that and if it’s something I want to revisit. Recently I rewatched Twister, which I hadn’t seen in a long time and is an old favorite from when I was in high school.

I have a bunch of private lists I cycle through; every movie nominated for a Spirit Award, every movie that’s won an Oscar, every movie that’s played in competition at Cannes, the top 1,000 films at the box office. There’s another great website that I use as a biblical resource which is They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? and their lists of acclaimed films for all-time and the 21st century. I hit those up often. Something that I watched purely because of the very high Letterboxd rating and really loved is Funeral Parade of Roses. I try to see as many movies as I can that have a 4.0 rating or higher.

You respect the Letterboxd consensus. I do, but I don’t always agree with it.

‘Little Fish’ director Chad Hartigan.

Which is your most underrated or overlooked movie according to Letterboxd? I can say I was the very first person to log a movie called Witness in the City, which is an Italian noir movie I watched when I was doing my ‘directors my own age’ series. Literally nobody had logged it, so my review was like “whoa, I can’t believe I’m the first person to log this!”. It was very exciting for me because it’s great, but I’m the OG logger of that movie.

From your list of every film you’ve seen in a theater since you were twelve, which was your most memorable experience? The cheap answer is that it’s hard to top my own movies. The Sundance premiere of Morris From America at the Eccles Theater is maybe the best, but if I’m disqualifying my own films, seeing Scream 3 in a very packed theater in Virginia Beach was really fun, really rowdy. There was a trailer for a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie and I remember the climax was Van Damme going “you lied to me!!!” and everyone laughed. Someone did a George Costanza move later during Scream 3 and yelled out “you lied to me!!!” and everybody laughed again—so that’s a high. That’s the thing I miss the most about movie theaters, and the worry I have if theaters go away, is that so much of how we feel about a movie can be tied to the experience; who we saw it with, what we did before or after, what the crowd was like, or if anything strange happened. There are a lot of movies I have strong memories and affection for because of the experience of seeing them and I probably wouldn’t feel the same way about if I just watched it at home on my laptop.

I typically like to cap interviews off with what filmmakers thought was the best film of the past year, but we have your data to hand. For you, it’s Garrett Bradley’s documentary Time. Can you talk a bit about what makes the film stand out for you? One thing I learned about myself from the pandemic is that the motivation and desire to see new things is very closely tied to the theater-going experience for me. Once that was taken away and you could watch a new movie at home, it joins the pile of all the other movies. The fact that it’s new doesn’t really do anything for me. Why would I press play on Da 5 Bloods when I still haven’t seen Malcolm X? I gotta see Malcolm X! There wasn’t an urgency, so I saw far fewer films than in an ordinary year. But Time I found incredibly moving and important. Similar to what I liked about the Little Fish script, it’s so hyper-focused on one relationship and within that one story it has so much to say about larger issues and the world at large. It was an emotional and rich viewing experience.

‘Little Fish’ is on demand and playing in select theaters now. Images courtesy of IFC Films.

#little fish #chad hartigan #life in film #film director #letterboxd #how i letterboxd #letterboxd member #letterboxd tips #olivia cook #jack o'connell #romance #romantic film #sci fi romance #pandemic movie #covid movie

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randbwrite · 4 years ago

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La Comtesse Chronicles Chapter 5 Part 2

Words: 1467

CW: Vampires

TW: Blood

The flight was unlike anything either had ever experienced. It was a marvel, seeing the world from a new perspective. Who can put it into words? Or paint a masterpiece capturing just how small and insignificant one feels when seeing how small they were in the greater scheme? Yet every life they passed over would continue on their way, utterly oblivious to the circumstances of their world at large. Inspiring and humbling simultaneously.

It also made for a splendid distraction from what would be waiting for them, or Cal in particular.

He was used to people hating him; really Derrick was the only person who’d so much as tolerated the scoundrel, with his own mentor ready to strangle him after a few years. The Citadel may have been a death trap waiting to happen, but he knew every inch of the place and how to survive it. This whole experience would be brand new...and they’re all vampires, he assumed. Ones who knew what they were doing with their abilities, if the two he’d seen on the battlefield were any indication.

Frak it all, get a grip! Since when did he fret about new adventures? He was constantly going into dangerous situations, usually with the intent to kill someone. That aspect was already out of the way! Technically. Which was why everyone would be looking to take his head. You know, entering castles tended to be easier when nobody knew anything about him...but this newness wasn’t all bad. Though saying it out loud would be impossible, he was especially glad for Derrick coming along. The man had been dealt a bad hand...or more accurately an entire deck of darkness. About time he got a break. The...former(?) assassin would figure things out.

Like wrapping his head around a change of occupation and address all in one day. Oh yeah, and classification? Vampire? There wasn’t any quibbling about that terminology, not after what he’d seen. ...That and the fangs emerging all too easily with the thought of food. He was guessing his usual fare of oranges wasn’t going to cut it either. This strange thirst was beginning to press more insistently at his tolerance for hunger. He wasn’t sure how he felt about...drinking blood. Best to use this time to think it over. Or there’s what he should have done. Never mind! Avoidance it was then!

....

Yeahhh...the reception was about as frigid as one might expect.

But staring at those doors, seeing someone else answer them and feeling the finality in the sound of them closing behind...none of this may feel real yet, but it was starting to sink in.

For once, Cal didn’t have a quip questioning the formality, or lack thereof, from the butler. Suppose when one’s a vampire, a few details such as tone weren’t worth quibbling over. Not that he could fault the man his frost. Definitely blaming any failing in the attempts at levity on distracting levels of thirst...and less on the array of Antarctic level temperatures being directed at the pair. Least he wasn’t so pitiful Derrick felt the need to put an arm on his shoulder...ah, never mind. Okay, so he waited till they were out of sight. Small mercies. No one followed them, seeming content to wait for dinner to begin the grilling.

When Cal floated the suggestion he might take his meal in his room, the words faltered before being fully formed. Dude may have been a butler, but Sebastian could give the assassins a run for their money in the intimidation factor. Got it. No avoiding this.

Didn’t seem to matter how good Cal was at hiding things, Derrick always saw through it. Annoying...and helpful. The bandages came off from around his rib cage, gnarly bruising explaining stiff movement. Course, Derrick was decked out with his own variety of colors as well. The two made quite the pair, each helping the other with clothes a bit restrictive for current predicaments, but they certainly looked a sight better than their former, somewhat tattered options.

In the end, the jacket rounding off the outfit refused to stretch over the mountain’s shoulders, threatening to burst down the center seam if Derrick so much as flexed and it had to be left behind. Cal assured him this was just fine...and not to think about it too much. They’d be having more important things occupying their minds shortly anyway.

....

The atmosphere at the table was one of downright hostility, though Comtesse’s appearance was enough to take nearly everyone’s breath away. Derrick had zero trouble catching names, though none of them outside of Napoleon and Jean were familiar to him. Generals and emperors were names that circulated the Citadel; a vague curiosity as to what was happening in the outside world frequently getting the better of him. The animosity didn’t phase him; being the focus of disdain and ridicule was his normal as well. A polite nod and unaffected smile greeted every member, whether returned or ignored.

For Cal, despite a number of them being famous during or after this current time, they all rang bells. Though with the exception of Dazai, and admittedly the rest were very distant memories he hadn’t dredged up for over a decade. Lot of water under that bridge. And bodies. His expression was one of his typical jester’s grin, the nerves bunched up and singing with no place to go being tightly reigned in. She’d told the residents there was no harm to be done, but he knew rather personally how powerful a desire for vengeance tended to inspire people to action.

Just maybe not at the dinner table? One can hope.

“Right! Famous lads from history, eh? If I’d have known the great Napoleon Bonaparte was on the battlefield, I might’ve brought more darts! Course, I thought you’d be shorter an’ all. Inferno or not, you’re reasonably impressive!”

Derrick could’ve groaned, however if he said he hadn’t anticipated this happening it would’ve been a lie. Leave it to Cal to get the elephant out of the way first thing. Scratch that, Cal would ride the elephant around the room whooping and hollering.

“We are indebted to your graciousness for freeing us from that place, and accepting us into your home. It may be a moment before I can formulate questions, in the meantime if I can answer anything for you?”

There were two conversations taking place, one, civilized and calm between Derrick, Comtesse, and whoever was listening to that particular discussion. The second consisting of Cal, Arthur, Theo, Napoleon, and Mozart...mostly in fortissimo. There was a hard glint in Cal’s emeralds, a closing down as he deflected queries calling into question his sanity, morals, and parenting. Shakespeare watched both conversations with avid interest, muttering things to himself while a smile played about his face.

One thing stood out above the bickering, the scent of rouge putting a crease between Cal’s brows he wasn’t sure what to do with. “Your Comtesse was another job. There was nothing more to it. Take it as personally as you like, she’s important to ya.” (You don’t have the first possible inkling how many people I’ve killed who were important to someone.) That’s why he’d personally taken to not have anyone important to him. Till Derrick took that personal and became someone important. One day he’d recall how the frak that had happened... ”All I’ve got to offer is my word. I won’t be raising a hand against her from here out. Same goes for any of you all either. Take it or leave it, that’s how it is.”

More of a promise than he’d ever given out before. Even Derrick hadn’t gotten that, understood or not. They both knew, in the Citadel you did what you had to. Avoiding being put in a bad situation was the only way to go; it was why no one had seen them together, let alone knew they were friends.

The rouge was practically taunting him now. The smell was all too familiar, memories kept locked up tight creeping along the edges. Eat or wither away. Great options. His fangs and throat had specific ideas and didn’t like being ignored. Words dried up along with the inhibition. If he hadn’t have outed himself already, the reaction to his first conscious topping of blood would do it. Revulsion, not for the beverage ingested but for everything that peculiar scent of copper brought back with it, transformed his features from the devil-may-care rascal into a man haunted

The smile turned fractured façade wouldn’t fool anyone. His question posed for la Comtesse was quiet, the din at the table keeping its animated dissection of actions taken pointedly ignored.

“However did you manage to wrangle a wormhole anyway, swee—Comtesse?”

#cw: vampires #tw: blood #vampires #Ikemen Vampire #dark fantasy #whump #whumpfic #au #OC #Derrick #rapscallion #comtesse #fanfiction

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mnogorgannik · 4 years ago

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2 10 n 11 :)

this is basically an essay im so sorry. watch how hard i can infodump (ill put this under a cut hopefully it works bc sometimes tumblr decimates the keep reading things if theyre in asks)

2. Who’s your favorite of the Bound? What do you think of the different ideologies they have? Which of the factions are you most aligned with?

WE ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER I AM A PETER LOVER THROUGH AND THROUGH!!!!!! oh baby i love that morally questionable architect. pretty early on in getting into pathologic (it’s coming up on a year now...) i thought about peter stamatin too hard and now i’m here. but really i find him to be such a fascinating character!

the thing about pathologic that i love is how almost every character can be as complex as you want. pathologic does an excellent job of implying a lot of character traits while only exploring some in further detail, which in some games is frustrating but patho does it so well! it consistently hints at traits and lets you fill in the details yourself. peter’s character is extremely interesting to me... and maybe a little more relatable at times than i want to admit lol.

i think i’ll talk about both stamatins though! their dynamic hurts me a lot. i’ll start with andrey bc i’ve been thinking about him lately. although i’ll bounce back and forth between both stamatins.

i’ve said this before but i’ll say it again.... andrey’s role as a protector who inadvertently hurts the people he cares about really gets to me. he is not a shield but, in his own words, a battering ram. and the problem is that battering ram has a recoil.

i have to wonder how that mentality of his came about, anyways. the implication is that it’s always just been him and peter, so did he take on that role because there wasn’t anyone else to do it?

in his efforts to protect peter from... military, i believe, he kills four people. which leads to daniil getting mistaken for andrey, which leads to daniil getting shot. and almost dying. he protects peter but to a smothering extent, peter even says he’s been suffering for ten years bc of andrey which is a LOADED line. he protects on a physical level but he kinda fucks up on the emotional.

there’s a horrible irony in peter and eva being the people he cares about the most and both attempting suicide. with eva once she’s missing he immediately goes running off trying to look for her, and . ahh i can’t remember right off hand what exactly he thought happened. but ik he was probably expecting a fight. with peter he says that after that he’ll never let peter leave his side, at least “as far as his knife can fly”... it sounds cheesy but the one thing he can’t save anyone from is themself.

and god the way andrey bases his ENTIRE sense of self worth on peter fucking hurts. they’re not peter and andrey, the architects. they’re Peter And Andrey, The Architect. (thinking about “one architect, two brothers” here.) andrey thinks he’s larger than life and all but he’s constantly living in peter’s shadow. their theatre of death positions come to mind here, with peter standing up, looking down at andrey. but andrey is on his knees in front of peter, arms limp to his sides.... separated by a wooden beam...

peter’s side of this dynamic is fascinating too. his dependency on andrey is. ow. leaving all practical matters and decision making to him... there’s this resentment (That’s Fine I’ve Been Suffering For Ten Years Because Of Him) and lack of communication that especially shows through for him.

while in p2 andrey completely crumbles if peter dies, peter doesn’t seem to care...... at all....?? which hopefully is elaborated upon in p2. he’s willing to talk to aspity about worrying if andrey is angry with him but he can’t bring it up with andrey himself. when he asks how andrey is doing he stops and says andrey is a “tough man” and can handle anything. in general, while it’s definitely there for andrey, themes of dependency are really glaringly obvious for peter.

one of my favorite peter things i’ve talked about before is still his ego!!! peter has a gigantic ego!!! he really does think that even though he’s hit the ceiling and can’t go any further he is still “a true architect” and “the rock upon which is built the stairway to tomorrow”. he has a blunt edge to him and he doesn’t ever tell you more than he thinks he needs to which i love. if he doesn’t want to tell you something he isn’t gonna do it. this is a character trait i think ppl miss which is sad because it’s so good and adds another layer of depth to him!

it really does hurt me how he’s valued for his mind alone (AHEM AHEM AHEM. GEORGIY) but it’s the thing nobody understands about him. i’m nowhere near as smart as peter lol but i do know that pain of feeling like none of your ideas can be understood because you just can’t express them the way you’d like, and then feeling like you’ll never be able to make it happen.

also, here’s a little thing i’ve picked up on. this connection probably doesn’t exist but i’m making it because the stamatins make me lose my mind and start becoming one of those people who looks for connections in everything i guess. peter standing in the theatre of death, andrey below him. peter’s loft being at a high point in the town, the broken heart being underground. peter’s loft is also higher north on the map but the broken heart is lower south. just smth interesting

i have more thoughts on them of course! but this is all getting awfully long. i feel like i’ve only just gotten to the tip of the iceberg even though i’ve written so much skfjskfjs this just feels quite surface level or. at least what is surface level for me who thinks about the stamatins so hard.

anyways i’ll keep my answers to the other two parts of this question quick! peter and andrey’s more creative vs practical mindsets are rly neat. especially because i would actually argue peter is a little more grounded in reality in certain aspects. not all, but certain ones...... their take on the utopian ideology is interesting. hot take: peter’s version of utopianism leans a tad towards humility. and andrey /does/ feel “straightforward utopian” but i think in certain regards? this man has a bit of a termite streak..... (hi al if you’re reading this). but i won’t get into that right now i’ve already gone on so long. saving that for later.

i think all of the factions kinda suck in their own way sometimes, honestly? although all of them are well written and have their pros and cons. were i in pathologic and i had to choose one i’d probably be a termite but everyone around me seems to think i’m a utopian. is it bc i love peter so much

10. What would you be like as a Pathologic character?

this question is a hard one! i did make a self insert once, mile-a-minute, but they’ve become their own oc by now. i think i’d be very...... very afraid...... probably isolating myself why does every pathologic character break quarantine???? also you could trade beetles with me :) thats about all i’ve got sorry this is real short

11. What is something you would change, writing-wise, about either game?

UGH i’ve been gushing about pathologic because. obviously i love this game so much. but the way it handles racism & such (in both games!) leaves much to be desired :/

i see a lot of the points it’s trying to make but i think the way they’re handled can be very messy. there are moments that work very well but. a lot that don’t. (i am aware that dybowski writes partially from his own experiences)

all too often the game “validates” the kin’s oppression and... at times paints them as oddly antagonistic? i don’t like how often as artemy you’re able to be like “i’m not one of those beasts” and i think there are better ways to touch on his internalized racism. in general the constant comparisons to animals is weird. you get big vlad who is obviously explicitly racist comparing them to animals, but then sometimes it’s like “ACTUALLY calling them animals is fine :)”

i think the herb brides are kind of. Hm. in their portrayal. also using parts of the buryat alphabet to denote an accent is weird. making odongh and herb brides inhuman is weird. connecting the kin to Magic is weird.

and, listen, i’d really like to not be playing Artemy Burakh Experiences a Microaggression Simulator every time i’m playing the haruspex route. hate that you either can’t call ppl out on their shit or if you can it ends the conversation/bars you from getting necessary information. glad you at least get to drag the vlads, i guess?

i also was talking about this but wrt peter specifically, and this issue is present throughout the game but it’s especially visible with peter, i don’t like how often you can mock him for his addiction.

he’s obviously in an extremely rough patch! being able to be just so plain cruel to him about the dependency on alcohol (and iirc in p1 hallucinogens, bc aglaya mentions it) he’s formed to cope with his mental illness & trauma just feels bad. especially because yes it is not a healthy coping mechanism at all but... it still is a coping mechanism, if that makes sense?

the way you’re able to constantly rub it in his face feels awful. peter is fully aware that it isn’t good for him and shows a desire to quit. even if he didn’t it would still be awful to say because. it’s just insensitive. like you don’t just go up to someone and keep being like HEY YOU DRINK A LOT YOU SHOULD STOP DOING THAT DO YOU KNOW WHAT WATER IS? feels really bad to keep harping on something that causes him pain and that he struggles with every single day.

however peter does have moments where he tells you Not to say that, or if you pry into why he drinks he’ll outright say he doesn’t remember you being his friend, which is better than nothing.

in p1 moreso than p2 i hate how you can be like oh he’s craaaazy he’s off his rocker he’s delusional!!!! that “why, i never... an architect of schizophrenia!” comment sticks in my mind because it’s just... so genuinely mean. especially because if i remember correctly that line is from when he’s planning on LITERALLY FUCKING BURNING HIMSELF ALIVE

i think if they were going to have all of this they should have gone more in depth on how it’s really. not good that he’s treated so poorly. and i do believe that’s what they were going for, a la the art book w/ the whole “not to be made into a drunken clown, this is a tragic character”, etc. but it just doesn’t land. i’m holding out for the bachelor and changeling routes in p2 to see if they expand upon any of it but i highly doubt i’ll be satisfied in this regard.

i stand by the One time it was really fucking funny to clown on peter being the time you can tell him little girls eat raspberries and earthworms and he just believes you

#asks #patho #GODDDDDD #i hope you wanted to read an essay today

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blog-sliverofjade · 4 years ago

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Hearth Fires 15: Conflicted

Pairing: Remi Denier x OFC

Summary: Lorel Maddox just wants to live as a human, run her bakery in peace, and forget. Unfortunately, the alpha of the local leopard pack has very different ideas.

Remi Denier doesn’t know what to make of the female changeling who wants nothing to do with him or the RainFire pack. He does know that he has a driving need to protect her. Even if it’s from herself.

While they’re embroiled in a battle of wills, there’s a war brewing on the horizon. The outside threat could not only destroy everything they hold dear, but tear apart the fragile new bonds of the Trinity Accord, plunging the world into bloodshed to rival the Territorial Wars of centuries past.

Word count: 3685

Hearth Fires Masterlist

Beta read by the precious @pandabearer

The small, green valley was thrown into early twilight by the forested mountains that protected the Arrow settlement. The children were playing their hearts out, as if trying to eke out that much more life before the day’s end. Judd Lauren, inarguably a lethal blade of a man, made a mix of cubs, pups, and psy give chase before allowing them to swarm him. Remi shook his head; he was still amazed that the assassin was capable of laughter, let alone could play with children with such care.

“I’ve asked around and a couple of other packs around the country are experiencing the same issues, mostly in places where there was already anti-psy sentiment. Word is they’re running militia training camps,” he said to the man who led some of the most dangerous people in the world. “Have the psy been having similar problems?”

Before Aden could answer, a baby leopard bounded up to bat playfully at Remi’s boots, tail swishing back and forth. He scooped up the cub for a tap on the nose and a quick cuddle before sending her off to rejoin the game.

“No,” Aden answered when they were alone again, watching his wife clean up the aftermath of a sugar-fuelled feeding frenzy. Even though Halloween was still a few weeks off, Zaira had brought candy; the cubs and pups enthusiastically introduced their psy playmates to the concept of Halloween and trick-or-treating. Remi suspected she didn’t grasp the concept of the holiday and was just using it as an excuse to spoil the children. Heaven knew the baby Arrows could certainly do with the occasional spoiling, and she knew that better than anyone.

Envy sank its claws into him. The Arrow pair weren’t mated in the changeling sense, yet they had an unbreakable bond that was obvious even to the non-telepathic races. He yearned to know what it was like to be so intimately connected with someone who suited him on every level. A predatory changeling alpha needed a mate by his side, someone who knew when to bend and when to show their claws, someone who would help their pack grow and thrive. He wanted someone he could trust enough to let his guard down and just be. No duties, not dominant, not alpha, just Remi.

Compared to most alphas, he’d taken some time to wake up to his alpha instincts. Once that need overrode his reservations, he’d gone about it with the laser-like focus of an apex predator. However, there were some aspects he hadn’t anticipated. At first, some of the women tried to climb the hierarchy by climbing into his bed. He’d shut that down right away, making it crystal clear that intimate skin privileges between packmates would in no way impact one’s position either positively or negatively.

Ever since then, he’d been sure to never pay too much attention to any one partner when his need for intimate skin privileges grew too much. He’d inherited too many of his father’s traits that had turned dark after his mother passed. He would be driven to take and possess a lover entirely, demanding complete sexual submission. Dominant changeling women weren’t exactly known for their surrendering natures, and any paramour he took would have to be dominant. Any other personality would be crushed by him simply being who he was. The fragile equilibrium of the new pack couldn’t handle such an imbalanced relationship.

A submissive couldn’t fight against a dominant, especially against sexual aggression from someone in a position of power; it was against their very nature. And he would slit his own throat before he shed the blood of any of his people, before he turned into the monster that stalked his darkest nightmares. He’d simply come to accept that being alone was the price he had to pay in exchange for the family he’d built.

“On top of that, we’ve had a perimeter breach in the eastern and northern sectors.” The second occurrence had been reported when Remi’d been arguing with Lorelei; he’d had to see her safely home before going to investigate. He’d bullied her into shifting to her other form by threatening to throw her over his shoulder and carrying her if she didn’t. The obstinate ocelot went into the change still wearing his shirt. His scent, already coating her in a superficial layer from wearing his tee, spread more evenly on her body when the fabric inevitably disintegrated. That had satisfied something primal, deep below the conscious level.

Coming of age in a brutal pack had irreparably changed him. He managed the violence that lived in him by directing it at those who would harm his people, but those same drives darkened to a sexual hunger when it came to her. He was rapidly becoming addicted to her. Unfortunately, his drug of choice was touch averse, specifically his touch. He hated the loss of control, feeling like a juvenile fresh from his first kill again. The pack needed him to keep his head on his shoulders, not lose it sniffing after a female.

“You’re getting harder,” Tien had said as he’d driven her home. It wasn’t a criticism: it was concern from one packmate to another. His touch hunger was already causing friction and there weren’t enough mated pairs at the higher end of the hierarchy to counteract the instability. And the only person he wanted to sate that need with was dividing his attention.

“She’s a liability.” If they thought he wasn’t doing right by the pack, especially if he was focused on an outsider to their detriment, he’d soon be facing challenges, and that would tear them apart when they were already facing outside dangers.

“Not everyone’s built for combat, that doesn’t mean they have nothing to contribute.” She misinterpreted his flat statement and defended the submissive, an arch statement reminding him that neither end of the power hierarchy was worth more or less than the other. That was what maternals did, protective in their own way.

He knew that better than most. Lorelei’s strength shone whenever she was in the same room with him; annoying as it was, he respected the hell out of her for standing up to him. What his father had forgotten, or perhaps never known, was that strength wasn’t always physical; a person’s value couldn’t be calculated in terms of how much blood they could shed. He would never understand how his father could have treated their most physically vulnerable as unworthy of respect. It ultimately led to his downfall.

“That’s not what I meant, Tien,” he’d growled, hands tightening on the manual controls until the wheel groaned in protest. “She poses a security risk. I never should have let her so deep into our territory.” They had changed the site of the autumn barbecue at the last minute to one more distant from where they made their homes at the heart of their land. But with several non-predatory changelings disappearing in the area recently, his instincts were driving him to keep his people protected deep within their territory and ban anyone who wasn’t fully allied with RainFire.

Changelings of any stripe needed freedom; too many restrictions, even if they were for protection, stifled them. The proper balance of safety and freedom gave cubs a firm foundation and the safety to develop their strength and personalities. It was an alpha’s honour to ensure cubs have what they need to flourish, not crush them by keeping them tightly confined without room to grow.

“She’s a baker, hardly a master spy. What’s she going to do? Steal Avery’s cheesecake recipes?” she’d scoffed. “What she is, is scared. I don’t think she knows how to stop protecting herself; it’s why she’s short-tempered.”

Remi had a different interpretation on that. He’d kept his reservations about her stability to himself, not even warning his sentinels. That was the true risk she posed: he was already keeping secrets from the soldiers who shed their blood in defense of RainFire because he wanted to protect an outsider when all his energies should be focused on safeguarding his people, not divided between them and a woman he couldn’t have.

When she went feral, and there was no doubt in his mind that she would if she didn’t learn to balance her two aspects, he would be the one to take her down. It would be his responsibility because he would have failed both her and his pack, which meant he could not permit that outcome to come to pass.

“Physical reconnaissance?” The question wrenched Remi from his musings.

“Seems like,” he said grimly. They still hadn’t been able to pinpoint who was behind the incursions and it was maddening. A stray breeze blew his hair back into his face and he shoved it back with one hand; he needed a haircut otherwise he’d soon need hair ties.

“I could have the squad monitor for any related activity, although the possibility of finding any evidence is minute.” A smile lit up Aden’s face as he watched his mate attempting to settle a squabble between a cub and a baby Arrow with cool logic.

“Don’t waste manpower, but I’d appreciate any intel passed our way.” The elite military unit protected the heart and conscience of the psy race: the empaths. Aden would never sacrifice their greater mission for RainFire’s sake; it was an unspoken understanding between the two men. Despite their differences, they both had an adamantine core of integrity, and both had been forged in crucibles of the cruellest kind. “I’ll send the info on the missing changelings.”

A wolf couple roaming in the area had disappeared sometime over the past week; he’d only known because they’d failed to check in during the window of time they said they would be leaving as arranged when they’d asked for permission to be in his territory. Two of the most powerful Tk’s he knew, one of them a true teleporter, had already tried to teleport to the two missing, using their faces as a lock and both had failed, which meant that they had either been disfigured or were dead.

Normally spending time with the cubs soothed even his worst moods, yet today it sat uneasily on him that he was on a playdate instead of searching for the wolves; his overdeveloped drive to protect was punishing him. Logically, he knew that the children needed to play with their friends before the semi-monthly gatherings would be disrupted by the holiday season. The pups and cubs were more flexible and would be fine until the new year; it was the psy who needed the foundation of routine, and even though they weren’t his in the strictest sense, it wasn’t in him to hurt a child, no matter how obliquely.

Aden Kai, a scary motherfucker who could create an impregnable shield that could deflect bullets back along their trajectories, smiled, hard eyes softening as Zaira climbed the rise towards them. A faint line between her brows was the only indication of her apparent puzzlement, and held up two identical cups.

“Tavish and Jasper are in disagreement over who gets the blue cup. These are both blue. I’m not familiar with Logan’s medical history, but no visual impairments were noted at Owen’s last physical.”

Remi’s shoulders shook with laughter as the two lethal Arrows looked to him for advice, perplexed. If only all of his problems were simply bickering cubs.

FROM: Zayaan Derici <email redacted>

TO: Lorel Maddox <email redacted>

October 15, 2083 2:30PM

Subject: RE: Fion and Mila Caine, RedRock

I cannot express my gratitude for your parents saving my life from our rogue member nor can I convey the depth of sorrow I’ve carried with me all these years, yet I know that it’s merely a drop compared to your loss.

Your parents were fine, courageous people. If you would like to know the details of what happened, I will gladly provide them, but I didn’t want to burden you with the knowledge before you were ready.

I’m ashamed that I didn’t look for you; I’d forgotten they had a little girl. Please forgive me, you would have been “a baby” in my 10-year-old mind. When I was older, I tried to find their relatives, but RedRock’s records were destroyed in a fire that night. I was astonished when your alpha reached out to me and elated when I received your email.

You may wish to move on and not re-visit this tragedy. I would not fault you for that, but I hope to hear from you again. I’ve attached a picture of my two cubs, Fiona and Mila; they are named after your parents.

Gratefully yours,

Devon Gutierrez

Two days passed without incident: no ultimatums, earth-shattering maxims, moments of bloodthirsty madness, and definitely no arguments with a certain autocratic leopard. One would think that would be restful, and yet, no matter how many times she gave herself a firm talking to, Lorel found herself restive.

The longing she felt for him was stronger than mere lust, which was something she’d more or less dealt with on her own since puberty. It was like her very skin ached for touch and without it, she felt untethered from the earth, like she didn’t exist without tactile contact to anchor her. His touch had fanned her ever-present hunger to a voracious need that kept her awake at nights no matter how many times she used her battery-operated boyfriend.

Lorel was grateful that Irena, who was across the workspace from her, didn’t appear to have the same sense of smell that cat changelings had, otherwise she’d never be able to look her in the eye again.

“Irena, could you please pass me the passionfruit?”

“Depends, will you get me that gorgeous cat’s number?” she asked, handing over the bowl with a mischievous grin.

“I don’t think he’s looking,” she shook her head with a rueful smile and began to cut the purple fruit.

“Damn. Wouldn’t mind getting eaten by a cat, if you know what I mean.” Looking up briefly from the sugar cookies she was cutting out, she waggled perfectly manicured eyebrows. This week’s designs were ghosts, pumpkins, and witches’ hats.

“Irena!” Her knife slipped and juice squirted down her apron.

The crow laughed gaily at Lorel’s shock, the sound filling the kitchen. It was still early and they were preparing for the day; they didn’t have to worry about scandalizing customers yet.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” she asked once she’d recovered from the embarrassment. “And if you so much as breathe a word of this to anyone, I will make sure you get all the early morning shifts during the holiday season.” She jabbed a warning finger at Irena; SweetCheeks would have to start baking at 3 am, two hours earlier than usual, to meet projected seasonal demand.

She shuddered and nodded acquiescence, waiting for Lorel to continue.

“Do alphas, or wing leaders,” she added, remembering the avian-specific term Irena used, “have certain… expectations of packmates?”

“Uh, depends on the person and the needs of the flight, or pack.” Her dark brows drew together when she looked up briefly from the dough.

“No, I mean single pack members.”

“What, you mean like one of them cults where the guy in charge sleeps with all the women? No, that is not normal. I won’t say it’s never happened, but people can be evil.” Hazel eyes aghast, she shook her head furiously. “I haven’t heard anything like that about RainFire, and we’re on good terms with them.”

Lorel had not only heard of instances of alphas becoming corrupt and taking advantage of those they were meant to care for, she’d also been forced to watch documentaries on them. Ostensibly, it was to protect her from becoming a victim of the depraved culture of changeling packs. While she didn’t think that authoritarianism was the default culture of packs, neither had she known exactly how abhorrent such occurrences were considered among changelings. She could smell Irena’s scent sour at the thought despite the competing aromas coming from the ovens.

Face warming, Lorel sketched in with broad strokes what had taken place in the woods the week before, never looking up from her work.

“Kissing between packmates is usually more like kissing a sibling. That sounds more like he’s looking for intimate skin privileges,” frowned Irena.

The kiss between them had been the farthest thing from that. It had been wild and sensual and like nothing she had ever experienced before. When she woke from fitful dreams in the bits of sleep she did manage to get, she swore that she could still taste him on her lips.

“And if there was a misunderstanding, like someone thought he was abusing his position as alpha?” The words he’d used were imprinted in her brain, they’d been so full of restrained fury. Once the hormones and adrenaline had faded, she’d nearly thrown up she’d been so disgusted with herself. Conflict of any kind usually left her feeling deeply discomfited, or at least it did whenever her ocelot wasn’t complicating matters with its temper. And it was always worst when she was in the wrong.

“You did not,” winced Irena. “In that case, I’d say it’s a damn good thing you’re not in the pack yet because his pride will not take that well.” Eyes wide, she shook her head and blew out a breath, golden-brown cheeks puffing up.

“He said I was ‘touch hungry.’ How was I supposed to know it wasn’t just a line? Like when doctors used to say, ‘I diagnose you woman, the cure is medically induced orgasms’!” she threw her hands in the air in frustration, sending green bits of pulp flying, even as she pinked at her own words. In fact, she was pretty sure that was the first time she’d ever uttered the word “orgasms” aloud; Chloe and Irena were definitely bad influences on her.

Giggling, Irena pressed the back of her forearm to her forehead. Since her hands were covered in flour and bits of dough, it was the equivalent of clapping a hand over her face.

“Flights- packs, whatever- are good for that, and no, I am not talking about group sex,” she said once she had breath again, sniffing back tears of mirth. “Mind you, some of those cats…” she trailed off with a slyly speculative expression. “Anyhoo, there’s different skin privileges between packmates, family, and lovers. Any might help alleviate touch hunger, but all the hugs in the world won’t cut it if you’re in dire need of a good dicking.”

“Do you enjoy making me blush?” Lorel mock glared.

“Yep,” she chirped unrepentantly. “One of these days I expect to see blood spurt out of your nose like in anime.” She waggled a hand near her face to mimic a spray of blood. Lorel flicked a passionfruit pit at the crow who giggled and batted the airborne seed towards the sink where it landed with a plink. “If he’s offering as a packmate, there’s no strings attached. It’s just fulfilling each other’s need. You set your own boundaries when it comes to skin privileges, all you have to do is say no and they’ll back off entirely. If he wants a relationship, that’s a whole nother kettle of wax, and I don’t know what big cats are like. Now if it was a corvid, I could give you a crash course.”

“How can I tell?”

“Ask him,” she said, hands spread wide, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Lorel stared at her like she was speaking another language.

“Communication? You know, the basis of all healthy relationships?”

Unsure how to respond to that, Lorel busied herself with straining the passionfruit pulp. She’d had few healthy relationships and even fewer romantic relationships, none of which had qualified as healthy.

“Lorel, are you a virgin?” Irena tilted her head in a way that was distinctly not human.

“No!” Her voice was so high it could have shattered glass. Then, in a calmer register, but not looking up, “Not technically. Besides, I don’t think he even wants to look at me; I’m half-surprised he hasn’t given up and banished me entirely.” Inexplicably, the thought made her chest ache till it felt like she couldn’t breathe. “I haven’t known him very long, but I feel like he’s mine.” This last she whispered to herself, confounded by the sudden realization. She hadn’t meant to say it, hadn’t even known she was thinking it until the words tumbled out.

Irena crossed the workspace to enfold Lorel with a hug, face set with lines of sympathy. Instincts told her to maintain her guard, to hold some part of herself back, but she was so tired that after a moment she released the tension she carried. Slowly wrapping her arms around the crow, she laid her head on the taller woman’s shoulder and breathed in the scent of friend, allowing herself to relax.

Lorel made acquaintances easily, but she’d never clicked as deeply as she had with the friends she’d made in the short time she’d been there. She’d always kept herself apart to protect the people around her from the violent madness she’d seen as an inevitability.

To hold that at bay, she lived by rigid rules to keep her other half, the one ruled by needs and emotions, under control. Being good and demure and all the things she was taught to be had gained her nothing, certainly not the approval of her grandparents; if anything, it put her more at risk of going rogue, if Remi was to be believed.

Now she knew differently because he was trying to show her a different way. He’d never demand that she silence herself or hide her wildness, on the contrary, he challenged her to embrace it. Such an attitude was a stark contrast to the people she’d called family for so long. He didn’t know that she would have to give up everything she’d ever known, including the people who raised her.

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ronanvespertine · 5 years ago

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I think what gets people about Hawks is he’s a planner- and we’re so used to merely reacting heros. There’s always the chance when you strike first that you’ll strike wrong, but the alternative is waiting until it’s too late. And isn’t that one of the huge issues people have with heros? That they were too slow and didn’t save someone who needed it? Hawks is ruthless and it’s terrifying to be on the receiving end if that. But he’s been the hero a lot of people needed

Oh my god, this.....this is a really good interpretation of him. I really like how you think of Hawks! I’ve never really thought of it that way.

I’m gonna ramble about this ask for a while, so I’ll try to put a brief answer above the read more cut. I love how you pointed out what people need/expect from heroes in terms of how they respond. The consequences of a villain attack (property damage, casualties, displacement) are what gives fuel to criticism, and heroes can’t really excuse themselves from those results because those consequences are not to be taken lightly and heroes took on the responsibility of minimizing impact.

It’s the whole thing about “thoughts and prayers”. Pretty words after a tragedy don’t matter because they change nothing. What really matters is action—preventative measures. And that’s how Hawks approaches hero work. Preventing matters and quick resolutions to minimize impact.

And yes, Hawks’ kind of heroism is what people need in a general sense. Meticulous hard work focused around preventing villain attacks or stopping them as fast as possible. But the intensity with which Hawks goes about it is really scary—you’re right to call it ruthless. And that’s normally a good thing until you call morality into question.

I don’t really want to delve into whether his actions are right or wrong, because.....well, it’s complicated. You can’t slap a label on it. And in the high-stakes world of heroism, morality is a pretty ironic thing to emphasize. Heroes act for the “greater good”, but does that really give them the right to kill? And vice versa—is it okay to risk millions of lives for the sake of adhering to a wishy-washy ideal of no dead?

Let’s go with this: morality is meaningless. Life isn’t dictated by black and white—society is. What life is about is choices and consequences—what you choose to do and what happens because of it. (More on morality under the cut)

I tried to keep it short, but it’s still a pretty lengthy answer. Sorry about that. Anyway, under the read more I’m gonna go ramble because anon just ignited the analytics in my head. Maybe check it out, ‘cause I talk a little more about what I think of Hawks under the cut.

The difference between heroes who react (Endeavor, Miruko, etc.) versus heroes who plan (Hawks, Nighteye, etc.) isn’t something I really thought too much on. But that’s a really good way to look at heroes! In Nighteye’s case, I’d say the guy waits too much and he could possible have past incidents that would fit what you’re talking about—waiting too long until it’s too late. All Might could be interpreted as a mix of both, depending on how you look at it, but his “planning” is more an abstract ideal—establishing a Symbol of Peace that discourages crime rates.

Hawks NEVER waits. And that’s the reason why the PLF raid occurred with the heroes taking the INITIATIVE, a big contrast in comparison with other incidents in the manga. In regards to the Kamino Nightmare, UA took precautions but they fell through and the heroes reacted quickly against the LoV to get Bakugo back once they had sufficient data and forces. But later, we see this decision is touched on a little by the HPSC president when she talks about Hawks not being available for Kamino, and how heroes have been trailing after villains’ actions because no one has been doing enough intelligence gathering in advance.

Hero society isn’t doing enough to PREVENT villain attacks. And well, that’s a big bone to gnaw on.

We can talk about the very basics—preventing villains from being born in the first place. But that’s too expansive a task, and heroes/government can’t foresee or prevent everything. Not to mention how complicated implementing those measures will get when you start tangling with law. (If you’re from a massive country with a complicated lawmaking system and polarizing political parties, you’ll know what I mean.)

Then if we focus on something closer to immediate—say, intelligence gathering—that gets a little murky, too. Censorship, surveillance, regulatory laws—until where do we draw the line? When do we consider those preventative measures “oppression”? People will have different opinions of that, and that’ll result in debate and gridlock.

There’s also cultural issues—how do you mass edit a society’s perception of certain things?

We had the issue of “villanous quirks” brought up with Shinsou and Toga. Can you change everyone’s mindsets to regard quirks as a natural gene people can’t help but be born with? In contrast, at what point do you need to start considering the evil that could be done by a quirk on the basis of self-defense? (Think about it. If someone had a quirk that made you forget being under its influence, then how would you know when to change from trusting that person to questioning them for your own protection?)

We also have the issue of quirklessness with Midoriya and Melissa, though I don’t think it’s that complicated. How do you equalize quirks and no-quirks? In contrast, when do you need to discriminate? (It’s the dilemma of equality. Physical requirements for men and women differ because of natural differences in their makeup. It’s fair, but it’s not equal. A minor thing to point out, but you get the idea, right? If you want to take it up a notch, consider the notion of “equal opportunity”. In America, there’s a whole debate about how to raise disadvantaged groups to equal standing without compromising the ones who are already there. Especially in education. There’s this thing about “quotas” in college admissions—colleges can’t set aside a specific number of spots for disadvantaged groups because it will take away opportunities for the rest, but they can include those questions in their applications for a “holistic” process. However, it’s not a full fix. There’s still a disproportionate ratio of minority groups because it doesn’t take into account the minority background: growing up in unsafe/unequipped communities, lacking academic resources or education to compete with those of advantageous groups, family backgrounds that influence the kid’s education because of extra responsibilities, poverty, uneducated parents, cultural stigma, etc. It’s a huge, complex web of a problem that a small rule like that can’t fully encompass.)

Oh god, I got political. But you get what I mean. There’s too big of a mess that heroes/government won’t be able to address every single one of them. So, what they’ll need to do is figure out what they can do and implement it, or figure out which aspect/measure to focus energy and resources on first.

In regards to morality, I answered a previous ask about Hawks and said this:

Sacrificing another person’s life isn’t okay, period, because you never had the right/power to determine another person’s worth in the first place.

I still stick by that, but there’s something I want to make clear about what I think about Hawks. Hawks is free to choose the “wrong” decision. I’m not condoning or condemning him for it. Hell, I’m not even judging him. The way I read My Hero Academia is by watching the characters make their decisions and trying to understand what led to them. I feel like that’s something everyone should try out: just watching the characters, not judging them, but just trying to understand.

Again, morality means nothing. It’s just choices and consequences.

The thing about choices is, you should understand everything about them. And that’s what I want Hawks to build on. If he’s going to make a decision—especially a “wrong” one—then I want him to fully understand the weight of that choice. I feel like Hawks could be desensitized to the weight of life, and that’s what I’m worried about. Then again, we don’t really know a lot about what Hawks feels aside from his expressions and double-meaning dialogue. I could be wrong—Hawks could have a solid grasp on what taking a life means and feel somber remorse over it. But who knows? (I’ll love him even more than I do now if he does understand. God, I love this asshole of a bird.)

Basically, this is what I want Hawks’ approach to Twice’s death to be: it’s wrong, and he’s okay with it. He’ll willingly carry the weight of his choice so he can achieve his dream of a society without an excessive dependence on heroes.

That’s basically Hawks’ whole character. What is he willing to carry in order to achieve his goals? How far will he corrupt himself to get peace for everyone else? (Honestly, the martyr complex is hard with this guy hahaha!) I just want to make sure he seriously understands what he’s “corrupting” himself with.

Anyway, rambling’s over! Hahahaha, I literally switched from my phone to my iPad to the computer to answer this ask lol. And anon, thanks for dropping by!

#bnha hawks #takami keigo #wing hero: hawks #manga spoilers #ronan answers #asks #anon #character study #oof i spent a long time on this #igod i love bnha and horikoshi for creating such a realistic and complex world/characters #legit can ramble about them all day #but i gotta finish dinner and write some fics so we end it here haha!#ok i just looked at the post and it put the read more at the very top #well shit #dammit tumblr #and now i just looked at it on mobile and the read more isnt there at all #DAMMIT TUMBLR

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purplesurveys · 5 years ago

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718

If you lived in Bikini Bottom, would you befriend Spongebob or Plankton? Obviously Spongebob. I’m there to have a good time and catch jellyfish, not eat holographic meatloaf and make it my life’s goal to steal a secret formula. Do you have any bananas in your house right now? I think we still have some left. My dad bought a pack? a group? a bunch? of them so he can make banana cue and turon for my mom and sister while we’re all stuck at home for the meantime. Which overrated tattoo are you sick of seeing? Eh I don’t judge this easily since I assume tattoos mean a lot to people but where I’m from, line tattoos are pretty overused. They DO look nice and I get why they’ve been trending for a while, but yeah they’re evvvvvverywhere. Is it easy to distract you? Yes haha I have a rather quick attention span. Do you prefer to drink from glasses or mugs? Depends on the drink. I drink my water from a glass but I prefer my coffee in a mug, that sort of thing.

What was the last thing you taught a younger kid? I don’t feel confident teaching kids just yet, huhu. It usually works the other way around: when I’m with kids, they teach me how to play their toys or whatever game they’re playing on their parents’ phone/iPad. Are the clocks in your house mostly digital or analog? We only have one analog clock. We mostly tell the time from our phones. How long have you had your television(s)? Answered this before but we have two TVs that are 12 years old and two others that were bought within the last decade. Do you like watching movies made with CGI or do you prefer hand-drawn ones? I don’t care. As long as the end product is done well I can enjoy the movie. Where did your parents buy their car(s)? I know for sure the two family cars were bought directly from the official dealers. I think mine was a secondhand one. Do you know why your grandparents chose your mother's name? No. I think they just liked the name. That makes me want to ask my grandma though. What is your favourite kind of soup? Miso is the only one I really like. Have you ever made your own musical instrument? Nope. What do you think of Leighton Meester's singing voice? I only know one song of hers and I reeeeeally loved that when it came out, but I don’t think it’s enough for me to have an opinion for her music altogether. I definitely don’t hate her voice though. Do you think you'd do well at teaching the English language to a foreigner? Yeah, it’s my other everyday language and I’m a little bit more fluent in it than I am in Filipino. How long have your neighbours lived there? About the same time as us, I think. We all moved in at sort of the same time when the village was newly developed. Is it weird to hear your name in movies or TV shows? It’s not a very common name so it does feel a bit weird to hear, yes. It’s weirder if I have to refer to the character in third person cause I never liked saying my own name :/ Why do so many people seem to hate the Jonas Brothers? Am assuming this refers to the Jonas Brothers pre-reunion because I’m sure no one hates them and their new music now lmao. I think, simply put, it was because they were teenagers then, and pre-teen and teenage girls was their main fanbase? Most people liked to shit on that category of celebrities, even today – case in point, Justin Bieber, 5SOS, One Direction haha. What is a store you like that is exclusive to your country? Fully Booked! It’s the most complete, up-to-date, and chic bookstore brand we have. The Fully Booked branch in BGC in particular is a partnership with Starbucks, so you can immediately walk over there to get a coffee and read after buying a book heh. If you attend school, what time do you usually get home after? I always have extracurriculars like org stuff, meetings, or fieldwork after my academic schedule so more often than not I’ll get home by 9 or 10 PM, which leaves me feeling exhausted as fuck at the end of the day. When was the last time you really needed to just let loose? Like two weeks ago? I was bored out of my mind being stuck at home so I chugged a lot of soju that I asked my dad to buy so I can at least be drunk while being bored lol. Have you ever been blackmailed? Kinda. There was a time when I didn’t talk to my sister and didn’t really feel well enough to reconcile with her yet, but my mom threatened to go to our class guidance counselor and expose me and ‘the kind of older sister I am’ if I didn’t make amends with my sister immediately.

This might sound sarcastic but thanks, survey, for reminding me what kind of mom my mother actually was during the years that were the most critical to my development lmao. I always need reminders like this because despite how our relationship has ‘improved’ now that I’m older, I shouldn’t forget the trauma she caused me and the fact that I had always planned to detach myself from her as much as possible once I’m fully independent. I can’t disappoint my younger self by keeping her in my life as if nothing happened.

Do you suffer from Restless Leg Syndrome? No. I keep forgetting what that means. Would you rather have novels based on your life or a series of comic books? Novels, so I’d be more interested to read it. Have you written a resume before, either for yourself or someone else? I did a resumé when I applied for my internship. Did you know that they plan on releasing a movie based on The Smurfs? This survey is sooooooo old hah they’ve made a bunch of films on it already. Do you ever wonder what it would be like to live underwater? Not really. Mostly I’ve just wondered what it would be like to be a creature from the deep sea, where it’s totally dark and most of the animals there look prehistoric as fuck lol. Have you ever worked in a bakery? If not, would you like to? No but this question reminded me of Harry Styles, aw :’) ANYWAY if I did I’d probably take up a job in the office, since I can neither bake nor deal with people on a regular basis even if one argues that bakeries aren’t really particular spots for angry Karens or Barbaras. What is your favourite thing about snow? I like that we don’t get them because it’s bound to make my first encounter with snow in the future magical as fuck. Is there a big personality difference between you and your sibling(s)? Yeah. I tend to adapt to new environments way better than they do and I’m definitely the most extroverted of the three in all aspects. Do you enjoy decorating things with stickers? Hahahah yes, it’s an uncontrollable urge. I keep my stickers to just my laptop case these days, but back then I used to put stickers on my phone case, my ID case, clipboard, wallet, etc. Did you lose anything recently? Did you end up finding it? I lose my hair tie every now and then; my hair’s a bit short for a ponytail now so my hair tie gradually slips out my hair with me barely noticing it, so it always ends up in random places around the house. I do end up finding it after a while but it gets frustrating whenever I realize it had fallen off again. What colour oven mitts do you have? We don’t really use the oven so we barely use the ones we have. I don’t even know the color of it.

Why do you/don't you watch award shows? Because there are sooo many commercials in the middle of it, some presenters are awkward as fuck and I’d rather save myself from the secondhand cringe, and most of the time the choices for the winners are undeserving and end up pissing everyone off. It’s always easier to just wait a few hours and check the results on Google; and besides, the only fun parts are seeing what everyone is wearing and who attends to begin with hah. What do you think of Ellen DeGeneres as the new judge on American Idol? God this was a lifetime ago. I think I mostly didn’t mind it but I never did get over the replacement of the OGs Randy, Simon, and Paula. Do you ever do the exercises featured in some magazines? No. Have you ever watched What The Buck? What do you think of it? I don’t think I’ve heard of that. How long ago did you switch from cable to satellite, if you did? We didn’t make a ‘switch,’ per se. We had cable in our old home but when we moved to our current house in 2008, having extra channels wasn’t really the priority as moving already entailed a whole lot of expenses to begin with. That meant we only had free TV for a while which was extremely fucking boring, but eventually my dad got us satellite in like 2011 or 2012. When was the last time you partnered up with someone to complete something? I decided to partner up with Andrew for my undergraduate thesis in like August last year. Do you consider Lady GaGa's appearance artistic, or just plain weird? Artistic. What do you usually do when you have trouble sleeping? I put a lengthy YouTube video on so I can fall asleep to the background noise. At least that’s what I do these days - I always thought I needed complete silence to fall asleep, but apparently that’s not the absolute case. What was the last thing you used scissors for? I opened a sachet of 3-in-1 coffee.

Have you ever used some kind of food as a facial mask? Nah I always just use Korean sheet masks. How many USB cords do you have lying around? I personally don’t have any but I do have a hard drive. Are you satisfied with your social life (or lack thereof)? I’m very satisfied with it and I’m glad I got to open up in college. Do you know anybody whose initials spell something? Sure. What is your favourite flavour of Kool-Aid? I’ve never had Kool-Aid. Is there a specific food you think NEEDS to be at Christmas dinner? My grandma’s steak. Would you be able to re-string a guitar? I wouldn’t even know where to buy guitar strings. What TV show do you just assume you wouldn't like? How I Met Your Mother, just because their fans love to make fun of and compare their oh-so-great show to Friends so much when I’ve never seen a single Friends fan make fun of HIMYM like ????? Why the one-sided, unsolicited hate??? I was always planning to watch the show and appreciate Friends and HIMYM at the same time but because the fans are so pathetic I just stopped wanting to watch it altogether. Do your friends have more money than you? Seems unfair to pit ourselves against one another when we’re all still depending on our parents’ money lmao. Who always has the power to make you feel intimidated? Ate Frances has always had a very strong personality. Do you have more bread or cheese in your house? Bread. What was the last movie trailer you saw? Not sure. I don’t really like trailers since most of them give away too much of the plots already. Did you purchase any meat product when you were at the store last? My dad did. Have you ever been told that you have chubby cheeks? Well I don’t, so no I’m not usually told this lol. Do you know how to properly use a saw? Nope. Isn't it a shame that what Kanye West did at the VMA's overshadowed what was supposed to be a night dedicated to Michael Jackson? Hahahaha not really, I found it hilarious and so so stupid. There were a billion other tributes to MJ that year that went smoothly so it doesn’t really matter to me if the 2009 VMAs will always be known as the Imma-let-you-finish VMAs.

#survey #surveys

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seyaryminamoto · 5 years ago

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Post canon, do you think Azula would regret her actions during the war? As Azula is someone who’s very single-minded when it comes to success, I don’t see her regretting anything. War is war for her. But how can she change? I don’t think she would regret her actions just because people didn’t accept her actions or think what she did was bad. She would need a logical explanation. What do you think?

Uh… that really depends on how a writer chooses to carry her character forward. While Azula didn’t commit any of her worst war crimes in my story, she started out being every bit as remorseless about the Fire Nation’s actions as you’d expect from canon Azula. It has been, of course, an insanely long process, but she has grown to understand the harm her nation did, enough that she even works to fix what little stuff she can nowadays.

As usual, this got long, soooo…

TL;DR: show her the flaws in the Fire Nation’s system, make her bond with new people (preferrably either Team Avatar or other people from other nations), and after a FAIRLY long time she’ll come to understand where the Fire Nation went wrong and regret some of her actions, to some extent.

Now, if you want a full breakdown of what I mean by all of that, feel free to keep reading:

First things first… I’d think Azula needs to see how the war damaged her own nation. The Painted Lady featured the floating town of Jang Hui in the most polluted river the entire franchise had given us so far. ATLA did deal with subjects relating to environmental damage before, but never quite to that extreme: common people were living in the worst conditions because a weapons factory that was operative since Azulon’s time had been dumping their waste in that river for over a decade, if I recall correctly.

Neither Zuko nor Azula ever saw this, only the Gaang did: how would they react if they did, though? How would they feel upon finding their people are facing such dire consequences for the warmongering of their forefathers? You may be inclined to think Azula might not care, these are means to an end, but I’d like to think an Azula who has been developed to some extent would think otherwise (I can outright tell ya’, I’m bringing this up because I literally wrote Azula confronting this specific reality in Gladiator’s 82nd chapter :’DDD).

This without going into the subject of the death toll: how many of their soldiers were sacrificed and how much people have had to die at a war that has lasted 100 years. Efficient, effective Azula would most likely be disturbed to realize how many resources have gone to waste, how much work has been invested into operations that went nowhere because, let’s be real, if the Fire Nation had been effective all the damn time, this war wouldn’t have dragged out as long as it did. Add to this that Azula is outright the most competent Fire Nation antagonist we ever saw on the show, and it’s obvious the Fire Nation armies would leave a lot to be desired for someone who’d expect nothing but the best from her own people.

Point and case being: show Azula the flaws in the Fire Nation systems, and she’ll start opening her eyes to the reality of the Fire Nation’s internal mess. If they’re striving for greatness, wouldn’t they be above such flaws? Shouldn’t they be better than this?

Now, how would she regret her own actions? That’s a taller order to fulfill yet. But, as tall as it may be, it’s not impossible.

For starters, one of the things I dislike deeply about the comics is that Azula doesn’t feel like herself to me because she’s dead-set on the throne as her endgame even though anyone can tell it’s never going to be hers. Why do I dislike it? Because this is the same girl who, upon being thwarted constantly by Team Avatar in Book 2, kept changing her strategies and even changing the battles she was fighting so she could obtain a “big win” and make her father happy. Can’t catch Iroh and Zuko with a Royal Barge and a full firebending procession? Switch to a smaller team with a train-tank. Can’t find Iroh and Zuko yet, but found the Avatar? Try to capture the Avatar. Failed to capture the Avatar? Off to capture Ba Sing Se instead. Failure to capture the city? Again, switching to tracking down the flying bison to find the Avatar: found the Kyoshi Warriors, found a method to infiltrate the city, captured Zuko and eventually Iroh, “killed” the Avatar, conquered the city: AZULA WINS!

But why did she win? Because she changed tactics. Because she was NEVER static, never hung up on a single goal. She needed to be victorious, and she was in the end, but not for a long time: she literally doesn’t win a single violent confrontation until she fights the Kyoshi Warriors. As epic as she may be, I ALWAYS bring this up because it’s part of her character as well as everything else. In the comics, though? She may change tactics on occasion, but the endgame of her plans never really changes: she wants the throne at all costs, like that’s the only thing in the world that she could ever want. And I find that difficult to understand in a character like her because she lost EVERYTHING in Sozin’s Comet, the last we saw of her she was crying desperately after knowing she had been defeated. This, paired with the mirror scene, showed that Azula was shattering inside. A character who went through trauma of that magnitude can react in countless ways… but the way that I would have thought suited her best would be having a severe belief crisis instead: why did her brother succeed when he had always been the failure while she was the perfect child? Why does he have friends who will fight beside him while hers abandoned her? Why, when everything came to a head, she was completely and utterly ALONE?

The interpretation of the comics is that she decided those questions all could be answered with “Hallucination-Ursa brainwashed them all!” and “I must take the throne and my entire life will be fixed again!”, something that still makes me shake my head to this day. When having the opportunity to explore complex subjects through Azula’s character, they picked the most simplistic route possible to deal with it and obsessed her with a throne she only showed outright interest in during… what, four episodes of the original show? :’D

Sooooooo, as far as comics are concerned, I honestly don’t think they’re taking a route to make Azula regret what she’s done. Other people have a different take on the subject, they’re free to disagree, but unless the new writer treats Azula more seriously than Yang did, it’s hard to imagine they’ll actually touch onto the more complex aspects of the character.

Therefore if we went through the route I expected her to take, meaning, Azula trying to figure out why she failed without dumping all the blame on a single hallucination, I can imagine her touching the surface of the fact that something about her methods, something about her actions, couldn’t have been right. The Ursa hallucination already suggests that Azula knows, on some level, where she went wrong: she feels forced to justify why she handled everyone through fear, claiming “fear is the only reliable way”. It’s not so reliable anymore, though, is it? All the people she thought she’d intimidated and frightened are thriving now, while she’s in an asylum, of all things. Something in her methods was wrong, plain and simple. A perfectionist like her wouldn’t like accepting this, but she’d have no choice other than doing it: otherwise she’d NEVER have ended up in the situation she’s in.

Just like with the previous item, begin to touch upon the failures, the flaws, the problems… and slowly, Azula’s concepts of the world would unravel, and she’d be forced to make sense of it all again, only, now she knows and understands it better than she did before.

Of course, changing her understanding of the world would be far more successful with the right help than by having her work out everything on her own. And by the right help I mean… Azula can’t be helped the same way Zuko was. It’s that simple. You can’t have her open up to Iroh, or learn better through him, because she thinks he’s a failure as well and she has as little respect as possble for him. Likewise, she’d most likely be too proud to learn any better from Zuko, who, let’s be real, has a long way to go still in terms of growing and ESPECIALLY developing enough patience to deal with Azula. While everyone wants him to do it, and hell, I agree that him helping her would be the right way to bring his character full circle, the way Ehasz described it, but I can also see it being a REALLY messed up journey, with more hardships than I think Zuko can endure as he is by the end of ATLA. He’d need a much stronger hold on his emotions than he ever displayed, and we know Azula is one very sore spot for him. Therefore, while it would be thematically great? It would take longer than a Gladiator-length story to do this properly, with both Azula and Zuko being IC enough as compared to where they left off at the end of ATLA.

On top of it all… my most honest take? I don’t really want anyone from Azula’s old social circles, be it friends or family, being part of the start of her healing process. Why’s that? For one thing, what I said above about Zuko and Iroh. For another, her relationship with her mother is radioactive trash even without factoring in The Search. Lastly, bouncing back from a betrayal like Mai and Ty Lee’s would take her AGES, and I don’t think she’d realistically ever fully trust them again after that, especially seeing how neither of them seem to want to be friends with her again anyhow in the show, not even touching upon how much they seem to hate her in the comics. Therefore? I’d like it better if Azula either started to have her own adventures with Team Avatar or found new friends of her own, as she did in Smoke and Shadow.

… Only, and this is why I’d favor Team Avatar, Azula needs influences who AREN’T Fire Nation. All her life that’s all she’s known. If you give her common ground with any of the other five members of the Gaang, you could actually create an interesting dynamic that involves Azula exchanging experiences (rather than trampling over) with someone with a completely different culture than her own.

For example, she can bond with Aang over being bending prodigies, something she doesn’t have in common with anyone from her old circles. She can bond with Katara over having older brothers who drive them crazy. She can bond with Toph over the same thing as with Aang + they’re bound to share some degree of their sense of humor and they’d likely have a competitive streak about who’s the better bender in their respective element, not to mention they’re both highborn who most likely can relate to each other’s family problems. She could bond with Suki over leadership, over warrior training since youth (of course, because of their bad blood I find this one the more difficult angle but it’s far from impossible). And if you really want me to get started with how much stuff she could bond over with Sokka I’ll be writing this ask until tomorrow, so have this link instead.

All this I bring up also under the logic that Team Avatar has forgiven people who wronged them before :’) no, it hasn’t been easy, and no, I wouldn’t expect her to become instant friends with anyone, but it’s hard for me to fathom that all of them would be 100% against being anywhere near Azula forever and ever. Set up grounds for them to have to work together for one purpose or another and you’ll get somewhere with developing Azula’s friendship with any/some of them before you know it.

The core point of having Azula bond and talk with them, though, is for her to undergo the same epiphany she does in Gladiator: shameless self-promoting time!

“What we used to have was separation, definitions, boxes with labels where you could throw each person depending on what they were. And you and me? We don’t share any of those boxes, do we? We’re opposites in practically every regard. Yet why is it that nobody else who shares my boxes has resounded with me in the way you do?”

“We’ve had our clashes, it’s true” he whispered “We really didn’t start off well. But… I guess that comes with balance too, doesn’t it? We were too different to understand each other right away, but in time…”

“We found a rhythm. A way to coexist without destroying each other” said Azula, smiling “Despite it all… fire and water might not need to snuff the other out of existence”

It only took me 107 chapters to get her to this point :’) realistically speaking, I have a hard time seeing a full-blown development of Azula taking a short time, especially if it means tackling even more problems than I needed to in Gladiator, seeing as it’s an AU where she didn’t really get to join the war.

Point being, once Azula finds common ground and solid friendships well outside the Fire Nation (be it Team Avatar or even other people from different nations), she’ll start to feel empathy for them, even if she doesn’t intend to at first. Their lives will matter to her, their struggles… she will find herself realizing what kind of hardships her new friends have undergone because of what the Fire Nation did. And as much as that means she’ll start caring only about one person at a time, that can be expanded into her opening her eyes fully to the horrors of the war she never cared about before.

I honestly doubt she’ll come to fully regret her successes, such as taking over Ba Sing Se or stopping the Invasion force. But she can regret having stood on the side of the conflict where she did, despite she really had nowhere else to stand during ATLA’s time. I’d think, if given proper time to grow, learn better and understand people who are, in essence, different from her despite sharing so much in common with her, Azula would eventually close the door on her past and begin to work towards a future where she won’t have to fear she’ll lose everything again, a future where she’ll have stronger bonds, where she won’t end up alone and abandoned by everyone she ever cared about.

#anon #azula analysis #man I thought my analysis days were over #can't lie this can be fun to do still #however long it gets

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icewindandboringhorror · 5 years ago

Photo

Another set of responding to asks lol.. As usual I have them numbered and will also write out the ask in the text, especially since the screencaps are all blurry and taken at various times/compiled together badly and probably hard to read ghghhggh..... answers under the read more ~

-------------------------

1. "Hi I don't mean to bother you at all, but I was wondering where you get your rocking horse shoes? (I think thats what they're called) I've been looking everywhere and I can't seem to find any :(( "

I don’t entirely remember, since I got them like 6 or 7 years ago.. I think maybe at some point that place ‘bodyline’ or something had some cheap ones? But I don’t see them on the site anymore, they were like $50 or $60. Now when I google it I can only find these insane like $600 ones from vivian westwood or whoever, or ones that are platform shoes but not necessarily the same type. Maybe you could find some on aliexpress or ebay or something? Usually you have to use weirdly specific search terms and look for a while, but you can often find stuff like that on those sites. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help!!!

2. "I've been sick for over a month and my doctor tested me - everything came back fine. After some discussion it appears that my ptsd symptoms came back and the stress on my body is making me fatigued, sick and dizzy. I don't want to say that this could be similar to you situation, but if you have a therapist or someone to talk to about any stresses/your sickness, it might help relieve the pressure a bit. Good luck, I'm so sorry you feel so unwell"

Thank you for sharing! Yeah, I think stress definitely plays a part in why I feel sick so often. Currently I’m not still having the same problem I was having a few months ago when you sent this, so that’s good at least!!

3. “Hi! Do you plan to ever have more sculptures for sale? Or would you do commissions? I haven't seen any in a while but wanted to buy one! :-O”

I have plenty that I want to sell, I guess it’s just hard for me to get set up. Since so much of the reason I procrastinate selling stuff is because I hate the stress of deciding on a price, I’ve thought for a while now that maybe I can just auction them (so I just set a base price, but people bid whatever they feel is fair and I don’t have to decide myself). But I’m just not sure of a good way to do that.. Ebay has auctions, but I don’t want random strangers buying them, I’d rather stick to just the pool of people who follow my art blog and are already familiar with my sculptures or etc. I could do them on here ?? (like, ‘reply to this post to bid, bids close 8am EST, whoever said the highest number sends the money through paypal and then I send the sculpture’ sort of thing???) But I’m not sure if it’s legal to sell stuff through tumblr, or if there could be any other problems with doing it so ‘unofficially’ like that.. I don’t know, I have a vague idea, I’m just having trouble deciding the best way to set up something! I do want to sell some soon though, if I live through the pandemic and anything ever goes back to normal, of course (I wouldn’t want to be having to leave the house to ship stuff in the mail right now).

As for commissions, I have actually done sculpture commissions for friends a few times, so I feel confident-ish that I’d be able to do something like that, but I also wouldn’t want to get overwhelmed since it takes a lot of work. Custom sculptures may also be more expensive, and again.. I always feel guilty and strange about pricing. I’ve thought about doing very limited sculpture commissions though (like, maybe just one at a time, first come first serve or something..?). If it seems like there’s actual interest in that sort of thing, I could definitely consider doing it in the future!

4. " *picks up that smol blue kid and throws them across the room* "

ghgh .. the smallness is an advantage... they could just skitter back down your arm like a tiny squirrel the second you tried to pick them up.. Ythrili survival strategy is to be too small to catch in the first place

(also forgive every sketch in this post, my screen that you can draw on broke, so I’m either drawing stuff in ms paint with a mouse, or drawing stuff on paper and coloring it in firealpaca also with a mouse ghghh.. not going to look Good)

5. "it sounds like you feel pressure to only post good content on the internet, and so you end up psyching yourself out of posting at all. Am I on the right track? "

Not necessarily, like I mentioned in the tags I think it’s more just that everything is complicated by my brain. I can’t just do something effortlessly. Whether it’s for an audience or not, I get caught up on every little detail and adding so much complexity to everything that all tasks take me longer than they take other people lol. I think I just tend to take everything very seriously??

Like for example, I’m often accused of ‘turning things into a discussion’ when someone was just intending to make an off-handed remark, because if someone is bringing up a topic to discuss, I end up engaging with it 100% and putting full effort into it, and it’s hard for me to be ‘’casual’’ about pretty much anything (so if someone was like ‘My day yesterday was a bit weird’ I wouldn’t be able to just respond ‘aw man, that sucks’, I would just be like ‘Weird how? what happened? what made it weird? Are you okay now? Are things still weird? Have you found a solution?’ etc. etc.). I was also bad at essays/open answer questions in school (despite usually being great at the class otherwise), because no matter how hard I tried to filter my speech and cut things out, I was always far too long-winded and would get almost too engaged with the topic and lose the clear cut thought organization and focus that you’re supposed to have I guess. Even like, playing video games or something that’s supposed to be relaxing, I can’t just ‘jump into them’ and do whatever, usually any game I play (large ones at least, small 25 minute point and click adventure games don’t count of course), I have 7 - 10 pages of notes, do hours of research, look up most of the main spoilers, plan out and organize exactly how I’m going to play it and this and that, etc. lol...

So, that personality trait carries over into posting things online as well, I can’t just type something out quickly and hit ‘post’ without a second thought. Social media is hard for me because you’re supposed to use it casually, but I spend a long time re-reading drafted posts, thinking about them, etc. etc., and end up never actually getting around to posting anything. It’s not that I’m perfectionist about it and want it to be ‘good’ or appear a certain way, it’s just that my mind becomes preoccupied with things I guess. I’m a natural information gatherer, part of my natural way of processing things is to learn everything possible before acting, and I want to make sure I’ve fully thought about everything always, and know as much as I can (so I wouldn’t want to publicly say something without giving it a lot of consideration first, or post a picture without really thinking about if I want to post it, what my reasons behind posting it are (like if I’m posting something just for a validation of a certain aspect of myself VS. genuinely because I like it, etc.), if a few months from now I’ll still like that I posted it, etc. lol.. even with like silly cat photos or something, I have to analyze it and be like ‘hmm.. will I still stand by this picture in 4 months? why am I posting it publicly vs, just keeping it privately to myself on my computer? what’s important about it?’ etc. etc. ghgjhgjh.. like.. shut up lol.)

ANYWAY, yeah, I don’t know if it’s about wanting online content to be “good”, as much as it’s just like... I take everything way too seriously and am detail-oriented, contemplative, and analytical to a fault, which means it just takes me 10x longer to do basic ‘’simple’’ things that it would for other people. Though I can still be quite quick-thinking and decisive (I don’t often waver back and forth between things too long), it’s usually because I have years of thinking about the same exact things behind me, so I already am very clear on my opinions on stuff, to a point. But when it’s new things I’m less familiar with (like playing a new game, or posting regularly online), I’m still in a phase where I guess I have to give it a lot of thought. I just process things in a different way than other people I guess? Or have some inherent inability to be brief/concise/careless? If you’ve ever read any of my worldbuilding posts (where I usually start off wanting to explain one thing but then have to derail into 400 other misc. details and explanations and it ends up being a novel), then maybe it’s more evident what I mean, where it’s just like... my natural manner of speaking is Too Much.. I guess? Even this answer is winding and rambly, and I feel like other people could have answered this ask in only a few sentences lol..

If any of that makes sense? I don’t know how to describe how I am lol.. I just know it's hard to me to use social media in this ~~casual effortless~~ way most people seem to, since my brain is just inherently incapable of anything ‘’casual’’ or ‘’effortless’’ lol.. T u T ;;

6. " Hi! I hope this isn't weird to say, I'm designing a race for my DND campaign and some of the aesthetics are a little bit inspired by some of your costumes and makeup designs. You're awesome and your art is awesome so thanks : ) "

Thanks so much, I appreciate it! It’s always cool to hear I can inspire people~

(I usually don’t include many compliments in these ask compilation posts, but I always try to include a few, just to let people know that even if I don’t respond to all of them I do see them, and appreciate it!)

7. ???

I ended up cropping out this ask and not answering because some of the content was questionable (the reason WHY/how they wanted to make the character) in a way that I didn’t feel like getting into a long thing about, but part of it was relevant to making OCs in my world, so I will just make a quick comment:

I do state that this is a closed world, so I don’t want anyone making OCs of my species or etc. at least not at this point. Once my game is finished (if ever lol), or I write a few books or something, then I feel it would be understandable if people like, made up a background story for their player character and thus maybe could have some form of OC in my world and etc.. So I may be more relaxed on this in the future as I create content that people naturally would want to engage with , but for now, I’m still a very tiny creator with a closed world and it just doesn’t feel the same as like.. making an oc based on some thing in a big TV series or something. My worldbuliding and etc. is still very personal to me. Unless we’re directly collaborating on things (like mentioned here (link) a bit), or you’re a personal friend of mine who’s gotten involved in the world with my own guidance (meaning I could tell you lore things you’d need to know to make it accurate, etc.), then I don’t feel it’s appropriate for strangers to do at this point.

Especially since I don’t even have enough world info out for people to be able to reference (most species have half-complete guides, I’ve only ever talked about like, one continent, etc.). There are so many necessary details which I have only in my head and have never typed out, so again, idk, it’d just be weird. I’m not okay with it until I have a lot more lore published, and maybe a few actual works out there that people can reference/stories/games/basis for OCs to exist in the first place. If that makes sense?

8. "Hey, is it ok to use your outfit posts as inspiration for a dnd character? I love them so much, you have such a unique way of combining crazy patterns and fabrics into something that gives off a good vibe”

Yes, that would be fine! Thank you for asking, and I appreciate the compliments~ Hopefully I can get back to posting that sort of thing more often lol.. I’ve gotten WAY off my routine and haven’t done many outfits lately.. aaa

9. "hi Luca! i just wanted to say i really love all of your costumes and fashions and dress ups, its all so cool and pretty and interesting. i actually wanna dress up for fun for myself, and now that i know about the bins i think i'll try to convince my mom to take me to similar places for cheap clothing pieces, since my mom is worried about how much all this costume stuff costs. anyway, please keep posting your cool and beautiful stuff! "

Thank you so much! I wish you luck with your costumes! Yeah, I think there’s a common idea in a lot of fashion communities (like with makeup, costumes, etc.) that you have to always have high quality things to look nice, and even if sometimes you can do more with a little extra money, really you can make anything look good with what you have if you just combine it right. As I’ve always been quite low income, being into fashion and stuff has be discouraging at times, that I couldn’t afford certain materials or items, but you just have to find a niche where what you’re able to do works. For example, a lot of even ‘cheap’ lolita style clothings are too expensive for me (like $30 - $50 for a dress??? then the more pricey ones can be over $100???) lol.. BUT, then stuff like mori kei, cult party kei, fantasy costumes, etc. you can do with nearly any fabric you can find, and it’s still just as fun and creative. Most of the outfits I take pictures of probably cost me no more than $1 - $10 for every single item combined. Obviously it depends on location - I have better access now that I live near a place like the bins, which I understand there may not be similar resources in small towns or etc. But even with generic thrift stores (which may not be as cheap as the bins), you can still find pretty good alternatives to all the money it costs to buy things brand new. There’s still some stuff I legit just can’t do because I don’t have access to the materials, but for the most part I can manage everything I’d like with $3 eye-shadows and 15 cent tattered curtain fabrics lol. You can still do really cool stuff on a pretty nonexistent budget!

10. “do you have any tips on growing your hair long? is it expensive to up keep? i wanna grow mine out but it grows so slow!”

Well, I know nothing about hair and am not a hair stylist or etc. so I really don’t have any tips lol?? And I think hair maintenance depends a lot on the type of hair you have, not everyone’s is the same. I assume we must have similar hair (my natural hair is thick kind of coarse very dark brown/black hair, which is a bit wavy in some parts but mostly straight, but most of my hair currently (aside from the overgrown roots at the top) is altered because of damage from bleaching and etc., it’s more brittle. so that’s what I’ll be referencing) if you’re asking me this instead of someone else, but just know that whatever I say may not apply to you.

Anyway, I really don’t do anything to my hair to make it grow or etc., it’s just that I’ve gone a long time without cutting it lol. I used to cut it all the time or change styles, and now I’ve kind of just left it for 5 or 6 years or so. Because of my mental illness I have trouble maintaining personal care and etc., so I do sometimes go a week or more without washing it, even though I’m trying to work that into my schedule more (luckily I don’t have stinky head, I’ve heard some people’s scalp oils and stuff can smell weird if left for too long, I have the privilege of being able to like.. skip on hygiene a lot without it severely impacting my ability to do things or etc. since it’s usually not obvious if I haven’t bathed in a week or two).

My cat also EATS HUMAN HAIR for some reason, so I have to keep it up all the time, so that when I shed it doesn’t actually just fall loose onto the ground lol. Literally all I do to my hair is just keep it in two braids at all times and wash it with normal shampoo and conditioner occasionally, when I can. I really only think it’s gotten long because I’ve been leaving it alone and not messing with it, not really because of anything I’ve done (like I don’t use fancy products on it or etc.) And because of that, no, it’s not really expensive! It absolutely WOULD be if I were like..a normal functioning person and I regularly bleached it and dyed it and put products on it and styled it and used shampoo and conditioner every 1-3 days on it and etc. lol.. But I guess because I don’t do anything to it to maintain it, I’m not spending money on hairspray or dye or shampoo or etc. I used to bleach it a lot and straighten it and use hairspray and stuff on it, and it seems healthier (at least on the new top parts) now that I’m just ... ignoring it basically lol. But I don’t really know what to do to make it grow faster! I’m bad at self-care, and even if I do costumes and stuff, I really am not into beauty and hair and nails and makeup and stuff, so I’m probably the wrong person to ask hghjhb.. My upkeep routine is just... eat and sleep. wash face with water daily.. do extra stuff if you can manage to despite your functioning issues, etc. I’m definitely not a Beauty Advice person, I barely brush my hair even once a week lol

11. "Maybe you should reduce the number of races if it's too overwhelming? A world can still be immersive with only a few races in it."

(sidenote - Not to be nitpicky, but I make a specific point that the groups of fantasy creatures I create are species, not ‘’races’’, even though it is a commonly used term in fantasy worldbuilding, I think it’s inaccurate/weird )

I know I don’t have to make so many different groups, but, I guess I just really want it to be a broad setting. Part of the point in creating Nanyevimi (aside from worldbuilding just being extremely fun and a hobby greatly suited to someone with my personality traits lol) is to have an established world that I can do anything within, a framework already built where it'd be super easy to just drop a character anywhere on the map and already have an idea of what their culture, background, experiences, etc. would be based on pre-existing details about that portion of the world, etc. But I also want it to be broad, and varied, where every area kind of has it’s own dynamics going on there, so if you’re in a different place, you get a different kind of story. (like in an elven alliance city, you’d be better suited to tell an adventure story centering around complicated local politics, or city life, or etc.. whereas out in some isolated mountains in the south, it’d be more suited for a mystery story about stumbling across ancient ruins, or running into a mysterious traveler, etc.)

Which I guess doesn’t matter much, since I'm better at setting, world design, character design, planning, and details than I am at plot, so I probably won’t actually ever do anything with it (god forbid I tried to write a book or something with my utter inability to be concise/brief in any imaginable way). I can craft settings/characters/history/world-details all day endlessly, never losing inspiration or etc, but my weak point is actually telling stories within those settings and formulating a solid plan, organizing plot structures long term and etc.. Setting up everything for something to happen/creating a place where many interesting premises could occur is fine, but then actually thinking of how those things should OCCUR, or how the set up should play out, is where I get kind of lost. I guess the ideal at some point would be to have people working with me, helping when writing stories in my world/outlining games/etc, to add more cohesion/structure and reign in the unfocused stream of ideas, but that’s very unlikely since I don’t have any close friends that are good at organizing or plotting either, etc. BUT anyway, even if I can’t ever manage to do anything with it, the whole “having a setting I can use for anything I want if anything ever comes up, which is already established and thus makes it much easier to formulate ideas because all the background work is already done for myself” thing is at least a nice goal.. in concept...theoretically lol..

And, it’s not really too overwhelming, I think the overwhelming part is actually just formatting and producing those ideas in a consumable form. It’s not hard for me to keep track of 20 different groups and make backgrounds and every imaginable detail for them, but it IS hard to actually take all that information that exists in my head, type it out as a worldbuilding post, format and organize it, draw pictures to go with it, etc. If I could just post long stream of consciousness style 300,000 word long posts with no paragraph breaks, 4000 typos, barely any punctuation, etc., then I’d have A LOT more world-building info publicly available (since that’s what all the initial documents on my computer look like lol), but that’s just so inaccessible it’d be pointless to have public in the first place. The hard part isn’t really coming up with or managing the information, it’s just... organizing it all, and finding a way to share it.

12. "oh PLEASE tell me what boing peach beverage the elf looks like"

a quick sketch of them.. mysterious peach (and other produce) salesman

13. "fun question: what are ur fashion pet-peeves?"

Well, basically none because I hate when people are rigid over Fashion Rules or etc. Like, people who take pictures of others in public because they “look weird” , or who constantly trash on what people are allowed to wear, what patterns can be mixed with others, etc. etc. I get that some stuff can look kind of bad sometimes, and it’s not that I think nobody is allowed to criticize fashion trends or etc. (especially if they’re legitimately problematic, like of course someone wearing a homophobic t-shirt or doing blackface should be criticized), but I mean just like... that sort of trivial bitter criticism that doesn’t do anything but make people feel bad about the way they look or make them afraid to dress in ways they feel comfortable. Like taking a picture of someone and posting it online to make fun of them because they wore socks with sandals, or bullying 14 year olds who just started doing makeup and haven’t totally gotten their look sorted out yet, etc. etc. (ESPECIALLY since this can often intersect with classism, racism, etc. if you really examine what people mock as 'ugly' or 'unacceptable' styles, it's often stuff like men wearing dresses/makeup, women not shaving, clothing associated with poverty (like wearing “”cheap”” clothes), physical traits commonly associated with poc, making fun of people who look a certain way likely due to mental illness (like fidgeting, dirty mismatched clothing, carrying stuffed animals or comfort items in public etc.), etc. etc.

I find costumes and makeup and outfits to be a very cool and fun way to express myself. So when people are complete freaks about it and set out to just relentlessly make others feel bad for no good reason, it’s like... obnoxious... How can you take something with so much potential and limit it and close others off and turn it into this rigid hateful thing, when it should be something that everyone is able to be passionate about and appreciate?? Outside appearance isn't everything, but it's a tool of expression for so many people and can relate to who they are as a person, people should never feel uncomfortable to be who they are or look how they look just because some dumbass rich person writing for a style magazine has the gall to declare some random thing to be 'Unfashionable' despite not having a genuinely creative bone in their body, or some bigot thinks that certain things are ‘ugly’ or ‘unprofessional’ due to their own mental associations, etc.

But anyway, I guess if I had to choose a few things that I just think look kind of odd to me personally/are generally off-putting...

--- the overdrawing lips thing when you can see the persons actual lip-line and it almost looks like they have two mouths or something? (if not done intentionally for costume makeup). It can look a little strange to me sometimes, like an optical illusion where you see multiple mouth lines at once?? idk like this?

--- freckles that are just round circles and really heavy and don’t look realistic (though again, I also realize this could just be the person’s first time drawing them on or something and I’m not mocking for lack of skill, etc. I just mean that it’s a little strange to look at, not actually BAD though) (and it can also be intentional, like for a cartoony costume look) ---- People adopting cutesy/childlike fashion and clothing and sexualizing it or using it as part of their sex/kink stuff.. I just feel like anything associated with children should not be sexualized..? If the first thing someone thinks when seeing children's school uniforms or frilly little girl’s doll dresses or whatever is that it could be a Hot Thing then hhh... like why is your brain making those connections lol.. People can dress how they want for whatever reasons they want, but that’s always personally creeped me out a little. Similar to our culture’s obsession with looking young being ‘hot’ (like a grown man wanting someone who’s a legal adult but still “looks 16″ or etc.), where it’s like.. okay, I guess yeah outwardly you can make that choice, and maybe aren’t directly causing harm, but.. the underlying tones of it and etc. still make it very unsettling to witness lol... ---- anything appropriated obviously, as well as fetishization or bastardization of cultures, like t-shirts with Japanese writing on them Just For Aesthetic, or taking certain culturally or religiously significant symbols or etc. and adopting them as ‘just a silly fashion’ thing when you’re actually being disrespectful, etc. ---- those shorts or whatever that go up extremely high on the hipbones always look a little weird to me lol, like they give a person funny proportions,

(you may have to right click open image in new window and zoom to see the text, but it’s like.. the blank space makes it look kind of weird to me? Like there’s too much where there’s just nothing going on? idk. That’s just my personal preference though, obviously I tend to lean towards busy designs lol)

That’s all I can think of though, like I said, I’m really not picky or judgy about fashion since I think people should be able to do whatever they want for the most part. I’m not like a “omg stripes should NEVER be worn with plaid!!” type person or something lol.

14. "Hey Luca! I love when you post about your world. Do you have a favorite species you've made up so far? Also, I hope you're holding up well during the crisis!"

AAaa thanks! I’m okay mostly. It’s distressing since because of my particular mental illness I already have constant paranoia and obsessions about health, so of course hearing about so much illness can be really triggering constantly and I’m preoccupied in never-ending anxiety spirals about mortality and etc. etc. etc. , but situationally, I’m just very thankful that nobody in my household has gotten sick yet and I desperately wish that will continue to be the case. *** *** ***

(ignore the *** *** *** , this is a text version of a physical compulsion (a hand movement) that I have to do when I mention certain topics lol.. the little man in my brain that controls my obsessive compulsive disorder says I must do certain things after saying or thinking certain things,, You Know How It Is )

And I really love worldbuilding questions, so thank you so much!!!!! Hghgh maybe it seems weird to favor any over the others, but of course I really like the Avirre'thel. Conceptually, I think their origin story and connection to ancient elves and their abilities and etc. put them in a really unique position in the broader world (some of the only truly immortal people to exist, the only people who can still decipher ancient elven texts in a way that makes sense, etc. etc.). Since Nanyevimi (my world) is really just a setting being built so that in the future I can set things within it (games, short stories, etc.), I think I'm drawn to the aspects of it that have the most potential to make interesting characters, and there are definitely a lot of pre-established dynamics with the Avirre'thel/in Navyete (their home country) as a whole that would make it an good place to set certain things, or a good group for a main character to be from, etc.

I do really like the Jhevona as a species overall too, even if I haven't developed them as much, they also kind of stand out as having some fairly unique features that put them in an interesting position in the world (being one of the most magically capable groups that exists but that also having downsides (health issues and infertility from magic exposure, etc.), how the necessity to keep control over their magic influences their culture, being some of the only natural shape-shifters, etc.). Within that, I REALLY love the Thastanri (a subspecies of Jhevona), like their connection to dreams, the Imkasyn, being one of the last few peoples in contact with real dragons, etc. etc. There are a lot of complex things going on in their area, so there’d be a lot of potential to tell a variety of stories or have interesting characters from that group.

AND, though it's supposed to be Unknown in the world so I won't talk about it just in case I ever write a book one day or something and need to preserve at least a FEW mysteries that I don't just outright explain in worldbuilding posts, Jhevona do have the most interesting origins of any species in my opinion. There are some things from before the timeline break sort of thing (where all recorded history was seemingly wiped and everyone had a big memory loss about 50,000 yrs ago) that people aren't aware of anymore... but Jhevona used to have a cool backstory and quite interesting function in society prior to that. There are some remnants in the genetics of the species and how their magic works (at least for certain groups) that kind of hint at how ancient Jhevona used to look and what they used to do, even though in the modern day things are very different.

15. "Top 10 songs you've been listening to lately?"

I don’t have a top 10 since I listen to everything for different reasons, and don’t have as deep a relationship with music the way some people do (like I don’t really have a favorite band or group I have a connection with that’s “gotten me through hard times”, or music I cry to/any songs that are specifically personally emotionally meaningful to me, etc., etc.), but here’s a quick playlist of a few favorite-ish things I’ve had in my head a lot recently -

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPmQ4SZdFFHNkgKo7nAiEMgVvLcycX5Qc

the last song on the list specifically I’ve been replaying a lot for some reason, I guess since it’s good background music as there’s no words. Particularly the part that starts around like 38 seconds in, something about that melody reminds me of something distant, in a dreamlike way. The past few days I mostly alternate between that song, Outstanding, and And The Beat Goes On lol

16. " Do you ever sell sculptures? I really like that little fawn!"

Yeah, I hope to eventually! Like I mentioned in question number three, if I can set up some sort of way to do auctions or etc, then maybe I can sell that one!

17 & 18 : '"aaa yay!! i missed your outfits!!!" / "can I just say love ur outfits! They're so cool and inspire me to draw my ocs with new outfits > o < and I love your cat too, please give him a big ol pat!"

Thank you!!!! more compliments posted just to show I appreciate them lol, even if I don’t publicly respond to every one~ And, the Boyes appreciate the pats.. here is them.. big babbeys...

#it bothers me still that I didn't take all the screenshots the same way and there's different colors of nu #mbers and etc. lol.... but some of those are from 4 months ago or more and I had already deleted the original ask #from my inbox so I can't go rescreencap it to match the others..#this is the issue inherent in taking so long to answer things that I just respond in large batches lol #replies #okay also I know it's been months but... one of you has to like this post or at least show you read/interacted with my #response somehow because I cannot spend like 4-5 hours typing stuff for others if nobody will read it ghghg #( i know i make it take longer by being rambly and etc. but.. still...)#I'm sorry they sat in my inbox a long time and etc. but... also..... my pwecious time and effort #i hope at least one of the people I'm responding to sees that i did indeed reply to them lol

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